DESIGN: Buildings / Build Queues / Infrastructure

Past public reviews and discussions.
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Hexxium
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#241 Post by Hexxium »

drek wrote:Building infrastructure just doesn't mesh with a global queue. It's too many items to juggle, esp. in late game, to fit into one queue.

The orginal idea behind infra was that it would build automatically if the planet wasn't building anything else--no micromanagement required.

[...]If infra improving involves a great deal of micromanagement, then the benefits of the system are entirely eliminated.
I completely agree with that.
drek wrote: 1: unspent PPs are automatically donated to improving infrastrucure. (as per PC's orginal proposal)
2: Infrastructure improves regardless of PP, the "investment" entirely abstracted (my refinement meant for use with a global queue, because I'd rather not deal with the problem of how to divide unspent PPs between worlds)
I like possibility 1, because it involves some investment, like buildings would. However, with global production, there's still no way to speed up infrastructure growth on certain planets.

Possibility 2 could be used in addition to any other solution: There is some very slow, automatic and free infrastructure growth. Although I'm still not sure if it's a good idea to have something improve for free.
drek wrote:If additional control over infra building is desired, I continue to suggest using Leaders as tokens--placing certain Leaders in a system would increase the infra improvement rate.
I don't like this idea very much. It sounds a bit like accepting a weakness in the production system and trying to "fix" it using leaders. I'd also like leaders to be very special, and using leaders as the standard method, or maybe even the only viable method to speed up planet development, just doesn't support that. But that's just my personal point of view about the feel of the game.

Still better than having no possibilities to prioritize infrastructure growth - but I wish we could find a better way ;)

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Krikkitone
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#242 Post by Krikkitone »

Note: we Must avoid Infrastructure growth based on local Industrial production, otherwise that means all New worlds will have to be set at Industrial Focus for fastest Infrastructure Growth. Meaning they can only be specialized later..I'd prefer to be able to set a world's Foci at the time of colonization and only adjust it when Imperial Needs change.


Infrastructure Growth Limits based on Local Infrastructure (regardless of Focus) I think is best. (so Farming Infrastructure growth is limited based on the Local Farming Infrastructure, Research Infrastructure growth is limited based on the Local Research Infrastructure, etc.)..But they rely on Imperial Industrial Infrastructure to supply the production to reach that growth


I still think that infrastructure growth is best considered a 'Project' for the Imperial Build Queue, since that is where Resource allocation priorities are set.

For the simplest version, it could be limited to one (or two) projects. Build Infrastructure Everywhere (and Rush Infrastructure Everywhere)

Essentially you could then say what your priority was on infrastructure by where you put other things in the queue..High priority things would go before 'Building Infrastructure', low priority things would go after 'Rushing Infrastructure'.

This wouldn't allow any differentiation based on planetary target (eliminating that management option) but it could automatically give 'first build' to lower levels of infrastructure.

That way an 'Imperial Priority' of infrastructure building is recognized, and Leaders could be used for the occasional 'Planetary Favoritism' giving some free growth, or just allowing a higher limit/lower cost to normal paid growth.

It also allows infrastructure to still have a cost And a priority for paying that cost with minimal management situations.
(Especially since it is rather rare to want to specify a single world for infrastructure development with pooled resources. The shipyards, fortress worlds, future 'building' sites, etc. Or Worlds with a particular Focus)..Those would be nice management options but may be too rare to worry about

noelte
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#243 Post by noelte »

..., otherwise that means all New worlds will have to be set at Industrial Focus for fastest Infrastructure Growth. Meaning they can only be specialized later
Would also be mess as infrastructur is designed to be cut when changing focus.


What's about some kind of a % over all industry spending on building infrastructure rather than using some general project which will be in place at every time?

drek
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#244 Post by drek »

Let's help out Aq, so that he doesn't go insane trying to parse this thread.

Just from memory, I've come up with this list of issues for the public review. I'd like for everyone to read and potentially amend it (correcting any mistakes or ommissions I've made). In the end, hopefully we'll have a list that can be used for the public review:

Options for public review:

Nature of the build queue:

1: Local to one planet, as per moo2.
2: System wide.
3: Semi-local. Queues are local to a system or planet, but PP is automatically imported from nearby idle systems (with a distance tax applied).
4: Global. As with the research queue, all Industry points are thrown into the same pot and spent without distance penalty anywhere in the empire. There is some penalty for building on worlds with low infrastructure (PP tax and/or limits to what can be built)

Nature of buildings:
1: Although I don’t recall anyone proposing it, let’s say moo2/civ buildings style buildings are the first option
2: One building per planet, from a short list of archetypical buildings
3: A few buildings per planet (it’s been said “at most 5, on average 2”)

Nature of building effects:
1: Aside from wonders, buildings generally have local effects
2: Buildings generally have area effects, including a) the entire empire b) the entire system and c) the entire system plus systems connected by starlane. Effects generally do not stack, and can be comboed with other effects for a sum greater than the parts. (like M:tG cards)

Nature of Build Projects
1: As per civ/moo2. Each project costs a number of resources. There may be some limits imposed on the amount of PP invested per turn based on infrastructure and/or shipyard sizes.
2: As per our research projects: Each project costs a number of turns to construct—each turn a certain PP tax must be paid. (imho, if there’s a global queue this is the only option.)

