Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyality, Sectors (WIP)

#16 Post by Vezzra »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 7:08 am
Vezzra wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 2:30 pm...regarding Influence (and all related ideas/mechanics) nothing is "set in stone"
In the scope of this thread stockable influence is set in stone. I cant build on quicksand so I have to choose one of the multiple versions of influence. And as "code is law", I use the implemented version. If this decided to be different (in the sense that somebody is working on another implementation), i will change this proposal appropiately.
That's ok of course.

However, I've been replying to Oberlus' statement, which didn't sound like it was meant to apply only within the scope of this discussion here, so I just wanted to point out that there haven't been any final decisions on anything influence related yet.

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyality, Sectors (WIP)

#17 Post by Vezzra »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 7:17 amThe imperial stockpile is the mechanism Geoff chose to allow (hidden peaceful) distributed empires.
I know. If you recall, while not happy with it, I too agreed to accept the proposal. Hence the use of the word "would" in my statement.

However, that doesn't mean that I suddenly like the concept, I haven't changed my opinion about it. I just decided that I have to live with a design decision I don't like and don't agree with.
I suggest you get over it.
May I tentatively inquire as to what you mean by that...?
If I follow the interpretation of KISS in this post, we rather should not have influence etc at all because the game works well enough without it and it certainly won't become simpler.
Well, following that train of logic, ultimately we'd arrive at the conclusion that we should make no game at all, as that would certainly be the simplest thing of all. ;)

When considering if something should be included, the issue is always weighing the additional complexity introduced against the benefits for gameplay (when discussion things in the context of wanting to stay KISS of course - if we wanted to make SimGalaxy the same evaluation would end up very differently). And this is where I think stockpile mechanics fall short.

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#18 Post by Vezzra »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 8:54 amThese powerful planets are not unstable, they just are not loyal to your empire anymore.
This.

When reading through your statements/explanations, I'm a bit confused about what you mean/suggest when talking about loyalty/stability/happiness, and/or how they relate to each other. The statement I quoted however reflects exactly what I think is absolutely essential: we need to carefully distinguish between "stability" and "loyalty" - these are two different things. They affect each other of course, but are still separate. As you say - e.g. a colony can be perfectly stable, but that doesn't mean the population likes you or is loyal to you.

Which is why these two need to be tracked separately (on whatever level, that's another story).

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#19 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 9:48 am edit4:
Sectors
This is actually the part of your proposal I am the most interested in getting into as I have had some of my own ideas in this area, so I hope we can bounce ideas off of each other.
  • Sectors are supply-connected regions of space inside an empire
  • Each sector is build around a control-planet
  • Each system is part of at max one sector
I would say we are in complete agreement here about these three points and would say that these should be the basis of any sector system that we wind up using in Free Orion.
[*]A system belongs to the sector which has the highest control (with the highest max-control if control is tied). If there is still a tie, it is semi-independent and does not belong to a sector and may influence events in all competing sectors
So thinking about it I don't know if "control" is necessary, and that we can't just use supply. As far as potentially competing sectors, I think that one thing your proposal lacks is a definition of sector size. More on this on the next paragraph.
[*]There may be a cut-off, so a system which is below a certain control value is not part of a sector
I would use something similar to the system that Stellaris is going to adopt for sectors. In the system the sectors are defined be establishing a Sector Capital, and then every system, not already part of another sector that is within N jumps of the Sector Capital is part of that sector and systems without any sector are "frontier space". What we could do is simply give any potentially disputed system to the sector capitol with the highest supply.
[*]Sectors are visualized by showing sector borders
This is actually the only one I really dislike, I think it would make the UI too cluttered. We already have supply and sensor range displayed, adding sectors to this will look very "busy" IMO. As an alternative proposal I would suggest that instead we have sector names (named after the Capital Planet's system), displayed in the planet or system view, maybe both. As far as displaying sectors, if we really do want to do that, I would like to say that maybe it's time to discuss having multiple views for Free Orion, with a Sector View being one of the options.
[*]Sectors could be used long-term as a more granular management unit than systems (e.g. for leaders, and once-per-sector buildings, special focus available only on control planets)
So I have some ideas in this area. Namely in how we could manage sectors. I think that one way to do that would be to have different types of Sector Capitol Buildings. Each sector would have only one type of capitol building. Empires could possibly have multiple different types of Sector Capitols, allowing for specialization of sectors. Each of these could have various effects over their sectors and could be unlocked by different governments or different civics.
  • Regional Capitol: default. Basic Sector Capitol building, no special effects.
  • Sociological Institution: bonus to research focus in sector. Also provides bonus to detection range at planet.
  • Administration Center: bonus to industry focus in sector. Also provides stockpiling boost at planet.
  • Galactic Foundation: bonus to influence focus in sector. Also provides stealth boost at planet.
  • Psi Corps: Passive bonus to research, production and influence on planet. Con only be built on a planet with telepathic species. Also provides bonus to shields.
  • Guildhall: bonus to logistics focus. Also provide ship-speed boost in sector. Guildhalls require a supply connection within their sector to a metabolism special.
    Different Types of Guilds: Spice, Positron & Elerium Guilds give a bonus to research at the planet. Soup, Monopole & Mineral Guilds give a bonus to industry on the planet. Fruit, Superconductor & Crystal Guilds give a bonus to influence on the planet.
  • Great Manor-House: bonus to defense focus. Also provides planetary bonus to troops.
    Different Types of Great Houses: Barony of Industry gives a passive bonus to production on the planet. Duchy of Academia gives a passive bonus to research on the planet. County of Intrigue gives a passive bonus to influence on the planet.
  • Megacorporate Headquarters: bonus to stockpiling focus. Also provides bonus to supply.
    Different Types of Megacorporations: Manufacturing Megacorp gives a bonus to production n the sector. Research Megacorp gives a bonus to research in the sector. Media Megacorp gives a bonus to influence in the sector.
  • Collective Thought Network: bonus to research, production and influence foci on the planet.
  • Hive Nest: bonus to logistics, defense and stockpiling foci on the planet.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#20 Post by Ophiuchus »

