Anybody Still Have the UMT?

[crucis]

The main point about the complexity of starfire economics is that it is not complex.  It is just book keeping intensive.  I agree with you completely that removing the arbitrary PU colonization in favor of ISF's defined sizes would reduce that substantially.  Rolling the multiplier and letting the dice fall as they may would also be a good change if you use the ISF mechanic since economies periodically expand and collapse, unlike in ISF where you only would take the new number if it was higher...leading to eventually all economies having a x12 multiplier.  This is somewhat what is done in Squadron Strike where your income tends to fluctuate around a mean value.

When I speak about the relatively simpler economics of the EVM system in ISF, I wouldn't take that to assume that I was also saying that the REI multiplier was also a good thing.  I don't disagree that the overall sizes of ISF economies was too large.  My general point in defense of ISF's EVM economics was that I think that dealing with planetary GPV's tended to be a little easier because you didn't have to concern yourself with worrying about incremental colonization which leads to populations having constantly changing population sizes (whether you manage that in PU's or EVM's or whatever).  In ISF, once you placed an OP or a Colony, its EVM number didn't change, except when your TL increased.  You didn't tend to need to constantly pay attention to what the GPV of those various worlds were, except for at TL upgrades.

However, for better or worse, if one decreases general GPV levels, it also tend to have the effect of making bulk colonization, which was the model used in ISF, much more difficult since bulk emplacement costs would tend to eat up a much greater proportion of a Large/VLg planet's GPV... which would tend to seriously hurt colonization as a game strategy.  

It must also be considered that not including any sort of incremental population growth also hurts colonization as a strategy, since population sizes would tend to be limited to Small.  Of course, one could seriously reduce the "all at once" growth times in ISF to playable levels, which would probably cause a planet to jump a bracket roughly every 40 turns.  However, you are still faced with the desire on the part of some players to have constant and visible growth, rather than big leaps every X years.  But this sort of constant (monthly) or semi-constant (yearly) growth also increases the amount of paperwork one must do to maintain one's planetary economies...  (and causes some players to want computer support to automatically cause that constant growth to happen...  i.e. they want the constant growth to happen but don't want to be bothered to do it themselves).


Also, I don't think that there's a chance in hell that I'd allow rerolled REI's to actually decrease.  As a multiplier, it could cause catastrophic drops in planetary incomes and also since it's a die roll, you end up with the size of your economy being very much at the whim of lady luck.  I don't see any reason whatsoever that when your TL went up that you should actually see a DECREASE in your planetary income.

Anyways, at the moment, I'm currently working on a slightly simpler economic model that's sort of between the EVM and PU/PTU model that does retain incremental Yearly growth as well as incremental colonization, but without PTU's or the annoying, though reasonably realistic PU/PTU conversion factors.  It's still a work in progress and I'm not sure that it will really be an improvement on PU/PTU economics or not.

My comment on adding to the number of resources so you have 5 rather than 1 is that you can make the interactions work better.  Ships would take: metal, energy and money to build, but maintenance points to support.  Maintenance points cost metal and energy to produce at a rate determined by your fraction of economy devoted to the military-industrial complex.  And so forth.  This allows the designer to introduce checks and balances.  

Honestly, this seems to be ... very un-STARFIRE-like to me... running an economy on something other than megacredits...  a massive paradigm breaker...

You can't balance a purely compound interest growth economy by simply requiring more money over a long time period.  The costs have to rise with the income and they don't.  They don't rise because a lot of things were introduced into the game to make things simpler (the CFN/IFN), no maintenance for AW, free SY, etc.  The trouble is that each change individually may make sense and may even be a good design choice but the collective effect was not taken into account.

Oh yes, I agree that even minor changes can have ... consequences...  :roll:

Crap happens.  Mistakes happen.  You do the best you can do and move on.

[Paul M]

Well at least to a certain degree we share the same opinion which is good.

Removing logistic constraints was one of the main things that was done in 3rdR (or SM2) and propagated into 4thE.  It has a significant effect on things like the number of missile ships, the use and size of AWs, rate of growth of colonies, etc.  I don't think that in the end the effects were worth the book keeping savings but that is a personal view.  I had a good number of mine layers and buoy control ships, also I had 2 FTs that accompanied each exploration fleet loaded up with maintenance, mines, DSB-L, DSB, DSB-Xr, the control systems for them, boatbays with Pn and extra Q.

