Planetary defense redesign

[Oberlus]

instead of an unconditional strong stability boost, make it mostly work by countering negative stability instead.

i still think a small to moderate amount of stability in all cases would be fine/good.

e.g.

• one effect +2 target stability for all cases
• and a second effect which could either give +0.5 stability each turn (so slowing down decreasing stability) or rather boost target stability by 13 if e.g. stability < 0

What would be the explanation/fluff for those effects?
Something similar to what we have with Martial Law, regarding troops in the streets to keep people under control?

And what purpose does it serve regarding gameplay?

If the conditional effect to rise the stability is small enough to not allow for important flat bonuses out of supply / under siege, as in only good to avoid/delay planet rebellion but not to get better output than focused to output, then I would like that, it could be balanced with respect to Confederation and make sense.

[Ophiuchus]

instead of an unconditional strong stability boost, make it mostly work by countering negative stability instead.

i still think a small to moderate amount of stability in all cases would be fine/good.

e.g.

• one effect +2 target stability for all cases
• and a second effect which could either give +0.5 stability each turn (so slowing down decreasing stability) or rather boost target stability by 13 if e.g. stability < 0

What would be the explanation/fluff for those effects?

• expenses for the troops strengthen local economy, and are a long-term commitment of the empire -> stability
• having a strong military organisation locally gives the impression of stability, unsurmountable empire forces, deterring opponents. also you have a lot of informants everywhere and the organisation and its troop can react fast. This is not helping in getting better at production/research... but it is enough (if barely) to keep the colony at peace. difference to martial law is more about the symbols than about actual violence

Regarding intended game effect of the unconditional boost: I think protection focus should boost all the defensive stats. For me that includes stability (and also stealth). I also think it good from a narrative point of view - you can get a bit stability out of a focus on protection. In some cases that might be enough to get the society over a certain threshold to get a productive non-focus related gain - meaning NAI and automated industry gains. Also a +2 stability gain is AFAIU not enough to get something out of focus dancing.

If the conditional effect to rise the stability is small enough to not allow for important flat bonuses out of supply / under siege, as in only good to avoid/delay planet rebellion but not to get better output than focused to output, then I would like that, it could be balanced with respect to Confederation and make sense.

Keeping stability <= 0 was the intention of the conditional boost.
the way I wrote the effect imlementation (gating it with stability, not target stability), it does not give help in getting stability above 0.
One could of course also use Value(target-stability) as guard and SetValue(min(target-stability+15,0)) for similar effect.

The slow +0.5 stability gain is just some idea which I think could be interesting in some cases, so probably it is orthogonal to the conditional boost. Besides slowing stability loss, it also helps growing stability. I would like to playtest it as third effect.
Combined with -5 stability after invasion one would probably often put a newly combined colony on protection (which makes sense for me fluffwise). Besides influence, supply, stockpile, protection is anyway the only sensible choice directly after invasion/colonisation.

[Oberlus]

Maybe just make it so that the conditional stability boost can't go higher than X stability (say 5, dunno, a value that is not enough to qualify for most stability-gated effects). With an example: if the stability bonus is +10, the maximum is 5, target stability without focus was -7, -4 and -1, then after focus target meters are 3, 5 and 5 (and not 3, 6 and 9).
Would this be OK for others?

[Ophiuchus]

Maybe just make it so that the conditional stability boost can't go higher than X stability (say 5, dunno, a value that is not enough to qualify for most stability-gated effects). With an example: if the stability bonus is +10, the maximum is 5, target stability without focus was -7, -4 and -1, then after focus target meters are 3, 5 and 5 (and not 3, 6 and 9).
Would this be OK for others?

+1

good catch about stabilising to a value above zero. industry/research should be able to grow. and building and repairing ships should probably possible. being able to spawn a colony could be good or bad. So, i guess stability 5 is good

i prefer a low unconditional bonus as well as I find it more interesting, but it is not completely necessary.

[Oberlus]

i prefer a low unconditional bonus as well as I find it more interesting, but it is not completely necessary.

I'm all right with that +2 you proposed. All the fluff makes sense too.

[Ophiuchus]

good catch about stabilising to a value above zero. industry/research should be able to grow. and building and repairing ships should probably possible. being able to spawn a colony could be good or bad. So, i guess stability 5 is good

or maybe, lets stabilize at 3 or 4? so that you have to take care that cutting off your shipyard from the capital/next administrative building does not mean you can't build or repair (or you have actually to change policy in order to do that).