C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Steve Walmsley]

Hi Steve!
I'm a fan, player and long-time lurker. . .
Of the aspects of the game "explore-expand-exploit-exterminate" I like more the first two and I would know if there are plans to develop the aspect of colony managing and keep colonies happy, flourishing and healthy.

Nothing beyond what is currently in the changes list. I'll see how things progress after release.

[bombastico]

Ok thank you and have a nice day!

[Jorgen_CAB]

I would like a slight overhaul of the technology system so we can't just build labs to produce research points. It should be tied with more factors such as general education and amount of resource spent on higher education.

I also think that even a relatively small empire should be able to match a bigger empire in terms of theoretical research, the difference should be in the amount of applied research two empires can produce. That would mean more restrictions on how much you can focus in any single technology. As it is no really realistic that you can spend labs and expect a linear return of that investment.

I also believe that scientist skill often play too much of a role in the amount of points you get.

I also would like that technologies that give automatic bonuses should scale in cost with the society they impact or if those modifiers can be added in a different way so there is an industrial or scientific cost to implement them throughout an empire. We don't get our ships automatically upgraded with new technology as soon as we discover them, the same thing should be true for the rest of  society as well.

[alex_brunius]

Some brainstorming/thoughts.

I would like a slight overhaul of the technology system so we can't just build labs to produce research points. It should be tied with more factors such as general education and amount of resource spent on higher education.

Bringing in education  is a bit of a can of worms / slippery slope here because for it to make sense more and more of the entire civilian sector needs to be modeled, but otherwise I am all for something to make it less linear with empire size which ties in probably more with your next point.

I also think that even a relatively small empire should be able to match a bigger empire in terms of theoretical research, the difference should be in the amount of applied research two empires can produce. That would mean more restrictions on how much you can focus in any single technology. As it is no really realistic that you can spend labs and expect a linear return of that investment.

The feasibility of Tall vs Wide empire strategies is a common debate in all 4x games I've engaged in discussions around, and wide is certainly being VERY favored in Aurora with everything from population growth mechanics to research rewarding spreading out rather than focusing "inward" on quality over quantity. I am also a firm believer that diminishing returns makes almost every simulation-like game better due to it's nature of being self-balancing much more so than a linear scaling is.

I also believe that scientist skill often play too much of a role in the amount of points you get.

For sure. While it feels great to have that 65% * 4 = 3.6 times research speed when you do have it, it's also absolutely devastating to lose it, and it's a bit hard on your immersion to have a single leader over 10 million research workers able to influence the output to such a degree. Another immersion ruining factor is how an empire with billions of subjects can refocus 100% of it's research effort overnight into a totally different area, so some sort of "retooling" delay for labs switching specialization might be something worth considering. I would like the research bonuses to be gained and connected closer to the planet/lab in some way instead and have leaders able to maybe influence it in smaller and more unique/interesting ways in terms of tradeoffs. Maybe some scientists reduce credit cost instead of increase research point output, while those that increase output the greatest also increase credit costs more to mention one option, another is having them influence how many workers the labs need as a tradeoff too ( Classic efficiency vs output ).

I also would like that technologies that give automatic bonuses should scale in cost with the society they impact or if those modifiers can be added in a different way so there is an industrial or scientific cost to implement them throughout an empire. We don't get our ships automatically upgraded with new technology as soon as we discover them, the same thing should be true for the rest of  society as well.

It's a tricky one though to implement in a good way in order to not make it a huge choir and boring aspect of the game to have to upgrade 30 worlds manually each time you research a new tech. One of my favorite implementations of this was in ST:TNG:BotF ( yes that is the proper abbreviation of the full title). This game let you assign an industrial project to upgrade labs, factories, farms or other building types that became progressively more expensive with tech before being able to enjoy the advantage and it always was such a hard choice what to prioritize and when, especially since the price of obsolete upgrades was significantly reduced so letting a system fall behind made upgrading to the old tech levels much cheaper.

