Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on January 30, 2019, 01:26:08 PM
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The question of power generation being added to the game was raised in the wealth thread. While I don't want to use power generation to replace wealth, I would consider adding it as a new function if it adds an interesting new dimension. This thread is to consider ideas about how that might work.
Different installations would require power to function and this power could come from a variety of potential sources. For example, nuclear (or Sorium-based) power stations, geothermal stations on worlds with high tectonics, solar power plants on worlds with high temperatures, hydro power on worlds with a lot of water, etc. Possibly power satellites that absorb solar energy from a star and beam it to the planet that needs it (with a suitable energy efficiency tech line).
I am open to comments on whether power should even be a consideration or is it assumed that each installation already includes its own power generation. If power generation is included, what form should it take? Can power be beamed from planet to planet? Can it be stored?
Comments welcome.
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I really like the idea of power, would integrate well into the Power and Propulsion tech tree. A way to 'export' power, perhaps even between systems would be neat. Take a look at how the games of the X-series (X3 Albion Prelude and so on) do it. Some places are very well suited for power generation, and power is 'exported' by means of power cells as cargo.
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An easy way to make it meaningfully distinct from wealth and minerals would be to make it local and non-store-able. Each planet has its own supply, and it needs to keep pace with demand, or you have to start load shedding. This would also create an incentive to set up colony worlds with at least a few factories and a trickle supply of minerals, to avoid having to ship out new power plants as they grow, which can only be a good thing.
Power could come from reactors (low worker requirement per TWh, but burns Sorium or Fuel) or sustainable generation sources (solar, wind, hydro, tidal, etc., high worker requirement per TWh, but only burns Wealth). Possibility of building orbital installations of either type, similar to how terraformers work today (more expensive, easier to move around, easier to destroy because they aren't under the STO umbrella, uses Crew instead of Workers).
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I think Power Plants are a great way to provide a limit on manufacturing and researching power. However, I think the "infrastructure" should be simple, one is TN Power Plants, and the other is conventional (hydro, tectonic, volcanic, etc). Conventional while cheaper provides lower power, say 10 per unit but TN Power Plants are much higher cost, consumes Sorium and relies on Power & Propulsion tech, gated by current reactor technology provides 100 unit per factory. Each power reactor tech allows for more power per unit. Pressurised Heavy Water will allow for 10 PP (starting tech) but each one provides a 20 percent increase (12, 14, 16, 18, 20, etc).
The early game, you want to use conventional power but they do not scale as well as TN Power Plants but are much more costly.
Also, manpower requirements should be low for conventional versus TN Power Plants.
Afterwards, manufacturing and other facilities may require a power source of some kind in order to perform optimally. A lack of power should influence manufacturing efficiency or something to that effect.
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It might be interesting? Honestly, one self imposed limitation I use on myself is a limit of how many mines I'll put on a single planet, so that I don't just run my entire empire with 10,000 auto-mines on a planet with 15 million tons of every mineral at .1 accessibility. Power could accomplish something similar and make for interesting choices.
OTOH, I think adding power would basically want to be combined with a large overhaul of the economic/industrial system. I'm sure Steve knows better than anyone, but I can't help but wonder if it might be better handled as a feature in a future version, especially as I gather the C# code to handle the economy is already written.
I think Power Plants are a great way to provide a limit on manufacturing and researching power. However, I think the "infrastructure" should be simple, one is TN Power Plants, and the other is conventional (hydro, tectonic, volcanic, etc). Conventional while cheaper provides lower power, say 10 per unit but TN Power Plants are much higher cost, consumes Sorium and relies on Power & Propulsion tech, gated by current reactor technology provides 100 unit per factory. Each power reactor tech allows for more power per unit. Pressurised Heavy Water will allow for 10 PP (starting tech) but each one provides a 20 percent increase (12, 14, 16, 18, 20, etc).
The early game, you want to use conventional power but they do not scale as well as TN Power Plants but are much more costly.
Also, manpower requirements should be low for conventional versus TN Power Plants.
Afterwards, manufacturing and other facilities may require a power source of some kind in order to perform optimally. A lack of power should influence manufacturing efficiency or something to that effect.
