Anybody Still Have the UMT?

[Paul M]

I see my suggestion wasn't clear.

I was suggesting not having any population directly in either asteroids fields or on moons just using both as a system income multiplier.

AST give +10% per belt
moons give +1-2% per 10 moons in the system (round to the nearest).  But both the bonus and the number of moons needs to be balance by actual testing.  The thing is that I am balancing the moons against the +10% from asteroid belts.

Both bonuses are adjusted for the maximum population in the system (since this reflects the processing capacity locally available) at x25% for settlement, x50% for small, x75% for medium, and full for large+

Yes I liked having AST in hexes solely for the sensor net they provided.  You can also do this with variable PU sizes.  It is solely a way to reduce the bookwork.

[crucis]

I see my suggestion wasn't clear.

I was suggesting not having any population directly in either asteroids fields or on moons just using both as a system income multiplier.

AST give +10% per belt
moons give +1-2% per 10 moons in the system (round to the nearest).  But both the bonus and the number of moons needs to be balance by actual testing.  The thing is that I am balancing the moons against the +10% from asteroid belts.

Both bonuses are adjusted for the maximum population in the system (since this reflects the processing capacity locally available) at x25% for settlement, x50% for small, x75% for medium, and full for large+

Yes I liked having AST in hexes solely for the sensor net they provided.  You can also do this with variable PU sizes.  It is solely a way to reduce the bookwork.

No, Paul, I actually understood the suggestion quite well.

I actually spend some time brainstorming the idea.  I wouldn't use the scaling percentages you included for pop sizes, since I'd think that the fact that this model is already percentile based would make it self-scaling to the populations/incomes it modifiers.  That is, if you applied this to a small population, you'd get rather less of an income bonus than if it was applied to a VLg.

Also, this bonus shouldn't exist unless the in-system CFN exists.

As for the size of the bonus on a per-moon basis, 1-2% per TEN moons seems quite low.  If you compare 1 OP with 20 PU vs 1 Lg pop with 2000 PU, that one moon represents 1% of the Lg population all by itself.  OTOH, you make a good point that it's rather difficult to balance the per-moon percentage against the value of an asteroid belt, since AB population sizes aren't fixed... they're based on the size on the AB's orbit.

Crucis

[Paul M]

The exact numbers need to be adjusted by testing I was just putting out something to make it clear what I meant.   Also as this income is free (baring the need for the in system CFN) then it isn't intended to represent exactly the same benefit you would get from actually putting down the colonies on the moons.  If ast give +10% for, at a minimum, 30 outposts (radius 1 AST belt) and that is 6x1x5x16* = 480 PU, which is about 10 moons with 50 PU colonies then 1% per moon, but most asteroid belts will be higher radius then that.  Say take radius of 5 and you have 2400 PU (6x5x5x16), which is 48 moon colonies...and now you are very close to 2% per 10.  I can't recall enough about the system generation mechanics to estimate what radius is the mean.  Since 01 moons (if included) have a lower colonization potential and could represent a reasonable number of moons of the total the 2% per 10 looks not too bad as a starting point.

If you adjust the bonus per belt upward then it would make sense to adjust the number of moons necessary downward or the benefit per group of moons upward.  One could go to as highs as +100% per belt and +2% per moon to represent full development but I would say that you can make that available via system upgrades or technologies or whatever should you want to give higher incomes.

Allowing only the colonization of rock worlds (O1, O2, ST, T) dramatically reduces the book keeping per system.  If you limit the O1 and O2 to outposts and colonies then they get no benefit from the moons and belts (since they should be well below the in system CFN threshold) which makes them less attractive and thus reducing again the book keeping by reducing the number of settled systems.  

*(6 hexs/radius)x(radius)x(5 sites/hex)x(16 PU/site)

[crucis]

The exact numbers need to be adjusted by testing I was just putting out something to make it clear what I meant.   Also as this income is free (baring the need for the in system CFN) then it isn't intended to represent exactly the same benefit you would get from actually putting down the colonies on the moons.  If ast give +10% for, at a minimum, 30 outposts (radius 1 AST belt) and that is 6x1x5x16* = 480 PU, which is about 10 moons with 50 PU colonies then 1% per moon, but most asteroid belts will be higher radius then that.  Say take radius of 5 and you have 2400 PU (6x5x5x16), which is 48 moon colonies...and now you are very close to 2% per 10.  I can't recall enough about the system generation mechanics to estimate what radius is the mean.  Since 01 moons (if included) have a lower colonization potential and could represent a reasonable number of moons of the total the 2% per 10 looks not too bad as a starting point.

If you adjust the bonus per belt upward then it would make sense to adjust the number of moons necessary downward or the benefit per group of moons upward.  One could go to as highs as +100% per belt and +2% per moon to represent full development but I would say that you can make that available via system upgrades or technologies or whatever should you want to give higher incomes.

Allowing only the colonization of rock worlds (O1, O2, ST, T) dramatically reduces the book keeping per system.  If you limit the O1 and O2 to outposts and colonies then they get no benefit from the moons and belts (since they should be well below the in system CFN threshold) which makes them less attractive and thus reducing again the book keeping by reducing the number of settled systems.  

*(6 hexs/radius)x(radius)x(5 sites/hex)x(16 PU/site)

Ahh... I was working from the 4e formula which is 20 PU per LM (which comes out to 2 OP of 20 PU each, per system hex).  Applying the same logic as 4e used for this 20 PU/LM, the equivalent formula using SM#2's 5 OP's per sH and 16 PU per OP would be: 80 PU per LM of AB orbit.