Another abstracted way to achieve something similar might be to have later techs just reduce the worker requirements instead ( or at least mostly provide efficiency improvement this way ) which means that you constantly need to increase the number of factories/labs/finance centers and so on to gain benefit of the later tech levels. ( Building more buildings here is an abstraction/simplification of investments into upgrading to more advanced buildings ). This would probably make the math much harder though to judge how many buildings your population can support unless other UI improvements are made.

[Steve Walmsley]

Not sure if I mentioned anywhere but max scientist bonus in C# Aurora is 50%,

[Father Tim]

I'd be happy to see Research Facilities switch from an 'X points per month' basis to a 'random amount per month centered on X points' -- effectively a die roll for each production cycle.  Overall research times should stay roughly the same, but this 2,000 point item might take a month longer than that 2,000 point item.  I'd definitely prefer not to know that my empire will invent a new drive system on Tuesday, September 14th, 926 AL.

I would also prefer to see newly assigned labs & scientists 'ramp up' to their full bonus -- maybe 1-5% per week.  I wouldn't want to penalize racial tech projects for the same team (so that Dr. P&P's labs aren't dropping back to zero for each new size of the same old engine), but I can see arguments both for and against keeping the bonus when going from Magnetic Confinement to Internal Confinement, for example.

- - - - -

A much more radical idea that tempts me is to drastically reduce the number of labs a scientist can oversee (say, to one-fifth of current, i.e. one per admin rating) and to allow multiple lab groups working on the same project to produce combined progress.  (Currently, any research done on Mars is ignored on Earth, and vice versa, unless and until a project is completed.)

So instead of having one super-scientist who can oversee thirty-five labs in one place all working on the next anti-matter engines, you would instead have one scientist with seven labs on Earth, another with five labs on Mars, a third with four labs on Io, etc.  I would want a small penalty (maybe only 10%) to the research produced by the additional scientists to enforce the paradigm that 'a single project under a single leader is more efficient' -- not for "realism" (I don't want to open that can of worms) but because I think there is value in that game mechanic.  Probabaly also an additonal penalty for research done in a different system.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Bringing in education  is a bit of a can of worms / slippery slope here because for it to make sense more and more of the entire civilian sector needs to be modeled, but otherwise I am all for something to make it less linear with empire size which ties in probably more with your next point.

The feasibility of Tall vs Wide empire strategies is a common debate in all 4x games I've engaged in discussions around, and wide is certainly being VERY favored in Aurora with everything from population growth mechanics to research rewarding spreading out rather than focusing "inward" on quality over quantity. I am also a firm believer that diminishing returns makes almost every simulation-like game better due to it's nature of being self-balancing much more so than a linear scaling is.

For sure. While it feels great to have that 65% * 4 = 3.6 times research speed when you do have it, it's also absolutely devastating to lose it, and it's a bit hard on your immersion to have a single leader over 10 million research workers able to influence the output to such a degree. Another immersion ruining factor is how an empire with billions of subjects can refocus 100% of it's research effort overnight into a totally different area, so some sort of "retooling" delay for labs switching specialization might be something worth considering. I would like the research bonuses to be gained and connected closer to the planet/lab in some way instead and have leaders able to maybe influence it in smaller and more unique/interesting ways in terms of tradeoffs. Maybe some scientists reduce credit cost instead of increase research point output, while those that increase output the greatest also increase credit costs more to mention one option, another is having them influence how many workers the labs need as a tradeoff too ( Classic efficiency vs output ).

It's a tricky one though to implement in a good way in order to not make it a huge choir and boring aspect of the game to have to upgrade 30 worlds manually each time you research a new tech. One of my favorite implementations of this was in ST:TNG:BotF ( yes that is the proper abbreviation of the full title). This game let you assign an industrial project to upgrade labs, factories, farms or other building types that became progressively more expensive with tech before being able to enjoy the advantage and it always was such a hard choice what to prioritize and when, especially since the price of obsolete upgrades was significantly reduced so letting a system fall behind made upgrading to the old tech levels much cheaper.

