Author Topic: Cold War Comments Thread  (Read 71918 times)

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Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #600 on: October 30, 2022, 11:04:33 AM »
Does the Colonial Union have any avenues for expansion? Are they still exploring new space or are they just colonising the territory they already know?

The Colonial Union is still exploring and expanding via colonization.  They continued to explore and colonize during the recent unpleasantness with the Alliance, nearly unabated, although two of their three survey groups were pulled in to support the Battle Fleet.  On the other hand, exploration and colonization came to a complete halt for quite a while in the Alliance, given the breakdown in communications and the confusion caused by the D'Bringi coup and countercoup.  The Alliance had a pretty big lead to begin with, though, and three home worlds with very large populations, while the Colonial Union doesn't have any planets with populations larger than medium.

Exploration by the Alliance has largely come to a halt as well.  This is for two reasons.  Partly this is due to the difficulties the Alliance has recently suffered through, which caused exploration fleets to be called back to support military ventures.  It also is because the Alliance has decided to standardize and modernize its exploration fleets, reducing its reliance on explorer class ships, which are too small to defend themselves or carry long-range sensors.  This modernization program got interrupted by the Alliance's current difficulties, and although the D'Bringi unpleasantness is largely over, the other wars occupying the Alliance's attentions will cause more than a little diversion as well.  The modernization program will likely be delayed until the Alliance reaches HT-10, which they hope will be soon. 
 
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Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #601 on: October 30, 2022, 03:06:02 PM »
For those who aren't familiar with Starfire, or who haven't played in a while, I thought I would post a little refresher on how Starfire colonization works. 

The basis of production in Imperial Starfire is the Population Unit (PU).  A PU is modified by the mineral wealth or lack thereof of its planet, and the race's tech level, and other modifiers, to find out how much mega-credits it produces a month.  A planet, moon, or asteroid can have varying numbers of PU's, with asteroid having the lowest upper limit of 16, and benign planets having the highest limit of 3,200.  It seems pretty straight forward, and it is.  Except, this is Starfire, so everything has to be complicated.  The complication comes with how many actual people the PU represents.  A PU can represent anywhere from 50,000 to 22,500,000 people.  This varies based on the number of PU's located on a planet/moon/asteroid.  Mostly, you can ignore this, as it has no effect on the game, as PU's are the basis of production, not people.  The only place this becomes important is in terms of colonization.  All costs for colonization are calculated by Population Transport Unit, or PTU.  One PTU equals 50,000 people.  So, for smaller populations, one PTU = one PU.  For a very large population, one PTU equals four hundred and fifty PTU's.  This is how the economics of colonization work in Imperial Starfire.  It doesn't make any sense to draw from a planet with a size of small, settlement, colony, or outpost, because it would deplete that population rapidly.  Generally, planets with populations of the size medium, or 400+ PU's, are considered suitable for supporting colonization, as at that size one PU equals 18 PTU's, so drawing PTU's from a medium population for a full sized 150 PTU colonization mission would only reduce the medium population by just over 8 PU's.  That's a winner for the colonizing race, as it is losing 8 PU's at the source population and gaining 150 PU's at the destination.  You can boost a colony's population over 150 but doing so rapidly becomes very expensive.  To boost a small population of 150 PU's to a medium of 400 PU's would take 650 PTU's to gain 250 PU's, whereas those 650 PTU's could be sent to five different habitable planets to gain 650 PU's of income. 

Because of speed limitations, it is most effective to colonize systems within four jumps of your colonization-source.  Anything farther than that increases the cost of colonization, and the duration that the cargo and quarters capacity is tied up.  Colonizing more than four jumps out can be done, but in my standard Starfire campaigns it was rare. 

That briefly is the economics of colonization in Imperial Starfire.  In the Cold War campaign, I have drastically reduced the population growth rate to 20% of normal, if I remember correctly.  This has affected the economics of colonization a lot, and in ways I didn't expect.  Under the standard rules, generally by the time I had colonized the worlds within four jumps of my main colonization-supporting planets, some of the new colonies had grown to medium size and were thus able to support colonies themselves, extending the range at which colonies would be placed.  This is not true in the Cold War campaign.  Only after about 200 turns have colonies planted in the early days of the game grown enough to support colonization.  This means that all of the major races were discovering planets in the 5-8 jumps area, or even the 9-12 jumps area, that they cannot cheaply colonize, because their only source of colonization remained their home planet.  I soon realized that I was going to have to colonize planets in the 5-8 jump range band, and that I was going to have to force-grow colonies to medium size to support colonization efforts by shipping in PTU's to grow the population, rather than relying on growth.  All of my races have been engaged in this practice, some more effectively than others. 