I can see better why you'd be leaning towards that 10% for AB's vs about 1-2% per 10 moons.  At 5 OP's/sH per AB (or 80 PU/LM), each system hex of AB has as many OP's as a single Type I planet with a max # of moons, or 3 system hexes of AB would have roughly the same number of PU's as a single Type G planet with its max number of Type O2 moons, which could have Colonies. (actually, the 3 sH of AB would be 18 PU short ... or need 1 more OP for near equivalency).   Regardless, the SM#2 5 OP/sH puts a LOT of PU in any AB... essentially 4 times as many as in 4e ... not that 20 PU per LM doesn't still come out to quite a high number for larger belts...

 
Let me skip to the start of your reply where you state: "Also as this income is free (baring the need for the in system CFN) "   Yes, this is something that I observed about the concept ... that you aren't paying for the colonization. I think that one could say that the abstraction is assuming that the reduced benefits of the "moons bonus" (relative to the actual value of explicitly colonized moons) represents payments over time for that colonization, or something to that effect.  I added the need for the in-system CFN, since if one is going to be sending out these abstracted colonists to the moons and getting the income in return, the in-system CFN would need to exist.  Also, assuming that you are sending these abstracted colonists from a planet in the same system, that pretty much requires that the planet be at least a Medium.  The problem here is that this pretty much rules out any system that doesn't have a Type T/ST planet in it that you can get to the level that it's producing its own colonists.  Systems without a T/ST would be out of luck, and either have no moon colonization, or require explicit colonization of those moons (but mixing the two models would probably be a very bad idea for game balance).


=======



At this time, let me suggest an alternate idea for simplification of moon colonization.  Pool all moon populations for the star system into two pools.  One for Desolate moons and another for extreme moons.  This has the advantage that you'd still have to engage in placing PU's at their normal costs for whichever pool is receiving them.  The Desolate pool would have a population of 60 PU per moon (or 50 PU, using the SM#2 colony size), and the Extreme pool would have a population of 20 PU per moon (or 16 PU, using the SM#2 outpost size).  Mineral content would assumed to be average for the each pool.  

Also, the PU's would probably (!) have to be spread evenly amongst all moons in the pool.  Alternatively, I suppose that one could use this method... Fill up the moons orbiting planets closest to their star first, moving outward, and for each planet, fill up the moons closest to each planet.  And for binary systems, I'd suggest using the same proximity process, but starting with the component having the largest T/ST population.  For example, if comp B has a T/ST and comp A doesn't, start filling up the moons around comp B's planets first.  Or if both comps have populated T/ST's, start with the component having the largest T/ST population.  Or if neither comp has a T/ST, then just start with Comp A.  Personally, I like the simplicity of the "spread evenly" method.  But the beauty of the alternate method is that there's a clear order that's entirely based on proximity, and its benefit is that by filling up moons and leaving others empty, you have fewer moons that need to be defended.


This idea has a number of benefits.   Colonization costs remain ... and remain the same.  Colonization of star systems without any Type T/ST remains as is.  All star systems (well, those with stars and planets) will have only two moon pools that have to be tracked for colonization, population, and income purposes.   That's 2 data lines, rather than, what ... 10, 20, 30 or so individual moon populations?  That's a lot less data tracking, while retaining the same relative costs and incomes.   In a sense, it's similar to 4e's merged AB populations, though obviously the size of the moon pools would be calculated differently (i.e. counting up the actual moons generated by the sysgen process).


Crucis

[Paul M]

It depends on what you want to accomplish.

If you want the game to playable in PnP beyond something like 20 systems, then what I suggest is going to accomplish that better since it reduces dramatically the book keeping.  You can also add technological developments to improve the bonuses from moons or asteroid belts.  These can then have a cost to install as well.  This gives the player a feeling of improvement without substantially altering the book keeping.  You can say start with +2% per 12 moons and let that improve to +2% per 5 moons in steps of one such advance every 2 TL.  For AST you could have systems that add +10, +9, +8, +7, etc to the bonus from asteroid belts developed in the alternative TLs.  I would, thinking about it, give a employment cost that dependent on the number of systems in your empire as well.  

If you basically want to reduce somewhat the book keeping then the suggestion of a moon pool does the job.  But it also needs to be tracked for colonization, and growth each turn for each system.  It is much less less work but it is still a lot more work, since it means that every system will have this.  This means more systems for the player to deal with.  Also be aware that merging populations may lead to higher growth rates since there is never an issue with reaching the limit and needing to pay to shift PU around.  This is the singular draw back to merged population pools.

And yes AST can hold huge populations.  They can for say a binary star system with both outer positions being belts out perform most other systems, they are a long term investment but an extremely good one under SM2/4thE economics.  Then consider how much IU you can stockpile there.  I always considered multiple belt systems a real find.

From the perspective of the SM it is easier to use the first method since it dramatically cuts down on the paperwork to be reviewed.  For players I think you end up in a six of one, half dozen of another situation; some will like one more or much more than the other option.  Some will like neither of them as well.

Ultimately computers are to book keeping issues what mines and DSB-L are to warp point defense.

[crucis]

It depends on what you want to accomplish.

If you want the game to playable in PnP beyond something like 20 systems, ...

