Posted by: Bremen
« on: December 08, 2019, 05:13:43 PM »As someone who loves playing with mines and buoys I just want to say that I love the new launch ready ordnance task. It'll make setting up minefields and sensor buoy rings so much easier.
4X for Ever
Posted by: Tikigod
« on: November 24, 2019, 11:19:45 PM »In regards to the weapons interrupt change, is there any chance of having a option maybe in the event window to decide if certain things like that do interrupt or not?
There are a few fringe cases such as when you have a faster fleet that is jumping in and out of attack range as weapons recharge where retaining the interrupt can still be useful, so having the option to switch behaviours would be pretty neat.
There are a few fringe cases such as when you have a faster fleet that is jumping in and out of attack range as weapons recharge where retaining the interrupt can still be useful, so having the option to switch behaviours would be pretty neat.
Posted by: Shuul
« on: November 24, 2019, 05:05:55 PM »I feel like the weapons interruptions update is one of my favorite changes, thank you Steve!
Posted by: TMaekler
« on: November 15, 2019, 02:17:20 AM »Maybe the production efficiency bonus should not be added to the planetary production site, or the shipyard, but to a person? Widening the use of personnel for those installations, the installation foreman receives the production experience. Then when later another unit of the experience he gained is produced he can construct them quicker. Only for his project of course. Or if you want to build in parallel his experience is „split up“. And if he dies a new guy has to be trained... .
Posted by: Tikigod
« on: November 14, 2019, 02:56:37 PM »I agree with the faster (but not cheaper) approach, with an option to turn it on or off similar to Fleet Maintenance.
We do already get a cheaper average ship with repeated runs once you factor in the retooling costs as every ship off the line then spreads that retooling cost. Personally I think that is enough benefit already.
If you stage your ship components well so that your modules are suitable for a multiple ship designs I believe you can get around a fair bit of the added retooling time cost by stockpiling the modules you will need ahead of time as the shipyard will use pre-existing modules it needs in local stockpiles before actually attempting to construct the modules itself which I've always been led to believe takes longer.
So whilst you're retooling you can actually be producing (Or salvaging old ships) to get a stockpile for most of the modules you'll need.
Posted by: chrislocke2000
« on: November 11, 2019, 07:12:13 AM »I agree with the faster (but not cheaper) approach, with an option to turn it on or off similar to Fleet Maintenance.
We do already get a cheaper average ship with repeated runs once you factor in the retooling costs as every ship off the line then spreads that retooling cost. Personally I think that is enough benefit already.
Posted by: Rabid_Cog
« on: November 11, 2019, 04:10:31 AM »It can only affect shipyards because individual factories are not tracked and I'm assuming Steve doesn't want to put in that level of fidelity. If you don't track individual factories, you leave the system open for the sort of abuse I described above.
What's the deviation between classes so that they still qualify for faster construction? Same as for construction in general, ie 20% BP difference? Or was it 10%, can't remember now. Should it be something else? Will this lead into container/bulk type ships, ie you design a template ship that never gets built that has generic engines and sensors etc and then you build the 3-5 different varieties of it that are only different from the template by the allowed 10-20% BP. Which can lead to a situation where not only (most) of your shipyards can build (most) of your ships, but they do it (possibly much) faster.
I'm sure other people can think of more pitfalls in such a system. I don't mean that a feature needs to be balanced to boredom, but that we as a community think things through as much as possible, to make things easier for Steve.
If you can manage to design your ships in this manner, you deserve every scrap of benefit you get. I've tried to do that before and it is extremely difficult to get all your ships to fit the same mold. Remember, size differences have a huge impact so you have to fill in the space with something on the base ship.
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: November 10, 2019, 07:11:35 PM »It can only affect shipyards because individual factories are not tracked and I'm assuming Steve doesn't want to put in that level of fidelity. If you don't track individual factories, you leave the system open for the sort of abuse I described above.
What's the deviation between classes so that they still qualify for faster construction? Same as for construction in general, ie 20% BP difference? Or was it 10%, can't remember now. Should it be something else? Will this lead into container/bulk type ships, ie you design a template ship that never gets built that has generic engines and sensors etc and then you build the 3-5 different varieties of it that are only different from the template by the allowed 10-20% BP. Which can lead to a situation where not only (most) of your shipyards can build (most) of your ships, but they do it (possibly much) faster.
I'm sure other people can think of more pitfalls in such a system. I don't mean that a feature needs to be balanced to boredom, but that we as a community think things through as much as possible, to make things easier for Steve.
What's the deviation between classes so that they still qualify for faster construction? Same as for construction in general, ie 20% BP difference? Or was it 10%, can't remember now. Should it be something else? Will this lead into container/bulk type ships, ie you design a template ship that never gets built that has generic engines and sensors etc and then you build the 3-5 different varieties of it that are only different from the template by the allowed 10-20% BP. Which can lead to a situation where not only (most) of your shipyards can build (most) of your ships, but they do it (possibly much) faster.
