Alpha 4.1?

General discussion for the game Anacreon
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Hussell
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Seems there has been an update. The oddly unselectable capitals are gone, and unbalanced production seems to be sticking. Anything else?
george moromisato
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Hussell wrote:Seems there has been an update. The oddly unselectable capitals are gone, and unbalanced production seems to be sticking. Anything else?
Fixed a problem with new empires joining (which ultimately caused the unselectable capitals). That's really it, though. I'm working on more substantive stuff this week, plus balancing some of the new high-tech units/production, etc.
Hussell
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Sounds good. I guess this is a good time for requests, then?

Most annoying problem (bug?): foundation worlds are constantly in civil war.

Biggest wish for improvement: I've mentioned my desire to see the interface redesigned to make in-depth information more available (tooltips?) and to make better use of space (a horizontal column instead of a bar at the bottom?), but I think that's actually 2nd place in my personal ranking. What I really want is improved automation of industries on individual worlds. With the Emperor/Empress only making relatively infrequent appearances to run the high-level affairs of the empire, I'd expect each world to make decisions about its production as intelligently as possible, given the limited information they have. They should: adjust production to match total demand from their own industries and export trade routes; avoid redundant changes (starting home-grown industry and increasing trade-route capacity at the same time); avoid stupid industrial distribution (2% to chronimium to produce 0.5/watch, when the trade route is already providing 135/watch and the trade partner has lots of extra); and be able to be as self-sufficient as possible (currently only the capital can build jumpship components to supply its jumpship yards... every world should be able to do this, to make things simpler for beginning players).

Currently, putting a lot of time into specializing your worlds and balancing your trade routes pays off significantly in terms of ship production. I have more than double the ship production of some empires which are easily 50% larger than me in terms of worlds and population, because I've spent way too much time figuring out how to get the most out my worlds. Making individual worlds a bit more intelligent would lower the bar a bit, and probably make the game more popular in the long run, without making the gameplay any less fun, I think.
george moromisato
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Hussell wrote:... but I think that's actually 2nd place in my personal ranking. What I really want is improved automation of industries on individual worlds. With the Emperor/Empress only making relatively infrequent appearances to run the high-level affairs of the empire, I'd expect each world to make decisions about its production as intelligently as possible, given the limited information they have. They should: adjust production to match total demand from their own industries and export trade routes; avoid redundant changes (starting home-grown industry and increasing trade-route capacity at the same time); avoid stupid industrial distribution (2% to chronimium to produce 0.5/watch, when the trade route is already providing 135/watch and the trade partner has lots of extra); and be able to be as self-sufficient as possible (currently only the capital can build jumpship components to supply its jumpship yards... every world should be able to do this, to make things simpler for beginning players).

Currently, putting a lot of time into specializing your worlds and balancing your trade routes pays off significantly in terms of ship production. I have more than double the ship production of some empires which are easily 50% larger than me in terms of worlds and population, because I've spent way too much time figuring out how to get the most out my worlds. Making individual worlds a bit more intelligent would lower the bar a bit, and probably make the game more popular in the long run, without making the gameplay any less fun, I think.
Good points, all. I have a few thoughts:

I would like for specialization to be an explicit trade-off. Perhaps not one where the player chooses drudgery to get more production, but I believe there needs to be a trade-off--otherwise everyone would do it. Instead, I'd like there to be multiple, viable strategies for building a powerful empire. My current thinking is that there should be four viable strategies (obviously, I haven't coded up these features yet, but this is my plan):

A. Scale: More worlds means more production, which means more ships and more combat power. Trade-off: More sector capitals required, which increases chance that one will rebel and fight for control.
B. Productivity: Increase productivity of individual worlds through various technologies: performance enhancing drugs (ambrosia), higher population concentrations, etc. Trade-off: Greater chance of planetary disasters (plague, ecological collapse, etc.)
C. Trade: Increased trade increases specialization and thus productivity. Trade-off: Increased piracy.
D. Tech: Use high-tech ships (fewer units, but each is more powerful). Trade-off: Greater chance of high-tech disasters (nanoplague, singularity, etc.)

Note also that, by design, the above strategies require different levels of player experience. Going for scale should be the easiest strategy--what most newbies might try. Next in difficulty might be high tech, followed by productivity and/or trade.

That said, I agree that it is important to reduce micromangement (which is not generally fun), so I agree with your suggestions. I believe some of your recommendations are already in place (auto-adjusting for total demand, for instance), though, and I'd love to hear concrete cases where they fail. However, I would like to implement the following recommendations:

1. Avoid stupid industrial distributions: I believe this is caused by hysteresis when accounting for prior trade.
2. Avoid redundant changes: This might be related to the above, but I've seen it too and it needs to be fixed.

Lastly, I suspect that we will need even more auto-balancing features once some of the planetary disaster features come into play. I believe the steady-state is mostly OK (an empire does not require much intervention). But if enemies conquer a planet or a planet suffers from a massive disaster, the ripple effects can cause chaos. We'll need some system for helping the emperor/empress cope.
Hussell
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I believe some of your recommendations are already in place (auto-adjusting for total demand, for instance), though, and I'd love to hear concrete cases where they fail.
The most obvious case for me is Consumer Goods Autofacs. When left to itself, a world will generate food, goods, and luxuries with roughly 30%/50%/20% of industry respectively (at biotech level). But a specialized consumer goods autofac will default to 33.3% each. Typically there will be a major shortage of luxuries when the autofac is exporting to lots of high-tech worlds, and much more food will be produced than necessary. Despite this, the autofac will not shift excess industrial allocation from food production to make up the shortfall in luxury production by itself. (Unless that changed in the update just now.)

