Proportions and Facilities

[Aub]

As much as I am in love with the Proportions, I hate the way facilities are handled in it.

Just think about it: in the original SEIV, you would develop a planet in a certain way, but this development was very limited: after you put 20 or 25 facilities in there (less if you cannot breathe the atmosphere), you are pretty much done. Those facitiles could be queued up from the start, and the planet could be left alone for some time.

When you research a new type of facilites, you make adjustments, but that does not happen that often.

This all means: very little micro-management! (Hip-hip-hurray!) I can concentrate on building ships and military operations without sacrificing my production or research capacity.

Now, the bad news is that in Proportions it's not that simple at all. You cannot queue in a cultural center form the start: it will take forever to finish. You have to gradually add lower-level cities, and then you choose the right times to upgrade them. Add to it the hardcoded limitation of upgrading only to the latest, and you get a real nightmare. When do I advance my research, what city level do I build first on a new colony - so that it will finish in a reasonable time, and would then upgrade in a reasonable time... oh, all these decisions are now really important! And that means micro-management rules...

I knew all theis for some time now, but I didn't want ot post because I didn't have solutions to propose. Now I feel I have some.

The goal in Proportions in simple here: to have a really powerful Homeworld, and to have colony worlds that can be made quite powerful in time but start very weak and almost never reach the homeworld power.

Now: how about, instead of having more advanced facilities on the homeworld, just having more of them?

Let's say, a homeworld has 500 "big cities" (clicks with reality, too!). A big city can be built in 1 year on average (with the future avanced technology ), so it takes 500 years to build up a comparable planet -- fair enough, isn't it?

A world with non-breathable atmosphere can have a limit of 50 facilities or so - so they would cap up quicker. The numbers can be played with, and we still can have different city types - just not that many, two or three. That way, upgrading does not become a nightmare. And a planet could still be filled up with research centers in just several years. I leave the details to the reader (more specifically, to PvK )

Ok, that's just an idea, all input is welcome. I just think that, given the nature of upgrades in SEIV, playing with the number of facilities versus their level is a more promising way. Don't you think so?

Aub

[Suicide Junkie]

One potential problem with the Large number of facility slots you are proposing is that you can only build one facility per turn max.

That means it will still take at least 500 turns to fill any breathable planet with even the cheapest facilities.

[PvK]

I love all feedback, but in this case, my reply may sound like a bunch of counter-arguments. But, here's my first take on this.

1) The thing that really stands out to me is that I have the opposite experience as a player. I seem to spend much more time micro-managing planet development in the standard game than I do in Proportions games. One reason is simply that I can generate colonies more quickly, but also, in the standard game, most facilities are built in a single turn, while in Proportions, each one usually takes at least a few turns, and sometimes a few years. So I only have to consider maybe 2-3 empty construction queues per turn, while in my standard games, I often have dozens to think about each turn.

2) It may be because I'm so familiar with the facility values in Proportions, and have set up some spreadsheets as I designed and balanced them, but to me the facility choices don't seem all that complicated. The range of choices is very great, and offers a huge range between cheap and fast versus long-term facilities that are more compact. It almost always makes sense to fill up slots with the cheapest ones, and only then start investing in larger ones.

3) Maybe there's a way, but offhand I think it might not be possible to give the homeworld 500 facility slots, without giving all breathable planets 500 facility slots. Also, going back to my reaction #1 above, this sounds like much more micromanagement, rather than less. And the view of what is on each planet sounds like it would get to be a nightmare, since there is no "compressed view" offered for planets.

So in sum, I guess I think maybe you aren't identifying your issue accurately. Maybe you are just confused about what your construction and upgrade options are, rather than having a micromanagement issue?

PvK

[oleg]

I agree. Aub' idea is very interesting but I personally have less micromanagement with Proportions : it takes long time to build advanced facilities and planet can be left alone for years. Besides, there is no need to colonize as many planets as possible as in normal SE IV. Half a dozen of breathable planets is all what you need for whole game, really !

[ October 07, 2002, 00:44: Message edited by: oleg ]

[Fyron]

Sure there is a reason to colonize them: to keep others from doing so.

[PvK]

Another reason would be to set up a military base, with defenses and facilties to resupply, repair, and refit ships, store units, etc. In this way, you can move towards taking other player's developed colonies, and also expand the area over which you can operate your fleet in strength, particularly since more powerful ships in Proportions have serious tradeoffs between speed and range.

But I think oleg was referring to the planets that you try to develop to be as productive as possible, in which case it can make sense to concentrate on only a few at a time.

PvK

[Aub]

Originally posted by PvK:
...I only have to consider maybe 2-3 empty construction queues per turn, while in my standard games, I often have dozens to think about each turn.

Hmm, right, but in the original SEIV, you can queue things up for years ahead since the choice is really straightforward.

2) It may be because I'm so familiar with the facility values in Proportions, and have set up some spreadsheets as I designed and balanced them, but to me the facility choices don't seem all that complicated.

Ok, ok, I admit, I just don't feel comfortable with this system - maybe I don't understand how to deal with it! Could someone tell me what a usual development path for a colony world would look like?

