Automation buildings are weird and should be changed.

[Sweeze]

Two problems with how the automation/optimization buildings work currently.

1. The lower tier building costs 8 energy per district for 25% of the workforce. The higher tier building costs 10 energy per district for 50% of the workforce. This leads to the tier 1 building actually costing you more than it gives in return for most of the early game, even on a specialized planet. Automate a technician job and you wouldn't be making 32 energy per district (what you need to break even from automating 1/4th of it) for a long time. But making 20 energy per district is quite doable. This leads to a weird circumstance where the tier 1 building is actively detrimental and useless except as a stepping stone once you've unlocked the tier 2 building, and in the meantime while upgrading to tier 2 you're actually hurting yourself.

2. Since the automation costs upkeep based on # of districts it weirdly advantages colonies with more workforce per district. This is, ecumenopolis/hive worlds/machine worlds and ringworlds. This doesn't make much sense, why should they have special synergy with automation? It's like a weird "win more" decision

Both of these would be fixed if the buildings instead charged you based on how much workforce they actually provide. Make it 8 and 10 energy per 100 workforce automated respectively and I think it would be fair? Someone tell me if there's some kind of upside to how these buildings currently work that I'm not seeing.

 

[RingworldUtopia]

isn't the advantage that those workers will now be working something else now? so the upkeep is a tradeoff till you can upgrade it? i'm not sure i understand automation yet, but that was my assumption.

 

[Adaman5280]

isn't the advantage that those workers will now be working something else now? so the upkeep is a tradeoff till you can upgrade it? i'm not sure i understand automation yet, but that was my assumption.

This is how i understood it too, it frees those pops up so they can work other jobs. Popless production is in almost every case a good thing.


idk that the upkeep seems unreasonable to be honest

 

[Abdulijubjub]

They're certainly weird.

The upkeep on the first one is too high for the point in the game where you get it, though you can cheese it to make it useful anyway. The upkeep on the second one is lower for more of the same effect, which breaks the general trend that the game uses for these things (like e.g. upgraded labs costing 3 energy and 1 gas extra, instead of 2 energy, for the same 200 jobs). And you want to spam it.

Also: you can quickly unlock the second tier if you find Gray Goo and wait to research it until you finish the first tier of building speed tech.

First one:

• Build one of each rural district
• Build an Automation Building and two e.g. Voltaic Production Yards in each district.
• Receive (3*200+100)*0.25=175 worker jobs of each type for only 8+2+2+1 energy in upkeep.

So even with its cost, it's still very good... but only if you cheese it. And eventually you upgrade to the next tier for 350 worker jobs of each type, for only 2 extra energy.

Doing the same for cities is even stronger, because you can have a large number of building slots (potentially 1000+ jobs worked, costing just 8 energy). It needs to go back to scaling costs with buildings.

 

[Sweeze]

isn't the advantage that those workers will now be working something else now? so the upkeep is a tradeoff till you can upgrade it? i'm not sure i understand automation yet, but that was my assumption.

No, because its a net negative

If you have a district that would provide 30 energy if worked, and the automation building works 25% of that, it will generate 7.5 energy. But the automation building itself costs 8 energy to have working. Meaning you are producing negative 0.5 energy and should just leave the job unfilled.

First one:

• Build one of each rural district
• Build an Automation Building and two e.g. Voltaic Production Yards in each district.
• Receive (3*200+100)*0.25=175 worker jobs of each type for only 8+2+2+1 energy in upkeep.

So even with its cost, it's still very good... but only if you cheese it. And eventually you upgrade to the next tier for 350 worker jobs of each type, for only 2 extra energy.

Funny, there's a similar semi-cheese with the Wilderness economy where you also only want/need 1 district of every resource per planet and get the rest by populating the building slots, then you fill every district but those three with research/unity. I should have figured out this trick worked for automation as well. Sadly I already finished my genocidal game and was desperate for workforce, won't get to try this out until I do that again.

 

[aadf97799c]

still have no idea how automation work

can a job be filled half by pop half by automation and work at full capacity

 

[Ishyro]

can a job be filled half by pop half by automation and work at full capacity

Yes and no. AFAIK automation is always at 100% efficiency (or at least, the "pop" produced has no bonus, but maybe the bonus from buildings and stuff still apply).

So by having 50% automated, you usualy are less productive than without automation. But that's pops you don't have.

So if you have civilians lying around (and no special use for them), automation is bad, but otherwise it's good.

Edit: test on an edge case with a lot of job efficiency:

Without automation:

With automation:

So it's indeed creating workforce at 100% efficiency, which is usually detrimental if you actually have the pop.

 

[Sweeze]

No, it's *always* detrimental if you have the pop, because it costs 32 energy per pop "generated". Some of you seem to fundamentally not understand how this thing works, its upkeep scales with the number of districts.

