And while we are speaking of officers getting older; when will we get the chance to research age increasing technology?
A small decline in a bonus/es could also represent corruption setting in rather than failing health, something that could be remedied by assigning someone else to that post though that would probably just add micro the game?I apologise if this has been brought up before, but would it be feasible to implement a system where commanders also have a chance of losing efficiency bonuses once they reach a certain time in service?
I tend to treat my civilian administrators as abstractions of an entire government apparatus, and hence I assume the efficiency bonuses are tied not to a particular leader but rather to the entire colonial administration of thousands of civil servants. I find this better from a RP perspective because this leads to certain colonies being better than others at certain functions (which I RP as resulting from local expertise, incentives, and infrastructure), hence my colonies feel more real and unique. And it sometimes forces me to make sub-optimal decisions - like building up a new naval base not at the local warp point nexus, but one system over at a colony which is actually good at shipbuilding.
The problem, of course, is that immortal (story character) leaders tend to universally end up with sky-high bonuses of everything. I've been solving this by periodically randomising leader bonuses, but this gets tedious as the game progresses and I would really like an alternative. Essentially, past a certain time in service (say 20 years), I'd like to have commanders start rolling for a small reduction in their bonuses in addition to the usual rolls for an increase. Does this seem reasonable?
There is an East-West split in that assumption, Eastern cultures (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) place a high value on the elder members of society, deferring to their wisdom, moral authority, etc. In the West, older people are seen as less capable, out of touch, etc.
Partly that is because as you get older, your perspective changes (based on a lot more experience of life) and you value different things (time vs money for example). Younger people generally don't have the same frame of reference (less life experience) so they can't understand that different perspective. In the East, that is understood and the elders are consulted for their hard-earned wisdom. In the West, they just assume older people are 'out of touch'.
So, apart from actual age-related diseases that impair mental faculties, which is covered by the medical conditions in Aurora, I don't subscribe to the Western 'older people are less capable' paradigm. I am certainly far more capable and wise than I was at half my current age, because I have twice the life experience and I have learned from twice as many mistakes
I realise that in your above suggestion, you reference 'story characters' that can't get ill, but being extremely capable is the whole point of story characters.
So, apart from actual age-related diseases that impair mental faculties, which is covered by the medical conditions in Aurora, I don't subscribe to the Western 'older people are less capable' paradigm.
I apologise if this has been brought up before, but would it be feasible to implement a system where commanders also have a chance of losing efficiency bonuses once they reach a certain time in service?
I tend to treat my civilian administrators as abstractions of an entire government apparatus, and hence I assume the efficiency bonuses are tied not to a particular leader but rather to the entire colonial administration of thousands of civil servants. I find this better from a RP perspective because this leads to certain colonies being better than others at certain functions (which I RP as resulting from local expertise, incentives, and infrastructure), hence my colonies feel more real and unique. And it sometimes forces me to make sub-optimal decisions - like building up a new naval base not at the local warp point nexus, but one system over at a colony which is actually good at shipbuilding.
The problem, of course, is that immortal (story character) leaders tend to universally end up with sky-high bonuses of everything. I've been solving this by periodically randomising leader bonuses, but this gets tedious as the game progresses and I would really like an alternative. Essentially, past a certain time in service (say 20 years), I'd like to have commanders start rolling for a small reduction in their bonuses in addition to the usual rolls for an increase. Does this seem reasonable?
If you think financial centers aren't any good, we clearly follow very different approaches to economic growth.
For any given play style that minimizes the use of financial centers, my observation above is moot.
For my play style, which pursues very aggressive economic growth, financial centers are the best investment available in the game (with the arguable exception of terraforming).
I don't think I've ever heard anyone express the opinion that "you're much better off just relying on taxing civilian shipping."
That seems to imply that players make a choice between increasing civ tax income or building financial centers.
But pursuing either one does not reduce the opportunity to pursue the other.
EDIT:
And in fact I have ~1500 financial centers in my current game, with a total population of ~2.5b.
Why? Because I need the income. I always want to build more stuff, and building financial centers increases my income faster than anything else, which then allows me to build more stuff.
There's already a very strong incentive to move production facilities to smaller colonies, because smaller colonies give you the greatest manufacturing bang for your population buck. I don't see how this would make things worse given the other incentives for spreading out industry (mineral resources, proximity to mining sites, local fleet logistics) still exist, and it's not like financial centres are very good anyway (the consensus advice has always been that you're much better off just relying on taxing civilian shipping). Plus given typical homeworld population sizes, I don't think this should be a problem unless you have thousands of financial centres, in which case, why?