As for not tracking ship grade there are another two aspects here.  Firstly crew grade of NPRs was a considerable factor in the threat of a NPR.  It made the more militant NPRs dangerous.  Facing a small fleet of elite ships was not the same thing as facing a larger fleet of green dweebs with 3 thumbs.  Also and more significant from the players point of view was crew grade increase was a pay off to maintenance costs.  A ship that is active adds its construction cost every 5 turns due to 20% maintenance.  If over time you can add to its grade then you get a reason to have a standing fleet otherwise you might as well just build directly to mothballs, and activate only when a war threatens.  This allows a near total focus on colonization.  This means that when the war inevitably starts you will have a far larger economy to draw upon.  I have seen the effect of this sort of thing in our local game.

One concrete suggestion I can make to reduce the book keeping of the economy is to remove direct colonization of anything but planets.  Limit 02 to settlement and O1 to colony.  Fix the "PU" per colony step as well as is done in ISF.  Either you can afford to put down the full step or you wait a turn.  But the main suggestion I would make is to just treat moons like asteroid belts.  Sum up the number of moons in the system and give +1-2% system income per 10 moons (round to the nearest).  Also prorate it and the asteroid bonus by the maximum planetary population: settlement (25%), small (50%), medium (75%) and large (100%).   This substantially reduces the book keeping for each system.  You just need now a few lines for each system (the rock worlds only) and the number of asteroid belts plus the number of moons total.  The system generation is also reduced since you don't need to track moon economic value.  You could then make some economic investments such as asteroid processing centres that add a certain amount of "PU" to the system to represent the old style direct colonization of the asteroid belts...or allow for a higher IU purchase limit on systems with asteroid belts.  The specific numbers don't really matter since that needs to be adjusted in playtesting but this is about the only way I can see to substantially reduce book keeping in starfire economics without changing the economics.  

Another thing is to include support costs for systems only containing O2 or O1 colonies.  You would have to ship in stuff to keep them alive anyway so have a Q and H cost to the system that comes from the CFN.  You can even do this for the T and ST worlds until they build up to small or larger size.  Otherwise the CFN expands with the growth of the economy allowing the economy to grow faster...contributing to the standard Starfire the rich get richer faster and faster syndrome.

[crucis]

Well at least to a certain degree we share the same opinion which is good.

Yes, to some degree...  

Removing logistic constraints was one of the main things that was done in 3rdR (or SM2) and propagated into 4thE.  It has a significant effect on things like the number of missile ships, the use and size of AWs, rate of growth of colonies, etc.  I don't think that in the end the effects were worth the book keeping savings but that is a personal view.  I had a good number of mine layers and buoy control ships, also I had 2 FTs that accompanied each exploration fleet loaded up with maintenance, mines, DSB-L, DSB, DSB-Xr, the control systems for them, boatbays with Pn and extra Q.

I want to hit on the 3 points you mention in the 2nd sentence...

Number of Missile ships:  I don't know if the SM#2 changes had any affect here.  I made extravagant use of missile ships in pure ISF, and I personally was never bothered much by the missile tracking rules.  I just had a number of Imp FT, built up stockpiles of missiles, and dealt with it.  It never seemed like a big deal to me. ... oh well, different strokes and all that...

AW's... I think that we've covered the issues of AW's pretty well.  No maintenance on emplaced AW increases their use and causes massive, massive use of them.  Allowing the CFN to emplace AW's causes minefields to grow in size incredibly, and allow the empire to have an semi-unlimited fleet of minelayers.  I believe that AW's should only be allowed to be laid by dedicated minelayers, which must be built, maintained, etc. and in this regard will be a severe limiting factor on the rate of growth of minefields, since it's rather unlikely that any player would build up vast fleets of minelayers...  

"Rate of growth of colonies": this phrase could have two different meanings, so I'll hit both...  

1. (Population Growth) I don't particularly think that population growth rates when applied to OP's and Colonies really matters much at all, particularly for OPs and COLs on T/ST's.  The way I look at T/ST's is that unless you have reasons for being unable to expand a perfectly good T/ST's population (such as being at war), the best thing you can do is push hard to expand the T/ST's population to Settlement, then to Small... so that pop growth can kick in and get you to Medium ASAP.  Emplacing an OP or a Col on a T/ST and just sitting around and waiting for the pop to grow just seems like a waste of a perfectly good T/ST to me... :|   However, I somewhat get the gist of the direction of your suggestions...

