Proportions and Facilities

[oleg]

Exactly. I like to play Proportions because after while I get warm feelings to my most developed planets. I even rename them individualy !

[Aub]

Originally Posted by PvK:
...It's certainly true that not all players want facility choices to be more interesting...

Let me review my position. I am for ineteresting choices, but I am against the upgrade nightmare. Now, if I could upgrade each city individually and to the level I desire, I would probably be happy: it's more micro-management than I want, but it pays off in the being "more interesting".

Upgrading is, however, severely limited in SEIV, and that makes upgrade choices and timing not fun. I do not like struggling with random and artificially imposed constraints.

PvK, all scenarios you describe do not touch upgrading to higher-level facilities. You say it's "gravy"? Well, your grave has a burned taste! If it does not work, why have it there?

What I was proposing is to increase the number of available slots so that (at least 99% of the time) you don't have to upgrade, you can only add (that does not take the variety away, does it). Isn't it a logical conclusion?

(Ok, maybe 500 facility slots was an overkill. How about 125? SEIV facility screen has 64 slots on it, so it's two full screens; that's not too bad!)

Originally Posted by oleg:
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.

First, it does not work on a non-breathable world where you only have 5 facility slots max. You HAVE to plan upgrades. Now, if you queue 5 cities in there, by the time you're done you're in a tough spot since now upgrading to an advanced city will take your planet off the map for several YEARS (at least, and with no "liquidity"). And you do want those advanced cities; the first-level cities do not produce much (almost no reasearch for example). Ah, no - you are forced to solve the upgrade puzzle.

Aub

[steveh11]

Originally posted by 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.

Well, My Mileage Varies

I like the "charm of Proportions colony development", I would just like it to be a little more 'fire and forget' than the current, more micromanaged, style.

Unless the minister that builds facilities, whoever he is, is up to the job. Anyone care to let the AI handle their colony development?

Steve.

[PvK]

I guess I look at the choices offered by Proportions colony development as adding some actual management, or macro-management, rather than micro-management. It's still a perfectly valid and effective strategy to make dull pre-planned colonies planned years or decades in advance (just fill up on minor facilities - you'll only usually have a handful of planets in a position to build any cities, anyway, and the decisions to do so are years apart).

I agree that the upgrade mechanic is an unfortunate artificial limitation. I just offer some uses for what upgrade options the game allows. When I select the values for the various larger facilities, I look at a number of factors including the time before return on investment, and the ability to upgrade. If you really use all of the slots on a planet with major facilities, then there becomes a choice, if you want to do even more major development there, between a long multiple-facility upgrade, with no loss in production during the upgrade, but a longer period of waiting for any improvement; or scrap and replace, which may seem wasteful, and may not be as efficient as building a city on another planet, but give faster return-on-investment than upgrading 3 or more large facilities at once (and also will give a major immediate boost for the scrap value of the facility).

It is an interesting suggestion to use more facility slots. It would mean re-working ALL of the production facility values, however, which would be a lot of work.

Also, as I described a lot during the "Proportion Mod - so confusing!" thread, I am using the low number of slots on domed colonies to abstractly represent the extreme difficulty of trying to turn a wildly inhospitible environment into a productive and efficient world comparable to the homeworld. If domed colonies offered bunches of facility slots, it would be years and years before you'd notice any inconvenience from developing on the worst worlds, which IMO would be much less desirable (from a design standpoint). That is, I _like_ that there are serious limits, inconvenience and inefficiency, and therefore choices, about what you can put on a domed colony.

PvK

[Aub]

Ok, my concrete proposal is:

1. Remove all upgrade options for cities and complexes. That is, the only option is to scrap and replace. Tough? Yes, but at least you won't feel that you're lagging behind because someone's juggling the twisted upgrade mechanics better than you do.

2. Make upgrades on Research Centers II / Mineral Miners II etc. very cheap - so that one could upgrade a whole bunch in reasonable time. The cost here is research; and if the research costs need to be increased even more, so be it.

I'd like to see more facility slots, but I buy the arguments that it will make non-breathable worlds too similar to the breathable ones, and that it's a lot of re-balancing work.

How's that? I'm simply trying to work around the upgrade mechanics, that's all. For me, the definition of micromanagement is "there is a tedious task, and doing it manually and doing it well brings significant gameplay benefits"... So if managing city upgrades is tedious and feels unnatural, I'd rather not see this option at all. Does it take anything from the game? I don't think so.

(An example of an unnatural limitation: you have two domed colonies, one has 5 Cities. You'd like to upgrade them to Major Cities, and to start building a Megalopolis on the other... and you cannot! Why? How are the two related!? The only reason is the game mechanics... so now you have to make a choice. It is so, SO IRRITATING - I'd rather NOT have the choice to upgrade, and not think about this kind of unnatural interdependencies!)

Aub

[ October 08, 2002, 19:23: Message edited by: Aub ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Couldn't the whole nonbreathable/tough life situation be created by a low population limit, and the poor resource production/build rate modifier associated with it?

PS:
With enough facility slots available per planet, the scrap & rebuild to upgrade would be reasonable. I would say 10 facilities per planet would be about the minimum for this.

[ October 08, 2002, 20:13: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Jmenschenfresser]

I've never played an extensive game of Proportions...don't get me wrong, I've played a hundred plus turns in one game, but that's nothing.

If I understand this, your main complaint is the upgrade feature. That you can only upgrade to the highest level? I can see that.

On the other hand, scrapping whole cities is a weird concept...talk about counterintuitive.

Perhaps it would be possible to divide the tree up into low density, medium density, and high density settlements.

Dunno, but I can see your point with the upgrade thing.

[dogscoff]

Now, if I could upgrade each city individually and to the level I desire, I would probably be happy: it's more micro-management than I want, but it pays off in the being "more interesting".

As well as discussing alterations to the Proportions mod, I hope you're sending emails to Malfador requesting improvements to the upgrade system.

[Suicide Junkie]

Quick suggestion:
Upgrades should give you the "how many do you want" menu just like for units!

[Aub]

Originally posted by Jmenschenfresser:
...
If I understand this, your main complaint is the upgrade feature. That you can only upgrade to the highest level? I can see that....

Yes, and the fact that you can only upgrade all facilities at once... and that it does not upgrade them one-by-one, so you cannot interrupt the process. All these limitations combined together produce a very awkward system.

Of course I'd like to see it improved, but in the meantime I'd like to see it worked around in the mods like Proportions, instead of building a complex upgrade tree on top of the poor functioning system.

Aub