I like Admin Cap, but it appears to be confusing a lot of people and could do with being "dynamically rebranded" to use the parlace of the present expansion.
There are a lot of people posting threads saying that admin cap is too restrictive, because they don't understand that it's a soft limit that you're expected to go over. A lot of people are seeing it as the new name for the core sector limit, or like CK2's demense limit, which exist(ed) to limit how much is under the player's direct control. In fact it's more of a rolling together of expansion penalties and the core sector limit, given the mechanics of the former but the trappings, techs, traditions, etc of the latter. I like this. Having fewer extraneous gameplay figures to worry about is always better.
I think that there has been a failure to make this abundantly clear to players though, and that's kind of on the devs.
So expansion penalties are a reasonably common strategy game phenomenon, intended to slow down snowballing. The best example I think I've seen in a game is Rome 2: Total War and its Imperium Level system. Though reaching the milestones of Imperium increases your empire-wide corruption and edges you closer to large-scale civil wars, it also unlocks the ability to field more armies and agents. Despite the penalty, it remains unequivocally clear to the player that this is the direction you're supposed to proceed in.
So my proposal is thus. Either abolish admin cap entirely, soften expansion penalties slightly so that this doesn't eff up the early game, and replace the +admin_cap techs/traditions/etc with -expansion_penalty% modifiers (like the opposite of what the Megacorp authority does to expansion penalties). OR, add in bonuses to passing certain empire sizes. Maybe something like +1 administrator job or +5% ruler output on your capital per 25 empire size.
Or just stick in a better tutorial/tooltip for it ingame, idk.
What do you guys think?
There are a lot of people posting threads saying that admin cap is too restrictive, because they don't understand that it's a soft limit that you're expected to go over. A lot of people are seeing it as the new name for the core sector limit, or like CK2's demense limit, which exist(ed) to limit how much is under the player's direct control. In fact it's more of a rolling together of expansion penalties and the core sector limit, given the mechanics of the former but the trappings, techs, traditions, etc of the latter. I like this. Having fewer extraneous gameplay figures to worry about is always better.
I think that there has been a failure to make this abundantly clear to players though, and that's kind of on the devs.
So expansion penalties are a reasonably common strategy game phenomenon, intended to slow down snowballing. The best example I think I've seen in a game is Rome 2: Total War and its Imperium Level system. Though reaching the milestones of Imperium increases your empire-wide corruption and edges you closer to large-scale civil wars, it also unlocks the ability to field more armies and agents. Despite the penalty, it remains unequivocally clear to the player that this is the direction you're supposed to proceed in.
So my proposal is thus. Either abolish admin cap entirely, soften expansion penalties slightly so that this doesn't eff up the early game, and replace the +admin_cap techs/traditions/etc with -expansion_penalty% modifiers (like the opposite of what the Megacorp authority does to expansion penalties). OR, add in bonuses to passing certain empire sizes. Maybe something like +1 administrator job or +5% ruler output on your capital per 25 empire size.
Or just stick in a better tutorial/tooltip for it ingame, idk.
What do you guys think?
