New influence upkeep

For topics that do not fit in another sub-forum.

Moderator: Oberlus

Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5704
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

New influence upkeep

#1 Post by Oberlus »

There's a new influence upkeep formula in the neighborhood:
upkeep_equation.png
upkeep_equation.png (4.87 KiB) Viewed 6484 times
where y is the upkeep per colony, x is the number of owned colonies*, 9 is a parameter that represents the maximum upkeep that a single colony will pay (it's a game rule, you can change it), and 1000 is another parameter (game rule) that represents with how many owned planets will your colonies require the maximum upkeep, or colonies at maximum upkeep.

*calculated as #owned_non_exobot_colonies + 0.25*(#outposts + #exobot_colonies)

The shape of the curve for the default values of the parameters:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=y% ... 2C+1200%5D


If your empire manages to produce exactly 9 IP per colony on average, all colonies will be required to be influence-focused, but new colonies will be possible, just slowly (using flat bonuses for the PP costs and waiting for the population to growth so that maximum IP output is reached).
If your empire produces on average more than 9 IP per colony, your empire will be able to have some colonies not influence-focused and keep growing faster after reaching the threshold of 1000 colonies..
If your empire can't reach an average output of 9 IP per colony, your empire won't be able to own 1000 colonies. For example, if average IP output was 7, the maximum number of colonies would be aprox. 360.

The number of 9 IP per colony is expected to be relatively hard to achieve but possible in galaxies with enough species. A 42 pop planet with an average influence, artistic species can do 8.48, or with non-artistic, great influence species would produce 9.72.
The number of 1000 planets roughly corresponds to
- An ancient, high density galaxy of 410 systems.
- A mature, medium density galaxy of 850 systems.
- A young, low density galaxy of 1750 systems.

In default galaxy settings (mature, medium density galaxies of 150 systems), the expected number of planets is 175. With 175 planets, the upkeep per colony is about 5 IP. Therefore, we can expect those games to be relatively easy on influence pressure, allowing players to keep acquiring colonies and growing their PP and RP from focused colonies until swallowing the whole galaxy.


What you can do with these parameters to tailor influence upkeep pressure to your like in your games:

- Increase colonies at maximum upkeep if you want to make your end game stage faster while still having a potential hard cap of colonies for empires that can't reach 9 IP per colony.
- Increase maximum upkeep if you want to make impossible to own the whole galaxy, forcing players to play sparse.
- Decrease colonies at maximum upkeep if you want to slow down empire's growth during mid game while still having a potential hard cap.
- Decrease maximum upkeep if you want to make all empires capable of indefinite growth.

For example, if you wanted to play default settings with a much stronger influence pressure, keep max upkeep at 9 but decrease colonies at max upkeep to 175.
Or, if you wanted to almost remove influence upkeep from game, set max upkeep at 1 or 0.5 and colonies at max upkeep to... anything greater than 0.


PS: it's not merged yet.

Post Reply