[3.3 Beta] Suggestion: There's nothing wrong with Sprawl. Just give us the proper presentation and tools.

[GnoSIS]

You wish to make research costs and unity projects/decisions dependant on empire sprawl size? OK!

However, we, the players need the proper presentation and tools to play that way:

1. People play differently. So as you did with pop growth, let us choose on galaxy setup, the sprawl point where tech costs double, or a relevant weight scaling setting. Tech costs is not it.

2. The red lettering penatly tooltip presentation is intimidating. You are presenting a game design decision as a penalty only.

3. So as I play, I keed to know how good the research effort goes. +786 research per month with this new system tells me nothing, because it is expected that costs are variable!

What I need is a research(and perhaps unity) efficiency indicator. It's calculated as: research_produced / empire_sprawl. So, 100 produced against 100 sprawl is 100% and 200 against 100 is 200%.

It is up to me to decide as I play, at what level I wish to keep that efficiency, and I, as the player understand that to make it higher, I need more labs, more researchers, more research stations OR less of the other stuff! I also understand that at game start that number would be up in the 400%, but at end game more around the 100% range (or even more, as the actual numbers or game style dictates). It is also helpful because we build our empire incrementaly, so it helps to determine at a glance where you are going, and what to build/prioritize next.

More to the point, if done properly, it would assist the AI to plan its research, if that metric is availiable to the scripts.

 

[DeadEyeTucker]

I would like some breakpoint increases to sprawl. The fact that it's 50 and nothing increases it all game feels way too arbitrary and hard limit. Would like a few techs or traditions that give a one time bonus. Obviously don't make it something repeatable like the old admin cap or it too will lose it's bite.

 

[moyang]

I like this idea, exact numbers can be tweaked. Maybe (research_produced) / (sprawl modified tech cost (%)) would be better, since the first 50 sprawl does not incur tech cost penalty.
UNE starts the game with 68 research and 45 sprawl, no penalty yet so at 100% tech cost. 68 / 100 = 0.68 -> 68% research efficiency. This also gives hint to players that they should build more labs.
Problem is it might give people a bad hint at the same time - they might think it's ok at 200% efficiency, where they should make it even higher. Maybe show research efficiency of each field, effectively dividing the number by 3?

For example, in my 3.3 beta game I have 871.1 sprawl and 7.7k research. Research efficiency would be 7.7k / 182.1 = 42.28 -> 4228% efficiency, and that's just after conquering some land.

 

[GnoSIS]

I would like some breakpoint increases to sprawl. The fact that it's 50 and nothing increases it all game feels way too arbitrary and hard limit. Would like a few techs or traditions that give a one time bonus. Obviously don't make it something repeatable like the old admin cap or it too will lose it's bite.

It can also be based at zero, and instead have the 100% mark move up 50 or 100 points.

Basing the free limit at zero is natural, and you can then have different modifiers from various stuff. But more to the point those modifiers should be a discount based on percent and not a fixed number, to make them relevant in the end game too!

 

[GnoSIS]

I like this idea, exact numbers can be tweaked. Maybe (research_produced) / (sprawl modified tech cost (%)) would be better, since the first 50 sprawl does not incur tech cost penalty.
UNE starts the game with 68 research and 45 sprawl, no penalty yet so at 100% tech cost. 68 / 100 = 0.68 -> 68% research efficiency. This also gives hint to players that they should build more labs.
Problem is it might give people a bad hint at the same time - they might think it's ok at 200% efficiency, where they should make it even higher. Maybe show research efficiency of each field, effectively dividing the number by 3?

For example, in my 3.3 beta game I have 871.1 sprawl and 7.7k research. Research efficiency would be 7.7k / 182.1 = 42.28 -> 4228% efficiency, and that's just after conquering some land.

Correct,

exact dynamics are left for the designers. My intent is that we need the tool to manage the game, me doing the division by myself every 2-5 years is boring.

Of course there should be some tooltip guidance, i,e, that its expected at game start to have 400%. Also this is another way the AI paersonalities can be customized.

 

[Bezborg]

Excellent suggestion

 

[Ludaire]

1. People play differently. So as you did with pop growth, let us choose on galaxy setup, the sprawl point where tech costs double, or a relevant weight scaling setting. Tech costs is not it.

I don't particularly like this idea. They did it for growth, and I think that was a mistake. Changing tech costs changes the pace of the game overall (or at least one aspect), and that's a common setting in 4X games. It doesn't fundamentally change the balance between empires, or at least it wouldn't if that slider controlled the time it takes to do a whole lot more things instead of just making tech faster/slower while leaving everything else the same.

