Stellaris Dev Diary #159 - Galactic Community

[Pointyearedgit]

The game has devolved into alloy nihilism.
Don't shoot us for noticing it, we're just the messengers.

Are you suggesting mineral nihilism was superior? A more evolved form?

 

[methegrate]

Are you suggesting mineral nihilism was superior? A more evolved form?

That's a false equivalence.

The economy is an optimization game because almost every resource is used primarily to pay maintenance costs. That means that they all have an optimal income of net-zero. Alloys are the only exception to that rule. As a result, there is no strategic gameplay to managing the economy. The best decision in every case is to optimize your economy for alloy production because there's no benefit to having more of any other resource and endless benefits to having more alloys.

Minerals only seem to be an exception, but they're not. Ultimately you only need as many minerals as you have construction slots for civilian infrastructure. This creates a fixed expense beyond which you never need anything more than maintenance costs. So where, say, your food needs are optimized at Maintenance - Income = Zero, your mineral needs are optimized at (Fixed Cost Amortized + Maintenance) - Income = Zero.

The problem isn't alloys or even the economic system. The problem is that the only resource you need in Stellaris is the shipbuilding resource. Every other resource just goes to paying maintenance costs. You have some minor actions you can take like encouraging planetary growth, but those are trivial in effect. If you stockpile the shipbuilding resource, you can always build more ships. Even if you hit the fleet cap, ships will get destroyed in combat so you can then build more. There is no equivalent use for any other resource; what few things you can spend excess resources on elsewhere, like planetary edicts, are trivial compared to shipbuilding (at best).

And it doesn't matter what resource you put into that formula. It was just as much a problem when minerals were the shipbuilding resource, it would be just as much a problem for an empire that built ships with energy or food.

No one is suggesting that mineral "nihilism" was a better system. It's just the same problem with a different name.

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

That's a false equivalence.

The economy is an optimization game because almost every resource is used primarily to pay maintenance costs. That means that they all have an optimal income of net-zero. Alloys are the only exception to that rule. As a result, there is no strategic gameplay to managing the economy. The best decision in every case is to optimize your economy for alloy production because there's no benefit to having more of any other resource and endless benefits to having more alloys.

Minerals only seem to be an exception, but they're not. Ultimately you only need as many minerals as you have construction slots for civilian infrastructure. This creates a fixed expense beyond which you never need anything more than maintenance costs. So where, say, your food needs are optimized at Maintenance - Income = Zero, your mineral needs are optimized at (Fixed Cost Amortized + Maintenance) - Income = Zero.

The problem isn't alloys or even the economic system. The problem is that the only resource you need in Stellaris is the shipbuilding resource. Every other resource just goes to paying maintenance costs. You have some minor actions you can take like encouraging planetary growth, but those are trivial in effect. If you stockpile the shipbuilding resource, you can always build more ships. Even if you hit the fleet cap, ships will get destroyed in combat so you can then build more. There is no equivalent use for any other resource; what few things you can spend excess resources on elsewhere, like planetary edicts, are trivial compared to shipbuilding (at best).

And it doesn't matter what resource you put into that formula. It was just as much a problem when minerals were the shipbuilding resource, it would be just as much a problem for an empire that built ships with energy or food.

No one is suggesting that mineral "nihilism" was a better system. It's just the same problem with a different name.

Well, you do need more energy to upkeep the fleet, but the point stands.

Surplus resources can also translate into surplus energy (and from there to alloys), but that's rarely a better strategy than direct energy or alloy production. So again, the point stands.

Any suggestions on what could be done with other resources? It seems like there could be a benefit to stockpiling them if there were ways to "lose your (proverbial) ships" akin to war. And there could be a benefit to keeping regular production above maintenance, in case something causes it to drop a bit.

Food: Interstellar blights could depress food production for years at a time.

Energy: Energy sources get periodically depleted, or some weird disturbance in the Shroud fucks with the physics in a region of the galaxy and suddenly fusion doesn't work until your scientists can adjust.

Minerals: Mines get tapped out, or sneaky silicoid tribbles have a population explosion and start eating them all until pest control deals with it.

