Author Topic: Food  (Read 3977 times)

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Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Food
« on: November 26, 2021, 07:15:03 AM »
With the changes made for C# Aurora population have become even more important and are now a vital resource, however there is still not a great incentive to actually create lots of colonies aside from RP.

If we had a new resource item "food", and have all populations require X amount of tons per cycle as a maintenance cost. Then have a new facilitiy (farms etc) that create this resource out of simple labour.

The quick and dirty way I see it would be populatons require 1 ton of food to maintain or they begin to drop (starvation with added unrest). A facility produces 2 tons of food as so feeds your current population and allows for growth.

This would create more jobs for civilian transports that often end up just orbiting a world for eons in giant numbers, it would give you a reason to colonise outwards with agri worlds etc.
 
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Offline Andrew

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Re: Food
« Reply #1 on: November 26, 2021, 07:52:14 AM »
Each colony already has a large proportion of its population involved in none industrial efforts, as modern agriculture requires about 1% of the population this means that any and all food production is already catered for in the existing model.
As any reasonable model would only require less then 1% of each colonies population to be involved in food production this comes under the heading of a pointless extra thing to manage requiring signifigant player time resource but no signifigant in game resource . So a needless and annoying addition
 
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Food
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2021, 08:41:02 AM »
In a modern society such as Aurora then food would not be much of an issue, just one resource among many and pretty insignificant to the TN resources as well.

There are some pretty big advantage to spreading your colonies as it means a much higher population growth, the more colonies you have the faster your population numbers will grow, in my opinion that is as good enough an incentive as any other to build as many colonies as possible. Population will eventually become your single most constraint in terms of economical growth, so will be important.

As you can't just produce more population then spreading them to colonies for faster growth is the only way you can effect this constraint.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Food
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2021, 10:21:56 AM »
Above replies are absolutely correct, particular Jorgen's point about faster growth as smaller colonies grow much more quickly.

I do also want to point out that food is far from the only resource not explicitly modeled. If you compare the build cost of any component or facility in terms of minerals to the size of that component or facility, you will see that the minerals are clearly not the full composition of that component. One unit of any TNE requires two tons of cargo space to ship in a freighter, yet a mine or factory which takes up 25,000 tons requires only 120 units of TNE (240 tons)? This only makes sense if we realize there is a lot of non-TNE material which is used - conventional materials like wood, steel, glass, plastics, alumin(i)um, and so on. It makes sense why these are not modeled and instead we have TNEs to deal with, since most of these materials are expected to be fairly common in the universe whereas in Aurora mineral scarcity is a critical gameplay mechanic.

When you dig into it, there is really a lot of resource and economic factors which Aurora doesn't model, simply because it wouldn't make for very much addition to the gameplay even if it would be "more realistic".  ;)
 
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Offline Pury

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Re: Food
« Reply #4 on: November 26, 2021, 11:09:50 AM »
To be fair, some sort of "planetary Blockade" might be an interesting addition to the game. For example, if colony is large enough (lets say 40% max population) It starts to not only demand protection, but also connection to trade. If for whatever reason (Pirate attacks) not enough Trade ships will trade with the planet to satisfy its Commercial needs, It will start to get small morale loss. If the "Blockade" will commence for longer, Planet growth will stop and eventually start to decline. If NPR/Player is the one who enforced the Blockade/destruction of Trade ships, System will surrender because of the prolonged morale loss. It will give both Players and NPR a slow,safe and at least for me RP attractive way to takeover developed worlds. As all the work would be done by commercial ship lines no micro will be needed, only when the trade note is at risk player/npr would have to react. I Think it might play really nicely with new faction, and maybe will allow for some more impact full behind the lines action.
 
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Offline Migi

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Re: Food
« Reply #5 on: November 26, 2021, 12:08:29 PM »
To be fair, some sort of "planetary Blockade" might be an interesting addition to the game. For example, if colony is large enough (lets say 40% max population) It starts to not only demand protection, but also connection to trade. If for whatever reason (Pirate attacks) not enough Trade ships will trade with the planet to satisfy its Commercial needs, It will start to get small morale loss. If the "Blockade" will commence for longer, Planet growth will stop and eventually start to decline. If NPR/Player is the one who enforced the Blockade/destruction of Trade ships, System will surrender because of the prolonged morale loss. It will give both Players and NPR a slow,safe and at least for me RP attractive way to takeover developed worlds. As all the work would be done by commercial ship lines no micro will be needed, only when the trade note is at risk player/npr would have to react. I Think it might play really nicely with new faction, and maybe will allow for some more impact full behind the lines action.
I think a 40% max population trigger would be a bad choice, it should be a fixed amount like the limit for generating trade goods and CMCs. Otherwise asteroid mining colonies will be impacted nearly immediately but a Mars colony will take decades before it hits the limit.
I don't agree that population growth should be impacted, trade goods are likely to be high-value low-volume goods. I find it hard to believe that low value bulk goods will be transported for profit by the civilian market.
Morale impact is more plausible, but the real reason to protect civilians and systems is to protect the ships, which have inherent value.

