Additive bonuses vs multiplicative bonuses

[TheGrouch91]

Hello there,

I wanted to start a little discussion here about you guys' opinion about how bonuses stack. Right now the game features mostly additive bonuses which may or may not be a good thing.

I for one have more and more the feeling that the game goes quite a bit overboard with additive bonuses. Now it's clear that they're easier to understand and much easier to balance but it also makes each of them rather boring. There are no interesting differences between them. A 5% bonus will always be a 5% bonus. The other problem with this system is diminishing returns. Especially lategame you'll have so many bonuses that getting that extra 5% will be almost worthless. I catch myself going for mostly flat bonuses or rather reductions in upkeep as they actually stack better additively.

Anyway what's your opinion? Should there be more multiplicative multipliers? Or would that too easily break the game?

 

[alexlock]

I don't like additive bonuses. Game basically lies to you, and in my opinion that fact dwarfs any positives it have.

PS: Don't see, how multiplicative bonuses would break the game.

 

[Platoondas]

Multiplicative bonuses make it possible to min-max to greater extremes. I think this would increase the space for people to play the economy aggressively at the cost of role-play and positional players.

 

[Althizor]

Multiplicative bonuses could easily lock you into all or nothing decisions. If every growth bonus made other growth bonus stronger because they were all multiplicative, bonuses would have to be tuned down so that taking all of them doesn't break the game. But then since every individual bonus has to be fairly small, it doesn't make sense to only take one or two. You either grab -every- growth bonus or you grab none of them and focus on grabbing all of something else.

 

[permeakra]

Multiplicative bonuses could easily lock you into all or nothing decisions. If every growth bonus made other growth bonus stronger because they were all multiplicative, bonuses would have to be tuned down so that taking all of them doesn't break the game.

For small bonuses the difference between additive and multiplicative isn't all that big. if we take 3 10% multiplicative bonuses, you get 1.1*1.1*1.1 = 1.33 , and 1.30 if you use purely additive ones. Now, if we take 25% bonus, the difference is much larger but is still ~ 0.12 of total value. But for 50% bonus it is 35% of total value difference but those are rare and far between and can be balanced separately.

 

[TheGrouch91]

Multiplicative bonuses make it possible to min-max to greater extremes. I think this would increase the space for people to play the economy aggressively at the cost of role-play and positional players.

What exactly are "positional players"? And this game has always been a min-maxing game. Roleplaying is almost always non-optimal and you do it for fun.

 

[TheGrouch91]

Also the way I imagine it was to have different layers of bonuses. Let's say an empire, planet and pop layer. Because to me that is a lot more logical than just dumping every bonus into the same category (except for the odd trade value modifier).

 

[Peace Weaver]

I agree with the folks saying multiplicative bonuses are too extreme and prone to throwing things out of whack.

However the new economy does offer a lot of potential in creating more tiers of additive bonuses. Things that reduce upkeep of buildings or increase output can translate into resource conversion bonuses that would allow you to get more mileage out of each unit of resource if the infrastructure for it exists.

 

[Platoondas]

What exactly are "positional players"? And this game has always been a min-maxing game. Roleplaying is almost always non-optimal and you do it for fun.

A positional player puts more of their attention into how they move their fleets. In my circle of friends everyone is a balance of these three aspects but the balance is different.

Just because roleplaying is non-optimal doesn't mean you shouldn't consider it in game balance. If the maximum advantage of min-maxing is increased then for equal difficulty the game becomes harder for a roleplayer.

 

[TheGrouch91]

A positional player puts more of their attention into how they move their fleets. In my circle of friends everyone is a balance of these three aspects but the balance is different.

Just because roleplaying is non-optimal doesn't mean you shouldn't consider it in game balance. If the maximum advantage of min-maxing is increased then for equal difficulty the game becomes harder for a roleplayer.

So you rather have meaningless decisions so that you can pretend to play a certain way that ends up being incredibly similar to others in the lategame because of how small additive bonuses affect your gameplay? I'd say the opposite is true. The more meaningful bonuses and maluses are the more they allow me to roleplay. If everyone is almost the same then how is it really roleplaying.

 

[permeakra]

Ok, I read here and found that people complains about multiplicative bonuses being too extreme. Guys, check how additive bonuses offering reduction of a quality work.

We have several different bonuses providing reductionof housing use by -10%. I think, you can stack 4 ("fertile" advanced trait, "communal" trait, Buraucracy civic and a tradition from Adaptability tree available via despoilers) for flat -40% housing reduction. Which, combined with slavery (0.75 basic housing) allows for some absurd results. However, if we use multiplicative bonuses, we shall get only -35% housing.

Furthermore, with multiplicative housing reduction you are at least guaranteed to stay with positive housing use. Additive reduction theoretically allows reaching negative housing needs. That would be fun.

 

[Masoz]

There are a TON of stacking worker, trade, and population related bonuses. If these stacked multiplicatively you're looking at a very easy way to get permanently storage capped on everything.

