Labs, Factories, and Focus

if I'm reading this correctly, which I do hope I am. Then your saying you should either focus on building Factories and stuffing money into them in the beginning. and the other is to build a decent research orafice first then slowly ease into productivity...

The one thing that I notice which is a major dissadvantage of the factory rush is the unexpected losses incurred in the game. if you have a dollar and set it to spend money on half science and half production. then you esstially are halving your total capacity. Thus instead of 12pp for a factory you get 6pp due to how much is being put into the labor of producing.

There is also the later concern of your finacial ability, if you start with all factories and have them always produce you will never generate the bc needed to support the mass of factories, which will lead to an inevitable crash in the market.

For the concept, assume the sliders are social production and research only. It would appear that maximum capacity is achieved when the slider is at 100% of either one, and is defined as MAX(FactoryPts, LabPts). If these values are similar, then any range of the slider is near optimal given that situation; however, the combined points will be less that if all of one type is built.

you state that if you remove the military support from the picture that it would work out. This would largely depend on how much potential money was driven into the system for that cause, since we cannot be completely sure, you either subsitute 'x' for 0 which in this case is plausible or find out the x number of ships you would have supported with x ammount of cash.

After, you've done that you see that bare factories in this case might hold considering you have gotten all the trade, and your economy is rocketing. you might be able to support those factories which could powerhouse the map. again barring the money input to support them.

The best factory provides 12pp (or 9pp/3rp). The best lab provides 18rp (or 4.5pp/13.5rp). If neutral alignment, the best lab provides 22rp (or 5.5pp/16.5rp). In general, labs are less expensive than factories for the points they produce. Some buildings (like Research/Manufacturing capital) don't help when using all of one type of building.

I've tried both methods, but although I prefer research worlds, it's much harder to manage and grow. I generally use Social Production +50% either way which is almost essential when using the lab-only method. What are people's opinions about these two strategies? How could each be used strategically?

in the case of your research worlds it may be harder to grow but they are also hot spots for enemies so if you really want the worlds to continue doing your reasearch, then you best have some allies or better yet planetary defense nets on the ones closest to a border or even which might be attacked cuz of its postion, or its resources. Try to keep any of these research Giants away from borders and have them bordered or at least have one planet of decent productive ability close by incase of an insurgency or it the neighbors get restless. The ideas are sound for this though, in my case I would choose production just cuz its my style of play to have explosive production...

Good Hunting...Qa Plah!!

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Well there is of course the other option which is to use a balanced approach. If you have nearly the same pp/rp capacity on all worlds then you can put the slider where you want it and still be efficient with what you have. Probably this is also more in line with what a standard economy can support. In this case, you end up with roughly 3 factories per 2 labs at similar tech levels. The worlds are self-sufficient and you have no specialized planets that are critical. Using 50/50 on the sliders, if you use focus on one area then it's about 60/40. Of course, you can put the sliders anywhere from 30-70 and still be using resources well, depending on priorities. The other thing is time; doubling pp or rp will halve the time to build/research, but the other task will take twice as long. You get decreasing time benefits from having massive production or research, and increasing penalties for neglecting the other one.

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I think factories only is a clearly superior approach, because you can turn factories off. Also, I think that it would be very difficult to keep up in the early game with the AI players with a no factories startegy, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

I played a few games using the all-factory approach. However, for my game enjoyment purposes I've gone back to a balanced approach. Maybe it's the micromanager or roleplayer in me, but there is something about those unused bonus research tiles that offends my sensibilities.

There's another option too, balanced sliders with specialized worlds.

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I think factories only is a clearly superior approach, because you can turn factories off. Also, I think that it would be very difficult to keep up in the early game with the AI players with a no factories startegy, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

For obscene and sucidal, the factory approach will mean you suck at research, the AI wont trade with you tech for tech too in the recent patches, it only is capable of pullin of victory in giant maps with lots of planets, because research would go so far in debt, and its production would still suck

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Research way in the 1.6 beta patches is the only way you can beat the AI on sucidal maps that dont have like 300 planets+

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Well there is of course the other option which is to use a balanced approach. If you have nearly the same pp/rp capacity on all worlds then you can put the slider where you want it and still be efficient with what you have. Probably this is also more in line with what a standard economy can support. In this case, you end up with roughly 3 factories per 2 labs at similar tech levels.

The balanced approach will produce significantly less. Lets take your example of 5 tiles. One approach will be 3 factories/2 labs with a 1/49/50 slider. Then lets look at 5 factories with a 1/99/0 slider. Also, 5 labs with a 0/0/100 slider.

