I looked at a lot of posts before deciding to make a new thread. There is some kind of 50 page long, 711 reply "easy tweaks" thread.. that's real efficient guys. I'm sure the developers spend all day looking at it too.
Let's have a focused suggestion thread on the production mess. If you have some kind of idea for how the BC->"Production Points"->Mil/Social stuff should work, put it in here.
Who knows, if we get enough replies maybe it will get stickified, and something actually get done with the mess that is the economy simulation.
My take on how this should work, given the rest of the game concept:
Domestic policy screen:
Show taxes collected = X BC.
Have Research slider set to Y BC: takes Y BC from the treasury each turn. Why even bother with percents? Just sum up the raw total possible research for the empire and allow the player to pick how much to utilize. The details may be left to the minions!
Then, display RP total based on BC put into research and bonuses.
Then, a total industrial slider, just like now, that sets a MAXIMUM utilization for each planet. That is, if the slider is at 75% and planet X makes 100 MP a turn, it's now cranking out 75 MP max, regardless of any other tinkering the player might be able to do elsewhere. That's good macromanagement.
Since Research has been decoupled from Industry, now only one slider dictating default split between Mil/Soc spending. Now you have total control over per-planet spending max, and split. Everything you want from a macro point of view.
Colony Management screen:
Per planet have a slider that splits the max BC allocated from the Domestic Policy screen along Mil/Soc lines, just like in the DP screen itself. This could simply be disabled by default (checkbox controlled)-- if enabled, the planet could possess a different split, allowing for your big worlds to go all mil spending, etc. I personally would leave soc=100% on the DP screen all the time, since I want to say who makes what ships when, and I can't concieve of ever wanting to make ships at fifty planets at once. But macro control is good, since people play differently.
Finally, the game should realize when there is no Soc spending, any possible BCs need to go into Mil, and vice versa, and if there are no projects being built, there should obviously be no spending. No-brainer. I find it really hard to believe this wasn't dealt with before release.. you weirdos.
If an actual Stardock developer wants to come up in here and say this nightmare is necessary for game balance-- so be it. I respect you guys for building a non mainstream product, and good job on the rest of it. I hope the fanbots will leave their "the game roolz stfu" posts to "I vote to keep things the way they are". I'm sure the developers want to know who wants things to stay the same too!
So what do the rest of you think? Some other way?
