The basic concept is clearly NOT sound. If I take a fleet worth 110PP into battle against one worth 100RP, and strategic effects are neutral, my back of a fag packet estimate would be that I have a reasonably good chance of winning, after all I supposedly have a 10% advantage. If I take a 10,010PP fleet into battle with one which cost 10,000Pp, my fag packet estimate would be that it was anyone's guess... thus that +10PP/turn is not worth as much to me as it would have been before.Geoff the Medio wrote: The real important strategic point is the difference between your production and another empire's. If you have 100 PP / turn, and they have 100 PP / turn, the difference is 0. If you produced 110 a turn, the +10 PP / turn gives you a huge advantage. The same applies if you're both at 1000 PP / turn or 10000. Assuming you have equal tech levels and strategic effects are neutral, the majority of your PP's "cancel", so however much extra you have is your advantage. The +10 has the same value in all cases. You don't need to go to +100 or +1000 to get the same relative value when at 1000 / turn or 10000 / turn. (Ok, I admit this isn't that clean cut, as minor fluctuations would be more likely to wash away the +10 if you're making 10000/turn, but the basic concept is sound)
Well, getting +10 more allows me to pursue a strategy that will result in me needing 109/ food a turn, i.e. I can go on a colonising spree and support a tenth of my empire as developing worlds, just as the +1 from 9 to 10 allowed me to colonise a single planet when I had ten planets. The impact on my strategy is the same.For food, if you produce 9 / turn and need 10 / turn, then +1 is all you need. If you produce 99 / turn and need 100 turn, you only still only need +1 more. Getting +10 more is no extra help. The player "hungers" for each additional food the same amount.
Ellestar's argument is much more cogent. The drive towards double focus and specialisation is much stronger under an exponential system.
Of course a lot of this discussion is now looking irrelevant, since we seem to be headed away from a fixed 0-10 range towards perhaps -50 to 50 or 0-100 or some such, and a larger range of possible meter values gives more opportunity to accomodate the range of effects by varying the relative bonusses (e.g. late game techs can give +10 rather than +1, so the range balancing doesn't need to be done in the mapping table.
This was the main source of the problem, since with only ten steps between min and max, there just wasn't much room to maneuver.