Another abstracted way to achieve something similar might be to have later techs just reduce the worker requirements instead ( or at least mostly provide efficiency improvement this way ) which means that you constantly need to increase the number of factories/labs/finance centers and so on to gain benefit of the later tech levels. ( Building more buildings here is an abstraction/simplification of investments into upgrading to more advanced buildings ). This would probably make the math much harder though to judge how many buildings your population can support unless other UI improvements are made.

Ahh... please don't get me started on the Tall versus Wide troupe... something that only exist in fantasy land. Reality is far more complex and evolved than that.

I generally agree with what you say... the point would simply to make research less linear. If you invest twice the amount of resources into research you simply can't expect twice the outcome of that investment.

There also is a very big difference between theoretical and practical science. As most factions in Aurora are big enough to be competitive in theoretical science but economy is what generally will govern how much you can apply that theoretical science into applicable technology. And even then there need to be limitations... at some point it probably don't matter how big your economy is, certain research will still take time. economy will at some point matter more for how wide you can spread your science and be competitive through multiple choices and general superiority in quality too.

When I refer to smaller empires I don't mean the troupe of Tall from certain 4x games... I hate that term. I just mean an empire with a weaker economy. In real life a physically small country can obviously be more economically stronger than a larger country or some country with a smaller population versus one with a bigger population. But that is a complex issue and can't be explained with Wide or Tall as those concepts really don't exist in such simple terms, so we should not loose ourselves in flawed concepts...

I agree that there should not be some tedious way to integrate technology it would have to be easy and automatic. But there should be a choice to how much resources you want to put into it and by which speed you want to incorporate it versus using the resources elsewhere. The same type of decisions you make when updating a fleet now or later based on other needs.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'd be happy to see Research Facilities switch from an 'X points per month' basis to a 'random amount per month centered on X points' -- effectively a die roll for each production cycle.  Overall research times should stay roughly the same, but this 2,000 point item might take a month longer than that 2,000 point item.  I'd definitely prefer not to know that my empire will invent a new drive system on Tuesday, September 14th, 926 AL.

I would also prefer to see newly assigned labs & scientists 'ramp up' to their full bonus -- maybe 1-5% per week.  I wouldn't want to penalize racial tech projects for the same team (so that Dr. P&P's labs aren't dropping back to zero for each new size of the same old engine), but I can see arguments both for and against keeping the bonus when going from Magnetic Confinement to Internal Confinement, for example.

- - - - -

A much more radical idea that tempts me is to drastically reduce the number of labs a scientist can oversee (say, to one-fifth of current, i.e. one per admin rating) and to allow multiple lab groups working on the same project to produce combined progress.  (Currently, any research done on Mars is ignored on Earth, and vice versa, unless and until a project is completed.)

So instead of having one super-scientist who can oversee thirty-five labs in one place all working on the next anti-matter engines, you would instead have one scientist with seven labs on Earth, another with five labs on Mars, a third with four labs on Io, etc.  I would want a small penalty (maybe only 10%) to the research produced by the additional scientists to enforce the paradigm that 'a single project under a single leader is more efficient' -- not for "realism" (I don't want to open that can of worms) but because I think there is value in that game mechanic.  Probabaly also an additonal penalty for research done in a different system.

Certainly some interesting ideas... personally I like if there is a die roll each cycle if you manage to get some progress and you not knowing the exact progress. I also like the way science is performed in Rule the Waves... to be honest that game give a relatively good simulation of how research is actually performed. You can't actually just ignore some research but you can reduce the likelihood that you have breakthroughs in some over other areas but you can't have 100% control of it.

I would really like a system similar to that if possible... but I'm sure allot of people would not like not being in full control of what gets researched... but it would be really good for role-play as you have to play the cards that get dealt and there will naturally be differences in factions research endeavours. You can't postpone development because you have not reached a certain level in a certain technology... you have no idea what technology your scientists will have a breakthrough next and when that will be anyway.