Reduce tracking of moon populations and economies by finding some abstract way to deal with them.  This was brought up ten or so years ago when Marvin was working on GSF.  The idea of treating all moons in a star system similar to how each asteroid belt is currently handled in 4e, as a single merged population.  As I recall, the idea was met with little to no support.  Players wanted to know where their colonists were.  The opinion IIRC seemed to be that it was OK to merge an AB population but not OK to merge all moon populations.  I'm a bit hesitant to go against that... OTOH, perhaps it's time to reconsider...


As for using fixed EVM-like economic values for worlds at each TL, you don't know how much my heart aches to do that.  As I've said to many people, I'm old school Starfire, as in pre-SM#2.  And I've tried working on economic models that could use fixed EVM-like economic values.  The problem that I come up against is this:  Some (many?  most?) players want to see constant or semi-constant and visible economic growth to their economies.  This requires an incremental growth mechanism with either yearly or monthly growth.  And as a result, those "fixed economic values" are never "fixed".  They float just like in the PU/PTU model.  Secondly, with reduced economies, it appears that trying to maintain any sense of an aggressive colonization as a powerful game strategy requires the use of incremental colonization, i.e. being able to colonize in blocks smaller than the full size of the OP, Colony, Settlement, etc., because bulk colonization is quite expensive.  Oh, bulk colonization of outposts, if one looks at 4e colonization costs, max OP size (i.e. 20 PTU), and such, isn't really particularly expensive.  But as you start looking at bulk costs for Colonies and Settlements is gets increasingly nasty.  And Bulk colonization of a Small ... that's just down right rude, it's so expensive.  

You (or perhaps it was someone else) may say ... well, just save up for that expensive bulk colonization.  But from an economic standpoint, you're talking about a lot of money that you're forced to let sit around and "do nothing" (well, possibly buy up IU's in the interim), rather than just ship it out and get on with the colonization, even if it is incrementally.


Getting back to the idea of a merged moon population and merged AB populations...  

If one tries to use a Fixed EVM-like system, the merged population for AB's  falls apart, since that concept (in 4e) depends upon the underlying assumption that there are 2 OP's per system hex, hence 20 PU per LM of AB orbit.  Thus, you end up with a non-fixed economic size ... at least if one wants to stick with those assumptions.  Now, one could make some different assumptions, such as AB's closer to stars are denser than those more distant from stars, and hence there's a rough average (max population) size to all AB's regardless of distance.  I made this rough guess at about a Large.  However, there's also the question of whether populations in Desolate and Extreme environments actually grow.  If they do not, you'd never see a "large" population in an AB in the merged pop model.  About the max you might see is a Small.

These same issues would also be true if you tried to use a merged population model for moons, though with a couple of twists since you'd sort of just count up the # of moons for the merged pop.  I suppose that you should have a merged moon pop for Desolate moons and Extreme moons, since the colonization costs would differ.  However, you still have the same problem that merged populations that do not have a fixed size (whether floating due to AB orbit size or # of moons in the system) and thus do not mesh well into a fixed EVM-like economic value model.  Frankly, if one uses this sort of merged population pool, you almost have to use an incremental population model.



However, you also seem to suggest that desolate and extreme moons could be treated similarly to the asteroid belt bonus ... as a income modifier to Planetary economies.  This could be doable.  It's simple enough.  However, I do have to question the relative value of moons vs asteroid belts in this regard.  I've always thought of asteroid belts as giant strip mines.  Aside from a few near moon-sized "planetoids", you have a giant field of nicely broken up rocks just waiting to be stripped down and loaded onto ore FT's and sent off to some ore processing plants...  Of course, I suppose in a sense, you've covered this disparity of value and ease of mining in your suggestion that it require TEN moons per 1 or 2% of income bonus.  OTOH, that might actually be too low.  Using 4e numbers, let's compare a Lg pop to an OP (ignoring all other factors). A Lg pop would have (at max) 2000 PU's, where as a single OP would have 20 PU's (again, at max).  That's 1% of the economic value of the Large ... for a single Outpost.  Of course, this percentage rises if the T/ST pop is smaller or drops if the T/ST pop is VLG.



I suppose that that for a truly simple and extremely abstract model for this, you could say that for each desolate or extreme moon (and you'd probably just want to treat them the same) in the system, you get a 1% income bonus to any planetary population in the system with a Small population or larger.  You'd also need the presence of an in-system CFN (which I currently define as the presence of 200 PU's in the star system, not 200 MC).  However, I should say that if one was going to use this model, asteroid belt colonization should not exist either, and AB's should only contribute their AB bonus to planetary incomes.

