Balance industry-focused bonus techs and buildings

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Oberlus
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Balance industry-focused bonus techs and buildings

#1 Post by Oberlus »

Some proposals of balance for FO 0.4.9 or later:


The following are all bonuses for industry focused planets:

Robotic Producion (tech): 24/3, +0.1 PP per pop
(Required for the following independent tech lines)

The industrial center tech line:
Industrial Center (tech): 60/4.
Industrial Center (empire wide bld.): 75/5, +0.2 PP per pop
Greater IC (tech): 300/5, +0.4 PP per pop (this includes the previous +0.2)
Supreme IC (tech): 1000/7, +0.6 PP per pop (idem)

The orbital generation tech line:
Fusion Generation (tech): 36/3, +0.2 PP per pop
Orbital Generation (tech): 120/4
Gas Giant Generator (system-wide bld.): 25/3, +10 PP per planet on GG system with GGG.
Solar Orbital Generation (tech): 200/8.
Solar Orbital Generator (empire wide bld).: 75/6, +0.4/0.2/0.1 PP per planet.


First balance issue I see:

IC (first level) gives the same bonus than Fusion G. with nearly triple cost (60 RP + 75 PP vs 36 RP) and time (4+5 vs 3), and subject to supply-group connectivity (while Fusion is unrestricted empire-wide). I think those should be better balanced, otherwise no one should ever build an IC before geting Fusion G. (so it seems another no-brainer).
As Fusion G. may be relatively well balanced with respect other same-level learning techs, I guess increasing its cost is not the best way to go. But it for sure can sustain some cost increase, since it is cheap even when compared to the previous Robotic Prod. tech. So maybe making it a bit more expensive and making IC cheaper would be a good way to balance this?

Mild adjustment:
Industrial Center (tech): 40/3.
Industrial Center (bld): 60/4, +0.2 PP per pop
Fusion Generation (tech): 50/5, +0.2 PP per pop

Hmmmm... Not satisfied with these numbers, that makes IC aprox. twice as expensive as Fusion G., which is an improvement for the no-brainer issue but not a fix. But I'm not sure forcing a stronger change wouldn't be a problem on its own (at least for AIs):

Strong adjustment:
Industrial Center (tech): 36/3.
Industrial Center (bld): 50/4, +0.2 PP per pop
Fusion Generation (tech): 75/6, +0.2 PP per pop

I've considered and discarded adding an empire-wide or supply-group-wide building for fusion G. (same way as with IC, first a tech, then a building), because it makes no sense to me. I assume you are silently building fusion generators in all your planets once you get the tech, and I can't see any fluff explanation to justify a central building for this.
In fact, I would assume that interstellar travel wouldn't be possible without fusion reactors on board, so this fusion tech would be one of the initially unlocked techs that give no bonus at all (see suggestion in last para. of Side note 1 for a possible renaming of these techs without real impact in the game).



Second balance issue?

Now I'll try to compare the benefits of GGGs against second level of IC and see if those need balance (IMO). Not straightforward because one depends on planets in GG systems and the other on population.

Getting second level IC requires (assuming previous suggestion to balance first level IC is rejected) 360 RPs and 9 turns (lets disregard the cost of the building, irrelevant compared to the cost of greater IC), while getting GGGs requires 156 RPs, 7 turns and the building of each GGG on each system (+3 turns).

Four relative extreme scenarios (corrections are very welcome):
Small (6 systems) vs big (12 systems) empire x many (66% systems with GGs and 3 non-GG planets per system) vs few (33% systems with GGs and 2 non-GG planets per system). I happily assume same level of growth techs for both cases and an average population of 18 per planet.

Small-few (2 systems have GGs):
- 12 planets total = +86.4 PPs from IC.
- 4 planets get +10 PPs = +40 PPs, requiring 50 PPs first.

Small-many (4 systems have GG):
- 12 planets total = +86.4 PPs from IC.
- 8 planets get +10 PPs = +80 PPs, requiring 100 PPs first.

Big-few (4 systems have GGs):
- 36 planets total = +259.2 PPs from IC.
- 12 planets get +10 PPs = +120 PPs, requiring 100 PPs first.

Big-many (8 systems have GG):
- 36 planets total = +259.2 PPs from IC.
- 24 planets get +10 PPs = +240 PPs, requiring 200 PPs first.

On long run simulations the PPs required for the GGGs are negligible since you get it back in two turns on average.

If growth techs are not researched (so average population is way lower than 18 and you can get the Orb. Gen. tech sooner), the GGGs win hands down.
Only if GGs are very rare (less than 1/8 or 1/10 of your planets get the +10 PP bonus) will you prefer to go the growth techs plus IC first.
And here I'm overlooking that GGGs also "forced" you to get the +0.2 PP per population from Fusion G. So in fact we can half the PPs you get from IC. Thinking that way it is just absurdly unbalanced.

However, I would expect IC level 2 to be better than Fusion G. + GGGs at least in more than just some marginal situations.

