Too much colony micro?
Too much colony micro?
I think it gets a little stale and far too micro intensive with doing the same things to each colony in a system with a built up empire.Why not have other planets in the same system classed as hands off specialist colonies with no colony building but they add buffs to the main system colony.It would reduce lots of busy work.Endless Space did a similar thing.I think it would make huge galaxies much more playable.
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EisenHammer
- Explorer
- Posts: 16
Re: Too much colony micro?
I was just getting ready to agree with you. When I went and looked at the game setup screen for a new game. And realized you can set the number of planets per system. I now think the best thing to do is just reduce the number of planets in a star system to reduce colony micromanagement. And a good thing about having separate planets in a system is that you can have different civilizations setting up a colony in the same star system. Also having a slider that can increase research output may also help with a smaller colony count. So it won't take forever to research something.
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True_poser
- Contributor
- Posts: 165
- Location: Minsk
Re: Too much colony micro?
I usually set 1 planet per system.
But yes, I'd say there is a micromanagement problem, as you have to have many colonies to achieve good research speed (the only thing you can't buy).
But yes, I'd say there is a micromanagement problem, as you have to have many colonies to achieve good research speed (the only thing you can't buy).
Re: Too much colony micro?
Is there an option to auto-build science/income like in moo2?
That helped me automate many planets. At least I got new buildings through science
That helped me automate many planets. At least I got new buildings through science
Re: Too much colony micro?
Well, there really isn't much building on colonies compared to Master of Orion 2, i mean, all you need to build is 3 maxed out buildings on the capital, 2 maxed out buildings and a single level building on the colony worlds, its pretty much the same.
The only time when you need to build anything else after the above process is when you discover stargates, planetary beam defense or any 4th level building....other then that, there is virtually no colony management.
I can have 30+ colonies and it will never be too much work, as long as i do it a few colonies at a time, it just gets annoyingly boring to do the same thing over and over and over again.
The only time when you need to build anything else after the above process is when you discover stargates, planetary beam defense or any 4th level building....other then that, there is virtually no colony management.
I can have 30+ colonies and it will never be too much work, as long as i do it a few colonies at a time, it just gets annoyingly boring to do the same thing over and over and over again.
Re: Too much colony micro?
The problem is that the economic system is not yet really functional so nothing you do poses an economic drawback, and the economic system allows insta-production so you don't really need factories etc either.
If the economic system doesn't restrict you from developing all your planets the same way and to full extent, it does not serve the purpose of adding a strategic layer of choice and consequence. Since it does not do that, colony management becomes a repetitive chore.
The systems are in place and I think they work well, just not calibrated yet. When the economic system puts more of a squeeze on the player so you can't just build everything all the time, ships or improvements, then the game will really shine
If the economic system doesn't restrict you from developing all your planets the same way and to full extent, it does not serve the purpose of adding a strategic layer of choice and consequence. Since it does not do that, colony management becomes a repetitive chore.
The systems are in place and I think they work well, just not calibrated yet. When the economic system puts more of a squeeze on the player so you can't just build everything all the time, ships or improvements, then the game will really shine
Re: Too much colony micro?
Just remember, too much challenge can kill a game.Lightzy wrote:The problem is that the economic system is not yet really functional so nothing you do poses an economic drawback, and the economic system allows insta-production so you don't really need factories etc either.
If the economic system doesn't restrict you from developing all your planets the same way and to full extent, it does not serve the purpose of adding a strategic layer of choice and consequence. Since it does not do that, colony management becomes a repetitive chore.
The systems are in place and I think they work well, just not calibrated yet. When the economic system puts more of a squeeze on the player so you can't just build everything all the time, ships or improvements, then the game will really shine
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True_poser
- Contributor
- Posts: 165
- Location: Minsk
Re: Too much colony micro?
Of course.
The problem is that you don't really need industry and farming, as you always have enough money to buy everything except the top tier.
Top tier is ok to buy when you have trillions.
And when (and if) the industry will be made necessary (for instance, by linking terraforming time to industrial capacity), we have a plethora of construction technologies which can be added to the starting hand of a custem race and 1-2 levels of which give you roughly x2-2.5 industry.
So a custom race will have instant superiority over stock races, which means, right, no challenge at all.
The problem is that you don't really need industry and farming, as you always have enough money to buy everything except the top tier.
Top tier is ok to buy when you have trillions.
And when (and if) the industry will be made necessary (for instance, by linking terraforming time to industrial capacity), we have a plethora of construction technologies which can be added to the starting hand of a custem race and 1-2 levels of which give you roughly x2-2.5 industry.
So a custom race will have instant superiority over stock races, which means, right, no challenge at all.
Re: Too much colony micro?
Buying stuff needs to ALWAYS be at least twice inferior to constructing it. So that if you're buying something it's the result of duress, emergency.
The economy system needs to be punishing enough to force you to manage your colonies properly, and allocate certain sectors to tourism and economy, or you'll be running negative and all your ships will start disbanding (while suffering terrible penalties).