If you think financial centers aren't any good, we clearly follow very different approaches to economic growth.
For any given play style that minimizes the use of financial centers, my observation above is moot.
For my play style, which pursues very aggressive economic growth, financial centers are the best investment available in the game (with the arguable exception of terraforming).
I don't think I've ever heard anyone express the opinion that "you're much better off just relying on taxing civilian shipping."
That seems to imply that players make a choice between increasing civ tax income or building financial centers.
But pursuing either one does not reduce the opportunity to pursue the other.
EDIT:
And in fact I have ~1500 financial centers in my current game, with a total population of ~2.5b.
Why? Because I need the income. I always want to build more stuff, and building financial centers increases my income faster than anything else, which then allows me to build more stuff.
There's already a very strong incentive to move production facilities to smaller colonies, because smaller colonies give you the greatest manufacturing bang for your population buck. I don't see how this would make things worse given the other incentives for spreading out industry (mineral resources, proximity to mining sites, local fleet logistics) still exist, and it's not like financial centres are very good anyway (the consensus advice has always been that you're much better off just relying on taxing civilian shipping). Plus given typical homeworld population sizes, I don't think this should be a problem unless you have thousands of financial centres, in which case, why?
It's an interesting idea, but there is one side-effect I don't think we will like.
Higher population colonies will have a greater wealth multiplier than smaller colonies.
Therefore when we spread out population (which we still will do as much as possible, because population growth remains the long-term economic bottleneck), we will be incentivized to leave financial centers on the homeworld (and/or our largest other colonies), and move actual production facilities to smaller colonies.
This requires us to manage production and logistics across many smaller colonies.
Our current system doesn't penalize us for focusing smaller colonies on financial production, which means we don't have to choose between optimizing income and reducing logistical complexity.
I am not sure if this has been suggested before, but I'd like to see wealth production scale off the number of service sector workers instead of manufacturing sector workers.
Basically, instead of the current system where
Annual Wealth Production = Wealth Production Rate * Workers Employed in TN Facilities
I'd instead like to have:
Annual Wealth Production = Wealth Production Rate * Total Service Sector Workers * (Workers Employed in TN Facilities)/(Total Manufacturing Sector Workers)
Right now, colonies with a high manufacturing sector percentage are also the colonies that produce the most wealth relative to their size. With this change, a smaller manufacturing sector is no longer "lost" productivity - bigger colonies with large service sectors produce more wealth, while smaller colonies generally have more workers available for manufacturing. This would both be more natural and also create strategic implications, since spreading out your population to boost manufacturing will now have the side-effect of reducing wealth production.
Obviously the wealth production rate would need to be scaled down by a factor of two-ish to compensate.
Wealth generation used to be based on total population. It was changed to the current method for C#. Here is the post explaining why:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg112448#msg112448
1) High population, low industry nations are now easy to handle as most of the population does not generate wealth (it is assumed that the wealth from agriculture and service is used to cover welfare, health, education, etc. with a net wealth of zero).
2) Conventional starts do not generate huge excess wealth
3) As a nation industrialises, its wealth generation capability grows naturally, which reflects historical trends.
4) The planned wealth reserve cap can be removed.
5) Financial centres grow in importance and have more of a wealth impact (in relative terms) compared to VB6.
I am not sure if this has been suggested before, but I'd like to see wealth production scale off the number of service sector workers instead of manufacturing sector workers.
Basically, instead of the current system where
Annual Wealth Production = Wealth Production Rate * Workers Employed in TN Facilities
I'd instead like to have:
Annual Wealth Production = Wealth Production Rate * Total Service Sector Workers * (Workers Employed in TN Facilities)/(Total Manufacturing Sector Workers)
Right now, colonies with a high manufacturing sector percentage are also the colonies that produce the most wealth relative to their size. With this change, a smaller manufacturing sector is no longer "lost" productivity - bigger colonies with large service sectors produce more wealth, while smaller colonies generally have more workers available for manufacturing. This would both be more natural and also create strategic implications, since spreading out your population to boost manufacturing will now have the side-effect of reducing wealth production.
Obviously the wealth production rate would need to be scaled down by a factor of two-ish to compensate.