The other issue is that trade is fulfilled by the civilian shipping lines, and I personally would not want any planet morale entirely dependant on them having their act together and fulfilling trade deals regularly. Any colonies a long way away from the rest of the empire might not receive visits sufficiently regularly because of the travel time.
The obvious fix (allowing player controlled cargo ships to fulfil trade routes) is very unlikely to be accepted.
 
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Food
« Reply #6 on: November 26, 2021, 01:12:02 PM »
The only type of story where food management would add value lMO is the kind of "Coruscant" type city covered planets with 100:eds of billions or trillions of inhabitants that are dependent on masses of imported food being delivered.

Aurora 4x isn't really well set up for those stories given it has planetary population limits based on land area that take space required for food production into account, and also because most normal games would need to run for thousands of years and build empires vastly larger than is practical to manage to get there.

And even if I'm often the first to ask for more accurate logistical challenges managing delivery of food also doesn't really sound all that exiting either. Sometimes the "rule of cool" in game development is a good guideline.
 
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Offline Norm49

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Re: Food
« Reply #7 on: March 25, 2022, 12:54:29 PM »
Some people say that in modern society food isn't a problem but our modern society doesn't have colonies on barren planet. I would love to see the civilian side of thing being more model. Food would be a nice addition. Or maybe make it as a option in the same ways civilian transport companies can be active or not.
 

Offline Rince Wind

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Re: Food
« Reply #8 on: May 21, 2022, 05:23:28 AM »
On barren planets a higher percentage of the population is working in the agricultural sector, iirc. So it is already accounted for that you need to put more effort in.
 

Offline gpt3

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Re: Food
« Reply #9 on: May 21, 2022, 09:12:32 AM »
Above replies are absolutely correct, particular Jorgen's point about faster growth as smaller colonies grow much more quickly.

I do also want to point out that food is far from the only resource not explicitly modeled. If you compare the build cost of any component or facility in terms of minerals to the size of that component or facility, you will see that the minerals are clearly not the full composition of that component. One unit of any TNE requires two tons of cargo space to ship in a freighter, yet a mine or factory which takes up 25,000 tons requires only 120 units of TNE (240 tons)? This only makes sense if we realize there is a lot of non-TNE material which is used - conventional materials like wood, steel, glass, plastics, alumin(i)um, and so on. It makes sense why these are not modeled and instead we have TNEs to deal with, since most of these materials are expected to be fairly common in the universe whereas in Aurora mineral scarcity is a critical gameplay mechanic.

When you dig into it, there is really a lot of resource and economic factors which Aurora doesn't model, simply because it wouldn't make for very much addition to the gameplay even if it would be "more realistic".  ;)

Some people say that in modern society food isn't a problem but our modern society doesn't have colonies on barren planet. I would love to see the civilian side of thing being more model. Food would be a nice addition. Or maybe make it as a option in the same ways civilian transport companies can be active or not.

Aurora's resource model assumes that conventional materials are post-scarcity (presumably due to economic improvements brought by TN technology).

Any society that can casually build fusion generators doesn't really need normal agriculture anymore - instead it can manufacture its staple diet in hydroponic farms and microbe vats. Of course, there will always be those that prefer traditional foods (an apple probably tastes better than Synth Paste), but that's what the "luxury food", "spices", and "wines" trade goods are for!
 
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Offline kilo

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Re: Food
« Reply #10 on: May 22, 2022, 05:46:00 AM »
Making certain planets better at producing food than others would allow for some efficiency gains from food trading. The number of people working in agriculture would plummet empire-wide. You would end up with some sort of globalization and blockades and wars could lead to supply chain issues and starvation. This could lead to quite some hyper realistic game mechanics.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Food
« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2022, 03:59:48 AM »
Making certain planets better at producing food than others would allow for some efficiency gains from food trading. The number of people working in agriculture would plummet empire-wide. You would end up with some sort of globalization and blockades and wars could lead to supply chain issues and starvation. This could lead to quite some hyper realistic game mechanics.