The best factory provides 12pp (or 9pp/3rp). The best lab provides 18rp (or 4.5pp/13.5rp).

Approach 1: 3 factories, 2 labs, 50/50 split.
Your 3 factoris are going to produce 6pp each, 18 total.
Your 2 labs are going to produce 9rp each, 18 total.
Half of your capacity per tile is unused. That is, all of your buildings are only producing half of what they could. Still, this is cheap on the pocket book, and 18pp/18rp might seem a decent out put for 5 tiles. Lets continue.

Approach 2: 5 factories, 100/0 split
Your 5 factories are going to produce 12pp each, 60pp total.
If you focus on research, you produce 45pp and 15 rp.
Fair enough, that is 3 less rp per five tiles than a balanced approach, but you are also producing almost three times the military/social production. There is no lost productivity per tile, everything is producing the most it can.

Approach 3: 5 labs, 0/100 split (and to be fair, we will use non-neutral discovery spheres)
Your 5 labs are going to produce 18rp each, 90rp total.
If you focus on social or military, you produce 22.5pp and 67.5rp
With this set up, you are at a 2 to 1 production disadvantage against an all factories build, but notice how you blow away the 18/18 that the balanced approach produced. You are also researching at more than four times the rate of the all factories build. Multiply out this advantage across all the tiles in your empire, and there is really no comparison. With this approach you will build less, so you need to build smarter. It is more difficult, but with practice gives you the largest advantage.

For obscene and sucidal, the factory approach will mean you suck at research

This has also been my experience.

In fact, it is the extreme advantage these approaches give which is why I think they are a point of so much discussion.

Hope that helps,
Wyndstar

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Hi!

-All Factories-
Advantages

* Planets can build ships, factories and do research at the same time.
* It requires low amount of MicroManagement. After the second or the third factory is built, player sets focus on research and forgets the planet again.
* Easy to do an early low-tech attack, where only transports and very few armed ships are needed.
* Easy to do the mid-game attack, since most planets are developed and can produce lots of cheap low-tech warships and transports. The added bonus is tech, gained through invasion, that can help overcome the tech lag.
* Initial Colony now has production of 16 (DA 1.6 beta5), allowing faster start of a colony.

Disadvantages:

* You don't have much to sell to get more money to sustain planet ramp-up.
* "Fastest" tech is almost mandatory.
* Obtaining both extreme colonization techs is necessary, as it effects only output of factories.

-All Labs-

Advantages:

* Lots of money earned through tech trade.
* strategy-supporting techs (diplomacy and econ bonuses, better labs) can be gained very quickly.
* independent of the development of other AIs. The only thing needed from them is money.
* Second part of extreme colonization techs can be ignored, since it effects only production of factories.

Disadvantages:

* Not possible to build labs and ships at the same time.
* Hard to compete with AIs in colony rush on maps with lots of planets, since no planet can dish out any serious amount of military production. This results in realy high costs of colony rush, since most colonizers have to be bought, and that takes away another big amount of money from already low treasury.
* Playing it without the tech trade "on" makes it exponentialy more difficult.
* Constant trade tech-for-money and buying takes A LOT of MM.
* Susceptible to an early and mid-game attack, as its military production is still low.
* Requires rebuilding of planets with factories when target techs are researched.

-Comparison-

* Both strategies demand lots of money, but all-labs is more demanding, since the first lab or two on each planet have to be bought, and also most colonizers.
* IMO all-labs is more appropriate for smaller maps, and probably can't be played without tech trading "on" on obscene and suicidal.
* All-factories is more appropriate for larger maps, as planets can build and research at the same time, so player's costs for colony rush are significantly lower.
* Both strategies suffer with the "slow" and "very slow" tech settings. All-labs because it can sell less, and all-factories because it can research less, but the all-fac's is hit more.

My 2 cents.

BR, Iztok

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I've been following the all factory/all lab threads for a while, and I'm wondering if people like this feature or not. It seems to be an "advanced" strategy that is harder to pull off than building both factories and labs, and it allows much greater production. The key to this is the fact that no production is lost when using focus. Is that a good thing? Should some "waste" be introduced to focus to revitalize a balanced building approach?

Of course, given the fact that the industrial and research sliders are linked, the "waste" would have to equal fifty percent of total output to make having both factories and labs.

3 factories @ 12ip * 50% Military (or Social) = 18mp
3 labs @ 18rp * 50% Science = 27rp
= 45 production points of both kinds

6 factories @ 12ip * 100% Military (or Social) = 72mp
or, when focused using the current system: 18rp and 54mp
= 72 production points of both kinds.