So far this game shows a ton of finesse and innovation and even real style in the design of the systems, just the tweaking of them is not there yet, to make it an actual strategy game
The economy system needs to be punishing enough to force you to manage your colonies properly, and allocate certain sectors to tourism and economy, or you'll be running negative and all your ships will start disbanding (while suffering terrible penalties).
So far this game shows a ton of finesse and innovation and even real style in the design of the systems, just the tweaking of them is not there yet, to make it an actual strategy game
Re: Too much colony micro?
We would like to add an auto-build mode for planets that you don't want to manage. Eg: Set it as a 'Research colony' and the AI will build it for you if the funds are available. This could be enhanced to add colony designs to control on how it's built up later.
Lightzy: The problem is that some (usually new) players don't pay attention to the economy and go bankrupt. We had high maintenance initially to some buildings but we changed it to make this less likely. We may bring this back with difficulty levels and we will keep improving the economy balance.
Lightzy: The problem is that some (usually new) players don't pay attention to the economy and go bankrupt. We had high maintenance initially to some buildings but we changed it to make this less likely. We may bring this back with difficulty levels and we will keep improving the economy balance.
Horizon - Lead Designer | a.k.a. Raf
Re: Too much colony micro?
It's not at all realistic or interesting that you can buyout in one turn stuff (like endless space u could buyout 10ships at once or heavy develop new planets in one turn)...I see often with money upgrades u can buyout a ship in far less turns than building upgraded industry ten the ship...so whats the point of industry...? It's also very strange than ..I can colonize Mars in the second turn ,build trade/tourism 2x times with buyout then when about 200-300 million pop, it's money output is the same or even bigger than Earth with 7 billion ppl. I had one plent with nothing special on it, 60~mil pop, 2+ billion income...still it's not enoughh considering how one single big ship takes like 5 billion maintenance .
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FrozenFallout
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- Location: USA
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Re: Too much colony micro?
bidusv1 wrote:It's not at all realistic or interesting that you can buyout in one turn stuff (like endless space u could buyout 10ships at once or heavy develop new planets in one turn)...I see often with money upgrades u can buyout a ship in far less turns than building upgraded industry ten the ship...so whats the point of industry...? It's also very strange than ..I can colonize Mars in the second turn ,build trade/tourism 2x times with buyout then when about 200-300 million pop, it's money output is the same or even bigger than Earth with 7 billion ppl. I had one plent with nothing special on it, 60~mil pop, 2+ billion income...still it's not enoughh considering how one single big ship takes like 5 billion maintenance .
This got me thinking, I wonder if buy out could be changed to something like Rush order, where you would get a 50% or 75% boost to production but it wouldn't just "Buy Out" the item. As I find that by Mid game no matter the econ set up I can normally just buy out everything I ever want. I am a diplo whore so I normally have an epic econ going by Mid game and I think the game would be much more interesting if I couldn't just buy out everything I ever needed or wanted. For example I had an Army costing me 100+ BC a turn and many star bases around turn 150 or so and I was easily able to throw all those ships at the Tantik Homeworld with hopes of their destruction because I just got Shields and need to refit the whole army. Not a problem though even though I cant "refit them" I am able to replace the whole army in a couple turns thanks to buy out and also all my planets now have brand new starbases all in 1 turn.
Buy out is just too good and shines far brighter in this game then any other 4x game I have played by the time you get to Mid game. I think it would really help Mid game and End game if you buy out was converted into something that cost credits to enhance your industry on a planet. For outposts that don't get much industry a 75% reduction in time to build a starbase would actually still be very helpful bringing a 200 turn job down to 50. For a 20 turn job on a good planet it would still be really nice bringing it down to 5 turns. But it wouldn't be as over powered as Buy out currently is for every planet.
Re: Too much colony micro?
We could ask the devs for rush penalties such as any of the following:
big dose of pollution
50% reduced production after the rush period for N turns
penalty to the other planetary production types: i.e. you rush research tier...then one of the other tiers is reduced for N turns.
Could be a species-wide cool-down on further "rush orders". I.e. the entire trading/transport infrastructure just rushed to help out...it takes time to regenerate/rest that capability.
The above could give rise to other effects: Higher pollution could also have impacts on either food, morale, population growth, or tourism, based on the species.
However I still believe that a galactic ruler should have the power to push big levers in the economy to make real things happen where it is needed....
big dose of pollution
50% reduced production after the rush period for N turns
penalty to the other planetary production types: i.e. you rush research tier...then one of the other tiers is reduced for N turns.
Could be a species-wide cool-down on further "rush orders". I.e. the entire trading/transport infrastructure just rushed to help out...it takes time to regenerate/rest that capability.
The above could give rise to other effects: Higher pollution could also have impacts on either food, morale, population growth, or tourism, based on the species.
However I still believe that a galactic ruler should have the power to push big levers in the economy to make real things happen where it is needed....