Removing sprawl is changing an important core mechanic, and I feel it would be like if you could turn fleet upkeep up or down or turn off the consumer goods upkeep on researchers. Yeah, in theory being able to do this would allow certain empires to do crazy things, but it's not good to have the in-game settings change fundamental aspects of the game's balance. At the very least, if they do this, I hope they go with a similar "We cannot be held responsible for any perf or balance issues if you mess with this slider" message alongside it.

3. So as I play, I keed to know how good the research effort goes. +786 research per month with this new system tells me nothing, because it is expected that costs are variable!

I actually posted a suggestion that addresses this directly: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...top-bar-instead-of-the-actual-output.1507886/

You can mathematically calculate what your effective research output is based on your current output and sprawl. This "effective research" value is how much your research would be worth if you were hypothetically at zero sprawl. While I don't think we should encourage people to think that zero sprawl is a state you should ever be in, I do think establishing a way of displaying how much unity and research you're generating in a way that is independent of sprawl would be extremely valuable for clarifying the mechanic. It means that research output and tech costs can be properly compared to each other just based on the values you see instead of needing to dig into the base costs or pull out your calculator for your output.

I would like some breakpoint increases to sprawl. The fact that it's 50 and nothing increases it all game feels way too arbitrary and hard limit. Would like a few techs or traditions that give a one time bonus. Obviously don't make it something repeatable like the old admin cap or it too will lose it's bite.

I'd go the opposite direction. Get rid of the 50 point grace period we currently have because it just confuses things. Introducing a cap like this and ways to increase it is what brought us here, and I'd really we rather just do away with it entirely. Players need to learn to increase their unity and research output to deal with the sprawl increases to costs, not worry about trying to eliminate those increases entirely.

I think viewing it as an upkeep rather than a penalty is really important. You don't have a certain amount of fleet capacity you can fill before you start paying upkeep, and you certainly can't increase that cap. There are modifiers to that upkeep, but they're about reducing the impact by small amounts, not totally eliminating fleet upkeep as a mechanic in your game. The only thing you can truly do is produce more energy and alloys to offset the upkeep. There's a red number in your energy and alloy breakdown from day 1. No one cares. No one demands that it go away. The only issue is that people still view the sprawl-based increases to costs as a penalty for playing wrong instead of an upkeep or cost that's a natural part of the game and should never be zero in the first place.

This shift in numeric presentation is the other half of that suggestion I mentioned above. Displaying effective research/unity output at the top level means they can move sprawl's effects from being a bunch of scary numbers collected in one place to red numbers that are properly distributed throughout the UI where they are having an impact, and that impact is made very clear, even if the equation to derive the numbers is a bit obtuse. It's not like all the details of the growth equation is displayed in game. It just shows you the resulting growth cost with no information on why it's getting bigger while the base growth increase/decrease due to pop size and capacity is just explained as "This thing exists" and nowhere is the precise math explained. Really, only the people who edit wikis and create spreadsheets need to know all the gory details.

 

[Rangoric]

I think viewing it as an upkeep rather than a penalty is really important. You don't have a certain amount of fleet capacity you can fill before you start paying upkeep, and you certainly can't increase that cap. There are modifiers to that upkeep, but they're about reducing the impact by small amounts, not totally eliminating fleet upkeep as a mechanic in your game. The only thing you can truly do is produce more energy and alloys to offset the upkeep. There's a red number in your energy and alloy breakdown from day 1. No one cares. No one demands that it go away. The only issue is that people still view the sprawl-based increases to costs as a penalty for playing wrong instead of an upkeep or cost that's a natural part of the game and should never be zero in the first place.

I like the representing it as upkeep instead of as a penalty. Research being slowed by 10% is the same as some sort of penalty on the amount needed to be gained. It also makes it more obvious that doubling your output is still beneficial and outweighs that 10% going to 11%. It changes it from a huge tooltip of bad news to being like all the other things where it shows the net amount you get, and you can see the gross/production in the tooltip, but the net amount always uses the same scale and is easy to understand. You can make this number go up and it's obvious it's going up when you are trying to improve it, instead of having to do math on the cost of the tech vs the amount you are making to see the gains.

So that tech costs 10k, you produce 1k/month, and you know what that means. When you inhabit that ringworld and see this 1k start shooting up, you don't have to sit there and think "But my sprawl makes that less worth it so am I really ahead?"