I should note that I'm hesitant to allow for multiple asteroid belts to contribute multiple AB bonuses, because it seems to me that there's only so much raw material that any planetary economy can absorb, and that it seems to me that even a single AB is going to be strip miner's dream ... a vast, VAST strip mine of seemingly unlimited potential.  Assuming a second or third (or more) AB can add additional increments of raw material to the planetary income somehow seems wrong to me.  OTOH... it occurs to me that if one kept the ABB but dumped explicit colonization to the AB, you'd dumped a lot of income, since you have made the AB's outposts (merged or not) disappear... so perhaps the ABB should be higher (20%?) to account for an assumed population to the belt...

A problem that I have with this interesting and very abstract model is that you no longer have any visible populations on these moons.  Are they all assumed to have OP's on them?  Do these assumed OP's have assumed sensor capability?  Can these assumed OP's be captured and "interrogated" for intel?  And so on and so on...

Also, even if one assumes 1% for each Desolate or Extreme moon, that also assumes that all of those moons only have OP's on them.  Perhaps Desolate Moons should count as 2 or 3% since they could actually have Colonies, which are worth 3 times more than an OP on an Extreme moon.  Also, why bother allowing explicit colonization of extreme planets (i.e. mercury-like planets)?  Why not just count them in with the moons?  They're small and could be easily subsumed into the mix.  I'd suggest keeping O2 aka Type B planets as explicitly colonizable, because frankly, larger O2 planets should have a higher pop cap than Settlement.  Mass 1 planets are really about the same size as the largest of Jupiter's moons.  OTOH, a Mass 2 planet, even a Mass 2 O2/B planet would be more Earth sized, and even if not particularly hospitable (i.e. a Desolate environment), should be capable of a Small population.

Also prorate it and the asteroid bonus by the maximum planetary population: settlement (25%), small (50%), medium (75%) and large (100%).

I've copied out a portion of your above quote because I don't understand it at all.  (I realize that I may have killed the context of this sentence by removing the surrounding sentences...)  Paul, could you explain what you mean here.  It's completely going over my head right now...  

I believe that the most interesting idea was to treat all non-T/ST planets (and O2/B planets (my addition) ) as only an abstract bonus to planetary incomes.  This is a very interesting idea, since it would certainly simplify economic and population tracking. I do have a concern that you gain this bonus essentially for free (i.e. because you never had to establish any of those outposts and colonies on all those moons).  OTOH, perhaps the simplification more than offsets this concern.

Another concern that I have is what about star systems without any T/ST planets or a (large?) O2 planet?  Within this model, you'd have a bunch of moons, minor planets, and AB's without any major planet that could receive their income.  Does that mean that economically speaking, such systems are no better than starless nexuses?  Well, perhaps that would just be a "cost" for the greater benefit of this simplification.  And it may be a case where the value of the benefit (greatly, in this case?) outweighs the value of the loss (i.e. no economic benefit from systems not having any T/ST/B planet)... and thus justifies the change.

I'm also concerned that players may not like the idea of colonization and income of all those moons becoming nothing more than an abstract income bonus.  OTOH, if simplification in the name of playing the game more P&P style is desirable, then to that end, this sort of abstraction should also be desirable.

Thanks, PaulM.

[mavikfelna]

As for crew grade being a payoff for maintenance costs... bah... (Minor error on your part... warship maintenance is 15% not 20%). I agree that people often put most of the starting fleets directly into mothballs as well as building directly into moth balls. I find this annoying, but I'll let it pass and move on, as it's not really the point here...

Remember that thing I said at the end of my previous post (I think) about how sometimes the solutions to problems can often be worse than the problems themselves? I see this as one of those cases. Let me be plain. As much as some people in the past have griped about ISF's missile tracking and personnel point rules, I personally find crew grade rules to be much more annoying than those other two ...combined!!! I utterly loathe tracking individual ships, crew crew, crew grade XP.... and none of these so-called benefits come close to the cost of all that extra tracking!!! (/rant)

Now this is a huge difference between you and most of the rest of us in the thread. I would much rather have crew grade than not. It makes a huge difference to the flavor of the game and adds worthwhile complexity. Now, I never really minded the missile tracking in ISF, though I dislike PP as they made sense to me. If I have a planet with billions of beings on it, how is it I can only come up with enough crews for 20 ships, or whatever. If nothing else, you could conscript the crews, take the grade penalty and just train them up over time eventually.

