Industrial Center Rework

[Geoff the Medio]

I had an idea, based on watching some Cities: Skylines Let's Play videos, which I'm wondering about appyling to buildings like the Industrial Center.

The idea is somewhat motivated by the thought that there can be something between an building that needs to be produced on every planet or within X distance to act on planets, and a building that can be produced once and act on a whole empire or supply-connected group.

In city builders games, often you need to have more buildings of the same type as your city population increases. That is, you just need a single police station, a clinic, a fire station, a dump, etc. near the start of the game to keep people happy. Then, when the population gets big enough, the demand increases, and you need more of the building to keep people happy. But making two or more of something when the demand is low doesn't give any additional benefit; as long as the demand is met, the max possible benefit is given.

Something like this could be done for some FreeOrion buildings, such as the Industrial Center. In the attached patch, I've modified the building so it gives a bonus to all supply-connected industry-focused empire planets, but limited such that the total population served across all planets is 100 population per Industry Center (IC). If you less than 100 population on connected industry-focused planets, you get the max bonus from just a single IC. If the population on those planets goes above 100, then the bonus on planet each is reduced, but (if I did the math right) the total bonus given is still the same bonus that 100 population would get.

Since all these planets are supply-connected and share industry output, the result is that you can get up to 100 * [[INDUSTRY_PER_POP]] bonus per IC, spread over all your connected planets, limited either by the population connected and focused or by the IC capacity. There's no need or reason to produce more ICs before the population to be served goes over 100, but when it does, you need to produce another one to keep getting IC bonuses proportional with the population.

This doesn't require the micromanagement of an IC on every planet, but gives larger growing empires reason to produce a few more, to have stuff in the production queue besides ships. It also would give empires a need to find and colonize planets with adequate infrastructure to supply additional ICs (or similar buildings).

Since the limit is on population served, as the bonus per population point increases from ICs as tech improves, players don't immediately need to produce a whole new set of ICs to get the increased bonuses. The population served / "capacity" of an IC or similar building could also be tied to the infrastructure of the planet it's located on, or other techs / refinements.

Clearly, some warning indicators that the player doesn't have enough ICs (or whatever) in the empire to get the max possible bonus would be needed if doing things like this.

Also, note that I made it so IC effects now do stack, but the above-described limits do apply, so if you produce a second unnecessary IC, you don't get double the bonus, but instead have two half-size bonuses listed. Might not be great due to tooltip clogging, but it would be simple enough to modify things so that just a single IC is listed as giving all the bonus.

[Dilvish]

I had an idea

I see appeal and some value to the idea. I do think we need to be wary of inspiration from such types of games though-- it's been a long time since I've played any, but it's my recollection that since the strategic aspects of the game were minimal, they largely took the form of managing your management headaches-- it's almost like management headache was an intentional part of such games. I think they also tended to be much more focused on 'realism' (i.e., managing realistic aspects of population growth, even if it is just a plain headache.) I'm not citing this as a reason against the basic idea, just as a reason to be very, very careful about its implementation.

I am a bit uncertain about the tradeoff/balance between "interesting strategic dimension" versus management headache-- even if it is not really a "micro"-management headache, something like this can easily be a management nuisance/headache. I think it very well could make an interesting strategic dimension, but I think it will need a lot of thought. In fact, the management nuisance is rather inherent to it, and so the challenge is to have the added strategic dimension be worth the cost of that headache. I think having a decent UI element to assist the player would be critical in minimizing the headache aspect.

In the attached patch, I've modified the building so it gives a bonus to all supply-connected industry-focused empire planets, but limited such that the total population served across all planets is 100 population per Industry Center (IC)....Clearly, some warning indicators that the player doesn't have enough ICs (or whatever) in the empire to get the max possible bonus would be needed if doing things like this.

In addition to a simple warning of actual problem, I think we'd want/need to provide a UI element to assist a player with planning before the need for warning arises. Perhaps akin to the population census element, there could be a Facilities review element that you could interact with a bit, showing the different types (and corresponding numbers) of buildings you have, some indication of current coverage relative to max coverage for that number of buildings, etc.

So far, I'm left thinking that a decent UI element would make the nuisance reasonably small, but the strategic decision value also seems fairly low-- not nothing, but low. It will be hard to assess without the corresponding UI element to ease the nuisance, but if folks feel it is worth it without the element then all the better when the element is introduced. It also could be that this kind of facilities review UI element might be able to provide value for our current content, so maybe that is worth doing no matter what.

[Vezzra]

I like this idea. A lot. As Dilvish pointed out, we probably need to be careful not to create some management issues here, but I think if the capacity of the ICs is sufficiently high, it should be managable (100 might be a too low). An UI element helping the player to see the "capacity utilization" (is that the right term?) of such buildings to enable him to effectively plan the production of additional ones in time will definitely be needed.

I'd say we should just try how such an approach would work.

The population served / "capacity" of an IC or similar building could also be tied to the infrastructure of the planet it's located on, or other techs / refinements.

This in particular sounds like a very good idea to me. If we also add "infrastructure costs" to other buildings besides the few that already have it, this will make for some interesting decisions, as you would want to build ICs on worlds with high infrastructure of course, and you'd also want as few other buildings as possible on that world (as it would reduce the infra utilizable by the IC). This will force the player to carefully plan how to use his high infrastructure worlds, and finally make infra a valuable resource again.

