Something I came across was the slow startup of a FreeOrion game. Untill you have more than 3 planets managing your economy is a plain hassle. The current focus system of FreeOrion allows only resource to be produced, the focused one.
The Cultural Archive is a hack to allow a single planet empire to exist. With a larger empire this management system is still noticed as switching the focus of planets creates major swings, resulting in a 'sensitive' feel for the economy.
This change greatly helps the beginning of an empire, allowing a much smoother startup without so many 'dead turns' at the beginning.
The blockaded planets dying quickly was also a symptom of this economic setup. Planets that are blockaded and not food focused no longer die, they just famine and shrink to their smaller food production, which is usually still crippling unless on a planet suited to that species.
This change still requires an interdependent economy in the empire as most planets won't reach their target population without a farming focus or food surplus from somewhere, especially if the planet is not favourable for the species. Specialised planets with high focused resource output are still integral to the gameplay as the focus is a multiplier effect.
Currently Humans are the only species using the new resource layout, if I receive any postive feedback I will edit the rest of the species to work similarly.
Changes include:
- Seperated general and focused production for farming, mining, industry and research in the species definition.
Making some (not all, especially not the very powerful ones, just the ones where the tech sounds generally applicable) techs apply to all producing planets.
Updated the descriptions for techs I changed.
Balancing of the new resource layout (gameplay tested but further balancing will no doubt happen).
Removal of Cultural Archive as a startup building.
I noticed that due to bitrot some of the tech descriptions no longer matched the techs so I fixed that.
What is still lacking is more descriptive text in the breakdown of a resource's production. As these changes are partially in the species definition the hover breakdown of a resource creates more than one "Species Human +X" text in the hoverbox when a resource is focused. My suggestion is to allow descriptions for EffectsGroup which would involve a change to the parser. This could than have "Human Farming +X, Focused Farming +Y" which I believe is much nicer. This would also be nice for brief expanded descriptions for species which have a species specific bonus to a resource stat.
Suggestions are of course welcome, considerations I've been tossing up is making Good planets not food sustainable without a farming focus and making mining be just population dependent (unless focused, in which case give a fixed gain along with a population bonus).