If power generation were added there'd definite need to be an automated option, for worlds with automated mines.
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Interesting...
Just throw out some ideas:
'Standard' power plants
- Conventional power plants, non-TN tech, low energy/building, low cost/energy, high worker/energy, does not consume fuel. cannot be built, just as starting buildings (same as conventional factories)
- Nuclear power plants, scale with reactor tech. High energy/building, moderate cost/energy, low worker/energy, consumes fuel/sorium?
Special power plants that are relevant to planet features, should have lower cost/energy than nuclear power plants (that can be built anywhere). Scales with a new tech line 'renewable power generation Lv X' and planetary features. Has a limit on how many can be built on each planet depending on planet size and features.
- Geo Thermal plants, 2x power output on planets with high tectonics, 1x on normal, 0.5x on low, 0 on dead planets. At 1x multiplier, moderate energy/building, moderate cost/energy, moderate worker/energy
- Tidal power plants, scale with the % of ocean surface of the planet, and the mass of the closest moon (relative to the planet). At 1x multiplier, low energy/building, moderate cost/energy, low worker/energy
- (Ground) Solar power plants, scale with the distance from the planet to the sun, and the atmosphere thickness. At 1x multiplier, low energy/building, high cost/energy, very low worker/energy
- Wind power plants, scale with atmosphere density and temperature difference? On tidal locked worlds it has a much higher mulitplier (where the temperature difference should produce constant winds). At 1x multiplier, very low energy/building, moderate cost/energy, low worker/energy.
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I am currently reading "Earth Song Cycle" by Mark Wandrey on kindle and the "wealth" in that universe is based on Energy. Everything runs on EPC batteries which come in different sizes and capacities so to keep your civilization running you need to keep on buying the EPCs. There is more to it than that, but that is the bottom line.
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"choke" mechanisms aren't really intrinsically fun. if you haven't got anything but "dance this little dance correctly and you can go back to playing aurora like it was vb6" honestly at some point it just becomes a hassle.
it also seems to fly in the face of the core assumption that TN societies find it trivial to generate *huge* amounts of energy.how many cubic meters per year of sorium fuel would it take to supply 21st century earth's power needs? a half billion people working with infinitely more efficient industrial technology dont seem like they should pose a drastic energy problem.
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Sorry but no, I do not think power plants would make a meaningful addition to the game other than adding more micro. There's a reason grand strategy games don't consider power except as just another material resource that can be traded and stored.
It might be interesting as an additional civilian trade good, but that's it.
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If I did power generation for buildings, I'd probably keep it simple.
Give each world a baseline power capacity. This is the combination of solar (based on distance from the sun, planet's surface area, and atmosphere) and any other "conventional" power like geothermal, and maybe tidal; wind is basically just solar power at a planetary level. This level of energy is "free" - if you have a colony on the planet it can draw on this power, maybe split for multiple colonies. You don't need to build solar/geothermal/etc plants because that would just be micromanagement. Maybe there could be a tech line, renewable power sources, that gives % increases.
If you want more buildings than the baseline power provides, you'd build sorium power plants - these wouldn't be too expensive, but would require refined sorium fuel to run, and would massively increase the available power. They could scale based on your reactor tech.
The end result of this would be more motivation to spread to other worlds, and not keep all your industry just on your homeworld (something I admit I tend to do). I think it could work out.
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I think adding power requirements for colonies, especially if the power plants required sorium, would drive players nuts. Trying to manage many colonies can already feel like spinning plates; now add onto it each one is constantly draining fuel and every construction factory shipped over or mine now also has to come with a requisite amount of power. It just doesn't feel like the gameplay benefit would match the hassle, though I have confidence someone here could make interesting. :)
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I don't see power as much of a gameplay enhancer. As others have said, if it's just a chokepoint without interesting decisions it will just be tedious. This would be the case if the decision is basically which powerplant type to build on which world.