Nature of defensive structures:

1: There’s nothing special about defensive structures. They are handled like other structures. Ship, space stations that are built as ships and (later on) ground units provide defense. Any static ground defenses are immobile ground units.
2: There are special defensive build slots on every planet, in which static planet defenses are built, such as planet shields, big ol’ laser cannons, missile bases, etc. etc.
3: Each planet has a Defensive Level (rated 1-5). When the player selects a defensive level on a world, the planet builds up (or scraps down) to the new level.

Powercrazy’s Infrastructure
As a replacement for all the wee buildings that use to define worlds in moo2, Powercrazy suggested “Infrastructure”.

1: There is no infrastructure. Buildings, population levels, environment define the planet well enough without the extra number (as in moo2)
2: Infrastructure is single number (probably 1-100%) that scales the effiency of the planet
3: Infrastructure is a score for each Focus resource, defining the amount of resources generated by each population point. When the Focus of a world is changed, Infrastructure (over the course of some number of turns) adjusts to the new Focus choice.

Infrastructure Improvement

1: Unspent Industry is automatically assigned to improving infrastructure.
2: Infrastructure automatically improves, without investment. Rate of improvement can be increased through “rush infrastructure projects”.
3: Infrastructure automatically improves, without investment. Rate of improvement can be increased through placement of Leaders on the galaxy map.
4: Building infrastructure is another type of build project. The player gives each planet a position in the queue, with orders to build up infrastructure to a certain level.
5: An annoying set of sliders allows the player to divvy up industry between build projects and infrastructure.

Daveybaby
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#245 Post by Daveybaby »

Heh, i can sum it up more succinctly than that.

(1) Everything in the game except space combat.

There you go :wink:
The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

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Krikkitone
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#246 Post by Krikkitone »

noelte wrote:
What's about some kind of a % over all industry spending on building infrastructure rather than using some general project which will be in place at every time?
The problem is that runs into the microargument,

Imagine you have two things that you are putting 50% of your resources into, they will take 10 turns at that rate.
It will be better to put 100% into one for 5 turns and Then the other for 5 turns because you get the benefit of the first for 5 more turns.
The exception is Gradually Diminishing returns from investment (bad because it is necessarily complex)
If you have a Cap on investment (like the research model), you might still get both of them in 5 turns, but you would be getting the first one as fast as you can.


So with % investments, the best solution for the player (unless there is complicated diminishing returns factors..which would make it even more complicated for the minmaxer..forcing them to give up..but in disgust), is to alternate projects between 100% and 0%.

A queue provides an easy way to do that.

Things Below 'Build Infrastructure' on the queue will still get probably built, because there is a limit to how much you can spend on Infrastructure in one turn.
Would also be mess as infrastructure is designed to be cut when changing focus
That is a bad Idea and (no matter what we decide on the Cost of Infrastructure and how to prioritize it) why we need 5 Infrastructure Ratings , one per Focus, (so that one Infrastructure Replaces the others rather than all of them suddenly dropping, and one recovering)




One more option on Nature of Buildings
4. Buildings limited to a certain number of each type per Empire/special situation

also Nature of Build Projects
1 and 2 are Very similar, the only difference is if there is a Minimum per turn investment, and if the Total PP cost is influenced by the same conditions that influence.

I'd rewrite them
as

1. Fixed Investment Required Each Turn (Yes/No) like the Research queue
2. Total Cost Determined by (Fixed/Local Factors)
3. Minimum Time Determined by (Fixed/Local Factors)

The Cost divided by Minimum time would determine Maximum Investment (or Fixed Investment) in any case.

(Otherwise Very good summary of about everything everyone has said)

Satyagraha
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#247 Post by Satyagraha »

Ragnar wrote: The efficiency % based on infrastructure % seems like a great idea, if we stipulate that all planets can spend 100% of their own PP and then apply the inefficency to the external PP coming in.
what do you think about Ragnar´s suggestion?

