Redistribution & Blockades: a simple solution

[utilae]

It seems oversimplified to me that resources flow equally well between your core worlds and the "outer rim" colonies with (possibly many) empty or non-friendly systems in between. Notice that an empty node is turned from "neutral" to "friendly" if you park some military ships there—sort of an ad-hoc garrison.

It makes sense to me that it would be easier to transport goods between friendly worlds then nuetral or unknown worlds. If you were the pilot, you would feel safe going between friendly worlds, ie it would attract more frieghters and give 100% trade. As the pilot, you would feel uneasy going between nuetral (uncolonised by you) routes. It would attract less freighters and give 50% trade.

Needing to "fill space" with ships to have efficient intra-empire resource exchange is appealing. It gives a purpose to have roving groups of fast attack / long range cruisers that can take out an enemy's behind-the-front-lines space-filling sentry ships, but which would be too weak to fare well against powerful but slow-moving main battle fleets. It also gives a way to disrupt commerce with groups of cloaked ships in a similar role that doesn't involve magically creating a group of freighters for them to battle...

Having your ships move out of position to engage enemies would also disrupt your commerce. And there may be a problem that a good economy is dependant on having a ship on each planet.

Also, regarding partial sharing, it's not clear how it would work. You say that (perhaps) 50% sharing is allowed. What does that mean exactly? The planet can export 50% of its surplus, or get 50% of it's needed imports for locally-produced things? That would imply a planet can import more if it's building more, which doesn't make much sense.

I see it as follows. Only 50% of traffic (freighters) are active in the neutral trade lane, where 100% of traffic would be active in the friendly trade lane. So it makes sense to have more traffice in a friendly lane then a neutral or enemy lane.

My point is that it's arbitrary...57.3% is no worse, aside from being even more weird looking. The arbitraryness worries me, as it seems like there's probably a better system possible that justifies such numbers. The reduced rate of supply to fleets for example, would drop the % rate of supply based on distance, making the resulting supply rate not completely arbitrary. I realize this might end up being just a bad argument to complicate things, but I still don't like arbitrarily chosing a number for something like this.

But if it is made to be this complex, then the player won't know the effect as easily as if it was simply a 50% drop in trade.

[Geoff the Medio]

Needing to "fill space" with ships to have efficient intra-empire resource exchange is appealing. It gives a purpose to have roving groups of fast attack / long range cruisers that can take out an enemy's behind-the-front-lines space-filling sentry ships, but which would be too weak to fare well against powerful but slow-moving main battle fleets. It also gives a way to disrupt commerce with groups of cloaked ships in a similar role that doesn't involve magically creating a group of freighters for them to battle...

Having your ships move out of position to engage enemies would also disrupt your commerce.

It would... so perhaps you shouldn't move all your ships? Leave a few cheap sentry destroyers keeping down piracy, ensure safe passage of your trade goods, keeping up surveilance of your territory, and actively enforcing your control of what systems you consider to be your territory. Use larger battle-ready ships to battle enemy fleets.

And there may be a problem that a good economy is dependant on having a ship on each planet.

Just each system, not each planet. But regardless, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Also, regarding partial sharing, it's not clear how it would work. You say that (perhaps) 50% sharing is allowed. What does that mean exactly? The planet can export 50% of its surplus, or get 50% of it's needed imports for locally-produced things? That would imply a planet can import more if it's building more, which doesn't make much sense.

I see it as follows. Only 50% of traffic (freighters) are active in the neutral trade lane, where 100% of traffic would be active in the friendly trade lane. So it makes sense to have more traffice in a friendly lane then a neutral or enemy lane.

You miss my point. I'm not concerned with why reduced trading happens, but rather I want to know what it means to have "50% of traffic .. active". Right now it's not clear what gameplay effect that would have, and how it would be calculated / processed / displayed.

[eleazar]

And there may be a problem that a good economy is dependant on having a ship on each planet.

Just each system, not each planet. But regardless, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Actually in my proposal you generally only need ships in systems without friendly inhabited planets, that connect your inhabited systems.

I'm not concerned with why reduced trading happens, but rather I want to know what it means to have "50% of traffic .. active". Right now it's not clear what gameplay effect that would have, and how it would be calculated / processed / displayed.

Algorithms aren't my thing, and i'm not sure how the current distribution happens. Perhaps a better "definition" of 50% can be devised. But i imagine it would work something like this:

• 1) planets use all of their own resources that they can.
  2) Optimal distribution is calculated for the surplus (however that is now done).
  3) Planets connected to the home world recieve/contribute only 50% of #2.
  4) Any excess surplus is distributed between planets connected only by friendly nodes.
  5) Remaining surplus that cannot reach the central repository on the home world is lost.

I expect "Research" will not be subject to redistribution limitations, since presumably it's possible to communicate with any far-flung colony, or ship, since they all do your bidding, no matter how many enemy planets are between.

[Geoff the Medio]

And there may be a problem that a good economy is dependant on having a ship on each planet.