But not having crew grade gives no reason what so ever to keep units in active status. And the thrill of working up that special cruiser (or whatever) through the grades to those exalted Star Trek like heights of legendary status just goes away with no reward.

--Mav

[procyon]

After looking it over, the bonus to income for moons actually seems like a good idea.  If you look at the moons of Jupiter/Saturn/Uranus/Neptune, the area resembles an asteroid field.  Particularly if you factor in the Trojans in Jupiters orbit.  Would really cut down on paperwork.

As for sensor capability on the moons, I don't know of any mining companies running sophisticated ground to air radar setups today.  If the players want a sensor outpost, build a PDC with sensors.

And on crew grade, I like it.  So does everyone I run games with.  Just make it optional for those who don't care to mess with it.

[crucis]

After looking it over, the bonus to income for moons actually seems like a good idea.  If you look at the moons of Jupiter/Saturn/Uranus/Neptune, the area resembles an asteroid field.  Particularly if you factor in the Trojans in Jupiters orbit.  Would really cut down on paperwork.

I've actually put some thought into the idea... and while I still think that it's "interesting", it has some issues.  Also, I read back thru the Starfire List archive back when Marvin first suggested combining Asteroid Belt pops and also combining Moon pops, and the prevailing opinion was strongly against combining moon pops, but a bit split on the issue of combining AB pops.... which I suppose represents what ended up happening in 4e... each AB having its own merged population, but moons continuing to be tracked separately.

This is a case that is in a sense similar to Crew Grade below.  There are people who simply like having moon populations exist as separate entities and like having the ability to choose which of those rocks they want to colonize in which order.

So, it's most likely that I won't bother changing that and will keep moon pops as is, but will most likely use merged pops for each AB...

As for sensor capability on the moons, I don't know of any mining companies running sophisticated ground to air radar setups today.  If the players want a sensor outpost, build a PDC with sensors.

Pretty fair point.  Heck, this argument would be just as true for explicit OP's and Col's, though I suppose it would tick some people off just a bit if only major populations had innate sensor capabilities, and minor pops needed to build their own PCF's or BS's with long range sensors...

And on crew grade, I like it.  So does everyone I run games with.  Just make it optional for those who don't care to mess with it.

I had no real intention of removing crew grade rules, much as I dislike them...  

[procyon]

I meant to mention this a while back.  One sore point for my group with the PU on moons and AB is that when we went from 3rd to 4/5e, increases in TL didn't improve your income on Des/Ext.  moons.  20PU earned a set amount.  T/ST got better (bigger) to a point, but an EL1 moon makes the same as an EL8 moon.  You would think they would get better at mining/prosecting/etc.

Seems a little off.  If you keep moon populations, you could address that if you keep the PU/PTU. (If it uses the ISF steps it isn't an issue.)  It would make my wife and kids happy.  We never have been able to come up with a good solution that worked well.  If we based income on PU x some EL factor, it never seemed to work well.  If it just applied to moons/AB, des/ext eventually became a better investment than T/ST.  If it was applied to everything, income shot up too quickly for our tastes.

Of course if the income was a % of the T/ST's, then they would follow the TL increases of the planets.

[mavikfelna]

Of course if the income was a % of the T/ST's, then they would follow the TL increases of the planets.

Actually, I'm liking this idea the more I hear it. And I like having discrete populations. I'd say the assumption would be that once a system had a large enough population base, that base population would then exploit the moons and asteroids.

If you set the limit at a small pop before gaining Ast and Moon bonuses that might be too large a requirement. So say make it Settlement level, that would mean even a system with only a barren world could still get the benefit. And you'd only have to track populations on the most important bodies in the system.

Give Ast a flat +10% if one, +15% if multiple and give moons a +1% per moon to a max of, say, +15%.

You can still emplace installations on or around any body in the system, and I would include SY in that, as long as the system had a population size allowing for full system exploitation as it would be assumed the major population is routing everything appropriately.

--Mav

[crucis]

Of course if the income was a % of the T/ST's, then they would follow the TL increases of the planets.

Actually, I'm liking this idea the more I hear it.

As for the minimum required population to trigger this moon colonization, I'm actually thinking that it should be Small or Medium (though for two different reasons).

