Balance: Resource Interdependencies

[PowerCrazy]

I hope to see more of these threads as the game gets more playable and closer to final release.

We have decided on 5 resources. 3 tangible and 2 intangible. They are food, minerals, money, industry, and research.

The exact uses of each have not been decided so I'm goign to suggest the uses of each from a game balance POV.

Food - Used to: feed your people, can be limitedly stockpiled, perhaps with technology stockpile will go up and eventually can be infinitely stockpiled.
Comes from: your people based on what focus the planet is.

Minerals - Used by: industry to build things. Can be stockpiled, perhaps infinitely at the begining? or same as food, the stockpile goes up with tech.
Comes from: same as food.

Money - Used to: maintain fleets AND pay for research. Just as industry requires minerals as an input, research requires money as an input, there is a balance factor the player must consider between how big his fleet is and how much he wants to research.
Comes from: Your people at a flat rate, if you have X people in your empire, you will get X money. Perhaps can be increased at certain planets with special buildings etc.

Industry(intangible) - Uses minerals to build ships. Perhaps also to build wonders/important buildings. [tangent]I don't think industry needs to be the only force that builds buildigns. Simliar to how a planet can develop on its own without industry, a farming planet should be able to build a "farming" wonder just as fast as an industry planet can build an "industry" wonder. Will explain more later.[/tangent]

Research(intangible) - Uses money to "build" new techs. Other uses?

Basically I have set up an interdependency among the resources in an empire. You need money to research, you need minerals to build, you need food for people and you need people to get money, minerals, research, and to build so that you can grow more.

The actual numbers will come as soon as the uses and dependency of resources are decided. The numbers will be VERY important as they will be the starting point for all balancing of each planets focus, and how much various things cost. In short this could potentially make or break the game, no pressure .

[noelte]

Hmm, research uses money to "build" new techs sounds odd. Where did you see this information? I remeber that we have some talks about using money to increase production but never using it to >build< tech.

[haravikk]

In relation to money and research I always thought of it like:
Money >> Research >> Tech

ie Money funds the buildings/scientists that generate the RP's which then go into technology. Like a budget I guess, the amount of money that you give to scientists determines what they can do and how fast they can do it I guess. Could be interesting if techs required a certain 'budgetary' level before they can even be started but that's a bit off topic

[drek]

In the current design Research is a focus. There's no Money (as in the resource) involved--planets can produce research directly without spending Money.

I suppose things could change, but it would involve rehashing decisions that have already gone through public review and are already a part of the v.2 requirement documents.

[Krikkitone]

The way I see it.

Each resource is produced by the Infrastructures of that Resource that are supported by the local population.

Each project (ie everything) has a particular amount cost of each resource and a particular Maximum rate of investment (MRI). (For Techs the MRI is based on the particular tech, for 'buildings'..whether wonder/special type or infrastructures, the MRI is based on the local infrastructure, for ships the MRI is based on infrastructure and shipyards.)

AND.. in a change from Industry requiring Minerals
MOST projects that require Industry also require the same amount of Minerals.. that way we could have projects (like maintenance) that use less minerals than normal. (or projects that are more Mineral intensive)

[Ragnar]

I'm struggling with what food really is good for (game wise). It seems zero balance it where we are heading right now, but how do you get there? Surplus is a waste-it does nothing. A shortage means starvation- riots. How do you control the focus/infrastructure settings to get zero balance? Seems we will be miromanaging to tweek it back and forth for maximum efficiency.
To solve this why not make food surplus do something like increase the population growth rate. And by the same token, shortages decrease growth rate (death rate). This will keep the micro down and give you a good reason for a farming strategy.

[noelte]

i have smilar concerns regarding food. But as it is, you are unable to mirco because you can't move population from industry to farming. It's all done by foci. (the only possible micro might be using secondary focus) This in mind i guess we will always make sure that there is a surplus of food.

[Krikkitone]

One of the ideas for Food is to have it be involved in Terraforming. (This would be useful because then Food in the late game would have an impact/use.)

Also, If you have a stockpile, then you can have shortages for a while (meaning you don't have to constantly tweak it to avoid riots.)

Excess Food increasing Growth rate might also be useful (of course that would have to be excess food consumed..ie 'building' extra popunits out of food)

[drek]

Eventually, I'm hoping there will be a some "social meters", some semi-controlable as "government picks". One meter would be Health, influnced by technology and Nutrient surplus.

Also, as Krikkitone stated, I was thinking terraforming might cost a heafty amount of Nutrients.

[PowerCrazy]

In the current design Research is a focus. There's no Money (as in the resource) involved--planets can produce research directly without spending Money.

I suppose things could change, but it would involve rehashing decisions that have already gone through public review and are already a part of the v.2 requirement documents.

Are you sure? I thought money was decided as a resource according to this thread viewtopic.php?t=528&start=0&postdays=0& ... highlight=. What I'm suggesting is the ways the resources will be used. Research requires money as its input and industry requires minerals. Money is NOT a focus. It is simply produced by your people as a byproduct of them existing. Thus you need more people to research more. Because money exists i'm proposing that you use it to maintain fleets AND to research as a constraint on how much a player can do. This for game balance purposes and will eventually determine how much of what resource is produced on the various planet foci.

[noelte]

What I'm suggesting is the ways the resources will be used

I think the point is that we already talked about how reseach is generated. You add something new to this topic. drek didn't said that money isn't a resource but money isn't used to do research.

if you use money to do research you be forced to produce some money first.

EDIT: we talked about money and research at nearly the same time. thats might be the cause that we didn't thought of using money to do research.

[drek]

Yeah.

That's what I meant. The method by which Research is generated has already been decided, and therefore probably shouldn't be rehashed.

For maintaince fees on Research, I was thinking of something like Empire of the Fallen Sun in reverse. Certain parts of the tech tree would require buildings before they were "unlocked" for research. Assuming the current build model passes public review, these buildings would have heafty maintainace fees.

Losing the research building would result in the technology being "disabled" until a replacement is built or conquered.

For example, a Singularity Research Station might have to be built on a planet orbitting a black hole before research into the wormhole branch of the tech tree is allowed.

[haravikk]

I actually agree that food seems a bit useless. Wouldn't it be easier just to have a fertility rating for a planet, the greater the fertility the more population you can support? Advances and terraforming could allow fertility to be improved, while space bombardment would reduce it (by destroying the buildings/infrastructure).
Trade could simply give a small bonus to fertility across an empire.
Fertility would be pretty much a percentage that increases/decreases the population limit, for example if a planet has a base population limit of 8 billion, but has a fertility of 50% then it would be able to support up to 12 billion. Fertility could also be negative to the point of being completely uninhabitable unless terraformed by an outpost/ship.

[noelte]

I actually agree that food seems a bit useless. Wouldn't it be easier just to have a fertility rating for a planet, the greater the fertility the more population you can support?

I disagree, you might have planets with nearly no food production and others which generate more than you need. Also the foci settings define how much food is generated. Normaly you would have some farming planets which provide all the others with the needed food.

[guiguibaah]

- HEY! That's a clever idea - food can be used as some measure for terraforming. Maybe not the primary factor, but if you are an empire that farms a lot, you probably have a lot of bio goods to go around.

Reality wise, your farms could shift from making wheat to becoming some sort of zoos for terraformed wildlife. Game wise, any excess food produced could go directly into the terraforming 'production'.