Consumer Goods: Economic depressions.

And all the better if these aren't just events, but things that other empires can influence to make happen.

Maxing out alloys all the time won't necessarily save you if your meager consumer goods run out and suddenly there's massive civil unrest on the planets you just conquered. Then your alloy production tanks. Then the empire next door that kept a sensible surplus rushes your malus-ed fleets that were too busy bombing down the rebels.

 

[Dmitrius]

Well, you do need more energy to upkeep the fleet, but the point stands.

Surplus resources can also translate into surplus energy (and from there to alloys), but that's rarely a better strategy than direct energy or alloy production. So again, the point stands.

Any suggestions on what could be done with other resources? It seems like there could be a benefit to stockpiling them if there were ways to "lose your (proverbial) ships" akin to war. And there could be a benefit to keeping regular production above maintenance, in case something causes it to drop a bit.

Food: Interstellar blights could depress food production for years at a time.

Energy: Energy sources get periodically depleted, or some weird disturbance in the Shroud fucks with the physics in a region of the galaxy and suddenly fusion doesn't work until your scientists can adjust.

Minerals: Mines get tapped out, or sneaky silicoid tribbles have a population explosion and start eating them all until pest control deals with it.

Consumer Goods: Economic depressions.

And all the better if these aren't just events, but things that other empires can influence to make happen.

Maxing out alloys all the time won't necessarily save you if your meager consumer goods run out and suddenly there's massive civil unrest on the planets you just conquered. Then your alloy production tanks. Then the empire next door that kept a sensible surplus rushes your malus-ed fleets that were too busy bombing down the rebels.

Yeah,

I think the question then becomes what to do about it?

Placing harsher penalties on fleet cap would limit how far alloys can push you past the fleet cap limit, butbthat hardly solves the problem. Similarly a hard cap would feel silly and further hurt empires focused on economic growth.

Personally I think this is multifaceted. My solution (much as I think it will be red crossed into oblivion) is.

1. Forget fleet cap, switch to manpower (basically an abstracted number of military personnel based on the number of pops assigned to planet side military buildings) this resource is then used to crew ships (new ships reduce the rate of accumulation).

Thus an empire must sacrifice production for military might and military losses cannot just be measured in alloy cost.

2. Remove ridiculous bribe mechanic from game. Seriously.

3. Increase the civilian good cost of everything and reduce the efficiency of mineral to alloy production.l (just a simple balancing thing here).

4. Make rare resources more various, and limited to certain parts of map. In other words space oil effectively. Not scientific, but the realistic hemogeouny of space does not for intriguing strategy make.

What do you guys think?

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

1. Forget fleet cap, switch to manpower (basically an abstracted number of military personnel based on the number of pops assigned to planet side military buildings) this resource is then used to crew ships (new ships reduce the rate of production).

Thus an empire must sacrifice production for military might and military losses cannot just be measured in alloy cost.

Hard agree. Presumably you are losing manpower, which is partly why loss of ships results in war exhaustion.

2. Remove ridiculous bribe mechanic from game. Seriously.

Not sure what you're referring to.

3. Increase the civilian good cost of everything and reduce the efficiency of mineral to alloy production.l (just a simple balancing thing here).

I'm a little worried that this might make consumer goods even less valuable by comparison. Right now they're comparatively useless beyond job upkeep, since even Egalitarians have better means of boosting happiness and Utopian standards aren't worth it.

4. Make rare resources more various, and limited to certain parts of map. In other words space oil effectively. Not scientific, but the realistic hemogeouny of space does not for intriguing strategy make.

Part of the problem with this analogy is that the real world has an ocean, so multiple empires have an avenue to fight for it. Hyperlanes don't allow this. It might work if they spawned near wormholes, but then prime real estate would be a little too prime.

 

[DrNukeLear]

Yeah,

I think the question then becomes what to do about it?

Placing harsher penalties on fleet cap would limit how far alloys can push you past the fleet cap limit, butbthat hardly solves the problem. Similarly a hard cap would feel silly and further hurt empires focused on economic growth.