If it's Small, it would be because Small is above the minimum required number of PU's needed to trigger the in-system CFN... which in Cosmic will be 200 PU.  (Not 200 MC.  By setting it in terms of PU's there's no question about whether ABB or other factors affect the requirement or not.  200 PU is 200 PU.  Ya got'em or ya don't.)

If it's Medium, it would be because Medium is the minimum required pop bracket that triggers the production of "free" colonists... without which you really aren't doing this sort of in-system colonization.  

Yes, you "could" ship them in from elsewhere.  But frankly, if you're shipping PTU's into a system, you're gonna dump them on the T/ST, if there is one.  And unless your empire is really hard up for colonizable real estate, you're not too likely to be wanting to ship PTU's to other systems to colonize moons, particularly extreme ones.  Also, this is an abstraction.  And like any abstraction, it would be imperfect and have flaws.  It's the nature of the beast.  Expecting abstractions to be perfect is usually pretty futile.

As for the question of systems not having any T/ST's, I have two answers.  A. I've been seriously considering allowing Mass 2/3 Type B planets to have a pop cap of Small.  All other factors being equal, a Mass 2/3 planet should have 4 or more times greater surface area as a Mass 1 planet.  This isn't a problem for T/ST's because they are only Mass 2 or 3.  And it's not a problem for Type H planets because they're only Mass 1.  But currently, Type B planets can be Mass 1, 2, or 3... which means that they have a much wide range of planetary size (and surface area) than T, ST, and H's.

Of course, even if I were to allow M2/3 Type B's to have pops up to Small, it still wouldn't matter if the min required pop to trigger this moon percentage thing was a Medium.

Beyond this, if a system didn't even have a M2/3 Type B, there'd be no world of sufficient size to either trigger the percentage thing.  This is another point where this abstraction is weak.  Without a sufficiently large population to which you can "anchor" the moon percentage thing (and trigger its creation and the in-system CFN), you'd end up with no colonization of the moons in the system, due to the abstraction.  Now, from a simplicity PoV, this may not be the worst thing imaginable.  However, there are always going to be some players who would bemoan the inability to colonize these systems.





Mav, last night, I dug into the Starfire List's archive and read thru all the posts on a thread from March 1999 (IIRC) where Marvin first asked about the idea of merging moon and AB populations.  The general consensus tended to be very, very much against any merging of moon populations, and it was split on the idea of merging AB populations... which sort of tracks to what was done in 4e.  Moon populations kept as is, but AB populations were merged on a per-AB basis.

I am rather hesitant to step away from explicit colonization of moons, because I don't want to piss off a rather significant portion of players who would dislike the loss of control.  I suppose that I could include it as an option, with the strong caveat that it will not be a perfect parallel for explicit moon colonization, but would simplify the process considerably for p&p usage.

[crucis]

I meant to mention this a while back.  One sore point for my group with the PU on moons and AB is that when we went from 3rd to 4/5e, increases in TL didn't improve your income on Des/Ext.  moons.  20PU earned a set amount.  T/ST got better (bigger) to a point, but an EL1 moon makes the same as an EL8 moon.  You would think they would get better at mining/prosecting/etc.

Seems a little off.  If you keep moon populations, you could address that if you keep the PU/PTU. (If it uses the ISF steps it isn't an issue.)  It would make my wife and kids happy.  We never have been able to come up with a good solution that worked well.  If we based income on PU x some EL factor, it never seemed to work well.  If it just applied to moons/AB, des/ext eventually became a better investment than T/ST.  If it was applied to everything, income shot up too quickly for our tastes.

Of course if the income was a % of the T/ST's, then they would follow the TL increases of the planets.

Procyon, I don't think that you realize it, but this is definitely a bit of a 3e vs. 4e can of worms.  :mrgreen:


This all comes down to the differing concepts of TLF (Tech Level Factor, a 3e/SM#2 concept) vs. EL Growth (a 4e concept).  Additionally, there's also a matter of misperceptions about what the PU in 4e (but not SM#2) actually represents.

In SM#2 with its TLF,  all of those little OPs and Col's get a little GPV bump every time the EL/TL goes up, and all of the T/ST's get a big GPV bump as well.  And while this does cause large and very large populations' incomes to grow considerably as TL's increase, it is necessary that the TLF remains constant across all pop brackets.  Otherwise, smaller pop brackets with larger TLF's would eventually pass larger pops with smaller TLF for the same TL in GPV.  In SM#2, the TLF uses a 10% per EL increment, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be smaller.  But it would still have to be constant for all pop brackets, nonetheless.


