3rd Edition Rules

[sloanjh]

However, I think that there's a way around it that's a bit less painful.  It would involve having a separate PU Growth rate for each bracket...

This is what Steve does in Aurora - large population worlds have a much lower growth rate than small worlds.  OTOH, I think Steve's algorithm is even more drastic at cutting growth rates for large populations than just using PTU.  Using the algorithm PTU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PTU_N gives straight exponential growth in the PTU.  Using PU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PU_N gives FASTER THAN EXPONENTIAL growth, since the first few PTU count for more PU as you go to higher brackets.  Steve's algorithm is PTU_N+1 = (1+rate(PTU_N))*PU_N, where the rate function goes down as population goes up.  If you made it a step function (i.e. only dependent on which PU bracket the population is in) then it shouldn't add much complexity for paper+pencil folks to apply, and you can tune the steps to whatever you want.

John

[crucis]

This is what Steve does in Aurora - large population worlds have a much lower growth rate than small worlds.  OTOH, I think Steve's algorithm is even more drastic at cutting growth rates for large populations than just using PTU.  Using the algorithm PTU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PTU_N gives straight exponential growth in the PTU.  Using PU_N+1 = (1+rate)*PU_N gives FASTER THAN EXPONENTIAL growth, since the first few PTU count for more PU as you go to higher brackets.  Steve's algorithm is PTU_N+1 = (1+rate(PTU_N))*PU_N, where the rate function goes down as population goes up.  If you made it a step function (i.e. only dependent on which PU bracket the population is in) then it shouldn't add much complexity for paper+pencil folks to apply, and you can tune the steps to whatever you want.

John

Yes, if one does direct PTU growth, the PTU growth rate is steady at whatever the yearly or monthly rate is.  But the overall perceived PU economic growth rate does decrease as you jump from one bracket to the next.  Off the top of my head, the perceived PU growth rate for colonial pops (assuming a 20% yearly PTU growth rate) would be 20% yearly for OP-Sttlmt pops, but for VLg pops it would be something on the order of 3.45%.  Of course, I can't say how truly mathematically or statistically accurate that 3.45% number is, since all I did was use a simple spreadsheet analysis where I applied 20% yearly PTU growth and converted PTU's to PU each year until the pop exceeded the max size.  Then I averaged each of the yearly perceived PU growth rates to get the 3.45% number.

But for game purposes, I think that it'd be better to stick with whole number rates for the PU growth rates by bracket.  And if using whole numbers and assuming (for arguments sake at the moment that the PTU growth rate was 20%), the yearly growth rates by bracket would look like this: OP-Sttmnt=20%, Small=12%, Medium=7%, Large=5%, VLg=3%.

It does then beg the question about what to do when growth causes PU totals to cross to the next larger bracket.  I'm hesitant to say just leave it as is, because I suspect that some people might intentionally try to game the system to get a slightly higher growth rate by shipping off the PTU's that were just enough to cause the PU total to jump brackets.  The way to convert those overage PU's (oPU) is to do this:  oPU * (rate_1/rate_2) to get the proper number of PU's above the max of the previous bracket, where rate_1 was the conversion rate of the previous pop bracket and rate_2 is the conversion rate of the new pop bracket.  The math is easy enough, at least for me.  But it's not exactly dirt simple, and not exactly a particularly satisfying solution.    But the only simpler solution I have to bracket jumping is to say that when you bracket jump thru growth, rather than perform some annoying calculations, you just set your new PU total to the min PU value of new pop bracket.  But this could be really annoying if your planet had a PU total very close to the of the smaller bracket and growth was going to put the PU total well above the min of the larger bracket. 

I suppose that this is what happens when you try to change the "proper" process down to simpler.  You lose some of the inherent accuracies in the proper method.

[crucis]

We break down PU to make PTU all the time (or so I would assume for Starslayer), the 10 free ptu you get for a very large world is a drop in the bucket.  Even the 100 free ptu for a max sized world isn't sufficient when I go to push my people out, and breaking down a PU isn't a big deal (loss of 2 MCr income compared to gaining 100+ MCr).  As for small populations for worlds that are poor or very poor I break them down all the time and shove the people out to the moons.  But it took us well over a 100 turns to reach the point where we even had a shot at making a medium population world by forced growth and those to me are worth more as places I can pull 3 PU from to give me 150 PTU for further expanision after letting them grow a few times.  Getting 1 PTU free per turn is ok but it doesn't break anything.  It is possible this is different in ultra or something but 3rdR free ptu growth is basically icing on the cake. 

We wanted a game that played more like the Stars At War and less like the typical Starfire game, as we have done two campaigns before that and we have lots of experience with exploding economic growth.


As for the model...what I mean is that the whole of starfire is based on a compound interest growth formula. 

Well, that's sort of what you're going to get when growth is based on a percentage of the current base's total.  It's going to compound no matter what.  The only question is how fast.  I'd say that SM#2 was clearly way too fast, and even GSF/Ultra is still too fast.  Also, I think that there's also the underlying question about whether "growth" in the game is population growth or economic growth.  The SM2 and Ultra both call the rule "population growth", but PU's really aren't a measure of population, but of economic output.  In truth, the PU (Population Unit) should be called an EU (Economic Unit).  And that's where the problem lies.  So-called population growth is actually economic growth because the growth is applied to PU not PTU, the true measure of population.  And even at 1% per month, that's about 10% per 10-month year, which in real terms would be pretty darned explosive economic growth, I think.  Add to that fact that with the PU/PTU conversion factor, the underlying PTU growth is absolutely staggering in larger populations.