Personally I think this is multifaceted. My solution (much as I think it will be red crossed into oblivion) is.

1. Forget fleet cap, switch to manpower (basically an abstracted number of military personnel based on the number of pops assigned to planet side military buildings) this resource is then used to crew ships (new ships reduce the rate of accumulation).

Thus an empire must sacrifice production for military might and military losses cannot just be measured in alloy cost.

2. Remove ridiculous bribe mechanic from game. Seriously.

3. Increase the civilian good cost of everything and reduce the efficiency of mineral to alloy production.l (just a simple balancing thing here).

4. Make rare resources more various, and limited to certain parts of map. In other words space oil effectively. Not scientific, but the realistic hemogeouny of space does not for intriguing strategy make.

What do you guys think?

I’m currently working on a mod (this isn’t a plug just describing the alternative system) which adds reaction mass as a resource, every ship burns reaction mass as upkeep (bigger ships and faster ships burn more), when you exceed your reaction mass your ships slow down. Unlike alloys (which can benefit from efficiency upgrades and higher tier production facilities) reaction mass is limited to what you can harvest from stars, gas giants and extract from planets (planetary rarity is the same as motes etc.).

In addition it has officers and manpower (which were introduced mainly to slow the production of armies.

 

[Dmitrius]

Hard agree. Presumably you are losing manpower, which is partly why loss of ships results in war exhaustion.



Not sure what you're referring to.



I'm a little worried that this might make consumer goods even less valuable by comparison. Right now they're comparatively useless beyond job upkeep, since even Egalitarians have better means of boosting happiness and Utopian standards aren't worth it.



Part of the problem with this analogy is that the real world has an ocean, so multiple empires have an avenue to fight for it. Hyperlanes don't allow this. It might work if they spawned near wormholes, but then prime real estate would be a little too prime.

You can send relatively small quantities of alloy to empires for up to 100 relations improvement using the trade system.

The oil analogy criticism is fair yes, but right now universal distribution of resources removes the entire point of expansion beyond more of same once relics have been completed. We need a galaxy where regions are distinguishable from each other for expansions and trade to be worthwhile.

 

[Dmitrius]

I’m currently working on a mod (this isn’t a plug just describing the alternative system) which adds reaction mass as a resource, every ship burns reaction mass as upkeep (bigger ships and faster ships burn more), when you exceed your reaction mass your ships slow down. Unlike alloys (which can benefit from efficiency upgrades and higher tier production facilities) reaction mass is limited to what you can harvest from stars, gas giants and extract from planets (planetary rarity is the same as motes etc.).

In addition it has officers and manpower (which were introduced mainly to slow the production of armies.

So you're adding fuel as a mechanic? That's pretty cool man. Post it on the boards when done. Would love to try that out.

P.s I presume it would be very difficult if not impossible, but having it be tied to the fleet would be awesome. Essentially requiring refuel. (Or maybe a new fuel hauler class ship).

 

[Private Prinny]

One technology-hogging xenophile diplomat, one spymaster slimy lizard and one humorless militarist that likes to dismiss others' claims?

Ah, yes *Airquotes* Reapers!
;-p

As a navel gazing Inward Perfectionist I am not a fan of overpowered Federations, but the Galacic Community? I can get behind that.

“Joker get ready to cut off *ahem* lose signal at any moment now!”

 

[DrNukeLear]

So you're adding fuel as a mechanic? That's pretty cool man. Post it on the boards when done. Would love to try that out.

P.s I presume it would be very difficult if not impossible, but having it be tied to the fleet would be awesome. Essentially requiring refuel. (Or maybe a new fuel hauler class ship).

I'd prefer a "supply line mechanic": If there is no path shorter than 2 months travel to a friendly/captured station (or juggernaut) without tracing that path through a dangerous system (i.e. a system with an enemy presence) then take a penalty to repair rates, speed and firepower as the crews try to economise on parts, ammo and fuel. But that would just add to the end game crawl (unless there was some fancy caching on a system by system basis). You'd probably want "resupply" treaties to allow you to use other nations stations.