I could see sorium power plants for large worlds as interesting. In that case, a developed world needs sorium shipped in, even if it's not a manufacturing planet. Then I as a player can decide how to acquire it and protect my sources, and I could blockade enemy planets to stop their sorium shipments. If the powerplants are entirely contained on a world, there isn't much gameplay, as you will just build enough to keep everything running and NPRs will too and you can't affect it.
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I like the idea of power being modeled by the game, however that really depends on how it is implemented.
If it becomes just more micro: build x power plants to power your stuff, with no meaningful decisions needed, then it is indeed just more micro, as some other people already mentioned. I would not like that.
If instead it adds some more possible interesting choices for the player, it might be good. I operate under the assumption that TN facilities consume huge amounts of power, and so that power generation needs to be MASSIVE. Several orders of magnitude beyond what we use today.
Let us say that power can be beamed into space to other colonies in the same system, and maybe even through stabilized jump points (this might or might not need specialized equipments, like ships at the gates or similar).
In this situation, power generation does not need to be on the same planet where the power is used. So... some planets might become interesting colonization targets just because they allow for plentiful power generation.
That pressure cooker planet with impossibly strong winds might be a great target for wind power generation, even if normally you'd never consider it
That planet with very active tectonics might be great for geotermal power plants
And that scorched rock orbiting SO close to a large star, a wonderful candidate for solar power plants
Once again, this is assuming you need a HUGE amount of power, and so that normal power generation does not cut it. So you either colonize these worlds, just for the potential power they can generate.... Or you resort to Sorium powered plants, with the problem that they keep consuming a large amount of Sorium.
In my opinion this scenario is the only one which would be worth having if you track power. Because in this case, you actually have more planets that becomes colony candidates, and as always this has the potential to become a meaningful strategic choice. You then have to defend these planets and such.
Is this too much of an hassle to play around with? I don't know, I guess it depends on the person. Is this too bothersome to code? That's up to Steve. But something similar to this is the only scenario where I would like power generation to be tracked.
If instead it becomes just more mindless micro (build a plant every x other installations) then I'm not really interested.
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I am in agreement with others that while power could be interesting, it would need a lot of depth and meaningful choice in order to function as anything more than an annoyance. What you suggested about different environments favouring different power generation is a good start to that, though it should be ensured that it doesn't become just picking one of 5 buildings that all do the same thing depending on what biome you are on. Given the necessary complexity, I think this would be best suited to a v1.X update later on where it could be integrated into a larger economics model upgrade, if the economic side of the game is something you want to expand. I certainly though don't think we have any urgent need for it.
I think that if it were to be added, then in order to differentiate it from the other systems we already have, it should probably at least face significant efficiency losses when moved between colonies.
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Thanks for all the comments everyone. In retrospect, I think power generation is probably going to add more micromanagement than additional game play, so I don't plan to implement it.
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I would hate a power system that was simply another version of "input X minerals + Y wealth to output Z power."
BUT!
I would LOVE a power management system if it featured a widely diverse set of generators. (As Zincat suggested above.)
For example:
Fossil fuel plants cost only wealth, not minerals to run, but produce Greenhouse gas-- excuse me, Aestium.
Nuclear plants cost only wealth, not minerals to run -- and, no GHGs. BUT cost much more to build.
Solar plants base their output on stellar class and planetary albedo.
Wind plants based on planetary climate and/or dominant terrain.
Geothermal plants vary functionality widely by dominant terrain.
Raw Sorium reactors require Sorium, but very little (or no) wealth.
Refined-Sorium-fueled reactors more efficient than Raw Sorium, but requiring refined fuel.
etc.
Then, too, plants that vary in size and efficiency, allowing one to trade off between extra TNE to build but requiring fewer workers, and manpower-intensive plants that allow one to 'get by' with more conventional tech.
Basically, if I have to build a five-dimensional matrix to figure out the 'best' power plant for any particular colony, I'll like it a lot better than if the system is "Ordnance Factories for Electricity."
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How about a more abstract idea of power?
Planets can have anomalies which affect research, what about factors which can boost production?
A colony situated somewhere with geothermal energy could get a bonus to factory production, somewhere with a healthy biosphere could get a bonus to agriculture, the solar flux reaching a colony could affect both.
