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