 

[Dmitrius]

I'd prefer a "supply line mechanic": If there is no path shorter than 2 months travel to a friendly/captured station (or juggernaut) without tracing that path through a dangerous system (i.e. a system with an enemy presence) then take a penalty to repair rates, speed and firepower as the crews try to economise on parts, ammo and fuel. But that would just add to the end game crawl (unless there was some fancy caching on a system by system basis). You'd probably want "resupply" treaties to allow you to use other nations stations.

Yeah that makes sense.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Well, you do need more energy to upkeep the fleet, but the point stands.

Surplus resources can also translate into surplus energy (and from there to alloys), but that's rarely a better strategy than direct energy or alloy production. So again, the point stands.

Any suggestions on what could be done with other resources? It seems like there could be a benefit to stockpiling them if there were ways to "lose your (proverbial) ships" akin to war. And there could be a benefit to keeping regular production above maintenance, in case something causes it to drop a bit.

Food: Interstellar blights could depress food production for years at a time.

Energy: Energy sources get periodically depleted, or some weird disturbance in the Shroud fucks with the physics in a region of the galaxy and suddenly fusion doesn't work until your scientists can adjust.

Minerals: Mines get tapped out, or sneaky silicoid tribbles have a population explosion and start eating them all until pest control deals with it.

Consumer Goods: Economic depressions.

And all the better if these aren't just events, but things that other empires can influence to make happen.

Maxing out alloys all the time won't necessarily save you if your meager consumer goods run out and suddenly there's massive civil unrest on the planets you just conquered. Then your alloy production tanks. Then the empire next door that kept a sensible surplus rushes your malus-ed fleets that were too busy bombing down the rebels.

I like the concept of having far more Resource Sinks in the game. Though I'd rather have ways to spend the resources rather than events that hinder production (more of fun toys than painful splinters but it would still serve its purpose either way).

Currently megastructures use alloys and influence, Terraforming uses Energy, Ecumenopolis conversion uses minerals and influence.
We don't have any equivalent for food, rare resources, consumer goods, amenities, trade value... and the amount you will ever spend on terraforming and ecumenopolis conversion is limited. So more sinks for minerals and energy would be good too. With that in mind here are a few ideas...

Resource Sinks
Food
I wouldn't mind if planetary decisions could stack - e.g. The food decision costs 1000, then 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000.
Or better yet it was a toggle that gave +10% growth for -8 food, and could be upgraded indefinitely so next it would give an additional +10% more growth for -16, +10% more for -24, +10% for -32 food and so on. Just as the trade nomination can be boosted for increasing costs.
Also those decisions really needs to be converted into a toggle rather than a one-off but that's a separate issue.

Minerals - I think ecumenopolis is a good base here. Large-scale planetary projects to change worlds would be interesting. We have things like penal colonies and resort worlds but they are both almost free, a little fiddly and oddly hard-locked to large worlds. Adding the bonus to all other worlds in stages (like megastructures), using more resources to upgrade those worlds to get the cool bonuses and removing the size restriction would be great. My last game I had most of my planets being ridiculously small thanks to RNG and I went into the game planning on making a resort world, thrall worlds and prison worlds and just didn't have any suitable candidates which was a little sad. (I had a lovely tomb world that I settled just for either a prison or resort... but it was too small to be used for generic balance reasons... not that I actually needed the bonus or would have gained a lot from it). Things like computer planets, temple planets, military testing grounds and the like would also work, more special planetary designations with expensive sinks for those worlds and global bonuses from them so they always matter at least a little bit.