There could be a range of factors so that every type of production can have a bonus, it could provide more reasons to choose certain sites for colonization, as well as give some basic RP potential.
I wouldn't suggest such bonuses should be major, maybe capped at 50% if that, but once such a system is in place bonuses and the opposite could then also be applied as a result of battle damage in a more granular and interesting fashion.
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Perhaps power's role is as a trade good instead of a fixed game mechanic? Specifically, a trade good that has an influence on the rest of your production, similar to Infrastructure: Power Cells.
Industry (Factories, Shipyards, mines) consume power cells. Every planet produces power cells based on:
Current population
Distance from the sun
Water coverage
Tidelocked or not
Up to a certain maximum based on all of the above as well as planet size.
Idea is that smaller colonies with little industry function as net exporters. Large, industrialized planets are net importers.
If you dont have enough power cells on your planet, you suffer up to a 20%(?) production efficiency loss, modified by what percentage of the requirement you do have.
Or maybe just a bonus if you have enough.
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I would rather see power generation and management made more integrated into starship design instead down the line anyways. Full power to shields!
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Okay, Steve's already backed off from the idea, but I have to express my fundamental disagreement with an assumption almost everyone is making, apparently without thinking about it.
Any form of power generation that consumed sorium fuel (or raw sorium) would be a major change in the game and its lore.
Up to this point, reactors do not use up any TNEs in the course of their operations; the things that do - engines and shields - use fuel to transform power into work. My headcannon is that processed sorium affects the properties of the Aether - likely something such as viscosity or surface tension - and these components spray careful patterns of fuel out of the ship to achieve their effect.
(I tend to go further, and have TN engines use astonishingly little energy compared to what we are accustomed to consider necessary for spaceflight. This meshes unfortunately poorly with the dependence of engine techs on the reactor tree, but I'd rather ignore that than give up this interpretation, and haven't yet come up with a good reconciliation. And you can always require the expelled fuel to be activated by arcing energy through it, if you need shrieking generators in your ships' engines.)
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Power could be an interesting option for military actions and sabotage. A very well fortified planet could be overrun by a sabotage action which switches off the power so none of the planetary defense does work.
Other than that I agree that its probably too unnecessary micromanagement. And this sabotage surely can be simulated differently.
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Power could be an interesting option for military actions and sabotage. A very well fortified planet could be overrun by a sabotage action which switches off the power so none of the planetary defense does work.
Other than that I agree that its probably too unnecessary micromanagement. And this sabotage surely can be simulated differently.
And planetary defenses have separate independent power generators that don't rely on the planetary network, for exactly that reason besides battle damage. All STOs come with a built in power plant
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I've always been a big fan of huge, exoatmospheric construction projects, so I would love to include power as a mechanic. You could have dyson spheres or other power generation satellites beaming power to your industrial centers.
I also would have power use heat planets up; even if you're not creating greenhouse gases, industry will generate waste heat. And on an inter-stellar empire scale, this will be a LOT of heat.
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If we're suggesting late game options around power then I think one interesting idea would to have anti-matter as the fuel for most advanced technology, and make it a "mineral" that needs to be produced. At lower tech levels then it can be assumed that standard micro TN reactors power pretty much everything. But as tech levels increase then energy density requirements would begin to limit tech improvement.
A new technology can unlock "Stabilized anti-matter production", where you discover the new anti-matter mineral. Most higher tech (weapons, engines, shields etc) consume anti-matter in addition to their usual requirements.
Anti-matter itself would require enormous amounts of power to produce. You could build basic fusion plant installations which would produce a trickle of anti-matter, but meaningful production would require large scale orbital facilities, or deep geothermal plants on certain worlds only, or solar farms close to a bright star etc.
I suppose it would be a bit like Civ where you're going along great, and then suddenly discover you need a source of coal to really advance to the next level.
And of course becoming dependent on a handful of gigantic but fragile anti-matter forges, perhaps on the edges of your empire, would be a very interesting new strategic challenge.
(This is C# 2.0 stuff I know, but as we're talking about it).