I have a hard time accepting this number. But IF it is no longer true that the game cannot be played p&p beyond 20 star systems, then perhaps the game has become too complex starting with SM#2 to do so, since I never had these problems with 2e and 3e with its EVM economics and oversized economies (as well as many other issues).

then what I suggest is going to accomplish that better since it reduces dramatically the book keeping.  You can also add technological developments to improve the bonuses from moons or asteroid belts.  These can then have a cost to install as well.  This gives the player a feeling of improvement without substantially altering the book keeping.  You can say start with +2% per 12 moons and let that improve to +2% per 5 moons in steps of one such advance every 2 TL.  For AST you could have systems that add +10, +9, +8, +7, etc to the bonus from asteroid belts developed in the alternative TLs.  I would, thinking about it, give a employment cost that dependent on the number of systems in your empire as well.  

If you basically want to reduce somewhat the book keeping then the suggestion of a moon pool does the job.  But it also needs to be tracked for colonization, and growth each turn for each system.  It is much less less work but it is still a lot more work, since it means that every system will have this.  This means more systems for the player to deal with.  Also be aware that merging populations may lead to higher growth rates since there is never an issue with reaching the limit and needing to pay to shift PU around.  This is the singular draw back to merged population pools.

A.  Don't assume that non-habitable environments will grow.  Not allowing non-habs to grow removes a significant amount of paperwork, though it also does happen to affect their ROR's as well.

B.  Even were they to have growth, I wouldn't say that their growth rates would be "higher".  Given that the pool size is exactly equal to the population that those moons could have had if tracked separately, you'll end up with the same population in either case.  Of course, the effective rate of growth for individual OP's might be limited by whatever rounding of PU's was used (i.e. are you tracking in only whole numbers or in tenths of PU's, for example).  And of course in a pool process, this sort of issue is reduced since you would apply growth (if it existed) to the pooled population as a whole, not against individual OP's and Col's.  This really is no different from what occurs in 4e with its merged asteroid belt populations.  Rather than track many dozens of individual OP's, you just have one merged population per belt.

C. And it has to be considered, remembered, and accepted that whenever one uses abstractions, there will be certain losses of detail and granularity.  It's just the nature of the beast.  This pool concept stays much truer to the rules of the game than the percentile suggestion.  And yes, I did just say that abstractions will cause certain losses, etc., etc.  But I'm not sure that people would accept that degree of loss of detail.... and if the abstraction isn't accepted ... well, the battle's lost.
 

Frankly, it'd probably be better to use miketr's house rule and just ban all (or nearly all) colonization of non-habitable worlds... or perhaps make it so expensive that about the only justifiable reason to establish a colony on such a world would be to create an absolutely necessary naval base in a strategically critical star system that had the bad luck to not possess a T/ST.   Of course, there'd be a number of issues with this approach.  Banning or simply making non-habitable colonization unprofitable would remove a significant investment option that's used by stay-at-home races (whether by choice or otherwise).  It would also seem to enhance the effects of exploration luck since the only real sources of planetary income would be T/ST's (and HGT's if such things existed).  

Honestly, I'm not sure that I could bring myself to take this major leap and go the route of banning non-habitable colonization or making it unprofitable, for the reasons I mention above.... bit it would represent a MAJOR simplification for tracking economics.  However, it would also remove a significant chunk of income...

And yes AST can hold huge populations.  They can for say a binary star system with both outer positions being belts out perform most other systems, they are a long term investment but an extremely good one under SM2/4thE economics.  Then consider how much IU you can stockpile there.  I always considered multiple belt systems a real find.

So true.  And if non-habitable colonization was banned or made unprofitable, those AB's would suddenly no longer be massive income producers...  I think that I can hear the screams now!!!  And also if non-hab colonization was ... blah, blah, blah, then the only way to access the asteroid belt bonus(es) (assuming they still existed without non-hab colonization) would be if there was either a T/ST, or (if not outright banned), one established an otherwise unprofitable non-habitable colony to gain the bonus if that would make the colony sufficiently profitable.

From the perspective of the SM it is easier to use the first method since it dramatically cuts down on the paperwork to be reviewed.  For players I think you end up in a six of one, half dozen of another situation; some will like one more or much more than the other option.  Some will like neither of them as well.

Yes, I agree with this paragraph whole heartedly.  Suggest any 2 new ideas on the same general topic, and you'll quite likely end up with something like a 50/50 split.

Ultimately computers are to book keeping issues what mines and DSB-L are to warp point defense.

Shudder... mines and laser buoys.... man, o man.... WP stagnation...   There's a grim problem that I'll eventually have to get back to...  

[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.  

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!

ZimRathbone, I'm not sure if this is what you meant with your comment, but as someone who's read thru a lot of the Starfire List's archive (particularly pre-2000) I suspect that you're referring to the very old debates about O1 vs IU profitability...  

[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.

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

ZimRathbone, I'm not sure if this is what you meant with your comment, but as someone who's read thru a lot of the Starfire List's archive (particularly pre-2000) I suspect that you're referring to the very old debates about O1 vs IU profitability...  

[Paul M]

On the question of profitability...all economic investments in starfire 3rdR or 4thE are profitable.  This includes O1-normals.  The question is only if you could have made more money investing it in another option.  The problem with this argument is that it is based on assumptions (depending on which other option you wish to mention, the assumption changes) that are subject to sudden change due to events in the game.  The issue with starfire economics at its basic level is that the economic model is compound interest growth.  As all aspects of the game are tied to money, and money grows according to a compound interest growth model so to do all other aspects of the game (research...which itself increases income, colonisation...which further increases income and will kill the game due to book keeping, and fleet size...which costs you money admittedly but eventually will kill the game due to fleet bloat).  At some stage your empire becomes so wealthy that money becomes essentially no longer a limiting factor.

