Catalytic processing should be a policy, not a civic

[Kabian]

Catalytic Processing as a Civic

Catalytic Processing as a Civic, while being amazing in terms of RP (something sometimes lacking), its in itself, a civic that harms the empire that takes it for the following reasons:

• food procesing becomes inefficient as the game progresses (a lategame alloy worker requires 1.66 base miners, while a catalytic worker requires 1.75 base food producers)
• minerals have more options to be produced (both megaestructure and 2 unity edicts of 50% minerals from workers and 33% empire minerals).
• catalytic processing doesnt affect consumer goods, which means you have to split your production between minerals and food, which leads to more inefficiency.
• costs a civic point, which could be used in rockbreakers/mining guilds if one wants to have better alloy production, since taking this civic instead of catalytic reduces the pops required on miners by around 20%-30%

Proposed changes to catalytic:

• Make catalytic affect artisans, allowing catalytic empires to streamline production.
• Make catalytic a decision option you can switch to change your procesing methods.

Why a policy?

• As a policy, it doesnt have to compete with other civics, which it cant without making it stronger
• give a bonus that can be felt by the player over other manufacturing methods (example: mining guilds)
• Allow for easier expansion of the system: Examples:
  • Energy processing: nuclear manufacturing: turn energy into alloys in a 4 to 1 ratio
  • Mixed processing: turn food and minerals into alloys in a 1 mineral 1.5 food to 1 alloy
  • Etc...
• Can still be enabled disabled depending on tech/other civics.

Please coment your opinion about this change!

 

[GOLANX]

I mean, if you switch it on or off, you suddenly need a lot more food or minerals.
Which also requires a whole re-structuring of your districts.

Maybe if you're a purge type empire turning a recently taken empire into food for it might be useful.
But what are you doing with that overflow minerals you suddenly have?
Or you capture a matter decompressor and want to switch over to minerals, now you have a way too much food!
Can't sell it on the market or the prices will drop REALLY fast getting you nothing from it any more.

not necessarily, its really easy to build up a large surplus of food, and minerals have a lot of other uses, with the 10 year cooldown you can swap to food, eat up your surplus food and stockpile and use minerals, food stores should last about 10 years at which point you switch back. it only requires economic restructuring if you commit to one side, playing both, eating up surpluses requires no such commitment. the market will smooth out the rough edges, should you run low on a resource you can buy what you need, selling off surplus before you switch again. minerals have more uses than alloys, like buildings, food doesn't, policies don't require the player to make a long term commitment, civics are much better at that.

 

[GhostDanny]

not necessarily, its really easy to build up a large surplus of food, and minerals have a lot of other uses, with the 10 year cooldown you can swap to food, eat up your surplus food and stockpile and use minerals, food stores should last about 10 years at which point you switch back. it only requires economic restructuring if you commit to one side, playing both, eating up surpluses requires no such commitment. the market will smooth out the rough edges, should you run low on a resource you can buy what you need, selling off surplus before you switch again. minerals have more uses than alloys, like buildings, food doesn't, policies don't require the player to make a long term commitment, civics are much better at that.

If you play both sides, then you'll never have a few thousands alloys per month coming in.
Unless you're absolutely massive, which by that point, who cares?!
You should then already be the uncontested ruler of the galaxy.

Only the end game crisis to maybe stand in your way, which cheats any ways too.

 

[Archael90]

Catalytic Processing as a Civic

Catalytic Processing as a Civic, while being amazing in terms of RP (something sometimes lacking), its in itself, a civic that harms the empire that takes it for the following reasons:

• food procesing becomes inefficient as the game progresses (a lategame alloy worker requires 1.66 base miners, while a catalytic worker requires 1.75 base food producers)
• minerals have more options to be produced (both megaestructure and 2 unity edicts of 50% minerals from workers and 33% empire minerals).
• catalytic processing doesnt affect consumer goods, which means you have to split your production between minerals and food, which leads to more inefficiency.
• costs a civic point, which could be used in rockbreakers/mining guilds if one wants to have better alloy production, since taking this civic instead of catalytic reduces the pops required on miners by around 20%-30%

Proposed changes to catalytic:

• Make catalytic affect artisans, allowing catalytic empires to streamline production.
• Make catalytic a decision option you can switch to change your procesing methods.

Why a policy?