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Yeah, I agree that while it would be neat to have an additional mechanic, it should be more complex than just "build X facilities on every colony" thing, and it shouldn't be more micro-intensive than existing planetary/colonization mechanics. Having to ship Sorium or Fuel to every colony, or even just every manufacturing colony would be quite a pain.
Perhaps power's role is as a trade good instead of a fixed game mechanic? Specifically, a trade good that has an influence on the rest of your production, similar to Infrastructure: Power Cells.
Industry (Factories, Shipyards, mines) consume power cells. Every planet produces power cells based on:
Current population
Distance from the sun
Water coverage
Tidelocked or not
Up to a certain maximum based on all of the above as well as planet size.
Idea is that smaller colonies with little industry function as net exporters. Large, industrialized planets are net importers.
If you dont have enough power cells on your planet, you suffer up to a 20%(?) production efficiency loss, modified by what percentage of the requirement you do have.
Or maybe just a bonus if you have enough.
That's pretty good idea! It would be far less of a hassle for Steve to introduce an extra trade good, and it would be another incentive to settle planets/moons without TN minerals on them, as they would still produce infa and power cells for other colonies to consume. It doesn't even need to have have malus/bonus effect. Have the size of the manufacturing sector determine the demand for them.
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Yeah, I agree that while it would be neat to have an additional mechanic, it should be more complex than just "build X facilities on every colony" thing, and it shouldn't be more micro-intensive than existing planetary/colonization mechanics. Having to ship Sorium or Fuel to every colony, or even just every manufacturing colony would be quite a pain.
Perhaps power's role is as a trade good instead of a fixed game mechanic? Specifically, a trade good that has an influence on the rest of your production, similar to Infrastructure: Power Cells.
Industry (Factories, Shipyards, mines) consume power cells. Every planet produces power cells based on:
Current population
Distance from the sun
Water coverage
Tidelocked or not
Up to a certain maximum based on all of the above as well as planet size.
Idea is that smaller colonies with little industry function as net exporters. Large, industrialized planets are net importers.
If you dont have enough power cells on your planet, you suffer up to a 20%(?) production efficiency loss, modified by what percentage of the requirement you do have.
Or maybe just a bonus if you have enough.
That's pretty good idea! It would be far less of a hassle for Steve to introduce an extra trade good, and it would be another incentive to settle planets/moons without TN minerals on them, as they would still produce infa and power cells for other colonies to consume. It doesn't even need to have have malus/bonus effect. Have the size of the manufacturing sector determine the demand for them.
Making trade more important would be a worthwhile undertaking. Energy is the least useful tradegood though. If you are talking electricity, producing it in situ is always the best option. Effects to other trade goods could be added without twisting logic too much.
Since TN reactors produce unlimited energy using Sorium and seems to break thermodynamics anyway, civilian energy needs are a nonstarter. Why ship material when you could just ground the ship and use power from the engine for all your energy needs instead?
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Increasing power demands as your civilization grows eventually leading to Dyson spheres.. at least partial ones. Regardless of if we get a power system or not gigantic constructions like that would be cool as end-game projects. If nothing else so just for the achievement of getting there.
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If I did power generation for buildings, I'd probably keep it simple.
Give each world a baseline power capacity. This is the combination of solar (based on distance from the sun, planet's surface area, and atmosphere) and any other "conventional" power like geothermal, and maybe tidal; wind is basically just solar power at a planetary level. This level of energy is "free" - if you have a colony on the planet it can draw on this power, maybe split for multiple colonies. You don't need to build solar/geothermal/etc plants because that would just be micromanagement. Maybe there could be a tech line, renewable power sources, that gives % increases.
If you want more buildings than the baseline power provides, you'd build sorium power plants - these wouldn't be too expensive, but would require refined sorium fuel to run, and would massively increase the available power. They could scale based on your reactor tech.
The end result of this would be more motivation to spread to other worlds, and not keep all your industry just on your home-world (something I admit I tend to do). I think it could work out.
If ever implemented this sound like a good way to do it. It would encourage spreading out heavy industry. I understand that factories obviously would be expensive and consume allot of energy in comparison with most other facilites. This is how it is in real life... industry (and mining) and its logistics consume by far the most energy.
