Civilian ships reduction - An idea

[misanthropope]

spike

even at the very beginning of the game, there isnt an important order which is too small for a large freighter. 

conceivably, at some point your haulers are so big that none of them would be willing to be bothered moving a research installation (!), but that's pretty darn far down the line, and not difficult to prevent. 

even on day 1, if you had to move colonists in increments of 100k, i honestly don't see a problem, and the small freighters wouldn't disappear until your economy has grown substantially.  the "dump more colonists than infra supports" problem would be really no bigger or smaller, given the tendency of big clusters of freighters to independently arrive at identical conclusion. 

it might be you want to tie freighter size to total imperial population (i guess, have it limited by both corporate income and total imperial pop, so new corporations arent priced out of the market), but that's an easy kind of tuning decision.  the crux of the civ problem is that as it stands, a freighter represents a rapidly decreasing individual significance to gameplay, and an increasing burden of decision-making on the AI.  gravitating to bigger hulls over time is clearly called for, whatever the exact implementation. 

[liveware]

Probably better to have civilian freighter size tied to total empire volume of trade goods rather than total empire population. Colony ship size should probably be related to total volume of passenger demand. Maybe a calculation similar to (total colony pop capacity - total colony pop destinations) / total colony pop would give a useful estimate of total passenger demand.

This would scale naturally with empire size as larger empires would presumably have larger demand for large amounts of passengers and trade goods.

[skoormit]

Right now civilian ships design uses 10% power engines. Possible easiest solution : increase engine power to 25%, decrease spawn rate 2,5 times. There will be 2,5 times less civilians while doing same amount of job.

They use whatever engine tech their attached race has researched.

Yes, they use tech what race has researched and use 10% power engines.

They do not always use 10% power engines.
They use the lowest engine power modifier that their race has researched.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Right now civilian ships design uses 10% power engines. Possible easiest solution : increase engine power to 25%, decrease spawn rate 2,5 times. There will be 2,5 times less civilians while doing same amount of job.

They use whatever engine tech their attached race has researched.

Yes, they use tech what race has researched and use 10% power engines.

Agron Huge F12 class Freighter      177 830 tons       175 Crew       1 013.2 BP       TCS 3 557    TH 6 400    EM 0
1799 km/s      Armour 1-281       Shields 0-0       HTK 116      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 3    Max Repair 50 MSP
Cargo 125 000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 20   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

Agron P640.0 Civilian Drive (10)    Power 6400    Fuel Use 0.01%    Signature 640    Explosion 1%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 Litres    Range 40.5 billion km (260 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

1800km/s at Plasma Core AM Drive Tech.
It results in 100+ days of travel between 2 of my sectors (5 jumps in total).

Increase engine power to 25%, decrease numbers. Less impact on game performance, while same amount of civilian jobs are done.

While increasing the engine power seem like a good idea that is only because there are no fuel issues for the civilians that you see. The reason why they use the most fuel efficient engines are for role-play purposes as the game don't model fuel costs for civilians.

So arbitrarily increasing it might perhaps not be the best solution. You as a player could prevent them using better engines by not researching the technology though if you yourself don't use it.

At the same time I do understand the frustration that they could be more efficient.

In my opinion civilians should consume resources as well as civilians consuming fuel even if it should be in more abstracted formats, then it would make sense that the ships uses the most fuel efficient engines.

There might also be some more optimisation that could be done to how civilians operate in the code as well, but I leave that up to Steve to figure out. That might be from how they work to how the code is structured.

Civilians using TN materials would eliminate the primary reason for having them.  They would simply be too expensive to ever allow.

spike

even at the very beginning of the game, there isnt an important order which is too small for a large freighter. 

conceivably, at some point your haulers are so big that none of them would be willing to be bothered moving a research installation (!), but that's pretty darn far down the line, and not difficult to prevent. 

even on day 1, if you had to move colonists in increments of 100k, i honestly don't see a problem, and the small freighters wouldn't disappear until your economy has grown substantially.  the "dump more colonists than infra supports" problem would be really no bigger or smaller, given the tendency of big clusters of freighters to independently arrive at identical conclusion. 

it might be you want to tie freighter size to total imperial population (i guess, have it limited by both corporate income and total imperial pop, so new corporations arent priced out of the market), but that's an easy kind of tuning decision.  the crux of the civ problem is that as it stands, a freighter represents a rapidly decreasing individual significance to gameplay, and an increasing burden of decision-making on the AI.  gravitating to bigger hulls over time is clearly called for, whatever the exact implementation.

