3rd Edition Rules

[crucis]

I normally don't comment on Starfire since I've not played in a decade, but with percentages... Consider say... the US researching something with 10% of its GNP. Then consider Honduras researching the same item with their GNP. Both are dedicating 10%, but I'd think the US would get the research done faster just because of the extra money and manpower that their 10% brings in. Unless you have something up your sleeve that addresses this?

That's a fair point, Erik.  But is Honduras too small to have a large enough base of scientific knowledge to make much headway?  Remember how in ISF Small pops when they may have been allowed to do R&D tended to have to it more slowly because they didn't have a large enough scientific community.

But at the same time, remember that allowing smaller NPRs to be as efficient as larger empires is probably more of a game balance thing than a realism thing.  Otherwise, we'd have the 'rich getting richer faster' problem popping up in various ways within R&D.  And if smaller single system NPR's can't keep up with empires when it comes to R&D, they'll end up being even less of a challenge than they are already.


But ya know, in old pure ISF, what happened probably would have semi-accurately represented what you described, when smaller NPR's may have found developing multiple tech systems, or even some of the hideously expensive higher TL ones a serious burden on the small economies, whereas some economic juggernaut like Steve's Rigelians would just shrug off the cost of some expensive high TL dev projects as chump change.

[MWadwell]

What I had in mind was (using the Ultra pop numbers) this.  If an OP is 1-20 PTU and a Colony is 21-60 PTU, I'm thinking that in this model, you'd have to emplace at least 15 PTU to achieve Outpost status, or at least income producing Outpost status.  As for Colony, you;d then have to increase to about 45-50 PTU's to become an income producing Colony.

If that’s the way you’d prefer to do it, then I’m happy with it.

I just thought it easier to have all outposts producing no income (with the reasoning that they are only just self-sufficient, and producing no surpluses for export) – as it is easier to write a simple rule then one with “ifs” in it.

Honestly, though this isn't doing much for me.  Once again, it comes down to the annoyance of tracking all those pesky PTU's.  Having to know how many PTU's all your outposts and colonies and settlements have, so that you can know how many more you need to get produce income at that level or to jump to the next level.  It's just too micro for my taste.

re: “too micro” – and yet you are happy to track and send orders to every IFN FT….. 

I’m the opposite – I find that an spreadsheet works well for populations and so makes it very easy, but tracking all those pesky FT’s to be a chore.

I think that the problem here is that I'm an old school pure ISF guy who grew up enjoying a simpler strategic game of Starfire and I'm dealing with 3e fans who often grew up playing the SM#2 modified version of ISF.  And I just don't find that micro level of granularity in the economics and colonization appealing or interesting.  It doesn't bother me to have to scrounge together the FT's and money to do colonization, rather than sending off the colonists in dribs and drabs.  Regardless, don't think that I'm nuking this line of thought.  I'm just venting my general distaste for this general level of economic granularity that I'm generally not fond of in SM#2 (and Ultra, etc.)

I think that the first serious slowdown occurs between Small to Medium.  Below that, pop growth is probably fairly quick, though I'd think that it's more likely that players won't want to wait for OP's to grow into Colonies, or Colonies into Settlements.  As I think I said before, I think that they'll absolutely take habitable pops all the way up to Settlement without a second thought.  Perhaps even Small, though that may be less of a guarantee.

O.K. Here’s what I’ve calculated for the various population growth rules (Note: that for all of the calculations, I started with an Outpost of only 2 PU):

Standard ISF
Outpost ->  Colony in 60 turns
Colony ->  Settlement in 60 turns
Settlement ->  Small in 120 turns
Small ->  Medium in 180 turns
Medium ->  Large in 360 turns
Large ->  Very Large in 660 turns
Total Time = 1440 turns


SM#2
Outpost ->  Colony in 60 turns
Colony ->  Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement ->  Small in 30 turns
Small ->  Medium in 20 turns
Medium ->  Large in 30 turns
Large ->  Very Large in 30 turns
Total Time = 200 turns


Using PTU (as suggested by Crucis on 2nd October) – with 25% growth rate for medium+ populations (i.e. as per SM#2)
Outpost ->  Colony in 60 turns
Colony ->  Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement ->  Small in 50 turns
Small ->  Medium in 70 turns
Medium ->  Large in 100 turns
Large ->  Very Large in 110 turns
Total Time = 420 turns


I’m very happy with the idea suggested by Crucis to do population growth in PTU, as that drops the growth rate considerably (tripling the time it takes to go from Small onwards, and doubling the overall time it takes to go from a small outpost to a Very Large Population).

Even if the population is “pushed” to Small (i.e. 151 PU) to help growth along, changing from PU (where it took 80 turns to go to Very Large) to PTU (where it now takes 280 turns) has a dramatic effect.

In retrospect, I think that it is a brilliant idea.

And BTW, if by "secondary colonization sites" you mean secondary colonization source populations (i.e. other than the homeworld), I'm not all that sympathetic to the idea of having to keep growth high enough to produce these secondary source pops just so that there are colonization pop sources ever 4 StMP.  I can understand why non-habitable colonization may be too expensive beyond that 4 StMP threshold, but habitable colonization should be worthy of doing considerably far beyond that.

