Arioch wrote:Reducing late-game micromanagement is an important goal.
Yep. At least for those guys who dont like micromanagement. Dont forget there are alot of nerds who loves it. (like myself
) My suggestion was made to help those players who are not like me. Especially the younger players who grow up with twitchy mouse games dont have patience to play a 4x because there is too much to do and they become bored.
Arioch wrote:The two hurdles to overcome with literally pooling Wrench production system-wide are 1) how to manage this in a single-planet production model, and 2) how to prevent it from becoming an absurdly overpowered strategy.
1) IMO
managing is even simpler than the current system. In the current system I have eg. 5 star systems with in average 3 planets producing 15 things at the same time. When you merge the production queues of the planets in those systems, only 5 queues are remaining, one per star system. They pump out the objects faster, but 5 different queues are are always much easier to manage and oversee than 15.
But maybe you mean with "managing single-planet production model" how to determine which object is built on which planet? In this case you could introduce a routine, where the player can allocate the object which is currently in the queue to a certain planet, maybe with a single click-box. Or if it is a ship it could automatically travel to a pre-specified rally point anywhere in the empire.
2) "absurdly overpowered strategy" - I cannot see any real "overpowering" in this system. The number of wrench points stay the same as in the old model, they are just pooled together. Maybe you can explain why you think that the merge model is "overpowered"?
In case it is really overwpowered you could always introduce a eg. 10% production penalty in wrench points for the merging planets. (call it attrition or corruption)
Arioch wrote:
The idea of a system-level shipyard has been mentioned before, but that would require a whole new mechanism for system-level infrastructure that doesn't currently exist.
Its not my idea to have a system level shipyard, but system level planetary production. In this model the shipyard is just the point where the ships appear.
Arioch wrote:I think one possible way to manage it would be to add a "Manufacture Parts" production activity, which would allow a planet's Wrench production to be transferred to another planet in the same system. It might make sense to require certain infrastructure for this transfer: the receiving planet should have some kind of orbital station with a Construction Module (or maybe a full-blown Shipyard), and perhaps the sending planet should have some kind of infrastructure as well, perhaps a Spaceport module (the parts need a way to get from one planet to the other), and the transfer of production points should probably be at a small penalty (perhaps -20%, or variable based on the available infrastructure). A production pooling activity would need to compete on an equitable basis with the Research and Trade activities, which involve a significant conversion penalty.
Why not just introduce a "merge system" button in the planet list on the left, where players can click on. And done. The planets are chained together and only one queue appears. Of course include an un-merge button, if the player wants to control every planet manually again.