Infrastructure.  Even a small freighter has a minimum order of 10 units.  Large freighters have minimum orders that can easily exceed what a small colony supplies or requests.  Large colonizers also move too many people at once when seeding high cost worlds.  This is especially painful when dealing with LG worlds.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Civilians using TN materials would eliminate the primary reason for having them.  They would simply be too expensive to ever allow.

I don't think that needs to be the case as it would be a different mechanic. i would not be so quick to judge something before there is a general idea how it would work.

In my opinion all civilian population should consume some TN materials all the time, it they don't get enough there can be some wealth issues. I'm more interested in the simulation of the civilian part of the economy and how that can force problems and decisions on the players general expansion and strategy.

In my opinion obstacles usually leads to interesting choices rather than just progressive advancement. That is why I think that allowing civilian population and civilian freighter lines to consume resources is a good idea.

It obviously would need to be balanced with other incomes and also how wealth in general work. But I think that reverting back to the population generating wealth if it also require resources would be better than the current situation. We also should be able to influence to some degree how much workforce we want to use out of the population. The more of the population we use for governmental production the less wealth we will generate. We also could eliminate the financial buildings entirely as well and have the civilian population generate all the wealth.

You can even role-play a hive mind that way, the civilians just are the general drone population that generate the wealth as wealth is not really a defined resource.

You then would see populations service industry to be the one that generate wealth and the more population you use for construction the less wealth that particular colony will generate. If you use too much of the service industry you will eventually get morale problems. So you would still be limited to how many people you can use for governmental industry it just would be more or a soft cap.

Civilian shipping lines would be a very important cog in the trade between colonies. If trade is not performed you would get negative wealth income from those worlds... perhaps a world could then suffer from wealth income between say 5-100% depending on how much of its trade with other colonies it can satisfy. This would also "fix" conventional starts as the wealth income on the home planet are pretty limited at the start with a very low efficiency, although the home planet of any race could have a higher lowest cap of efficiency. The efficiency would also effect the consume of resources for the civilians as well so as when wealth efficiency rise so does the colonies need for resources.

The game need "in my opinion" more sources like MSP, fuel and the like drainage to make planning giving you even more decisions on what to focus on and how.

You now could not ignore the civilians as you need them. Although I also think that under such a system the player should have a governmental civilian company where you can add ships that you construct yourself if you don't want civilians to spawn by themselves.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Civilians using TN materials would eliminate the primary reason for having them.  They would simply be too expensive to ever allow.

I don't think that needs to be the case as it would be a different mechanic. i would not be so quick to judge something before there is a general idea how it would work.

In my opinion all civilian population should consume some TN materials all the time, it they don't get enough there can be some wealth issues. I'm more interested in the simulation of the civilian part of the economy and how that can force problems and decisions on the players general expansion and strategy.

In my opinion obstacles usually leads to interesting choices rather than just progressive advancement. That is why I think that allowing civilian population and civilian freighter lines to consume resources is a good idea.

It obviously would need to be balanced with other incomes and also how wealth in general work. But I think that reverting back to the population generating wealth if it also require resources would be better than the current situation. We also should be able to influence to some degree how much workforce we want to use out of the population. The more of the population we use for governmental production the less wealth we will generate. We also could eliminate the financial buildings entirely as well and have the civilian population generate all the wealth.

You can even role-play a hive mind that way, the civilians just are the general drone population that generate the wealth as wealth is not really a defined resource.