This is why I think that the true root cause solution is to base population growth on PTU, whether directly or indirectly.  Colonial populations would grow very quickly, but mid-size pops would see their economic growth slowing, and Large-ish pops would see their economic growth hitting far more reasonable (and slow) levels.

The only question is your "rate of return" that you stick in the interest part of the formula.  Every investment yields an automatic positive return.  The only brake on the system is maintenance costs and that doesn't work particularly well (as Kurt's and Steve's mega-economies can attest to). 

It doesn't help that a number of things in 3rdR (and later versions) don't have to pay any maintenance, such as ship yards, machine shops, automated weapons, and so forth.
And no maint on automated weapons (mines, DSB's, etc.) provides no limit on their usage.  With maint on AW's, you'd probably only emplace them in times of need.  But without maint, there's no penalty for just dumping them out there.

Also, I don't see how one produces an uncertainty of return on the investments without seriously complicating an already complex game.  For example, I suppose that one could have some sort of stronger version of the IEPP (ISF rule 19.03.05) that didn't hit until after the colonial population had been established on the world for a random number of turns.  But if colonial populations were getting wiped out by deadly local diseases, thus destroying the investment, it might only encourage players to care more about other investments, rather than take the risk.  And of course they're not going to invest in something with a negative return unless there's one darned good reason to do so that's not economic.  And I'm not too sure how many players would think that it was fun to have one of their colony worlds wiped out in this way.  And since the idea of this and any game is to have fun, I'm not entirely sure that it's something that should be a required rule.  Optional?  Perhaps, but not required.

The CFN...I first played Starfire with the 2nd edition rules for empire building and had my own freighters.  The issue with the CFN is that it is again something that facilitates rapid, easy and cheap expansion of the empire.  More to the point it makes it so you settle every rock you find (why not?). 

I'm not certain about what you really mean by "why not?".  "Why not?" because doing so is a good, relatively inexpensive investment.  Or "why not?" because you think that colonizing such "rocks" should be a good thing on its own merit?

I can see that an argument could be made that making the colonization of every "rock" isn't necessarily a good thing.  Perhaps colonization costs for Desolate and Extreme worlds could be increased.  But of course there will be a tipping point beyond which it will not be cost effective to engage in colonization of such "rocks", or at least the ROI will be so high that players won't want to spend the money on such colonization efforts.

Of course, I also think that SM#2 made the cost and ease of colonizing all those "rocks" so much easier and less expensive that it became a reasonable strategy to do so.  Of course, I think that a reason for this was that Marvin was trying to make a conscious effort to create an alternate growth strategy to exploration and seeking out trade partners, in part because the "exploration to seek out trade partners" strategy can be rather random, since you have no control over when and how often you'll encounter NPR's in general and friendly NPR's in particular.  OTOH, the colonize every rock strategy creates a LOT of separate populations that have to be tracked which seems like a real nightmare for a p&p gamer (particularly all those separate little OP's in Asteroid Belts).

Also, I always like the "go forth and explore" strategy because it inevitably lead to wars, which to me seemed like the entire point of the game.

It also allows for too many other things (movement of mines, dsb, supplies, etc).

Agreed.  The CFN and Mines/DSB bug me in particular.  I'm no military historian, but it seems to me that mines don't get transported and laid by civilians.  That's a job for military personnel, and Imperial FT's.  And requiring military FT's would put a bit of a dampener on mine-laying since you'd have to actually build your own mine-layers and move them to wherever you need the mines laid.

Why the colonization rebate is there is a good question. 

Paul, I think that the reason for the rebate is to make the CFN a better deal than using Imperial FT's for colonization.  I think that if one built some imperial FT's and compared the results vs CFN costs, you'd find that Imp FT's are probably a slightly better deal than the CFN for colonization UNLESS the rebate exists.

It is a good idea as it minimizes one form of book keeping (logistical book keeping) but it has the effect over time of producing a large and extensively settled empire which generates a book keeping nightmare if you are doing this with a spread sheet, and of course if you look at the above statement generates a further driver to the compound interest growth terms.

Something that bugs me about the CFN is that it's 8 pages of rules to simulate what you wouldn't need any additional pages of rules to cover if one just used imperial FT's in the first place.  If one uses Imp FT's all the existing rules for pretty much everything handle what needs to be handled for one's "military transport command" to run.  But with the CFN, you need additional rules to SIMULATE what Imp FT's do without added rules.  

People complain about feature creep and increased page counts.  Well, the CFN is a good example of those two things.

[MWadwell]

Of course, I also think that SM#2 made the cost and ease of colonizing all those "rocks" so much easier and less expensive that it became a reasonable strategy to do so.  Of course, I think that a reason for this was that Marvin was trying to make a conscious effort to create an alternate growth strategy to exploration and seeking out trade partners, in part because the "exploration to seek out trade partners" strategy can be rather random, since you have no control over when and how often you'll encounter NPR's in general and friendly NPR's in particular.  OTOH, the colonize every rock strategy creates a LOT of separate populations that have to be tracked which seems like a real nightmare for a p&p gamer (particularly all those separate little OP's in Asteroid Belts).

Also, I always like the "go forth and explore" strategy because it inevitably lead to wars, which to me seemed like the entire point of the game.

