Buildings

[Krikkitone]

I prefer either NO buildings, or just "special" buildings. i.e. wonders or the equivalent.

What is the purpose of buildings? So your planets have something to do. Give a tangible sense of infrastructure, spoils of war?

I'd rather a planet be defined by its foci, ONLY. Thus all planets that have X pop and are classified as Industrial planets will be equivalent, with no input from me save me telling them what to build and when to build it. We could have a little number beside a planet when you click on it that was basically a percent. This would be how developed a planet is, when it gets to 100% it will start contributing money to your empire, unless you have it build something: say a wonder or a ship, or defenses.

All this would be automatic. And when you develop the new industrial controls, this % would decrease because the planet is no longer at its maximum.

I like this! Great idea. Basically a planet automatically builds itself up, unless you assign it to build something else. This could be the penalty for switching focus as well--lose half your infrastructure score for switching. (plus, an easy method of inflicting bombing damage...just decrease the infrastructure score.)

I do agree that we don't really need a bunch of economy buildings, since FO's already got the Focus system. Buildings should do extra special things, like Wonders.

My system would be slightly similar but would have the advantage of being more differentiated. Each planet would have 'special buildings' as well as
a few types of
'Infrastructure buildings' ie buildings that you can and are expected to have multiple copies of.

So a planet would have its special buildings and then... 100 'Factories' 34 'Farms', .... (one type for each resource and one or more types of defensive building)

Essentially the same (the UI could display it as % of maximum usable.. based on population and tech) but the game effect would make it easier to model things like technological and population expansion and changing focus.

So a planet's infrastructure levels would depend on how much you've invested in it since it was formed, what tech level you are at*, what the population of the planet is*, and how long it has been at its current focus, and what that focus is*
*these are the only things that would matter to its 'equilibrium' levels, ie the ones you build toward. (of course that assumes the population is at max and no new technological discoveries are made)

So changing focus wouldn't suddenly change what a planet built, it would change which Infrastructure level would get built up and what other ones would be scrapped when necessary. And the Infrastructure levels (assuming you have sufficient population) would be what would produce the resources.

[utilae]

That's how I would like it too.

[Kostik666]

Well what can i say... i was sitting on a rainy night, with nothing to do, continued my MOO3 game at turn 450+... and decided to go thru my planets and build them up for 2-3 hours i sat there point-n-clicking, and you know what, i got thru less than 1/3rd.

the only thing i can say for your plans is that buildings have to stay...

what needs to change is the AI development and building que.

the whole idea brought by powercrazy and anything that was topped off is great, but what makes this game interesting is the involvement you take in building your empire... though at times it is too much.

i did not get time to think anything thru but heres my solution.

1) get a system for managing all planets... such as building plan - (choose building) for every planet

2) All production and research and such mumbo jumbo generate at empire level, and are controlled at empire level.

3) the actual amount of productivity (research, etc.) designated by population or by money, as in use sliders to give percent population or percent income to various tasks maybe even to surplus income for later use.

4) planetary defence - the fun part, i enjoy nothing more than to see a pile of bad guys get crushed by some tiny defence i put up. so my suggestion is - customize. amount of defence given by planet size/ population ( i prefer size, if planet is undeveloped you are still able to put up a valid defence), anyways for customization. each planet is allowed 1 orbital base (size varies with tech level) and a number of ground defence (varies on population/size) and you have a choice how to fill it up, make one screen allocated for choosing defence... oh say sliders, 20% missile, 20% fighter, 60% beam. and a few sections for what exact weapons to use in each. say a planets defence is 100 set units. 20 will fill with your specified missile, 20 with fighters, and 60 with beams.

think about it, you wont have to let the computer tell you how to defend, you can do it yourself.

correct me if im wrong, agree disagree, this is what i came up off the top of my mind, more ideas will come

[Krikkitone]

3) the actual amount of productivity (research, etc.) designated by population or by money, as in use sliders to give percent population or percent income to various tasks maybe even to surplus income for later use.

Well as someone else in this thread, or a related pointed out, I forget exactly who.

If you have two projects competing for the same totally interchangeable resource, then you want to finish one as fast as possible and Then do the other so a queue is better than % for divying up a single resource. (since it will complete in the same time)

Now % is appropriate for division between non easily interchangable resources (the 5 resources we have at least won't be Easily interchangable) or for 'space' ie defensive structures.


On the other points I agree with you. (for defensive bases I would look for something similar to the system of Focus.. you have several 'weapon types' ie LR beam, PD beam, Missile, Fighter, Shield generator.. with each a type and Proportional Level is chosen (as well as a type and level of Armor for each weapon facility).. That becomes your Imperial Standard Defense Base and each planet then has a Level of Defense (similar to but not the same as Focus) that says how developed a system you want it to maintain. (one could even eliminate instant upgrade and just let old weapon systems get physically upgraded.)