Pool growth is different then individual sites because it is a pool, so the inevitable result of reaching a population maximum of a colony is avoided.  This is particularly true of AST belts.  If you have a limit per site of 16 PU then assuming you invest in 4 PU originally...after 9 growth turns that outpost would have 3 spare PTU which you would have to pay to move to a new site.  This is the cost of using the growth which is not present when the whole belt is treated as a pool.  It is a non-trivial difference between the two systems as using that growth costs you money on one hand and nothing on the other.  Also your insystem CFN capacity might be insufficient to move them in one turn so your growth in PU would be spread over multiple turns.  This is true of moon pools as well.  It is the singular drawback to the pool system.

If you remove growth then the issue becomes moot.

"Stay at home"  is not a viable strategy.  No single system, no matter the system can compete with a empire of multiple star systems.   Kurt demonstrated this with the cat people that eventually spawned an AI race, and that was a heck of a system (triple star system if memory serves).  The thebans are a threat in crusade because of Webber wanting them to be that way not because it is viable in game terms, in my experience most of webber's fiction on starfire is fiction on fiction since none of it would actually work in game, his battle outcomes in Stars at War never corresponded to outcomes from actually playing the scenario out and in many cases were beyond belief..."When enemies join forces"..."Rigilian's dance on their graves!"  Even the bugs in ISW4 are not much of a threat since they have only 6 primary systems compared to what the other races have, they are actually only a threat due to their stockpiled fleet.   3rdR is all about colonizing every rock you find, it is just a question of prioritizing them nothing more.  A stay at home race is competitive economically only for a relatively short time.

Twenty systems is about the limit for a 3rdR or 4thE game.  For PnP you have to copy over 20-30 lines of information (assuming per turn growth) updating the PU per line for each system.  Recalculate the income per site and total the system up.  The exact time that takes is dependent on too many factors to estimate properly but lets make a WAG and say 5 min per system...that is around 2 hours of time just spent doing the books.  Then you have to work out your budget for your empire, update your RP totals, figure out your fleet builds, track your ship yards, track your fleets, update your fleet lists.  Work out the colonization.  Update all the information, write a summary of the SM.  When I was using 2e (with house rules) and playing PB-snail mail it used to take me 10-12 hours over a week at the minimum to do a turn.

If you use spread sheets 25 lines per system is 500 lines in the spreadsheet which is a lot of scrolling you have to do during the update process, the other option to make each system a page is as much clicking and scrolling but on a different axis and makes finding a system harder.  All the rest of the stuff still needs to be tracked but you have to make sure the linkages back to the last turns spread sheet function correctly and the fiddle faddle of all this adds about as much effort as the paper process above but at least the calculations of the numbers are faster.  If you over spend you can just quickly reduce the number of PTU moved to balance the budget.  Fleet maintenance is simpler as again you don't have to recalculate it every turn since it is automatically updated, but even making sure that you manual shift ships from one category to another takes time.  Updating, tracking and moving fleets and ships is as much a chore with a spread sheet as on paper...if not maybe more so since some of starfires rules are a pain to program (especially 4thE RP limits).

After your empire is 20 systems all these tasks become more a chore and less fun in my experience.  I've done both PnP and computer assisted, and both computer assisted with Starfire Asssistant and with self written spread sheets.  I am also not incompetent with excel and can use a lot of advanced functions to make life easy in the long run.  The result of all of these is that Starfire Assistant is the best way to do things either for the player or the SM.  Starfire empire management is best handled by a database program.  

Admittedly I used to spend upwards of 6 hours doing a turn with SFA but that is for a 50+ system empire, with 500 or so ships, and at least 1 NPR.  Kurt or Steve could give numbers that they spent.  My last solo 4thE game I ended when I encountered a NPR and realized how much my work load was about to increase.  I played a NPR in a PBEM game because the SM had too much going to keep track.  That was fun but also a lot of work and I had only about, at most, 10 systems under my control.

I play War in the Pacific AE and that takes me several hours per game day...so possibly the fault is mine for spending too much time looking at my starfire empires--or reviewing how the pacific war is going--in detail but I doubt seriously my estimates are out by much more than a factor of 2.

[crucis]

Paul, I've had a bit of an epiphany on this issue tonight...  I decided to step back and re-assess SF economics to see if I could find the causes of some of the problems.

Let's be clear, the problem is explosive economic growth.  Huge fleet sizes are largely a symptom of this, though having some other limiting factor, like PP's, might help as well (but this is outside of what I was thinking about tonight).

Why does explosive economic growth occur?   As you've said, the overall economy size growth seems exponential.  

I think that the problem lies in the aggressive Colonization strategy that was developed starting in SM#2 and moving on into 4e.  But I don't think that it's related to the costs of Colonization itself, so much as the ease with which colonized worlds grow into colonist producing worlds in their own right.  Furthermore, I don't think that free PTU's are really the problem, at least in SM#2.  (It's probably much more of an issue in Ultra, since you get 2% of your world's PTU total as free PTU's, for worlds with populations of 1000 PU or greater... which for VLG's is a truly IMMENSE number.)  The real problem (IMHO) is that once colonial worlds start reaching Large level, each PU of growth can be turned into 90 PTU's in SM#2 or 70 PTU's in Ultra.  And given the considerable number of growth PU's you will normally get, it's a rather minor sacrifice to give up 4-7 Large pop PU's to turn them into around 460-490 PTUs ... and create a Small population all at once, as long as you have the free cash to pay for the colonization costs.

