Geoff the Medio wrote:What issues?
- IMO balancing the IS when it can be used on top of supply based PP distribution is much more difficult. It has to offer sufficient benefits so acquiring stockpile techs isn't pointless, it must not be too powerful so it does not make normal PP distribution obsolete. Then again, for stockpiling species like the Sly, it has to be powerful enough so they actually work. Looking back at the discussions and the changes requiring several substantial revisions of the IS until we got to a point where it can be considered working, that was quite a challenge. I expect getting things balanced and working well to be far easier when supply based PP distribution and IS are mutual exclusive choices.
- Coupling all the other stuff that relies on supply connections with the IS mechanic. If supply needs to be nerfed in order to balance strong stockpiling traits, then everything else that relies on supply connections is affected as well. I fail to see how that is supposed to be a good thing.
- The issues with the production queue: with IS and supply based PP distribution both available we need all that extra stuff that has been added to provide e.g. the means to handle which items can draw from the stockpile and which can't. Presenting to the player what's going on with your PP: which PP go where, indicating PP waste, etc., everything got more complicated. I can't recall all the details, but I remember reading about more than just some trivial issues and complications that needed to be dealt with. All of which simply wouldn't exist if IS and supply based PP distribution where mutual exclusive choices.
What do you mean, doesn't make sense to produce those buildings? Considering the substantial boni they provide, and the Sly are unable to use, that's another severe handicap for them? Don't get me wrong: it certainly can be another interesting characteristic of such a species. The problem is, with the current implementation, apparently the Sly have to be bad at or unable to use such buildings (because of the necessary severe supply nerf). IMO it's completely unnecessary and restricting to force these things together. That should be a choice. We should be able to also have a good stockpiling species that does not suck at using Industrial Centers. Coupling good stockpiling with such bad supply is an exceedingly bad idea IMO, as so much stuff depends on supply, and all that doesn't work with species like the Sly. To say all that stuff doesn't make sense for an empire with lots of Sly doesn't make much sense to me.Why should all species play the same way? Maybe it doesn't make sense for empires with lots of Sly to produce those buildings.
Not to mention that everything related to or dependent on supply becomes much harder to design/balance, because you always have to take into account how that affects stockpiling species.
I actually see a lot of problems here...
I don't understand. Unless I misunderstood something, nerfing the Sly's supply was deemed necessary to get them properly balanced. So, having both, good stockpiling and a good supply network apparently is quite seriously overpowered. Hasn't there been a discussion just about the issues involved with Sly empires acquiring other species and vice versa?Is this a problem? Sly are good at letting an empire withdraw from the stockpile. So if an empire suddenly gets some Sly, it can produce for a few turns with any stockpiled production, until that runs out. If it was saving lots of it, then that was perhaps a valid strategy. Either way, if the empire has both Sly and a good supply network, the two are somewhat redundant, so having the Sly doesn't really benefit the empire very much.
And a normal empire acquiring Sly benefits a lot, because just by that it can make use of the IS much more efficiently. E.g. strategies employed by their enemies that involve cutting off single systems of parts of that empire wouldn't work anymore. After all the discussions we had about the potential of the IS for diminishing the importance of traditional supply based PP distribution mechanic, and all the concerns voiced regarding the implications and consequences of such a mechanic added, I don't understand why you don't see a problem here...?
Ok, I concede that point. This makes sense.An empire needs to devote substantial resources to being able to (without substantial delay) access the stockpiled production... either having stockpiling species colonies, or substantial numbers of other planets focused on stockpiling. If an empire wants to do this just to be able to access a single blockaded planet's output, then that seems fine to me... But if they haven't been focusing on a stockpiling strategy for most of the game, that's probably a very inefficient use of their planets, and blockading a planet from a supply-networked empire will have substantial impact on that empire. They can either do without the planet's output, or pivot strategies to access it by starting to ramp up stockpiling capability.
Sure, I merely want to point out that with the IS mechanic, IMO these issues have been particularly severe and the integration process more difficult than usual, indicating that there still are some fundamental problems with the design, which need to be addressed.Certainly, but new mechanics like this can often be expected to take a while to integrate with all the other content and mechanics. We're using an iterative design and implementation process.
I'm confused: of course they are redundant, because both handle distribution of PP. But they are also polar opposites, in the way they work: the weaknesses of the one are the strengths of the other. Combining them cancels out the weaknesses, and leaves you with the best of both worlds, essentially giving you something that more or less completely changes how traditional supply based PP distribution works.The two systems - stockpiling or supply networks - are already redundant. What is the huge concern about an empire having both? Doing so seems like a waste of resources, to me, not something that needs to be explicitly forbidden by game mechanics.
Which is why "normal" empires only get very limited IS capabilities, while "stockpiling" empires get nerfed supply capabilities. Unless I missed something, that's the way things are currently implemented, aren't they? I just suggest to do things thoroughly and go all the way to make them actually mutual exclusive choices, as that, for the reasons cited, would get rid of a lot of unnecessary issues.