OTOH, in 4e, when EL's go up, you get EL Growth, which amounts to a number of free PU's added to your population.  However, as you point out, certain populations have hard PU caps, such as OP's and Cols.  And when such capped pops get their EL Growth, they will either lose those free PU's, or sometimes, players will shift some PU's off of OP's and Colonies just prior to EL Growth to make room for the bonus PU's (which I think looks like a massive pain in the butt). I think that the only way that you could do what you'd like to do in 4e while keeping EL Growth would be to add floating caps to all population levels.



This is where the aforementioned misperception comes into play.  

In SM#2's version, the PU is truly a unit of population.  Its actual size is undefined and varies from bracket to bracket, but it remains a unit of population, nonetheless.  And any technological advances (i.e. EL increases) are represented by the TLF which modifies the economic output of each PU.

OTOH, in 4e, the PU is actually a unit of economic output, not of population.  1 PU produces 1 MC of economic output, regardless of EL.  Period.  And any technological advances are represented by EL growth, with the underlying concept being that as EL's increase, fewer and fewer people are needed per PU to produce 1 MC of economic output, and that those freed up people are turned into the new PU's added by EL Growth.  

The misperception is, IMHO, the fact that the 4e rules call the PU the "Population" unit, not the Economic Unit.  The entire rules section covers population.  IMHO, the entire rules section's terminologies and title gently get the players to think that the PU is about population, when at the same time its definition in a single sentence states otherwise.  


There's also another "problem".  The idea that those little OP's and Col's don't derive any economic improvement from EL advancements.  If one is assuming that EL growth is freeing up workers to "create" new PU's, and if the population of an OP is held static (1 million people, BTW), then should not the upper limit of the Outpost bracket increase a little bit with each EL to allow those freed up workers to create their new PU's of economic output for the OP?  Of course, I suspect that the fact that this does not happen represents a simplification, since it could be a pain to increase the size of a OP every time the EL increases.  OTOH, it's already a pain when EL's increase if you try to offload excess EL growth PU's.  There's pain whichever way your turn unless you just throw up your hands and say F-it and let the growth PU's disappear... which is simpler for bookkeeping, but causes you to lose growth potential.  Of course, with the current model of EL growth, if you want to use those excess growth PU's from a capped world, it actually costs you money to keep them ... which can be an incentive to just let'em disappear...  


There are some other subtle differences going on in SM#2 vs 4e economics that I won't go into at this time, as they don't affect the issue in your post, procyon.  

If you want to try out some floating caps for Outposts, Colonies, and Settlements, here are some quickie guesstimates of what they might look like.  These are conceptually similar to the caps used for Benign, Harsh, and Hostile populations.

Settlement: 160 + 20*EL
Colony: 54 + 6*EL
Outpost:  18 + 2*EL

Note that each bracket is set so that the value at EL1 equals its normal value in the PU table.  


Honestly, I'm not sure if I'd suggest using floating caps such as these, as they will likely require a fair amount of paperwork at each EL level up.  OTOH, as I've already mentioned, if a population is at its cap, you're already faced with some annoyances at EL level ups.  So, I suppose that it's a case of picking one's poison.

[crucis]

I meant to mention this a while back.  One sore point for my group with the PU on moons and AB is that when we went from 3rd to 4/5e, increases in TL didn't improve your income on Des/Ext.  moons.  20PU earned a set amount.  T/ST got better (bigger) to a point, but an EL1 moon makes the same as an EL8 moon.  You would think they would get better at mining/prosecting/etc.

Seems a little off.  If you keep moon populations, you could address that if you keep the PU/PTU. (If it uses the ISF steps it isn't an issue.)  It would make my wife and kids happy.  We never have been able to come up with a good solution that worked well.  If we based income on PU x some EL factor, it never seemed to work well.  If it just applied to moons/AB, des/ext eventually became a better investment than T/ST.  If it was applied to everything, income shot up too quickly for our tastes.

Of course if the income was a % of the T/ST's, then they would follow the TL increases of the planets.

I didn't intend to write a second response to your post, Procyon.  And I do not intend for this one to be particularly long.  I didn't want to edit the previous reply and add more text to an already long tome... What I forgot to include was my thoughts on where I was going with Cosmic's economics.


