The case for changing excess production mechanism

from GalCiv2 Forums
RIght now, if a planet with 50 military production is building a ship that requires 20 more points to complete, the difference of 30 points is wasted and the player is charged for it. This applies for social production as well. Research is different, as the excess production towards a technology carries over to the next technology (unless the researched technology was the last in the branch, in which case the excess research is wasted and the player is charged for it).

I'm proposing to change the handling of excess production so that it's carried over to the next ship, building, or tech. The motivation for this change is to reduce the need for micromanagement by eliminating the incentive for micromanagement.

With the current system, there are sudden changes in payoff for small changes in input. Consider this:

Three planets building a 160 cost fighter in current system:
Planet A, 158 military production, 2 turns to complete (316 charged per fighter)
Planet B, 164 military production, 1 turn to complete (164 charged per fighter)
Planet C, 640 military production, 1 turn to complete (640 charged per fighter)

Three planets building a 160 cost fighter in proposed system:
Planet A, 158 military production, on average 1.013 turns to complete (160 charged per fighter)
Planet B, 164 military production, on average 0.976 turns to complete (160 charged per fighter)
Planet C, 640 military production, on average 0.25 turns to complete (160 charged per fighter, 4.0 fighters per turn)

And now for the details.

Proposed handling of excess social production:
Extra production is applied to to progress of the next building in the queue; the process is repeated if this extra production completes the next building as well. If social production remains and the build queue is empty, the extra social production becomes military production.

Proposed handling of excess military production:
Extra production is applied to building an additional ship of the same model; as above, the process of moving excess production is repeated, allowing multiple ships to be built on a planet in one turn.

Proposed handling of excess military production:
Instead of being applied automatically to the "next tech in the branch" as it is now (which is ok but not ideal), excess research should be stored and applied to whichever technology the player selects as the next research target. At this point (after user input), the process is repeated. So if you had a total research in a turn of 1200 and decided to start researching the Armor Path, at the beginning of your turn you see the following series of menus:
You've researched Armor Theory! (at this point, 1120 RP remaining)
Research selection screen: user selects "Titanium Armor"
You've researched Titanium Armor! (1040 RP remaining)
Research selection screen: user selects "Titanium Armor II"
You've researched Titanium Armor II! (850 RP remaining)
And now maybe that's enough armor, and I want to switch to Expert Minitiaturization
Research selection screen: user selects "Expert Miniaturization', progress 850/5000)
In other words, allow the player to select each technology when researching multiple techs in a turn.

These changes would eliminate the waste that micromanging seeks to minimize, and in so doing would obviate micromanagement of production. Moving to the new system would take a moderate amount of work: implementing the new formulae, modifying the UI for when techs are researched, rebalancing in light of higher (waste-free) production levels, maybe some slight AI changes. It would make a huge difference when it comes to the user experience, though, especially on higher levels where micromanagement becomes a big (and unwelcome) part of the game.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree the system needs to be changed, at VERY least to only charge for *used* production. I played for weeks before I worked out I was charged for full turns of production regardless of how much I was using, and that there was no carry-over, or ability to build up to your output (ie output 600, $150 ship, produce four per turn).
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i always thought (not in the game) that excess production produced more money
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Makes perfect sense. There is no reason that excess production should be wasted the way it is. I hope the devs like your idea and implement it soon.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Adjust your spending to control waste. You can lower the overall amount you spend. And also adjust how much you spend per class, military, social and research.

If you have no social projects going, cut social to zero. This will raise the financeing you spend with which you build ships and research. If this results in excess military spending on to many planets your building to many factories(etc) IMHO. I usually only have one or two heavy military planets. The rest go to population (taxes) and research with moderate space for factories.

You can also adjust spending on each planet by clicking the lil button in each window (mil, soc and resrch). That "forces" extra spending (but just from that planets spending) to what ever catagory you choose, for each individual planet. This can be done on each planet if you choose.

In my games usually by teh end of year 2 I have social turned off except when I just finish a new research that allows an upgrade. I watch to see when all planets are done then turn social back to zero.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This sounds like a very sensible way for it to be done!

I didnt realise you got charged for overflowing production; that makes it even worse! it could also penalises people who like to build large fleets of small ships as opposed to fewer large ships later in the game.

oldDocc: yes you CAN do this sort of micromanagement, I think the poster is arguing that micromanaging is no fun and the game mechanics should be changed so this is not needed.