Energy - I think having more deals with enclaves available, more blockers to clear even in the very late game (think super-blockers that cost 10,000 energy to clear but reveal special deposits like betharian stone, or dimensional portals). More expensive terraforming in stages (so there's a larger total cost but smaller up-front cost). Drastically more expensive resettling costs in the late game (just as leader upkeep increases via technology/leader enhancement policy)... more reliable (unlimited) and regular (lower cooldown) reliquary bonuses, not done as a joke but as an actual mechanic so you have a consistent but small source of minor artifacts without needing the rubicator as well as getting lots of little special modifiers and planetary goodies. More regular trader visits, preferably offering an actual choice (more than one option) of what to buy so you aren't screwed by RNG when they ask for Dark matter in the first 20 years or for -5 specialists on their first visit vs 1 science ship or -6 months of society research (they're really chaotic at the moment and with bugged pathfinding... I've only actually seen them regularly in test games when I remove all other empires for bug-hunting, otherwise they get stuck on hostile neutrals).

Unity I'd make some edicts for at the start and have the unity ambitions arrive earlier - as rewards for completing tradition trees. I'd also shift some of the pop-ethics shifting costs to use unity. Promoting a faction costing unity for example so spiritualists can maintain their unity of purpose with their innate increased unity production.

Science already has some sinks - genemodding, robomodding and obviously repeatable technology. The problem I have with it is that the costs of each individual sink have not increased in line with the production available from all the new toys like research ringworlds. So I'd increase the costs of high tier techs a little to compensate so people aren't on level 100 repeatable techs before the crisis shows. If anything I'd like them to be struggling to get the highest tier tech at that point not for everyone to be far beyond the technologically advanced fallen empires.


Sliders and Planet Management
We need a tool for quickly managing the spending of excess production on boosting variables in the game rather than stockpiling them and then manually clicking on each world, opening up the decisions, scrolling down to the correct decision and hoping you don't misclick and destroy an art monument... repeating that for a dozen worlds all the time.

With a dedicated screen. I'm picturing an expandable list of all jobs in your empire. Giving you an easy to read breakdown of numbers per planet. With the planetary decisions moved over to here so you can manage all the planets at once.

You could super-charge your research labs by investing more consumer goods, your factories by feeding them more minerals and motes and running them harder - but pushing increased production would have a negative impact on pop happiness so give you a reason to go for chemical bliss to avoid them caring about it. Also adding a few events with pollution and disasters from pushing too hard would be nice, as long as they have a very long MTTH so they aren't frustrating, commonplace and unavoidable.

Picture a management screen with each job given a slider, that expands when clicked to show the break-down by planet much like how pop jobs expand when you click on a strata. So you can drag the slider to the right to boost all entertainers/enforcers/etc. in your empire. Or click it first to expand the display to show the number of entertainers on each world and just boost one planet if there's a political crisis/event going on. Or you can drag the slider to the left on all your factories and have them lower production and resource consumption when you're in a deficit but at the risk of having events if pushed beyond a clearly marked point (I'm picturing a little red arrow marking dangerous boosting/restricting values, adjusted by tech) where factories start being disabled, ruined or trigger events over time.

I mention this because what I really want is a management screen showing me how many farmers I have, how many scientists and which planet has the most for allocation of limited resources - which planet produces the most science but isn't being boosted to send my new science ship, where should my newly purchased art monument go, which planet is producing the most unity for my ministry of culture's % bonus to have the highest value etc. I want to see my entire empire at a glance and see trouble before it happens or manage trouble over a dozen worlds with a single click. This sort of system would allow that, as well as giving easy access to resource sinks (currently implemented as decisions) on all worlds.

Imagine having a slider for nutritional boosting decisions so you can spend your excess food evenly over all worlds with one single click. You have +580 food per month (about enough for keeping up 70 food boosts currently, though you probably will only ever use say 20 planets/boosts), click the slider at +400 food spent on growth boosts. Done. Your food income drops because all your slaves are purged? Click it back to 0. You have a massive deficit because of some crisis? Click it to the left and restrict food/rationing on all worlds, but maybe you open the drop-down and keep food going to key worlds even in the middle of a crisis because they're essential to the war effort and you don't want low morale.