The problem is, that in the pre-SM#2 games, "Go Forth and Explore" was the only winning strategy. The winner was the player who found (and befriended) the most NPR's in the shortest amount of time - which really led to economic growth!

The SDS made a number of changes (i.e. reduing the colonisation costs, adding the penalties to higher political states, made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN) to make "Stay at Home" a viable strategy for those empires that got trapped in pockets.

Agreed.  The CFN and Mines/DSB bug me in particular.  I'm no military historian, but it seems to me that mines don't get transported and laid by civilians.  That's a job for military personnel, and Imperial FT's.  And requiring military FT's would put a bit of a dampener on mine-laying since you'd have to actually build your own mine-layers and move them to wherever you need the mines laid.

I agree with the idea, but can see a little bit of a double standard.

Missiles are carried by merchant ships, and the only difference between a DSB and a missile, is that after a missile is unloaded, is is then grabbed by another ship - whereas the DSB is left there and turn on.

I agree that the rule change would be a good idea - but I can see arguements about double standards.....

Something that bugs me about the CFN is that it's 8 pages of rules to simulate what you wouldn't need any additional pages of rules to cover if one just used imperial FT's in the first place.  If one uses Imp FT's all the existing rules for pretty much everything handle what needs to be handled for one's "military transport command" to run.  But with the CFN, you need additional rules to SIMULATE what Imp FT's do without added rules.  

People complain about feature creep and increased page counts.  Well, the CFN is a good example of those two things.

Hehe - here I'm going to disagree.

My first exposure to starfire was reading ISF - and when I got to the part where everything had to be shipped (missiles, mainteance, colonisation, income, etc.) I can remember thinking "what a paperwork nightmare".

Having no CFN would mean doubling the number of ships (in the creation of the IFN), and tripling the number of ship movements (as afterall, quite a bit of the military ships are sitting still watching WP's, etc.).

While the CFN has made the rules larger, they have also dramatically decreased the paperwork overhead of running a game.... Which to me, is well worth it.

[crucis]

The problem is, that in the pre-SM#2 games, "Go Forth and Explore" was the only winning strategy. The winner was the player who found (and befriended) the most NPR's in the shortest amount of time - which really led to economic growth!

The SDS made a number of changes (i.e. reducing the colonisation costs, adding the penalties to higher political states, made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN) to make "Stay at Home" a viable strategy for those empires that got trapped in pockets.

I'm not entirely sure that I agree with "made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN", though I agree with the others.  I think that one could reduce colonization costs without the CFN being a factor or the reason for those reduced costs.

As for "Stay at Home" being a viable strategy, I think that I'd put it a little differently.  If the empiers that aren't bottled up are aggressively colonizing, how is "stay at home" really any different from what the other guys are doing?  The difference with the change is that one can fairly argue that the Stuck at homes have something they can be doing while they're bottled up, but it's not really an "alternative" strategy if those who aren't bottled up and expanding are also doing it.  Of course, that may be a bit of a semantic argument.

I'm no military historian, but it seems to me that mines don't get transported and laid by civilians.  That's a job for military personnel, and Imperial FT's.  And requiring military FT's would put a bit of a dampener on mine-laying since you'd have to actually build your own mine-layers and move them to wherever you need the mines laid. 

I agree with the idea, but can see a little bit of a double standard.

Missiles are carried by merchant ships, and the only difference between a DSB and a missile, is that after a missile is unloaded, is is then grabbed by another ship - whereas the DSB is left there and turn on.

I agree that the rule change would be a good idea - but I can see arguments about double standards.....

Let's say that you have a munitions depot on your homeworld, and a frontier system with a WP that connects to a known hostile.  I could see civilian FT's carrying the mines/DSB's to a CFN facility in the frontier system, but the mines/DSB's should be transferred to actual minelayers who transport and lay them near the "hostile" WP, since it's a potentially dangerous area.

Regarding missiles, actually, it could be the same thing.  They could transport the ordnance from a nice safe depot to another safe depot, but the CFN shouldn't be meeting an imperial fleet in hostile space for remunitioning.  That should be the job of a Imperial munitions FT.

So, there really doesn't need to be any double standard.  The CFN should only be transporting munitions from CFN depot to CFN depot.

Hehe - here I'm going to disagree.

My first exposure to starfire was reading ISF - and when I got to the part where everything had to be shipped (missiles, mainteance, colonisation, income, etc.) I can remember thinking "what a paperwork nightmare".

Having no CFN would mean doubling the number of ships (in the creation of the IFN), and tripling the number of ship movements (as afterall, quite a bit of the military ships are sitting still watching WP's, etc.).

While the CFN has made the rules larger, they have also dramatically decreased the paperwork overhead of running a game.... Which to me, is well worth it.

I guess that I'd rather move virtual ships (Imperial FT's) than double-virtual ships (CFN FT's).  And I'd rather manage ships (Imp FT's) than pools of H and Q. 

It's a philosophical thing for me.  Starfire is a game about ships, so i want to move ships, not manage amorphous pools of holds and quarters.

As for the CFN and size of the rules, that's the entire point about feature creep.  A feature has been added that you like.  But there are obviously going to be other features that have been added that other people like.  You like the benefits of the CFN as you see them.  Other people may like the benefits of more highly detailed system generation, for example.  Or galactic oddities, or random events, or NPR gov't/racial types, or unusual races, or crew grade, or graded leaders.

