Also tracking ships is a major major pain.
I believe that the biggest reason that "tracking ships is a major major pain" is the crew grade rules. Those rules basically turn each and every ship into an individual entity with its own unique number of XP. I never play with crew grade, and have never had to bother tracking crew grade XP, and thus have been able to treat all ships of the same class much more simply. That is, say that I have 30 Longbow BC's in system "A", and I decide to order 12 of those BC's to travel to system "B". I don't need to care which 12 BC's will be moved, since they're essentially anonymous. I'm moving a single group of ships, that just happens to be 12 BC's, not 12 individual units each with its own identity and XP total. Saves a LOT of headaches.
I've done various 4thE games with only Excel spreadsheets. Though the computer you would think would simplify stuff that is true only to a point. Excel is spreadsheet not a database so it gets complex at between 10 and 20 systems. Also tracking ships is a major major pain. One of the issues is just how hard it is to scroll...stupid as that is. But with 50 lines per system as an average you are at 500+ lines in your empire rather fast. And each line needs to be entered by hand so there is huge chance to make a mistake. Cut and paste only goes so far. Plus the turn to turn issues. It is doable but the death by bookkeeping sets in rather quickly. This version is really just PnP using the computer as a binder/calculator.
A part of the paperwork annoyance problem from a P&P perspective is the constant or semi-constant need to recalculate each world's GPV due to monthly or yearly growth. And on top of that, allowing populations on Desolates and Extreme worlds to naturally grow makes this problem MUCH worse, since there are likely MANY more Desolate and Extreme populations in a heavily colonized empire than there are habitables. Of course, the habitables will account for more of the overall income, but the desolates and extremes will be much more numerous and if allowed to naturally grow, each would require GPV recalculation every growth cycle. If Desolate and Extreme population growth is removed, the paperwork annoyance in this regard is considerably reduced.
Also, there are some other factor contribute to making certain aspects of the paperwork more difficult in the PU/PTU model vs. the EVM model. For example, with the existence of mineral values and incremental colonization, all those little Desolate and Extreme populations are far, far less homogeneous in their GPV numbers. Now, this may be pleasing for some for the sense of realism, but it also makes dealing with all those little individual populations more tedious than if they all had the same value.
For example, in ISF, the EVM value an OP or a Colony on a Type O1/O2 world was a set value. It didn't change due to mineral values or incremental colonization or growth. Only a change in the empire's TL would cause an increase in the EVM. (And yes, a change in the TL would require the REI's to be re-rolled, but the REI concept also tended to be one of the largest factors in my ISF planetary economies could be so huge.) So, in the ISF model, all those Desolate and Extreme OP's and Colonies did tend to have very GPV's, which might seem rather bland, but it also greatly simplified dealing with them.
My point about complex economies is perhaps not so clear. By complex I don't mean bookkeeping intensive but simply that there is more to them than MCr.
Actually, I did understand what you meant...
You can shove the problem back (Marvin's solution) which only works if the game is over with quick. That doesn't remove the problem and so for me that is not a viable solution.
I don't necessarily agree with you here. I'd argue that Marvin's solutions probably work best in a smaller game because of the numbers of T/ST's he allows. I think that if T/ST are "too" common (a very relative term, mind you), in a shorter game, not enough time/turns will pass to cause those "too common" T/ST's to become to economically explosive, but after a certain point they will be. But if you want a longer, larger game, you could considerably delay this by reducing the numbers of T/ST's in the game galaxy. Of course that will also increase exploration luck as a factor. But IMHO there are some tradeoffs that just can't be avoided. if you want to keep economies from growing too large too quick, you need to have fewer economically explosive T/ST's in the mix, even if it does increase the exploration luck factor. But if all one cares about is "exploration luck", then make every system exactly the same (1 T, 1 ST, and the usual other junk) and exploration luck will be a total non-issue. Of course, you'll have T/ST's everywhere and imperial economies will go nuclear in a very, very short time.
Another related point is the relative values of the 3 habitable environment types: Benign, Harsh, and Hostile. In SM#2, Harsh's were capped at Medium and Hostiles at Settlement. OTOH, in 4e, Harsh's were capped (loosely) at Large, and Hostiles at (loosely) Medium. I think that this change was done to mitigate exploration luck, since it reduced the difference in economic value for Harshs and Hostiles relative to Benigns. But at the same time, by increasing the values of Harshs and Hostiles, it also increase the overall value of all T/ST's taken together. In simple terms, if each of the 3 hab env's has a 33% chance of existing, that means that the average T/ST population in SM#2 would be a Medium, whereas in 4e it would be a Large... and since Larges are twice the PU size of Mediums, this means that the average total GPV has potentially increased by factor of 2. Something to consider...
The removal of the NPRs probably makes exploration luck even more critical but then a game of 5 players in say 50 starsystems is likely to devolve into 4:1, 3:1, 2:1 and then either 1:1 or end as one player has the economy and military to overwhelm the remaining one. It might go 3:2, 2:1, 1:1 as well but clearly the first players to unite have the highest chance of "winning" and outsystem colonization is going to be limited regardless since the time scale to make such things worthwhile won't exist. I could be wrong since it isn't the sort of game I have played but long term investments don't seem to play a major role in a short game.
It took me a few re-readings to absorb this paragraph, Paul. The ratios caught my eye and prevented me from absorbing the really important point. Yes, 5 players in only 50 star systems with no NPR's would tend to limit the value of outsystem colonization. Then again, I suppose that I could say that if you were playing that many players in so small a galaxy, you're really looking to have a bunch of battles, and exploration would seem to be more about finding routes into enemy territory, than exploration for its own sake and for finding colonizable real estate.
