it might force the player into an onerous dominant strategy of producing factories first in order to build other structures; only to later destroy them to purchase the final structure (farm, etc.)
Mal wrote: First, I would recommend research conversion on concurrent projects given some prioritization system.
Mal wrote: If that's true, it might force the player into an onerous dominant strategy of producing factories first in order to build other structures; only to later destroy them to purchase the final structure (farm, etc.). Given a large, growing empire that seems too limited and promotes painful micromanagement. At the very least, many factories end up not working on anything.
Arioch wrote:Thanks for the feedback.Mal wrote: First, I would recommend research conversion on concurrent projects given some prioritization system.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. Research projects are sequential rather than concurrent, so there's no need to assign priority. If you mean an ability to queue research projects, that's something we'd like to improve on when we revamp the research UI (currently you can queue a series of prerequisites to a target tech, but you can't queue an arbitrary number of unrelated techs like you can in most games that have a tree display).
Arioch wrote:...if you could pool your entire empire's production and funnel it into a single planet's production target, then you can trivialize the cost of very expensive units, manufacturing Dread Stars in a single turn.
Arioch wrote:...It would also require an additional management/UI system to determine which planets have priority access to the production global resource.
Mal wrote:Instead, in reality, the increased cost vertex of that iron triangle should not produce the industry resource needed to complete a project. It should actually only reduce the schedule of assembly. Why? A battleship or factory of fixed scope requires the same requirement of components (manufactured goods and raw resources) to complete. That money is actually used for added work to assemble the project (e.g. added fabrication man/hours, express delivery of components, etc.). You're paying for time, not goods and raw resources.
That's splitting a fine hair I know, but consider that my point is that the money resource should only be converting the "turns" resource (i.e. time) and not both the turns resource and the industry resource. You are giving the player a hefty benefit by using money. As late game approaches, richer empires can use this advantage to greater effect -- accelerate it. It's a significant positive feedback loop in other words.
Mal wrote:I was suggesting that concurrent (parallel) research projects should be possible. Not simply a FIFO queue that, in my opinion, is much more sequential. For example, I am working on three different research nodes at the same time. The number of research resources dedicated to each is either fixed or variable (player set). Or, I could choose to focus entirely on a single node. More meaningful choices.
Mal wrote:Using population demand as a industry resource drain is the offset to hyper-production. The elegance is that it can give the early game player with a lower population a modest boost to building toys quickly -- ostensibly their homogeneous focus and specialization. That's stimulating for them and promotes learning and experimentation. As the empire's population grows large, the needs of the population continue to tax the player's ability to hyper-build. Population demand is the conversion regulator. And as I suggested, you use some instance of shipyard converter (and/or barracks converter) to further regulate units. Those specialized converters aren't just important to you as production gates, but also for a few other reasons.
Arioch wrote:We only have roughly two months to complete the game in our current schedule, and there's still a lot to do; I hope you don't feel I'm being dismissive when I say that it's really not feasible to change the fundamentals of how the research and production mechanics work this late in development.
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