[Kostik666]

you got a point krikk

maybe a combined system

on one hand you have resource spent, on the other you have priority

you set your empire to spend 40% on war effort, 30% construction&development, 20% research, 10% terraform, 20% something... i dont know... (the spending tables consider spending on maintainance and other thisngs that are immediate, without which something has to be destroyed, and money available to spend is the remains)

you have onether chart for priority where you set what is more important for you, and the less important one just waits.


im not suggesting and empirewide control to replace everything,
what im saying is we take all the individual planets (which will still be accessible and usable) and put them in one big general formula

so when you get too lazy to go thru 100 planets you just set them all to spend equal percentages, to use a standard, a norm. prduction values still differ planet to planet, if one is more populated or rich.

another good point is a global emergency fund, as in having a surplus for planets to dig into.

we need a very complex system to working everything out, but we also need that system to be displayed in just a few screens so everything can be easily managed

[Satyagraha]

Basically a planet automatically builds itself up, unless you assign it to build something else. I do agree that we don't really need a bunch of economy buildings, since FO's already got the Focus system. Buildings should do extra special things, like Wonders.

compared to, say, moo2, what kinds of buildings will be abstracted and which will stay in? about how many buildings would there be then?

[Krikkitone]

Well, MOO2 Buildings that I wouldn't count as Economic Infrastructure would be

Cloning Centers
Star bases*
Defense Bases*
Army Bases*
Planetary Shields*
Artemis System Net*
Terraforming
Biospheres
Food Replicators

Maybe Pollution Control Buildings..but in MOO2 they really were just a production booster

*These would mostly be part of some type of Defensive Infrastructure.. Except for the Shipyard capacity of the Starbase.

[PowerCrazy]

A ship yard, assuming we have very few of them, would be a special building.

Terraforming would be a special project that you would assign a planet, and after several turns the planet would be terraformed to terran standards of your race.

Food Replicators seems like it would be more of a farming tech then anytihng.
Biospheres should be automatic.
A cloning center seems useless to me as we aren't going to be moving population around. I'd say we just make it automatic when you get the tech your growth rate increases.

Also just because something is automatic doesn't necessarilly mean it is "free" We could model it as a percentage of empire wealth, allow the player to pay an upfront cost if they have enough etc. It would be something happening in the background that the player oculd either yea, or nay, but wouldn't have to tell every planet to build.

Defenses are there own topic and I think we should get the building model down before talking about those.

[Hexxium]

Also just because something is automatic doesn't necessarilly mean it is "free" We could model it as a percentage of empire wealth, allow the player to pay an upfront cost if they have enough etc. It would be something happening in the background that the player oculd either yea, or nay, but wouldn't have to tell every planet to build.

The problem with that is, that you coudn't influence which planets to develop first, in the case of not having enough production to improve all of them at maximum rate. Unless you only use local ressources for that, of course.

Sure, you could have some kind of priority list, but that would make things more complicated.

[emrys]

compared to, say, moo2, what kinds of buildings will be abstracted and which will stay in? about how many buildings would there be then?

From my point of view, this is the key to the "infrastructure" argument and the easiest question to answer:

what to abstract

Any building that would end up getting built on more than 10-20% of planets should be abstracted out into infrastructure, because whatever it adds to the game in immersion or differentiation between planets is outweighed by the extra mouse clikcs and no-brain boring decsions it introduces.

What is left are the things that actually make one planet different from the next, and give real strategic decisions.

how many "buildings" to have

We should have sufficient building choices that in a typical sized empire, where planets typically have about 3-5 slots upper end, few of these upper end planet have identical sets of buildings, i.e. enough that buildings actually add character to a planet.

[noelte]

Hmm, it feels like a de-ja-vu to me. But i have the same problem to understand not having many buildings as i had with the HOI research model.

Why do we have to insist on autobuild infrastucture. I understand if a industry needs a specific amount of population, new factories should be build as populataion increases. But all the unique buildings (one per planet) should be build on player decisions. Yes, late game i don't want handle building them by hand, that's why i would use focus specific build lists. Or something of that kind. Of cause, choosing a building to be build should not only be based on, "Hmm, i'm on a farming planet, let's get build soil enrichment". Buildings should require maintance and some other properties which require a real choise.


And even if that don't comes to life. Why the 3-5 building slots. Why forcing the player to chose building by available slots and not by gain/cost ratio. How big are these buildings that only 3-5 of them fit onto a planet (plz don't hurt me, Aq. I did't said it )

Ronald.

[drek]

Yes, late game i don't want handle building them by hand, that's why i would use focus specific build lists.

A build list/viceroy system is an extra piece of UI that I'd rather not deal with. Keeping things clean and easy to find is very important to me. Besides, if situation is generic enough that player decision can be replicated across numerous cases, then it's a good canidate for abstraction.

How big are these buildings that only 3-5 of them fit onto a planet.

Even in Moo2 and Civ, buildings are abstractions. Except in the case of wonders, a single building in the game system doesn't map to a single building on the planet surface. Buildings are tokens--game pieces.

To put it another way, when you build a "bank" in Civ or Moo2, it represents an entire network of banks.

Three through five actually sounds like way too many to me. Zero to three would work out better, especially in large empires. If you can, try playing the game Spartan to see how it all works out. Based on my experiences with Spartan, the answer is "pretty well". It still feels like a Civ style game, just with far less build decisions.