The problem is, that once you breach the 8 StMP limit, the ROI starts to favour IU over colonisation.

Using the best case (benign planets), and taking into consideration that PU grows (while IU doesn’t) – once you reach 12 StMP, it isn’t worth colonising Poor/Very Poor planets (with Very Poor becoming a bad investment at 8 StMP).

Using Harsh planets, only the richest are the best at 12 StMP, through to it not being worth your while to colonise Very Poor planets at 4 StMP. Hostile is slightly worse then Harsh.


So if you eliminate the ability of colonies to support colonisation (through reduced population growth), then it isn’t economically feasible to place colonies more then 3 months travel from your homeworld – resulting in very small empires, and the use of genocide as a defensive weapon (i.e. if yousend in raids to kill off all of the enemies populations within 4 StMP of the border, then their ability to secure the border area becomes very difficult).

There is "some" pop growth.  I just don't think that most players are going to play campaigns that are long enough to see a Small grow into a Medium AND then see that Medium reach Large status.  You have to remember that pop growth is the root cause of the economic explosiveness problems.  I don't think that having a bunch of Mediums and Smalls is too big of a problem.  It's when you start seeing Large's and VLg's show up that things really get out of control.

I agree – which is why I’m pointing out that if you go to PTU growth, that addresses the problems of too many Large/Very Large populations (and so income).

Having said that though, I do see a need to have “normal” population growth to allow planets to gow to Medium size – to allow them to be used as sources of colonists.
 

I want to do away with the both the flat hard set numbers for both TL Research and tech system Development and replace them with a fees that are based on a percentage of your empire's income.  Obviously, the base percentage for TL Research would be much higher than for tech item Development.  And this doesn't take into any sort of acceleration like Crash, Perceived Threat, Assisted, and so forth.  But it will all be based on percentages of income so that the smallest empires can afford to do research, and the largest ones will be paying more.  But frankly, I'm thinking that the percentage will be the same, regardless of TL.

O.K.

I'm also thinking that there will be a couple of categories, Critical Projects and Hazardous Projects, which will increase cost, time, and risk of the projects.  Critical projects are meant to be the "game changing" tech systems, like fighters, cap missiles, anti-matter warheads, etc.  Hazardous projects are those that are particularly dangerous, like anti-matter, X-ray Laser detonation chambers, laser buoys, etc. As you can see, anti-matter warheads are both critical and hazardous projects.

Ahh – make sense.

[Paul M]

On the bug BBs they were the left over bits of a fleet, the Rigillians had destroyed their long range weapon armed ships but had exhausted their fighters/missiles or whatever they were using at the time to do it.  They had the 3 DD's left, the bugs had 40 assault BBs.  There was no hoisting on petards.  The bugs suffer from a dramatically slowed down research speed and the Rigillians were out teching them seriously.  You can see the difference this makes in Kurt's games where the Bugs are equivillent tech level to the "player" that is considerably harder.  In Steve's game the bugs and Rigillians both started at HT1 but the Bugs were only about half the tech level of the Rigillians at this time (HT4 or 5 Bugs vrs HT7+ for the Rigillians). 

I could say this shows the problem with specialist ships, but for warp point assaults in particular the game all but demands you build specialist assault ships.  If you want to go the full specialized fleet route that is your choice as a player, I think there is some justification for it, and there is equally justification against it.  My objection is that 3 DD's should not be able to destory 40 BBs regardless of whatever the situation is.  I also am absolutely certain the game was not played out, Steve just looked at the 1 hex range bonus, the 2 MPs and improved turn mode and said they won.  Likely this is the case but at least a part of me says there should be a way to bring the DDs under fire since 1 hex isn't that huge of an advantage.  Contionously closing on the DDs probably doesn't work but splittting the fleet of BBs in 3 groups and manuevering around should hem in the DDs...maybe not though.  But still it isn't a result that I like, and it is the result of a basic set of design choices that I would not make given a choice in the matter. 

On the time to growth, the home rules that we are using at the moment make forcing a planet to medium economically sensible.  The Drakes may have started it first, but pretty much everyone joined in.  Also growth to max sized settlement is a rarity.  In general growth on the way to settlement only happens due to when it discovered and when colonization starts, delivery of 156 PTU to the target is the general way that planets become small.  That means nothing to small might take anywhere from 6 turns to 1 turn depending on the size of the economy in question.  I certainly took longer with poor or very poor worlds but even now I am settling out to 13 transits.  The Drakes know of several (for them hostiles) they haven't settled just due to me using the spending guidelines.  But we are at Turn 182 and my maximum population outside of my home world is 430 PU.  But my homesystem is only 25% or so of my economy.

But it is the growth from small to very large that fuels the economic meltdown in a SM2 game.  80 turns is a reasonable time for a game and that means by turn 100 you could well have 5+ very large worlds in your emprire.  I also don't blame the economic model for generating the results it is designed to produce (intentionally or not) since the math is the math.  I just think that attempting to "correct" the behavior of model that is functioning in a WAD fashion is more complex and generates more rules and requires constant maintenance to deal with exploits then making a more complex model.  But I don't think it is neccessary to go to the level of worrying about where each screw in each ship is coming from.