Generally, there are three kinds of colonization taking place in the Cold War campaign. 

The first is in-system colonization, where a medium size population ships PTU's to the other planets, moons and asteroids in the same system.  This is cheap and effective, because each system will support a limited amount of free in-system colonization based on its productivity, and this can greatly increase the wealth generated by the system.  For example, the Rehorish Home Planet produces 12,357 MCr's per month.  The Rehorish Home System, which is fully colonized, produces 17,872 MCr's.  The real drawback of this form of colonization is the time requirement it forces on the player in real life.  Even with Starfire Assistant to help, it is probably the most time-consuming part of each turn, except for actual battles. 

The second is standard colonization of newly discovered planets with 150 PU/PTU colonies.  Both the Alliance and the Colonial Union have been forced by slow population growth to colonize in the 5-8 jump range-band, and sometimes even farther out than that. 

The third is population-boosting colonization, which the races are using to boost the population of existing colonies to and past the 400 PU level so that it can support both in-system colonization, and the colonization of nearby habitable planets.  This is very expensive and resource intensive, since it ties up large amounts of the race's freighters and colony transports.  Generally, my races have reserved this type of colonization for benign/very-rich planets, or strategically or economically important systems. 

The slow population growth in this campaign has really caused a problem for the humans in the campaign.  Since Earth was largely bombed out early in the campaign, they lost their source of nearly limitless colonization, and this has affected all human successor states.  Because this is the first time I've used the slower growth rates I did not anticipate how it would affect humanity.  The Colonial Union ruthlessly plundered the remaining population on Earth to fund a massive colonization spree in the aftermath of the war, and this was effective, but has depleted Earth's population to the point where it is no longer the largest population in the Colonial Union. 
 
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Offline Starslayer_D

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #602 on: October 31, 2022, 03:43:49 AM »
Seems your races are in the medium range of colonisation possibilities.

The lower range are races with not fully grown Homeworlds or low income, who have simply not the capacity to ship as much as they should.
The middle range are races with a 3600 PU homeworld wich get 100 PTU free each turn adn can afford to ship that.
The upper range are races with multiple fully grown worlds and the income to ship all the PTU each turn, like the Thebans in Paul and my campaign.
or the bugs, who due to only paying 1/4 od the Q and H .. just don't care.
Those high end races can afford to force colonisation. The bugs routinely just dump 800 PTU on a world, catapulting it to medium and ti the 50% bonus income stage.. well, each round. They ran out of worlds to do that on now, though.
The thebans can afford to send colonisation into the 9-12 jumps range, as their income is high enough to support such a huge ICN that typing up a few thousand H and Q for several turns doesn't matter. Also, it often was cheaper to boost a closer world to 800 and gain anew colonisation source than to settle directly. At least the thebans did that for VR worlds and systems with a lot of asteroid belts (income multiplier).
What we removed was colonising asteroids, as that is a very efficient way to boost income. A system with 4 Belts is as good as several habitable worlds in a system. Thus we removed a huge money bloat.
If we hadn't, I wouldn't look at 280k income, but at a million. Bugs would not be able to copete with that when they only settele habitable worlds.
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #603 on: October 31, 2022, 03:26:39 PM »
Seems your races are in the medium range of colonisation possibilities.