I guess it just depends how big a job changing things to work like this would end up being...

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
I'm proposing to change the handling of excess production so that it's carried over to the next ship, building, or tech

That lost production is carried over from the GalCiv1. Many of us were asking for that to change many times in GalCiv2. I don't remember geting even an ansver from developers about those requests and suggestions.
BR, Iztok
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I like the idea. But i also like how research is handled now, also. I like getting 4-5 techs along the branch in a single turn with only a few repeated OK clicks. Your system would require a lot more work for me, since i usually go along an entire branch for most things like weapons, defenses, diplomacy, governments...
Now, if you could keep it so that it was still possible to advance along to the next tech in the series with a single click, with the option of changing in between, I could go for that. But have it default to the next tech in the series so that i do not have to select anything, just hit an OK button.

But being able to generate several ships in a single turn on my high production worlds, that sure would be great!
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I do remember somwhere the devs, IIRC, were strictly against the idea. Did you search the forums/ journals?
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
"extra" production should be carried over, at leat in the form of credits on something like that.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
OldDocc wrote

Adjust your spending to control waste. You can lower the overall amount you spend. And also adjust how much you spend per class, military, social and research.


That works fine if you are playing on a smaller galaxy or are not acquiring new planets. I play primarily on huge or gigantic galaxies. Nnear mid- or end-game, I have well over 50 and usually over 100 planets. My early, well-developed planets are completely upgraded and just churning out research and ships, while my newly acquired planets are still building social projects. The approach put forth by OldDocc does not work for larger galaxies.

The proposal by Veblen is very appealing to me. I love 4X, detail-oriented games, but there is such a thing as too much micromanagement!
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This has been a problem in the Civilization games too (you know, Sid Meyer et. al.) They fixed it in the latest for just the reasons that you indicate - takes the 'micromanagemeent' of each planet each turn off the table.

I for one whole heartedly support this type of change. If it means that all production costs have to be increased a fraction to offset some perceved 'bonus', that would be cool. There is no logical reason for a 160 cost figher to cost 300+ just because the planet it is being built on has 155 shields committed to military production. In fact, this is a prescribed PUNISHMENT to those who don't micromanage each planet each turn.

John
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree that the system is not ideal but the best soloution would be that you are not charged for excess production. Your multiple build soloution would require extra control fields incase you do not want to build multiple craft in one turn. Also this way prevents people (or the AI) just spamming huge fleets of small craft which I woulds forsee as being very annoying (and perhaps requiring a fair degree of micromanagement of their own).

OldDocc.. surely if you are building no social projects then you are not charged anything for social production so switching social production off won't change anything (unless your overall spending is less than 100%).
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree with MoratLyssander. If anything, excess production should just be not charged. Otherwise, the slew of fighters that could come from one planet would be overwhelming.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i have a stupid question what would be wrong with a shipyard building more than one small ship per turn

how many PT boats could be built at once or frigates

compared to a carrier or a battleship

Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ya, try to take over a planet with good production and we would be having to destroy 10 ships that next turn instead of just the one. It would up the difficulty a bit.

Still, I think it is a good idea. Danielost is right. A good production facility in the real world can construct multiple ships at the same time.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Adjust your spending to control waste. You can lower the overall amount you spend. And also adjust how much you spend per class, military, social and research.


Micromanagement is one thing. But when excess is being wasted on ONE planet, you change the slider so that WASTE isn't well.. wasted. But that doesnt affect the other 10 planets that STILL have military or social prod producing waste.

If there was a slider PER PLANET then yeah that's one thing.

But I agree with getting rid of the waste and putting it to good use.

Even though Frogboy has stated that there will be NO 4 ships produce per turn, at LEAST have the excess carried over into the NEXT ships production. That was potentially you could turn military down to 0, and with a planet with 600 production still produce ships for 4 turns (1 each turn).
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Let's say Stardock has 100 employees.

And let's say It takes 20 of them to work on the next GalCiv2 update.
The other 80 work on the various OTHER products Stardock has.

If you apply the current production system to Stardock as a company, you would PAY 20 people to work and complete the next update in a week, while you paid the other 80 to stand around and watch UNTIL the update on GalCiv was done BEFORE working on their own projects or future projects. Because the max production would be 100.