My point is that while I want more resource sinks... I don't want them implemented as limited-duration micro-heavy decisions or edicts as they don't scale well into the late game or allow you to react with any speed to events. It forces you to stockpile large quantities and check worlds regularly... or instead to ignore resources like food entirely and keep it at close to 0 income, which is sad. A screen with sliders would solve the problem and let you invest in different things instead, more flexible, dynamic and intuitive than clicking a policy that works for 10 years but doesn't show you the predicted changes so you take a massive gamble drastically shifting, ponderously lurching, dangerously bouncing from one extreme to another (ditto for species living standards, I hate not knowing if I can cover the consumer goods cost of increasing living standards for example).

Linked resources, building on Jin_Cardassian's suggestion.
We currently have fixed production of all resources throughout the entire game. A farmer always produces the same amount of food, miner the same amount of minerals etc. I don't think we need for each deposit to be finite to have something equivalent implemented in the game. For example:

What if events caused galaxy wide drops in mineral output when the total mineral income from all sources exceeded a certain level, with the penalty to production being whatever it would need to be to reduce the total mineral output down to the mineral cap?
e.g.
Condition: When Total Galactic Mineral income exceed 3000,
Result: Mineral Shortage event, total mineral income is reduced to equal 3000.
MTTH: 50 years.
Condition: When Total Galactic Mineral income exceeds 5000
Result: Mineral Shortage event, total mineral income is reduced to equal 3000.
MTTH 5 years.
OR
When Total Galactic Alloy production exceeds 2000
Result: Mineral Shortage event, total mineral income is reduced to equal 3000.
MTTH 10 years.
OR
When 3 planets cracked
Result: Mineral Shortage event, total mineral income is reduced to equal 3000.
MTTH 5 years.
(any combination of triggers is possible, any value for the cap is possible too, the odds could increase over time, with specific player-led crisis events like you going on a genocidal rampage, cracking worlds, bombing them into tomb worlds or releasing the pox on planets. Also it could be that it isn't reduced to a value but all production over that amount is penalized, more of a soft cap instead but for simplicity of the maths I'm doing a hard cap here).

Empire A mines 1100 minerals, Empire B mines 2200 minerals, the cap is 3000 minerals, 3300 is being mined so all mineral output is reduced by 10% and now Empire A mines 1000 minerals (-10% due to mineral shortage), Empire B mines 2000 (-10% due to mineral shortage).
If Empire A increases mining to 3800 and Empire B remains constant, Total is 6000/3000, now both empires have -50% due to mineral shortage. Empire A gets 1900 (-50% due to mineral shortage), Empire B is down to 1100 (-50% due to mineral shortage).
It still pays to invest in mines, space deposits and the like. But it's more of a tragedy of the commons - if everyone limited their production then everyone could share what's available, but they don't... which in this case makes it a source of economic conflict.

Waging a war of extermination would actually help and there would be a bounce-back mechanic during a crisis as empires fall and the penalties ease-off as there is less competition for the limited resources. It also enables resolutions to pass that punish empires using more than their fair share, increase the total cap or decrease the cap with the goal of finding a sustainable solution to eventually potentially lift the event if everyone complies.

Certain sources of resources could be ignored in the calculations (dyson spheres for energy, matter decompressors for minerals, hydroponic labs for food, or the first 20 points of production from a planet could be excluded thanks to supply depos etc.) This would allow you wage economic war over mineral production, fighting over rich mineral deposits, limiting your alloy production and giving you an incentive for certain late-game resource sinks that avoid it (megastructures), and boosting certain under-used buildings like hydroponic labs and supply depos if they had an impact secondary to their normally meager bonus.

The system would work equally well with food (blights), all resources (could be called shortages, depletion, pollution, sabotage) as well as things like population growth (plagues) where total galactic population is brought down to reasonable levels over time thanks to the events, with certain buildings like gene clinics protecting some of your population on each world and removing them from the calculation - also reducing the risk of plague in general as the game "sees" fewer total pops. Or even unity (strife, hostility, conflict, despair from cosmic truths).

Lastly these don't have to be triggered by having too much of a particular resource, but they could instead be triggered by specific events - releasing the pox, releasing information of the nature of the simulation, the war in heaven, mid-game crisis like marauders triggering piracy/crime events, late-game crisis, interconnected resources - total alloy output could trigger mineral shortages, total organic pop levels trigger food shortages, machine pop levels could trigger wide-scale cyber warfare (research shortage), pirates could trigger a widespread black market (limiting crime suppression values on all worlds) etc.