Vezzra wrote: Fri May 24, 2019 1:45 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Mon May 20, 2019 8:54 amThese powerful planets are not unstable, they just are not loyal to your empire anymore.
This.

When reading through your statements/explanations, I'm a bit confused about what you mean/suggest when talking about loyalty/stability/happiness, and/or how they relate to each other. The statement I quoted however reflects exactly what I think is absolutely essential: we need to carefully distinguish between "stability" and "loyalty" - these are two different things. They affect each other of course, but are still separate. As you say - e.g. a colony can be perfectly stable, but that doesn't mean the population likes you or is loyal to you.

Which is why these two need to be tracked separately (on whatever level, that's another story).
I think one value tracking for "if the value is too low, you do not get your full potential/bad things are happening" on a planetary level is enough, so i do not distinguish between happiness/loyalty/stability - there is only one value. Conceptually "stability" and "loyalty" are very different, but i do not see enough game-playing depth there introduce more than one concept.

In my proposal conceptually instead of a colony stability i have colony power (i.e. supply) which kind of expresses that this colony is stable and resourceful. And i have the power (i.e. supply) of another "control planet" planet keeping the local power in check. If the control planet is too weak ("why should we do what those degenerate weaklings decide?"), a planet/region may try to become independent.

So in this case it is about loyalty to the empire/the player, not about stability as especially very stable/powerful planets try to break free.

Additionally tracking stability would definitely work. In that case you e.g. get planet-local rebels if stability is low, and well funded interplanetary ones if both stability and planetary power are high. But that seems rather as an extension from the viewpoint of this proposal.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#21 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Sat May 25, 2019 8:23 amI think one value tracking for "if the value is too low, you do not get your full potential/bad things are happening" on a planetary level is enough, so i do not distinguish between happiness/loyalty/stability - there is only one value. Conceptually "stability" and "loyalty" are very different, but i do not see enough game-playing depth there introduce more than one concept.
That's what I think.
In my view:
  • If loyalty is high and happiness is high, they work well and fight against external intromision.
  • If loyalty is low and happiness is low, they work less and want to abandon the empire.
  • If loyalty is high by but happiness is low, they work less but don't want to abandon de empire.
  • If happiness is high but loyalty is low, that's strange, if their empire is feeding and protecting them well, why are they loyal to someone else? Anyway, they work less because lack of motivation, but do want to abandon de empire?
If in the last point we say "no, they don't want to abandon the empire that keeps them happy although they still think bad of the empire and are less motivated to cooperate", then we have:
  • Both meters high: all is good.
  • One of the meters low: bad work output.
  • Both meters low: revolt.
In that case I think just one meter (Stability) is fine.