Different people have different tastes.  But if I were to go seriously minimalistic, I'd end up ticking off a lot of players who like all those features.  Some stuff that people do like or would like could easily be put in a separate "Advanced Players" book, particularly if it's content that currently doesn't exist in 3e.  But stuff that's already in 3e could be very difficult to cull out of the rules, due to all the existing cross references, which I've already mentioned.

[sloanjh]

It does then beg the question about what to do when growth causes PU totals to cross to the next larger bracket.  I'm hesitant to say just leave it as is, because I suspect that some people might intentionally try to game the system to get a slightly higher growth rate by shipping off the PTU's that were just enough to cause the PU total to jump brackets.  The way to convert those overage PU's (oPU) is to do this:  oPU * (rate_1/rate_2) to get the proper number of PU's above the max of the previous bracket, where rate_1 was the conversion rate of the previous pop bracket and rate_2 is the conversion rate of the new pop bracket.  The math is easy enough, at least for me.  But it's not exactly dirt simple, and not exactly a particularly satisfying solution.    But the only simpler solution I have to bracket jumping is to say that when you bracket jump thru growth, rather than perform some annoying calculations, you just set your new PU total to the min PU value of new pop bracket.  But this could be really annoying if your planet had a PU total very close to the of the smaller bracket and growth was going to put the PU total well above the min of the larger bracket. 

I suppose that this is what happens when you try to change the "proper" process down to simpler.  You lose some of the inherent accuracies in the proper method.

I think this paragraph goes to the heart of Matt's comments about "is the rule really necessary".  I actually considered this factor when I made my post, and I intentionally left it out because it falls under the "So What" principle, i.e. "So what if there's this particular glitch - will it have a substantive effect on the game".  And the reason I think this one goes to the heart is that the effect is smaller than the approximation errors that have already gone into the game mechanic in question.  Before I worried about band crossing, I would be much more worried about things like climate, economic strength, or even natural variation on population growth.  If one were designing a computer version, one could use the "exact" formula (but even then, I would argue that it consumes programmer time that could be more valuably spent elsewhere).  In a paper and pencil game intended to appeal to a large audience, it is much more important that the method for calculating the new value be absolutely dead simple than that mild exploits such as the one you described exist, especially if those exploits could be reinterpreted as government responding to the wishes of the people (population grows faster because people like less crowded planets, so start shipping people off-planet when the population reaches a certain threshhold).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Starfire community has a lot of people who enjoy these sort of detail-oriented calculations (I include myself in this category).  I agree with Matt (or was it Paul) that if the game is going to have broad appeal as a paper and pencil game, the tendency to cater to this constituency through complex, detailed rule sets must be resisted.  If, on the other hand, the intent is to go after this constituency, then it has to come with the realization that the player community might be to small to support the game from an economic standpoint.

John

[crucis]

I think this paragraph goes to the heart of Matt's comments about "is the rule really necessary".  I actually considered this factor when I made my post, and I intentionally left it out because it falls under the "So What" principle, i.e. "So what if there's this particular glitch - will it have a substantive effect on the game".  And the reason I think this one goes to the heart is that the effect is smaller than the approximation errors that have already gone into the game mechanic in question.  Before I worried about band crossing, I would be much more worried about things like climate, economic strength, or even natural variation on population growth.  If one were designing a computer version, one could use the "exact" formula (but even then, I would argue that it consumes programmer time that could be more valuably spent elsewhere).  In a paper and pencil game intended to appeal to a large audience, it is much more important that the method for calculating the new value be absolutely dead simple than that mild exploits such as the one you described exist, especially if those exploits could be reinterpreted as government responding to the wishes of the people (population grows faster because people like less crowded planets, so start shipping people off-planet when the population reaches a certain threshhold).

I also think that one could argue that perhaps the PU/PTU style of economics may be a bit too complex for a p&p game except for the most detail oriented players.  Maybe a simpler, more abstracted model that would be better suited to p&p would be better.  One that relied on simpler calculations.  But it should be noted that a simpler, more abstract economic model might also not support things that PU/PTU does.  Incremental colonization, for example.  Or at least incremental to the level of detail that the PTU supports.  Something to think about.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Starfire community has a lot of people who enjoy these sort of detail-oriented calculations (I include myself in this category).  I agree with Matt (or was it Paul) that if the game is going to have broad appeal as a paper and pencil game, the tendency to cater to this constituency through complex, detailed rule sets must be resisted.  If, on the other hand, the intent is to go after this constituency, then it has to come with the realization that the player community might be to small to support the game from an economic standpoint.

John

I'd add to those last couple sentences that one has to realize that the people who are committed to supporting Starfire within SDS and volunteering their time to do so are going to tend to be people who probably lean more towards the more detailed game than the simpler game.  And those people many not have it in them to want to give their time and efforts to support the type of game that they themselves wouldn't enjoy.

SO now it's sort of a 3 edged sword. 

[MWadwell]

I'm not entirely sure that I agree with "made colonisation easier through the introduction of the CFN", though I agree with the others.  I think that one could reduce colonization costs without the CFN being a factor or the reason for those reduced costs.

Oh I would - with the pre-SM#2 rules, you had to individually track all of the IFN ships, and schedule it so that the required amount of H and Q arrive within the required time frame. With SM#2, it is a lot simpler and easier. This is one (of the few  ) cases where more rules equals simpler play (as opposed to more rules = more complexities).

