FreeOrion

I think to do this, colony development should depend on two things 'Focus' and 'Investment'. This way a player can be come an 'Economist', building up his colonies into optimized Focuses as fast as possible with their limited population growth, or a 'Militarist' sacrificing Infrastructure building for ships to get more colonies/defend the ones they've got.*

An Imperial queue easily allows this by letting you determine which or how many ships get priority ahead of Infrastructures. (even with only a single 'Infrastructure Everywhere' project for the queue.)


* For this to be worthwhile, there does need to be a range where it is a worthwhile trade off, so Infrastructure probably needs to be fairly expensive. (something that you put on hold during a war to afford mobilizing your ships/get more as fast as possible)

I vote for Proposal #2/2a (deferring the exact details for later).

For the build method I have a question: is build method #3 as you described it meant to cover only the "build in limbo - place anywhere after construction - RTS style" method advocated by Tzlaine (EDIT - misattributed to Drek, sorry), or also the "place at or before first progress" method I've been advocating. Equally is it meant to cover only the "no limits on funneling" approach (i.e. all the empires production can be applied simultaneously to any single point in the empire), or allow the "limited funneling" advocated by Krikkitone, (either by placement penalties a la Drek (?), or production rate limits per Krikkitone, or 'import losses' as per someone else).

To be clearer does 3 only cover a "one point of production" list, or does it also cover an imperial project queue with multiple points of production.

Because I'm voting method 3, but by that I mean I'd like an imperial allocation list, with things actually being built somewhere - as opposed to the Command and Conquer style "build a 50 turn behemoth in unattackable limbo then pop it out of the brand new shipyard on the border with my enemy I built last turn." that seemed to go along with Tzlaine's proposal.

I would have to agree with Hexxium and Noelte. They both make good points. I don't want to oversimplify the game to the point it isn't fun. I would really prefer an improvement on MOO2. I want to be ABLE to control all the details, but not HAVE to. So I vote 1a. That said, I can live with 2/2a (if passed, we should probably keep the defense implementation as an option to be determined later), with five types of infrastruture per Krikkitone.

I vote build method as a combination of mostly 1 and a little 3. All things should have a location when allocated, not after build. They should be managed from either the planet que or the empire que. Local built items have priority in the imperial que, but then priority to large projects using imperial production could be prioritzed in the imperial que. Any non-local production should have an import loss. It should be more efficient to build big things on heavy industry worlds, but the possibility to build on an undeveloped world at extreme cost should exist (no way should it be at the same efficiency as local build).

2a - limited buildingslots and defense separate from them. I would not limit the amount of defense structures you can build on a planet with other than upkeep-costs.

3- Empire wide que but so that building is localized. - You cant start building something without beforehand deciding where the structure will be buildt and there would need to be some restrictions to keep empire-wide building making sense = even though parts for building can be manufactured trough the empire, the industrial capasity/infrastructure of target system would have strong effect on building time of the project.

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Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Tzlaine actually. I perfer that the location be set before the build begins.

I vote for 2a and 2. Building methology 3 is okay, too; but it seems to me that #2 will promote a feeling of familiarity with your systems.

Ragnor post sums it up for me. Other than that:

I vote for 2a - limited build slots

and 3 - Empire wide que , but definatly no (build in limbo, mobalization centres thing). Things should be built at a definate location.

With the optional development of Sectors by the player so the Empire wide que can be more localized if the player likes it that way.

guiguibaah's suggestion is good.

Slots are ok with me, tecnicaly I think "orbital" and defence stuff (shipyards, sheilds, cannons, missle bases) stuff should be built on a seperate tactical map (used for combat) and thus only civilian type stuff and an abstracted ground defence component (call it bunkers) would actualy be attached to the planet, so call it 2a but slightly differnt they has been proposed so far.

Im strongly oposed to a empire wide "build limbo" as the otherwise very nice slide show presentation proposes. The nessary tools to balance an empire wide pooling of production for ships and facilites will far outway its simplicity resulting in a much MORE complex system then even Moo2 has. This is why I pose the #3 empire wide pooling system.

Insted a combination of 1 and 2 would be best, use the following rules. If it is atacthed to or come into existene at a planet then build it their, if it comes into existence in the system then build it their (ships primarily).

