Hypergrowth

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shrinkshooter
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Hypergrowth

#1 Post by shrinkshooter »

through proper structuring and management, and careful cultivation of the necessary conditions for it to begin, indefinite hyperexponential growth may be maintained.
Before I begin yes, I know this is a game. Yes, i know it does impossible things for the sake of fun at the expense of realism. However, I have a problem with the hypergrowth tech. Indefinite exponential hypergrowth is not only impossible, but totally absurd. Of course you say to me "but we don't care, it helps the gameplay and is yet another element in the tech tree." Maybe so, but if you stay true to your word in this tech, then the player gets infinitely richer, and richer faster, over time. Nothing can have indefinite growth. Just like nothing can travel at indefinite speed (read: infinitely great). It's not the impossibility that is the problem, because we toss that aside for the sake of gameplay all the time, which is fine and actually necessary. It's the absurdity.

I know in all likelihood a good number of you will disagree with me. That's my hunch anyway. Maybe I think this because I believe you'll think I'm "distrubing the peace" or something, trying to mess with a tech that's been sitting there uncontested for a while. But this would simply be a crying session if I didn't offer alternatives, so here goes: what I think someone was trying to do was make econmics with little to no monetary downfall. Stocks increase in price, and then they can crash. Perhaps we could alter this tech to be something that helps the growth of the economy, but once the economy hits its cap, prices can stabilize. With some amount of control over panicked investing or "getting out of the market" (or something economically-sounding that gives an impression), prices stablize and remain the same or very nearly the same for time immemorial. making the same profit (ignoring inflation and blah blah) day after day with the same sold products and prices is much more plausible than "indefinite hyperexponential growth."

If E. coli bacteria were totally unrestricted, in the span of 48 hours a single E. coli individual could reproduce enough to create a colony that weighs more than the mass of the entire planet. I hope this makes my point, I don't know how else I can say it in different ways. You guys are smart though, so I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?
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Tortanick
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Re: Hypergrowth

#2 Post by Tortanick »

Well it wouldn't be too hard to change since there is no tech icon yet. Just needs a new name and description.

In addition to your proposal another option would be something that removes the fluctuations resulting in a near perfectly straight line on the economic growth chart, the stability/predictibility would make it easier for buissness to function.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Hypergrowth

#3 Post by Geoff the Medio »

The fact that techs have been sitting uncontested for a long time only means that nobody but me was interested in putting in time and effort to think about making a tech tree.

When almost all the current techs were written, I just had five poorly defined categories that I needed to fill out, and no idea how many theories I'd need or what exactly should go in each one. I just made up as many reasonable sounding techs as I could (12 to 16 theories per category), and arranged them in a semi-reasonable tree, and wrote passable fluff descriptions. There's no gamplay purpose to most of them, and there's probably way too many to all be filled out with applications.

I have no objections to significant reworkings of the tree, and in fact expect it to occur as we add more components to the game. Specific tech addition, modification and removal suggestions are welcomed. I suspect we'll need to remove about a third of the existing theories, likely changing many of them to applications. That way, when we add three or five more tech categories, and fill out all the applications and refinements, we won't end up with hundreds of techs to keep track of and find uses for.

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Josh
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Re: Hypergrowth

#4 Post by Josh »

When almost all the current techs were written, I just had five poorly defined categories that I needed to fill out, and no idea how many theories I'd need or what exactly should go in each one.
And you did a great job. I don't even mind most of them :P
To be honest, some of my inspirations come after I've read the "fluff".

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shrinkshooter
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Re: Hypergrowth

#5 Post by shrinkshooter »

Economic activity functions as a positive feedback into its own growth. An exponential growth curve naturally follows from this in many cases, and economic growth is thus often described as a ratio of the economy's size. Occasional bursts of hyperexponential growth intermittantly occur, but are unstable and followed by painful corrections. However, through proper structuring and management, and careful cultivation of the necessary conditions for it to begin, indefinite hyperexponential growth may be maintained.
Think of changing it to:
Economic activity functions as a positive feedback into its own growth, but when a factor surpasses sustainable limitation, drastic consequences soon follow. Occasional bursts of hyperexponential growth intermittantly occur, but are unstable and followed by painful corrections. However, through proper structuring, management, and careful cultivation of the necessary conditions, growth bursts can be followed by economic stability ensuring the prevention of any economic downturns or crashes.
Suggested titles: Economic Stability, Stabilized Economic Limitations (or Limits), Stablizied Economic Capping, Economic Degredation Prevention, [insert name here]

==edit==

I have also posted an icon for this tech in the graphics forum.
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shrinkshooter
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Re: Hypergrowth

#6 Post by shrinkshooter »

I'm gravedigging this post from last year only because I still think it needs to be addressed. The icon submitted with the infinite symbol for stabilized hypergrowth is certainly a good icon IMO (although it doesn't convey stability from what I can tell), but as I said before this description for this tech should be changed, which would ultimately change what the icon looks like. I only want to change it because infinite exponential growth is totally absurd (one bacterium can asexually reproduce every 20 minutes and in a short time the population can outweigh the mass of the Earth) especially for something so chaotic as an economy. I'm totally fine with suspension of reality for the sake of the game, but I think a healthy dose of reality every now and then can be a good thing. Do people disagree?
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Hypergrowth

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

We can just delete it. It doesn't actually do anything now, and we'll need to prune the tech tree and reorganize it significantly at some point.

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shrinkshooter
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Re: Hypergrowth

#8 Post by shrinkshooter »

Ah. Are the other techs that have no icon like that as well? Which ones aren't we using, or haven't we actually come to a consensus on it?
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Hypergrowth

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

shrinkshooter wrote:Are the other techs that have no icon like that as well?
A good number of application techs don't have icons. Some of the ship category ones could be given icons that are monochromed versions of the corresponding part icons, although there are no good icons for hulls.

Many buildings also lack icons. It'd be nice if this thread could get some attention.
Which ones aren't we using, or haven't we actually come to a consensus on it?
Do you mean which techs will be removed? No idea. Many need to be added, and some need to be removed, and most need to be reorganized. I'm not thinking about it much right now, and probably won't until some more game features are added that will end up having techs related to them.

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