 

[Random Players]

No, it's *always* detrimental if you have the pop, because it costs 32 energy per pop "generated". Some of you seem to fundamentally not understand how this thing works, its upkeep scales with the number of districts.

32 energy per 'pop' (100 pops, I presume) would mean talking about the 25% Automation building, which is 8 per district, correct? And assuming each district gives 100 workers?

That's.... very obviously not the kind of setup you should put a automation building in. Let us instead take my current poke at how the new system works with Astro-miner Arc Welders (yes, yes, I know, better to take it later. This is testing, not optimization) Machine Intelligence as a example. Not very far in yet, don't even have colony centralization yet due to RNG, so it's hardly a case of late game tech skewing numbers.

Looking at one of my fresh colonies I put a automation building in, it's 2 Nexus Districts only has a Archives attached to it for now until I can truly specialize planets. That does mean that from it alone, it does only give 200 jobs, or 50 automation.. except there is also 300 replicator jobs, 100 Hunter-Seeker Drone jobs and 300 logistic drone jobs from the capital building+Machine assembly plant. Then from the research Labs, Simulation site and Uplink node there are +200 Coordinator Jobs and +60 of each researcher jobs.
The end result is that for 16 energy, I get a total of 320 Workforce, not 50. And that's just the basic automation building. Sure, this workforce doesn't benefit from pop traits, but it accelerates the growth for a minimal price anyway. I do technically have the pops for the jobs.... except they can now work other jobs.

As another example, how about Generator Districts? On my capital, I have ten. Keep in mind Astro-miners has a Empire Level -50% menial drone output along with a flat -1 base production, which does both affect automation as far as I've been able to tell.
Each Generator District thanks to the Energy Generation Specialization gives 300 jobs (3000), with a additional +200 from a voltaic Production Yard. The remaining two slots are the automation building and a Energy Grid for +20% Tech-drone output. For 80 Energy per month, I get 800 workforce as a result. And turning the Tech Drone job down to max 25%, I get a output of 174 energy despite Astro-Miners. Net positive and again freeing up my drones for other things they COULD be doing.

Bottom line is that while the Automation building's Upkeep may scale with districts, it's Efficiency scales with number of jobs.

 

[Ishyro]

No, it's *always* detrimental if you have the pop

I tend to avoid using "always" in these kind of games because you can often find an edge case where what you thought was a rule doen't apply.

For example, in an empire with civil education, you probably want to automatize everything and maximise your civilian population, once your economy is strong enough to handle it.

 

[Gundabadguy]

No, it's *always* detrimental if you have the pop, because it costs 32 energy per pop "generated". Some of you seem to fundamentally not understand how this thing works, its upkeep scales with the number of districts.

You seem to be focusing on automated energy districts in which, assuming your calculations are correct, it is a net loss, but automation affects more than just energy districts.

 

[Sweeze]

I tend to avoid using "always" in these kind of games because you can often find an edge case where what you thought was a rule doen't apply.

For example, in an empire with civil education, you probably want to automatize everything and maximise your civilian population, once your economy is strong enough to handle it.

No, you do not understand.

There is a HUGE energy penalty automating jobs.

If you have a pop to work a technician job, even if that pop is somehow awful and has -100% job efficiency, that pop will produce more than an automation building would.

You seem to be focusing on automated energy districts in which, assuming your calculations are correct, it is a net loss, but automation affects more than just energy districts.

Pops are almost entirely fungible. Automating other districts is usually worse. Automating an energy district gives you 75 pops for 8 energy, automating research labs or foundries gives you 50 pops for 8 energy.

snip

Yes we already went over how you can cheese the mechanics by making only 1 district and a lot of buildings. That's really stupid and just shows the reverse of how bad this system is.

 

[Random Players]

No, you do not understand.

There is a HUGE energy penalty automating jobs.

If you have a pop to work a technician job, even if that pop is somehow awful and has -100% job efficiency, that pop will produce more than an automation building would.



Pops are almost entirely fungible. Automating other districts is usually worse. Automating an energy district gives you 75 pops for 8 energy, automating research labs or foundries gives you 50 pops for 8 energy.



Yes we already went over how you can cheese the mechanics by making only 1 district and a lot of buildings. That's really stupid and just shows the reverse of how bad this system is.

Read the last part, with my capital's generator districts. Only 200 out of 3200 jobs are from buildings there.

 

[-Marauder-]

This is how i understood it too, it frees those pops up so they can work other jobs. Popless production is in almost every case a good thing.


idk that the upkeep seems unreasonable to be honest

Someone spend the time and did the math. No, it's not a good thing. You lost a bunch of bonuses and benefits and the cost tends to be higher than what you get out of it.

I love how some people disagree with this as if math is subjective. Someone ran the numbers in one of the early threads, from start to bottom factoring in bonuses, etc. The buildings are a bigger drain than they are net gain unless you have a dyson sphere/absolute glut of energy and don't need it for anything.