For Build Quees let the player put something in the quee at or above the level it is build at. This means the player dosent have to make ALL the very fine detial desison making only just as much as they wish (oh and Sector could also be a grouping larger then system but smaller then Whole Empire). I could put a planetary facility at the Imperaial, Sector or system level quee and it "drops" down to an apropriate planet when one becomes avalible and is build their (using only that locations productivity). Likewise a system level facility could be put in the Imperial Quee and drop to an avalible system. Classic Civ style Wonders would be Empire wide projects and be built "everyware and noware" and only they would pool production from the whole empire as in proposal #3 when they are done they are esentialy located at all your systems.

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Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Being new here, please excuse me if I start talking OT. I hope to avoid this - worst case scenario, I highlited my vote in BOLD and you can just skip the rest. I hope you wont, though

As I see, the diffrence between propositions #1 and #2 is 'should we have limited number of slots per planet or not'. But is this the only alternative? Why not have the best of both of both worlds - simply decide which buildings/projects/thingies are limited are which are not.

Bascially, I think that all 'buidlings' should be divided into large-scale (requiring a slot) and small-scale (no slot needed).

The large scale projects should represent major planetary infrastructure (cities, roads, the WHOLE ECONOMY) and increase constanlty over time, representing resources of the economy (think factories of MOO1 or Stars!), and after they reach certain level, they could be transformed into slot-requiring 'buildings' (I prefer term projects, planet is NOT a city) - here think of MOO3 or Se4 Proportions mod), that would represent the infrastructure projects taking large amounts of land (think a balanced metropolis (producing little of all type of resource) or specialized continent size farming (industrial, miliary, whatever you like) complex - like in Se4Prop mod).

A note here - the increase of production should not come as a result of filling this slot - it should be the other way around. A metropolis does not appear from thin air and boosts the economy, it is the growing economy that gives rise to metropolis.

Then we need to think of small scale buildings that should not require any slots of all - think of projects that take very little land. Why a megalopolis should exclude a robotic factory, research complex or missile site?
Logicaly, if something takes lots of land , it takes a slot. A planetary scanner or missile site or holotheaters network or soil enrichment project could be said to be incorporated into existing infrastructure, and would not take any slots (not to mention that advanced civ should be able to build such things underground or in orbit) - but could still be based on planet (and on empire scale as well) - to prevent the discovery of, lets say, holotheaters of immedietly boosting an economy of new founded outpost.
They could be divided into 'planetary wonders' - one per planet (soil enrichment of holo network), and cumulative (missile defences).

Basically, I'd suggest that planet should have maximum population number that would translate into factories/resurce maximum number, and a maximum number of slots - both based on size and perhaps factors like atmoshpere (another nice SE concept, but lets not complicate it at that point). So I believe this is a vote for Proposal #2a: Limited Build Slots w/Separate Defense structures - but for me, not only defence structures should be separate, but all things/projects that do not require their own large land areals.

As for build methodology, I think that level 1 ( Build methodology 1: Local Building ) gives best strategic choice, but the more it can be automatized, the better. Perhaps a player could create his own build queues and save them (again, think of default build queue in stars!) - and assign them to new clolonies when they are colonized, so border outpost builds diffrent then inner mineral world.

Hope I haven't strayed to OT. Wish I have discovered this place a year ago...

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Prokonsul Piotrus, we proposed the slots system to solve a problem present in MOO2/SMAC/other game. That is, late game when you have many buildings, building a new colony and managing it is a tedious mess - there are many buildings to select from, and you simply don't care. The larger your empire becomes, the even more tiresome it is to manage. The slots system was designed to reduce the number of decisions overall.
After all, which planets should have hydroponic farms or an automated factory? All. The decision is made before you even get to make it. So, we remove this decision entirely and leave only that which has an actual bearing of the game's direction. The end result from this system is that hopefully the game is almost as easy to play near the end as it was at the start - without sacrificing diversity or depth.

Edit: This thread (which is daunting in size) goes into some of the details of the problem above and the solutions presented:
http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=642

I'm going to vote for 2 or 2a. I had to think about this for a while, as I was hesitant to side with something I've never really seen done before. But the basic premise of the player intervening to make an exception rather than to uphold a rule, is solid and important. It may, emphasize may, be possible to design automation for 1a that would let me feel comfortable using it (MOO3's did not), but in my opinion you'd still be treating just the symptoms and not the root of the problem.