I'm sure other people can think of more pitfalls in such a system. I don't mean that a feature needs to be balanced to boredom, but that we as a community think things through as much as possible, to make things easier for Steve.
Posted by: Dawa1147
« on: November 09, 2019, 05:43:42 PM »I agree with the faster (but not cheaper) approach, with an option to turn it on or off similar to Fleet Maintenance.
Posted by: papent
« on: November 09, 2019, 09:24:52 AM »i imagined as working just as xenoscepter, Jorgen_CAB, and Father Tim implied.
A: it only decrease production time not price/resources required.
B: there's Efficiency/gearing bonus as stated by previous posters.
A: it only decrease production time not price/resources required.
B: there's Efficiency/gearing bonus as stated by previous posters.
Posted by: Tikigod
« on: November 09, 2019, 09:17:54 AM »QuoteIf we take factories then you could have a gearing bonus based on some technology and time you spent building something. You just store the gearing bonus of each item line with an amount of factories applied to it. When you add factories you degrade the gearing bonus accordingly and if you remove factories it stays the same. So now you need to be careful when and if you want to really increase the number of factories for that line.
--- This is what Hearts of Iron IV did, it works quite well actually. Never played Hearts of Iron III, so I can't say anything about that. In Hearts of Iron IV, however, I have sunk a considerable amount of time into that game and can say this:
- Production is based on per factory assigned.
- Time spent on the item being produced increased Production Efficiency.
- Switching items would remove efficiency, not sure if switching to similar equipment (like Infantry Equipment 1 to Infantry Equipment 2 for example) diminished the penalty or not.
- There were several techs supporting this, with a few modifiers of note.
- Cost did NOT decrease with efficiency gain, but rather the number of units produced per line. (Speed)
--- The modifiers were Production Efficiency, Efficiency Gain Speed (basically how fast you could "tool up" a line), Efficiency Cap, and Efficiency Loss (How much you lost when switching to a different item.)
Indeed, the way Hearts of Iron 4 approaches production could actually be applied very well to ship production considering how the game actually goes about producing ships on a per module basis.
A shipyard could be made to track a history of what components it has produced overtime (with perhaps a production history reset after a very large retooling procedure, or after some years of inactivity), and then using variables such as module complexity (construction cost), shipyard building rate and number of production iterations come up with a efficiency scale and ceiling cap in that shipyard for each type of module in its production history.
Retooling could be approached by essentially comparing the component lists needed for the new target design against the current design, retaining those modules that are shared across both designs in the shipyards production history (and reduce the existing efficiency gain by some factor) and then clear the rest of that shipyards production history once retooling is completed.
I am not sure how retooling is approached in the VB/C# versions but doing that kind of approach would also make it more natural to calculate retooling costs based on component differences of the two designs, rather than based on overall build cost/size differences.
This could also be applied in a more basic way to ordnance, PDC, orbital structures, fighters and so forth. Though in such cases it would probably be best to approach production history in a much more crude manner, essentially just doing a linear efficiency gain in that area with each component built and then do a efficiency wipe when producing a new design of that object type.
Posted by: xenoscepter
« on: November 09, 2019, 02:35:04 AM »Quote
If we take factories then you could have a gearing bonus based on some technology and time you spent building something. You just store the gearing bonus of each item line with an amount of factories applied to it. When you add factories you degrade the gearing bonus accordingly and if you remove factories it stays the same. So now you need to be careful when and if you want to really increase the number of factories for that line.
--- This is what Hearts of Iron IV did, it works quite well actually. Never played Hearts of Iron III, so I can't say anything about that. In Hearts of Iron IV, however, I have sunk a considerable amount of time into that game and can say this:
- Production is based on per factory assigned.
- Time spent on the item being produced increased Production Efficiency.
- Switching items would remove efficiency, not sure if switching to similar equipment (like Infantry Equipment 1 to Infantry Equipment 2 for example) diminished the penalty or not.
- There were several techs supporting this, with a few modifiers of note.
- Cost did NOT decrease with efficiency gain, but rather the number of units produced per line. (Speed)
--- The modifiers were Production Efficiency, Efficiency Gain Speed (basically how fast you could "tool up" a line), Efficiency Cap, and Efficiency Loss (How much you lost when switching to a different item.)
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: November 08, 2019, 08:46:42 PM »Okay, I'll queue 5000 Research Labs with 1 Construction Factory. Of course I don't have the minerals to build 5000 RL but that's okay, 1 CF won't get them build anytime this millennium so that's not a problem. It WILL get maximum efficiency bonus at which point I can throw as many CF at it as I want to exploit that bonus. And if I need them for something else, I'll just leave that 1 CF there to maintain the serial production bonus.
This sort of system was used in Hearts of Iron 3 (and slightly modified in 4 I believe) and it was nothing but exploit city for multiplayer and yet another way human player was overpowered compared to the AI.
Serial production bonus CAN work with shipyards because you can't move slipways to another shipyard. But with construction/fighter/ordnance factories as well as research, fields where you can move factories and labs freely around, it wouldn't work.
