FreeOrion

First some background:
The economy system is set up with two Classifications: Primary and Secondary. This is set in stone. There’s no juggling of colonists, there’s no sliders…all that’s already been decided in the old forums. The possible classes are "Research, Mining, Farming, Industry, and Balanced". If I remember correctly, the door was left open for future classes to be added, such as "Recreation" or "Government".

I'm assuming that there's going to be some sort of method for building stuff in v.2, like starships and defensive bases, that resembles the method in v.1.

Here’s my dumb idea:

Instead of Secondary Classification, we combine it with the build project to get Industrial Project. Instead of three different drop-down combo boxes per planet (Primary Class, Secondary Class, and what v.1 calls Focus) we have two (Primary Focus and Industrial Project).

Primary Focus is just Primary Classification renamed. Personally, I just like word “Focus” more—sounds more natural. (also, it's already named "Focus" in v.1)

The Industrial Projects possible:

*Produce Extra Nutrients (converts Industry to Food at a 2 to 1 ratio, rounded up. It's the same as Secondary Class Farming)
*Produce Extra Minerals (same, secondary class Mining)
*Produce Extra Research (same, secondary class Research)
*Produce Trade Goods (costs minerals as well as industry, makes Money)
*Migrate Population (see my migration post on the design board in the population cap thread)
*Build Ship (costs twice as many minerals as industry spent, makes ships)
*Build Defensive Base (costs double minerals. for v.2 only, a hold-over from v.1 until we get real buildings in the game)

You can set the build queue to produce something a multiple number of times. For example Produce Extra Nutrients x 10 would do so for ten turns. Build Scout Ship x 10 would build ten scout ships.

There'd also be an Infinite symbol. So you could Produce Extra Minerals x Infinity--the planet would produce extra minerals until you set the queue to something else. Or Build Colony Ship x Infinity to keep cranking out Colony ships.

A typical build queue might look something like this:
1:Build colony ship
2:Build Defensive base x 5
3:Produce Extra Research x Infinity

A colony ship gets built, then 5 defensive bases, then the planet produces extra research until the player resets the queue.

This is something I'm thinking about for v.2--just throwing out here to see if people think its stoopid. It's possible that in later versions we might have multiple items being worked on in the build queue--or a empire wide fleet construction interface. For sake of argument and v.2's requirements, I'm assuming a simpler build queue. (that is if we have a build queue at all in v.2...might have to set every planet manually after each project is completed, as per v.1).

Personally I thought the system was fine the way aquitaine had it. I don't really see why we should drop secondardy classification now. The whole point of this classification thing is, that probably won't need to touch it ever again if you don't want to. Your system seems to merge the secondary classification with the build qeue. I don't really like that a whole lot. Also, I don't think turning industry into food/research is very good thing to do...

I really don't mind having three dropdown things. I will mostly never need to touch the first two. And that's a good thing.

It's not that I mind three combo boxes so much, it's that I'm trying to preserve screen real estate so we can fit as much as possible right there on burndaddy's planet bar. The idea is to do as much as possible without having to open up the seprate planet dialog box.

I'm on a mission to reduce clicks: one click at a time.

Don't reduce clicks too much. From what I hear MoO3 requires one click per turn. That being the end turn button.

Also, I don't see reducing the clickcount by one a valid reason to change our econ system. Ever thought about making two of these boxes a little smaller? Besides, I like to go to planet view every once in a while. I like to see a big picture of my planet's surface with little structures on it. There's plenty of room for the boxes there.

I agree with Nightfish. I think it makes more sense to have a secondary classification and limit the build queue to ships, bases, etc.

_________________
Empire Team Lead

I think the colonies are to focused.
If I read your post corectly a conoly hane perform 1 type oe output per tur or that particular type of out put over n turns.
Have only 1 output of either sci, mineing ect is verry limited. Think back to anther game like moo deals with building Civilization. I civ like as in Moo2 you could assign your populations to ferform varrious taks; food, income, production ect. Haveing the ability to assign population to you needs is very useful as city build locations gave you different resourse similair in the way colonizeation of systems gave you different resources.
Think less focused and please do not let colonies be so single minded in performing tasks.

PK:

Then be afraid. It's in the game.

As others have pointed out, this aint moo2. For the record, moo3 had more stuff to fiddle with than moo2: it was a vastly more complicated game. It's just that it had so much stuff to fiddle with that it was easier just to let the AI viceroys play the game for you instead of microing stuff yourself. (and aside from that, there wasn't good feedback. You'd mess with a knob here and there, and the effects would be unpredicatble due to poor documentation and the complexity of the system).

NF:

Nod, maybe it's a dumb idea. I dunno.

Reducing clicks is an aspect of what I'd like to achieve. What I actually mean is I'd like to reduce the number of things that we have to display, and the number of things the player has to remember and fiddle with. Messing around with 3 combo boxes is ok for 10 planets, but what about 100?

