Planets all the same?

Different tiles already have various special things such as artifacts and such.

yeah but isnt he saying that the bonuses arent large enough and that there should be penealties as well?

Penalties is an interesting point. It would add more variation to a worlds value even among equal PQ worlds.

A wider variety of tile graphics would be nice, but its an extra.

Should mountains perhaps be more apparent on the map?

More distinctive looking terrain graphics would make a big difference

Strange colours perhaps for various worlds?

That would really be cool. A frozen world would have an "icy" set of tiles, for instance

Maybe the actual arrangement of squares could be important as well, offering some sort of synergistic bonus to bordering industries? I guess what I am trying to say is that it would be a lot more fun if there was more fiddling/developing going on with the worlds.

I'm not keen on this one. It would probably just complicate the job of the AI.

That would really be cool. A frozen world would have an "icy" set of tiles, for instance


i think that there is already some sort of ice worlds but they only have a PQ of 3 at the most

hmmm i wonder should it be that sometimes an tile has a special ablitiy to have access to the core of the planet like weak soil to implant a PQ Improver which works more effectivly and also besides the Random event where something hapens...

Whar changes planets is not the only the tilers, but the style. More dusty air? Europa style icy planet? How was it formed:
Is it a forest green, rocky mineral rich, young or old planet, lots or little heat, close to its star, spinning like mad, with excentric orbit... but the players bothers about nothing of that, he justs looks tiles to play!

Thus it can be overall more rocky, or is it overall more greens? Or is it Caladan-like (Dune), based on water and coasts? Is it all flat, or mountainous with valeys? Is it lots of deserts, or a place with big winds? Sometimes it can have lots of ressources, but in consequence have a lesser colonization potential because of harshness... Anyway, the player only looks at the effect on tiles (a system on which it would have serious effects), but it could also have an effect on visual styles. I'm not sure if it'd be better in an expansion, not at all or what though.

So for the esthetic, it's all a matter of bringing overall differences. But I guess it'd mean more work, graphically but in the end perhaps on the statistical chances of finding certain tiles on a given planet. So maybe it'd fit more in an expansion, dunno.

I have to agree with the Dano13. Esthetically, all the planets look virtually identical. So the only thing different to me is tile count. Most of the bonus tiles currently in the system are effectively meaningless. If a tile gives less then a 20% bonus, I won't ever see it help me in Beta3a. So what's the point of bonuses? There isn't. What's that leave? Tiles in stupid places.

Planets really lose out, currently. They are effectively the same. We are just using lower PQs in 2 versus 1.

Different tile sets won't help out overall. Then you'll just have the same problem, but have 2 or 3 color palletes of the same thing.

Bonus tiles would do better at giving bonuses that the player can use from day one on the planet. Not something that takes to practically the last dozen or so turns to even have a chance.

My impressions/fun evaluation so far: Planets are worse off then in GC1. They are less fun, and the player will think less about them in GC2 then in GC1. Was this the intended effect?

in GC1 planets techicly didn't exist they were just a portal in a star system and budget allowing. you could bulid as many improvments on a planet as you wanted. in GC2 you can only place bulidgs where there are tiles so some intense streagty is required...

Lowa11, that isn't actually correct (re: intense strategy).

I find that I purpose my worlds once, and only revisit them to upgrade their facilities. So, where's the intense strategy? No where.

It's nice being able to repurpose a world. But actually doing so will be a rare event. Oh well, I hope governors can do a good job of following templates when building, updating, and repurposing worlds so that we don't have to waste any real time on worlds. Otherwise, worlds will just takes away from the fun and strategy of the game.

Sorry Star Pilot I just don't agree.

I think the tile system is a huge improvement over gc1 and it does require strategy. You have to decide which worlds will do what for your empire and to what degree. You have limited space so will you build the entertainment centre or another research lab? If you build the lab is that low morale going to be a problem later? Or do you need more research badly enough to risk it?

Compare that to "oh I'll just build everything on every planet in this order" that was gc1 and its much more involved.

I just can't see how someone can say that, Star Pilot.

First off:

In GalCiv I, there was NO LIMIT to what you could build on a planet. Therefore, there was no thought whatsoever about what you built on a planet. You'd pretty much build anything.