So 27 points (37.5%, i.e. 1/2 of 75%) would have to be "wasted" in the focus for the two set ups to be equivalent.

The current focus formula seems to be:
Non-focus production = Non-focus production * 75%
Focus production = Focus production + (Non-focus production * 25%)

It could be changed to:
Non-focus production = Non-focus production * 37.5%
Focus production = Focus production + (non-focus production * 25%)

In the above example, the six factories at 100% Military spending, when focused, would produce: 72mp*37.5% = 27mp and 72mp*.25% = 18rp
Exactly the same as the 3 factory, 3 lab set up!

What would happen with all labs?
6 labs @ 18rp * 100% Research = 108rp
Focused under new formula they would produce:
108rp*37.5% = 40.5rp and 108rp*25% = 27mp

Okay, so even under the new formula, exclusively building labs would offer some advantage to building a mix or building just factories, but I wonder if the advantage would be offset by all of the disadvantages mentioned by other posters.

What do you think of the idea of "nerfing" focus?
Is the current system a "only-way-to-win, only-way-to-play", unrealistic annoyance, or is it just hard enough to pull off that the risk equals the reward and focus should stay how it is?

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Hi!

the "waste" would have to equal fifty percent of total output

That would simply kill diversity of the game, since only one approach would be feasible.

Are you aware that all-X also requires 3-4 times the money than the mixed approach? That's the real secret of advanced players - knowldge how to cover that insane hole all-X is making in a game that was never mentioned to produce so much money, and the dedication to actually DO what's necessary. I know what to do, but I lack the patience to actually DO all that MM. I've chosen to play at maso and have fun rather than grind.

BR, Iztok

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There are a lot of good responses here - thanks everyone.

One reason I am favoring the lab-only approach is that I can more easily increase social production than research with bonuses and techs:

Social Production +50%
Industrialist +20%
With a few low-level techs I also get +30%

So if I have 100 rp on a planet, and focus production, I get 75 rp and 50 mp, rather than 25 mp. In this case, military production will be at +50%, which is helpful as well. With the all-factory build, it's not possible to boost research to this level, as I am limited to Research +20% ability. I also get the increase at half cost.

I've found it helpful to build basic labs or xeno labs first, then upgrade as needed. It's difficult to use NLCs in any case because of their high cost, and generally faster to upgrade 1-2 lab levels at a time until you reach your highest lab. Economy picks are essential (and I will often use +30% and Federalist) to maintain the labs.

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That would simply kill diversity of the game, since only one approach would be feasible

Iztok - your points are well taken. It seems like the risk (and difficulty) of managing an all one-type-of-building approach is high enough to keep it from becoming a cheap, one-size-fits-all sure fire way to win.

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I'm with you Itzok. Fun is more important than winning on the highest difficulty level. Having said that, I do think that there is a problem with game balance if you need to ignore important elements of the game design (labs or factories, a lot of the bonus tiles) to get an optimal strategy.

How about nerfing the sliders so that if you set a slider above a certain percentage it results in a increasing marginal penalty. This could be used to balance on the game so that a 100% in labs or factories isn't clearly better (assuming you can survive long enough) than a diversified approach.

Alternatively, Evil Stormbringer suggested getting rid of the sliders all together (or have them frozen at 1/3 each). I actually prefer this approach, but I can already hear people screaming.

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Alternatively, Evil Stormbringer suggested getting rid of the sliders all together (or have them frozen at 1/3 each). I actually prefer this approach, but I can already hear people screaming.

I can see the rationale behind that, but I would be one of the ones screaming. I've never played all-factories or all-labs, but I do like adjusting the sliders frequently.

In DA you've got enough trouble trying to sustain an economy, even with Star Fed, Stock Exchanges, and 1/2 of all planets devoted strictly to money-making! At least that's been my experience. I can't imagine even needing more production, or knowing what the heck to do with it. I'd probably be forced to yank down the production slider at some point. And that's quite unacceptable and counterproductive.

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I'd personally just prefer to remove the spending slider entirely, and have the military, social, and research sliders all act independantly in that regard. That way, should you have an economy that can sustain it, you will have 100% of your empire's possible production going at once. Perhaps a little harsher on new players... but would allow one to avoid weird penalties to mixed factory/lab strategies, like the ones Wyndstar is trying to avoid.

It'd require some thought as to how the social/military distribution would work, though. Would you still be required to balance them out? Would your factories have equal parts military point potential and social point potential, with no ability for one to carry over in the other? Would you be able to potentially double your ship production with 100% values in military and social (or would their individual maximums be halved to deal with this?)