In our München game we didn't have much player versus player conflict since realistically it was better to trade with them and we almost all had NPRs that were bigger threats on our borders.  In the current game the SC trades with the Thebans but also fortifies all points of contact (eventually).  PvP conflict arrises mainly when there is a compelling economic argument for it (or if the person playing is just bloody minded).  I've seen it in a smaller board game...actual combat starts only when "peaceful" expansion opportunities comes to an end.  I think that is what confuses me the most about Dominions II...the AI I believe agressively attacks you even though there are better choices around...I just know I do absymally poorly in that game.  But I think it is a lot like "King of Dragon's Pass" in that you have to work out how a lot of stuff works to deal with the game properly.

[crucis]

On the bug BBs they were the left over bits of a fleet, the Rigillians had destroyed their long range weapon armed ships but had exhausted their fighters/missiles or whatever they were using at the time to do it.  They had the 3 DD's left, the bugs had 40 assault BBs.  There was no hoisting on petards.  The bugs suffer from a dramatically slowed down research speed and the Rigillians were out teching them seriously.  You can see the difference this makes in Kurt's games where the Bugs are equivillent tech level to the "player" that is considerably harder.  In Steve's game the bugs and Rigillians both started at HT1 but the Bugs were only about half the tech level of the Rigillians at this time (HT4 or 5 Bugs vrs HT7+ for the Rigillians). 

This double population growth with a corresponding half tech advancement thing probably works out ok in the PU/PTU model where "population" growth is really economic growth.  But if true population growth were used, i.e. growth applied to the actual population measure, the PTU, I'm thinking that the Bugs would be screwed in the 2x population growth/50% tech advancement rule, since their economy wouldn't be growing at anywhere near a doubled rate.

I'm gonna have to remember that for later...

I could say this shows the problem with specialist ships, but for warp point assaults in particular the game all but demands you build specialist assault ships.  If you want to go the full specialized fleet route that is your choice as a player, I think there is some justification for it, and there is equally justification against it.  My objection is that 3 DD's should not be able to destory 40 BBs regardless of whatever the situation is.  I also am absolutely certain the game was not played out, Steve just looked at the 1 hex range bonus, the 2 MPs and improved turn mode and said they won.  Likely this is the case but at least a part of me says there should be a way to bring the DDs under fire since 1 hex isn't that huge of an advantage.  Continuously closing on the DDs probably doesn't work but splittting the fleet of BBs in 3 groups and manuevering around should hem in the DDs...maybe not though.  But still it isn't a result that I like, and it is the result of a basic set of design choices that I would not make given a choice in the matter. 

Oh, there's no doubt that specialist ships can have problems if they are caught unsupported and away from the battlefield for which they were specifically designed.  In this case, it was probably a poor decision to use regular F rather than Fc, since Fc would have given the ships a bit more reach.  At least enough that they could have prevented the DD's from ripping them to shreds as they did.

On the time to growth, the home rules that we are using at the moment make forcing a planet to medium economically sensible.  The Drakes may have started it first, but pretty much everyone joined in.  Also growth to max sized settlement is a rarity.  In general growth on the way to settlement only happens due to when it discovered and when colonization starts, delivery of 156 PTU to the target is the general way that planets become small.  That means nothing to small might take anywhere from 6 turns to 1 turn depending on the size of the economy in question.  I certainly took longer with poor or very poor worlds but even now I am settling out to 13 transits.  The Drakes know of several (for them hostiles) they haven't settled just due to me using the spending guidelines.  But we are at Turn 182 and my maximum population outside of my home world is 430 PU.  But my homesystem is only 25% or so of my economy.

I can understand you not wanting to colonize those hostile worlds so aggressively, given that hostiles have a max pop in SM#2 of only Settlement.  I won't say that they're not worth the trouble, since I don't know the other details.  But with a cap of Settlement, they're little better than a Desolate O2 planet (IIRC). 

But it is the growth from small to very large that fuels the economic meltdown in a SM2 game. 

Of course.  I don't particularly concern myself with growth for outposts, colonies, and settlements, because I assume that players will be increasing their populations thru colonization, and not waiting for growth to drive the population up to Small and Medium and so on.

 

80 turns is a reasonable time for a game and that means by turn 100 you could well have 5+ very large worlds in your empire.  I also don't blame the economic model for generating the results it is designed to produce (intentionally or not) since the math is the math.  I just think that attempting to "correct" the behavior of model that is functioning in a WAD fashion is more complex and generates more rules and requires constant maintenance to deal with exploits then making a more complex model.  But I don't think it is necessary to go to the level of worrying about where each screw in each ship is coming from.

What do you mean by "functioning in a WAD fashion"?  What's "WAD"?

In our München game we didn't have much player versus player conflict since realistically it was better to trade with them and we almost all had NPRs that were bigger threats on our borders.  In the current game the SC trades with the Thebans but also fortifies all points of contact (eventually).  PvP conflict arises mainly when there is a compelling economic argument for it (or if the person playing is just bloody minded).  I've seen it in a smaller board game...actual combat starts only when "peaceful" expansion opportunities comes to an end.  I think that is what confuses me the most about Dominions II...the AI I believe aggressively attacks you even though there are better choices around...I just know I do abysmally poorly in that game.  But I think it is a lot like "King of Dragon's Pass" in that you have to work out how a lot of stuff works to deal with the game properly.