Secondly:

Effective strategy would involve having certain worlds specialize.  What I think is missing are buildings that magnify certain TYPES of buildings. For instance, you would be more inclined to build a "Research world" if there was a "Research Network Center" that took your research on that planet and increased it by 15%.  That's not in beta 3 but it might make it into the first beta 4. 

Thirdly:

There's a lot less micro-managment now IMO. We may not do governors at all since you can just queue up an entire planet and revisit them later.  At most, we might have govenrors who set certain buildings to upgrade to other buildings as they become available but they remain whatever type you set them to in the beginning.

Have to disagree with less micro-management, Frogboy, especially early in the game. In GC1, my first act was to create two governors (one is for normal colonies, one was for larger colonies that would produce the bulk of my military ships), and as I colonized a planet, assign it to one of the two govenors. As I got new improvements, I'd assign them to one or both govenors, and the only time I intervened with a planet controlled by a govenor was for morale issues. On the other hand, every time I took an alien colony intact, I'd spend a minute or two stripping out all the stuff I didn't need/want, usually saving 20-30cr or more per turn in maintenance fees.

In GC2, when I get banks, I have to go to every world that I want a bank on and add one (or more), same with mines and all the other improvements that you don't start with. Your "at most" clause is my "at least" as it would at least eliminate going back through all my worlds to place improvements that are upgrades to existing improvements. Hmmm... There may be other ways to do it, without individual govenors, something similar to the military govenor of CG1, that would let me say "queue an upgrade for basic starport to improved starport" but there's still many times I wouldn't want to do that, and would wind up having to go through by hand and deciding where I want to do certain upgrades. Think players that use farms to control population, hence morale.

On the other hand, I can see where govenors are going to be a pain in GC2. Tell me the number of tiles I've got, and I'll tell you what I'll put there. Tell me how many of each bonus resource is there, and what goes on the planet can radically change. I don't see a way for GC1-style govenors to handle that kind of complexity, unless we get more govenors.

On the other hand, I just thought of an alternative that might just work, though I'm not sure if the general public is ready for it. How feasible is this, Frogboy? (I don't see any programming issues, but since I don't know your code, that's a hunch at best.)

First, we need a way to designate tiles for improvements that we don't have yet (O.K., need is a little strong, since I offer an alternative two paragraphs down).

Second, we need a way to group colonies. Call it a govenor, call it a category, call it George for all I care. District? Nah, districts are usually laid out geographically, not by category/type. Attach them to bureaucrats? Or maybe attach them to commities? Assistants? Paper pushers? Being able to have a colony as part of multiple groups would be very nice, but not necessary. Being able to name the groups would also be very nice, rather than numbered or fixed name (now where did I put my list of planets that were my primary ship producers?).

Third, we need some commands to issue to groups, like "upgrade all improvement Xs on these colonies to improvement Ys", "switch military production to ship Z", or "build one improvement W in any unreserved tile, preferably a tile with a matching bonus, failing that, preferably a tile with no bonus." Oh, and maybe a "build one improvement V in any unreserved title that does not have a mismatched bonus, prefereably one with a matching bonus." Ultimately, even go so far as "build one (or more) type U improvement on each colony in any available tiles that have matching bonuses."

Finally, we need a way to do next-colony/prev-colony within a group, for those times that we need to analyze what we're adding, but don't want to go through the entire list of colonies looking for the ones that need the work.

In retrospect, items 2 and 3 are the critical ones, item 1 (probably one of the harder items) only needed if we don't get the W and V options of item 3 (even just the W option reduces the need), and item 4 would just be really nice to have. It still feels a little like micromanagement, but much better than what we have now, and probably suits the game much better than GC1 style govenors.

Then again, I'm the kind of programmer who thinks in terms of sets, so this kind of organization makes sense to me. I can't imagine having only item three and going through a list of all my colonies and ctrl-clicking on the ones I want to modify, though that would be easier for normal people to get.

With the direction GC2 colony management is going at this time, with "At most, we might have govenrors who set certain buildings to upgrade to other buildings as they become available" type govenors and no other way to reduce the micromanagement, I'm going to spend a lot less time playing huge/gigantic maps, my favorite pasttime of GC1 (well, of any game really, I like room to expand my empire without having to take someone elses territory right off the bat).

Oh, and I just thought of one more addition, just to make things more complicated.

Specifying the priority/urgency of the request.

1) drop everything, do it now.
2) put it at the end of the normal work queue
3) put it at the end of the idle work queue.

