Distibuted production models

[tzlaine]

Instead of the old system where every planet builds up its own shipyard and produces its own ships which you somehow have to get together to form a fleet. MOO3 solved that last part with the, as far as I'm concerned, unrealistic and asinine reserve. Every ship instantly disappears when it is completed and reappears in the reserve box universe. When you are ready for it, poof, it reappears in our univers at the spot you designated but boy it sure takes a long time to go from planet to planet. Anyway that is a topic for the rant and rave forum. Back to the topic at hand.

By contrast, I suppose you think its realistic that our ships will travel faster than light, along "starlanes"? The realism argument has no place in a game. Monopoly is pretty a pretty unrealistic simulation of real estate dealing in Atlantic City, but it's a hell of a lot of fun.

The only real difference between your proposal and #3 is that you don't like the automated movement afforded by the abstract redeployment system. This system is an abstraction. No one is saying that these ships disappear and reappear, but instead that you have a staff of capable officers that take care of the details for you so that you don't "see" them.

[drek]

The problem is if infrastructure growth doesn't cost anything, then there is no trade-off or flexibility in economic growth vs. expansion, militarism, or technology.

That's what leaders are for.

Under my current design, infrastructure growth is *painfully* slow on worlds with less than 20% infrastructure. If you hire a leader watch over this colony, improving the infrastructure growth rate, you are filling a leader slot and therefore are neglecting:

* A tax-collector style leader who can get you mo' money
* A military leader who can win you battles
* Any other colonies you happen to have stuck in the slow part of the infrastructure curve.

Ranos:
That sounds like micro-hell to me.

Tzlaine:
I'm working on a UI sketch for the Research system. I've got what I think it a great idea for how to represent research capacity....it should work nicely for a global build queue as well.

I'm liking this global build queue a quite lot, gets better the more I think about it.

UI wise, I'm thinking the reserves would be a special fleet accessable from the Homewold and planets with shipyards. Your fleet UI is perfect for the job.

[Ranos]

Ranos:
That sounds like micro-hell to me.

Micro-hell? What are you smoking? You have only a couple of places to go to order what ships to build, or you have a general screen where you say what you want built and the ships are automatically distributed to the shipyards. How complicated is that?

@ tzlaine

No I don't think starlanes are realistic and I don't like them but that wasn't what we were discussing here. Realism arguements belong in all complex games. People like realism, thats why first person shooter games are so popular. Monopoly is a board game where you have a bord, some paper, some plastic and a couple of dice and you have to do all the thinking. Computer games are complex programs where the thinking is done by a maching that can think a million times faster than you or me.

After reading through more of the posts, I saw the one where there would be a couple of shipyards and those are the rally points for where the ships go. This is something I could live with, not that I couldn't live with the MOO3 way, it just isn't as fun for me.

[Aquitaine]

Micro-hell? What are you smoking?

Please be courteous.

Realism arguements belong in all complex games. People like realism, thats why first person shooter games are so popular. Monopoly is a board game where you have a bord, some paper, some plastic and a couple of dice and you have to do all the thinking. Computer games are complex programs where the thinking is done by a maching that can think a million times faster than you or me.

I'm sorry, but that is not what the developers and the community of this project has determined. Realism arguments have no place either in support of an argument or to defeat someone else's. I'm not going to go into details for the 1000th time, but suffice it to say that you will not get anywhere with this line of reasoning.

[Krikkitone]

That's what leaders are for.

Under my current design, infrastructure growth is *painfully* slow on worlds with less than 20% infrastructure. If you hire a leader watch over this colony, improving the infrastructure growth rate, you are filling a leader slot and therefore are neglecting:

* A tax-collector style leader who can get you mo' money
* A military leader who can win you battles
* Any other colonies you happen to have stuck in the slow part of the infrastructure curve.

Tzlaine:
I'm working on a UI sketch for the Research system. I've got what I think it a great idea for how to represent research capacity....it should work nicely for a global build queue as well.

I'm liking this global build queue a quite lot, gets better the more I think about it.

UI wise, I'm thinking the reserves would be a special fleet accessable from the Homewold and planets with shipyards. Your fleet UI is perfect for the job.

The problem is that makes leader just a 'spending focus' designation.

With the other method (Global Production builds local infrastructure at a maximum rate dependent on the amount of local infrastructure already there) there is still room for the rest of your empire to jump start Either those new colonies or those new fleets.