Paul, I guess that my experience is that I'm used to more bloody minded players, people who wanted to go forth and conquer the galaxy as it were.

[Paul M]

The bugs were only HT4 or HT5 (I believe they were 5) and Fc is HT8, the Rigillians were HT7+ (I think they were base HT7 but had a number of HT8 systems, most importantly fighters).  The bugs were looped not due to bad design but mainly due to being so seriously out teched.  The Rigillians it must be remembered had ECM at this point.  So the bugs were fighting uphill on the tech curve and had only "quantity has a quality of its own" working for them.  You see the huge difference the fact that the eaters are the same tech level as the other races makes in Kurt's games.  Even in the official history the TFN was higher tech then the bugs, although the books give no indication that the bugs were slow to research things.  They developed the GB exceptionally quickly...though why they didn't develop the SBMHAWK pod is beyond my understanding.  Possibly they felt the GB was the same as the pod I guess.

The drakes have a spending limit on colonization and IU that I respect.  They are a military anarchy and spend most of their money on ships and defences rather than colonies.  So they have left a few outlier systems lie fallow.  The fact is Hostile worlds are much much much better than an O2, and this is because of two things.  The first is with 150 PU plus 75 IU you have a relatively easy to achieve industrial base in the system that nets you an income that guarentees the in system CFN is present.  The second and most important is they produce a good supply of PTUs that are available to be seeded into the system.   The Drakes have only 5 or 6 ST worlds (benign to them) so most of their income comes from hostiles, and in these systems every chunck of rock has an outpost or colony.  A hostile and a habitable in a system is a nice bonus since the growth PTU remove the need for you to break down PTU in the habitable to start the moon colonies so it grows faster.  There is a huge difference in the economic output of a pure moon colony system and one with a hostile planet present.

WAD is "working as designed" and since the economic model is compound interest growth, and it delievers compound interest gowth it is "working as designed."

It isn't that we weren't agressively conquoring the universe.  I was being called in as guest admiral regularily.  It is just that a war with a player or trade with a player?  One sucks money away from your growth the other adds to it...  Not much thought required. 

We did have a Player vrs NPC+Player battle due to treaties.  It was a nice set up with a map upstairs and down and the SM's updating them (at the system scale) and Franz suckered me but good, plus I didn't realize that the fleet had 3 CC ships (I didn't see them in the ship list I was given...around 20 pages of ships).  Had I known that, the battle would have proceeded and defeat in detail would have occured but since I had to wait for CDs to arrive, we ended up with a negotiated settlement and everyone left the system happy.  The suckering was when he sent in unarmed ships that I could have engaged but there were enough of them that I declined an even number battle and just shadowed them...since no one would send in unarmed ships to a war zone...I gotta admire the chutzpha there while kicking myself for the opportunity I missed.  I can understand the british admiralties rules on engaging the enemy regardless...but this was both another player and an NPC's forces.  I felt good about not loosing the NPRs fleet, but rather irritated by not spotting those 3 CC ships as I could have intercepted Franz's main attack piecemeal with my full fleet had the communication delay not been so bad.  Still it was one of the most enjoyable starfire times I had since it was played with real fog of war and on the system level.  A level of the game that is mostly ignored, and real fog of war makes a huge difference.  Scouting and counter scouting become considerable more critical and decisions are a lot harder to make the less information you have to base them on.

However there were at least 3 big bads, or 1 big bad and 2 bads...no make that 3 bads.  I had an incursion of the tyranids at one nexus, while the other nexus had the HT15+ race.  The tyranid threat caused me to settle for a NI with one NPR whose battle fleet I smashed in a 100+ ship WP assault but I needed those ships moving so didn't invade and conquor rather just said...don't bug me again else you won't be so lucky.   I had more nexus's then I could believe.  There was a AI race (the big bad) and a J'Rill race plus the "bugs" (the tyranids) and well Starslayer as one of the DMs could comment more.   Basically enough threats that taking on a player when there was no reason to made no sense.

[Starslayer_D]

Well, the Tyranids were slowly exhausting themselves against an NPC wich kept optimising it's designs. There was a system. NPR 1 send in it's fleet. tyranids smashed them. Then NPR  send it's fleets in, smashed the tyranids, retreated for repairs. Tyranids went in, got weakened against NPR 1 by smashing them. NPR 2 went in, smashed the tyranids..  repeat...

The Hive Mind was discovering more contact points with Franz than they could defend, and Franz was serriously an oponent for them all on his own. His asteroid forts sure bottled them up. The build up untill they felt safe to attack took too long.

That left The Core... the machine race. They smashed everything wich didn't surrender, and amalgenated races who proved willing to. Anything smahed got processed into J'Rill boxes, and send out as J'rill fleets to survey more of the universe than the Core could afford to fortify. and they fortified seriously.
Anyway, The Core was designed to tacle anyone.. anywhere...  they had 2-3 times the economy of a player race, had allies, had an immense fleet with viscious ship designs... taking them down would have been a very big fight.