As for "Stay at Home" being a viable strategy, I think that I'd put it a little differently.  If the empiers that aren't bottled up are aggressively colonizing, how is "stay at home" really any different from what the other guys are doing?  The difference with the change is that one can fairly argue that the Stuck at homes have something they can be doing while they're bottled up, but it's not really an "alternative" strategy if those who aren't bottled up and expanding are also doing it.  Of course, that may be a bit of a semantic argument.

Either I missed your point (likely), or I think you missed mine. With agressive colonisation, you can get ROI's of around 5 to 10%. However, if you are stuck in a limited number of systems, your ROI is only going to be in the order of 3% - which means that in the long term you will lose.

So, to avoid the "stay at home" player from giving up (as they know that they are going to lose), the ROI for the "stay at home" strategy had to improve.

I agree with the idea, but can see a little bit of a double standard.

Missiles are carried by merchant ships, and the only difference between a DSB and a missile, is that after a missile is unloaded, is is then grabbed by another ship - whereas the DSB is left there and turn on.

I agree that the rule change would be a good idea - but I can see arguments about double standards.....

Let's say that you have a munitions depot on your homeworld, and a frontier system with a WP that connects to a known hostile.  I could see civilian FT's carrying the mines/DSB's to a CFN facility in the frontier system, but the mines/DSB's should be transferred to actual minelayers who transport and lay them near the "hostile" WP, since it's a potentially dangerous area.

Regarding missiles, actually, it could be the same thing.  They could transport the ordnance from a nice safe depot to another safe depot, but the CFN shouldn't be meeting an imperial fleet in hostile space for remunitioning.  That should be the job of a Imperial munitions FT.

So, there really doesn't need to be any double standard.  The CFN should only be transporting munitions from CFN depot to CFN depot.

But the problem is, that at the moment the CFN can operate in contested systems. For your idea to work, you would need to outlaw the CFN working in contested systems.

I guess that I'd rather move virtual ships (Imperial FT's) than double-virtual ships (CFN FT's).  And I'd rather manage ships (Imp FT's) than pools of H and Q. 

It's a philosophical thing for me.  Starfire is a game about ships, so i want to move ships, not manage amorphous pools of holds and quarters.

I agree - Starfire is for moving ships - but I don't want to be bogged down tracking every little FT in the empire - that grows old quickly. I know it's subjective, (as you pointed out below), but my attention to detail ends before I get to that level of detail.

As for the CFN and size of the rules, that's the entire point about feature creep.  A feature has been added that you like.  But there are obviously going to be other features that have been added that other people like.  You like the benefits of the CFN as you see them.  Other people may like the benefits of more highly detailed system generation, for example.  Or galactic oddities, or random events, or NPR gov't/racial types, or unusual races, or crew grade, or graded leaders.

Different people have different tastes.  But if I were to go seriously minimalistic, I'd end up ticking off a lot of players who like all those features.  Some stuff that people do like or would like could easily be put in a separate "Advanced Players" book, particularly if it's content that currently doesn't exist in 3e.  But stuff that's already in 3e could be very difficult to cull out of the rules, due to all the existing cross references, which I've already mentioned.

There are features that make the game simpler (i.e. the CFN), and there are others that make the game more complex (i.e. tidelocking). I know it's a subjective issue, but I'm all for keeping the game simple and easy to play - as I would prefer to spend my time fighting battles then getting bogged down cross-referencing tables ....

[Paul M]

By "Why Not?" I mean simply "why not colonize everything you can colonize?"  Every investment in colonization you make, even a moon 12 transits from your homeworld yields a postive income shift the turn after it is emplaced.  Since every investment yields a positive outcome why not make every such investment that you can?  The arguement against it is only "you could have done something else with a better rate of return."  And that is a weak argument unless you have a functional crystal ball as you never know what the future will bring.  I have been investing in moons mainly to build up supply chains for my exploration forces, unless Starslayer was refering to my secondary colonization...as all rich or better rocks in my systems tends to get colonized relatively soon after I build up 170 or so PU on the habitables.

It is compounded in Starfire as a lot of things as you said, and I agree completely, have no maintenace costs.  The results is an explosive growth in DSB-L, IDEW, Mines, and Pods.  The fact that we have to have mine layers, mine tenders, colliers, missile resupply ships, etc has dramatically changed our game.  Steve's rules he was experimenting with at the end of SFA were a good step forward.  Weber's TFN for example had a massive support capacity, and a huge investment in bases compared to any typical starfire campaign.  Also diverting income into building support ships also reduces fleet sizes as yard space, money, and maintenance funds are therefore reduced.

I don't understand why you think the economics of starfire are complex.  Could the game be simplier?  Colonize, invest in IU whatever you like in both cases your economy grows.  There is nothing to economics in starfire it is just compound interest growth.  That is the problem with the economic system/model.  There is, as I said before, no "cost for empire" so it produces a brain dead simple economic system.  Matt is also correct SM2 changed it from "befriend the most NPRs" to "find the habitables soonest."  It is why I would like a different model rather than trying to fix something that is at its heart unfixable (as the math is what it is).  We stress tested the starfire economy in our München campaigns, Starslayer as one of the SMs can comment better but higher growth then I bother with is easily achievable.

[Starslayer_D]

I meant the secondary rockball colonisation.