Where the normal work queue would contain anything not added via this mechanism, or anything added with normal priority, and the idle work queue is what gets worked on when there's nothing in the normal queue (so I could say "when you're not doing anything else, upgrade all basic factories to factories, but if I give you something real to work on, that gets priority").

And (get out your club/nerf bat/weapon of choice), for real creaping featuritis, let me add to the head or the tail of the normal and idle work queue. Nah, even I woudn't get enough use out of that one

Oh, before I give the wrong impression with that last paragraph, it was only that last feature request that I thought went too far, I really am interested in feedback on the feasibility/usability of this idea, including the prioritization. Personally, I think this idea is more functional than even GC1-style govenors, my biggest questions involve how comfortable other people would find this type of UI. There's a reason I never design a UI without at least bouncing all the details off of a "normal" user.

Lord FrogBoy, you are welcome to come watch me play. Then you'll see what I mean.

In GC1, I'd run 2 governors. One for my big worlds, one for my small worlds. I'd only adjust an individual world's only queue for moral reasons or building a wonder/trade good. When I took over alien worlds, I'd clean out the mess of their worlds, and then assign them the proper governor, based on world size

In GC2, I am still doing the same thing! Big worlds are industry, everything else follows the exact same formula, as they pay for empire's expenses, and do the bulk of my research. That's the optimal use for worlds. (Only the home world starts different, but it gets made over as soon as I have other worlds) There isn't any real worry over "should this be a bank world? Research world? Culture world?" Nope. Not one bit. Do a pull on the beta B crew and find out what they are doing. Me, I find the Min/Max line doesn't care. Resource bonuses turn out to be worthless 95% of the time. So resource bonuses don't matter as they aren't worth the bother most of the time. That makes worlds a simple tile count issue. Anything less then 10 tiles is a support world. Over 10, and I will make it a manu center, unless I've already gotten past critical mass (don't want to worry with having to give yet another starport orders and even more ships). If I have, it gets the same support formula, and I play on until the game crashes, I win, or I fall asleep.

What's this mean? Worlds have Zero Flavor. It's a simple math problem. But it's a bigger pain in the behind to deal with, because I don't have governors to automate the process for me.

I hate having to go in and upgrade everything by hand. (For instance, replacing markets with banks.) That will have to have a governor. GC2 is going to need it, to keep down the Micro-management tediums. Otherwise, GC2 is adding in a huge dose of tedium, and that drops the fun level.

Worlds haven't changed significantly. You can dress it up, but it amounts to the same thing, Brad. Your big worlds have to be your Manufacturing centers, if you are going to build ships (like warships). That pushes off the support (primarily MONEY! then a bit of research) functionality. Think about it.

Oh yeah... I never build farms. Farms suck. Markets and Banks kick their butt, and I never have to waste tilage on additional morale raisers doing that. If Farms are meant to raise money, but other things do it better without adding to the morale issue, why have Farms at all? This is balancing issue.

Seriously. Micromanagement is up (Tedium very high), not down, with the new worlds (thanks to having to manually upgrade), but what a world is still determined entirely by its PQ (tile count). Maybe this will change when more gets into the game, but frankly, I doubt it. All my little worlds have to be the research worlds that crank out the big money to pay for my (always big) industry worlds. Only the Homeworld gets a makeover, as it has to do some initial money/research until my colonies or conquests come online. I could of course, make full research worlds and full bank worlds, but using a mix means that I don't have to readjust my existing builds--- otherwise I would have to spend even more time in the tedious task of picking tiles, hitting demolish, then picking what I wanted build on top of that. (We really need a simple "replace with..." option, rather then making it a multi click. Bleah.) May the RNGods save me from that snooze fest.

I like having the ability to give a world a total makeover. Seriously. But I never actually need to. I hope this is also just a beta issue, but I don't think adding in more tile decoration is going to change that. Consider, I just get Stadium tech. Stadiums grant ECx2 bonus in morale. That would mean I can delete 2 Entertainment Centers, and have 1 Stadium? But I have to do this upgrade in pieces currently. Demolish the first EC, queue Stadium, return after Stadium is built to demolish the now unnecessary #2 EC so that tile can be used for something better. We can improve that by adding a "Replace With..." command instead. Now that upgrade is just one trip back to each world instead. Pick an EC and choose "Replace with... Stadium", then pick the other EC and pick "Replace with... Bank/Whatever". But this is so tedious, why do I need to bother? I won't, unless I need the money.