While this isn't the sort of campaign that would really interest me, I could see that it might be pretty good for people looking for a more "operational" game with a number of battles. And actually, if that IS the sort of game that they're interested in, I'd say that it'd be better to not include any NPR's in that small galaxy, since any hostile NPR would be terribly bad luck and any friendly NPR would be amazingly good luck. It'd probably be better in such a small galaxy to just let the players be knocking heads with each other and not let such a highly random factor as NPR's affect the outcome.
A suggestion for an economic change would be to have an economy that has: money, 4 resources (food, energy, metals, consumer goods), shipyards that build only certain hull sizes or smaller (but can't build multiples), have slow ship construction, and have maintenance points and have the ships require these in integer amounts so that small ships really aren't efficient. I would also make it so that the player be rewarded for building an infrastructure network (assuming it becomes less of a pain and more of a strategic asset). My feeling is that you have to give the players strategic choices, do they invest in a colony that looses money but gives their fleets more range and allows access to that warp point chain or do they forgo it and invest in a money making colony. The IFN basically destroys this sort of thing in 3rdR. The changes introduced in AD and onwards either removed the infrastructure, or made it maintenance free so that nothing impeded the rich getting richer, faster and faster.
There are many interesting points here.
Honestly, though this sort of complication just doesn't sound like Starfire to me. The "4 resources" thing only makes an already complicated game more complex.
Slower construction times? This doesn't do much for me, though it's the easiest thing to do within the existing framework without causing many secondary effects. I would worry that slower construction times would only serve to make smaller ships even more attractive, since it would make larger ships that much slower to build.
You also have a "time scale" issue here, I'd tend to think. Not a "time scale" issue similar to the supposed economic speed up. I'm thinking more along the lines of construction times vs. movement times. It's one thing to have ships taking a year or 2 to build if it's taking a long time to cross a number of star systems. But in that 5 player/50 star system galaxy, it may not be terribly uncommon for the players to be no more than 5 StMP apart (just a swag BTW), depending on the layout of the WP network. Or to put it another way, their home systems may not be much more than 2-3 months travel apart, once all the warp interconnections have been scouted out. Who's going to bother building big ships if the other player could be in your home system in 2-3 months? The one unalterable (I suppose) advantage of small ships over large ones is that you can build about 3 DD's in the same time that you could build 1 BB. Now, while the BB may be more powerful than those 3 DD, that's only true IF the BB gets completed. But in the meantime, you might have 1 or 2 of those DD's already finished.
Regardless, increased build times only slow the rate of fleet growth. They don't do anything to place caps on it. It would seem that only something like PP's could do something like that.
Maintenance Points? Well, I suppose that a ship's maintenance cost could be required to be rounded to the nearest whole number. Not sure how that would help out larger ships over smaller ones in terms of efficiency, unless you start assigning hardcoded maintenance fees to each hull type and have those fees arbitrarily favor larger ships over smaller ones. But then that doesn't take into account the relative costs of warships having different designs with more expensive and more advanced technologies. Oh, I suppose that one could multiply the total of all those hardcoded maint fees by some TL factor, but that wouldn't seem to be fair as it wouldn't take into account that you might have some classes that aren't up to current TL standards. Or heck, your empire's TL may have just increased, but none of your ships have any tech systems from that TL yet. Frankly, the question of rounding to the nearest whole number aside, it seems that the current method of calculating a ship's maintenance cost is the most fair and effective one that I can see at this moment.
"Infrastructure network"? This is a bit vague. Do you mean, something like saying that saying that fleets could only get their maintenance from the CFN "free" if they were within 4 StMP of a CFN terminal (really just any ol' Outpost)?
I understand what you're saying about the changes to the CFN (the IFN was what it was called in ISF) made in SM#2 do make dealing with maintenance "easier". This is an issue of differing perspectives and player desires. Some players don't want to deal with the issues of logistics, such as you're describing. And the CFN as it exists from SM#2 and forward has basically taken this element out of the game. All ships in your empire magically receive their maintenance every month, as long as they're not cut off, under the subsumed theory that all of those shipments are pre-planned months ahead of time below the player's "radar screen". And that can work to a degree to me, so long as they were well within the borders of the empire. But that theory falls on its face when you have ships that are pushing the frontiers of your empire forward. How does anyone in the CFN or the Navy's Logistics Division know where those ships are? How can you plan for maintenance shipments to ships that have passed beyond the frontiers of your empire and are god knows where?
I don't know that this iffy CFN/maintenance model contributes to the so-called "rich getting richer" issue, but it does stretch credulity a bit far for me. I sort of like the idea that you'd have to be within 4 StMP of any CFN terminal (basically any Imperial population) to be in the "instant" maintenance infrastructure of the empire, but if you wanted to move outside of that infrastructure, you'd have to bring along your own maintenance funds in Imperial FT's (or carried in your warship's cargo holds).
Or there could be a different way to look at this... While I'm not particularly interested in an economics and colonization model that actually produces colonies that truly are not profitable, it could be possible to require more specialized, non-income producing facilities to support the Navy's logistical (i.e. maintenance) network. Something like naval bases. They wouldn't necessarily be particularly expensive. They might not be much more than an outpost, but a non-income producing OP that was dedicated to naval logistics, etc.
I'm not unalterably opposed to re-including Personnel Points back into the game, though it seems unlikely. I'd only do it as a means of controlling fleet sizes. (For example, I wouldn't bother linking PP's to PCF's, since it's fleet size that's the issue, not the size of the Imperial Marine Corps.) The trick is finding the right balance between PP and PU.
The problem of the time scale. (snip)
I don't see time scale as a problem at all. I *like* the idea that it's speeded up so that things happen at a quicker pace and the game moves along.