If for some reason we decide that desertion of happy but unloyal colonies should be a thing, then we need that separate colony meter. My opinion is we don't "need" it. At least not to enable any particular interesting strategy (please correct me if I'm wrong).


I'm still thinking on all this stuff about sectors. I haven't played any game that uses that concept and I haven't grasped it yet (I mean, I still don't see the point, I'll look more into it to imagine how is the gameplay with that).

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#22 Post by Ophiuchus »

labgnome wrote: Fri May 24, 2019 7:01 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 9:48 am edit4:
Sectors
This is actually the part of your proposal I am the most interested in getting into as I have had some of my own ideas in this area, so I hope we can bounce ideas off of each other.
Seems we are mostly on the same page.
  • A system belongs to the sector which has the highest control (with the highest max-control if control is tied). If there is still a tie, it is semi-independent and does not belong to a sector and may influence events in all competing sectors
So thinking about it I don't know if "control" is necessary, and that we can't just use supply.
Supply value only exists on the local planets. I guess you mean the sector capital's supply. Control is that minus the distance. So if I get you right in terms of my proposal: you propose having the same level of control on all a sector's planets.
  • There may be a cut-off, so a system which is below a certain control value is not part of a sector
I would use something similar to the system that Stellaris is going to adopt for sectors. In the system the sectors are defined be establishing a Sector Capital, and then every system, not already part of another sector that is within N jumps of the Sector Capital is part of that sector and systems without any sector are "frontier space". What we could do is simply give any potentially disputed system to the sector capitol with the highest supply.
I wanted to reuse the notion of supply for defining the N jumps from sector capitals. In a certain sense supply is the commercial reach of a planet, so it could also be used as an effective policing reach. Normal supply is just to small for doing that. So I thought about N=4 or N=2*supply(control_planet).

Another "more realistic" variant which takes the galaxy landscape into account would be to project control one(?) level. So, your control planet has a direct reach of e.g. its supply and the projected reach of all the supply of all planets in its direct reach.

Having a least surprising reach (i.e. a fixed number of jumps like N=4) would ease the necessity to have a good overview UI.
  • Sectors are visualized by showing sector borders
This is actually the only one I really dislike, I think it would make the UI too cluttered. We already have supply and sensor range displayed, adding sectors to this will look very "busy" IMO. As an alternative proposal I would suggest that instead we have sector names (named after the Capital Planet's system), displayed in the planet or system view, maybe both. As far as displaying sectors, if we really do want to do that, I would like to say that maybe it's time to discuss having multiple views for Free Orion, with a Sector View being one of the options.
I like having the sector's name in the system view (next to the system's sun). Probably we will need at least an option to show sectors in the galaxy map for getting an overview. I guess there are many different possibilities. E.g. showing a small gap in the supply lines, border lines, or colouring of system name etc.
... Empires could possibly have multiple different types of Sector Capitols, allowing for specialization of sectors. Each of these could have various effects over their sectors and could be unlocked by different governments or different civics....
I am not sure we what kind of specialization of sectors we need. But the examples you gave seem easy to implement.
Last edited by Ophiuchus on Sat May 25, 2019 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#23 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Sat May 25, 2019 10:45 am...
If for some reason we decide that desertion of happy but unloyal colonies should be a thing, then we need that separate colony meter. My opinion is we don't "need" it.
That is a very nice writeup :)
Oberlus wrote: Sat May 25, 2019 10:45 am...
I'm still thinking on all this stuff about sectors. I haven't played any game that uses that concept and I haven't grasped it yet (I mean, I still don't see the point, I'll look more into it to imagine how is the gameplay with that).
The main point is having a management unit inbetween empire and planet. For example you have 1 empire, 50 planets and only 5 sectors. Also it demarcates a geographic region which could have population dynamics different from other regions. So some possible uses:
  • Sometimes build-once-per-sector is probably fine when build-once-per-planet is not.
  • Once-per-sector-decisions/policies: Specialisation of sectors, e.g. stockpile focus available only on control planets. Target of influence projects.
  • Unit of rebellion. If you use fleet to suppress rebels, it is easy on a single planet, but hard to suppress a bunch of planets
I also have the impression that it makes more sense to put leaders into sectors than in fleets because fleets are too volatile and too fine-grained. Sector leaders would be some kind of sector specialisation (e.g. all your average fleets fighting in the sector are considered good pilots).
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#24 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Sat May 25, 2019 7:10 pm Supply value only exists on the local planets. I guess you mean the sector capital's supply. Control is that minus the distance. So if I get you right in terms of my proposal: you propose having the same level of control on all a sector's planets.