As you said, one of the combos can be set and quickly forgotten, ie Primary Classification.

But secondary classification is quickly rendered moot in that hypothtical 100 planet game (or even in just a 25 planet game). That is to say, it's intended function (quickly re-adjusting your planet's output by minor amounts) doesn't seem valuable once you reach a certain number of planets. It's something I noticed while playing with my spreadsheet, trying to figure out numbers for the v.2 economy system.

If we marry secondary classification to the Industry of a planet, then changing a single secondary class can have real effects on the larger empire's stockpile of resources--espcially once we get facilities and technologies in the game that improve Industry. Further, it gives secondary class a "sunset clause". It's there when you need it in early game, then gets mostly superceeded by building stuffs in the mid game. Finally, it gives you some things to do with Industry that your otherwise not using.

As for changing industry to food: Cheetos. I rest my case.

Changing industry to research: SEMATECH. I use to work for them . Basically, it's a fully functional semiconductor fab used entirely for research into how to make better semiconductors and fabs.

Please don't think of "Industrial Projects" as being something new: it's secondary class renamed and combined with v.1's Focus.

Really, secondary class was supposed to be something for quickly readjusting my planet? I thought it was something to allow a planet to be "good" at a second thing. I think the system as is is well capable of handling 100 planets.

Problem: The way it was, I only changed my secondary classification when I had a problem with it. Now I have to change it every time I want to build something. Depending on what else we pass, colonies may build things fairly often. Sure, not if you get your way, but I don't think we should change our econ model to adapt to something else we didn't even pass yet.

I'm not sure it's a dumb idea as you say, it's just something I don't like. In the end, that's all we really do here: Dish out personal preferences. Some of us would prefer to have MoO2 reprogrammed by different people (thouhg I can't for the life of me imagine what that would be good for) others want macromanagers haven, everyone has his own view of how things should be.

I would liek to stay away from the idea of primary, secondary, it sounds like Development plans.

What about this idea:
We could seperate the build queue into two:
-Civilian
-Millitary

Civilian would build:
-Farms, Industry, Mining, Trade, Recreation

Millitary would build
-War ships, support ships, planet defences, spy related

Comments?

Sorry, no. This is already a passed item.

@drek:

I understand where you're coming from with the desire to reduce UI elements down to essentials. I think we can have all three items in one bar on the UI. Instead of text, we can represent the Primary and Secondary with icons that turn into a menu when clicked or right clicked. The production can stay text, probably. There are multiple solutions I'm sure, and if we are just a bit creative and we can avoid UI overdesign without underdesigning the game.

hrm,

I can kinda see the point of keeping secondary the way it is (although it really is basically useless in mid-to-late game)....plus my idea doesn't really mesh well with some build queue ideas people have had.

Maybe there's something else we can do with the secondary class later on in the design process, like stick the recreation/government classes there.

(Or maybe it's fine the way it is. The actual gameplay might feel different from my spreadsheet simulation.)

A visual image of this idea would get the picture across.

Please take a look at this FAQ entry on our main website:
http://www.freeorion.org/modules.php?op ... nt_id=0#10

Moo1-3 have already been done. There's no major compelling reason to make those again. However, there is plenty we can take from them to make something new.

So we are making a new game, taking what we like from the MoO series, and from other games.

It is fair for us to use the FreeOrion name. That name does not specify which of the three we are designing after. If one read it they could assume it's based on one, two, three, an amalgamation or conclude none at all. Truth is, we're basing it on all three and other games too. We are creating something new, but not necessarily revolutionary. It's going to be a great game by itself if we succeed where we hope to - but it will also be open source and moddable, meaning that people can change it and make it more like their favorite game if they wish, or something new.

I really don't think you need to worry about not being able to control individual colonists on a planet. That is a task that is tedious early on, and even more so later on. There are a few systems to choose. All three MoO's were different. We decided that a new system was better - something simple to understand, easy to control, but still gave a lot of power over colonies. The most important factor in our decision, if I recall correctly, was that classifications would make different planets - rather than at the end of the game having 50 planets all gaian with the same output. In order to build the more advanced/special buildings, your planet must have the correct primary classification. This way planets are unique, valuable resources. If you lose a farming world, then you are in trouble. if your primary industry world is taken over, then you will *need* to take it back. We felt it would add strategy to the game.

I'm probably missing something - but I can say, please don't lose heart too quickly. MoO2 was a great game, but it doesn't mean that it was the Only Way. The people who designed it were fallible humans, so it is possible they made mistakes. I'm not saying we will do better, but I'd like to think we have a chance. If not - again, opensource - if people don't like it they can change it.

I commend tyreth on not losing his temper as I surely would have had I gotten here first.

All seems harmless to me, PK obviously likes Moo2 alot.