Proportions and 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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[steveh11]

I think I agree with Aub: the course you describe is far more micro-managed than a standard game of SEIV.

In a standard game, I load up the entire queue (say, 25 slots) and forget it until it's queue becomes empty. Minimum player effort required: upgrades can be handled auto-magically.

In a Proportions game, doing as you suggest requires constant tinkering. I'm all for more interesting choices, but I prefer that I only have to make data entries once!

Overall I love Proportions and it's now the normal Version of the game that I play. This doesn't mean that I think it's perfect however, and I'm sure you don't either: in my (personal) view, colony development is a chore in Proportions which I could well do without. So maybe we could look at the suggestion again, please?

Steve.