• As a policy, it doesnt have to compete with other civics, which it cant without making it stronger
• give a bonus that can be felt by the player over other manufacturing methods (example: mining guilds)
• Allow for easier expansion of the system: Examples:
  • Energy processing: nuclear manufacturing: turn energy into alloys in a 4 to 1 ratio
  • Mixed processing: turn food and minerals into alloys in a 1 mineral 1.5 food to 1 alloy
  • Etc...
• Can still be enabled disabled depending on tech/other civics.

Please coment your opinion about this change!

If you dont want to use food for alloy production, then dont take that civic, simple as that. This civic is not meant to be most efficient, its not abould being meta civic. Its game changing civic, that changes how your empire works. If you dont want your empire to work that way, then dont use this civic.

 

[GOLANX]

If you play both sides, then you'll never have a few thousands alloys per month coming in.
Unless you're absolutely massive, which by that point, who cares?!
You should then already be the uncontested ruler of the galaxy.

Only the end game crisis to maybe stand in your way, which cheats any ways too.

what makes you think the output would drop? your changing the input that's it, unless you want to nerf the swapping process. by the time deficits will kick in you can swap back.

I also don't care for the technical hurdles of my ships are made of biomass, now they are made of lithomass, the conversion shouldn't be quick or easy on any level, perhaps you could have a policy that you can swap that makes a situation that lasts about 10 years and costs a lot of EC, minerals/food/CGs etc that can represent that cost of switching, as it takes 10 years and is expensive the player is not encouraged to swap policies very often and jobs can be swapped gradually instead of instantly.

 

[Tamwin5]

The idea that you can swap catalytic on or off every 10 years doesn't sit right with me. Rather than being a part of long term decision making players are likely to swap based on short term surpluses/deficits. I think Catalytic should be converted into an Origin that allows the player to cut minerals out of their empire entirely the way lithoids cut food out of their empire. i would go for a rename to organic construction as well. Any empire that completes bio ascension should have the ability to pick up Organic Construction as a civic for free (still costs unity but not a slot).

I think catalytic is perfectly fine as a civic (well it could use a minor buff, but the core concept and implementation itself is fine). Organic construction should be something separate, that swaps some of the alloy cost of ships for food, and maybe gives some passive hull regen or other bonus. I’d also have it swap only half of building costs for food, not completely eliminate minerals. Plants and animals still need rocks and minerals, after all.

Organic construction should be available as an origin and Ascension perk (requiring bio ascension), but NOT as a civic. An empire that’s going bioships should be locked imo, not able to swap back and forth. It also feels like too big of a thing for a civic to do.

 

[Kabian]

I think catalytic is perfectly fine as a civic (well it could use a minor buff, but the core concept and implementation itself is fine). Organic construction should be something separate, that swaps some of the alloy cost of ships for food, and maybe gives some passive hull regen or other bonus. I’d also have it swap only half of building costs for food, not completely eliminate minerals. Plants and animals still need rocks and minerals, after all.

Organic construction should be available as an origin and Ascension perk (requiring bio ascension), but NOT as a civic. An empire that’s going bioships should be locked imo, not able to swap back and forth. It also feels like too big of a thing for a civic to do.

While i agree that catalytic could stay a civic, it should get a rework so taking it is not taking a -20% / -50% efficiency on your alloy production, this could also be solved if minerals costed 1.5 energy instead base 1, which is the same cost as food, and food buildings gave 1.5 extra food instead 1

 

[goldennick94]

a civic that harms the empire that takes it for the following reasons:

• food procesing becomes inefficient as the game progresses (a lategame alloy worker requires 1.66 base miners, while a catalytic worker requires 1.75 base food producers)
• minerals have more options to be produced (both megaestructure and 2 unity edicts of 50% minerals from workers and 33% empire minerals).
• catalytic processing doesnt affect consumer goods, which means you have to split your production between minerals and food, which leads to more inefficiency.
• costs a civic point, which could be used in rockbreakers/mining guilds if one wants to have better alloy production, since taking this civic instead of catalytic reduces the pops required on miners by around 20%-30%

So, there's a few issues I have with this argument and I'll outline them below:

• I'm certain that the food conversion into alloys is intentionally designed to be less efficient than minerals. I believe the reasoning is because food production as a whole is more accessible than mineral production which I will detail below.
• I disagree with the notion that minerals have more options to be produced under the sense that while there are literally more options, they are not as accessible as food. There are 4 main sources (not including purging of lithoids) of minerals and that comes from mining districts, space mining, the nebula refinery (one per starbase in a nebula), and the megastructure. While the megastructure does put the potential capacity for mining output higher, it does require a black hole which may not be available at all times. Food on the other hand actually has a lot more accessible sources. Food comes from agriculture districts, planetary buildings (uncapped in fact), and starbase hydroponics (one per starbase, no restriction). Basically any planet or habitat and starbases are capable of generating food. This is important because take for example a forge world designated Ecumenopolis with full industrial districts. With minerals, it requires at least one more planet to maintain the mineral production for said alloys. With food, you can construct food buildings and starbase hydroponics and you can set the orbital ring to boost alloy and food production or give it hydroponics as well. The same cannot be said for minerals where the most accessible forms of production come from planets (which may not have many mining districts) and space mining.
• It's true that Catalytic Processing doesn't affect consumer goods and I do agree that the split production means you won't be able to maximize as hard on a singular resource production. I don't think the problem is that big however because consumer goods only scale on non-gestalts and the scaling is mostly on pop upkeep and a few jobs like Researchers. If you're tech-rushing, it's a bit more of a prominent issue, but consumer goods don't get eaten up as fast as trying to build an endgame fleet, for example.
• It does cost a civic point, that's true. It makes a certain amount of sense as a civic. It could also make sense as a tradition or an AP or a research tech. It's a bit of a weird puzzle piece in where to stick it that makes it feel "proper", so civic is as good as any other choice honestly. As for the Rockbreakers/Mining Guilds, this doesn't directly increase alloy production. It increases the capacity for alloy production without running into a deficit, sure. But it doesn't not directly affect alloy output. Those minerals could just as easily be going into feeding Lithoids or making buildings or armies. And if you had both Catalytic and say Mining Guilds, you might use the extra minerals for those things while trying to build ships.

While I can kind of understand the merits of your suggestion, I don't think the problem is as big as it may seem to you. I think Catalytic Processing is fine as is, imo.

 

[Sutopia]

So, there's a few issues I have with this argument and I'll outline them below:

• I'm certain that the food conversion into alloys is intentionally designed to be less efficient than minerals. I believe the reasoning is because food production as a whole is more accessible than mineral production which I will detail below.
• I disagree with the notion that minerals have more options to be produced under the sense that while there are literally more options, they are not as accessible as food. There are 4 main sources (not including purging of lithoids) of minerals and that comes from mining districts, space mining, the nebula refinery (one per starbase in a nebula), and the megastructure. While the megastructure does put the potential capacity for mining output higher, it does require a black hole which may not be available at all times. Food on the other hand actually has a lot more accessible sources. Food comes from agriculture districts, planetary buildings (uncapped in fact), and starbase hydroponics (one per starbase, no restriction). Basically any planet or habitat and starbases are capable of generating food. This is important because take for example a forge world designated Ecumenopolis with full industrial districts. With minerals, it requires at least one more planet to maintain the mineral production for said alloys. With food, you can construct food buildings and starbase hydroponics and you can set the orbital ring to boost alloy and food production or give it hydroponics as well. The same cannot be said for minerals where the most accessible forms of production come from planets (which may not have many mining districts) and space mining.
• It's true that Catalytic Processing doesn't affect consumer goods and I do agree that the split production means you won't be able to maximize as hard on a singular resource production. I don't think the problem is that big however because consumer goods only scale on non-gestalts and the scaling is mostly on pop upkeep and a few jobs like Researchers. If you're tech-rushing, it's a bit more of a prominent issue, but consumer goods don't get eaten up as fast as trying to build an endgame fleet, for example.
• It does cost a civic point, that's true. It makes a certain amount of sense as a civic. It could also make sense as a tradition or an AP or a research tech. It's a bit of a weird puzzle piece in where to stick it that makes it feel "proper", so civic is as good as any other choice honestly. As for the Rockbreakers/Mining Guilds, this doesn't directly increase alloy production. It increases the capacity for alloy production without running into a deficit, sure. But it doesn't not directly affect alloy output. Those minerals could just as easily be going into feeding Lithoids or making buildings or armies. And if you had both Catalytic and say Mining Guilds, you might use the extra minerals for those things while trying to build ships.

While I can kind of understand the merits of your suggestion, I don't think the problem is as big as it may seem to you. I think Catalytic Processing is fine as is, imo.

Accessibility is a joke if you’re not using up all mining districts. Early game when every pop counts you’re not restrained by the districts available so catalytic provides next to no value; Mid game when you yet to have mega engineering to get ring worlds for infinite farmers you’re looking at mineral being more performant than food and you probably still yet to have developed every world you have, this is when catalytic actively harming your economy. Late game oh who cares, the most important part is early-mid game snowball and you’re not gonna swap civic when your economy and supply chain is already very well established.
People treat hydroponic starbase as a way to get rid of food production/reduce farmer count. They’re that bad. You’re also not ganna have the luxury spending building slots on farming buildings when you can instead spam labs or fortresses or strategic resources. Building slots are not free ya know.

