Initial Game Settings and Resulting Rate of Gameplay

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

Hi all,

A lot of people play with changes from the default new game settings which affect the speed of various things, e.g. research, terraforming, or survey speed. Most commonly it seems that people reduce these, often quite a bit, in order to slow down gameplay - for example, reducing the speed at which new components are developed so that fleets do not need to be replaced or refitted quite as often.

I'm curious as to what settings people actually use for the various game speeds, and more interestingly what effect these settings have in terms of practical gameplay speed, i.e. how long it takes for things to happen compared to a normal playthrough. So for example, if you reduce research and survey speeds: how many years do you typically go between fleet upgrades/replacements? About how many years does it take you to colonize or develop a new star system? How long do you typically take to reach milestones or benchmarks e.g. parity with Precursor fleets or wiping out the first NPR? Things of that nature.

Also if anyone plays with Invaders on, how long do you usually last before dying horribly how's that work out for you?

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Current game is 25% research, 150% difficulty, earth starting pop 1.5 billion. Conventional start.

It took me 30ish years to beat my first (tiny) precursor base (with nuclear pulse/improved nuclear pulse). 40 for the first real bases. All the NPRs are stronger than me still. And I would've needed longer, I think, except I stole gas cooled reactors and ion drive tech via espionage.

I still have ships that are 20 years old in service, though they are pretty obsolete. My first rank ships are a decade or less of age; I'm in the middle of a fleet rebuild right now that will move those ships to the second rank.

[Rich.h]

Here's a few shots of things for my current game, I started off in 2080 as a standard TN empire.

As you can see, things ave been turned way way down. and the results are dramatic. I am now sitting on 11bn people spread across three systems, with Sol heavily populated. Point to note is that I also SM'd a few changes to my race setup, firstly being a reduction in population density, this results in Earth only able to sustain 7bn people. I find this gives me a good reason to actually get out there and make new colonies instead of just making endless auto miners.

To see what a difference the research rate makes, Mars houses the entire research for the civilization. and you can see it has 460 of them, even with all that capacity I have still only just entered the first fusion age of research. As an example, omicron shields are going to cost me 120k in research. What also destroys my progress in designing the components, you can see I currently have waiting to be started a 150k research cost engine. Granted that is maximum size, but it still means at best case I will be waiting about 5 years to develop it. Those 460 labs are actually not enough, but I then have the other limiting factor of not having enough high ranking scientists to make full use of those labs so more is pointless. This add another great way to use spare population and further drive colonial expansion. Every 5-10 years I will alter colony settings so I can get an influx from the outer colonies to my main industrial worlds so that they have extra labour, then switch back to stable so the outer colonies can grow again.

The other big thing is terraforming, I never got on well with the idea of turning things like Mars into a garden world in a year or two, even with space magic levels of tech. In my current game I started off with facilities but quickly found them lacking, as you need lots of population to run them, and so lots and lots of infrastructure. Also you need a horrific amount of terraforming facilities to allow you to develop a world inside workable timeframes. You can see the final image I have moved across to orbital terraformers, and yes that is 833 of them I have as a fleet. I struck gold on a great system with minerals and a planet that could house upto 23bn people, so invested heavily into getting it to a cost zero world. Yet even with just under 1k modules running it has take around 10 years or so to get me from a cost of 2 down to 1.6, and I estimate another 5 years to get rid of a bunch of carbon dioxide to finally get that cost zero.

The flip side to all this is that I do have an incredibly strong industry sector, Earth has almost 1bn shipyard workers, and across the entire empire I have 500m construction workers, so I tend to churn out auto mines at a rapid rate.

[Zap0]

The interesting thing with research is that research output scales with your industry. Not only are your starting labs scaled to industry, I'm saying here that your industry, and therefore the ability to increase your research rate, usually plateaus after the Earth minerals are eaten up and only only relatively slowly grows afterwards, assuming you spend a relatively equal amount of mines mining each mineral.