This would also mean that they could be ended in different ways e.g. if the mineral shortage was caused by minerals it would be ended by going under 3000 production, if caused by alloys then reducing alloy use would end the mineral shortage, if triggered by lithoid devastation then it could be ended by restoring the worlds etc.

Each of these would work by setting a hard or soft limit on resource production rather than adding new sinks to spend the resources on. So doing both would possibly be overkill... or fun if it's done well. The new resource sinks would be useful in the mid-game, the hit to production triggering conflict in the mid-to-late game.

 

[DrNukeLear]

Also those decisions really needs to be converted into a toggle rather than a one-off but that's a separate issue.

Actually I think if we moved to a system which had edicts and policies for planets and sectors in place of decisions it would be a step forwards.

 

[Spaceception]

1. Forget fleet cap, switch to manpower (basically an abstracted number of military personnel based on the number of pops assigned to planet side military buildings) this resource is then used to crew ships (new ships reduce the rate of accumulation).

Thus an empire must sacrifice production for military might and military losses cannot just be measured in alloy cost.

Agreed. Going over your manpower limit could instead give some sort of nerfs to your ship damage and such, so you can't just easily go over it and take the upkeep hit. Especially in the late game when you have more than enough energy/alloys from focusing on production so much, that going over the cap doesn't mean anything anymore. Some technologies could reduce this hit (like sapient combat computer, maybe it could passively run part of a ship, reducing the need for manpower), but it's something you need to plan for. Fortresses could give bonus manpower instead of naval cap, so could anchorages, but there could be other things. Like passive AI systems (maybe an equivalent for Psonics/Bio-Ascension, idk).

2. Remove ridiculous bribe mechanic from game. Seriously.

Yeah, the added benefit would be that the devs would need another way of making ally's, or keeping Empires at bay, which I hope things like Envoys could be (or are being?) expanded into. Gifts should be just that, gifts. Maybe they could allow you to get minor deals, and get your foot in the door. But you shouldn't be able to dump a bunch of alloys and some of your strategic resource stockpile on them, before getting every available agreement.

4. Make rare resources more various, and limited to certain parts of map. In other words space oil effectively. Not scientific, but the realistic hemogeouny of space does not for intriguing strategy make.

In case you haven't seen it: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/making-strategic-resources-strategic.1269918/

 

[Foefaller]

An EUIV Disaster type mechanic might be useful here.
You can grossly mismanage your factions for a while without problems, but eventually you find yourself on a Disaster timer and then you've (at best) facing a new #1 priority ticking time bomb of a problem that you'd damn well better fix now, or (at worst) staring down the approach of an unstoppable freight train and you'd be best placed to move all your armies to Brazil now because you're going to be a government in exile and you know it.


Hard disagree. The launch version factions were miles better than Utopia ones - they operated similar to Disasters and they were sector-geographically localised, which is exactly what I want out of them. Sure, you're right that they had that glaring exploit where you could just BALEET the sector, but that's trivial to overcome and if they'd plugged that one hole it would all have been fine.
I mean, in principle yes they should make it better than that by doing what the original pre-release dev diaries always promised and combine factions with sector rebellion by tweaking faction attractions such that you get a Materialist Sector, Authoritarian Sector, etc. But geographically-localised civil wars are a 1000% better internal dissent mechanic than just being forced to live for 300 years with a bunch of whiny -5% productivity pops that you can't do anything about.

I agree, the faction system we were expecting is much better than what we have now, but I still think kinda sorta working is better than not working at all.

 

[Foefaller]

Well, you do need more energy to upkeep the fleet, but the point stands.

Surplus resources can also translate into surplus energy (and from there to alloys), but that's rarely a better strategy than direct energy or alloy production. So again, the point stands.

Any suggestions on what could be done with other resources? It seems like there could be a benefit to stockpiling them if there were ways to "lose your (proverbial) ships" akin to war. And there could be a benefit to keeping regular production above maintenance, in case something causes it to drop a bit.