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If power generation scales up so much with TN tech, won't power consumption also scale up? Also, sorium is valuable and relatively scarce compared to things like sunlight and wind, especially when you have multiple planets to access. Especially when you have TN materials to improve your efficiency in generating from these sources.
But Sorium would form a good fallback if the risk becomes reduced productivity. Modeling Sorium consumption due to lack of power will be a pain, though. Rather just make it a trade good with supply and demand generated as previously discussed with no other special mechanics. Just a way to make wealth, basically (it powers your civilian economy!).
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In my opinion I think Steve should not dismiss the use of power so easily.
If each planets have access to a certain level of "free" energy and we make mining and factory (including naval yards) production very power hungry we would have some nice effects from thing.
First thing is that you would need to consider both energy and mineral availability in the overall economic calculations. You would not just put 10.000 mines on a world and strip mine it and move on the the next one. You would be forced to really think when you want to over mine a world past the energy capacity based on availability of free energy versus the cost of using fuel to increase the industry/mining there above certain levels.
Things like labs, financial and other academic institutions are cheap and once you reach a planets free energy from heavy industry you would start adding these less energy consuming industries to have the local population occupied.
You might also try to keep population low and ship it of to the next mining or factory world.
In my opinion this would make the game add more options and choices and "force" us to build more realistic colonies that are less of a rock/parer/scissor type construction method with all mines, all factories etc... Smaller colonies would run mostly factories and mines, that makes sense but as population increase there should be more cultural and academic facilities showing up, this make sense.
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I had an idea regarding power generation that could be simple to add but creates interesting choices.
Industry and research require power to operate efficiently. Normally this cost is included in the wealth cost to operate. However, a planet, or even a moon, can have a natural occurring power source. These pay for a set amount of industry as if they were nearly free. For example, Venus has a high-pressure atmosphere which can be utilized into a power source. The amount of energy is quite high and thus can handle a large amount of industry on its own without an energy grid built for it, and environmental concerns are very low.
Thus, a harsh but high energy planet might be better for the industry but not as livable compared to other planets. Players would choose which is more valuable for them to develop. Something to consider in the future without adding too much micromanagement.
Power tech will improve the bonus to natural occurring power making it cheaper to operate a factory/lab.
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I could see power technology as wealth multiplier since more powerful oowerplants require less wealth spent on logistics. But beyond that? Absolutely not.
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Im just throwing ideas against the wall here, seeing what will stick.
The same way planet size determines the maximum population of a planet, power level determines a maximum number of facilities (in tonnage?) on a planet. Planets have a base power level for what can be cheaply powered (solar) depending on size and environment, with an additional amount based on the size of the service sector of population (wind, hydro, fossil fuel, etc) based on the planet size and environment, and you can build Sorium Reactors that consume raw sorium (and require workers) but boost it by a big amount. Going over your power limit results in negative production efficiency modifiers.
So there are 3 "soft caps" to industry capacity of a planet
Unpopulated planet - Base cap
Scales with population (service sector) up to Base + Fully populated planet service sector cap
Each sorium reactor adds to this cap with no limit (but more sorium consumed)
Gameplay value:
No more stripmining an asteroid by dumping 1000 automines on it.
Planets with large populations are valuable as they allow concentration of industry.
Reason to spread out industry among many planets.
Little to no micromanagement as everything is automatic. You just decide to move industries offworld in bulk, which is a strictly macro-scale gameplay.
Possibility to ignore all of the above if you don't like it with a minor cost (sorium) or reduction in production efficiency.
Gives something more to explore for - planets with high population capacity/energy capacity
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I had an idea regarding power generation that could be simple to add but creates interesting choices.
Industry and research require power to operate efficiently. Normally this cost is included in the wealth cost to operate. However, a planet, or even a moon, can have a natural occurring power source. These pay for a set amount of industry as if they were nearly free. For example, Venus has a high-pressure atmosphere which can be utilized into a power source. The amount of energy is quite high and thus can handle a large amount of industry on its own without an energy grid built for it, and environmental concerns are very low.