Therefore, in the end I do see a imbalance between IC level 2 and GGGs. Suggested change (that includes the idea of making the GGGs a central building as Morlic suggested):

Greater IC (tech): 200/4, +0.4 PP per pop
Orbital Generation (tech): 200/5
Gas Giant Generator (supply-group-wide bld.): 200/5, +10 PP per planet on GG system.


Probably third level IC is also not properly balanced with respect to the SOG (and certainly it should be adjusted if GGGs costs are raised as suggested), but no need to go that far without first checking what you guys think of these calculations and ideas.




Side notes:

1. The description of Orbital Generation has two paragraphs, first one refers to getting energy from GGs and the second one refers to general energy generation from stuff orbiting planets that beam their production to the planet's surface. Second paragraph works very well for general orbital generation mechanics (like building solar panels in the stratosphere that beam energy into de planet via microwaves), while the first one is exclusive to the GGGs.
This, coupled with what I explain in the first balance issue, made me think of the following suggestion with no real impact in the game: Rename Fusion Generation as Orbital Generation and use the second para. of Orbital Generation (same bonuses it does apply, fluff explanation is you get energy from orbital stuff on every planet), then rename current Orbital Generation as Gas Giant Generation with only the first para. it already has in the description.

2. The description of Solar Orbital Generator (building) can be greatly improved.
(a) It does not say that the boost is only for industry focused planets,
(b) it does not make clear that the bonus depends on the star type of the system where you build it (one could think that each planet would get the bonus depending on the star type of its system), and
(c) the bonus it says it gives is confusing or wrong: x0.4, x0.2 and x0.1, as if it was going to divide your production, or, assuming it refers to x1.4, x1.2 and x1.1, as if it was going to multiply the whole production including the bonuses from other techs and buildings, while in fact it is +0.4, +0.2 and +0.1 per pop as most other techs and buildings.
Suggestion for description (mind my English):
Increases target Industry on Supply line connected planets with the Industry focus and depending on the star type of the system where it is build:
* Blue or White (+0.4 per population)
* Yellow or Orange (+0.2 per population)
* Red (+0.1 per population)
More than one in the same Supply connected Resource Group do not stack and add no extra bonus. The best bonus applies.

3. The description of Robotic Production mentions exobots in its first paragraph. I would change exobots for robots in there. Exobots have their own tech (after adaptive automation) and I see them as way more autonomous than just robots. I see the requirement of industry focus for the robotic production to apply the bonus as the need of maintenance that robots require (i.e. part of the planet's population is focused on producing and maintaining the robots, while exobots do that by themselves).

dbenage-cx
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Re: Balance industry-focused bonus techs and buildings

#2 Post by dbenage-cx »

Should population and infrastructure be considered to limit some of these bonuses?
e.g. GGG: max(10, industry_per_pop * min(population, infrastructure))
The would affect less hospitable planets, planets with shipyards, and possibly desire some adjustments of xenophobic effects.
Increases target Industry on Supply line connected planets with the Industry focus and depending on the star type of the system where it is build:
Suggestion, only because there is a difference between a generic supply line connection (tech upgrade) and a supply connection between two points (with links as appropriate):
Increases target Industry on planets set to Industry focus and connected by Supply line to this building. Target Industry is increased depending on the Star type of the system it is built in:

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Oberlus
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Re: Balance industry-focused bonus techs and buildings

#3 Post by Oberlus »

dbenage-cx wrote:Should population and infrastructure be considered to limit some of these bonuses?
e.g. GGG: max(10, industry_per_pop * min(population, infrastructure))
The would affect less hospitable planets, planets with shipyards, and possibly desire some adjustments of xenophobic effects.
I've always though that about fixed bonuses (also the +5 from asteroid outposts and the adaptive automation, the +2 from that learning tech...). E.g., if a tiny planet has space and resources to build a thinking machine that gives +2 RPs, then why can't a huge planet to build five of those machines? However, I also like the diversification of strategic options that non-population-based bonuses provide (e.g., if I'm a researching/production gifted species, I'll give higher preference to growth techs than if I'm playing a non-gifted species, which will prefer fixed-bonus techs first; also, if the species can expand faster than average then I will give higher preference to the non-population-based techs over growth and population-based techs).,
Nevertheless, the infrastructure meter or the size of the planet (regardless of actual population) could affect this fixed bonuses without disturbing this wide vs tall strategic choices that bring fun/replayability to the game (or even giving more importance to this choices, less no-brainers), and also give more importance to the infrastructure meter that currently is a bit underused in FO. So I would say something like this:
GGG: max(10, industry_per_pop * min(planetSize*CONSTANT, infrastructure)).
If such kind of change is adopted, the calculations on the starting post of this thread should be reconsidered, obviously.
dbenage-cx wrote:Suggestion, only because there is a difference between a generic supply line connection (tech upgrade) and a supply connection between two points (with links as appropriate):
Increases target Industry on planets set to Industry focus and connected by Supply line to this building. Target Industry is increased depending on the Star type of the system it is built in:
Your suggestion is perfect, IMO.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Balance industry-focused bonus techs and buildings

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I've previously proposed capping the size of some meter modifications. This would allow early-game effects to be still population-dependent, but not be excessively large with later-game higher populations.

https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/pull/1091/

This lead to another thread: http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10325

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