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Or split production altogether. Factories produce social improvements, a (new) line of starport improvements (or a new shipyard facility project line) produce ships.

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I don't think the game designers are going to make major changes like eliminating the sliders (as it oddly enough adds a uniqueness to the game, and would be a bitch to reprogram for game mechanics and AI). However, I agree that it adds unnecessary micromanagement. I find it irritating that "some of your buildings must not be working at max capacity". I would rather build factories and labs in the proportions I desire and be getting the full rp/mp from all of them, and eliminate the "production focus" system. Sliders (if any) should all be capacity sliders, so that I can for instance cut research spending if my economy is strained. Of course, the game would have to be rebalanced somewhat because planets would be spending more under normal conditions.

I think the idea of adding a new type of building for military points would make the most sense. It can easily have its own tech tree line similar to factories/labs. So you've got rp, sp, and mp, and the normal race bonuses that apply to each. No more fiddling with sliders or focusing production - but there is still a challenge of properly balancing these 3 buildings. The AI can also cope with this setup more easily and directly. It also makes sense that it takes a specialized factory or building to create space ship parts or construct them. We should make a thread in the Ideas->Colonies section and cast votes for this change lol.

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The last three posts are proposing an extreme simplification. As it is, the game does not require excessive micromanagement, but it does allow sufficient flexibility for many varying styles of play. I think the sliders are crucial to that kind of flexibility.

Just look at the proposed idea: only 3 sliders:
1) military
2) social
3) research

Now, you have to build buildings specific to each slider's production. So if you turn down any slider, you're only affecting gross production in that one category. What's happened is that the production capacity slider, as it is now, has been split into 3, with no room for balancing the various aspects of production. If you keep your production slider at 100% as it is, then you'll keep all 3 sliders at 100%. End of management, end of fun.

If I'm not understanding what you guys are saying, I'd be happy to hear where I'm wrong. If I am, then I think that most people would agree that this is a change that would be "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." Though if it's Iconian, it just might live!

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Hi!

I'd personally just prefer to remove the spending slider entirely, and have the military, social, and research sliders all act independantly in that regard.

Personally the only change I'd like to see is a separate funding for labs. I'd still like the game to retain the "ships or buildings" dilemma. But "production or research" dilemma we have currently, with a separate type of building for research, is IMO too artificial.

BR, Iztok

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I didn't propose adding a new kind of building for military construction, what I proposed was removing the spending bar entirely, and having those percents in the other bars correspond to how much of that kind of construction you are spending.

Basically, the idea is: have each slider BY ITSELF be a gradient of 0% to 100%, regardless of the other sliders. If I set military to 50%, social to 50%, and research to 50%, I should be getting half of my empires capacity for each, with the corresponding economy costs, allowing me to (potentially) run at 100/100/100... at a correspondingly crippling cost to my economy.

When your economy is in a normal situation, we'd have the same kinds of tradeoffs and funding balancing seen now, but when you have a huge surplus, you'll be able to actually run your empire at maximum capacity. By that point you've already won, anyways, so it's not like you're unbalancing the game.

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I think the basic problem that creates the All-X approach is the distaste with recieving less rp/mp than the buildings are rated at. Consequently, we want to get 100% of our production capacity, even if we have to focus some into another area. I can understand a factory compromise (social/military), but the factory/lab compromise doesn't make much sense to most people. The factory-only method is the only time when buildings are being fully utilized but research/production can be toggled on/off as needed.

The focus system moves 25% of an area with 100% efficiency. If the system remains as it is, I would like to be able to move up to 100% of my production (slider) to research with focus, but with less than 100% efficiency to be fair (like 50/66/75%). Actually, why not make it like other game systems where there are decreasing returns as you aproach 100% conversion (as it's hard to make the remaining equipment "do research" etc)? Then each planet can control its focus percent.

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I seriously doubt we will ever see the sliders change their behavior in Galciv2. That is too big a change. The game is what it is; maybe some new game can try a new economic model.

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I didn't propose adding a new kind of building for military construction, what I proposed was removing the spending bar entirely, and having those percents in the other bars correspond to how much of that kind of construction you are spending.

Basically, the idea is: have each slider BY ITSELF be a gradient of 0% to 100%, regardless of the other sliders. If I set military to 50%, social to 50%, and research to 50%, I should be getting half of my empires capacity for each, with the corresponding economy costs, allowing me to (potentially) run at 100/100/100... at a correspondingly crippling cost to my economy.