The TL 15 race was in the end not that dangerous, as they simply had a money issue building up their economy after maintainance and minutions had been covered. . They could hurt, but numbers would have just worn them down a lot.

I think a game with the economies we currently have, with spread out empires, would work a lot better.

[crucis]

The bugs were only HT4 or HT5 (I believe they were 5) and Fc is HT8, the Rigillians were HT7+ (I think they were base HT7 but had a number of HT8 systems, most importantly fighters).  The bugs were looped not due to bad design but mainly due to being so seriously out teched.  The Rigillians it must be remembered had ECM at this point.  So the bugs were fighting uphill on the tech curve and had only "quantity has a quality of its own" working for them.  You see the huge difference the fact that the eaters are the same tech level as the other races makes in Kurt's games.  Even in the official history the TFN was higher tech then the bugs, although the books give no indication that the bugs were slow to research things.  They developed the GB exceptionally quickly...though why they didn't develop the SBMHAWK pod is beyond my understanding.  Possibly they felt the GB was the same as the pod I guess.

A. I was given the impression in a previous post that the Bugs were of a higher TL than 4 or 5.  Hence my comment about Fc.

B. Bugs and SBMHAWK: The working premise was that the Bugs had no sense of personal self-preservation and thus had no pressing need to develop SBMHAWKs rather than use specialized assault ships.  From a racial perspective, that premise may work, but it seems to fail when one considers the cost in wasted ships, MC, and ship building time for those ships.  SBMHAWKs would have simply been more efficient.

The drakes have a spending limit on colonization and IU that I respect.  They are a military anarchy and spend most of their money on ships and defences rather than colonies.  So they have left a few outlier systems lie fallow.  The fact is Hostile worlds are much much much better than an O2, and this is because of two things.  The first is with 150 PU plus 75 IU you have a relatively easy to achieve industrial base in the system that nets you an income that guarantees the in system CFN is present.  The second and most important is they produce a good supply of PTUs that are available to be seeded into the system.   The Drakes have only 5 or 6 ST worlds (benign to them) so most of their income comes from hostiles, and in these systems every chunk of rock has an outpost or colony.  A hostile and a habitable in a system is a nice bonus since the growth PTU remove the need for you to break down PTU in the habitable to start the moon colonies so it grows faster.  There is a huge difference in the economic output of a pure moon colony system and one with a hostile planet present.

That's a good point you make that I'd overlooked.  Even though quite small compared to the titans of economic production that are Larges and VLg's, even a Hostile Settlement is going to have some growth.  And given SM#2's prodigious growth rates, that means that you're gonna have a nice amount of PTU's to use to colonize the local star system's rockballs. 

As for the comment about ST's, yes, given the 4-to-1 split between T's and ST's, it's hardly a surprise that Hostile Settlements represent such a large portion of the Drakes' income.  But for game balance purposes, it'd probably be better if the T/ST split was 2 to 1, rather than 4 to 1, at least within the current HD model used by both SM#2 and Ultra.

WAD is "working as designed" and since the economic model is compound interest growth, and it delievers compound interest gowth it is "working as designed."

"working as designed".  Got it.  Thanks.

It isn't that we weren't aggressively conquering the universe.  I was being called in as guest admiral regularily.  It is just that a war with a player or trade with a player?  One sucks money away from your growth the other adds to it...  Not much thought required. 

Yeah, not much thought required for me either.  ATTACK!!!!     (Assuming that I'm not otherwise engaged in other conflicts already...)

We did have a Player vrs NPC+Player battle due to treaties.  It was a nice set up with a map upstairs and down and the SM's updating them (at the system scale) and Franz suckered me but good, plus I didn't realize that the fleet had 3 CC ships (I didn't see them in the ship list I was given...around 20 pages of ships).  Had I known that, the battle would have proceeded and defeat in detail would have occurred but since I had to wait for CDs to arrive, we ended up with a negotiated settlement and everyone left the system happy.  The suckering was when he sent in unarmed ships that I could have engaged but there were enough of them that I declined an even number battle and just shadowed them...since no one would send in unarmed ships to a war zone...I gotta admire the chutzpah there while kicking myself for the opportunity I missed.  I can understand the british admiralties rules on engaging the enemy regardless...but this was both another player and an NPC's forces.  I felt good about not loosing the NPRs fleet, but rather irritated by not spotting those 3 CC ships as I could have intercepted Franz's main attack piecemeal with my full fleet had the communication delay not been so bad.  Still it was one of the most enjoyable starfire times I had since it was played with real fog of war and on the system level.  A level of the game that is mostly ignored, and real fog of war makes a huge difference.  Scouting and counter scouting become considerable more critical and decisions are a lot harder to make the less information you have to base them on.

Yeah, that sort of battle of maneuver and such doesn't happen all that much in Starfire since so many battles happen at WP's.  And I guess that it's a shame because there really is a lot of potential for some great deep space battles and operational level maneuvering and deception and such in the game.