 

[Kainser]

The game really needs to do a better job explaining what they actually do as well.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

You seem to be focusing on automated energy districts in which, assuming your calculations are correct, it is a net loss, but automation affects more than just energy districts.

75 workforce is 75 workforce. Paying 8 energy for 75 workforce of technicians and paying 8 energy for 75 workforce of some higher yield job while real pops work as technicians is the same.

(Assuming both jobs get the same efficiency bonuses so that 75 workforce is the same number of real pops, which obviously isn't exactly accurate and may change the ratio from 1::1)

Rural districts are currently less rewarding to automate, but it's because they have fewer buildings. The job yields don't matter for the reason above: pops are fungible.

 

[Critical Ethics]

They're certainly weird.

The upkeep on the first one is too high for the point in the game where you get it, though you can cheese it to make it useful anyway. The upkeep on the second one is lower for more of the same effect, which breaks the general trend that the game uses for these things (like e.g. upgraded labs costing 3 energy and 1 gas extra, instead of 2 energy, for the same 200 jobs). And you want to spam it.

Also: you can quickly unlock the second tier if you find Gray Goo and wait to research it until you finish the first tier of building speed tech.

First one:

• Build one of each rural district
• Build an Automation Building and two e.g. Voltaic Production Yards in each district.
• Receive (3*200+100)*0.25=175 worker jobs of each type for only 8+2+2+1 energy in upkeep.

So even with its cost, it's still very good... but only if you cheese it. And eventually you upgrade to the next tier for 350 worker jobs of each type, for only 2 extra energy.

Doing the same for cities is even stronger, because you can have a large number of building slots (potentially 1000+ jobs worked, costing just 8 energy). It needs to go back to scaling costs with buildings.

For rural districts this is yet another broken system trivially solved by gutting the static +job resource buildings from the game and including more buildings that do actually interesting things. As it is now they have to cost automation as if you were doing the already cheese setup of 1 district + as many spammable buildings as you can fit because otherwise t1 automation would increase the cheese of pulling 700 farmers out of one district, but in doing so they make it only viable in that setup.

The t2 automation gets away with a reasonable cost not because jumping from 25% to 50% is less valuable, but because they're assuming by the time you unlock it you're going to need more than 700 baseline farmers/technicians per mature planet.

It's absolutely crazy how efficient the spammable +job buildings are at annihalating the new economy.

E: there was a snipe here that was a bit mean

Spoiler

funny though

 

[Critical Ethics]

You seem to be focusing on automated energy districts in which, assuming your calculations are correct, it is a net loss, but automation affects more than just energy districts.

That's because all that automation does is free up pops. So it's only as valuable as what you do with those pops. If freeing up 75 metallurgists requires you to build 150 more technicians then all your automation building has done is lose you 75 pops.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Someone spend the time and did the math. No, it's not a good thing. You lost a bunch of bonuses and benefits and the cost tends to be higher than what you get out of it.

You lose efficiency bonuses, but keep all others. And 0 pops with +1000% efficiency still work 0 jobs, so if you would like to work more jobs than you have pops for, automation is useful (assuming you can make energy efficiently enough to be worth it).

Once an empire gets the second tier of automation building, they should basically automate everything until they have civilians pile up, and only then start taking the automation back down.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

For rural districts this is yet another broken system trivially solved by gutting the static +job resource buildings from the game and including more buildings that do actually interesting things. As it is now they have to cost automation as if you were doing the already cheese setup of 1 district + as many spammable buildings as you can fit because otherwise t1 automation would increase the cheese of pulling 700 farmers out of one district, but in doing so they make it only viable in that setup.

"Trivially solved" is a funny way to describe "design 3x as much content" (which is what "including more buildings that do actually interesting things" means in this case).

The t2 automation gets away with a reasonable cost not because jumping from 25% to 50% is less valuable, but because they're assuming by the time you unlock it you're going to need more than 700 baseline farmers/technicians per mature planet.

The automation buildings cost what they cost before buildings were excluded. As I understand it, the building costs will be back when they have time to fix the bug that made it count all buildings on the planet, instead of only the ones in the district.

It's absolutely crazy how efficient the spammable +job buildings are at annihalating the new economy. You'd think there'd be more effective espionage operations out of a team so skilled at self sabotage.

I think they're mostly fine. Consider that building a specialization costs as much as 3.3 rural districts: it's more empire size efficient, but without jobs from building slots, it would cost more than it gives you except on fairly large planets.

And for e.g. research... Research labs were fine before, and they're fine now. They're just filler and a way to let tall build even taller.

I wouldn't mourn if they went away, obviously (provided Agrarian Idyll and Subterranean get some fixes, since buildings are the only useful replacement they get for their building slots at the moment). But they're just inoffensive filler.