When your economy is in a normal situation, we'd have the same kinds of tradeoffs and funding balancing seen now, but when you have a huge surplus, you'll be able to actually run your empire at maximum capacity. By that point you've already won, anyways, so it's not like you're unbalancing the game.

Actually, they could remove the Production slider and alter the effect of the other sliders so that there would be no change to gameplay at all.

Moving the Military, Social and Research sliders all to 100% would be exactly like having Production at 100%, and all the other sliders set equal to each other.

And moving the Military, Social and Research sliders all to 50% would be exactly like having the Production slider at 50%, and all the other sliders set equal to each other.

And moving, say, the Military slider to 100% and all the others to zero would be exactly like setting those sliders the same in the current system, but with Production set to 33%.

From an Interface standpoint, the Production slider is completely superflous; there is no need to have it at all. I'm sure getting rid of that slider for the player would require very little programming effort, except for changing the graphic. (But I'm not sure how much the AI uses those sliders, so I'm not sure how much their logic would have to be changed.)

Anyway, people are so used to the way it is now there would probably be more people complaining about a change than people who appreciate this bit of Interface "streamlining" at this stage of the game.

It's not that huge of a deal, except that it makes me wonder why the heck they put that extra slider in there in the first place. The whole slider system is wildly non-intuitive to begin with, and that extra slider just made it more so - for no apparent reason whatsoever.

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Actually, they could remove the Production slider and alter the effect of the other sliders so that there would be no change to gameplay at all.

Moving the Military, Social and Research sliders all to 100% would be exactly like having Production at 100%, and all the other sliders set equal to each other.

And moving the Military, Social and Research sliders all to 50% would be exactly like having the Production slider at 50%, and all the other sliders set equal to each other.

And moving, say, the Military slider to 100% and all the others to zero would be exactly like setting those sliders the same in the current system, but with Production set to 33%.

From an Interface standpoint, the Production slider is completely superflous; there is no need to have it at all. I'm sure getting rid of that slider for the player would require very little programming effort, except for changing the graphic. (But I'm not sure how much the AI uses those sliders, so I'm not sure how much their logic would have to be changed.)

It's not that simple, is it? You'd be losing the ability to change balancing of production while keeping production at 100%. What if you wanted, for one turn, to put a lot of extra production into Military, to get a ship out the next turn. Once your military slider is at 100%, there's nothing more you could do. Dropping Social and/or Research sliders would't add anything to Military, even though it's perfectly reasonable to set up a system (like it is now) whereby factories can focus for a time on only military, only social, or a mixture of the two. As far as labs producing mp and factories producing rp, that's another (though) important discussion.

With your proposal, why not keep all sliders at 100% at all times? If you have to drop them, it's because your econ isn't strong and/or you can't find any quick cash. Otherwise, nobody would ever have a reason to touch those sliders. I honestly can't remember when I've dropped my Production Capacity slider below 100%, but when I did I was on a losing track.

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If you can run with 100 percent of all possible military, social, and research spending at once, you've either got too little capacity or an economy so solid that you've basically won anyways.

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Wow I wish I hadn't read this thread, makes me understand what I had merely suspected while having a good time. The economic side of this game is completely broken. That anyone can suggest such a strategy with a straight face is a pretty stunning indictment of the balancing in the game. Almost any game I have been semi-involved with would be all over that like white on rice. It would be the number one issue in the next patch. Of course maybe these strategy isn't feasible if you aren't going to play "screw the AI in trades for cash". Can anyone provide more info on that aspect?

As for the need to suddenly pump out a ship or improvement in one turn, well that is just silly anyway and it is frustrating that the game goes to great lengths to insulate the player from having to plan ahead. There are so many great things about this game and yet i just felt it wasn't all coming together correctly, and now I read this thread and wonder if I can even play it anymore...

I cannot imagine what would be the downside of having three separate sliders and no production slider. Seems like a clear win to me. Easier for everyone to understand, more realistic, makes more sense. I woudl even be in favor of a system where you can only adjust the sliders a few notches every ten turns or so. Min-Maxing is the bane of all true strategy games and it is fairly easy to insulate against. As for being able to run you economy at 100% all the time, if you have nothing but production buildings that shouldn't really be possible.

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now I read this thread and wonder if I can even play it anymore...

That's a bit harsh. If you think a 100% factory/lab strategy is an exploit, don't do it. Set your sliders to 1/3 each (or 25%-25%-50%) and just leave them there. You will accomplish close to what you are asking for. The only thing you won't have is individual control over spending in each sector because you currently only have one spending slider.

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Labs, Factories, and Focus

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