The lower range are races with not fully grown Homeworlds or low income, who have simply not the capacity to ship as much as they should.
The middle range are races with a 3600 PU homeworld wich get 100 PTU free each turn adn can afford to ship that.
The upper range are races with multiple fully grown worlds and the income to ship all the PTU each turn, like the Thebans in Paul and my campaign.
or the bugs, who due to only paying 1/4 od the Q and H .. just don't care.
Those high end races can afford to force colonisation. The bugs routinely just dump 800 PTU on a world, catapulting it to medium and ti the 50% bonus income stage.. well, each round. They ran out of worlds to do that on now, though.
The thebans can afford to send colonisation into the 9-12 jumps range, as their income is high enough to support such a huge ICN that typing up a few thousand H and Q for several turns doesn't matter. Also, it often was cheaper to boost a closer world to 800 and gain anew colonisation source than to settle directly. At least the thebans did that for VR worlds and systems with a lot of asteroid belts (income multiplier).
What we removed was colonising asteroids, as that is a very efficient way to boost income. A system with 4 Belts is as good as several habitable worlds in a system. Thus we removed a huge money bloat.
If we hadn't, I wouldn't look at 280k income, but at a million. Bugs would not be able to copete with that when they only settele habitable worlds.

I would say that the Alliance is in the upper range, while the Colonial Union and the Confederated Sentient Races are in the middle. 

If I did this again, I'd probably remove the asteroid colonization as well.  It is very time consuming for me, and like you said, an economy bloat.  Still, with the changes I did make the Cold War campaign has lasted quite a few more turns than the Phoenix Campaign did, so I count that as a success. 
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #604 on: October 31, 2022, 09:13:50 PM »
If I did this again, I'd probably remove the asteroid colonization as well.  It is very time consuming for me, and like you said, an economy bloat.  Still, with the changes I did make the Cold War campaign has lasted quite a few more turns than the Phoenix Campaign did, so I count that as a success.

I wonder if maybe instead of removing them entirely it would make some sense to simplify them mechanically. I'm thinking of the population limits in Aurora which are usually quite small for asteroids, to the point where one might say that a single colonization mission to create 150 PUs on an asteroid, or whatever the limit is, is the extent of the matter, there is no natural growth beyond that. I'm not at all familiar with Starfire mechanics, but I think that ought to reduce the bookkeeping to multiplying the total number of asteroid colonies by whatever multiplier gives the income per asteroid.

Of course since I know nothing of the Starfire mechanics aside from what I glean from this thread and other AARs, I could be way off base here?
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #605 on: November 01, 2022, 11:21:56 AM »
If I did this again, I'd probably remove the asteroid colonization as well.  It is very time consuming for me, and like you said, an economy bloat.  Still, with the changes I did make the Cold War campaign has lasted quite a few more turns than the Phoenix Campaign did, so I count that as a success.

I wonder if maybe instead of removing them entirely it would make some sense to simplify them mechanically. I'm thinking of the population limits in Aurora which are usually quite small for asteroids, to the point where one might say that a single colonization mission to create 150 PUs on an asteroid, or whatever the limit is, is the extent of the matter, there is no natural growth beyond that. I'm not at all familiar with Starfire mechanics, but I think that ought to reduce the bookkeeping to multiplying the total number of asteroid colonies by whatever multiplier gives the income per asteroid.

Of course since I know nothing of the Starfire mechanics aside from what I glean from this thread and other AARs, I could be way off base here?

There are a couple of issues here.  The maximum population on an asteroid is 16 PU, but an asteroid belt can contain anywhere from 6 to 54 (I think) outposts.  At 16 PU per outpost, that's up to 864 PU's for a large asteroid belt, which is the equivalent of a medium-large population.  A system with four of these asteroid belts, although unlikely, would have the equivalent of a very large population planet. 

This creates several issues relating to game mechanics.  The first is income bloat, which is what some of the house rules I'm using are intended to prevent or at least delay.  Colonizing asteroid belts willy-nilly causes income to go up faster, which kills strategic starfire games.  The Phoenix Campaign, my last major campaign, ended in the 140-150 turn range because the major races had gotten so big that it was taking excessive amounts of time to finish each game turn, and fleets had become so large that battles were unmanageable.  The Cold War campaign is now at turn 216 and still going strong, largely because I've limited population growth. 

the second issue is balance, which was mentioned by Starslayer.  The primary threat race in many campaigns are the bugs, a hive mind.  In Starfire, the bugs get several advantages, like greatly accelerated population growth, cheap colonization, and bonus income for larger populations, if I remember correctly.  However, they have several off-setting weaknesses.  One of which is that they can only colonize habitable planets.  This means that asteroid belts are off-limits for them, which gives non-bug races a big advantage. 