You then would see populations service industry to be the one that generate wealth and the more population you use for construction the less wealth that particular colony will generate. If you use too much of the service industry you will eventually get morale problems. So you would still be limited to how many people you can use for governmental industry it just would be more or a soft cap.

Civilian shipping lines would be a very important cog in the trade between colonies. If trade is not performed you would get negative wealth income from those worlds... perhaps a world could then suffer from wealth income between say 5-100% depending on how much of its trade with other colonies it can satisfy. This would also "fix" conventional starts as the wealth income on the home planet are pretty limited at the start with a very low efficiency, although the home planet of any race could have a higher lowest cap of efficiency. The efficiency would also effect the consume of resources for the civilians as well so as when wealth efficiency rise so does the colonies need for resources.

The game need "in my opinion" more sources like MSP, fuel and the like drainage to make planning giving you even more decisions on what to focus on and how.

You now could not ignore the civilians as you need them. Although I also think that under such a system the player should have a governmental civilian company where you can add ships that you construct yourself if you don't want civilians to spawn by themselves.

Mineral crunch is already a problem.  This would make Aurora unplayable, especially conventional slow starts.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Civilians using TN materials would eliminate the primary reason for having them.  They would simply be too expensive to ever allow.

I don't think that needs to be the case as it would be a different mechanic. i would not be so quick to judge something before there is a general idea how it would work.

In my opinion all civilian population should consume some TN materials all the time, it they don't get enough there can be some wealth issues. I'm more interested in the simulation of the civilian part of the economy and how that can force problems and decisions on the players general expansion and strategy.

In my opinion obstacles usually leads to interesting choices rather than just progressive advancement. That is why I think that allowing civilian population and civilian freighter lines to consume resources is a good idea.

It obviously would need to be balanced with other incomes and also how wealth in general work. But I think that reverting back to the population generating wealth if it also require resources would be better than the current situation. We also should be able to influence to some degree how much workforce we want to use out of the population. The more of the population we use for governmental production the less wealth we will generate. We also could eliminate the financial buildings entirely as well and have the civilian population generate all the wealth.

You can even role-play a hive mind that way, the civilians just are the general drone population that generate the wealth as wealth is not really a defined resource.

You then would see populations service industry to be the one that generate wealth and the more population you use for construction the less wealth that particular colony will generate. If you use too much of the service industry you will eventually get morale problems. So you would still be limited to how many people you can use for governmental industry it just would be more or a soft cap.

Civilian shipping lines would be a very important cog in the trade between colonies. If trade is not performed you would get negative wealth income from those worlds... perhaps a world could then suffer from wealth income between say 5-100% depending on how much of its trade with other colonies it can satisfy. This would also "fix" conventional starts as the wealth income on the home planet are pretty limited at the start with a very low efficiency, although the home planet of any race could have a higher lowest cap of efficiency. The efficiency would also effect the consume of resources for the civilians as well so as when wealth efficiency rise so does the colonies need for resources.

The game need "in my opinion" more sources like MSP, fuel and the like drainage to make planning giving you even more decisions on what to focus on and how.

You now could not ignore the civilians as you need them. Although I also think that under such a system the player should have a governmental civilian company where you can add ships that you construct yourself if you don't want civilians to spawn by themselves.

Mineral crunch is already a problem.  This would make Aurora unplayable, especially conventional slow starts.

Why?!?

You just would have to balance some of the other part of the game to account for it.

The thing is that the game need more things that stop exponential growth that some part of the game have. There need to be a few more areas of resource sinks.

I play exclusively very slow conventional starts and I don't agree that there would be any problem at all if balanced properly.

[QuakeIV]

It would not remove the reason for having the civilians, because I would absolutely put my own ships under civilian style auto management some of the time if I could.

I think it would be reasonable (reasonable from a gameplay perspective, it would take unknown amounts of work to actually implement) to be able to sell minerals to the civilian sector for wealth, in addition to allowing the civilian mining complexes to pump TN minerals into the civilian sector for them to then fabricate into ships.  For that matter, it would be kindof cool if you could sell access to your shipyards to the civilian sector to let them build their ships, in exchange for money.