 

[YellowGelni]

You guys know stellaris/pdox games in general are using a mixed system right? There are different modifier classes. Inside one modifier class (like weapon dmg) the modifiers stack additive but one modifier class stacks multiplicative with another modifier class. So 2x +10% Worker output and 1x +25% Mineral base production (Mining guilds op) gives +50% Minerals. Sometimes the stacking is less clear like in consumergoods production where you have 2x +10% worker output and 1x +10% specialist output resulting in a theoretical +32% consumer goods while requiring an expansion of the production facilitys since you gain +10% consumer goods and +20% minerals waiting to turn into +22% consumer goods.

Both types of modifier stacking can be realy unhealthy. In pdox games where your objective seams to acquire the largest pile of modifiers multiplicative stacking is unhealthy for positive modifiers since 3x +10% give you just a 3% bonus but in the late midgame you rather have 10x +10% resulting in an absolute difference of ~60% or a relative difference of ~30%. Negative modifiers on the other hand escalate if you stack them additive.

Personaly I prefere the mostly additive aproach of pdox since it allows for a rather interesting pacing in the game with snowball potential in the early game which stabilizes in the late game, makes overcoming the ai easier while feeling better (well when it will play the game again ...) and allows more comebacks since even if you are behind a few modifiers you are still rather equal. Also modifiers can be larger wich feels more satisfying (repeatable additive +5% feels better than +2% even if the multiplicative +2% would be way stronger since you are already at +150%)

 

[Mithkabob]

Additive bonuses are fine for the most part. But, I think they would feel better if there were a few more categories of increases that sum up and then get multiplied at the end like: Pop species bonuses, Tech increases, government/empire increases, policy/edict increases, and planet modifier increases. Some bonuses would probably need to be adjusted down, but I think it would be really nice to not have certain things get completely lost and be inferior to other choices, like certain species traits are ok early game and then become completely worthless late game against a trait that is already better than it early game that never becomes obsolete because it doesn't have any modifiers gained to compete with its effect.

 

[permeakra]

There are a TON of stacking worker, trade, and population related bonuses. If these stacked multiplicatively you're looking at a very easy way to get permanently storage capped on everything.

If they are positive in 10-15% range, the difference between additive and multiplicative is rather minor. Problems start arising when they reach around 40%, but bonuses of this size are fairly rare.

Personally I'm more concerned with negative modifiers. They indeed can move you below zero.

 

[RoverStorm]

I prefer additive bonuses for two very nice and simple reasons: more round numbers, and easier math.

No need to worry about what sort of horrifying decimal number you'll get when you try to calculate a 5%, 10%, 15%, and -20% multiplicative combined.

For additive, I can look at that and go:
"Ok, so 5+10+15-20 is a single 10% modifier, so if I had 100 minerals, that's 110 minerals!"

For multiplicative, it's instead:
"Hmm, it's not one modifier, so I need to multiply each one independently. If I had 100, I'd need to multiply it by 1.05(5%) to get 105, then 1.1(10%) to get 1.15.5, then 1.15(15%) to get 132.825, and then I would need to convert -20% into a modifier (which is 0.8), then I can do the final multiplication which gives...106.26 minerals. Yay! A not-round number!"

No, sorry, I'm OCD, I will never accept multiplicative modifiers over additive ones.

Plus it's much easier for balance: as bigger multiplicative numbers can scale drastically. The only additive bonus that scales drastically is the closer to zero of something you get. A 50% damage reduction is basically double HP. An 80% damage reduction is five times the HP. A 90% damage reduction is TEN times the HP. A 95% is TWENTY times the HP. You get the idea.

 

[Ryika]

So you rather have meaningless decisions so that you can pretend to play a certain way that ends up being incredibly similar to others in the lategame because of how small additive bonuses affect your gameplay? I'd say the opposite is true. The more meaningful bonuses and maluses are the more they allow me to roleplay. If everyone is almost the same then how is it really roleplaying.

Surely there is some middle ground between modifiers that are meaningless and modifiers that dominate the game.

I think the diminishing return that's inherent to additive numbers is one of the great things about it. Even if you have a yield or effect that's clearly stronger than all the other yields or effects, you can neglect to take a few of these bonuses during the game in favor of some more interesting bonuses that you personally prefer and the overall outcome will not be that much different, because going from 10 modifiers down to 9 modifiers is not that much of a loss, because that's where the diminishing returns are the strongest anyway.

In a multiplicative system you're really pushed to take all of them, because every modifier that you don't take weakens every other modifier in the multiplication chain.

That's not only good for roleplay, it's good in general as it increases the amount of strategies that are semi-viable.

 

[Theter]

Hey,

We already have multiplivative bonuses.

It's called Research (jobs + research speed). And its OP af.

Dont make the same mistakes for other resources.

 

[Tacticus101]

Additive bonuses give the same effect regardless of when you take them, they have the same value and can be more easily balanced and designed. Multiplicative bonuses change in strength depending on how many you already have.

That said, there are multiplicative bonuses in Stellaris, but they are limited at should be kept as such.

 

[fodazd]

A lot of species traits (Intelligent, Industrious, Natural x, etc.) are now much weaker than they used to be, because they stack additively with a lot of big bonuses that got introduced in 2.2. The more additively stacking bonuses you already have, the weaker each individual bonus gets.

On the other hand, anything that offers additively stacking reductions of upkeep (Conservationist, Communal, Byzantines, etc.) can be really strong, because the more additively stacking upkeep reductions you already have, the stronger each individual reduction gets.