The other issue, in my mind, is the time requirement imposed on the player to manage in-system colonization.  For an individual system this time is negligible, but for an empire with dozens of colonial systems, many of which are eligible for in-system colonization, the time management requirement goes up dramatically for the player.  This is because each system's in-system colonization capacity, which is free, is fairly limited, even for richer systems.  This capacity might be anywhere from 10 to 15 PU's per turn, maybe more if there is a larger population present, or if much of the system has been colonized.  At the rate of 15 PU's per turn, it is going to take a long time to colonize the whole system, and that means that every single turn the player is going to have to manage the in-system colonization for that system.  Starfire Assistant handles the actual mechanics and calculations, but the player has to handle selecting the population source and the destination, and has to do it every turn. 


 

Offline Paul M

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #606 on: November 01, 2022, 04:20:50 PM »
Each hex can have up to 5 outposts and so for a extremely large asteroid belt (72 hex's) you can have: 16 PU/outpost*5 outposts/hex*72 hexs = 5760 PU and that can have 2880 IU as well.  Admittedly 72 hexs is huge but even a system with 18 hexs (rather typical) is 1440 PU and 720 IU which is a nice chunk of change.  Also they are automatically rich so that is 125%.  It beats easily anything but a benign world.  And after a certain point the growth from the asteroid colonies themselves are non-trivial in terms of in system colonization.

What you say about in system colonization is true.  The Shanirians and the other races I run I do that extensively and it takes an eternity to go through each system shovel the 2 PU to moon x and so on.  But the Shanirian's especially I need to do this as they are "green" so they limit their investment in IU on benign worlds to 100 IU.

As for as colonization goes, I force grow to medium on any world either benign or else that is normal or better wealth.  Unlike the bugs I can't do it in one go but it doesn't take that long when you are shipping a 100 PU per turn or more to the planet.  The RM have the capability to do it fast when they so choose.  Also breaking down a few PU on a Large pop planet is usually worth it.  It is important to be clear that in starfire there are no bad investments.  The only question is if you have a better alternative, but when the answer is "nope" then shipping PU 20 jumps to a normal ice ball moon will still give you a net income increase when the colonists arrive.  There is no way an investment can lose money...the only question is the number of turns it will take to pay for itself.  There is no break to the rich get richer faster and faster that usually kills the game.  The only way I can see to do it is to make a lot of the stuff that in the game has no maintenance (as basically no one likes the bookkeeping) have maintenance...then there is a cost as your empire gets larger.  And make the cost scale somewhat with size...or do something that makes adding a system cost more than the system can make so that people think about if they want to expand.  Stellaris does this but even so in that game there is relatively little dis-incentive to expanding.  It is this cost of empire that has gotten virtually every real world empire I know of...eventually the empire expands to the point it is no longer economically viable to maintain it.  Then an internal or external event triggers it to break down.
 

Offline Gyrfalcon

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #607 on: November 03, 2022, 09:46:28 AM »
Neither one of the minor powers were more than a roadbump, which we could expect. Of the two, I found the Lothari reasoning more 'logical' (in the sense of 'the crazy dictator's secret police will torture and kill my family, their family, their extended family, everyone who knew anyone on those lists, and anyone who sees them while they're busy with the above if I surrender or retreat') than the Aurarii. Was it just a case that in both cases the minor empire didn't really believe they were next to a big multi-species empire that couldn't just bury them in hulls if needed?
 

Offline misanthropope

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #608 on: November 03, 2022, 10:43:59 AM »
single system NPRs succumb quickly to the deadliest diseconomy of all:  they have low story significance relative to the amount of SM effort they demand.
 
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Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #609 on: November 03, 2022, 10:57:45 AM »
Neither one of the minor powers were more than a roadbump, which we could expect. Of the two, I found the Lothari reasoning more 'logical' (in the sense of 'the crazy dictator's secret police will torture and kill my family, their family, their extended family, everyone who knew anyone on those lists, and anyone who sees them while they're busy with the above if I surrender or retreat') than the Aurarii. Was it just a case that in both cases the minor empire didn't really believe they were next to a big multi-species empire that couldn't just bury them in hulls if needed?