However there were at least 3 big bads, or 1 big bad and 2 bads...no make that 3 bads.  I had an incursion of the tyranids at one nexus, while the other nexus had the HT15+ race.  The tyranid threat caused me to settle for a NI with one NPR whose battle fleet I smashed in a 100+ ship WP assault but I needed those ships moving so didn't invade and conquor rather just said...don't bug me again else you won't be so lucky.   I had more nexus's then I could believe.  There was a AI race (the big bad) and a J'Rill race plus the "bugs" (the tyranids) and well Starslayer as one of the DMs could comment more.   Basically enough threats that taking on a player when there was no reason to made no sense.

Makes sense.  I'll agree that if you're already well involved in a number of conflicts, there's no sense in looking for more trouble.

[Paul M]

Weber's bugs made a number of decisions that made absolutely no sense.  Not having their fleet CLs use military engines, not developing the SBMHAWK pod, probing through a warp point that otherwise the enemy would not have localized once they were pushed back on that system, building defences on the WP rather than just towing them there...probably others...why they probed Alpha C is beyond me (find out it is a major system with a single CL and then go back for a full fleet)...did they actually do anything smart in any of the books?

The drakes also rely heavily on trade, but their homesystem (since it is the trade point for most of their treaties) is also expectionally heavily fortified, and crewed with elite crews.  It is the that crew grade that makes their otherwise absurd ship designs not quite so laughable.  Their SD will have 8 Rc and 8 Wa for example...once they get It, Zi and Dz deep space engagements against them will be nightmares.

Hmmm on "Attack" the point was we had 6 players if memory serves and two of them duking it out would have resulted in the other 4 pulling ahead since the player on player war would have stagnated into a mutual destruction orgy unless there was some curious warp point linkages.  What Starslayer describes for the Tyranids would likely have happened...fleet A smashes fleet 1 but is hit by fleet 2 which is caught by fleet B and so forth.   The sole advantage the players would have gotten was improved crews and admirals.  Overall in this situation...it is very hard to see where the advantage in "Attacke" over "trade" comes from.  If you could quickly hit the other player to take them down...that would have been a huge boost but...you would have needed to know that was a high chance before the start of the war...  Outside of a closed WP into their home system or near to it I don't see how you could do it.  Plus the big bads were big and bad and we all knew that, which was a huge dis-incentive to such things.

[Starslayer_D]

Heh..  well, one big bad.. the others were mostly medium bads. The tyranids had troubles, and were getting outteched. The hive mind was doing well but had develloped too many points of contact with an equal foe. The high tech guys like I said had a shoe string economy... the J'rill fleets (all three of them) were induvidually too weak at the point, but good for being nuisances due to J and Jc.

An the Core had a problem of a different sort. Spread out a lot...  but I am not sure anyone would have been willing to play out any of the battles around their come systems. They rivalled Kurts eaters in terms of fleet sizes and economy, but where the highest tech race in the game beside the T15 guys.. and they were busy developping T11 systems.
alas, the game became too big.. We originally had 8 player races, the biggest all were beraching 800k income. The bugs also had that, the core had 2 million. ervyone settled every crummy rock they could find up to 16 transits away.. (asteroid belt colonisation became a no-no from that experience).

[crucis]

Weber's bugs made a number of decisions that made absolutely no sense.  Not having their fleet CLs use military engines, not developing the SBMHAWK pod, probing through a warp point that otherwise the enemy would not have localized once they were pushed back on that system, building defences on the WP rather than just towing them there...probably others...why they probed Alpha C is beyond me (find out it is a major system with a single CL and then go back for a full fleet)...did they actually do anything smart in any of the books?

I mostly agree with you, PaulM.  I think that a lot of it has to be considered literary license.  The probing action seems the most strategically stupid. 

Their ship designs were intentionally specialized from the beginning.  However, I think that one thing that I wish could have been changed was that I'd have liked to see the Bugs be a bit more adaptable to more flexible design changes after it became clear that their uber-specialized fleet designs were cutting it against the Alliance's more balanced designs, particularly regarding ships armed for shorter ranged combat.  Their shorter range combat ships would have been better served to have had more of a mixed armament with some Wa or Wc missile launchers to provide a longer reach and/or some AFM launching capacity.

The drakes also rely heavily on trade, but their home system (since it is the trade point for most of their treaties) is also exceptionally heavily fortified, and crewed with elite crews.  It is the that crew grade that makes their otherwise absurd ship designs not quite so laughable.  Their SD will have 8 Rc and 8 Wa for example...once they get It, Zi and Dz deep space engagements against them will be nightmares.

Sounds rather like the Zarkolyans from ISW4 with those mixed missile launcher armaments.

[crucis]

An the Core had a problem of a different sort. Spread out a lot...  but I am not sure anyone would have been willing to play out any of the battles around their come systems. They rivaled Kurts eaters in terms of fleet sizes and economy, but where the highest tech race in the game beside the T15 guys.. and they were busy developing T11 systems.
alas, the game became too big.. We originally had 8 player races, the biggest all were reaching 800k income. The bugs also had that, the core had 2 million. Everyone settled every crummy rock they could find up to 16 transits away.. (asteroid belt colonisation became a no-no from that experience).

Guys, I'm curious what you think would be a way to make it less desirable to colonize "every crummy rock" around?  I want to avoid anything overly complex.