[SultanPepper]

Continuing on with the Research Discussion, I was always a fan of how Sword of the Stars did it. 
In SotS, you put a portion of your economic income into science, which directly affected how quickly you'd a tech.  More money = faster progress.  That aspect wouldn't work well in Aurora, but the breakthrough-overbudget system could.  After reaching 50% of the tech progress, there was a chance each turn it would be finished with a breakthrough.  At 100%, there'd be a chance they got held up and it'd go overbudget.  The chances would scale as you got closer or further from 100%.  That would potentially eliminate the 'Tech on 12th of March' factor, and if you could give a medal or commendation to Scientists with breakthroughs that could also be cool.

[Garfunkel]

Could also steal a page from the original Master of Orion. You select an emphasis (though MoO did allow you to focus everything) but your research is benefiting all fields to some extent. And once tech progresses, you need to improve the infrastructure of your planets. Of course in MoO it was just a slider and the game even adjusted it automatically for you.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Could also steal a page from the original Master of Orion. You select an emphasis (though MoO did allow you to focus everything) but your research is benefiting all fields to some extent. And once tech progresses, you need to improve the infrastructure of your planets. Of course in MoO it was just a slider and the game even adjusted it automatically for you.

That is roughly how Rule the Waves technology works too... you can select to focus more or less on different technologies. It is pointless to focus on everything as that is the same as leaving everything on normal focus.

You then also commit part of your economy to it. The higher this value is the less you get out of it.

I think that having a "slider" or just selecting a "%" box of the number of wealth you dedicate for technological upgrades for each colony would suffice. Then each colony could have a progress meter for each research category you want to catch up on that goes up over time depending on how much wealth you spend on improving it.

You could also give a lump sum of wealth that then speed up the process by up to twice the speed...

For example...

A colony is generating 1000 wealth and have 100 factories... you get the research to add +20% extra industry power. You have selected 10% of the wealth to go toward upgrading technology at that colony which meas it automatically add 100 wealth per year towards upgrade. Let's say each factory need 10 wealth to upgrade so you would need 1000 wealth to upgrade them all to the new standard. Let's say you produce 1000 points of construction at the start. After one year you have built 10 new industries and spent 100 wealth on upgrades... obviously all new industries is of the new standard... so now 20 of 110 industries are done... but the game does not have to track exactly how many just the overall progress, so the progress now is 18.2% so the colony generate 1139 construction points with 110 factories.
The game just show a progress made at 18.2% to max tech capacity for industry.

If you say... give the colony 300 wealth for upgrades these get stored at the colony earmarked for technological upgrades and for each cycle the colony upgrade it matches money from this storage so it upgrades twice as fast... so... in the above example it would apply 200 wealth the first year and take 100 wealth from this pool to do the upgrades and instead of ending up at 18.6% you instead end up at  30/110 at 27.2% or 1159 construction points

This should be a relatively simple yet effective system that is easy to overlook and will not require much micromanagement.

There could always be a default value for how much money would go towards technological upgrades and you don't have to fiddle with it unless you want it to change. Obviously no wealth is used if there is nothing to upgrade.

Such a system will have to make decisions on how fast you tech up depending on how fast you are able to integrate said technology to your society. You also should not be able to choose which sector to upgrade just a sum to upgrade and it apply that across all sectors that it can upgrade, that is the simplest way to do it. But you can boost it by adding funds and colonies that generate more wealth also can upgrade faster which to some extent make sense as an economically stronger colony should be able to upgrade faster.

Wealth upgrades probably should work slightly different though, at least for the civilian economy.

Or some such system that is simple yet effective and give you a choice of how to utilise your economy and to what benefit. If you already is overtaxing your wealth economy with military assets you might not afford technological upgrades... but then you have not been kind to your economy in the first place. 