The Lothari do indeed have an insane dictator, which requires periodic re-rolls of all relationships.  This is exactly what happened here, and it was just the Lothari's luck that their crazy dictator decided to start a war while the Alliance was still recovering from major internal disruptions. 

The Aurarii were a little different.  They are arrogant and difficult to get along with, and would have gone to war with the Doraz, who originally discovered them, if it wasn't for the Alliance making it clear that it was a bad idea and then moderating negotiations towards a friendly relationship.  The problem the Aurarii had was that their system has only one warp point in or out, and it's the one the Doraz discovered them through.  So, they had no route for expansion.  This is a potentially volatile situation for any race, and one of the few things that I consider a valid reason for a smaller NPR to go to war over.   The Alliance negotiated an agreement between the Doraz and the Aurarii for the Doraz to give them some otherwise useless territory, which had one open warp point for them to explore.  Unfortunately, that open warp point led to two new systems, neither of which had habitable planets, and then petered out.  This left the Aurarii, who consider themselves one of the pre-eminent races of the galaxy, isolated in a small pocket of systems with no route for growth. 

Once this happened war was practically inevitable, for several reasons.  First, they tried to negotiate with the Alliance for additional access to open warp points but were ignored.  Unknown to them the Alliance was preoccupied with their internal problems and had lost contact with their outer territories.  Once they received no answer to their entreaties for negotiations, their dysfunctional internal politics took over and war was inevitable.  This war, for the Aurarii, was always more about their internal politics rather than external relationships, no matter what the excuse was.

Ironically, even had the Alliance been on the ball and answered their calls for negotiation, they wouldn't have gotten what they wanted.  The Doraz themselves are facing a dramatic decrease in open warp points available for exploration and are considering asking the Alliance for access to any nearby areas in Alliance territory that they could explore.  The few remaining open warp points that the Doraz have access to are far away from the Aurarii system and it would be impractical to give access to them.  Of course, the Aurarii never asked the Doraz, so they had no way of knowing that. 
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #610 on: November 03, 2022, 10:58:09 AM »
single system NPRs succumb quickly to the deadliest diseconomy of all:  they have low story significance relative to the amount of SM effort they demand.

Hah!
 

Offline Shinanygnz

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #611 on: November 03, 2022, 11:43:22 AM »
single system NPRs succumb quickly to the deadliest diseconomy of all:  they have low story significance relative to the amount of SM effort they demand.

Hah!

Well, some handy training for the Alliance fleets, hopefully some crew grade increases ready for dealing with Mintek loonies :D
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #612 on: November 04, 2022, 10:06:50 AM »
single system NPRs succumb quickly to the deadliest diseconomy of all:  they have low story significance relative to the amount of SM effort they demand.

Hah!

Well, some handy training for the Alliance fleets, hopefully some crew grade increases ready for dealing with Mintek loonies :D

As you will see soon, it didn't quite work out that way for the Alliance.  In fact, they just lost some of their most experienced ships, which is what happens when you go up against an enemy that has higher technology than you do, and the bulk of your ships are older, un-refitted designs.  Losing those ultra-elite cruisers hurts, but I will say this, they went down swinging. 
 

Offline TheTalkingMeowth

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #613 on: November 04, 2022, 06:57:52 PM »
Are the casualties in Liawak the worst civilian loss of life since Earth nuked itself?
 

Offline Kurt (OP)

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Re: Cold War Comments Thread
« Reply #614 on: November 05, 2022, 08:25:57 AM »
Are the casualties in Liawak the worst civilian loss of life since Earth nuked itself?

Yes.  The Alliance-Human war was relatively civilized, as the D'Bringi were raiders intent on stealing, and the Rehorish saw no reason to provoke anyone with a massacre.  And the Alliance-Mintek clashes have been relatively bloodless as far as civilians are concerned, because the Mintek want to convert everyone.  Even the battles have been relatively 'civilized', at least between everyone but the Lothari, as damaged ships are usually allowed to retreat or surrender, and when it became clear one side had the clear advantage the other usually either withdrew or surrendered.  That has made the battles with the Lothari somewhat shocking, as entire Alliance battle groups have been wiped out, and after the Liawak incident, Alliance fleets are not asking for or granting surrender.