Another thought. Why not introduce modules that must be constructed before certain techs can be researched? Especially towards the end of the game. That would take care of some of the "Now what do I do with all these constructors" Dilemna

Vorlin, Production is not related to Income. Production is subtracted from Income (which comes from population & PQ) to get your Net Income. That's not a relationship though.

Planetary production capacity is affected by PQ, the many and various military/social production bonuses, and the Spend Rate slider on your Domestic Policy screen.

So if the effect of producing 'Nothing' were to be changed, that would not affect your Gross Income at all.

The effect of selecting 'Nothing' ought to be that that part of the production should be reduced to zero, thereby affecting your Net Income, not your gross.

Example:

To keep it simple, I have a galactic empire of one planet. My M/S/R sliders are set to 33/33/34 resulting in 10+1 military production, 10+1 social production and 15 research. Let's say my tax rate is set to provide an income of 37, and I have no outstanding loans, trade routes or maintenance. (Assume for the sake of argument that my mysterious production bonuses came from a 'random event'.) That means my Net Income is going to be +2 bc.

Now let's say I select 'Nothing' on my military production queue. What should happen? Currently, nothing would happen. I would continue to pay 10 bc/mo for that production which is not occurring. I am saying that the non-free production of 10 should NOT be subtracted from my gross income. My net income therefore should be +12.

What is unbalancing about that? My people are paying the same taxes they were before. I'm not getting anything for free. The 'free' portion of production bonuses are not given to me. If that production were shifted to a constructor then I would be +10 closer to having another constructor. As it is I simply have +10 more in my treasury instead. I don't see a problem here.

Since it is an empire of one planet, I could have achieved the EXACT same effect by setting my Military slider to 0% and adjusting my Spend Rate slider down an appropriate amount to achieve the 10+1 social and 15 research. Voila! I now have +12 going to my treasury and I have not touched my tax rate. So, is that unbalancing? Because that is in the game RIGHT NOW. Try it.

~SDC~

You're right, if nothing is done with the production one way or the other (it isn't subtracted for nothing, nor is it turned into anything else, and this is done before modifications by anything) then it is balanced because you don't have anything you didn't have anyway. I was looking at it from a post-production enhanced value because of the emphasis in -doing- something with that value which screws everything up because post-production enhancement is much greater than the original value (because of all the +prod buildings, starbases, and whatnots), but your view makes a lot more sense. It should be balanced in another way as well: it doesn't lead to the active building projects being rushed because they still have only their normal one-planet resources available (nothing extra is being funneled to them).

I was trying to untie the Gordian Knot, should have just cut it. LOL

Seems like this change would be fairly easy to implement, too, unless there is some behind the scenes mechanics that make it difficult.

BTW, production is related to spending which is related to income which would be effected by any production->cash scheme, so my original issue wasn't wrong, it was just unnecessary.

Starbase maintenance is a non-issue.

The choice is between wasting cash or building constructors.

Fix the wasted production problem. Have it give a 50% rebate. Give a better rebate with some techs. Better still, link the rebate to the government.

I can understand an emperor giving empire wide edicts that 20% of cash should go on military, even at the research colonies. But a star federation with devolved power to local authorities they would tell the emperor what to do with his "l'etat, c'est moi" attitude.

It'll need a fair bit of work on the AI, but it'll make the game a hell of a lot fun for us humans, who don't like being straight-jacketed by silly rules.

I think there's a simple solution.

Make it so only one of your starbases can affect a sector.

That's the way I assumed it worked, until I read about players building multiples on the forums.

Now I usually build two at most at homeworld sector, mostly out of laziness... there's too much constructor management as it is.

Any moderator opinions or commments? Frogboy?

I'm all for fixing the underlying issue ("Nothing" wastes resources best spent elsewhere). As previously stated, though, I'm also for limiting the number of bases - or their effects.... You should be thrilled when their is a resource in a colonizble-planet sector, 'cause then you get to have 2 bases there!


Re: super-constructors... these should be required to build some of the bigger / higher-tech modules, not just be a "5-constructor" package deal.

I always thought of a starbase as a self-sufficient entity. I don't think people on the surface should have to pay to keep it going. There's many other ways (mods) that could keep the starbase afloat without needing the assistance of a planet. That far into the future, charity shouldn't be needed for a starbase. There's so many other ways to generate income.

So many mods that could be made to counter any maintenance per month, so many uses for a starbase that could EARN bc rather than COST bc...for example:

1. Penal colony for prisoners
2. Star dust collector to create raw materials
3. Habitat mod for a million people to live
4. Star dock for ships
5. Quarantined laboratory for experiments
6. Military weapons experimentation

These are all things that only a starbase could do, but could generate revenue. What advanced society wouldn't take advantage of it to pay for the cost of even having it?

Could Make the starbase's maint influenced by the modules in it. Maybe the modules add a percent of the starbase's base maint to it. Then other things like techs, events, improvements, wonders, governments, or what have you can effect the base value of a star base, raising or lowering it, then the modules % would be applied ot the new base maint. It doesn't seem right to me, to pay the same amount for every star base when they are not all loaded with every module. I like quite a few of the other ideas too, maybe we can combine some of these.