But since in reality each project/product has it's own micromanagement, you put as many people on the project as needed and the EXCESS are put to use on either other projects or on a future GalCiv update that the original 20 are not working on. In reality the overflow would be put to use. And if 5 people weren't doing Anything (no PR, no coding, no designing, no nothing) those people probably would not be getting paid. This, however, they did change and excess social (when not producing) goes to military which (when not producing) goes to the bank.

But social and military should still carryover into something else when there *IS* something else to work on. Just like i'm sure, how Stardock actually works. Like any other company.

The general sliders should be used to control excess spending, not "layoffs" or "re-hiring".
A company doesn't just make a generalization and say we need to lay off 5000 employees, and then lay off 5000 random people. They see where the excess is and trim the "fat" where needed. The same goes with hiring. They don't just hire 5000 people and place them randomly. They see where more people are needed and hire qualified people to fill those positions.

To put this another way:

If I had slider bars to control, lowering them would result in cutting overhead like cutting down on business trips (social slider), cutting down on rental and company cars (military slider), and cutting down on excess paper and restricting internet usage (research costs).
It WOULD NOT just fire people if I turn them down, or hire people If i raised them. Those should be on a per-planet basis with each planet having it's own slider.

I can see if popping ships out per turn would unbalance the game. Hell it would probably make turns SO much longer than they are now when you have 300 worlds all popping out ships. But please, Stardock, at least let it carry over and apply to the next in line for the next turn if there is something waiting in line.

Please Stardock don't send the concrete trucks home when they still have concrete in them and there's still a road to build just because they weren't sent there for that other section. Please! The concrete will harden, and dynamite is expensive!


Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I would like to see a shipyard queue. and a system by which multiple ships could be crafted in the same shipyard at the same time - this would be more realistic than having 1wk to go on a cargo and you change it to some beam heavy small hull and it's instantly made.
If you had a queu, you could keep the original hull under construction, or sacrifice it (like destroying an old hull) for some bp.

I dont care how long the turns are, as long as I don't have to go crazy micromanaging 3, 8, 12 planets just so I don't waste production.

John
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I would like to see a shipyard queue. and a system by which multiple ships could be crafted in the same shipyard at the same time - this would be more realistic than having 1wk to go on a cargo and you change it to some beam heavy small hull and it's instantly made.
If you had a queu, you could keep the original hull under construction, or sacrifice it (like destroying an old hull) for some bp.

I dont care how long the turns are, as long as I don't have to go crazy micromanaging 3, 8, 12 planets just so I don't waste production.

John


Let me get this right. You want micromanagement and more than one ship at once, and queued ships, without the actual micromanagement? OXYMORON! YAY!
It's less realistic. You have only one starport to build ships in.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I would like to see a ship queue and if you have left over production on the first ship, it is just applied to the second ship very similar to the way technology works now. If there is not a second ship in the queue, the overage is cashed into the bank.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
isn't every planet supposed to have a govener

(sorry about spelling)

i guess the govener is the one we need to fire
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


you misread.

Being able to set up a ship queue is NOT micromanagement....

say I set up a queue to build one transport and 3 frigates. A queue would really enable 'me' to schedule these to emerge at the same time.

This could be great against dreadlords, because they show up about a turn or two after you've built anything and they blow it into space debris.

So, it's QUEUE management without having to calculate and judge how to fiddle your production sliders so you don't produce a wasted shield.

John
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ohhhhh... queue management is good. Building more than one ship at once= teh haxx, but queuing would be good, so you wouldn't have to go back and change it. But currently it is queued building, just the same ship. I think.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
yes but multi queing would be nice whether or not the stay unbuilt or not
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Please stop with the coloured text and big letters, your opinion is no more (nor less) important that anyone else's, and it's a pain in the butt to read dark colours on a black background, and it only shows your need for attention.

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Queueing ships would be nice if it meant that out of, say, 600 production points, 150 would be used for a small ship, and the other 450 would be applied to the next ship, thus giving you the ability to get a ship that cost 1050 on the next turn.

I don't think it should be carried forward indefinitely, though. If you don't use the production on the next turn, it's lost. It's already lame enough that you can start building a "junk" ship that costs a huge amount of production, and then when you finish researching the tech you've been waiting for, design a ship with it and switch to that ship, and it pops out next turn.