I was thinking more about how to decide edge cases, and less about the control mechanic. As I mentioned before, I think a single stability mechanic, replacing the current happiness mechanic, could cover both control and loyalty. I would just have the stability get a boost from proximity to the nearest capitol.

I wanted to reuse the notion of supply for defining the N jumps from sector capitals. In a certain sense supply is the commercial reach of a planet, so it could also be used as an effective policing reach. Normal supply is just to small for doing that. So I thought about N=4 or N=2*supply(control_planet).


I would go with the N=4 jumps, as it strikes me as the simplest solution.

I like having the sector's name in the system view (next to the system's sun). Probably we will need at least an option to show sectors in the galaxy map for getting an overview. I guess there are many different possibilities. E.g. showing a small gap in the supply lines, border lines, or colouring of system name etc.


The system view definitely works for me. Maybe also an option to look up planets by sector as well. If we are going to display sectors, I'd go with gaps in the supply lines, as that is the leas visually cluttered to me. I still think there should be a different view for sectors, but I don't know about implementation.

I am not sure we what kind of specialization of sectors we need. But the examples you gave seem easy to implement.


Well that why I went with the different planetary foci. Giving bonuses to those is a quick and easy way to build-in a sector specialization. Stellaris has sector automation, but I don't know if we want to introduce that into Free Orion, or even how we would like to do that.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#25 Post by Oberlus »

What I don't see (yet) is the point of the intermediate management level, the sectors.
If sectors are clusters of systems, with all planets of a system always in the same sector, I imagine my sectors being multifunctional (some colonies for production, some for research, etc.) and thus I don't see any management advantage from it. In fact I presume more micromagament if this is implemented.

Also, that control concept based on supply... if that control is about influence (power to control), shouldn't it be based on planetary influence meters? I mean, the most influential planet is the one that controls the sector.

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#26 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 4:52 pm What I don't see (yet) is the point of the intermediate management level, the sectors.
If sectors are clusters of systems, with all planets of a system always in the same sector, I imagine my sectors being multifunctional (some colonies for production, some for research, etc.) and thus I don't see any management advantage from it. In fact I presume more micromagament if this is implemented.
You may very well be right, but I can see sectors being a somewhat useful mechanic. For instance sectors can be useful for designating buildings we might want to be allowed to be built more then once, but want to discourage players from putting anywhere and everywhere, we could make those buildings (like say shipyards) one per sector.
Also, that control concept based on supply... if that control is about influence (power to control), shouldn't it be based on planetary influence meters? I mean, the most influential planet is the one that controls the sector.
Influence is supposed to be a planetary focus and thus the influence meter will be subject to change depending on this. Supply is something all planets get and the relative supply strength is relatively constant making it a better choice IMO.
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#27 Post by Oberlus »

labgnome wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 5:26 pmFor instance sectors can be useful for designating buildings we might want to be allowed to be built more then once, but want to discourage players from putting anywhere and everywhere, we could make those buildings (like say shipyards) one per sector.
You then swift the problem to the sector definition. How many sectors (sector capitals) can you deploy and what shape takes each sector? I assume the shape will be automatic (imply calculations) but the sector capital placement will have to solve the problem that you already had with shipyards.
So I think a simple rule for building placement that works for every building is better than introduccing the sectors and the imperial control. A new kind of meter besides influence, that shall interact with stability and opinions... If we can do all this stuff regarding colonies desiring independence without the sectors and the imperial control, using just the stability, I think that would be much simpler.
Influence is supposed to be a planetary focus and thus the influence meter will be subject to change depending on this. Supply is something all planets get and the relative supply strength is relatively constant making it a better choice IMO.
Now you gave me more arguments to reassure in my position: Supply is fixed, you can't manage that, so you can't decide what would be the planet with more supply, and it will be the smallest planet of the better supply species. That seems rather awkward. Giving more supply to smaller planets makes sense beccause supply is about sending and receibving stuff from the space. But here we are talking about influence power, that is more related to information technologies and bureaucracy (usually with the military power to back the decisions up if needed). So I would understand making sector capital the colony with more influence (and for this the planetary focus would be a way for the player to manage that) or the one with a given building (that's the best option IMO, same as the palace building to determine the capital of the empire).