Of course, I personally would like to see placing a starbase in another race's sector in which you do not control any planets be considered a hostile act. Maybe at higher levels it is, but not so far.



~SDC~

I like the idea of Planetary Starbase support items and/or a Starbase Wonder. It makes sense, the idea of planets supporting the upkeep of the bases (well they do anyway, credit-wise).

I'd say no maintenance cost for resource sb (outside of the possible sb tax). And no maint for the first SB in a sector that you control.

Kick in a 1.7 maint cost for the second sb in a sector or any non-resource sb outside your control.

But I also think that wasted resources in the real issue. If there was more to do end game with resources than constructors or improvements, this would be a non-starter. But this is an issue in most end-games of 4x games, to be fair. I always ran full into this in MOO2 too.

It is'nt broken, so don't fix it. You can make all sorts of arguments rationalising for or against the idea. Bottom line is : Don't muck up the game.

Solops, they are already mucking with the game.

Interstellar, dead on!

Alzandrion, that's an issue we've discussed earlier.

So far, in my games, I'm seeing the SB Maintainence issue simply KILLING the AI. The AI is horrid with starbases, and this is just making it worse. I thought the point of the 'Star Base Issue' was to improve the game's fun, not destroy it.

Come on, Star Dock! You got some concerns with star bases, just name them so we can discuss how to address them. But so far, your balancing act has just reduced fun and penalized the AI from what I'm seeing in my games. That doesn't seem to me to be the direction you wanted to go in.

Again, thanks for all the fantastic support!

I like the idea of the "Starbase support network", but I think it should be limited by sector. For instance, if a sector has 3 colonized planets, it can support up to 3 starbases without cost. Any further starbases built in that sector will create a monthly fee. That way you can't build all your free starbases in just a few sectors and ignore the other less strategic / valuable sectors.

Also, I think there should be a small, one time only, fee for each time you add a new module to a starbase (just like everytime you put an addition on your house it costs ya!)

Just my $.02.

~SDC~

Is it possible to make a simpler fix to starbase-o-rama:

Any given planet can only be affected by a single copy of any given module. The same could be true for ships and military enhancements.
You can build more than one SB, etc. or trade for them - the extras just do nothing. A warning when someone attempts to build a second SB in a sector could be added ("you do not benefit from more than one module of any type per sector...")

I like this better than high (undocumented) maintenance costs for regular SBs. You could also reign in the multipliers for freighters by the same mechanism (or just limit them to a max of 100%). As discussed above, any exponenetial formula for SB costs will need to be normalized to the size of the galaxy; otherwise there is no effective limit on them in tiny games and a severe limit on them in gigantic games.

Marc


~SDC~

PLEASE consider the COMMAND POINT RULE of MOO2!

It has PROOVEN to be very effective, reasonable, easy to understand.

Would work fine some way like this for starbases:

10 owned 15+ Stars + 3 mined Resources = 10 * (2) + 3 * (4) = 32 Points

now lets say Starbses are in clases like this:
modules ' 1-5 ' 6-10 ' 11-15 ' etc.
--------------------------------------------
points needed ' 1 ' 2 ' 4 ' etc.

Now as long as you have enough Points you pay 1$ (or something) per Point you spent.
After exeeding this Limit you pay an increasing Price to buy additional Points.

Ther a great possibilites in combinig this with new special Maintain resources, events and buildings.

~SDC~

Galfox, your suggestion seems to me, to be better suited to the 'Logisitics' tech tree/stat that Brad had mentioned. Your Logistics stat would determine the number of Command Points you have. And each module on a SB would cost 1 Command Point. Go over that limit, and your maintenence costs double. And each time after that you go over it, it doubles again. With 0 cost maintence ships going to 1 at the first threshold, and doubling after that.

Social Improvements could then give you extra Logistic points. An example: a Maintence 1, 200 Shields, building called Minor Command Center that gives 5 extra Logistic points.

THAT seems like a good way to represent the growing costs of support infrastructure.
[Message Edited]

From a real perspective, I would think starbases in a setting based on the tech in GalCiv would be mostly self-supporting and would be generators of income, especially as tech increased. If they need to be limited for game balance purposes then some sort of simplistic command-point related system as above would be ideal. We do need the ability to mothball ships and bases rather than destroy them to reduce maintenance.

I have a rather strange way to handle the Star Base problem, but I think it can work. In my opinion, and most of everyone else here it seems, excessive star-base use it too frequent. People over-build them to push back on culture, increase production or trade.

I would limit star-base in a totally different way - make them dependant on resources. That's right - you could only build star-bases on resource points. It would nessecery require to slightly increase the amount of resources in the game (and therefor slightly decreasing their bonus), but it will keep the amount of star-bases in the game low and will increase the importance of the resources as key stratigic staging points.

Personally, I like the struggle on the resource points and find it far more intriguing then just cranking up endless constructor ships and placing star-bases everywhere.