This gets really dangerous if a consumer goods autofac is ordered to not produce something. E.g., if it specializes in producing luxuries, but the world that it imports its food from is invaded, the world will starve to death instead of shifting some industry to produce enough food for itself. I can't believe that a local governor would insist on following a production target even as it causes the death of 11 billion citizens (not to mention the loss of all that industrial capacity and the ability to meet that production target).

Similar but much lesser problems occur with all industries that produce multiple items. E.g., a jumpship components autofac producing 50 graviton launchers a watch (when trade partners only demand 10), even as advanced jumpdrive stockpiles run out, or infantry component autofacs producing too many light armored vehicles and too few exoarmor.

Only after demand is satisfied should excess industrial capacity be split evenly among production lines. Manual settings should also be treated as nothing more than a target to aim for once demand has been satisfied. Note that 'excess industrial capacity' should include capacity that would be wasted due to insufficient resources, e.g., if there isn't any chronimium available, an infantry autofac should redistribute any industry devoted to exoarmor production until chronimium becomes available again. Industry from defense production that isn't working should be redistributed too (e.g. armored satellite production when there's no chronimium might be redirected to HEL cannon production).

I hope that helps. An algorithm for automating this might be a bit challenging. It may be possible to deal with the top-level producers (shipyards and academies) first, then work your way through the component autofacs, the goods autofacs, and the resource extractors without ever changing the trade route demand to a world you've already dealt with. But only then would it be clear how much industrial capacity would be wasted due to insufficient resources, so you might need a second pass through, but that might trigger more changes... Maybe keep trying until things stop changing or some cap on the number of attempts is reached?

As for allowing, say, starship yards to build their own starship component autofacs if they need to, there have already been a few questions by new players asking why their yard worlds aren't producing starships or jumpships. With the way industry works, this would not be an advantage for ship production unless you had no other worlds available to supply components, and it would make the initial setup of an empire much more user-friendly.
starxplor
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Hussell wrote: Most annoying problem (bug?): foundation worlds are constantly in civil war.
I have never been able to get a world out of civil war. I can maintain ownership and civil war indefinitely, but the only way I have found to get out of civil war is to let it succeed at revolting and reconcuring the world. Before using foundations, I was able to handle this with some micro-management, but with foundation worlds revolting, every planet boosted by it degrades, causing a massive collapse of trade networks, often leading to cascading revolts.

Any chance of being able to get out of civil war in the future?
Hussell
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I've successfully ended several civil wars. I've even ended them on foundation worlds twice (edit: three times now), even though they went straight back to it. Here's how: 1) Drop a lot of troops on the world, more than you had there before the civil war started. I often use 50,000 brigades. 2) Make certain none of the things that can cause those little exclamation point unhappiness messages can happen to the world. No shortages of anything (import everything the world uses). Space forces over 2,000 or so (which can be done with ships, not just fixed installations) to prevent industry groups from demanding more defenses. Bring the tech level of the world up to the level of your empire, or as close as you can manage, to prevent protests about that. 3) Wait for about a day, real-time (a year in-game), dropping more troops if necessary. The imperial forces will keep attacking the rebel base until there aren't any more rebels left. As long as nothing decreases the attitude of the citizens, eventually the civil war will end, and the attitude will be reset to 'happy'.
george moromisato
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FYI: I found a bug in the current build that causes foundation worlds to easily tip into civil war. I'll have a fix for it next week.
starxplor
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Hussell wrote:I've successfully ended several civil wars. I've even ended them on foundation worlds twice (edit: three times now), even though they went straight back to it. Here's how: 1) Drop a lot of troops on the world, more than you had there before the civil war started. I often use 50,000 brigades. 2) Make certain none of the things that can cause those little exclamation point unhappiness messages can happen to the world. No shortages of anything (import everything the world uses). Space forces over 2,000 or so (which can be done with ships, not just fixed installations) to prevent industry groups from demanding more defenses. Bring the tech level of the world up to the level of your empire, or as close as you can manage, to prevent protests about that. 3) Wait for about a day, real-time (a year in-game), dropping more troops if necessary. The imperial forces will keep attacking the rebel base until there aren't any more rebels left. As long as nothing decreases the attitude of the citizens, eventually the civil war will end, and the attitude will be reset to 'happy'.
I only have 1379 space forces, have 3500 ground force, mix of all three, and import or produce everything needed.

I suppose it is possible that the foundation world is re-revolting quick enough that I miss it...

The sector capital that has been in civil war with no troops on it for... almost as long as i have been playing never left my empire. Wonder if that is by design to not destroy entire empires in large swaths.
Hussell
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Due to a bug, foundation worlds are going into civil war, and not coming out of civil war most of the time. If you had ended a civil war, you would have gotten one of the large messages that stick around until you dismiss them. You'll just have to wait until the next update to deal with it.

As for the sector capital, if you have no troops there, you can't beat the rebels. Plus, if no troops were there to join the rebellion in the first place, the rebels will have trouble beating you and declaring independence. Drop some troops there, even if it isn't many, and give them a day or two to work.
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