Since the reserach rate stays at a similar level for a long time and only grows slowly, the time between tech levels will naturally increase over time. At the start of a game you e.g. usually take two years for a tech, then four years, then eight, and when you're at 16 years for a tech it takes you a century to get through a tech level (simplied assumption here that one researches all techs roughly equally). So there is a natural tendency for research to take longer after the initial rush at the start of a game is over and your number of labs and research times stabilize. Meaning you always get that stage where you don't have to refit your now-obsolete fleet every five years regardless.

If you start with 20 labs you plateau with MP tech, if you start with 50 labs you plateau with internal confinement or something else instead, but in either case you plateau after roughly the same time.

The research modifier just forces this situation sooner, before the stabilization of research rate that usually follows.

[Rich.h]

The interesting thing with research is that research output scales with your industry. Not only are your starting labs scaled to industry, I'm saying here that your industry, and therefore the ability to increase your research rate, usually plateaus after the Earth minerals are eaten up and only only relatively slowly grows afterwards, assuming you spend a relatively equal amount of mines mining each mineral.

Since the reserach rate stays at a similar level for a long time and only grows slowly, the time between tech levels will naturally increase over time. At the start of a game you e.g. usually take two years for a tech, then four years, then eight, and when you're at 16 years for a tech it takes you a century to get through a tech level (simplied assumption here that one researches all techs roughly equally). So there is a natural tendency for research to take longer after the initial rush at the start of a game is over and your number of labs and research times stabilize. Meaning you always get that stage where you don't have to refit your now-obsolete fleet every five years regardless.

If you start with 20 labs you plateau with MP tech, if you start with 50 labs you plateau with internal confinement or something else instead, but in either case you plateau after roughly the same time.

The research modifier just forces this situation sooner, before the stabilization of research rate that usually follows.

I have a house rule that forces it even sooner and harder than standard, I only allow a scientist with the relevant skills to conduct research. So if the rng only gives me a single power & propulsion leader, who then dies in an accident. I now cannot conduct any further engine research until another one graduates. This forces me to keep my leader pool both large and diverse, additionally it often means I am stuck trying to conduct 50k or more research projects with a scientist who can only work with 5-10 labs.

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

Current game is 25% research, 150% difficulty, earth starting pop 1.5 billion. Conventional start.

It took me 30ish years to beat my first (tiny) precursor base (with nuclear pulse/improved nuclear pulse). 40 for the first real bases. All the NPRs are stronger than me still. And I would've needed longer, I think, except I stole gas cooled reactors and ion drive tech via espionage.

I still have ships that are 20 years old in service, though they are pretty obsolete. My first rank ships are a decade or less of age; I'm in the middle of a fleet rebuild right now that will move those ships to the second rank.

This sounds close to what I expected, thanks!

-- Words and pictures --

This is the kind of effect on a campaign that I was hoping to see in terms of both the limits as well as how an empire develops.

The interesting thing with research is that research output scales with your industry. Not only are your starting labs scaled to industry, I'm saying here that your industry, and therefore the ability to increase your research rate, usually plateaus after the Earth minerals are eaten up and only only relatively slowly grows afterwards, assuming you spend a relatively equal amount of mines mining each mineral.

Since the reserach rate stays at a similar level for a long time and only grows slowly, the time between tech levels will naturally increase over time. At the start of a game you e.g. usually take two years for a tech, then four years, then eight, and when you're at 16 years for a tech it takes you a century to get through a tech level (simplied assumption here that one researches all techs roughly equally). So there is a natural tendency for research to take longer after the initial rush at the start of a game is over and your number of labs and research times stabilize. Meaning you always get that stage where you don't have to refit your now-obsolete fleet every five years regardless.

If you start with 20 labs you plateau with MP tech, if you start with 50 labs you plateau with internal confinement or something else instead, but in either case you plateau after roughly the same time.

The research modifier just forces this situation sooner, before the stabilization of research rate that usually follows.

This is a good point. So research modifier really only determines the pace of the early game, and basically the tech level at which the slower part of the game becomes dominant, rather than just being a straight slowdown. I hadn't thought of it like that. It also helps to understand why a lower research rate isn't the default, it seems like the default setting gives a faster early game but won't be that fast forever so you do eventually get to the more generational tech levels that make Aurora fun later on.