It's not an end of the world issue, because naturally a player can disregard it and not abuse it - like some players do with scientists and the 0 RL project exploit - but I'm little wary of adding clear and obvious exploits to the game when the feature itself isn't really necessary.
This is only if it is badly implemented...
If we take factories then you could have a gearing bonus based on some technology and time you spent building something. You just store the gearing bonus of each item line with an amount of factories applied to it. When you add factories you degrade the gearing bonus accordingly and if you remove factories it stays the same. So now you need to be careful when and if you want to really increase the number of factories for that line.
Or in the game it would rather be the number of percent you dedicate for each item and not factories directly.
Stuff would not become cheaper to build, you just build them faster.
As a balance you could just make factories slightly less productive.
I don't mind either way as I already restrict how much industry can shift between lines every year anyway so I already simulate this effect through role-play.
Posted by: Father Tim
« on: November 08, 2019, 04:51:19 PM »I miss 'prototype hull' and 'new class' penalties, and would like to see them come back. I wouldn't want bonuses* for serial production, because now you're altering the established values of things. I don't want to see unlimited 75% Frigates; I'm happy to see three expensive (say 125%, 120%, & 110%) 'class leaders'.
If you don't want to play with penalties, switch them off and everything costs 100%. If you do want them, you pay a little extra for new designs. If we use bonuses, I can't see anyone turning them off and not getting their 'cheap' second dozen ships.
.
*The only bonus I'd like is speed. I'd be quite happy if production of a design became faster (but definitely not cheaper) as more were completed.
- - - -
Disclaimer: My empire almost always build one yard for each design. I read much fiction on here where empires churn out two dozen freighters, retool their (only) commercial yard, build ten colony ships, retool, seven terraformers, retool, a couple tugs, retool, a dozen new-tech freighters, retool, etc. They end up spending more on retooling than I do on building multiple custom yards. Now that C# Aurora has ditched the per-yard overhead, it will be even more beneficial.
I build a one-slip terraformer yard and leave it producing one ship every forty-four weeks for decades, occasionaly retooling to an upgraded-tech terraformer design. Meanwhile, the yard next door is producing one fuel harvester every thirty-five weeks. The freighter yard has four slips, and the colony transport yard, two. Having six yards with one slip each that retool much less often is going to beat having one yard with 12 slips that retools every time it finishes a 'flight' of ships.
If you don't want to play with penalties, switch them off and everything costs 100%. If you do want them, you pay a little extra for new designs. If we use bonuses, I can't see anyone turning them off and not getting their 'cheap' second dozen ships.
.
*The only bonus I'd like is speed. I'd be quite happy if production of a design became faster (but definitely not cheaper) as more were completed.
- - - -
Disclaimer: My empire almost always build one yard for each design. I read much fiction on here where empires churn out two dozen freighters, retool their (only) commercial yard, build ten colony ships, retool, seven terraformers, retool, a couple tugs, retool, a dozen new-tech freighters, retool, etc. They end up spending more on retooling than I do on building multiple custom yards. Now that C# Aurora has ditched the per-yard overhead, it will be even more beneficial.
I build a one-slip terraformer yard and leave it producing one ship every forty-four weeks for decades, occasionaly retooling to an upgraded-tech terraformer design. Meanwhile, the yard next door is producing one fuel harvester every thirty-five weeks. The freighter yard has four slips, and the colony transport yard, two. Having six yards with one slip each that retool much less often is going to beat having one yard with 12 slips that retools every time it finishes a 'flight' of ships.
Posted by: Mini
« on: November 08, 2019, 03:32:35 PM »I think applying a serial production bonus to anything you'll be building for the entire game is a bad idea, since it basically just makes those things cheaper by however much the bonus is. The problem of leaving 0.00001% of production maintaining a serial bonus can be solved by 1) increasing the bonus only by items completed and not time spent building, and 2) having the bonus decay over time. This will mean that under a certain threshold there will be a fluctuating equilibrium reached with the average bonus being lower than the maximum bonus, inversely proportional to how much production you are putting in. Also applying it to the population as a whole instead of a single line of production also makes more sense in Aurora (if we are talking planet-side production and not shipyards), since you won't lose the bonus if you momentarily stop production (even within a single increment) and likely works better with how the game is programmed.
That said I think a serial production mechanic as a whole isn't that good of an idea. As Garfunkel brought up, it's something that strongly encourages trying to find exploits in, and even if you can ignore those exploits having them in the game is still a bad thing. It's also a very opaque mechanic that means that numbers all over the place to do with production start being various degrees of incorrect, and (in the case of shipyards) encourages having a large number of single slipway shipyards, increasing the amount of micromanagement and organisational clutter.
That said I think a serial production mechanic as a whole isn't that good of an idea. As Garfunkel brought up, it's something that strongly encourages trying to find exploits in, and even if you can ignore those exploits having them in the game is still a bad thing. It's also a very opaque mechanic that means that numbers all over the place to do with production start being various degrees of incorrect, and (in the case of shipyards) encourages having a large number of single slipway shipyards, increasing the amount of micromanagement and organisational clutter.