 

[DeadEyeTucker]

think viewing it as an upkeep rather than a penalty is really important. You don't have a certain amount of fleet capacity you can fill before you start paying upkeep, and you certainly can't increase that cap. There are modifiers to that upkeep, but they're about reducing the impact by small amounts, not totally eliminating fleet upkeep as a mechanic in your game. The only thing you can truly do is produce more energy and alloys to offset the upkeep. There's a red number in your energy and alloy breakdown from day 1. No one cares. No one demands that it go away. The only issue is that people still view the sprawl-based increases to costs as a penalty for playing wrong instead of an upkeep or cost that's a natural part of the game and should never be zero in the first place.

Have you played Imperator: Rome? I think there's something like research efficiency in the game where you want a certain amount of research points generated per population or something. This sounds similar to what you and others have been recommending and would probably look and feel better.

I agree that we don't want it being something that's endlessly increased, but as it currently stands you get 0 penalty under 50 and scaling penalties over 50. It just seems really weird and arbitrary how it currently stands, with basically all players hitting that number within the first decade and there being no one time increases to it all down the line hundreds of years later. It's not the same as energy and alloy upkeep, at least no where close psychologically anyways.

 

[currylambchop]

They did it for growth, and I think that was a mistake.

Allowing us to change growth in the galaxy slider is the only reason I will play. I refuse to play with arbitrary growth penalties.

 

[Ludaire]

Allowing us to change growth in the galaxy slider is the only reason I will play. I refuse to play with arbitrary growth penalties.

Yep. I'm sure there are people who would still be playing if they had an option to turn on the old defunct FTL travel methods or turn the tile system back on. Granted, those would be a lot harder to keep available, but still. Any major change is going to upset someone, and some of those people will be upset enough to stop playing. I don't think that's a justification for having an option to turn on or off every major balance change they make to the game, and if that means they go a different direction than I'd prefer...well, I'll be sad but so be it. I myself tend to respect a strong and cohesive vision even if it's not my cup of tea, and sometimes that means being unwilling to compromise in some areas.

Being able to configure things that affect core balance feels like it would fracture the experience too much and make it hard to gauge feedback. I doubt everyone offering feedback based on a run where they turned an important balance element off will consistently mention that, so there's going to be some weird outliers caused by people playing in a way that's not officially recommended, and it won't always be easy to make sense of them.

Then again, they let you set the number of rival empires to zero, so maybe ensuring all the possible configurations are balanced isn't really something they care about. Either way, it's not really a hill I care to die on so long as it's not an expensive thing. The pop growth seemed to be nearly trivial for them to add a slider for, so it's not that big of a deal to me. I just hope they don't invest too much time into fixing issues that arise because of that setting because I'd rather see that time go into the core experience they're designing.

Sprawl is a bit different because I'm not sure if there's a good way they could add a slider for it. It seems like you'd have to just offer a sprawl threshold that delays how long it takes for the mechanic to kick in, and you can set it at 0, 50, 100, etc. with the top being infinity I guess? Or you can just turn a multiplier on the cost increases up and down, with the possibility of being zero? Those don't seem very difficult to add, but I think most people want bureaucrats and admin cap back or at least admin cap-lite. However, I doubt they're going to maintain that as a working option in the game, so I'm not sure if there's a start screen option that would satisfy the people who dislike sprawl. Though if they don't strip out the stuff in code that would be needed admin cap back in, I wouldn't necessarily complain.

Which does suggest the idea of an "official" mod like the C6 mod for situations like this if players want something that strays from the balance of the game in the same way that portrait strayed from the aesthetic of the game.

 

[Dragatus]

I am neutral about #1, but I like #2 and #3.

Sprawl isn't something you can actively reduce anymore, so it should be presented in yellow font, not red. Red warning are for things that need urgent attention and that you can actively counter-act. For example, if there is a housing shortage on a planet or if your Energy income becomes negative.

And having an efficiency modifier derived from sprawl that is used to multiply research and unity would make it more clear to players that by expanding they are still getting ahead. You can even make the numbers come out so that the current balance is preserved.

 

[Andy_Dandy]

Pls no more Galaxy setups that makes it impossible to find a decent Multiplayer game.

 

[GnoSIS]

Pls no more Galaxy setups that makes it impossible to find a decent Multiplayer game.

That happens regardless of any proposed extra settings.

They need to add game presets, that can be forced. So you can look or filter games for them. But this is another suggestion for another thread..