Thus, it seems to me that the culprit is applying growth to PU's not PTU's.  Think about it.... assuming the Ultra monthly growth rate of 1% per month... this means that the VLG population (PTU) growth rate is actually 500 times larger than for Settlements and below.  True population growth actually accelerates as you move up thru the pop brackets.  Interestingly, if you calculate times required to move from bracket to bracket when you apply growth to PTU's instead of PU's, the times start looking rather similar to those in ISF.

And if growth rates happened to be slowed down in this manner, something else happens.  Growth would not produce any Large populations in the time frame of the game unless the player was willing to try to pay a premium and dump a vast number of colonists on a Medium population to try to force it up to Large level... and I expect that that would be disgustingly expensive...     And if growth can't produce any Large pops, you don't end up creating any of those PTU producing "factories".  Your colonial populations will tend to hang around the Small and Medium range.  So, most of your colonists would have to come from the homeworld ... and as the distances to new colony worlds increased, the cost of colonization would increase (due to the increased shipping costs) ... which should slow colonization growth.  And to put it another way, colonization RORs would drop as the distance from the home world to new colonial worlds increased. Of course, if your empire's economy is growing, then you should be able to afford those increased colonization costs.

Also, the fact that your colonial worlds are topping out around Small to Medium would greatly slow income increases since PTU-based growth would mean that on larger worlds (above Small), the derived PU growth rates would start slowing down (as CF's increase).

Of course, basing growth on PTU's does tend to be a bit complicated since you'd need to be constantly or semi-constantly converting back and forth between PU and PTU... (or use a different model).  This isn't a particularly P&P idea, though perhaps not too bad, since you'd only have to worry about it when the CF was greater than 1.  

However, the benefit is that overall economic growth gets slowed considerably above the Small population level.... with all the consequences I foresee described above.



Also, another thing that can be done is to reduce the numbers of Type T/ST's, though this is very much of a secondary solution to the above thoughts.  Simply making the star types more closely match their percentages in real life (as astronomers know it) would cut the numbers of T/ST's by half or a little more (I ran the numbers on this...).   Of course, this also increases the effects of Exploration Luck, which for some people seems to be a bigger concern than explosive economics... but not for me.



This has been a overly long post, so I think that I'll end it here...  Let me know what you think.

Crucis

[crucis]

On the question of profitability...all economic investments in starfire 3rdR or 4thE are profitable.  This includes O1-normals.  The question is only if you could have made more money investing it in another option.  The problem with this argument is that it is based on assumptions (depending on which other option you wish to mention, the assumption changes) that are subject to sudden change due to events in the game.  The issue with starfire economics at its basic level is that the economic model is compound interest growth.  As all aspects of the game are tied to money, and money grows according to a compound interest growth model so to do all other aspects of the game (research...which itself increases income, colonisation...which further increases income and will kill the game due to book keeping, and fleet size...which costs you money admittedly but eventually will kill the game due to fleet bloat).  At some stage your empire becomes so wealthy that money becomes essentially no longer a limiting factor.

You've said this before... "all economic investments are profitable".  Well duh.  Who in their right mind is going to knowingly make one that is NOT profitable?   The closest thing to an unprofitable investment is establishing a colony that gets conquered or nuked before it paid off its original cost.  Seriously... who in their right mind is going to knowingly make an economic investment that will NOT be profitable???

Moving on...

Aside from the previous long post, I've had some other new ideas on colonization and how to limit the number of "economic records"...  Rather than pool Desolate and Extreme moons, a more drastic step could be taken that would cut the number of "economic records", while retaining discrete system body colonization, and reducing overall income due to colonization "growth"...   Ban colonization of moons (and asteroid belts) in the Gas and Ice Zones.  (Or make them unprofitable, if there was a good reason for them to exist without generating income.)  This would remove a massive number of system bodies from being colonizable, though they could still support bases if need be.  (It's worth noting that Ice zone moons weren't colonizable in 2e.)  Rocky zone O2 (which I call Type B for Barren in Cosmic) bodies would still be colonizable normally.  This one change by itself would remove on average about 13-14 system bodies (not counting AB's) as sites for colonization per system (meaning 13-14 fewer "economic records" to track).

Pool growth is different then individual sites because it is a pool, so the inevitable result of reaching a population maximum of a colony is avoided.  This is particularly true of AST belts.  If you have a limit per site of 16 PU then assuming you invest in 4 PU originally...after 9 growth turns that outpost would have 3 spare PTU which you would have to pay to move to a new site.  This is the cost of using the growth which is not present when the whole belt is treated as a pool.  It is a non-trivial difference between the two systems as using that growth costs you money on one hand and nothing on the other.  Also your insystem CFN capacity might be insufficient to move them in one turn so your growth in PU would be spread over multiple turns.  This is true of moon pools as well.  It is the singular drawback to the pool system.

I agree that there are some little differences between growth when using discrete bodies and pools.  However, these differences are, to me, some of the more annoying things about the entire PU/PTU system.  Too much worrying about picky little details ...  moving around a PTU here and a PTU there ... worrying about CFN pool capacities, whether in-system or otherwise.  Too many annoying little details...  I guess I like things to be a little more "macro" and a little less "micro".

If you remove growth then the issue becomes moot.

Entirely true about removing growth from Desolate and Extreme worlds.

"Stay at home"  is not a viable strategy.  No single system, no matter the system can compete with a empire of multiple star systems.   (snip) 3rdR is all about colonizing every rock you find, it is just a question of prioritizing them nothing more.  A stay at home race is competitive economically only for a relatively short time.