Just each system, not each planet. But regardless, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Actually in my proposal you generally only need ships in systems without friendly inhabited planets, that connect your inhabited systems.

He was talking about my simplified suggestion with only friendly or hostile nodes and no neutral nodes.

Algorithms aren't my thing, and i'm not sure how the current distribution happens.

Right now, for minerals and industry (or equilvalently production points), trade and research it all goes into a empire pool, and is spend on projects on queues or put into the stockpile (when possible), regardless of where things are being built or researched (trade doesn't actually get used for anything).

For food, planets give themselves their local production or their need to prevent starvation, whichever is less; then their need to prevent starvation (taking from the pool if necessary); then twice their need or their local production, whichever is less; then twice their need to prevent starvation, which is enough to ensure the mas possible growth rate. Any extra or shortfall is deposited in or taken from the global pool.

This needs to be tweaked a bit, as presently there's no benefit to giving a planet more than it's minimum to prevent starvation if it can't grow, which occurs when it is at its maximum population. This probably means giving "max growth need" instead of "twice need to prevent starvation" on the third / fourth passes. There also probably needs to be some tweaking to account for health effects, which interacts with food supply to determine growth rate. Right now there may be (if I didn't remove it) a special that gets applied when starvation occurs that reduced health, though better would be to lower health if food supply is short... or perhaps keep "health" and "food supply" separate concepts that don't interact... which actually is probably better now that I think about it...

2) Optimal distribution is calculated for the surplus (however that is now done).
3) Planets connected to the home world recieve/contribute only 50% of #2.

Well, you'd have to figure out the contributions to the surplus before you could figure out the optimal distribution, as you need to know how much you have to figure out where to send it.

But regardless, a 50% penalty is fine for exports, as this represents some lost or not-sendable portion of a fixed amount, the amount produced, which can't be changed by just producing more on the planet (since it produces what it produces, and no more). But for imports, the 50% of need restriction is bothersome. There's no single limit on how much you could send to a planet. If planet A has twice the population of planet B, then why does that allow planet A to have a twice higher food import limit? With the current distribution rules, the proportions sent are voluntary and pseudo-optimally, in that the planets are fed enough to prevent starvation or to allow growth, because the player would want that to happen. But with the 50% of need penalty, there's no logical reason why population for food, or PP consumption for production, is a determining factor in how much can be sent. Whether it's realistic isn't the point, but rather, the issue is that it raises the question for the player about why this is, and why can't they send twice as much? It's effectively an arbitrary limit, which I find irritating and shouldn't be used.

[utilae]

He was talking about my simplified suggestion with only friendly or hostile nodes and no neutral nodes.

I was talking about either suggestion,

Actually in my proposal you generally only need ships in systems without friendly inhabited planets, that connect your inhabited systems.

Of course, that makes sense and removes the problem.

[eleazar]

But with the 50% of need penalty, there's no logical reason why population for food, or PP consumption for production, is a determining factor in how much can be sent. Whether it's realistic isn't the point, but rather, the issue is that it raises the question for the player about why this is, and why can't they send twice as much? It's effectively an arbitrary limit, which I find irritating and shouldn't be used.

Well, the important thing (to my proposal) is that there's an intermediate state of redistribution effectiveness between all and nothing. Perhaps it would make more sense (or be easier to calculate) if redistribution through neutral nodes simply cost something in terms of lost resources or trade.

How was it going to work when everyone was planning on partial blockades?

[Geoff the Medio]

Perhaps it would make more sense (or be easier to calculate) if redistribution through neutral nodes simply cost something in terms of lost resources or trade.

That's a tricky way to have things work... If you're losing resources for distribution along certain paths, then deciding how to distribute resources doesn't have a single "best" solution anymore.

Right now it's relatively simple: there is a global queue of production projects, which get funded in order, and there is no ambiguity over whether a project on the queue is higher or lower priority than another project, or whether one should be funded more or less depending on what other projects are after it in the queue, or before it other than how many PP are left. If we added limits on how much production resources could be transferred, then there would still be a best solution where there would just be a lower limit on how much certain projects can get funded. Similarly for food, there is a well-defined ordering based on amount produced locally and need. (Presumably trade and research won't have spending limits).

But if there are costs to resource sharing, then there is a lot of grey area and uncertainty created. If project A is higher on the queue, but will have a cost associated with it to transfer resources, should it still be funded fully, when a greater total amount of resources could be productively spent by funding, with no transfer cost, project B, which is lower on the queue? Perhaps there could be some player options to control this sort of thing, and maybe even this could be done without additional micromanagement or a clunky slider setting, but IMO we're better off not having the problem to start with.

So... IMO we need an integrated system of limits on how much resources can be imported to or exported from a system. Blockades, even partial, could affect this... as perhaps can distance of transfer and level of control of nodes passed through. And probably some tech levels or buildings can affect transfer limits... But no additional fees or lost resources due to just distance or node control. Lost resources due to piracy, raiding by other empires, or events are perhaps ok, though we need to be careful in how we attempt to mix non-abstracted raiding ships and abstracted shipping routes together so it makes sense...