I look forward to seeing how advances in the game code/features changes things. But currently, how worlds need to be used hasn't changed, Brad. They are still the same thing. Only now, I have to go and plunk down (then go back and demolish to upgrade! ) my queue instead of letting the GC1 governor handle it. Less fun due to much greater amounts of micromanagemet, and I still only use 2 classes of worlds, so all the worlds end up being identical, regardless of how the brown and blue is scattered around. They are just Big World 1, Big World 2, Little World 1, Little World 2, etc. but now with 75% less fun!

Oh yeah... I never build farms. Farms suck. Markets and Banks kick their butt, and I never have to waste tilage on additional morale raisers doing that. If Farms are meant to raise money, but other things do it better without adding to the morale issue, why have Farms at all? This is balancing issue.

Farms produce food which determines your population cap. 5 units of food raises your pop cap by 5 billion population, if the population matches food production then the colony can't support any further growth. (Pop cap is also limited by morale so its a combination thing)

I think Starpilot has really hit the nail on the head. There really are only two categories of worlds - Big and small, and the Micromanagement has gone up. To address the first point I think there needs to be a variety of World modifiers (Fertile worlds, arid worlds, radioactive, mineral rich, etc, etc you could probably come up with 100 or so Sci-fi modifiers to a planet) to make planets more distinctive. Not sure how to handle the second issue.

On a related note, I think there needs to be an option on Governors. On one of the older builds of GC1, once Governors finished a project they went on to the next one assigned without bothering you. This was GREAT - and cut down button clicking by about 70%. On the later builds they kept pestering you with the screen showing them what they were going to build next. Click, click. click, click for each turn. And becuase I was clicking so fast to accept each choice, in the rare case where I DID want to overrule their choices, I would blow past them, and have to go and find the planet the hard way anyway. In any event I think an option for whether new build projects of a governor need to be confirmed or not would make everyone happy.

Dano

Dano13, I agree. Governors as they existed in GC1 won't work for GC2 because of the planetary tiles. The suggestion I posted above is the only solution I've thought of that didn't involve an extensive AI for govenors, probably extensive enough to kill the idea right there.

However, since there's been no feedback at all, I'm assuming that neither the devs nor the players think that it's both doable and usable. Understandable, I'm a freak when it comes to what I would consider usable.

I hate getting into complicated mechanics so don't comment on them. I just talk about magic buttons I want see which make a certain thing happen. The rest I leave in the hands of the devs.

I like the new tile system, I'm not finding it too much work. I would like an option to auto upgrade buildings (starport to advanced starport for example) but thats about it at the moment.

I agree with Star Pilot too.

In GalCiv I, there was NO LIMIT to what you could build on a planet. Therefore, there was no thought whatsoever about what you built on a planet. You'd pretty much build anything.

No, you did not build wothless stuff, of which there was a lot. No +morale stuff on planets in your core, no expensive shipyards on planets that had such a low construction rate you built only constructors there. Also, research boosters were usually expensive and I restricted them to high output planets. Otherwise they costed so much I had to lower the overall spendings or research % (because of the not-free part granted by the improvements).

Planets were also more different because of events. An event that gave +30% to ships or research made that planet a ship-producer or a research-planet. Right now you get # +7,10,20% tiles for farming and research in 10 tiles, that's an average of +1% farming and +3% research. Make the specials +200% for a class 10 planet, it'll still be +20% (effectively adding 2 free tiles of one type rather than 1/5th of a tile), and group them so a planet has lots of good farming sites or lots of artefacts. Also provide more crappy tiles that can be terraformed,like 20% to 50% of the tiles on some world, or tiles which have minuses until you discover some tech.
+Farming is also useless in terms of planet specialisation as food is not traded among planets. You could either ditch +food sites or allow for food trade if you want food tiles to have a specialisation effect.

Buildings with planet-wide effects can change this a bit, but probably not more than they did in GCI. I didn't build the same stuff on my econ capital and my tech capital. This affected about 2 planets in the whole world... But these were one per civ types so you should have many of them, not one per civ-kinds but one-per-planet if you want to allow for specialized planets. Shipyards can also make a difference. If you create a planet which is unable to build ships, it makes sense to not build shipyard improvements on other tiles. But then the military spending is not tunable per planet, so that makes such a strategy basically worthless unless the money funded to military is actually used on social or tech, rather than lost (GCi) or refunded. If you could say: Refund military project money to tech on planet X, to banks (which should give money) on planet Y and on culture on planet Z, then you could specialize them. But this may seem arbitrary to refund on a single category, which would be required in order to specialize the planet.