I agree that "Stay at home" is not a viable strategy of choice.  Of course, there may be times when it's not your choice....

[procyon]

To PaulM

   I think you are being a little hard on the limit a PnP game can manage.  Granted several of my kids have been at it for a few years, but our current 5e game has over 123 systems explored, currently almost 230 that I have to track as SM,  and a fair number of NPR's thrown in.  The oldest boy has the most systems (about 40ish if I remember), and a fleet of 189 active ships and about a third of that mothballed. The rest of the players are all close to that number.   They track their populations, crew grades, admiral/governor/general/diplomat grades.  Write for fleet deployments/movments/colonization.  Ship upgrades/refits by shipyard.  The list goes on.  Unless a massive assault is going on, or they are working out some trade deal, they can usually finish off a turn in less than 2 hours writing it up.  They each have a binder with dividers, and well set routines in how to go about processing their turn.  They do use calculators, but the only one who tends to use a computer is the oldest boy who prefers to look in the rule PDF so that he doesn't have to fight his brother/sister/mom/me for the printed copy.  The kids are 14, 17, and 19.  They learned using a binder and a stubby pencil, and are pretty good at it.
   If they wanted a game with 1000's of systems, then a computer would be needed to to avoid carrying 16 pounds of paper around to work out your turns (although we heat with wood so it wouldn't go to waste).  But if a 14 year old can manage 40 systems and over 150 combat ships (plus many more FT's, SS, Bases, Bouys, etc), then I am sure most other people could manage the same feat if they chose to - in the same 2 hours.
   It's all in what you are used to, and how much fun you have doing it.  And if the power goes off, the candles come out and the games go on (which did happen during the long ice storm we had here in the midwest a few years back - 2 weeks/no electric power).
   It has also done wonders for their grades in school.


EDIT
I will admit that we have done several things to simplify the math load though in the way of house rules.

[crucis]

Twenty systems is about the limit for a 3rdR or 4thE game.  For PnP you have to copy over 20-30 lines of information (assuming per turn growth) updating the PU per line for each system.  Recalculate the income per site and total the system up.  The exact time that takes is dependent on too many factors to estimate properly but lets make a WAG and say 5 min per system...that is around 2 hours of time just spent doing the books.  Then you have to work out your budget for your empire, update your RP totals, figure out your fleet builds, track your ship yards, track your fleets, update your fleet lists.  Work out the colonization.  Update all the information, write a summary of the SM.  When I was using 2e (with house rules) and playing PB-snail mail it used to take me 10-12 hours over a week at the minimum to do a turn.

I had initially skipped over that latter half of the post which included the above paragraph because I didn't want to get into debating P&P vs. spreadsheets, etc.  

However, I just reread this particular paragraph and hit the bold/underlined clause and it it me..... doing monthly growth in p&p?  Are you serious?  
You increased your workload by a factor of 10 and it's the fault of the game?  Really?  IIRC, yearly growth was the standard in SM#2.  

Stop doing monthly growth and revert to yearly growth, and you should save yourself a decent chunk of time and effort right there.    

All its other faults aside, at least in ISF's economic model, once you'd emplaced a population, you didn't have to worry about recalculating its GPV unless you added "industrial" EVMs or your TL increased.  

It seems to me that the great majority of these complaints about how much work the economics in Starfire take is very much due to the increased detail that the PU/PTU system added to the mix.  Yes, being able to see small incremental increases in a population and its economic output may be interesting or enjoyable.  But the cost of seeing those increases comes with the requirement to do the calculations that produce those little incremental increases.  If people really want increased simpler bookkeeping in economics and population, then they'd need to accept a less granular, non-incremental model, similar to the ISF EVM economic model, since it is the the increased detail and granularity of the PU/PTU model that greatly complicates the economic model and greatly increases the amount of time and effort required to support that model.

[Paul M]

On profitability of everything.  The point I am trying to make is there is no trade offs.  There is no "good short term only" investments.  There are no "short term cash sinks but long term valuable" investments.  There is no need in fact to think about it.  If the rock exists; colonize.  To paraphrase a court room comment.  As I was talking with one of the ex-SMs over supper before we went to see Clash of the Titan's his comment is that the income growth is actually double-logerithmic.  We stressed the system to the limit I must admit and we had lots of money.  The main gist of what I am saying is that you automatically have more money available the next turn.  Then every 10 turns you get a massive growth boom.  Every 20 or so turns your economy goes up by 10% as your TL increases.  

Per turn growth is what 4thE calls for.  Yes you can simplify and use growth turns, and we did in our 3rdR game but you still need to recalculate system incomes per turn more likely than not as new colonization is an ongoing process.  In a PnP 3rdR I would use growth turns yes.  Pools have advantages and disadvantages I am only being thorough by mentioning them.  The key to reducing system book-keeping is as you say to reduce the number of moons you can colonize and reduce the number of settled planets per system.

As the NPR I was crash colonizing a planet so don't think it won't happen.  Our group really really stressed the Starfire economic model.  Our MCr growth was grotesque.

Your suggestions about slowing down growth via the use of PTU growth is probably a good idea.  The growth in starfire is extremely quick due to the x10 economic time multiplier.  The effect of slowing down the income effects of colonies would be a knock on benefit.  The cost increases for things and the decrease in incomes for 4thE were a big plus in my view.  But still my outsystem income as a fraction of the total was growing quickly in my solo 4thE game.  I should look and see if I have still got the spreadsheets.

