FreeOrion

Minerals are required to fuel industrial production. Without minerals, you can't have any industry.

So what this affects would be defined by what requires industry and what can be done without industry.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

a 1:1 ratio of minerals to industry seems a bit boring to me...might as well just combine them into one resource if that's the case. Plus I can think of a few special case industrial projects that probably shouldn't cost minerals. For example, if Evacuation remains an industrial project....

Might certain projects require a greater proportion of minerals? Like building a doomstar or somesort of monument facility (like a really big statue of the empire's leader) might be a 3:1 ratio.

I think it balances out because you can stockpile minerals.

We could use "1:1" for buildings and "1 : size" for ships. Or whatever else we like. In the end, it only shifts the ratio of mining : industry planets.

..., we don't need to decide until v.3, but a higher ratio of minerals might be part of what makes wonders of the galaxy special. Also, we might have more techs for mining have a greater effect than techs for industry and/or planet specials (mineral richness) that improve mineral intake.

So long as you keep your techs up and have decent, mineral rich worlds to mine you'd be able to maintain a 1:1 ratio of mining verse industrial worlds.

If all you need is X minerals to build Y industrial project, then minerals -are- industry. This may be fine, but let's be conscious of it; if minerals fuel industry, then some number of mineral 'points' equals some number of industrial 'points' and industrial projects require industrial points and not mineral points.

we could eliminate this second step, but that ties directly a planet's natural resources into its manufacturing capability, where in fact we may want the strageic element of having a mineral rich planet be distinct from a manufacturing planet (which I think we should).

Aq

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

The idea was that minerals fuel industry, but sometimes you need more minerals to fuel industry directed towards completing certain projects. Like a steam train's boiler, you'd need to shovel in more coal to push the engine up steep inclines.

I think it makes for interesting game play situations, and so long as there's a common idiom it shouldn't be too confusing for the player.

Plus it gives a player something to do with a large, late game stockpile of minerals.

Speaking of industrial planets being far away from mining worlds, I was wondering if we want a cost associated with importing nutrients and materials. I was thinking maybe if the resource comes from the same star system, the transfer is free...otherwise 2 Credits per resource in early game, reduced then eliminated by technology.

The net effect would be in early game you'd want for each star system to be self-suffient, but in mid game to late game it would become more advantagous to locate resource production dependant more on system (and planet) specials.

For example, the system special "Plentiful Heavy Elements" might give every planet in the system a +1 to mining, +2 if major focus is set to Mining. In early game you'd want to have a farming world in that system, later on it might be advantagous to switch all the planets in that system to Mining.

Too much micromanagement?

The thing I don't like the sound of in cost for resource shuffling is that a player is being charged for a process over which he only has indirect control. The player can't say "ship resources outside of this system" - it happens automatically. The only thing he can do to control the process is to balance every system to maximise value, which sounds like it could be micromanagement troubles.

May be we should put at least couple of freighters in the game?

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zzz...zzzz....zzzzz..... Ahem! 8-0 Who's there?!

Nah, no need for frieghters. Just automatic via magic FTL transporter beam. So about numbers:

2 consumed food per pop unit.
on a non-classified planet 3 of each resource produced per pop unit.

Classified planet (except science) 8 of resource classified 1 of each other.
Science planet: ALL science. CANNOT be self-sufficient.

Secondary Classifications:

These might be more complicated. I'm thinking that depending on what the primary classification is the secondary would produce more or less resources so as to force a Specialized world.

i.e. we don't want a mining, industrial world. Becuase than there is never a need for a strictly mining world or a strictly industrial world. So if we have a world that is an industrial mining world. it should be something like this (based on the above rules) +7 industry + 4 mining + 2 others. By adding a second classification you reduce the primary focus BUT you increase the others. Of course these numbers need to be balanced batter BUT i think they'll work for v.2

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

A suggestion: if races were able to trade rescources, the "two-step minerals-production model" would make sense. [As there could be a race with good mining abilities but poor industrial capacities and another one which is bad at mining but significantly better at production; race 1 trades his minerals to race 2 (e. g. for money).] Also, we could put the "deep core mine" in front of the research list and the "robotic factory" far back. This would force the player to watch his minerals/industry rate, (possibly) slowing down the development.

Concerning transportation expenses I agree to drekmonger: it can't be for free, as the transport of rescources requires ships, fuel, pilots...

Perhaps an option to make Importing and Exporting a resorce a Focus of a planet.

When a planet is set to "Exprot Thing" it makes that thing just like it normaly would but also uses up some Industrial capacity. Now insted of that Thing accumulating on the planet it is distributed to any needy planet in your empire. And best of all the needly planet dont need to do anything special to recive the goods, their just being droped off by the exporter who is in essence paying for the shipment by the industrial capacity usage.

When you set an Planet to "Import Thing" they consume some of their industrial capacity in exchange for collecting that Thing from any planet that has and excess of it. Again the planet it is taken from dose not need to be changed.

So by setting some planets to Export, some to Import you can control the movment of minerals/food through your empire.

Also I am wondering is their any chance ENERGY much like that used in SMAC will make it into the game??

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Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

I like this idea, though I think that imports/exports aught to be seperate from your infrastructure/planetary queues. This way you can move resources around as needed, while still producing buildings and ships

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Empire Team Lead

There should be no reason to seperate Freighters from abstraction-land. As we balance our planetary economies there will be a need to introduce waste and pollution etc, other artificial stabilizers in order to control the growth of the lucky players Huge Ultra Rich Gaia 2nd colony. As we don;t have an economy solidified yet we won't know the extent (if any) of this penalty. We can just put freighters in this waste. And we are going to have an empire tax right? Taxes usually deduct from industry and thus its the cost of freighters.

When I say free freighters I only mean for the player to not have to worry about them, we can even use freighters as a concrete number instead of CC or something as blatantly artificial as that. But when we get to that i will elaborate more.

Oh and this thread is supposed to discuss numbers of the economy. but we keep dwelling on freighters.... Oh well perhaps someone will care to offer a suggestion about the concrete? So far i am the only one....

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

I'd like to see some freighters in the game, even more advanced than in MOO2...
So i suggest: player should build freighters for transportation of resources, food, industry, colonists, etc. Freighters transports goods for a small fee (let say, 1 gp per one ). So the imported minerals will be little more expensive than locally digged. And, if player doesn't have enough freighters, then here we go - commercial freights, the fee will be 5 gp per one. Also, we can tie the government type to this option. Hive don't have commerce, so there will be no commercial freights. And Human race can put all import/export on freelancers' shoulders without building the gov's freigths.
If some system blockaded by enemy fleet, only government's freighters will come with goods, no commercials (there are no fools or for a higher price...

"Prevateer" rules forever! )

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zzz...zzzz....zzzzz..... Ahem! 8-0 Who's there?!

Freighters are cut. No, that's wrong, they can't be cut as we said they'd not be in the game right from the start. Hence we won't have a system more advanced than MoO2s here.