Plus I still think building infrastructure at a resource cost is best because that provides a non suddenly-disruptive but still costly means of changing focus.
Under your system, a Farming world whose focus has changed to a Industrial world would experience a sudden drop in Farming (And Research, Mining, and Money) and a sudden rise (or small drop) in Industry. Under an Investment In Infrastructure system, the Industrial output would slowly rise and the Farming output would slowly drop (unless the world wasn't fully developed yet) .. and this would require additional investment if the world was already fully developed.

*one minor disadvantage of either of our exponential growth systems is what if the infrastructure falls too much due to damage, I'd suggest a possible solution be to broaden the use of colony ship so that a colony ship sets Population, and all 5 Infrastructure settings to at least 1 (or what ever is the minimum number that is reasonable to grow off of.)... Possibly more expensive high tech colony ships could set the Infrastructure settings to a higher minimum...so that when the max Infrastructure is 1000 per pop you can start at 10 instead of 1.


I do agree with the idea of a Global build queue. I'd suggest something like the following

One queue for each resource

In each a list of projects using that resource

Projects color coded by 'type' (ships/ground unit/defensive/ development...etc.)

an ability to shift items forward or backward in the queue while they retain their investment.

an ability to have queued projects that are planet-specific grouped. (ie terraform [all Hostile planets])

an ability to shift a color coded type to the front of the queue (all ship production, all terraforming, all military tech, etc.)

repetitive queue items (ie build small ships or build infrastructure .. where the maximum investment can be greater than one small ship or level of infrastructure it would produce multiple ships/levels until the maximum investment was reached.. as opposed to the more normal build until the task is done)

discontinued projects would then Slowly lose their investment. (probably)

[vorenhutz]

Realism arguements belong in all complex games. People like realism, thats why first person shooter games are so popular.

Sorry that this is a bit OT, but I can't resist commenting on this. Realism in FPSs, hmm. Only a tiny fraction of FPSs are 'realistic' and those are IMO the least fun to play. One-shot-kills, realistic falling damage, no flashy laser guns... these things are just not fun.
I think we're making a game here, not a simulation

Anyway, I think distributed production is a neat idea. Things that could affect the 'distribution surcharge':
travel time to nearest shipyard/distribution center
planetary infrastructure
morale (if it's in)
enemy blockades
planet size (larger planets have more gravity, use more fuel)

I think it could be designed so you could micro it at the start, if you wanted to, and switch to a more macro approach later.

[Hexxium]

Planetary production in Star Wars:
Rebel intelligence officer: "The Empire is building another Death Star on Dantooine"
Admiral: "We'll attack them on Dantooine and destroy it before it's finished"

Global production in Star Wars:
Rebel intelligence officer: "The Empire is building another Death Star"
Admiral: "Ok, no problem, we'll just have to conquer every single industrial planet. Wait, it may be enough to destroy all the Imperial shipyards across the galaxy so it can't pop up anywhere"

Anyone see the problem with this?

Just a word on realism (sorry I can't resist): Of course it isn't mandatory, but if you don't get any significant disadvantages, you should (and I bet you would) always choose the more realistic/natural approach.

But the heavy impact of global production on strategy is the thing that concerns me. With the MoO3 reserve box approach it's the same problem. There should be a penalty for producing your Dreadnoughts on your secure core planets which are very difficult to conquer (consindering starlanes, they may not be accessible at all in an acceptable amount of time). Because MoO3 lacks this kind of penalty, wars often end up being very static and boring with no progress, with a narrow border in exactly one place, where both parties have a mobilization center. Unless you have a huge advantage in numbers, you can't get past the system because for both empires insane amounts of units can pop up there each turn.

The time it takes the new ships to reach the frontier zones is an appropriate penalty in my opinion. So either you'll have to wait for those reinforcements, or you'll have to build your ships near the frontier, at the risk of your facilities there being attacked (while you'll have to develop the necessary infrastructure/industry first). Or make a compromise and build the large ships on core worlds, while building some light reinforcements right where they are needed badly. Interesting strategy decision to make, and imho that's always a good thing.

So, why all this? To bypass that "Micro Hell"

I can think of better solutions for this. MoO3's planet classification system itself is a good approach. Although it shouldn't be used to control production by some weird AI. Instead, it could be used as a tool for manual macro management. I'm pretty new to this so I'm not sure yet what Focus in FO does, but it may work too, if there are enough choices.