I asked the ex-SM on his thoughts on size and he said 5 systems per player.  So my 20 is in his mind generous, but I think his is a bit on the too few side.  So, how many you can do is going to be limited by individual tastes.  But when you have to scroll through 500 lines in a spread sheet page I think it becomes harder to find the fun, in principle flipping through 30 pages in a binder would be easier, but the effort it takes to update the growth, etc with the spread sheet is substantially reduced.  I would also think that there is a lot of basic math skills that can be developed playing it PnP.  But ultimately it is a question of book keeping and that is better handled by a computer database program.  I wasn't using any house rules, I was playing by 4thE as it is stated in the rule book, so please accept that my comments on the number of systems is based on that.  Largely it was the fact I found an NPR and realized that I would need to do exactly the same thing for the NPR I was doing for my race that stopped me and not my own book keeping.

From the sounds of it though the people who do this PnP should chime in on their "house rules" and see if a collaborative effort might not yield some positive results.

[crucis]

On profitability of everything.  The point I am trying to make is there is no trade offs.  There is no "good short term only" investments.  There are no "short term cash sinks but long term valuable" investments. There is no need in fact to think about it.  If the rock exists; colonize.  To paraphrase a court room comment.  As I was talking with one of the ex-SMs over supper before we went to see Clash of the Titan's his comment is that the income growth is actually double-logerithmic.  We stressed the system to the limit I must admit and we had lots of money.

Well, I suppose that one might describe colonization in ISF as short term money sinks, due to those emplacement times during which you got no income.  In PU/PTU colonization, you start getting income the instant that your PTU's arrive on the destination world.    I also think that you can call EL Research as a short term money sink with long term value.

I don't see any good short-term only investments in SF.  The closest I could probably come is say that IU's are sort of like this when growth is allowed on non-habitables, since the non-habs will become an increasingly good long-term investment as their pop's grow.  But since I'm envisioning not allowing non-hab growth, this would make this probably tend to put non-habs on the same level as IU's to some degree, as neither would grow.

I'm not sure what would qualify as a short-term-only investment.  I suppose that one could create something like 5 or 10 month "bonds", where you put in X amount of money, and after 5 or 10 months, the bond matured and you got X+Y money back. And while leaving the money in that bond wouldn't earn more money, you could just roll the money over into another bond and keep the ball rolling, so it really ends up being a long term investment as well.  (Of course, the money wouldn't be usable while sitting in the bond, and would be subject to some sort of penalty for early withdrawal.)

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that short-term-only investments can be turned into long term investments simply by rolling over the income after the "short term", into another purchase of this short-term-only investment with the output of the first instance of the investment.

The main gist of what I am saying is that you automatically have more money available the next turn.

If you mean you automatically have more income available for the next turn (well, perhaps not until the next year, with yearly growth), I don't see that as an issue.  (Note that I'm not talking about money being carried over in the treasury.)  I don't expect to see income levels dropping, although it may be happen to a small degree, if one didn't have any free colonization PTU's (any significant number of free PTU's) and was forced to convert PU's into PTU's to produce colonists.

Then every 10 turns you get a massive growth boom.  Every 20 or so turns your economy goes up by 10% as your TL increases.  

I agree that that's the case.  But size of those increases aside, if you do growth every single turn, you have increased the scale of your paperwork by a factor of 10.  If you do it yearly, you've reduced the amount of work required.  Yes, the size of the jump in income and PU's will be larger than if you did it in 10 smaller increments.  However, that's the price you pay for reducing the workload.  There are no perfect solutions that provide perfect accuracy with limited paperwork.  

Per turn growth is what 4thE calls for.  Yes you can simplify and use growth turns, and we did in our 3rdR game but you still need to recalculate system incomes per turn more likely than not as new colonization is an ongoing process.  In a PnP 3rdR I would use growth turns yes.  Pools have advantages and disadvantages I am only being thorough by mentioning them.  The key to reducing system book-keeping is as you say to reduce the number of moons you can colonize and reduce the number of settled planets per system.

I agree with everything you say in this paragraph.  Yeah, monthly growth is the standard for 4e, but optional in SM#2.  And yes, GPV's will likely need to be recalculated very often due to new colonization.  Frankly, this is a downside to the PU/PTU system's incremental colonization model... too much moving around of a PTU here and a PTU there, which causes the need for regular GPV recalculations.

As for the advantages and disadvantages of pools (or anything else, for that matter), I appreciate the thoroughness.  I may have misinterpreted your comments in an overly negative light and not appreciated that you were simply trying to point out the upsides and downsides of the ideas.

As the NPR I was crash colonizing a planet so don't think it won't happen.  Our group really really stressed the Starfire economic model.  Our MCr growth was grotesque.

I have no doubt that it's not that difficult to do just that (i.e. stressing the system and causing "grotesque" income growth).  I think that it's important to consider that it's not necessary that income growth and population growth be the same thing.  The two things aren't exactly the same thing in SM#2, since the TLF causes a separate between income and population (in PU's).  OTOH, in 4e, they are pretty much the same thing, since EL increases enhance a world's economy by increasing the number of PU's on that world.  And I'm coming to believe that one can make a strong case that doing this is a long term negative to the game's economic system because it only decreases the time it will take for your colony worlds to reach the magic "Large" population level when those worlds become major colonial source populations. On the flip side, while the TLF does enhance income (perhaps too greatly at SM#2's 10% per EL), it does not cause increases to population on any world.