As to whether 2 or 2a specifically, I don't know, and I don't think we should lock ourselves into one or the other yet.

(On build methodology, Piotrus I think you're missing the point. MOO3 also had save/load for build queues, or at least for its devplans, and this only makes sense in conjunction with proposals 1 or 1a.)

Personally I have serious reservations about taking away the planet as the basic unit/framework for building something. Not deadset against it yet, but I need more convincing. What I'd like to see, I guess, is a combination of the build levels, allow things to be built on a planetary, system, or empire level at the user's discretion, depending on how big a project it is, how badly they need it done soon, and how willing they are to sacrifice some production at the planetary (or system) level for a time. Implementing all 3 will be a pain, probably involving an extra build queue for each system and sliders to control the %'s of output that get siphoned off, but you could do just planetary and system production, or just planetary and empire production, to simplify things. I like the idea of the option to do things at a system level though because it means, if you find a really great system with a lot of nice planets, then there's more value to it than JUST the sum of the values of all the planets it contains.

I suppose you could argue that just having so many nice planets all in one place makes them easier to defend and that alone gives you an advantage, but anyway. I also see implementation problems with build methodology 3 if you, as others have said, specify the target location in advance (which I too would want)... Maybe I just haven't grasped what you all have in mind yet, but I'm going to vote for methodology 1 or 2 for now.

Option for suggestion 3.

Issue of ships 'popping up' at shipyards since they are in an imperial build que. Since no destination is 'set'.

Solution?

- If a shipyard is attacked, a percentage of ships in your "imperial parts list" (ships that have not been dragged and dropped into a shipyard system, but are complete) get destroyed, depending on how many shipyards you have. If you have 3 shipyards and loose 1, you loose 33% of your 'stored' ships.

- If a shipyard is attacked and destroyed while a large order has been 'dragged and dropped' onto it, everything in the order is immediately destroyed.

- If you are building parts for a gigantic ship (a dealth star that takes 100 imperial queue turns), and you have 3 shipyards and loose 1, you loose 33% of that item's production. (So it you were 99% complete, you would now be back at 66%).

= = = =

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There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

In the case of a gigantic ship, Death Star kind of scale, here's what I'd do... You have three choices. A single planet with a shipyard and a lot of industry can be told to build it. This would take, say, 100 turns.

Or, you can tell a whole system to build it. One shipyard needs to be present in the system, where the ship will actually be constructed. The industry of all the planets in the system combines, laboring night and day to churn it out. Assume you have 3 industrial worlds and a few others there; it would then take, say, 40 turns.

Or you can tell the whole empire to build it. All other work comes to a screeching halt as the full might of the Whateverian Empire's industry comes to bear. Driven by one purpose, one goal, one ambition, every citizen still drawing breath races to the nearest production facility to contribute. As parts are shipped in from all corners of the galaxy, the fabric of space itself bends under the weight of the new behemoth. With this approach it might take, say, 5 turns.

With the second one, if the world where it's being built is captured or destroyed then the ship-under-construction and all effort that's gone into it are lost. If any other worlds in the system are lost, then it will simply take longer than before to finish building it.

With the third one, same deal. Lose the world designated at the beginning as the assembly point (must have a shipyard there), and all effort is lost. Any other growth or diminishment in your empire's size and industrial strength and tech will simply speed up or slow down the work still to be done on the ship. Once done, it pops out finished at the assembly point. The assembly point could be special just in having a shipyard, or its own local industry could also play a modest role, adding a scaling factor having to do with how easy it is for them to to do the "assembling" of all the parts that are being shipped in from elsewhere.

But I am strongly opposed to any form of dragging-and-dropping-into-a-shipyard-system. This reeks of MOO3 mob centers and generic, don't-exist-anywhere imperial ship reserves.

Still about the Death Star type of project. The wierd thing about Empire wide production is the apparent teleportation of production. I understand research kind of project/wonder can be contributed to by every worlds of your empire, but a behemoth ship is different.

Suppose the Death Star is built at the geographic center of your empire, if a far planet/system contribute to the project, its contribution (assuming it is in parts, ie thing that must be freight) must be shipped to the final assembly place. Usually, in a 4X game, it takes a couple of turns to go from one end to the other of your empire. It doesn't make sense that it takes 7 turns to move your fastest ship there, but you can contribute immediately to the project that is 'there'.

