C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Rabid_Cog]

How about:
New kind of trade good, "Tourists". Special in that Local production cannot satisfy local demand (so you can have both demand and supply on one planet) and requires a special module (liner berths) to transport.

Hey this trade good thing is a hoot. EVERYTHING can be a trade good, from TN minerals to parts of ships.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

usage rate is a reasonable way to allocate between freight and colony, but liners are going to present some problems.  they have zero idle time, ever, and while you're confined to one system (with very short transit times) their ROE is sky high.  weight by usage or profit and you're going to wind up with a lot of liners and a lot of wealth production.  which is actually *correct* given the economics of aurora, but amounts to an exploit since the economics are so underdeveloped.

i imagine you'd see similar behavior vis a vis colony ships for players who use the infinite wealth earth-moon round trip exploit.

would it be so bad just to let the player decide which types of ships subsidy funds are spent on?   make the "profits squandered" portion a bit higher, and call it a day?  youd have to have the designs published before the first one is built, but among other things players can keep the population of small civ units down, which is good in a lot of ways.

the other approach is just an elaboration of StHM's one:  you take the time to make sure you have shipping profits (in particular ROE) really right, and keep track of annual ROE by ship class.  have newer (and larger!) designs assigned tasks preferentially, and where ROE is high you build new ships and where ROE is low you retire.  this is a lot more work and i am not requesting you spend the time... but dare i say it is in the spirit of how aurora is developed and played?   OCD is an ugly disease

You have a solid point about Liners.  They really should be limited by wealth and population.  Rabid_Cog's Tourist trade good idea might work for that.

Player designed civilian ships just add micromanagement to something who's primary benefit is automation.  The lack of direct control is what keeps civilians balanced, game wise.  Civilians are cheap, but they do things on their own schedule, while player built ships are expensive but do what you want when and where you want it done.

Idle time is a good proxy for unexploited profit opportunities, and that actually matters more than current profits when deciding what to build.  If you make $100,000/year and are running off your feet to keep up, you can afford more workers, but if you are making $100,000,000/year and are having trouble keeping all of your workers busy, you stop hiring.


I don't know if Steve still wants Planet X name suggestions, but here goes:
Albus
Argus
Charity
Cuthbert
Filius
Gilderoy
Minerva
Poppy
Rolanda
Quirinus
Horace
Pomona
Remus
Rubeus
Severus
Sybil

I regret nothing.

[Garfunkel]

How about:
New kind of trade good, "Tourists". Special in that Local production cannot satisfy local demand (so you can have both demand and supply on one planet) and requires a special module (liner berths) to transport.

That's a really good idea and it would prevent the liners from shuttling 500 colonists around constantly while providing both an RP and an in-game mechanical reason for bringing in wealth, plus more traffic in a system.

[MarcAFK]

It would make sense for tourists to be a trade good, but then why can't your regular freighters just stack them into cargo holds like cordwood and dump them off to any colony? :/

[Garfunkel]

Because it would require that pre-existing module, luxury berths.

[Father Tim]

. . .  The simplest approach would be for each company to limit production based on the number of idle ships of each type, weighted to prefer types with fewer idlers.

A better approach would be for each compan to build only one type of civilian craft (freighter, colony, fuel harvester, etc.).  That way, companies with types with a higher demand will earn more money and build more ships.  Self-regulating.

There are two problems with that method:
1) You need both freighters and colonizers in the early game (read: first year) when you only have one company.
2) Even if you limit to a single type per company, you will still overbuild since your idlers are still a percentage of your working ships.

What I'm proposing is closer to how real shipping companies operate, in that if they have idle assets, they don't build more.  It also directly addresses the problem of idle civilian ships cluttering the game.  And frankly, 5/type/company is probably too high.

You say problem; I say design feature.

If your empire needs something, it should build that thing itself.  I have zero sympathy for the complaint that "the civilians won't pay me to do for me the thing I want them to do."

Frankly, I'd be happier if no civilians at all were generated until one's empire had at least one 10 million pop offworld colony, but I lost that argument a long time ago.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

It would make sense for tourists to be a trade good, but then why can't your regular freighters just stack them into cargo holds like cordwood and dump them off to any colony? :/

Nothing.  That's called 'economy class'.

In seriousness, a case can be made for using overpopulation, unrest, and unemployment to govern migration patterns instead of the current manual control.  The player could then encourage migration to/from certain worlds by paying a migration subsidy.

[JacenHan]

Frankly, I'd be happier if no civilians at all were generated until one's empire had at least one 10 million pop offworld colony, but I lost that argument a long time ago.

Isn't that essentially already implemented? C# requires two populated colonies (including the capital) for freighters and colony ships to be built, and at least two populated systems for passenger liners. Or would the 10 million pop change it significantly?

[Father Tim]

Isn't that essentially already implemented? C# requires two populated colonies (including the capital) for freighters and colony ships to be built, and at least two populated systems for passenger liners. Or would the 10 million pop change it significantly?

Very significantly.  At the moment, the instant the first colonist sets foot on "Moonbase 1" or wherever, the civilians start shipping colonists and free Infrastructure.  As a result, an empire doesn't need lift capacity of its own; one small ship can do the job of creating "designated populations" wherever by dropping off 1 Infrastructure and 0.0001 million population and let the civilians do the rest.