"3: Semi-local. Queues are local to a system or planet, but PP is automatically imported from nearby idle systems (with a distance tax applied)." is very specfic.
Can we have a more general description for semi-local? i´m in favor of Semi-local, but not distance taxes. If everything is going to an empire queue and spent from an empire queue, no matter where it comes from/goes to, it feels too de-localized.

edit:
3: Semi-local. Queues are local to a system or planet, PP can be imported at a penalty based on distance or infrastructure.
Last edited by Satyagraha on Wed May 26, 2004 7:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

drek
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#248 Post by drek »

Satyagraha:

I assume the answer is "yes". Write one.

btw, If not distance taxes then what?

Satyagraha
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#249 Post by Satyagraha »

3: Semi-local. Queues are local to a system or planet, PP can be imported at a penalty based on distance or infrastructure.

penalty could be based on local infrastructure, like someone suggested. local PP = no penalty, 30% infrastructure = f.e. 70% of imported PP lost.

drek
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#250 Post by drek »

How would the game know which systems to import Industry from? The metric I used was nearby worlds (perhaps one starlane hop away) with idle queues.

Another question springs to mind: if there are two or more worlds that could import PP from a source, how does the source decide which queue to export the PP to?

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Ragnar
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#251 Post by Ragnar »

In this situation, it doesn't matter where it comes from. It is all pooled at empire level and then distributed at local build. So:

Empire total is 2000 PP/turn

Planet A (frontier) outputs 100 PP and has 30% infrastructure and planet B (core) outputs 200 PP and has 70% infrastructure.

You want to build a shipyard that costs 500 PP/turn.

At plant A: 100 local PP + (400 imported PP/.3 = cost 1333) means you spent 1433 of your 2000 PP/turn

At plant B: 200 local PP + (300 imported PP/.7 = cost 429) means you spent 629 of your 2000 PP/turn

It is irrelevant where the imported PP came from, you just pull from your total pool, but build locations effect how much you can do in a turn. When you build on the poor/frontier world you eat up the resources of all your planets, when you build in a developed industry world you use less of your overall empire's resources (more efficient).

Edit: forgot to say we should be able to see this graphicly in the tetris que before we commit. So, you see a big block used when you select planet A and a small block when planet B. you can switch it around until you decide which planet to locate and then drop it into the que.

noelte
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#252 Post by noelte »

Krikkitone wrote:
Would also be mess as infrastructure is designed to be cut when changing focus
That is a bad Idea and (no matter what we decide on the Cost of Infrastructure and how to prioritize it) why we need 5 Infrastructure Ratings , one per Focus, (so that one Infrastructure Replaces the others rather than all of them suddenly dropping, and one recovering)
That wasn't my idea and i think there is already a decision (goes along with having foci). Infrastructur is reduced by some degree as penalty for changing foci. otherwise you would be able to change foci all the time which might lead to micro.

Satyagraha
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#253 Post by Satyagraha »

@ ragnar: i thought about that too, but there is one problem: what if you don´t have 20 planets that produce 100 PP each = 2000, but 100 planets that produce 200 PP each = 20.000 later in the game?

to spend it all, you´d need like 30 projects in the queue to fill it. if projects become more expensive, the balance between local/empire-wide is broken - infrastructure determines everything then. any ideas how to balance that?

Satyagraha
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#254 Post by Satyagraha »

another idea how on to introduce a local factor:

Local Industry determines how many PP can be generated, the remaining PP have to be imported & have a penalty.

project cost: 50 PP/turn
local industry: 10, feeds on 10 minerals from empire pool to create 10 PP.
imported PP: 40, let´s say penalty x5: 200 PP are required to create 40 PP without industry, the penalty is 160 PP.

so that underdeveloped colony would burn 210 PP instead of 50 PP.

edit: in this system, local vs empire production could be balanced: assuming that later in the game, PP output/planet has doubled, number of planets is also 2x, makes overall PP output = 4x. if industry output/planet would have grown 4x, the # of projects could be the same without breaking the balance.
Last edited by Satyagraha on Wed May 26, 2004 11:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Ragnar
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#255 Post by Ragnar »

@Satyagraha:

You have some good points there. Theoretically, as the game progresses the projects and ships should be more expensive, so you would keep the same relative number of projects going at each stage.

The local PP is based on the industry infrastructure, so I guess your infrastructure penalty is already there by having less local PP to put in. That works for me, too.



On the other subject of infrastructure: I agree with Krikkitone. We should have 5 levels of infrastructure for each resource.

An overall rating could be used that averages these to give the total picture of the planet. I think when changing focus the one you changed to goes up and the one you changes from goes down over a number of turns at an equal level until the proper ratio is achieved. Thus, the planet's total level stagnates until the new focus is in effect then grows as normal, this is the penalty for change. I hope that fits into what has been passed regarding focus.

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