Your suggestions about slowing down growth via the use of PTU growth is probably a good idea.  The growth in starfire is extremely quick due to the x10 economic time multiplier.  The effect of slowing down the income effects of colonies would be a knock on benefit.  The cost increases for things and the decrease in incomes for 4thE were a big plus in my view.  But still my outsystem income as a fraction of the total was growing quickly in my solo 4thE game.  I should look and see if I have still got the spreadsheets.

I don't mind things moving along.  The problem that PU based growth causes isn't so much that it increases the income of the world gaining the growth PU.  The real problem is that it's increasing the number of PTU's that the empire has to use for colonization far, far too quickly...  And it's not really a problem (IMHO) at the homeworld.  The problem is that PU based growth creates Large populations far too quicky, not for their income, but for their ability to turn into PTU-source populations that are much closer to that empire's frontier regions, thus shortening the distances to those frontier colonies and decreasing the costs of heavy colonization.  The longer you can force mass colonization to come from the homeworld the better, since it as empires grow, the cost of colonization will continue increase as the distance to those new world to be colonized grows.

It's also worth considering that PTU based growth would slow growth for world of Settlement size or smaller, since their PU/PTU CF equals 1.  And all in all, it wouldn't be too bad for Small populations.  PTU based growth really starts getting slower (in terms of its effect on PU totals, that is) once you transition into the Medium level.


There's also something else here to consider about the differences between SM#2 and 4e... EL Growth.  In SM#2, the economic benefit due to EL increases is due to an increase in the TLF multiplier.  But in 4e, the economic benefit due to EL increases is "EL Growth".    Now, given the considerable size of the growth rates in SM#2, it may be that there's not all that much difference in population numbers between SM#2 and 4e.  However, those are things that can be adjusted.  The problem that I see with EL growth vs. a TLF multiplier is that EL growth is creating more PU's (more PU based growth, BTW) that a) could be turned around as more PTU's for colonization and b) causes all those habitable planets to grow that much faster and getting to the Large pop level that much faster.  In SM#2, its higher population growth numbers aside, when your EL/TL increases, this doesn't cause a massive bump in your planets' PU totals.  Yes, you get income increases, but NOT increases to your PU totals, which have long term effects on your ability to colonize more cheaply as your habitable world populations reach the Large level more quickly.

OHHHHHHH!!!!!  I just realized another significant difference between SM#2 and 4e. (I hadn't realized this before.  But then again, I'd only come to the conclusion about the problems of PU based growth a few days ago.)  In SM#2, Harsh and Hostile populations are hard capped at Medium and Settlement.  OTOH, in 4e, Harsh and Hostile populations are capped at 1500 + 200/EL and 750 + 150/EL.  The problem I see with the 4e numbers here is that Harsh's are automatically Large with the ability to transition to VLg at EL3, while Hostiles start as Mediums, but transition to Large at EL2.  Of course, as colony worlds, it'll take some time for them to actually reach Large, but still, Harsh and Hostile worlds both have the ability to reach Large (and above) pop level and become the same massive producers of PTU's as Benign worlds.

This is not the case with the hard pop caps used in SM#2.  An SM#2 Harsh Medium pop isn't going to be a major source of colonists... whoa... wait a sec.... I think (could be wrong here) but once an SM#2 Harsh Medium will still have a growth rate of 25% on a capped population of 800 PU, which would be 200 PU every 10th turn, which at the SM#2 CF rate, comes out to 3600 PTU ... which must be moved quickly or lost.  That's still pretty considerable production of new colonists.  And even SM#2's Hostile pops being hard capped at Settlement level may be little bit of an issue here, since at a 50% yearly rate, once at their hard cap, they'd still produce 75 excess PTU's per year.  Not exactly huge numbers, but not non-existent.

I asked the ex-SM on his thoughts on size and he said 5 systems per player.  So my 20 is in his mind generous, but I think his is a bit on the too few side.  So, how many you can do is going to be limited by individual tastes. But when you have to scroll through 500 lines in a spread sheet page I think it becomes harder to find the fun, in principle flipping through 30 pages in a binder would be easier, but the effort it takes to update the growth, etc with the spread sheet is substantially reduced.  I would also think that there is a lot of basic math skills that can be developed playing it PnP.  But ultimately it is a question of book keeping and that is better handled by a computer database program.  I wasn't using any house rules, I was playing by 4thE as it is stated in the rule book, so please accept that my comments on the number of systems is based on that.  Largely it was the fact I found an NPR and realized that I would need to do exactly the same thing for the NPR I was doing for my race that stopped me and not my own book keeping.

Yes, individual tastes may vary.  But even considering spreadsheets, the number of lines, the number of what I call "economic records" where 1 "economic record" equals one discrete population with one discrete GPV that must be calculated, is a key element in determining the scale of bookkeeping involved.  Thus, if the number of "economic records" can be reduced, the scale of the bookkeeping should be reduced.

This can obviously be accomplished in a number of ways.... treating all moons in a system as a percentile modifier to planetary incomes; 2 population pools for desolate and extreme moons (and possibly any desolate and extreme planets as well); or limiting non-habitable colonization to rocky zone desolate planets and moons (and increasing their pop limits to counter pop losses elsewhere) while making all gas zone moons and extreme planets and moons in the Rocky Zone either unprofitable or banning colonization from them entirely.  The point in this latter idea wouldn't be to make some statement about the inability to colonize moons of gas giants or whatever.  It would be about trying to find a way to limit the level of record keeping, while keeping the benefits of discrete world colonization and avoiding certain issues that come from the use of pools, i.e. where are the PU's?.

From the sounds of it though the people who do this PnP should chime in on their "house rules" and see if a collaborative effort might not yield some positive results.

I'm always happy to get input.