Ophiuchus wrote:Vezzra wrote:I think the idea that the commitment to a distributed/stockpiling empire strategy has to be done by having to switch a significant part of your colonies to the stockpile focus is a fundamental concept of the IS mechanic.
I politely disagree
But Vezzra is right. I had forgot it too until now, but from the beginning, Geoff stated that a non-stockpiling species should have to devote a great commitment in order to get useful stockpiling capabilites (and that commitment can't be anything but many stockpiling focused planets, the commitment comes from the loss in RPs/PPs from not using the other foci).
Ophiuchus wrote:I would just like to have some kind of solution in the 0.4.8 release. Not sure who could/would implement this.
Don't lose the hope, we are close. Plus, as I said before, IMO IS can go to release as it is now and be revamped later. I think everyones now agree current IS works, allows new playstyles, does not break anything, and the only/biggest problem is just that some of its related techs/mechanics are underused/underpowered (balance stuff!).
Vezzra wrote:[...] the growth and stockpile foci should remain completely separate mechanics, so no stockpile bonus for growth focus.
[...] Mixing or even merging these focus settings [...] makes things harder to balance and removes possibilities for more varied strategies (IMO).
[...] I like Geoffs idea (of having one global empire meter which grows to its target/max value, and the local planetary meters contributing to that target/max value) best.
Agree.
Geoffs idea should require few and simple changes to the focs files and completely remove the focus-dance issue, allowing the IMO KISSer way of letting every colony to set the stockpiling focus.
Only foreseeable micromagement is, when you need to increase stockpile output, you have to check on the objects window which planets are producing less PPs or RPs as best candidates to set to stockpiling, and viceversa when needing to increase RP or PP at the expense of Stockpile, you'll look for the bigger stockpiling colonies; it's similar to what you have to do when setting research or production focus and you have to discriminate by species, in-system GGs, etc.).
However, with that change the empire-wide MaxStockpile meter should have a different change mechanic, because +1 per turn would we awful.
I think this has not been settled yet, but I apologise if I have missed a post where it was discussed and solved.
I think this empire-wide stockpile meter should/could mimic the behaviour of the PP/turn and RP/turn meters, that grow faster when you have more planets. I assume everybody is at least content with that mechanic for Research and Production, so I guess everybody would be at least content with such behaviour in this EmpireMaxStockpile meter.
For Research/Production meters, the change rate is actually
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Sigma[colony] min(1,abs(colony.max-colony.value)) (*)
In words, for the trivial case in which you have N colonies, all with research meter value < max+1, empire (aggregated) meter gets +N after one turn.
To mimic this behaviour in a empire MaxStockpile meter I guess the change rate could be something simple like this:
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min(N_EMPIRE_COLONIES/2, abs(MaxStockpile-value)) (*)
Assume you have 10 planets, current stockpile value of 12 and max stockpile of 20 (because you have switched many planets to stockpile focus last turn). Next turn you'd get value 17, next one 20, and that's it. Switching more or less planets to stockpiling focus does not alter the change rate, so no incentive to switch more than necessary if you just wanted to reach 20 stockpile limit.
If then you remove the stockpiling focus from half the colonies, you immediately reduce the MaxStockpile value so you get also a decrease of stockpiling value, so again no incentive to focus-dance (another story is when you deplete your stockpile and need no more high stockpile output).
(*) for simplicity here, I skipped the part of the formula to make it work for increases and decreases. But note that that part of the formula only makes it go up or down, but always with a max of 1/-1 per planet. However there is that mechanic elsewhere to punish foci switching by making decreases larger than increases. I haven't checked how or where is that focus change malus performed, but I had understood that a colony meter has max. increase 1 and max. decrease -3, until
that tech that makes it 3 and -5.
Ignoring the part of
that tech, to mimic this decrease=3*increase mechanic for the empire wide stockpile meter, if max increase (when MaxStockpile>value) would be min(0.5*N_EMPIRE_COLONIES, MaxStockpile-value), then max decrease (when MaxStockpile<value) should be max(-1.5*N_EMPIRE_COLONIES, MaxStockpile-value).
Next foreseeable problem with this approach of the stockpile meter change dependent on number of colonies is that it probably implies too much of an advantage for wide versus tall empires. An empire with twice the planets can use its stockpile twice as fast, requiring less commitment (it can keep stockpiling focus half the time, so have more outcome from research/production foci).
Maybe number of colonies is too simplistic. Population based then? My first impression is it can be harder to balance, but first try: I need to envision what is it like a half-wide, half-tall average empire at mid game, specifically the expected number of colonies and total population. Just guessing, if we take ¿15? as the expected average population per colony and 10 planets, that means expected population 225 (same as 15 colonies of pop 10). So a population of 200 or so should be able to get the same increase than a 10 (+5/-15 per turn) or 15 (+7.5/-22.5) colonies empire with the proposed change rate formula. Therefore, pop-based change rate when MaxStockpile>value could be:
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min(0.025 * EMPIRE_POPULATION, MaxStockpile-value)
And when MaxStockpile<value:
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max(-0.075 * EMPIRE_POPULATION, MaxStockpile-value))
These should end up like the following (unsure how) if
that tech should affect the stockpiling meter:
For MaxStockpile>value and
that tech on:
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min(0.075 * EMPIRE_POPULATION, MaxStockpile-value)
For MaxStockpile<value and
that tech on:
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max(-0.125 * EMPIRE_POPULATION, MaxStockpile-value))
Edit:
That tech is Force Energy Structures. It has a different focs code to do the same effect for the increase/decrease based on LocalCandidate.MaxStockpile>LocalCandidate.Stockpile, referring to min(Value+2,stuff) when increasing and max(Value-4,stuff) when decreasing. This should be changed to account for the empire-wide meter instead of each colony's meter. I lack FOCS knowledge.