Development Plans - feedback required

[Iyur]

Greetings.
Despite, that this is not a modding subforum, I want to post right here just to engage as much community, as I can, because I want to talk about an important thing and want to share my concept which I'm working on.

The topic is mostly about development plans (and, especially, in the light of complains about sector logic). I want to mod an ingame tool which helps players to control and develop their empires without a lot of micromanagement and in a more effecient way. Earlier I was working on IRM mod, mostly around sectors, factions & GUI stuff, so I'm sure it's quite possible within reasonable limits.

The concept is quite simple and almost completely taken from MOO3 gameplay. The main idea is just to define the weight value for each development activity (industry, agriculture, research etc) based on predefined player demands. Let's see the screen below (it's very very first and draft layout, made in PS) just to understand the basics.

You can make a new template for your current needs and create some plans, based on planet classification. Each development focus could have a certain importance weight (primary, secondary, tertiary), used later for calculating an overall impact. Let's say, they have weight of 1.0, 0.7 and 0.3. There are some basic development activities, like industrial, financial, agricultural, research etc. And you can apply a specific development activity with a specific importance to selected planet classification (for example, to core worlds, or capital, or mineral rich planets etc).

So, let's look again to screen - there is a small DP with some defined rules. And let's calculate an overall weight for specific activity for chosen planet classification. For example, we're taking a newly colonized planet within a sector. So, we have some plans which could be applied to this planet.

All Planets - Industrial (1.0) / Financial (0.7) / Research (0.3)
Sector - Growth (1.0) / Morale (0.7) / Industrial (0.3)
Colonised - Growth (1.0) / Morale (0.7) / Agricultural (0.3)

So, if we'll sum up all this weight values, we'll receive next:

Growth (2.0), Morale (1.4), Industrial (1.3), Financial (0.7), Research (0.3), Agricultual (0.3).

So, as you can see, the priority is to build facilities boosting population growth, then some buildings adding happines and then some mines. Other buildings could be built, but probably much later. If some building types are unavailable, we'll go for next defined activity. Later some internal script will check the calculated weights and will build or fix required facilities.

So, this is the point. I know, that there are a lof of autobuild mods ans some cool mods like CGM or so, but I want to give player more flexible tool to control his empire.
I think, it could add much more deepness to gameplay, make it more interesting and fix some issues (especially for sectors).

So, I'll be glad to hear any feedback and want to ask you to check out the basic classifications, activities and to add/change some of them, if it's necessery. Currently, there is a draft version of available classification:

Basic: All Planets
Emergency: Starving, Ruined, Besiedged, Unrest
Status: Capital (empire & sector capitals)
Administrative: Core, Sector
New: Colonised, Conquered, Gained
Size: Tiny, Small, Moderate, Large, Huge
Habitability: Extreeme, Poor, Moderate, Good, Ideal
Resources: Energy, Minerals, Food, Anomalies (tiles with research points)
Sector Focus: Agricultural, Balanced, Financial, Industrial, Military, Research
Population: Few, Low, Moderate, Many, Full
...

Activities: Agricultural, Financial, Growth, Industrial, Military, Morale (happiness), Research, Society (unity).
...

Thanks for your attention.

 

[ExNihil]

This would be an excellent addition to the game.

 

[Iyur]

The screen from predecessor:

 

[TheArid]

Maybe make it so that you can allow the sector to build new outposts in neighboring systems and automatically take control of them and colonize if possible.

 

[Azdule]

This could be tricky as it could cause the AI to drain your influence when you don't want it to....or spread out to places you don't want to extend to. Also the base AI colonizes planets already (if you allow it on the sector options). I may be mis-reading/understanding but I believe this would be in addition to the default sector ai?

 

[TheArid]

This could be tricky as it could cause the AI to drain your influence when you don't want it to....or spread out to places you don't want to extend to. Also the base AI colonizes planets already (if you allow it on the sector options). I may be mis-reading/understanding but I believe this would be in addition to the default sector ai?

Give the sector an influence bank which players can fill in.

 

[Iyur]

Well, theoretically it's possible, but I'd like to come back to original topic, related to development and planning.
However, I guess that I could simulate some colonisation processes, for example.

 

[TheArid]

Military Focus, is there any purpose to that? I mean the player will already have a larger fleet of their own so I’m not sure if people would want to spend their sector’s resources on establishing a small fleet that can’t help much.

 

[Iyur]

It could be some focus for emergency situation only - to build a few armies, ships or to build a few citadels.

 

[Iyur]

A bit more detailed concept.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UEX2Iv_xylAn_0uQTt1dALi3CpBilIgbYLwrHNg-dz8/edit?usp=sharing