The need for Minelayers, colliers etc. sure changes things. It defenitely backfired on a fleet or two went they forgot supply ships.
I eprsonally though would just use the mine laying rules as written, but needing a ship in place (not the cfn). Mineracks etc. (especially as they can't store mines in SFA) just added a bit too much aditional complexity even though they are a neat idea.. when you have to replace them with H and then adjust build costs... a bit of a hassle.

The Munich campaign collapsed when battles started taking several days, most peoples economies were between 500k and a million, and the main NPR antagonist hit over 2 million .. all in turn 75. All those ex, ct, and astreoids managed to hit the limitations of the acess database, on top, and I was getting glitches when advancing turns etc, and the database hit 300 MB pre-compression.

[crucis]

I meant the secondary rockball colonisation.

The need for Minelayers, colliers etc. sure changes things. It definitely backfired on a fleet or two went they forgot supply ships.
I personally though would just use the mine laying rules as written, but needing a ship in place (not the cfn). Mineracks etc. (especially as they can't store mines in SFA) just added a bit too much additional complexity even though they are a neat idea.. when you have to replace them with H and then adjust build costs... a bit of a hassle.

Mineracks?  Minelayers are really just freighters with some tractor beams, nothing particularly exotic.And the idea behinnd requiring the use of actual minelayers is to force players to build those actual minelayers and provide for the capacity to lay minefields where and whenever needed, and not be able to depend on the miraculous CFN to do it, particularly when laying mines really isn't a civilian's job.

The Munich campaign collapsed when battles started taking several days, most peoples economies were between 500k and a million, and the main NPR antagonist hit over 2 million .. all in turn 75. All those ex, ct, and astreoids managed to hit the limitations of the acess database, on top, and I was getting glitches when advancing turns etc, and the database hit 300 MB pre-compression.

A number of points.  I'd say that a big part of it is that SM#2's growth is vastly too fast, at 25% yearly PU growth for medium pops and above, 50% yearly PU growth for Small pops or below on habitables, and 25% yearly PU growth even on non-habitables.  And on top of that add in a TLF that may be too generous.  That's certainly a formula for hugely explosive economic growth, particularly when everyone is probably colonizing every little rock in sight.

Also, I realize that being able to colonize every little rock in sight represents an alternative strategy, but it's also a formula for much great complexity when you have to start tracking gazillions of those little rocks' outposts and colonies, not to mention allowing growth on all of those rocks.  And in a p&p game, adding gazillions those little rocks to track doesn't seem like a good thing to me.  I mean, sure, in theory, it provides a nice, afforable alternative strategy for the empire that's blocked from further exploration.  But it seems that in practice, it also creates a massive p&p paperwork nightmare.  And even eventually a nightmare for a database as well.


As for the poor database, colonizing all those rocks (and in particular the huge numbers of rocks, 5 per AB sys hex, in Asteroid Belts) certainly doesn't help keep down the number of records that the DB was having to track.  And By "ex" I assume you mean EX as in EXplorer type vessels.   And yes, when you have a set of survey rules that limits the number of "X" to 1 per ship, it drives the game towards building a great number of the smallest hulls you can build to be survey ships, which only places more stress on the DB. 

Also, I'd think that having to track crew grade for every single ship in existence wouldn't be good for the storage capacity of the DB either.  Personally, I've never used the crew grade rules because I never wanted to track my ships individually, until absolutely necessary.  If I had 30 ABC-class DD's in a given fleet, they were just a single line item in the fleet "30 ABC DD's", not 30 separate line items.  The only time that i'd track individual ships was when they were damaged and had to head back to a shipyard for repairs.  But after being repaired, the DD became part of the collective pile of DD's of that class.  I've always thought that crew grade was one of the most gawd-awful rules in 3rd edition, and vastly worse than personnel points.  (PP's were always relatively easy to manage to me, in comparison to crew grade.)  I also found that when fleets were large, having to pay attention to each ship's grade in a fleet's vast array of ships was another pain in the arse.

[procyon]

Without digging back for quotes...

I agree that economic growth is the self destruct button for all the Starfire games I have ever been aware of.  (Ok, other than players moving away...)

Pop growth does it in 4e on, while treaties did it for 3e.  Regardless, folks start getting more income for no increase in expenses either way.  

To me, that mechanic, right there - is the problem.


We have a bunch of house rules in our game to address those issues and keep them from shutting down our games.  But it is a pretty hefty book.  And I don't say they are for everybody.

What I would say is - any solution needs to address the problem.  It needs FIXED. Not adjusted.


We have several ideas we went through.  Some have worked well.  But they represent very fundamental changes to the games.  VERY.  And I don't know that everyone would like them.

To illustrate.
Military treaties.  Pretty much the same for us as they have always been.  Friends are friends.  Folks that aren't - aren't.

Trade treaties.  BIG difference for us.  We give no income bonus.  You heard me. None.  What you get is a bonus to your economic research for the trade of ideas and goods.  The civies are doing the buying and selling.  The governments are getting taxes and tarriffs to pay for customs, etc.  No net income.  But a bonus to your economics.  And as you get higher in EL, stuff gets more expensive, maint goes up, etc.
You also need trade treaties to trade tech between the races.

For colonization it is much more difficult to transfer to another game.
Our sys gen is biased toward smaller stars, and I make sure there is only about 1 hab per 40 systems.  
Yes - 40...
And in addition to maint to keep a fleet going - you need a port.  A spaceport.  And the number of HS it can support is what it can hold (the old 40HS).  It can support that level of fleet for 2StMP.  Ships in addition to that or beyond the range of the SP cost x3 maint.  So you can ship a massive fleet in to defend a distant system.  But you need to have a bunch of MC on hand to cover it or it will start to suffer failures from lack of maint.
And those SP cost maint also.
You can also only have one SP per 20PU FRD.