For example, after discovering some new technology that improves mining, you go to the empire production screen and choose:

[Rush] [Deep Extraction Mining] on [Mining Worlds] [OK]

- While instead of Rush (which would stall current project and replace it by the new one) you could choose [Enqueue on top] (which would put it right behind the current project), [Enqueue on bottom] (which is pretty self explanatory) or [Remove from queue]
- While instead of [Deep Extraction Mining] you could choose about anything that can be produced by industry
- While instead of [Mining Worlds] you could choose any planet category, like [Farming Worlds], [Shipyard Worlds], [Barren Worlds] or even [All Worlds]

To me, this system would be easy, realistic (yeah ) , and would still allow great individuality for different planets. Simple though powerful, and you could still micro your planets. The best thing about it is, of course, that it requires exactly 1 (that's one!) line in the UI with 3 combo/list boxes and one "OK" button

[Krikkitone]

[Rush] [Deep Extraction Mining] on [Mining Worlds] [OK]

That is almost what I am suggesting, but I think having multiple lines in the queue would work better.

With Multiple Lines one could put those Deep Extraction Mining wherever one wanted in priority. (the one line would be one at the bottom for new orders to go in the queue)

So in a sense it would be like MOO2's Queue but from one central location. When you want to put a new thing in the queue you choose What to build, Where to build it, and how to put it in the queue (at the top or bottom priority) You then would be allowed to move the various projects around in the queue.

So it would be more like

[rpt][Mining Infrastructure] on [Mining Worlds]
[1][Death Star] on [Dantooine]
[10][Star Destroyers] on [Starport worlds] *(giving a total of ten star destroyers.. the actual place built being auto decided..based on production)
[Finish current] [StarBases] on [Sakkra Border Worlds]
[rpt] [Infrastructure] on [All Worlds]
[rpt] [Rushed Infrastructure] on [Undeveloped Worlds]
[rpt] [Star bases] on [All Worlds]


Eventually queue items 2, 3, and 4 would be eliminated, the rest would remain, but they might not be able to use any production (once the infrastructure of all planets is at its max...I guess the 'order' would remain, in case any planets were decimated, or new ones founded).. the [starbase] order at the bottom would both build and maintain starbases.. and eventually all excess production would be maintaining the Starbases.

This way if there was something that you couldn't pour all of your production into on a planet, it would have somewhere else to be used.

By having maximum amounts going into a prticular project.. essentially amounts based on local production, then the distribution surcharge can be put in for 'importing production' essentially going over one's limit. Having it be dependent on the situation might be possible..although not ideal. (except for blockades in which the 'resource pool' would be seperate)

[drek]

you should (and I bet you would) always choose the more realistic/natural approach.

In FO, we'd tend to choose the the approach that's more fun.

With the MoO3 reserve box approach it's the same problem.

I hate Moo3's entire fleet construction system.

Under Tzlaine's system, you'd *need* a shipyard to pull units out of reserves. Shipyards are ideally very expensive, long time to build with a massive upkeep. Larger shipyards to pull Deathstars out of reserves would be even more expensive.

So, there's be a massive shipyard above Ewokworld, probably the only one in the entire Empire. Take it out, and no Deathstar will be popping out anywhere anyday soon.

Further, there might be spy actions for sabotaging on-going projects in the global build queue, or ships hanging out in reserves.

Or make a compromise and build the large ships on core worlds, while building some light reinforcements right where they are needed badly. Interesting strategy decision to make, and imho that's always a good thing.

The decision would be where to build expensive shipyards. On the frontier where it's vunlnerable, or in the core where it takes a long time for ships to fly out to the front....

Instead, it could be used as a tool for manual macro management. I'm pretty new to this so I'm not sure yet what Focus in FO does, but it may work too, if there are enough choices.

Rule of Thumb:
* It you need the AI to play the game for you, then the game system is too complicated and should be redesigned.

A tool for macro management is just lazy design, imho. Better to do as Powercrazy and Tzlaine have, and think up a system that doesn't require macro management tools.

While instead of [Deep Extraction Mining] you could choose about anything that can be produced by industry

The entire point of Powercrazy's infrastructure idea is to *eliminate* economy buildings. Under PC's orginal idea, the average world has zero buildings on it.

Only a few really important buildings would be constructed by the player, meaning Shipyards, Wonders of the Empire, that sort of thing.