[King-Salomon]

Frankly, I'd be happier if no civilians at all were generated until one's empire had at least one 10 million pop offworld colony, but I lost that argument a long time ago.

In C# you can set the civilians to "inactive" - after you have the population you want (in your example 10million pop offworld) you set them to active...

[Garfunkel]

Isn't that essentially already implemented? C# requires two populated colonies (including the capital) for freighters and colony ships to be built, and at least two populated systems for passenger liners. Or would the 10 million pop change it significantly?

Very significantly.  At the moment, the instant the first colonist sets foot on "Moonbase 1" or wherever, the civilians start shipping colonists and free Infrastructure.  As a result, an empire doesn't need lift capacity of its own; one small ship can do the job of creating "designated populations" wherever by dropping off 1 Infrastructure and 0.0001 million population and let the civilians do the rest.

Not even that. You only need to put down Infrastructure and the civilians will take care of the rest. I haven't built colony ships in years!

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Isn't that essentially already implemented? C# requires two populated colonies (including the capital) for freighters and colony ships to be built, and at least two populated systems for passenger liners. Or would the 10 million pop change it significantly?

Very significantly.  At the moment, the instant the first colonist sets foot on "Moonbase 1" or wherever, the civilians start shipping colonists and free Infrastructure.  As a result, an empire doesn't need lift capacity of its own; one small ship can do the job of creating "designated populations" wherever by dropping off 1 Infrastructure and 0.0001 million population and let the civilians do the rest.

Not even that. You only need to put down Infrastructure and the civilians will take care of the rest. I haven't built colony ships in years!

And Aurora is balanced for that, both for resource usage and for micromanagement.  There is still room for improvement, but it mostly works as is.

[Father Tim]

Isn't that essentially already implemented? C# requires two populated colonies (including the capital) for freighters and colony ships to be built, and at least two populated systems for passenger liners. Or would the 10 million pop change it significantly?

Very significantly.  At the moment, the instant the first colonist sets foot on "Moonbase 1" or wherever, the civilians start shipping colonists and free Infrastructure.  As a result, an empire doesn't need lift capacity of its own; one small ship can do the job of creating "designated populations" wherever by dropping off 1 Infrastructure and 0.0001 million population and let the civilians do the rest.

Not even that. You only need to put down Infrastructure and the civilians will take care of the rest. I haven't built colony ships in years!

C# Aurora will require a population, not just Infrastructure, at the destination to move colonists.  However, it will also give us the ability to move 100 colonists instead of 10,000, so still massively easy to exploit.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Isn't that essentially already implemented? C# requires two populated colonies (including the capital) for freighters and colony ships to be built, and at least two populated systems for passenger liners. Or would the 10 million pop change it significantly?

Very significantly.  At the moment, the instant the first colonist sets foot on "Moonbase 1" or wherever, the civilians start shipping colonists and free Infrastructure.  As a result, an empire doesn't need lift capacity of its own; one small ship can do the job of creating "designated populations" wherever by dropping off 1 Infrastructure and 0.0001 million population and let the civilians do the rest.

Not even that. You only need to put down Infrastructure and the civilians will take care of the rest. I haven't built colony ships in years!

C# Aurira will require a population, not just Infrastructure, at the destination to move colonists.  However, it will also give us the ability to move 100 colonists instead of 10,000, so still massively easy to exploit.

To be honest I don't think it is an exploit, it is a built in feature and something you want the civilians to do.... why should the state move these items and develop the colonies?!?

The state basically do the initial colonization and spend the upfront resources to do so the civilian economy take care of the rest.

As far as I know the civilians also only move regular infrastructure, if you need other types of infrastructure you need to move it on your own.

There is also a cost in having your civilians move infrastructure which is trade. I don't think you get much wealth if the civilians move infrastructure. At least it would make sense if that would be the case. Them moving the infrastructure is bonus enough in my opinion.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Isn't that essentially already implemented? C# requires two populated colonies (including the capital) for freighters and colony ships to be built, and at least two populated systems for passenger liners. Or would the 10 million pop change it significantly?

Very significantly.  At the moment, the instant the first colonist sets foot on "Moonbase 1" or wherever, the civilians start shipping colonists and free Infrastructure.  As a result, an empire doesn't need lift capacity of its own; one small ship can do the job of creating "designated populations" wherever by dropping off 1 Infrastructure and 0.0001 million population and let the civilians do the rest.

Not even that. You only need to put down Infrastructure and the civilians will take care of the rest. I haven't built colony ships in years!

C# Aurira will require a population, not just Infrastructure, at the destination to move colonists.  However, it will also give us the ability to move 100 colonists instead of 10,000, so still massively easy to exploit.

To be honest I don't think it is an exploit, it is a built in feature and something you want the civilians to do.... why should the state move these items and develop the colonies?!?

The state basically do the initial colonization and spend the upfront resources to do so the civilian economy take care of the rest.

As far as I know the civilians also only move regular infrastructure, if you need other types of infrastructure you need to move it on your own.

There is also a cost in having your civilians move infrastructure which is trade. I don't think you get much wealth if the civilians move infrastructure. At least it would make sense if that would be the case. Them moving the infrastructure is bonus enough in my opinion.

IIRC, they will move low gravity infrastructure, but only to/from low gravity worlds, which is going to be 'fun' for your first LG colony, and I do believe it still counts as trade.  But as you say, I'm just glad I don't have to pay for it.