And we hated the old 'freebie, million thick' minefields.  
My players and I rejoiced when 4e got rid of them.
One of the best moves ever to me.

We also cut pop growth to 1% per 10 turns.
Cuts down on refiguring every turn that you get otherwise with 4e.

Combine the scarcity of good colonization, expense of keeping the fleets, along with a few other rules (like we require an ICC for each pop over settlement [with a maint cost for it] or income doesn't increase past 180PU, SA and RDS cost maint even without PDC placement,  colonies farther than 4StMP from an ICC have NO net income -but you still want them to get an SP to support your border fleets, etc...)
Along with our limit on population growth - it makes getting bigger far more difficult.  It becomes a juggling act of can you afford to lose your PTU (none free in our games) to a border system that won't generate income but will cut the cost of your border defenses - and will take you two months of CFN cost to emplace...or do you need them closer to a sector capital to try and pad your income somewhat so you can expand that direction...


As I said.  It is a lot of rules we have put together to get a game we like.  At turn 400 my wife has the largest economy of any player with an effective income of about 50,000 MC supporting three carrier task groups, an independant cruiser group, two commerce interdiction groups, two fast carrier groups, three survey groups, and a couple dozen escort carriers covering her commerce lanes.  She has 3 habitables after this span of turns and an 'empire' that spans nearly a hundred systems.

Not bad for P&P, but it has taken a lot to get our game to this point.

But the problem is, that at the moment the CFN can operate in contested systems. For your idea to work, you would need to outlaw the CFN working in contested systems.

It won't in 4e plus.  And I missed out on SM2 for games so we went from tracking your own to 'the CFN won't go there'.  Never ran into this issue.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Starfire community has a lot of people who enjoy these sort of detail-oriented calculations (I include myself in this category).  I agree with Matt (or was it Paul) that if the game is going to have broad appeal as a paper and pencil game, the tendency to cater to this constituency through complex, detailed rule sets must be resisted.  If, on the other hand, the intent is to go after this constituency, then it has to come with the realization that the player community might be to small to support the game from an economic standpoint.

John

I'd add to those last couple sentences that one has to realize that the people who are committed to supporting Starfire within SDS and volunteering their time to do so are going to tend to be people who probably lean more towards the more detailed game than the simpler game.  And those people many not have it in them to want to give their time and efforts to support the type of game that they themselves wouldn't enjoy.

I agree with the statements I italicized.
All of the detail junkies - are old hands.  They have gotten a solid base and are looking to expand it.
And most of those writing the rules - are real old hands (sorry... I include myself with this) that have often taken this to amazing levels.

But I am probably the biggest exception.  I have kids that I enjoy teaching Starfire.  And I want them to be able to play it with their friends when they move away.  Or maybe their kids some day.
But I have no illusions that this is going to happen if the only rule set they have to hand out is 400+ pages.  

Matt is a sharp fella.  He has a long history with Starfire.  And it sounds like Solar gave his 'page shock'.  Folks who have no history have almost no chance.  

Which is why I am a HUGE proponent of creating a smaller ruleset.  And why I have been willing to put in the time to create the Quick Start Rule sets to get folks to play tactical battles without the 400 page books.  And why I have canvased anyone who knows anything about Starfire to get ideas for what can be done to fix its problems.

Also, I'd think that having to track crew grade for every single ship in existence wouldn't be good for the storage capacity of the DB either.  Personally, I've never used the crew grade rules because I never wanted to track my ships individually, until absolutely necessary. 

We like it.
But we also don't have fleets with anywhere close to that number of ships.  Ok, maybe my wife does.
But she has also built up her fleets over hundreds of turns.  And several of those ships have histories that long.
Same for all the players.
And we all like the fact that the old hands are far better at fighting than a ship two months out of the yards.
It helps with the RPing of it.  And it makes the ships even more dear to the players.  It makes them far less likely to do the 'die to a man' type of battle that is so common on table tops.  They will work to save a fleet instead of just expend it like a numbers game.

My wife has hand drawn counters for some of the ships that have been around for hundreds of turns.  That way she can tell what group is what on the large system maps at a glance instead of a mass of red or blue counters.
And on the occasion when a battle costs her a ship she has had for hundreds of turns, and fought dozens of battles with - it often sits on the table for days until she can finally bring herself to put it away for the last time.

You can't get that in a 'fluff-less' and 'grade-less' game.

So, we like grade.
But to learn the game - no, it is not necessary.

[crucis]

By "Why Not?" I mean simply "why not colonize everything you can colonize?"  Every investment in colonization you make, even a moon 12 transits from your homeworld yields a postive income shift the turn after it is emplaced.  Since every investment yields a positive outcome why not make every such investment that you can?  The arguement against it is only "you could have done something else with a better rate of return."  And that is a weak argument unless you have a functional crystal ball as you never know what the future will bring.  I have been investing in moons mainly to build up supply chains for my exploration forces, unless Starslayer was refering to my secondary colonization...as all rich or better rocks in my systems tends to get colonized relatively soon after I build up 170 or so PU on the habitables.

