Proportions and Facilities

[Phoenix-D]

"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."

I don't agree that removing the possibility entirely is "working around it", really."

Phoenix-D

[oleg]

Aub, taking into account the _very_ long time needed to build even a city, you can research almost all cultural facilities, up to arcology. Thus, if you don't like to upgrade, start to build whatever facility you like on every planet and never bother to upgrade them ! True, you want be able to use global "upgrade" option and go through each planet...

[ October 09, 2002, 00:32: Message edited by: oleg ]

[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.

[Aub]

Originally posted by oleg:
Aub, taking into account the _very_ long time needed to build even a city, you can research almost all cultural facilities, up to arcology. Thus, if you don't like to upgrade, start to build whatever facility you like on every planet and never bother to upgrade them ! True, you want be able to use global "upgrade" option and go through each planet...

Oleg, is this a practical advice? I don't think so. Try playing like this in multiplayer...

The problem is that the current system forces you to use upgrades - if you don't, and the other guy does, you lose valuable time and resources.

Plus, the facility parameters imply upgrading - building an Arcology from ground up does not make sense, it will take too long. It is designed to be reached through a series of upgrades. Unfortunately, if you were careless enough to research Arcology right away, you are screwed for good - you upgrade options are severely limited for the rest of the game. Is it a good thing that more research puts you at a disadvantage?

Aub

[oleg]

Yeah, I was just kidding.

BTW, arcology is a separate group - cities can be upgraded only up to metropholis (or megapolis - I forgot). In fact, PvK orininaly did not mod multistate cities - it was our idea (me and others) to have intermediate upgdadable stages. And it certainly made Proportions much more lovely. I would hate to lose multistage colony buildup.

[PvK]

Yes, Arcologies can only be built from the ground up, because they are not just mega-cities piled on old cities (those are Megalopoli). An Arcology is a completely different kind of thing, with its own eco-system worked into an artificial vertical environment.

Aub, I think I may have an observation that will help put your mind at ease about the upgrades of facilities. When I worked out the numbers for the cultural and (mega)complex facilities, I did consider that the upgrade mechanic was kinda lame, and that it would be annoying if players had to micro-manage their use of upgrades in order to stay competitive with opponents. For this reason and for other design reasons, I chose numbers for costs and output designed so that it actually isn't an advantage to try to abuse the upgrade system, because it's actually better, in almost every case, to build a new facility, as opposed to upgrading to a larger Version of the same type. The only advantages of upgrading (and of choosing large facilities) are in terms of concentration on single planets, which helps in terms of compact defense, and ability to combine bonus effects. In general though, you get more, and often sooner, by just building more smaller facilities, even if you're only upgrading one at a time.

So, at least if you're just trying to maximize your empire's total production, again, you can just follow the simple "fill up on simple facilities" system so familiar from SE4.

There are several advantages to the larger facilities, and in some cases, to upgrading, but in general it's pretty safe to assume that just building new stuff is actually more efficient, as long as you have slots to fill.

On the suggestion to tweak the upgrade costs, I'd love to have such options, but that's another thing the current SE4 doesn't let us mod.

Ok, so it does stink that SE4 only gives limited upgrade options. But as oleg and others mentioned, I added the upgrades at the request of players who enjoy it, and I think it's nice to at least have some ability to upgrade, at least as long as it's balanced so that there is no trick that makes it more efficient to upgrade than to build normally. (For instance, this is why I made Communities not upgrade to cities, because it would be a shortcut in terms of costs, which I can't mod.)

PvK

[oleg]

About upgrade cost: there is a an entry in settings.txt like "upgrade cost = 50". Does it affect ships upgrades only or applies to planets as well ? If later, may be we can vary it a little.

[Jmenschenfresser]

"Upgrade Facility Cost Percent := 50"

Aub or PvK,

Change that to 100 and you are good to go. The upgrade system will still be lame, but you won't have to worry about being ripped off, and you can scrap and build to your hearts desire.

[Mylon]

Is what would be nice is if upgrades, instead of currently modifying the cost of the new facility, applied a percentage of the old facility towards the new one. This way the strategy of building a 15kT minor city and upgrading to a 100kT metropolis would cost something on the order of 92.5KT (15 + (100 - 15*50%)) rather than the current system of 65kT (15 + 100*.5%).

But of course, something hardcoded and requires us to bother Aaron, not PVK.

[Aub]

Originally posted by Jmenschenfresser:
"Upgrade Facility Cost Percent := 50"

Aub or PvK,

Change that to 100 and you are good to go. The upgrade system will still be lame, but you won't have to worry about being ripped off, and you can scrap and build to your hearts desire.

Well, yes, that makes sense. You still get a significant benefit when you upgrade - the original facility keeps working and producing all that time it takes to upgrade it (and the time can be long!).

But this way upgrading feels more like a bonus feature, not something essential for survival of your species. You see, the way it is now, *everything* needs to be done through upgrades. If you plan to build a Metropolis, building a Minor City and then upgrading it wins hands down - it cuts the cost of the Metropolis in half!

Simply changing this line in settings may however destroy game balance. If this change is to be done in Proportions, higher level facility costs need to be reduced, as now there will be no way to get them at half-cost by playing the upgrade game.

PvK, what do you think of this?