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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#28 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 4:52 pm What I don't see (yet) is the point of the intermediate management level, the sectors.
If sectors are clusters of systems, with all planets of a system always in the same sector, I imagine my sectors being multifunctional (some colonies for production, some for research, etc.) and thus I don't see any management advantage from it.
That is currently true. Sector specialisation should go in hand with strategic value I guess.
labgnome wrote: Sat May 25, 2019 11:44 pm Stellaris has sector automation, but I don't know if we want to introduce that into Free Orion, or even how we would like to do that.
Stellaris actually needs (sector)automation because it has tons of planet management etc. We definitely do not want to go that route.
What could work is setting some minimal goals and the sector figures out how to reach these.
E.g. switching planet focus until goals are met. So if you say you want two-thirds research in that sector, and the max research is too low, the automation looks for research vs industry... traits on all its planets and switches the optimal planet to research focus until max research fits the goal. But if we would do this its probably better to do this first on empire scale.

Anyway i think our effect system is too powerful to do this easily, so I do not see how a sector decision would override planet decisions. Maybe adding a managed-by-sector planetary focus (and remove industry/research focus). But that does not help much reducing micro (switching focus is not happening often, especially if we start with the influence cost).
Oberlus wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 4:52 pm In fact I presume more micromagament if this is implemented.
That could happen, but only if used in the wrong way. once-per-sector instead of once-per-supply-group is probably wrong. once-per-sector instead of once-per-planet or once-per-system is probably good. Question is more if we need that granularity. I wanted that granularity against the stockpile focus dance (i.e. switching all of you planets to stockpile in order to get maximum stockpile growth - and switching back as soon as you got there). i think focus switch cost will fix the stockpile focus dance anyway.
Oberlus wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 4:52 pm Also, that control concept based on supply... if that control is about influence (power to control), shouldn't it be based on planetary influence meters? I mean, the most influential planet is the one that controls the sector.
Some reasons I was thinking to use supply
  • I imagined control to mostly work like supply networks (decreasing from a center, pushing against other supply, building a network) so if you need only to learn one value in order to know both supply values and control values.
  • Gives reason to small planets even if your supply tech makes supply value for the supply network irrelevant (note the space elevator might not fit in this)
  • There is a fitting fluff explanation / established notion (supply == commercial power)
  • It increases with your tech, so your sectors will have higher reach and contain more systems/planets later on --> decreases the number of sectors necessary --> decreases management
I certainly would not want to base control on influence because those interact anyway in multiple ways (paying for control planets, the region matters for influence generation, rebellions can be influenced by influence..) and we probably would start mixing layers in a bad way.

Originally I intended to use supply for two mechanism: reach (number of connected hops) and power (relative power changing loyality, deciding overlapping reaches)

The problem with supply as reach is that it is not so easy to control. Currently you can choose a planet/species, research supply tech, set the supply focus, and build an elevator. If supply increases it increases control in all directions. So having a fixed number of hops as reach is much more stable/predictable.

Supply as power deciding overlapping reaches has similar effects - system may switch from one sector to another if relative supply changes (via supply focus and elevator buildings).

Supply for relative power influencing loyalty is pretty much working as i intended.

Regarding the predictability I think of what the stellaris people are doing. They started AFAIK with full control which systems belonged into a sector. So they introduced a shitload of micromanagement making people optimize the sectors. So they changed that to fully automatically create sectors which lead to really badly shaped sectors and unhappy players. So they are increasing control of sector design by going for a fixed hop layout which is much more coarse-grained than the initial version. It's not rolled out yet so there is no experience from their third try but this might be a data point.

