Given these sentiments on how Free Orion currently operates, I think I would like to propose some ideas the problem of exponential growth.Vezzra wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 12:27 pmHowever, Oberlus has correctly pointed out a fundamental issue: we simply cannot do that by trying to balance build costs, because what's prohibitely expensive at the start of the game becomes practically negligible in late game. This isn't an issue only with shipyards, this issue has been plaguing us practically every time we want to make something you should be able to acquire/build in limited amounts. And every time we are forced to resort to often ackward/not ideal workarounds/other solutions.
The fundamental issue behind this is (as I've been pointing out again and again in the past) the way resource income increases over the course of a game. It's broken, plain and simple. And with it everything that builds upon it.
A 4X game like FO basically works this way: Acquire/produce a set of basic resources -> convert those resources into assets, which help you increase acquiring/producing more of the basic resources. That's the fundamental loop, so to speak.
If the increase in basic resource production is unbalanced, everything else will be unbalanced too. IMO FO gameplay has been suffering because of that for a very long time. And it's biting us again. Why don't we fix it?
Use the influence mechanic: Specifically let influence operate at a deficit (allow for negative influence) and use that as a soft cap on growth. Give maluses to production and research output and even max population on planets. Personally I'm thinking that each planet not focused on research should take up about 1/3 the output if a influence producing planet, that way you can have a planet set to research and another set to industry and then some influence left over for fleet upkeep and influence projects. This also means that population should count towards influence upkeep. This way you keep the proportion of planets focused on influence constant, as increasing populations, will mean planets can produce more influence from the focus.
Add another level to resources: This could allow for the existence of resource bottlenecks. Stellaris does this with minerals and alloys and later in the game with strategic resources. What I am thinking is to introduce resources as planetary specials that would be converted into production, research, and influence. For the time being I will call these rare ores, exotic ores and precious ores. Rare ores would be necessary for production. Exotic ores would be necessary for research. Precious ores would be necessary for influence. Each empire homeworld would start out with all three of the deposits. For all colonies the extraction focus will be necessary for the rest of the empire to take advantage of the resources, while the homeworld would come with the Processing Center building, that would allow it to be set to other foci while still reaping the benefits of the ores. In addition planets set to the extraction focus would need to be supply connected to a planet with a refinery building. This would require some changes as to how stockpiling and the foci would work. Firstly, the base resources, the ores, would only be stockpiled. Secondly the foci would be changed to convert ores into production, research and influence, instead of extracting it directly form the population.