In my opinion, from a realistic perspective, it makes very little sense. No world would allow itself not to be sufficient in the basics you need for survival. You never know when the next shipment of resources will come, it would be very risky. Societies in general also develop much better when they are more or less self sufficient in most basic technologies and industrial products, at least in reality. Trade of course is still important as it produces huge excess in wealth and knowledge transfer. But even in our world the poorest and less wealthy countries are those with very little self sufficiency in both industry and natural resources, these societies are also very dependable on others and very vulnerable to changes in the global trade network.

In my opinion Aurora are pretty realistic in this sense as it relies mostly on trade for luxury items. Although I do think that trade should increase colonies wealth income as that is usually what trade does.

But then again the economy in Aurora are quite abstracted and not very detailed aside from TN resources which in no way are consumed or used by the population at all, that is only for the state to worry about. I wish that TN material was a bit more like in Distant Worlds, that the state needed to compete with the population for and civilian merchant fleet for TN resources. If a world is blockaded and they can't consume the TN resources they need their wealth level should drop significantly as well as their political stability modifier over time. This would also be good for role-play as a world that does not get enough TN materials would suffer political instability and eventually you would break it if into its own entity, it would declare independence in order to secure what it needs by itself.

You now could also use the civilian ships to move TN resources... each world you simply would set a demand level and the civilians would try and satisfy that by moving the resources. Civilian mining complexes also would get a different meaning in the game as they would always produce the resources.

I also think that all resources probably should belong the to civilian economy and the state need to pay for it when they use it in wealth. You should then be able to tell a certain colony to only consume say 80% of their needs, but that would then effect their wealth and political stability, you could oppress it with military if you wish... but it would be a way to play more oppressive regimes or something you would need during wartime to use the TN resources for building military ships rather than consuming it for wealth.

In my opinion this would be more interesting than introduce something as insignificant as food, something that is just a measure of energy and basic none TN materials.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Food
« Reply #12 on: June 29, 2022, 09:18:21 PM »
I would disagree a little there, Jorgen. Many Earth nations have developed well despite not being self-sufficient. Just to give three examples of high-tech & rich countries that absolutely could not feed their existing populations without food imports: Finland, the UK and Japan. Similarly, very few countries are truly self-sufficient when it comes to natural resources - we don't even have to go for rare earth minerals as even more mundane minerals cannot be found everywhere and have been traded for centuries. Sure, many countries have implemented methods (tariffs/subsidies) to protect their domestic food production to maintain some local capability but it's not like it's enough to feed the population, it's more to placate local populace.

Similarly, I disagree with Migi that low-value bulk goods would be transported through space. Of course, in the real world that makes no sense because the cost of KG from Earth surface to orbit is exorbitant and will probably be prohibitive for that sort of trading for decades if not centuries to come. But just like 17th century galleons couldn't transport low-value bulk goods in numbers enough and fast enough to make it economical, modern bulk carriers can and do. And in Aurora, the miracle of TN-tech means that launch costs and transportation costs are negligible, to a large extent.

Combined, this means that in Aurora economy, it very well might be entirely feasible for certain planets to export gigantic amounts of food stuff - not just rare delicacies - to other planets where food production is more difficult/expensive. Just like the current trade goods seem to include low-value bulk goods. But adding food currently is not beneficial on its own, it should be part of a larger economic overhaul of the system. Maybe for version 3.0!
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Food
« Reply #13 on: June 29, 2022, 10:45:38 PM »
From a gameplay perspective, I would not welcome the added micromanagement of balancing low-value good shipments like food, regardless of possible lore justifications. IMO, if we're going to add a more complex economic model, we need the automation tools to handle it (and more importantly for the NPRs to handle it!) at empire scale. Particularly in multi-player-race games as for these especially it is critical to minimize the amount of repetitive tedium when it is multiplied by the number of player races.
 
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Offline Froggiest1982

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Re: Food
« Reply #14 on: June 30, 2022, 12:13:49 AM »
To be entirely honest, I would welcome the ability for "Player Controlled" freighters to move trade goods.

This could potentially open to more interesting outcomes.

Eventually, to avoid micromanagement, a flag for the Colony Ships or Freighters to be "automated" and act like they were civilian fleets, would also be a nice QOL feature and a nice addition.
 
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