[MatGB]

I'm ambivalent, but happy to try it out. Regarding UI, there's some work that could be done anyway that would also help with this.

For the top panel, some extra elements akin to the way the Census currently works ould almost certainly be good, for starters something that shows both current and target production (and research) would be very helpful, and you could, if this is implemented, have in the same thing a "number of ICS" and "population of industrial worlds" entry, both of which would be simple to calculate but a pain to add up from the Objects system.

Another option would be to rework the way ICs used to work (with Xuus, I forget, was it 200?) and make it jump number dependent, then captured capitals and similar would be a useful addition.

100 population is almost certainly far too low though, especially in the mid game. On the other hand, that could be modified by the two follow on techs.

[Sloth]

I also like this idea a lot. I always found it unfair that large empires (i.e. those which are already winning) get a larger effect for the same price.

I'm less sure about the infrastructure dependent capacity, but it's worth trying too.

[Magnate]

I like this idea too. I have two suggestions:

1. A sitrep that says "your population now exceeds that supported by your Industrial Centers", so you know to build another one.

2. Geometric rather than arithmetic progression: the first IC serves 50 pop, the second 100, the third 200 etc. That way you don't end up building dozens of them in the late game.

Also, this mechanic could be used for solar power generators, black hole generators, and even gas giant generators if you wanted to move them away from being per-system.

[flap]

I like it (even though I haven't played much). And I agree about the good UI requirement.

One thought I had about these buildings and special which have an effect in other systems, is that it is not easy to get a global view of their impact. So maybe clicking them (or hovering them with the mouse) should highlight the systems they impact, an display somewhere the total bonus/malus they bring.

As for the Industrial Center, that way to display things would be efficient if it did impact a limited number of planets, rather than a total population...

[Vezzra]

Also, this mechanic could be used for solar power generators, black hole generators, and even gas giant generators if you wanted to move them away from being per-system.

Agreed, we definitely should consider that approach for other, similar buildings.

[Vezzra]

As for the Industrial Center, that way to display things would be efficient if it did impact a limited number of planets, rather than a total population...

How is that supposed to work? Once you've more planets than your IC can support, you'd need to pick which, how do you want to do that?

[Krikkitone]

Possibly a different idea...to make the "industrial center" really apply.

Instead of giving a benefit TO connected industrial population
ie
benefit to industrial focused planets= Pop of planet * [X*#IC connected planets/ (pop of all connected industry planets)]
[capped at a certain maximum]

Have the IC get a benefit FROM connected industrial population
ie
benefit to a planet with an IC on it = X* [pop of all connected industry planets / # of IC connected planets]

So connecting an Industry world to an IC planet doesn't make that world stronger, it makes the IC itself stronger (up to the point where multiple IC are needed to handle the population)

[Dilvish]

So connecting an Industry world to an IC planet doesn't make that world stronger, it makes the IC itself stronger (up to the point where multiple IC are needed to handle the population)

I like the flavor of that idea, though since the qualifying pop and the resulting industry are both shared (only) within a supply connected group, it seems like a flavor-only kind of change.

[flap]

That's an interesting idea because the IC placement becomes important.

I had a different take on it :
That thread which has recently been necroed had me realizing that all buildings providing bonuses to the supply connected worlds have the same issue.

To be honest, I really don't like those buildings who give 1 bonus for the whole empire, however big it is : the construction is little more than an uninteresting extra step to carry out after the technology has been researched.

Actually, the way I though it worked (and fell it should work), is that those buildings have a impacts to neighbouring worlds (or worlds located a few supply lines away, depending on the supply line technology and the building itself).
For example, a basic IC, in an empire with basic logistics, would give a bonus to systems 1 supply line away. As the IC and logistic technologies are upgraded, systems 2,3 or event further away would also get the bonus

Of course, this would work if there was an easy way on the map to see which systems have a bonus, and which don't.

[Vezzra]

To be honest, I really don't like those buildings who give 1 bonus for the whole empire, however big it is : the construction is little more than an uninteresting extra step to carry out after the technology has been researched.

Well, not quite. Currently it is exactly how you describe it, but the plan is that buildings can be destroyed via planetary bombardement (or, once we get "covert operations" mechanics implemented in the far future, by sabotage). In that case such buildings become important strategic assets/targets.

Of course, this would work if there was an easy way on the map to see which systems have a bonus, and which don't.

That's the reason why we don't have them. IIRC there have been a few (I think the IC originally was one of them) that worked that way - only gave their bonus to nearby systems - but have been switched to give their bonus empire-wide/to all supply connected worlds because there was no easy way to see which colonies got affected by those buildings.

[MatGB]

IC used to give a bonus to all systems set to industry within 500uu, but like Vezzra said it as annoying to work out where was covered and you had to build overlapping setups.

would it be possible to script, rather than per population, per industry focused population centre? An IC with basic tech feeds, say, 5 worlds, greater feeds 10, supreme say 20 (but gives a lesser bonus). Then it's easy to see what's going on but your galaxy settings don't make them massively better/worse.


Been thinking along the same lines for Gas Giant Generators (and the follow on generators), I really dislike the micromanagement of outposting then building GGGs all the time, but if they each fed, say, 5 worlds, that'd be more interesting/strategic.

[Chriss]

For Industrial Centers, I like this aproach.

For GGG, what about my Infrastructure Based approach from here