It is compounded in Starfire as a lot of things as you said, and I agree completely, have no maintenace costs.  The results is an explosive growth in DSB-L, IDEW, Mines, and Pods.  The fact that we have to have mine layers, mine tenders, colliers, missile resupply ships, etc has dramatically changed our game.  Steve's rules he was experimenting with at the end of SFA were a good step forward.  Weber's TFN for example had a massive support capacity, and a huge investment in bases compared to any typical starfire campaign.  Also diverting income into building support ships also reduces fleet sizes as yard space, money, and maintenance funds are therefore reduced.

I don't understand why you think the economics of starfire are complex.

I was talking about the relative complexity of PU/PTU process as opposed to the EVM/REI process.  I think that the old ISF EVM/REI process was simpler. That's what I meant.

Could the game be simpler? 

Absolutely.  Don't worry about PU growth every month, or every 10th month.    Don't worry about PU/PTU conversions.  Those would make the basic economic process simpler, like it was in ISF.

Colonize, invest in IU whatever you like in both cases your economy grows.  There is nothing to economics in starfire it is just compound interest growth.  That is the problem with the economic system/model.  There is, as I said before, no "cost for empire" so it produces a brain dead simple economic system. 

I don't buy into the need for a "cost of empire" argument.  To me the true root cause is utterly out of control economic growth due to basing that growth on PU's rather than PTU's, within the existing PU/PTU model.  This was not a problem with the EVM/REI model.  To me, "cost of empire" is just one gigantic band-aid for failing to fix the true root cause (PU-based growth) and a number of existing lesser problems (no maintenance on things like SYD's, mines, etc.; R&D being based on fixed costs rather than percentages of an empire's total economy).  ((Though the lack of maint. on mines is more a problem of not controlling the number of active mine fields an empire has than it is about being a constraint on the empire's economy.))  I think that if these real problems were fixed in some way, there'd be little need for a "cost of empire" band-aid.

Matt is also correct SM2 changed it from "befriend the most NPRs" to "find the habitables soonest."  It is why I would like a different model rather than trying to fix something that is at its heart unfixable (as the math is what it is).  We stress tested the starfire economy in our München campaigns, Starslayer as one of the SMs can comment better but higher growth then I bother with is easily achievable.

Ah, but I don't think that the root causes of the problem are unfixable.  One just has to recognize the true root causes and then have a willingness to fix it or come up with a replacement that removes the problem(s).

[Starslayer_D]

well, from that last one came the current game played by Paul and me. Growth cut significantly, no asteroid colonisation, half research. Id does wonders.
The Minelayers and Mineracks where items Steve had added to the SFA database, and wich are used for the minelaying. I think I copy + pasted them into the rules, else, I will have to check alter and paste them here. Unfortunately, SFA didn't fully support them (as in 'make them carry mines').

Basically, the current game is using most of the ideas we developped after the economy explosion one (except the 'SM pregenerates all systems and makes sure no habitables are closer than 4 smtp to each other'... too much hassle for me.. some other Sm can do that).

And I think it has found a good balance and works.

[Paul M]

The growth is 10x faster than the game clock.  Each turn economically is a year while each turn militarily is a month.  That is one part of the problem.  The other part of the problem is that everything returns a positive income one turn after emplacement.  This leads very quickly (or quickly, or eventually) to the simple fact that the "rich get richer faster and faster."  This was addressed in part with GSF by increasing the costs of ships and a few of the other costs limiting the amount of money left over to use for economic expansion, but all it does is kick the can down the road.  What starslayer and I did (based on Wolfgang's ideas and our experience with SM2 economics) was to slow down growth dramatically, removing the factor of 10.  Fundamentally that is what you are talking about with PTU growth.  It took us almost 170 turns to get from the normal start population to 3200.  Our growth rates are 7.5% for high growth, 3.5% for medium growth, and 2.3% for low growth and the growth is only every 10 turns.  It will take something like 170 turns for a medium to grow to a large.

This is pretty much ISF's growth rate (give or take a factor of 2).  Probably too slow for lots of people.

But at the end of the day the issues are not dealt with, and are still present.  Slowing growth just pushes the point where you fall off the cliff down the road.  

As I said earlier this is the problem the people who made Civilization on the computer ran into.  Their solution was "corruption."  Sword in the Stars deals with it by introducing a colonization cost that can be extreme and makes you think about if you can even afford a colony in that system at this point in time.  To me you need to introduce something that makes the player think about if colonization of system x is worth while doing.  This goes back to my "why not?" comment.  Currently there is no reason to not colonize every rock you find.  If growth is by PTU it will still pay to colonize every rock and especially every asteroid belt you can lay your manipulating digits onto.  What limits real empires is the simple cost of maintaining them, the administrative overhead...and this is what is utterly missing and the result is the rich get richer faster and faster.  High growth rates just ensure you hit that cliff relatively soon...Steve and Kurt both hit it around turn 70 or so if not sooner.

As everything in starfire is about the MCr, then as MCrs become more plentiful research becomes a joke (cost is a non-issue), fleet sizes explode, AW numbers explode, IU and colonization explode, book keeping explodes and fun implodes (in my view).  Marvin's fix in GSF was to kick the can down the road by increasing costs and reducing income growth, problem solved for the kind of games he likes.  Your solution is the same as the one starslayer and I adopted, but all three don't fix anything they just kick the can varying distances down the road.

As the economic model is nothing more than compound interest growth, you get compound interest growth.  That to me is the root cause of the problem and nothing avoids it except changing the model.