Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Froggiest1982 on January 14, 2020, 02:45:07 PM
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Just a thought.
Shall the Sector Command require population to work?
Basically is a bit unrealistic that 8 Sector Commands could handle all the system within 4 jumps just with one Admin. I mean the amount of paperwork to handle should be insane.
Other things to consider: Rather than require more Sector Commands to increase the radius (The range of the Sector increases at an exponentially decreasing rate) why don't cap the number of Commands so that more commands are required? At the end of the day, nobody can oversee a whole Galaxy. Also, this could fix the workaround implemented to avoid exploit for example:
Sector Governors give one-quarter of their bonuses, (like mining or factory production), to all colonies in the sector.
Wouldn't be required. With a maximum of 4 Commands you could have the following to simulate the lost of efficiency within size:
100% bonus for 1 sector command radius 0
75% bonus for 2 sector commands radius 1
50% bonus for 3 sector commands radius 2
25% bonus for 4 sector commands radius 3
Otherwise, you could have the following to avoid single sector commands spawn exploit:
25% bonus for 1 sector command radius 0
50% bonus for 2 sector commands radius 1
75% bonus for 3 sector commands radius 2
100% bonus for 4 sector commands radius 3
The range of the Sector increases at an exponentially decreasing rate.
Wouldn't be required as limit will be a fixed set (4 or 5 or 10 depending on Steve's thoughts and test)
As discussed the need for population and maybe increase base BP required for construction could also balance exploiting the number of single sector commands.
any thoughts?
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I'm unsure what exploit you refer to.
Also, 100% in the same system is far too high a bonus. Getting your best leader to boost your whole home system, not just your home planet, at max? That's pretty huge.
That said, population use seems reasonable enough.
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I would only be in favor of a small population usage. 50k people per sector command do not sound a bad idea.
I'm against changin how the bonuses work though
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I'm unsure what exploit you refer to.
You could just plop in sector commands with the first example and get 100% bonus which is a lot so it was intended to discourage that tactic.
I agree that 100% is a lot however that was only an example. You could do 5-10-15-20 or 2-4-8-10...anyway I hope you understand.
I would only be in favor of a small population usage. 50k people per sector command do not sound a bad idea.
I'm against changin how the bonuses work though
Yes I do agree in fact the main post purpose was mostly the need of population as I believe is a bit unrealistic. Even more than 50K pop will actually justify the need of administrative compounds with Financial centers, sector commands and eventually academies.
I just wanted to know if this could have been seen as valuable or just a meh.
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I think the question of whether any building must have a population requirement should come down to game balance.
We need reasons to move colonists off our homeworld. Now, true, many reasons already exist. But buildings population requirements are one of those. The higher the pop requirement, the greater the incentive to move population to faroff places.
If Sector Commands have no pop requirements, they can be slapped down on any exposed piece of rock. That allows them on to be hidden or placed in systems with no viable colonies. This forms more the idea of a self-contained command post for the sector. Like a government bunker or something.
If they have pop requirements, the functions become more colony-centric. High population planets become more valuable as potential capitals to host these facilities. Now they are more like parliament or the Pentagon, requiring a large population to support them. This provides impetus to form little nexuses of government rule on populated planets throughout your empire.
When planets had no pop limits, the first option made more sense. You can dump enough infrastructure on any barren rock to run the Sector Command, so why force players to jump through the hoop? Now that there are maximum populations and most asteroids may struggle to be able to house sufficient population to run a Sector Command, perhaps the second may add more dynamic gameplay, encourage more desired behaviour and make more sense.
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I do think some population would make sense. Not a high one, but running a SECTOR should require a certain number of pupolation. Else we may just as well say that automation is 100%, and that no ship or structure need pop because robots do everything. Since it is apparent to me that this is not the point of the game, I'd really say that a sector command requires a notable amount of people to run. 50k seems reasonable.
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I do think some population would make sense. Not a high one, but running a SECTOR should require a certain number of pupolation. Else we may just as well say that automation is 100%, and that no ship or structure need pop because robots do everything. Since it is apparent to me that this is not the point of the game, I'd really say that a sector command requires a notable amount of people to run. 50k seems reasonable.
Just like ground training facilities, the lore isn't so much that Sector Commands are run by robots but that they already include their population (since its all government employees) and everything they need to live and it is therefore abstracted away for simplicity sake as it doesn't add much to the game. Really pretty much like the thing is a self-contained bunker.
Yes there is TECHNICALLY the consideration that this "population" is created out of nothing since the population of the planet you build them on does not decrease by an equal amount, but the amounts arent really relevant so it doesn't really matter and is not worth tracking. At least, that is if memory serves was the story.
As I said, with population limits on planets this might no longer be true. The population in question might be relevant when you are working with a small sector capital with only a maximum population of a hundred million or less (of which only a fraction are available as labour).