At the moment, I've been considering making a serious reversal of the Ultra Mineral/Environment value table, where habitable VP-VR values have an incremental difference of 20% points and Extremes have a difference of only 10% points.  I've been thinking of creating much wider differentials between VP and VR on the various Desolate and Extreme worlds to make the richest such bodies very, very desirable, and the poorest such bodies very undesirable.  And for habitables, I was thinking of reducing the increment from 20% points to 10% points, making the differential between VP and VR rather less.  This would reduce the impact of survey luck regarding to habitables much less, and increase it for non-habitables higher.  Of course, habitables would always be worth much more simply because they can grow, and non-habitables wouldn't.   But it might make non-habitables less predictable and cookie cutter-ish. 

Also, AB's wouldn't be automatically rich.  Rather I'm thinking that they should roll for their mineral wealth like any other world, except that they'd get an automatic 1 bracket increase for being an AB.  That is, a Poor AB would get bumped to Normal, or a Rich one would get bumped to VR. 

I'm also thinking of grading mineral wealth for non-habs based on planetary type, not merely Desolate/Extreme, and making Type H (Hot) Mercury-like bodies particularly wealthy any and Type F (Frozen; mostly Ice zone moons and AB's) less mineral wealthy; with Type B (Barren) (old O2) worlds being somewhere in the middle.


Like I said above, the goal is to make non-habitables either much more desirable, or much less desirable.  And in doing so, decrease the economic incentive to colonize every rock ball in sight by making the poorest ones far less attractive.  On the flipside, I realize that in this one dimensional economic model, even if VR Type H's were worth 300% of normal, it's still just money and in the end it's not enough to make someone want to fight over it.


Comment away...

[Starslayer_D]

Well, an asteroid belt allready delivers a +10% income modifier. why not leave it at that? I would put asteroids at a mineral value of normal.
The really big economic factor comes from the fact that a good belt can hold more PU than any habitable.. and now have a system with multiple belts.. wich also get the 10% multiple times. A five belt system can get over 40k income, belts alone!

[crucis]

Well, an asteroid belt allready delivers a +10% income modifier. why not leave it at that? I would put asteroids at a mineral value of normal.
The really big economic factor comes from the fact that a good belt can hold more PU than any habitable.. and now have a system with multiple belts.. which also get the 10% multiple times. A five belt system can get over 40k income, belts alone!

I have no problem with there being no rockballs to colonize in asteroid belts.  But I'd rather not have all belts have the same Ast. Belt multiplier.  I think that their value should differ by relative location (i.e. environment) and overall mineral wealth (i.e. Poor to Very Rich). 

It just seems too cookie cutter for all belts to be assumed to be equally valuable.  It is simpler. But if really, really simple was the goal, then why bother with mineral values for non-habitable bodies (or habitable planets, for that matter) at all?


I realize that MattW is usually concerned about the stuck-at-homes, and would be concerned about losing AB's as an option for them.  However, it's always seemed to me that those AB's are never used for stay-at-homes only.  If they're sufficiently profitable, everyone will colonize them.  And the paperwork issue isn't resolved.  So I tend to think that the best option is to simply not allow AB Colonization (ABC).  However, a significant down side here is that without ABC, there's a lot of income potential lost for systems that don't have habitable planets.

Hmmm, I've just has a minor epiphany on the topic.  I'm going to have to give it some thought before I discuss it further.

[crucis]

O.K. Here’s what I’ve calculated for the various population growth rules (Note: that for all of the calculations, I started with an Outpost of only 2 PU):

Standard ISF
Outpost ->  Colony in 60 turns
Colony ->  Settlement in 60 turns
Settlement ->  Small in 120 turns
Small ->  Medium in 180 turns
Medium ->  Large in 360 turns
Large ->  Very Large in 660 turns
Total Time = 1440 turns


SM#2
Outpost ->  Colony in 60 turns
Colony ->  Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement ->  Small in 30 turns
Small ->  Medium in 20 turns
Medium ->  Large in 30 turns
Large ->  Very Large in 30 turns
Total Time = 200 turns


Using PTU (as suggested by Crucis on 2nd October) – with 25% growth rate for medium+ populations (i.e. as per SM#2)
Outpost ->  Colony in 60 turns
Colony ->  Settlement in 30 turns
Settlement ->  Small in 50 turns
Small ->  Medium in 70 turns
Medium ->  Large in 100 turns
Large ->  Very Large in 110 turns
Total Time = 420 turns

Matt, I'd remove the times to build up to Settlement.  That sort of growth seems rare to me.  Even Settlement to Small may not be worth it. If growth is relatively slow, then there'd be a LOT of incentive to colonize yourself up to Small to save time.  And in a PU/PTU model, it could be worth it to try to drive it up to medium, or close enough to let growth finish the job.

I’m very happy with the idea suggested by Crucis to do population growth in PTU, as that drops the growth rate considerably (tripling the time it takes to go from Small onwards, and doubling the overall time it takes to go from a small outpost to a Very Large Population).

Even if the population is “pushed” to Small (i.e. 151 PU) to help growth along, changing from PU (where it took 80 turns to go to Very Large) to PTU (where it now takes 280 turns) has a dramatic effect.

In retrospect, I think that it is a brilliant idea.