 

[Silesian Burd]

Making Catalytic vs. Minerals a policy runs into the same issues as the different FTL options that one could start with, before Paradox decided to relegate Warp into Jump Drives (and the Mirror Dimension) and Wormhole into Gateways. It also runs into the issue of Alloys being overgeneralized.

Would a nation that started with Catalytic Conversion reasonably know how to do it with Minerals? It's more efficient (money-wise) with Minerals, so why the heck did they go with Catalytic?

And when would Catalytic Conversion (or the alternative) be a reasonable appearance in the Tech Deck? Would Catalytic be Society/Biology since it involves organic schlock, or Engineering/Materials because it produces ship-ready stuff?

Will there be an Energy Credit alternative to Minerals/Catalytics when Paradox finally makes playable Energy beings-- oh wait, those are the Unbidden.

 

[Archael90]

So, there's a few issues I have with this argument and I'll outline them below:

• I'm certain that the food conversion into alloys is intentionally designed to be less efficient than minerals. I believe the reasoning is because food production as a whole is more accessible than mineral production which I will detail below.
• I disagree with the notion that minerals have more options to be produced under the sense that while there are literally more options, they are not as accessible as food. There are 4 main sources (not including purging of lithoids) of minerals and that comes from mining districts, space mining, the nebula refinery (one per starbase in a nebula), and the megastructure. While the megastructure does put the potential capacity for mining output higher, it does require a black hole which may not be available at all times. Food on the other hand actually has a lot more accessible sources. Food comes from agriculture districts, planetary buildings (uncapped in fact), and starbase hydroponics (one per starbase, no restriction). Basically any planet or habitat and starbases are capable of generating food. This is important because take for example a forge world designated Ecumenopolis with full industrial districts. With minerals, it requires at least one more planet to maintain the mineral production for said alloys. With food, you can construct food buildings and starbase hydroponics and you can set the orbital ring to boost alloy and food production or give it hydroponics as well. The same cannot be said for minerals where the most accessible forms of production come from planets (which may not have many mining districts) and space mining.
• It's true that Catalytic Processing doesn't affect consumer goods and I do agree that the split production means you won't be able to maximize as hard on a singular resource production. I don't think the problem is that big however because consumer goods only scale on non-gestalts and the scaling is mostly on pop upkeep and a few jobs like Researchers. If you're tech-rushing, it's a bit more of a prominent issue, but consumer goods don't get eaten up as fast as trying to build an endgame fleet, for example.
• It does cost a civic point, that's true. It makes a certain amount of sense as a civic. It could also make sense as a tradition or an AP or a research tech. It's a bit of a weird puzzle piece in where to stick it that makes it feel "proper", so civic is as good as any other choice honestly. As for the Rockbreakers/Mining Guilds, this doesn't directly increase alloy production. It increases the capacity for alloy production without running into a deficit, sure. But it doesn't not directly affect alloy output. Those minerals could just as easily be going into feeding Lithoids or making buildings or armies. And if you had both Catalytic and say Mining Guilds, you might use the extra minerals for those things while trying to build ships.

While I can kind of understand the merits of your suggestion, I don't think the problem is as big as it may seem to you. I think Catalytic Processing is fine as is, imo.

ANd ringworlds that can provide massive amount of foods, but not minerals.

when Paradox finally makes playable Energy beings-- oh wait, those are the Unbidden

Unbidden are not playable... and thats a shame.

 

[evilcat]

It is enought if it was 8f for alloy, so it will be proportional with worker output + buildings.

 

[goldennick94]

ANd ringworlds that can provide massive amount of foods, but not minerals.

Aquatics also has Anglers which is also compatible for Agrarian Idyll, so you could have a mid-game Anglers, Agrarian Idyll, and Catalytic Processing Empire which would have loads of food production (Anglers jobs give an extra +2 food over regular farmers), trade value, extra consumer goods if you do need them for researchers and other jobs, and large alloy production. So either Ocean Worlds or Ringworlds would be plenty to power another planet that's a forge world full of alloy production. And you could use the trade for unity or energy. It has most of it's bases covered just from the agriculture districts. You won't have as much minerals, obviously but at that point you only really need them for just buildings and armies.