Another issue we might want to consider is whether we want trading limits to be a source of strategic ship movement information for player. If a system between a source and sink for resources isn't presently occupied by any players, it's presumably neutral. But if an enemy player moves ships into that system, should a player with no ships nearby be able to detect these ships due to the change in shipping routes? If shipped-through systems had to have friendly ships in them, this wouldn't be an issue, as control of a system is always known unambiguously...

How was it going to work when everyone was planning on partial blockades?

Not everyone was, and even if they were, it's not yet in the design document, and even if it is eventually, how it would actually work hasn't been figured out yet.

[marhawkman]

*files in same category as racial advantage points*

[Geoff the Medio]

A possible quirk to consider: rather than having an ethereal nonspecifically-located empire stockpile, or having specific buildings at which storage must occur, we could have stockpiles be spread around on all planets. The empire stockpile would be the sum of all planet stockpiles. Planets would add any extra resource they produce to their own stockpile. Stockpile redistribution would be done by some algorithm that uses the closest or otherwise "best" source from which to take the resources.

This might be too much extra information for players to manage, but it could provide a way to elegantly deal with sub-grids of planets that can share between themselves, but not with the rest of the empire, without needing to throw away any extra stockpilable resources in such situations for no apparently reason.

[marhawkman]

A possible quirk to consider: rather than having an ethereal nonspecifically-located empire stockpile, or having specific buildings at which storage must occur, we could have stockpiles be spread around on all planets. The empire stockpile would be the sum of all planet stockpiles. Planets would add any extra resource they produce to their own stockpile. Stockpile redistribution would be done by some algorithm that uses the closest or otherwise "best" source from which to take the resources.

This might be too much extra information for players to manage, but it could provide a way to elegantly deal with sub-grids of planets that can share between themselves, but not with the rest of the empire, without needing to throw away any extra stockpilable resources in such situations for no apparently reason.

I suppose this would work like the ship supply/ammo in SE:V? that sounds like a pretty good idea.

[eleazar]

OK, i'm going to try again. This version is less realistic, but it still allows much of the strategic interest my first version did, without the intractable mathematical conundrums. This isn't my idea solution, but the alternatives of:
— additional complexities of storehouses/stockpiles, or
— the duller strategy in which an empire's shape is irrelevant
should be avoided if possible.

Changes are highlighted with italics.



Definitions:
your side = belonging to you or your allies
uncontested = there have been no enemy fleets in the system this turn.


Friendly Node: The full exchange of food occurs between planets that can be connected to the homeworld by an unbroken line of friendly starlane nodes. The starlane between 2 friendly nodes is colored the color of your empire (as per current version).If the starlane also connects an allies worlds it will recieve a parallel stripe of the allies color.
A friendly node is a system that fulfills one of the following:

• * Contains only your side's ships and planets.
  * Contains one of your side's planets, and neutral ships and/or planets.
  * Contains no inhabited planets but, contains a your side's stationary, uncontested military ships.

Netural Nodes: Partial contribution of food occurs from planets whose connection to the homeworld must pass through a neutral starlane node. Partial contribution is 50% of full exchange. The remainder is lost.
A neutral node is a system that fulfills one of the following:

• * Contains planets belonging to your side, and enemies, but the enemy ships do not have uncontested control of the system.
  * Contains no ships or inhabited planets.
  * Contains only netural ships and/or planets.
  * Contains your side's planets, and a both your side's and enemy ships at some point in the turn. (i.e the system was contested)

Hostile Nodes: No exchange of food occurs between planets whose connection to the homeworld must pass through an enemy starlane node.
An enemy node is a system that fulfills one of the following:

• * Contains enemy planets, but does not contain your side's planets.
  * Contains a stationary, uncontested enemy fleet.
  * Has not been explored by your side.

EDIT: changed "Has not been explored by your side" to "hostile node".

[marhawkman]

I don't like the bit about the remainder being lost. Or is it just the remainder of what they don't use?

[eleazar]

I don't like the bit about the remainder being lost. Or is it just the remainder of what they don't use?

where do you proposes the remainder goes?
What's lost is part of what would be exported under ideal circumstances.

If there's nothings ever lost then the whole thing falls apart, and we're left with the current situation of total blockade or total flow.

[solidcordon]

some suggestions to increase the flavor of the neutral nodes.

apparently off topic.

[eleazar]

To increase the complexity still further....

There is no desire to increase complexity, in fact there's an aversion to complexity.

Realistic models of economic distribution have no place in the game. This is a space opera, not a simulation. The goal of this thread is to provide some strategic value to the shape of an empire with the minimum of additional rules, or complications.

If some variant of the idea i've proposed is not simple enough or does not add enough gameplay value, things will remain in their current state: either planets are totally blockaded by an enemy fleet, or resources have uninterrupted flow over the entire galaxy.