[tzlaine]

Planetary production in Star Wars:
Rebel intelligence officer: "The Empire is building another Death Star on Dantooine"
Admiral: "We'll attack them on Dantooine and destroy it before it's finished"

Global production in Star Wars:
Rebel intelligence officer: "The Empire is building another Death Star"
Admiral: "Ok, no problem, we'll just have to conquer every single industrial planet. Wait, it may be enough to destroy all the Imperial shipyards across the galaxy so it can't pop up anywhere"

Anyone see the problem with this?

You might want to go back and re-read the proposal. I'm suggesting that there are something like 5 or fewer shipyards in an empire. This provides the strategic targets we all wish were there in other 4X games, whereas a planetary-production model does not, since there are so many points of production. Also, your example is predicated on the player's being able to pinpoint progress on specific projects in specific locations that happen to be reachable, and large enough to still be under construction when reached. Who knows how much specificity there will be in the intel system?

But the heavy impact of global production on strategy is the thing that concerns me. With the MoO3 reserve box approach it's the same problem. There should be a penalty for producing your Dreadnoughts on your secure core planets which are very difficult to conquer (consindering starlanes, they may not be accessible at all in an acceptable amount of time). Because MoO3 lacks this kind of penalty, wars often end up being very static and boring with no progress, with a narrow border in exactly one place, where both parties have a mobilization center. Unless you have a huge advantage in numbers, you can't get past the system because for both empires insane amounts of units can pop up there each turn.

You're preaching to the choir. This project exists specifically because MOO3 was such a disappointment. However, the problems to which you allude are MOO3-specific. The fact that MOO3 screwed up the details of their abstract deployment model does not mean we have to.

The time it takes the new ships to reach the frontier zones is an appropriate penalty in my opinion.

This penalty exists in this proposal as well, if you'll notice. I'm just leaving out all the mouseclicks.

[Hexxium]

to drek:

In FO, we'd tend to choose the the approach that's more fun.

I completely agree with this, but out of two approaches that are both fun, the more realistic/intuitive/natural one is alwas better.

The decision would be where to build expensive shipyards. On the frontier where it's vunlnerable, or in the core where it takes a long time for ships to fly out to the front...

But with global or distributed production, it will be much easier to build a shipyard near the frontier "rather" quickly (yeah I know they're expensive), while with local production you'd have to build the appropriate infrastructure and industry on that planet first, then build the expensive shipyard. Much more to loose if you do that in the frontier.

It you need the AI to play the game for you, then the game system is too complicated and should be redesigned

I agree, but my suggestion didn't include any AI. Just a tool for manual macro management the player can use to manage many worlds simultaneously.

The entire point of Powercrazy's infrastructure idea is to *eliminate* economy buildings.

I know, and I don't like that very much, but that's a matter of personal preference I guess. I think it cuts down the possibilities to influence single planets/systems and makes them less unique. Shipyards and Wonders are not enoguh in my opinion, but as I already said that's just my opinion about the "feel" of the game.

to tzlaine:

You might want to go back and re-read the proposal. I'm suggesting that there are something like 5 or fewer shipyards in an empire. This provides the strategic targets we all wish were there in other 4X games, whereas a planetary-production model does not, since there are so many points of production

When producing a huge project like a "Death Star", with the planetary production model you couldn't build it just anywhere. And you'd still need a huge shipyard for that, making the number of possible planets even smaller.

Also, your example is predicated on the player's being able to pinpoint progress on specific projects in specific locations that happen to be reachable, and large enough to still be under construction when reached

Still a possible scenario, isn't it? And I was also specific about the "reachable locations" thing: if it's built in your enemy's core system, you probably can't do anything about it, but then it will also take them a long time to transfer it to the frontier.

You're preaching to the choir. This project exists specifically because MOO3 was such a disappointment. However, the problems to which you allude are MOO3-specific. The fact that MOO3 screwed up the details of their abstract deployment model does not mean we have to.

Well I know, but something like that has been suggested here for FO too, that's why I pointed out the problems with that.
The shipyards needed to pull out ships are just the same thing as mobilization centers in MoO3. I'm not sure that making them much more expensive will solve the general problems that come with it.

[drek]

But with global or distributed production, it will be much easier to build a shipyard near the frontier "rather" quickly (yeah I know they're expensive), while with local production you'd have to build the appropriate infrastructure and industry on that planet first, then build the expensive shipyard. Much more to loose if you do that in the frontier.