 

[GhostDanny]

Catalytic Processing should be optional for Anglers, Agrarian Idyll and Purge/Livestock using Xenophobes, without needing to dedicate a whole civic slot for it.

 

[NotAYakk]

So, there is a fun food-based empire.

Aquatic, Anglers, Catalytic, Argaryian Idyll.

You can make ocean worlds that produce both food (in honestly insane amounts) and CG (pearl divers) with not-quite-capped buildings.

A very small amount of mining can support all of the minerals you need. The rest of your empire is a few generator worlds, research, alloy production and unity; but you are also getting great trade from your ocean farm worlds.

...

I think a fun alternative to making CG be made with food would be to add a catalytic technician to agriculture districts under catalytic processing. Industrial districts still produce more alloys, but your farm planets can bioreact and produce alloys to a lesser extent.

 

[GhostDanny]

I think a fun alternative to making CG be made with food would be to add a catalytic technician to agriculture districts under catalytic processing. Industrial districts still produce more alloys, but your farm planets can bioreact and produce alloys to a lesser extent.

So a policy where you swap between pearl diver and catalytic technician?

 

[NotAYakk]

So a policy where you swap between pearl diver and catalytic technician?

No; I'm saying that, as a suggestion for Catalytic Processing civic, literally just add a Catalytic Processor job to Agriculture districts.

As others have noted, the swap of (mineral input) to (food input) for manufacturing alloys is mostly a zero-value trade. Civics should have a benefit.

Agriculture districts giving a catalytic processor job would be an interesting benefit. It has its downsides (more of your alloy production happens off specialized worlds, so will be less job efficient) and upsides (better district to job ratio efficiency) and quirks (keeping people doing farming jobs is a pain, as they will want to take the specialized job on farm worlds).

 

[Abdulijubjub]

No; I'm saying that, as a suggestion for Catalytic Processing civic, literally just add a Catalytic Processor job to Agriculture districts.

As others have noted, the swap of (mineral input) to (food input) for manufacturing alloys is mostly a zero-value trade. Civics should have a benefit.

Agriculture districts giving a catalytic processor job would be an interesting benefit. It has its downsides (more of your alloy production happens off specialized worlds, so will be less job efficient) and upsides (better district to job ratio efficiency) and quirks (keeping people doing farming jobs is a pain, as they will want to take the specialized job on farm worlds).

If PDX were to implement such a thing, they would likely fix it in the same way they fixed anglers: make catalytic technicians have worker weight so that pops don't promote out of farmer jobs unless you intentionally do so.

This would actually make the Anglers-Catalytic combo more amusing (and even more of a total transformation when you throw in Agrarian Idyll). Agridistricts become your everything-district: food, CG, alloys, amenities, building slots. You could finally achieve the dream of having farmers on every world, and have it make sense.

Like Agrarian-Idyll-Anglers, the inability to specialize planets would be steamrolled by the increased efficiency of having the excess amenities actually go toward something useful (instead of just stacking up on agri-worlds). And since forge worlds would just decrease food upkeep (and food would be dirt cheap with this combo), it's not really relevant.

Late game, you'd run into some issues with having to build a ton of extra processing/forge/fabricators, but that's mostly just offsetting the extra building slots. Orbital Rings would be an issue, though.

 

[NotAYakk]

If PDX were to implement such a thing, they would likely fix it in the same way they fixed anglers: make catalytic technicians have worker weight so that pops don't promote out of farmer jobs unless you intentionally do so.

This would actually make the Anglers-Catalytic combo more amusing (and even more of a total transformation when you throw in Agrarian Idyll). Agridistricts become your everything-district: food, CG, alloys, amenities, building slots. You could finally achieve the dream of having farmers on every world, and have it make sense.

Like Agrarian-Idyll-Anglers, the inability to specialize planets would be steamrolled by the increased efficiency of having the excess amenities actually go toward something useful (instead of just stacking up on agri-worlds). And since forge worlds would just decrease food upkeep (and food would be dirt cheap with this combo), it's not really relevant.

Late game, you'd run into some issues with having to build a ton of extra processing/forge/fabricators, but that's mostly just offsetting the extra building slots. Orbital Rings would be an issue, though.

Yes - my farm planet orbital rings are food + CG. Sort of funny.

 

[tanny]

Uhh… it’s food for alloy but you could have miners instead. Currently, the ratio doesn’t favor the idea. Maybe 2 food for alloys would be much more interesting? It’s been established that value-wise, Food=minerals.

 

[NotAYakk]

3 energy = 2 minerals = 3 food