I think that it's only as brilliant as one's patience and willingness to accept such a slow economic growth rate.  It *does* solve economic explosiveness...

The problem is, that once you breach the 8 StMP limit, the ROI starts to favour IU over colonisation.

Using the best case (benign planets), and taking into consideration that PU grows (while IU doesn’t) – once you reach 12 StMP, it isn’t worth colonising Poor/Very Poor planets (with Very Poor becoming a bad investment at 8 StMP).

Using Harsh planets, only the richest are the best at 12 StMP, through to it not being worth your while to colonise Very Poor planets at 4 StMP. Hostile is slightly worse then Harsh.


So if you eliminate the ability of colonies to support colonisation (through reduced population growth), then it isn’t economically feasible to place colonies more then 3 months travel from your homeworld – resulting in very small empires, and the use of genocide as a defensive weapon (i.e. if you send in raids to kill off all of the enemies populations within 4 StMP of the border, then their ability to secure the border area becomes very difficult).

I guess that this is a problem I have with too strict a use of ROI's in the colonization decision making process within the game, and not enough just playing out the "story" of your empire.



Tonight, I've been thinking of a different "setup" model for how one could do the game.   The way the various rules (i.e. the CFN, the percentages of Benigns/Harshs/Hostiles, etc.) configure things, there's a lot of pressure to really pay attention to colonizing and expanding in 4 StMP shells and seemingly being unable to see beyond these 4 StMP shells.  This might be important in a smallish game galaxy in a PvP game.  But I wonder if in a less competitively charged game (or even a solo game) in a large game galaxy, whether a different "configuration" could work to produce a more interesting, less cookie cutter style of game.

Let me outline what I was thinking.  First of all, this idea is mostly meant for a large game galaxy of hundreds of potential star systems, not a small galaxy of perhaps 10-20 systems per player.

1. Hold the number of T/ST's the same, but radically change the ratio of Benigns, Harsh's and Hostiles so that Benigns were quite rare (perhaps 5%), Harshs were moderately common (perhaps 25%), and Hostiles were very common (70%).

2. Reduce the number of NPR's to the levels used in Ultra.

One could accomplish a somewhat similar thing by simply reducing the number of habitables overall.  But in doing so, you lose a LOT of lesser growing populations that could help feed colonization without everything coming from the homeworld.  But by keeping overall habitables the same, but making Benigns rare, you seriously cut down on those explosively large populations and create a situation where those Benigns are precious finds.

Yes, this situation would create a lot more exploration luck.  But I think that it'd create a lot more mystery and uncertainty.  And with NPR's being rarer, hopefully the changes don't turn the setup into one that favors trade treaties over exploration and colonization.  (Of course, you're not going to get the trade treaties without first finding NPRs and friendly ones at that...)

I'm sure that some peoples' first instinct will be to say that the first person to find a Benign or a NPR to be a Partner will win the game.  But remember that I said up front that I think that this setup is probably better suited to solo games or less competitively charged games, rather than for players who are looking for every little fleeting advantage and who would resign when they discover that another player has found that advantage, like it was a game of chess.  I think that this setup would be good for players who want to see their game's "history" play out for the fun of it.

And in this setup, one could probably get away with a rather considerable PU growth rate, since there wouldn't be all that many Benigns around to get out of hand.




Anyway, comments?

[Paul M]

Just a couple of points.

1.  Growth up to a small is pretty much not worth discussing.  156 PTU will be dropped on any habitable to get it to small, only in the case of SM2 rates of population growth would someone consider only putting 100 PTU in place and taking 20 turns to grow it it small.  And I question seriously the sense of that except when you are at the start of the game and income strapped.  This reduces Matt's times to VLarge to 80 turns under SM2 and 280 turns under PTU growth plus anything from 1 to 10 turns to reflect the build up of the initial population.   With slow growth it becomes more an more sensible to target planets for further growth from small to medium via additional colonization.

2.  I don't see how you can change the distribution of benign, harsh and hostile as you suggest.  The increase in ST would just make people play ST races more often.  A better solution is just to reduce the catagory of benign to: HI of target planet is equal to HI of homeworld is benign, else it is harsh.

3.  You aren't solving anything with the changes you are just kicking the can down the road.  The economic system remains compound interest growth, there is but a single comodity to be min-maxed and all other conditions remain the same.  GSF did the same thing with just increasing the costs of ships.  The economic melt down will still eventually occur.

4.  Changing the value of the planets/moons wealth.  I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish.  You can do it, but the point is colonizing anything is worth more money next turn.  All you are doing is changing the rate of return.  The rate of return is always positive so there is never a reason to not do so, except that another economic investment might bring a higher rate of return.  But it doesn't change the fact that first you colonize the VR, then the R, and last the N (in-system colonization of moons) there is rarely any reason to not do this.  Asteroid belts allow huge populations, under your system depending on the distribution of REI values they would even be more valuable, a 100 LS VR asteroid belt would be an economic powerhouse.  A better way to deal with this is to bell curve the results so you can make outliers (VR or VP) more rare.  Generally you gain a lot in smoothing things out and in control when you go from a linear probability to a curved one.

5.  Starslayer can comment on the chance we are down to for finding an NPR...it is pathetically low and we still run into them.