I was thinking it is now the time to introduce sectors as I found three problems which those would solve: define a region and provide stability effects there, mid-granularity effects, leaders.
  • Rebellion could work on regions without sectors. Sectors are rather a coarse-grained tool to shape those regions and prepare your empire strategically for rebellion.
  • Regional stability effects are possible without sectors.
  • Regional/Once-per-sector buildings/effects - currently this is not strictly necessary.
  • A place for leaders and for defining the region of their effects. Leaders on fleets were proposed and I think that would be horrible. But the discussion on leaders is not so well advanced
Maybe that is not convincing enough and it is still too early to introduce sectors. If sectors give depth to strategic options it may be convincing. If regional effects without sectors are too confusing it may be convincing.

On the other hand implementing sectors may be as easy as implementing regional effects and probably better structured. The main difference between those i guess is that sectors do not overlap, so a system may be part of many regions but only of one sector.
Oberlus wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 6:03 pm So I think a simple rule for building placement that works for every building is better than introduccing the sectors and the imperial control. A new kind of meter besides influence, that shall interact with stability and opinions... If we can do all this stuff regarding colonies desiring independence without the sectors and the imperial control, using just the stability, I think that would be much simpler.
I do not understand what that could be, please provide an example.
Oberlus wrote: Mon May 27, 2019 6:03 pmSo I would understand making sector capital the colony ... with a given building (that's the best option IMO, same as the palace building to determine the capital of the empire).
Yes, you would choose the sector capital with a building. The supply example is about the reach, so sector capital with higher supply would control more systems/planets.

Also note that in my understanding controlling local supply and influence generation are not much different (focus, species, building). Supply only has planet size extra (which gets killed if the elevator counts).
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#29 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 am
more micromagament if this is implemented
That could happen, but only if used in the wrong way. once-per-sector instead of once-per-supply-group is probably wrong. once-per-sector instead of once-per-planet or once-per-system is probably good. Question is more if we need that granularity.
I think we don't need it. Let's make every non-colony building once-per-area (e.g. minimum distance to other buildings of that kind, so the limitation on number comes from the area dominated, good for expansionist and distributed empires) and implement a visual way to help the player identify the systems that could build a given building; or make the building's upkeep rather high and increasing with its number due to logistics complications, increasing also with the empire's tech level to account for the greater complexity of whatever the building is about (so the limitation on number comes from the influence performance of the empire).
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 amsupply == commercial power
If so, then the planets with more supply should be the ones with more population (and maybe growth specials) rather than the smaller ones.
I thought supply == cost to send stuff into orbit.
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 am(Supply) It increases with your tech, so your sectors will have higher reach and contain more systems/planets later on --> decreases the number of sectors necessary --> decreases management
That sounds like I need to get a tech to reduce management effort. That does not soun freeorion.
Also, if I can build one building per sector, no more to avoid spaming buildings, so sectors are a way to control building spaming that happens because it is an advantage to spam such buildings, but then you get less sectors (less advantage) the more tech you research, you won't want to get that extra research.
Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 amLeaders on fleets were proposed and I think that would be horrible. But the discussion on leaders is not so well advanced
Why? I think it makes much sense. The distances in space are huge, so the great tactical mind must be present where the battle develops to be able to matter in the outcome.

Regional/Sectorial effects could be great, but its a step into micromanagement. Big games might have huge layouts with many sectors to manage. I would stick to the imperial level management and the minimun actions possible to manage single colonies.

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labgnome
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Re: Influence, Control, Loyalty, Sectors (WIP)

#30 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Tue May 28, 2019 11:42 amStellaris actually needs (sector)automation because it has tons of planet management etc. We definitely do not want to go that route.
What could work is setting some minimal goals and the sector figures out how to reach these.
E.g. switching planet focus until goals are met. So if you say you want two-thirds research in that sector, and the max research is too low, the automation looks for research vs industry... traits on all its planets and switches the optimal planet to research focus until max research fits the goal. But if we would do this its probably better to do this first on empire scale.
I agree. This is why I was thinking of specialized sector capitols. To use regional effects to allow for some level of sector "management". You could always switch-out sector capitols if you needed to change what sort of specialization you have for your sector. Of course this will mean that the region will be temporarily without a regional capitol, and thus prone to rebellions ;)
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