Let's suppose I build a bunch of lowest-level cities first, say, 15 or 20 - now upgrading them all is a very bold move as it will take forever to complete... So I need to build two-three of them, and then I upgrade these to the next level, right? What about the level after that - it again takes forever! Also, as soon as I reasearch the third level, upgrading to the second level is not available for other worlds, so I need to be very careful with that. Hmm. I feel like I'm solving a puzzle, and this puzzle does not really belong to SEIV. It feels somewhat artificial, doesn't it?

3) Maybe there's a way, but offhand I think it might not be possible to give the homeworld 500 facility slots, without giving all breathable planets 500 facility slots...

That's OK - in Proportions, any breathable world can anyway be developed ad infinum - bringing it even to half the strength of a homeworld takes forever.

Thanks for listening me out -- Aub

[PvK]

One of the main intents of Proportions mod is to make most decisions more interesting, particularly in areas where the standard set offers clear choices. There are new kinds of choices and trade-offs, with many valid decisions, in many areas of play, including facility choice. I think that's a lot of fun and more interesting, because you can choose how to develop a planet, how much, in what way, etc. Colonies end up having more personality that way, and the whole process seems more interesting.

It's certainly true that not all players want facility choices to be more interesting.

I think I already describes a typical way to build a production colony that is efficient, below. Again:

1) Move population there, hopefully 10M or more, but not necessarily more than about 50M.

2) Fill up, minus or two slots, on the smallest available facility of the desired type. E.g. Mineral Mine I, Research Facility I.

3) Build a Construction Yard, at least, if you have a construction bonus and/or Hardy Industrialist, or have a higher tech in construction yards. If you don't want immediate return, it may be more efficient in the long run to build the contstruction yard first.

4) Scrap one facility at a time and build complex-sized facilities, or cities or minor cities.

5) Consider researching other techs that give better facilities, or bonus facilities, such as computers, etc.

However, you may want to just do steps 1) and 2). That is, you can do quite well with standard SE4 colony facilities, IF you can expand to a bunch of planets and defend them all. The main reasons to intensify development on single planets are that often it's difficult to get a whole lot of colonies before running into aliens, and the difficulty of transporting population over large distances.

Also, military colonies are important. Build resupply depot + construction yard, and dump units on at least one planet in each system you want to have a strong presence in.

That's the quick course. Trying to build big cities and so on is actually gravy - you can probably do fine without worrying about how well you are doing it, because it's a long-term thing. If you're more interested in other aspects of play, it's not all that important, unless you're trying to win a peaceful long-term economic strategy.

Originally posted by Aub:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
...I only have to consider maybe 2-3 empty construction queues per turn, while in my standard games, I often have dozens to think about each turn.

Hmm, right, but in the original SEIV, you can queue things up for years ahead since the choice is really straightforward.

2) It may be because I'm so familiar with the facility values in Proportions, and have set up some spreadsheets as I designed and balanced them, but to me the facility choices don't seem all that complicated.

Ok, ok, I admit, I just don't feel comfortable with this system - maybe I don't understand how to deal with it! Could someone tell me what a usual development path for a colony world would look like?

Let's suppose I build a bunch of lowest-level cities first, say, 15 or 20 - now upgrading them all is a very bold move as it will take forever to complete... So I need to build two-three of them, and then I upgrade these to the next level, right? What about the level after that - it again takes forever! Also, as soon as I reasearch the third level, upgrading to the second level is not available for other worlds, so I need to be very careful with that. Hmm. I feel like I'm solving a puzzle, and this puzzle does not really belong to SEIV. It feels somewhat artificial, doesn't it?

Your point about a planet with 15 to 20 cities is valid, but in practice, that takes a huge amount of time to develop anyway, and isn't all that efficient unless you are trying to maximize single planets. At any rate, I would recommend just scrapping single cities (or more typically, smaller facilities) and replacing them, rather than trying to upgrade 15+ cities at once. The upgrades only really work well with 1 or 2 at once, because of the limits of SE4, but it doesn't really happen that often, in my experience.

Often I make planets with many non-urban facilities, and just one or two urban facilities, which I then upgrade.

PvK

3) Maybe there's a way, but offhand I think it might not be possible to give the homeworld 500 facility slots, without giving all breathable planets 500 facility slots...

That's OK - in Proportions, any breathable world can anyway be developed ad infinum - bringing it even to half the strength of a homeworld takes forever.

Thanks for listening me out -- Aub

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[oleg]

Why can't you do the same in Proportions ??
Queue 10 miners and 5 cities and your typical medium planet fill have a full queu that would serve your for 200 turns ! Press "upgrade" every time you discover mineral miner 2 and advanced city. I really do not understand the desire to remove all the charm of Proportions colony development.

[dogscoff]

I really enjoy colony development in Proportions. I hate having a hundred idenical worlds each one with 10 identical mineral miners on. BORING!

I'd much rather take the time to build a more interesting world with a minor city, a rad extractor, a space port and 2 colonial communities, and then another world with a space port city, a space yard, 3 solar rad collectors and 2 minor cities...

It makes each one unique. Gives it character. More like a living, breathing planetary community than a number in an accounting device.