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I do think a sector command should require a fairly large colony, personally. You cant just put 50 guys in a bunker somewhere and then imagine that is performing major governmental services for an area of space consisting of multiple inhabited planets and possibly hundreds of billions of humans. I'd be fine with building one out of the way but it should probably require a fair degree of infrastructure to do so.
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I thnk a far better solution is that sector commands not grant bonuses to any colony/system with more population than the colony/system where the command is located.
Because I can imagine "50 guys in a bunker somewhere. . . performing major governmental services for an area of space consisting of multiple inhabited planets" so long as those planets are sparsely inhabited. Maybe that's because I used to live in a "city" that was the governmental hub for a million square kilometres.
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I thnk a far better solution is that sector commands not grant bonuses to any colony/system with more population than the colony/system where the command is located.
Because I can imagine "50 guys in a bunker somewhere. . . performing major governmental services for an area of space consisting of multiple inhabited planets" so long as those planets are sparsely inhabited. Maybe that's because I used to live in a "city" that was the governmental hub for a million square kilometres.
That sounds a more interesting approach... but unfortunately it also strikes me as harder to program, and the resulting code seems likely to have more crannies for bugs and be less efficient (however negligible the speed hit may seem in the new codebase).
Preview edit: Which is to say, it's a new mechanic rather than an existing one being applied to another installation. So that's a very steep hurdle to overcome in persuading Steve to put it in.
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I don't see that it would be any more difficult a mechanic than 'unrest reduces production' or 'worker shortage reduces prodution.' Especially if instead of a simple on/off for sector commands at small(er) populations, the mechanic becomes propotionately-reduced function.
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I... don't see how it would make sense. I can somehow see how a sector command should be on a decently inhabited place... But that's it.
Surely a sector command on a 100 million colony has enough infrastructure to properly coordinate even a 1 billion planet. Anyway, it seems an arbitrary limitation to me. I can agree that it should use some population, but that's it.
And 50k people doing nothing else but coordinating... and supported by mechanization... are already a lot in fact.
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I think I can be happy with 50k.
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By way of comparison, the Pentagon employs about 30k people directly.
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However, Sector Commands don't do military administration. They do civilian administration in C# Aurora, and keep in mind that the USA's own government employs some 200 000 people in Washington DC. Military administration in C# is done by Naval Headquarters instead.
Not all of the people in Washington employed by the USA government will be top level bureaucrats and their staff or other key government personnel, but a large number of them will be. I'd find it entirely reasonable that a Sector Command administrating a population of potentially billions on just one planet would require some 50 000 people as support staff for the assigned Sector Administrator.
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I don't really see the point to such a low target though. Unless the required population is an actual significant number to consider, this just turns into another meaningless checkbox where you dump a cargo ship of colonists and infrastructure onto a world and call it a day. This is on the scale of tracking the population involved in ground forces creation, where its a trivial enough sum to not really matter. Especially when we're talking these high level commands, and comparing them to entire nation scale control organizations.
If we're looking at this from a realism/simulation aspect, its not really accurate to compare the entire federal government to what is in essence a top level bureaucracy. These planets we're ruling over presumably already have functional governments in them, your sector command is simply acting as a top level coordinating efforts and focus to generate these bonuses. Your not talking tens of thousands of people to do that, your likely talking hundreds. This is your state governors office staff, not an entire extra federal government.
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I don't really see the point to such a low target though. Unless the required population is an actual significant number to consider, this just turns into another meaningless checkbox where you dump a cargo ship of colonists and infrastructure onto a world and call it a day. This is on the scale of tracking the population involved in ground forces creation, where its a trivial enough sum to not really matter. Especially when we're talking these high level commands, and comparing them to entire nation scale control organizations.
If we're looking at this from a realism/simulation aspect, its not really accurate to compare the entire federal government to what is in essence a top level bureaucracy. These planets we're ruling over presumably already have functional governments in them, your sector command is simply acting as a top level coordinating efforts and focus to generate these bonuses. Your not talking tens of thousands of people to do that, your likely talking hundreds. This is your state governors office staff, not an entire extra federal government.
It's a fair point. What about adding population per level then? you could keep 50K. So a level 2 Sector command would require 100k for example, 3 150k and so on.
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The 'top level bureaucracy' existed already and the sector command is some addition to that to the extent that it actually makes a big difference to the functioning of said sector. I think its reasonable to say that it is doing a lot more than just re-locating a couple hundred dudes that presumably already existed, and that its not so reasonable to say that adding a very small number of people would actually do all that much.
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By way of comparison, the Pentagon employs about 30k people directly.
And manages about 10% of the military personnel for one planet, not a whole solar system. Also, sector commands aren't just military, since they give bonuses to the economy. So 50k each sounds about right to me. (It's also in keeping with other installations, so if it's anywhere close to accurate, I'd be fine keeping it at the same level for simplicity).