Procyon, I am currently envisioning that Desolate and Extreme populations will not "grow".  Also, because I'm currently envisioning the use of a Economic Growth model (yearly, with Monthly optional) that is a merged population and economic/technological growth rate, this will also mean that those D/E populations won't receive any benefits of technological advancement.  Those poor OP's and Col's will stay stuck at 20 EU and 60 EU once you fill them up, and won't change after that (well, unless you remove some EU's or get bombed).

I recognize that this will feel wrong, but it's necessary to simplify the paper work for those dozens upon dozens of dinky little OP's and Cols...  unless I really went nuts and used the previously discussed Moon-percentage model... which would GREATLY simplify paperwork ... though with some rather iffy secondary effects.

[miketr]

Crucis there is IMHO a rather large problem with the idea your are suggesting for the O1 & O2 envir populations.

If you remove population growth AND the benefits of tech level then no one will ever colonize such rocks if they can do anything else.  Instead players will buy more Industrial Units till those are maxed out.  

At the end of the day Starfire's about making good economic choices.  If you make bad ones then the effects of those bad choices linger on like a weight around your neck.  Colonizing O1 & O2's becomes a weight compared to anything else.

EDIT Addition:

In games that my group plays for a long time now we have just banned colonization of O1/O2 environments.  It was even simpler to deal with.  I see little difference between our groups house rule and your suggested change.  The result will be the same no one will colonize such rocks.

[crucis]

Crucis there is IMHO a rather large problem with the idea your are suggesting for the O1 & O2 envir populations.

If you remove population growth AND the benefits of tech level then no one will ever colonize such rocks if they can do anything else.  Instead players will buy more Industrial Units till those are maxed out.  

Of course, that presumes that the relative colonization costs remain the same.  It would obviously be possible to help out Desolate and Extreme colonization (relative to IUs) by simply reducing the Emplacement Costs...The problem is the need to deal with tracking growth for all those little rocks.  Removing growth from those rocks also removes the need to deal with doing growth on those dozens upon dozens upon dozens of OPs and COLs every year (or worse, every month).

At the end of the day Starfire's about making good economic choices.  If you make bad ones then the effects of those bad choices linger on like a weight around your neck.  Colonizing O1 & O2's becomes a weight compared to anything else.

Of course, I don't disagree with these statements.  But the strategic side of the game needs to be simplified somewhat to make it a bit more p&p friendly.  The rules shouldn't be written with the assumption that spreadsheets (at a minimum) will be used.  They should be written with the assumption that it's a p&p game, but if players wish to use spreadsheets, they're certainly free to do so.  But the complexity of the game shouldn't be expanded simply because of the presence of spreadsheets allows that to be the case.  What you end up with then is a game that essentially requires a spreadsheet to play and may be at a level of complexity that it cannot be played P&P, and may not be understandable by people like procyon's kids.

EDIT Addition:

In games that my group plays for a long time now we have just banned colonization of O1/O2 environments.  It was even simpler to deal with.

Well, that's certainly one way to deal with it.  Seems a bit extreme, but I have no doubt that it reduces paperwork considerably.  

[miketr]

I hadn't considered you changing the costs.  I would be very interested to see what numbers you are thinking about for setting up O1/O2 colonies.

EDIT Addition:

In games that my group plays for a long time now we have just banned colonization of O1/O2 environments.  It was even simpler to deal with.

Well, that's certainly one way to deal with it.  Seems a bit extreme, but I have no doubt that it reduces paperwork considerably.  

Yes it does.  We talked it over and decided that the economic benefit of the hostile and extreme colonies wasn't worth the paper work load.  Especially when you no longer have to defend them.  Warp Point defense was still critical but but planetary defense became more common.  With all peoples eggs in fewer baskets there was more of a tendency to try to defend them.  

Michael

[ZimRathbone]

Crucis there is IMHO a rather large problem with the idea your are suggesting for the O1 & O2 envir populations.

If you remove population growth AND the benefits of tech level then no one will ever colonize such rocks if they can do anything else.  Instead players will buy more Industrial Units till those are maxed out.  

At the end of the day Starfire's about making good economic choices.  If you make bad ones then the effects of those bad choices linger on like a weight around your neck.  Colonizing O1 & O2's becomes a weight compared to anything else.

EDIT Addition:

In games that my group plays for a long time now we have just banned colonization of O1/O2 environments.  It was even simpler to deal with.  I see little difference between our groups house rule and your suggested change.  The result will be the same no one will colonize such rocks.

Well thats one way of resolving one of the classic SF Flamewars!