Cohesion

[Diettinger]

Cohesion does not seem to do too much. You have a base amount added to by systems and starbase upgrades. Against that you have External Hyperlanes and Isolated Systems. A minimalistic model.

How about adding in a factor for all of the fractions? The more disjointed those are the more cohesion ought to break down!

 

[LackNull]

Cohesion does not seem to do too much. You have a base amount added to by systems and starbase upgrades. Against that you have External Hyperlanes and Isolated Systems. A minimalistic model.

How about adding in a factor for all of the fractions? The more disjointed those are the more cohesion ought to break down!

Cohesion is only intended as a mechanic to discourage "snaking", I think, since piracy doesn't do that any more. If you started adding other unrelated mechanics into the mix it'd probably lose its original purpose, and necessitate adding another small mechanic to accomplish that goal again anyway. Besides, I don't think it's a good idea to add penalties for having lots of factions. It already naturally makes it harder to please all of them, and weighing the demands of political groups is one of the more interesting parts of the game, so encouraging players through penalties to minimize how many there are and how much they interact with them would be a shame.

Cohesion does seem to be a strange mechanic though, it seemingly exists solely to counter one particular strategy, and if you don't stretch your empire in long chains all over the place it'll probably never have any effect on your game at all.

 

[sillyrobot]

It is a poorly tuned mechanic, currently. If you play with few hyperlane connections, you'll typically always be at 100%. If you play on full hyperlanes, a moderate-sized empire of a dozen systems will dip down to 70-80% even it is a solid blob.

 

[TheDungen]

Actually piracy still kind of does it. You have to protect any trade going from the far ends of your snake or you'll have pirates.

 

[Diettinger]

Still... fractions and cohesion really do hang together well as mechanics.

 

[Inquizitor]

It seems like a pointless feature to me. I dont see why having a snaking empire should be that big of a deal as just covering it with your fleets is harder.

 

[Medu Salem]

Honestly I don't even notice the effects of the cohesion mechanics most of the time. I snake around like crazy to grab key systems and don't care at all... because even if one takes a few percent hit in the long run you are still better off because you cut off other empires of entire clusters. Better than looking to be a cohesive blob but ending up boxed in.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

In small maps, or maps densely packed with Empires, it can really hurt if you're forced to leap frog someone in the early game.
As noted above it also doesn't scale properly with hyperlane density.

With default map settings I've never seen it go below 100%.

So yeah, poorly tuned.

 

[Diettinger]

In small maps, or maps densely packed with Empires, it can really hurt if you're forced to leap frog someone in the early game.
As noted above it also doesn't scale properly with hyperlane density.

With default map settings I've never seen it go below 100%.

So yeah, poorly tuned.

Leap frogging was already expensive. You end up paying for all the systems in between but do not get the systems... so you pay for those twice.

 

[serpentskirt]

so you pay for those twice

Well, you at least save alloys.

 

[Dr. Chaos]

The worst thing about cohesion is, its only matters in the first few decades, after you have enough systems and starbases already, you can snake as much as you want and can leave worthless systems inside your empires borders, it doesnt matter anymore after a certain size.

I think its a better mechanic than spawning pirates, but poorly implemented and needs tuning.

 

[The Bored Chairman]

Cohesion is usually unnoticeable unless you're playing Corporate and have to grab key systems (which leaves your empire with unclaimed systems that are non-priority), since Corporate suffers pretty hard from going over Admin level.

I get the reasoning behind it, but it seems like a redundant feature, since every system is going to get claimed anyway.

 

[Riftwalker]

Cohesion is only intended as a mechanic to discourage "snaking", I think, since piracy doesn't do that any more. If you started adding other unrelated mechanics into the mix it'd probably lose its original purpose, and necessitate adding another small mechanic to accomplish that goal again anyway. Besides, I don't think it's a good idea to add penalties for having lots of factions. It already naturally makes it harder to please all of them, and weighing the demands of political groups is one of the more interesting parts of the game, so encouraging players through penalties to minimize how many there are and how much they interact with them would be a shame.

Cohesion does seem to be a strange mechanic though, it seemingly exists solely to counter one particular strategy, and if you don't stretch your empire in long chains all over the place it'll probably never have any effect on your game at all.

yeah basically the idea, that you'll save admin cap by only taking key specific nodes is discouraged. so in wars you don;t only claim high priority systems or putting outposts ontop of only colonizable planets.

Recently I actually got some cohesion penalties in early game because I rushed outposts too colonizable planets. didn't put me over admin cap though.

also, i think it's not too harsh, so that it doesn;'t cripple higher hyperlane settings. seems to be pretty restricting on max settings.

 

[bobucles]

Cohesion only really makes sense when planets get cut off from the main empire territories. Planets aren't self sufficient as they were before so cutting off a world is an opportunity to invoke some mean penalties.

 

[Diettinger]

If fractions were included in Cohesion it would be key much longer in the game as more and more fractions join. It would also be the starting points of a good civil war or two.

 

[The Bored Chairman]

If fractions were included in Cohesion it would be key much longer in the game as more and more fractions join. It would also be the starting points of a good civil war or two.

I kinda like this idea. The current Gov. Ethics Attraction seems a little stale and unbalanced right now (Especially Xenophobe draw. The second that faction shows up, it will NEVER leave, even if your empire is Fanatic Xenophile, Federated and has Free Xeno pops on every planet). They could rework it into the Unity mechanic, where if there are too few unity buildings on the planet, the people start developing their own culture. This could result in different outcomes (Egalitarian planets voting to leave the empire but getting an opinion bonus to the former owner if the empire allows it, Authoritarian planets cracking down on pops and putting the planet on lockdown, breaking from the empire if not liberated. Stuff like that).

Obviously, there'd be event chains that allow empires to stop or encourage the shift, instead of it being an instant revolt like it currently is.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

It doesn't even really affect snaking if you have filled your starbase cap.