Like Research projects, I'm thinking Production projects should take a set number of turns to complete, costing a set amount of Industry each turn. In the case of Shipyards, the set number of turns might be fixed at 20. Or more. There might also be a pay up front cost that is designed to send the player into "sticker shock".

I think it cuts down the possibilities to influence single planets/systems and makes them less unique.

I tend to agree, which is why I'd like to see a rich variety of planet specials (stuff like Tectonic Instability and Ancient Ruins) that can be interacted with through Leaders.

Your build system includes blanket commands that effects huge swathes of the player's empire. To me, this indicates that the worlds in your vision of the game are less than unique.

I think of worlds as chess pieces: each has very definite rules governing the best set of moves to make. You wouldn't want to issue a blanket statement "Move all pieces one square forward" in chess.

By simplfing the building system, we can focus on the difference between worlds, freeing the player from the drudgery of having to build 50 Biofarms on 50 planets. Instead, the player only concerns himself with building the structures that are truely unique: Wonders and the ilk.

[noelte]

Like Research projects, I'm thinking Production projects should take a set number of turns to complete, costing a set amount of Industry each turn. In the case of Shipyards, the set number of turns might be fixed at 20. Or more. There might also be a pay up front cost that is designed to send the player into "sticker shock".

As we already decided(?) that be don't want rush production by money to get things done within a single turn, i would think build projects might be fit in nicely. But if we going to have a max production which can be spend onto a single build project (i don't want to see a min production spending), than we have to allow multiple build projects at the same time!!

Ronald.

EDIT: Ups, i implied money will be in, but thankfully Aq. just made this statement

[tzlaine]

You might want to go back and re-read the proposal. I'm suggesting that there are something like 5 or fewer shipyards in an empire. This provides the strategic targets we all wish were there in other 4X games, whereas a planetary-production model does not, since there are so many points of production

When producing a huge project like a "Death Star", with the planetary production model you couldn't build it just anywhere. And you'd still need a huge shipyard for that, making the number of possible planets even smaller.

You can't just build it any where using the proposal either. It gets built at "one of" the shipyards, but the particular one is abstracted out of the system. You still have to spend the time moving from your shipyards (which will undoubtedly be in your core) to your frontier. If you've ever played the board game Axis and Allies, it's like you're playing the US, and you decide to buy some naval units at the beginning of your turn. You place them at the end of your turn, though, so depending on events that happen during your turn you might want to produce them in the Atlantic or the Pacific. At the point at which you want to move them, they have a location; before that, they are just in the production pipeline.

You might want to go back and re-read the proposal. I'm suggesting that there are something like 5 or fewer shipyards in an empire. This provides the strategic targets we all wish were there in other 4X games, whereas a planetary-production model does not, since there are so many points of production

When producing a huge project like a "Death Star", with the planetary production model you couldn't build it just anywhere. And you'd still need a huge shipyard for that, making the number of possible planets even smaller.

So there's only a few worlds capable of producing a death star, or there's only a few shipyards that can. My point is, what's the difference?

Also, your example is predicated on the player's being able to pinpoint progress on specific projects in specific locations that happen to be reachable, and large enough to still be under construction when reached

Still a possible scenario, isn't it? And I was also specific about the "reachable locations" thing: if it's built in your enemy's core system, you probably can't do anything about it, but then it will also take them a long time to transfer it to the frontier.

There's a lot of room between possible and likely. The point I was trying to make was that you took as your basic premise a very specific set of circumstances, and it is not at all clear how common the specific circumstances will be.

You're preaching to the choir. This project exists specifically because MOO3 was such a disappointment. However, the problems to which you allude are MOO3-specific. The fact that MOO3 screwed up the details of their abstract deployment model does not mean we have to.

Well I know, but something like that has been suggested here for FO too, that's why I pointed out the problems with that.
The shipyards needed to pull out ships are just the same thing as mobilization centers in MoO3. I'm not sure that making them much more expensive will solve the general problems that come with it.

Again, you cite really specific problems with MOO3 details that don't necessarily apply to FO. The fact that shipyards will be so expensive is part of the reason why they are not equivalent to mobilization centers. If you can't build one just anywhere, and they are tied to production, they take on a fundamentally different character.

[drek]

than we have to allow multiple build projects at the same time!!

Well yeah.

As stated, I'm hoping build projects work almost exactly like research projects. Same basic rules, same UI.