In that case (DS building with contribution from far away system) I propose that the far system build a contribution in the form of part that must be shipped in a cargo ship.

Strategic consequence would be the possibility to blockade some planet with crucial contribution to hamper the project completion.

Gameplay consequence would be dramatic increase of micro-management which would be VERY bad.



My vote would be 2 (slots) and 2 (system production) with possibility to contribute to a non-local production (ala Stars! ultimate recycling of ships or civilisation caravan contribution to wonders). If interface tools to allow building macro-management aren't present, it is not realistically fun, hence not viable.

As interface tools I mean a way to select many systems on the galaxy window in the same way than Windows desktop icons (ctrl+a for all, a box, ctrl+click to add/remove elements) and then sort and mass-remove/add elements on a list that can be ordered by focus/population/production capacity. With that selection, you could order the production of parts for the great project. Every part would have that ship that would be ordered to go to the production site automatically.
Sorry about the off-topicness of the last paragraph!

Tyreth, I understand and agree - this is why I say 2a in the end. I just wanted to stress (and if it was discussed before, sorry - still reading the older threads) that:
- slots should be filled by 'large' projects, not by a single factory or farm
- yes, many inventions that improve tech throught the empire should be implemented automatically on the empire scale
- some, however, would not logically appear on the very new colonies - for example, I could believe that soil enrichment with nanobots help would appear on each new colony, but holotheaters world network is not something that is easily build nor is it a priority for colonists fresh out of ships - so to avoid micromenaging, perhaps some 'planet wonders' should appear only after some max population planet % or slots number is filled?

And Aquitaine mentions 'The first issue is how infrastructure is calculated and improved'. My post was mostly a response to that question - I wanted to answer this by presenting a system based on 2a:
- population increase leads to automatically filling slots by 'large projects' (player can assign planet into one of predesigned build quies, so it will be automatically filled with project he wants when the given level of development is reached, BUT there will be no sharp jumps in development, it will be gradual)
- planet wonders are applied automatically when tech is discovered and/or planet has risen to suitable level of development to sustain them
- cumulative small projects (like separate defence queue of 2a, but some other non-military projects may be also be cumulative - for example, space yards...some other things, granted, this would require more brainstorming) are the third type of building

The key thing here is to allow player intervention into any step of the process if he feels it is necessary, but let him avoid this by clever automatic development - I see it like this.
After a colony is created (and anytime after that) player can assign (or change) a development project to it.
A development project is created somwehere in options, and looks like this:
- planets size x, slot number y, project name (ex. Border Agriculture World, size 4)
Build agrarian settlement, build agraraian city, build agrarian major city, build continent bio farm complex, upgrade agr settlement to agr major city, upgrade agr city to major agr city, buld second continent bio farm complex, priority* build planetary scanner, build agr major city, build continent miliary complex (ground-space missile specialization), autobuild (untill all slots are filled) bio farm comlexes, upgrade ALL urban slots to agrarian metropolis, build space shipyard, build&deploy orbital missile satelites x100, build&deploy medium mines x1000 (end of queue - msg to player main screen).

Note that most planet wonders like automated factories, holo theaters, commercial space ports or orbital elevators autmatically affect the planet when given level of slots or pop is filled, no need to put them into any queue. *priority build could be used to force building a planet wonder or cululative building before the requirements for its automatic creation are fullfilled.

It is possible that what I am describing here is what was said in the long discussion thingy - if yes, sorry bout wasting your time. :>

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About shipyards - I am also opposed to moo3 ships dropping out of nowhere. They have to be build in a given shipyard, and when it is lost, so is the given ship.

Mind you, I loved the idea of SE3 (lost in 4, unfortunaly ) that a partially build ship could sometimes be thrown in the combat - or moved to a safe zone. For example, if the hull has engines, it could fly away to avoid destruction is system it was build in was about to fall, if it had weapons it could be thrown into battle*

* dont you just love the situation like this...

- Sir, we are approaching the Death Star shipyard.
- Tell all ships to prepare to fire when we are in ran...
- Sir! We are registering an energy spike in the Death Star weapons sytems!
- What? Turn aro....
*BUM*

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