LDI... Frogboy is corect There are no limitations there are no Real limits however your not likly to bulid stupid stuff (i actually bulit everything on every planet though it took forever ) i think that if governers will be implemented alot of work will have to be done so there compatiable with planet tiles. i think they are a must but they need to be "Told". i think govs should be kept but they cannot bulid a "base" object and can only upgrade so it doesn't irriate you in the later now early on you got like one or two planets its easy to maintain HOWEVER later on it gets increasligly diffuculit its harder in GC2 than it was in GC1 oh well im hoping Beta 4 will PWN Beta 3 im tired of the game crashing,AI kills me,custom ships unfairness, Better tech tree, Better graphs (Though it can hurt my comp!) ETC.-uhh those are the bugs i care about that "NEED" to be fixed Very soon or im gonna start cursing and hiting my machine!

Lowa11, I think any governor replacement that can't handle new buildings is still a major step backwards. There are to many improvements that you don't start the game with. Banks are a big one. I agree that GC1 style governors won't work, but we really need to find something that will, otherwise the micromanagement in GC2 will increase considerably over GC1.

Planets were also more different because of events. An event that gave +30% to ships or research made that planet a ship-producer or a research-planet. Right now you get # +7,10,20% tiles for farming and research in 10 tiles, that's an average of +1% farming and +3% research. Make the specials +200% for a class 10 planet, it'll still be +20% (effectively adding 2 free tiles of one type rather than 1/5th of a tile), and group them so a planet has lots of good farming sites or lots of artefacts. Also provide more crappy tiles that can be terraformed,like 20% to 50% of the tiles on some world, or tiles which have minuses until you discover some tech. +Farming is also useless in terms of planet specialisation as food is not traded among planets. You could either ditch +food sites or allow for food trade if you want food tiles to have a specialisation effect.

You still get planet events while colonising in GC2 (if we don't then I'm seeing things).

The values of the tile bonuses come under play testing and that's what we do in Beta4 onwards, same goes for the number of terraformable tiles (which definitely needs increasing).

I think you've got a point about the food, I've thought the same a few times. It would much better strategically if food could be exported between colonies.

I never do food, as I find that 1 bank is better for money in then 1 farm, and I never have to add in morale features.
This means my worlds are ripe for invading, I suppose, but I never let the AI get that close. This isn't hard to do, as long as you avoid maps with lots of worlds, as the AI always does a perfect land rush while you are wondering where the darned things are (since they aren't at the stars anymore, but somewhere around them).

Ugleb, I've not seen one colonizing event since the beta started. Not one. Maybe there are there, but if they are, I'm not tripping them.

Worlds are currently worse off then before. If you put it to a vote right now, I'd vote for the old style worlds back, because those would be less hassle then current style worlds on moderate world count. How can we possible play large or gigantic maps spanning 100s of worlds, if we don't have governors to take out all the work! Think about it! Even plopping everything down at the start would be a lot more micro-management (MM) then GC1 ever had in it. If the MM goes up for something as basic as the worlds, it's not going to be a gold star mention with fans or reviewers.

Of course, the new custom ships, that will be. But you only design ships a few times in GC2. You will always be messing with worlds unless we at least get an Upgrade Manager. Consider: In concept, it should be easy! When a world's build queue is empty, the Upgrade Managar would just schedule a Lvl 1 facility to go to Lvl 2, and when that completed repeated (for all levels available). Players would set up their upgrade schedule like an old style GC1, allowing them to prioritize what should be upgraded first. Of course, players still have the MM of laying out new worlds and cleaning up/tweaking when they get big bonus items (ie, Stadiums = EC x2 of above), but at least that's one MM nightmare removed.

Just consider it, oh great and powerful StarDockian empire! One of GC1's strength was the fact that worlds were not a MM social queue problem. That allowed players to have larger empires, letting them have the feeling of more epic games. Without governors and helpers with the MM, the size (and consequently the feel) of GC2 games will shrink in actual gameplay, just to stay managable.