Food: Interstellar blights could depress food production for years at a time.

Energy: Energy sources get periodically depleted, or some weird disturbance in the Shroud fucks with the physics in a region of the galaxy and suddenly fusion doesn't work until your scientists can adjust.

Minerals: Mines get tapped out, or sneaky silicoid tribbles have a population explosion and start eating them all until pest control deals with it.

Consumer Goods: Economic depressions.

And all the better if these aren't just events, but things that other empires can influence to make happen.

Maxing out alloys all the time won't necessarily save you if your meager consumer goods run out and suddenly there's massive civil unrest on the planets you just conquered. Then your alloy production tanks. Then the empire next door that kept a sensible surplus rushes your malus-ed fleets that were too busy bombing down the rebels.

Endless Space 2 has Dust inflation, Dust being the setting's EC/currency equivalent.

Basically, as more Dust is produced by all the factions, the cost for upkeep/buying out production also increases as the real value of Dust drops. This meant that even if you were pretty much done "growing" in a max-pops-ability-to-pump-out-ships sense, you probably still needed to keep improving dust production in order to keep up with inflation (especially if there is a Lumeris faction in the game, who can make so much Dust that economy-crashing hyperinflation is a thing non-Lumeris have to worry about)

Now, I'm not sure if it would make sense to apply that directly to EC (or even if it should) but I could see it applying to Trade Value (with it taking more TV to get 1 EC, Megacorps/Trade Leagues getting resistance to it) and/or Consumer Goods, starting based on the amount produced when the Galactic Market is established (and perhaps a reason to fight/delay it?)

 

[Zalmoxis]

Considering the game relies on an FTL system to get ships from system to system, what if the FTL drive itself had a special fuel resource? Like the user above mentioned space oil. If you are out of FTL juice your ships can't leave any system. So you can build as many ships as you have alloys but your fleet operations have logistics attached. I like this idea better than manpower.

Heck, kill two birds with one stone. Larger ships have increasingly larger 'space oil' requirements so sending a battleship has more cost than the equivalent fleet-power of, say, destroyers. Break up the mono-battleship late-game fleets due to logistics concerns unless you got space-oil out the wazoo.

 

[brantodb01]

The AI has clearly still not been fixed. The player having 1k more Diplo power then the strongest AI. What's even the point in these features if the game is so broken it'll bend to your will with no challenge

 

[Janx14]

Is there going to be another dev battle like last time?

 

[The Founder]

Yeah, I saw the dev posts. None of them are relevant to my concerns. Thanks for jumping to conclusions though.

If I understand you right, the information wich parts are actually in the DLC have no impact on you complaining about there being too much in the DLC/not enough in the free patch. Wich is exactly why we do not take you seriously.
If I understood you wrong, please correct me.

I think that factions are a lost opportunity to differentiate between the four government types (Democracy, Oligarchy, Dictatorial and Imperial).

With a Democracy you should have to get decision, edict and policy changes through a parliament/assembly/congress/senate (controlled by representatives of the factions, so each percentage of the population will vote according to their ethic).
With an Oligarchy you should have a smaller council which are elected similarly to the leader, these councillors vote in accordance with their ethic.
With Dictatorial and Imperial you just make a decree and it's done.

Implementing decisions, edicts and policies on any populace which is majorly opposed to them should cause riots and lawlessness (read planet modifiers to happiness).

I do not really see how much Factions differ between the Governments. What a Party is in a Democracy, is a Faction of Princes in a Monarchy.

What is currently stopping the Factions from growing, is the lack of most uncontrolable ethics attraction factors.
All current Attraction factors are under your control, give or take.
A totally uncontrolable factor would just be arbitrary.
We need something that is only partially under your control.

If the G-Community Resolutions (or at least following them) carries Ethics attraction factors, they might just be the middle thing Factions needed all this time:
Not fully under your control, but also not fully out of it. And when in doubt, you can ignore them or leave the Community. A mechanic that works on you, but has options to be worked around.