[Father Tim]

I don't mind if my empire's mines slowly ramp production from 16 to 20 upon researching a new level of tech -- even if the start of such increases 'flow' outward from the discovering colony at 'the speed of ship' -- as long as I don't have to micro-manage them.

However, I can't conceive of a situation where I wouldn't immediately pay to start/continue the process -- whether that cost be wealth, minerals, lost production, or whatever -- unless it there were enemies in my sytems and that cost meant the difference between launching new ships this production cycle or not.

In every other case it's a net increase in {whatever}, regardless of the cost you put on it.  It's a decision on par with "Do I buy $5 worth of gas so I can take $50 worth of empties to the bottle depot, or do I leave them in my basement for another month?"  It's never not going to be worth it.

- - - - -

It sounds like my only real decision is going to be "Do I pay extra to get increased capacity sooner?"  To which the answer is going to be blatantly obvious.  Empire making a profit?  Do it (because we can afford it)!  Empire running a deficit?  Do it (because it increases taxes, and therefore imperial income)!

[Jorgen_CAB]

I don't mind if my empire's mines slowly ramp production from 16 to 20 upon researching a new level of tech -- even if the start of such increases 'flow' outward from the discovering colony at 'the speed of ship' -- as long as I don't have to micro-manage them.

However, I can't conceive of a situation where I wouldn't immediately pay to start/continue the process -- whether that cost be wealth, minerals, lost production, or whatever -- unless it there were enemies in my sytems and that cost meant the difference between launching new ships this production cycle or not.

In every other case it's a net increase in {whatever}, regardless of the cost you put on it.  It's a decision on par with "Do I buy $5 worth of gas so I can take $50 worth of empties to the bottle depot, or do I leave them in my basement for another month?"  It's never not going to be worth it.

- - - - -

It sounds like my only real decision is going to be "Do I pay extra to get increased capacity sooner?"  To which the answer is going to be blatantly obvious.  Empire making a profit?  Do it (because we can afford it)!  Empire running a deficit?  Do it (because it increases taxes, and therefore imperial income)!

Yes... but the decision might become what areas of your economy will you sacrifice in the mean time as it will require wealth to do the upgrades for you and how much wealth can you spend on it. We only can save a limited number of wealth now, so these should be real choice that have to be made.

To make it more interesting you could also make this a diminishing return sort if payment. So 10% means you get 10% return but at 100% you only get 50% of the investment to upgrades as there are more overhead cost to increase the speed of the projects.

There should always be a choice otherwise it make no sense to have the system in place. That is why linear system are not the greatest as there always are a best option.

I also agree on the micromanagement part, there should be minimal interaction and the action you do take should have a big impact.

There is also the fact that some colonies can upgrade allot faster than others as it depends on the wealth generation of the individual colony. Now... you obviously would need to have a special case for automated colonies... a base line wealth cost per building... so automated mines probably would upgrade slower than regular mines for example. There could be a minimum wealth to upgrade at say 10% of the cost per year no matter the wealth distribution of any colony.
But colonies with no population would become much slower to upgrade than colonies with population... at least the max speed possible.

But there would be decisions to be made in how much of the economy goes into developing tech as to how much goes into implementing it in a very different way.

[Father Tim]

So if I spend 10% of a colony's wealth (per month, for a year) my installations upgrade in a year, and if I spend 100% (for six months) they upgrade in six months?  I'm pretty sure I'm going to find some level of acceptable 'penalty' (maybe 25% for nine months) and "set it and forget it" on an empire-wide level.

[Jorgen_CAB]

So if I spend 10% of a colony's wealth (per month, for a year) my installations upgrade in a year, and if I spend 100% (for six months) they upgrade in six months?  I'm pretty sure I'm going to find some level of acceptable 'penalty' (maybe 25% for nine months) and "set it and forget it" on an empire-wide level.

That will depend on your overall health of the empire... so it will always be a decision at some stage.