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Frankly speaking, I'd like to say that at the end of the day this is probably something best left to roleplaying.
Want to have sector commands only on large worlds, because you feel you need a world of hundred of millions colonists in order for the sector command to make sense? Well, you're free to roleplay that, but it's not something to be enforced on the game.
I would be ok with sector commands requiring a token population, say those 50k people, to simulate that it needs some population presence. But anything else should be left to the roleplay of the person playing.
And I surely prefer sector commands to use zero population, rather than having it restricted only on very large colonies.
It comes down to: since it's not really a balance thing, but just a preference, let's avoid forcing ONE gameplay style on all players.
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Yea, I guess it does come down to roleplaying. The empire I'm drafting up for C#'s release canonically has a very lean government, so to me having a few hundred people run the one layer above it (with all the given technology from their Transnewtonian shenanigans) works for me, but running some 1800's in space empire would have entirely different expectations of how it should work. Hell, you could probably roleplay sectors as noble fiefdoms and have some interesting stuff around that, with its own expectations once again.
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You could always say, "In my headcannon it takes 50k pop." and never ever put one on a colony with less than 50k pop.
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You could always say, "In my headcannon it takes 50k pop." and never ever put one on a colony with less than 50k pop.
Well, this would fix everything!
;D
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I dunno, I guess I don't really care all that much in this case, but I'd prefer most things to be an actual mechanic rather than something you have to keep track of by hand. Its kindof a cop out to say 'oh yeah you can just do everything yourself instead of using the game' because thats effectively what it is. What if part of the population dies? Do I need to shut everything down by hand, and if I dont notice or forget to do so I keep benefitting from it? 'just RP it' doesn't really seem all that viable to me.
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Okay, I've lost track of what actual problem we are trying to solve. Are people legitimately worried that we can spend thousands of build points to up the output of automated mining colonies by 2 or 3 per cent? Because we can't build or research without a real population, and if we have one of those then giving the SecCom a worker requirement doesn't particularly matter.
If we're trying to stop the exploit of dumping one SecCom on top of several hundred auto-mines, I'm not sure that (mathematically) it's even an exploit. . . and if it is, then increasing the cost by one orbital habitat isn't doing much to stop it.
Personally, I have never put Sector Commands anywhere other than multi-billion population colonies. In at least half my games, I've never put them anywhere other than my imperial capital.
Until this thread came along, I had no idea they didn't require workers, or supporting pop, or whatever. I can't remember if I've ever captured any, or discovered any in alien ruins. They are just a cool thing I build a few of in my captial and largely forget about.
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According to Star Trek Discovery, the entire Terran Empire is run from a warp capable ship, not from earth itself. So having a SecCom on some remote rock could have its (legitimate?) reasons... :)
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And I surely prefer sector commands to use zero population, rather than having it restricted only on very large colonies.
It comes down to: since it's not really a balance thing, but just a preference, let's avoid forcing ONE gameplay style on all players.
I agree with Zincat here. While I fully understand and agree with QuakeIV that
I'd prefer most things to be an actual mechanic rather than something you have to keep track of by hand
in this case it's not important because there really is no game play issue here. Better to have it as a flexible thing instead of railroading.
If Steve thinks it should have a population requirement, then 50k is not enough at all. It should be 1 million per each level so that it's an actual investment. But I doubt that is necessary since Steve already increased the pop demands of other installations.
So leave Sector Commands as they are currently, it's working well enough IMHO.
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If Steve thinks it should have a population requirement, then 50k is not enough at all. It should be 1 million per each level so that it's an actual investment.
This is the key point. The number of sector command installations will be very small compared to other installation types, so unless the population requirement is substantial there is no game play decision involved. There are already significant additional demands on population in C# Aurora (Shipyard changes, plus the need for more financial centres and maintenance facilities), so I don't want to add any more until there has been a lot more play testing.
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Just a thought.
Shall the Sector Command require population to work?
Basically is a bit unrealistic that 8 Sector Commands could handle all the system within 4 jumps just with one Admin. I mean the amount of paperwork to handle should be insane.
I disagree that it's "a bit unrealistic" or an issue.
According to the change log for 7.0 the average number of jump points in a system seem to be about 2.7
With one of the JP leading back where you came from this means each system will on average contain jump points leading to 1.7 "new" systems.
So the amount of systems we need to administer increase by x 1.7 while the amount of sector commands we need to build increase by x 2.0 for each jump outward in all directions we make.
This is without taking into account that remote systems probably have less population or forces to administer, that you probably don't have meaningful activities in all systems as well as the fact that administrative centrals are more likely to be located in systems with more jump points.
It's overall IMHO a pretty good approximation, and if it could be improved in any way it would be taking into account the travel time and make it so Sector Commands scales with engine technology or distance in some manner. If it takes several years to travel from the sector command to the outlying regions I can agree with you that it's not especially realistic to allow effective administration ( although this is a quite extreme example ).