Thus, a harsh but high energy planet might be better for the industry but not as livable compared to other planets. Players would choose which is more valuable for them to develop. Something to consider in the future without adding too much micromanagement.
Power tech will improve the bonus to natural occurring power making it cheaper to operate a factory/lab.
With this one could actually create a "high energy planet" using terraformers with Venus as en example, giving terraforming another use besides changing a planets surface into a liveable environment.
Stars could also become major power sources by collecting light with mirrors, powering the rest of the system by beaming it over as a laser, which could also double as a powerful weapon.
Light still has travel time though, so you'd rather beam it to a nearby planet or space station and then redirect it toward the invaders.
Another possibility would be star lifting.
With mirrors again you'd reflect the light back to the star, blowing off material at its poles.
While feeding back elements the star needs for fusion you filter out impurities, among which could be valuable minerals.
The rest would be sold to the civilian sector, generating wealth.
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Im just throwing ideas against the wall here, seeing what will stick.
The same way planet size determines the maximum population of a planet, power level determines a maximum number of facilities (in tonnage?) on a planet. Planets have a base power level for what can be cheaply powered (solar) depending on size and environment, with an additional amount based on the size of the service sector of population (wind, hydro, fossil fuel, etc) based on the planet size and environment, and you can build Sorium Reactors that consume raw sorium (and require workers) but boost it by a big amount. Going over your power limit results in negative production efficiency modifiers.
So there are 3 "soft caps" to industry capacity of a planet
Unpopulated planet - Base cap
Scales with population (service sector) up to Base + Fully populated planet service sector cap
Each sorium reactor adds to this cap with no limit (but more sorium consumed)
Gameplay value:
No more stripmining an asteroid by dumping 1000 automines on it.
Planets with large populations are valuable as they allow concentration of industry.
Reason to spread out industry among many planets.
Little to no micromanagement as everything is automatic. You just decide to move industries offworld in bulk, which is a strictly macro-scale gameplay.
Possibility to ignore all of the above if you don't like it with a minor cost (sorium) or reduction in production efficiency.
Gives something more to explore for - planets with high population capacity/energy capacity
Except I also need to ship sorium along. Frankly I don't see why an automine should not also contain any and all infrastructure to satisfy its own power demands.
Also, why bother why gigawatt scale conventional thermal powerplants or solar/hydro when you can build sorium reactors that have orders of magnitude more power generation?
The only thing I could agree on is preventing strip mining with 1000 automines, but I would rather model that with diminishing returns for mines above a certain limit per body, representing that eventually mines are getting placed in suboptimal locations.
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You don't NEED to ship Sorium along, you have the CHOICE to ship Sorium along if the basic industry cap of, say, 100 automines is insuffiicient for you.
Why bother with gigawatt scale conventional plants when you have Sorium reactors? Answered in your previous sentence. They dont need sorium. Sorium is rare and expensive and its cheaper to build a massive solar power facility which functionally costs nothing as it is part of normal development than it is to provide a consistent supply of Sorium for a reactor.
I'm not trying to 'solve a problem' with this power idea, just thinking what value could be added with the mechanic without adding too much complexity.
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You don't NEED to ship Sorium along, you have the CHOICE to ship Sorium along if the basic industry cap of, say, 100 automines is insuffiicient for you.
Why bother with gigawatt scale conventional plants when you have Sorium reactors? Answered in your previous sentence. They dont need sorium. Sorium is rare and expensive and its cheaper to build a massive solar power facility which functionally costs nothing as it is part of normal development than it is to provide a consistent supply of Sorium for a reactor.
I'm not trying to 'solve a problem' with this power idea, just thinking what value could be added with the mechanic without adding too much complexity.
I don't see the value in exactly this. Unless you are really desperate for sorium, there is no reason ever to not pay the additional cost. Which means it should be automatic.
Every other industry is already capped by worker requirements. Automines are specifically there to get around that requirement, so they are the only ones truly affected by a new cap. Unless a planet is unable to power his regular industry, at which point it is just annoying micromanagement.
If too many automines bother you, give them diminishing returns, and don't bother with power generation.