PLEASE ADD the ability to transfer resources BACK from Sectors. It stinks that you can GIVE them resources but you can not get back all their extra stockpiled resources.
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PLEASE ADD the ability to transfer resources BACK from Sectors
- Thread starter Bearsfan22
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In a sense, I agree. But there should be ways to prevent using sectors as banks, else, when someone hits a resource cap, it would transfer it to the sectors to get it back later. Perhaps a global resource cap.
I don't see it happening. Part of the reasons Sectors exist is as a resource sink, that's why you can't demand 100% of their output, only 75%. If you could simply take whatever you wanted, then that element would be lost.
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I see no problem with them being used as a bank, if this is an issue than maybe add a transfer tax to help this from being abused. I think it still remains that there needs to be some better way to manage resources than to let that many sit there and not be able to access them. Capping sector resources lower and letting the excess roll back into your own would be good. How about simply having a 100% resource return setting from sectors... then once sectors deplete their excess they can then be readjusted.
I CAN NOT say that this is a game breaker or that it is currently unbalanced as is. In late game I often find that, more often than not, I have plenty of resources (even with sectors set to 75%). However, like most 4x games, resource management is a big part of the game and to see untouchable resources pile up like that is to me simply disturbing. Many times I have had to rebuild a destroyed fleet and had been lacking in resources for a while only to see sectors sitting on figurative "gold mine".
I love the game, just think this would be a simple "quality of life" adjustment for the player.
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Small influence cost for every bundle of 100 energy/minerals taken back from a sector, maybe like 25 influence, that might fix the balance issue, and encourage players to only raid sector treasuries when desperate.
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25 influence has significantly higher value than a mere 100 resources.
This issue becomes more of an actual problem in mid to late game, when your 5+ sectors are sitting on 5k energy and 25k minerals each, and you are broke trying to rebuild a 50k fleet that just got cut down to 15k from an invasion event while your neighbors just broke off their alliance because of the sudden power difference between you, and you know they are about to declare war.
I think the 100% and 125% options, at a happiness penalty, is a much better solution for all stages of gameplay, without actively breaking game balance by having 8-10 "banks" to fall back on in a pinch. Rather you would be overtaxing the rich "private sector" after a major war. Using a static influence cost would be detrimental to late game, making those resources just as unusable as ever.
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I always end up influence capped late game. If 25 is too much then you could make it less, 10 or 5 maybe. 1000 energy for 50 influence is a decent trade, in my opinion, especially if the intention is for you to only really use this mechanic to get out of a pinch resource-wise.
The 100% and 125% resource contribution options are interesting, and I hadn't thought of them previously. My issue with them is that sector income is monthly, and so the extra resource wouldn't be as accessible in an emergency as otherwise. These options would also be limited in the amount of resources they could provide you in bulk, you certainly couldn't hope to get hundreds more at once. This would also impact both resources, rather than the one that you need. Perhaps both the resource confiscation at an influence cost and higher sector tax rates could be implemented jointly?
How much of a happiness hit are you talking? I think that taking resources from sectors directly or implementing punitive tax rates should be pretty expensive things to do, so that the integrity of the resource caps and sector stockpile systems is maintained.
The 100% and 125% resource contribution options are interesting, and I hadn't thought of them previously. My issue with them is that sector income is monthly, and so the extra resource wouldn't be as accessible in an emergency as otherwise. These options would also be limited in the amount of resources they could provide you in bulk, you certainly couldn't hope to get hundreds more at once. This would also impact both resources, rather than the one that you need. Perhaps both the resource confiscation at an influence cost and higher sector tax rates could be implemented jointly?
How much of a happiness hit are you talking? I think that taking resources from sectors directly or implementing punitive tax rates should be pretty expensive things to do, so that the integrity of the resource caps and sector stockpile systems is maintained.
My point about the influence is that it doesn't adjust, your cap is always 1k. When I need resources, I use edics to increase production, so I never have excess at cap when I really need it anyway. But in the example I gave, from an actual game I played, my sectors had over 100,000 minerals between them, while I was at 0 trying to rebuild my fleet. Even at a generous exchange, let's say 50 influence for 1k, half my total influence cap would only get 1/10th of that back. In that late of a game, it's far too little in exchange for a very slow resource that has other uses (like edicts to increase production).
Meanwhile, the same exchange rate, in an earlier mid game, would be immensely overpowered. If you had a more "fair" exchange for mid game, it would be useless in late game. And influence in the early game is far too valuable to ever utilize that exchange.
You can't currently take 100% from a sector, for reasons of autonomy of the sector. But I think you should be able to, it should just have a drawback like happiness. Say, maybe -10%, it doesn't have to be too much, because if you drain the sector economy the whole thing starts to collapse anyway, which has plenty of it's own problems.
The 125% is not at all necessary, you could just cap it at 100%, and let the sectors live off of their surplus. That would work fine for managing late game surpluss, since you could start managing earlier and the sectors would never reach cap. But if they did change the mechanic, it would be a fun additional thing, to over tax at -20% happiness, and maybe even +10% ethics divergence.
Now, adding a monthly influence to overtaxing, would be a good balance too. -1 influence per sector taxed at 100%, and -2 for 125%. With or without a midler happiness penalty. Since in any case, the 100% and 125% would be emergency measures when you really need it, not something you would have or want active all the time.
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I haven't actually noticed, but is there a limit to the number of planets you can have in a given sector? If not, then -1 influence for taxing a sector that controls half the galaxy at 100% basically removes the sector system from the game, apart from not being able to control buildings directly. Again, I don't actually know if sector size is limited, so that bone of contention could be complete bunk.
If only using the increased tax rates, you could also weave collectivism and individualism into this for added ethics significance. Less happiness penalty for overtaxing collectivist pops, or if that's too complex, a collectivist empire for example. More happiness penalty for overtaxing individualists or as an individualist, and a baseline for empires that are neither collectivist nor individualist.
Influence cap inflexibility is a good point, as is unequal value of the trade over the duration of the game. I don't have any ideas apart from implementing influence cap upgrades in some fashion, which has its own issues, to account for these. I also just now realize that I have neglected edicts, and so this is why I have ended up influence capped in the first place.
Perhaps, if a mechanic would be implemented to allow sector inventory raiding in times when the empire at large is on the ropes to provide a mirror to the "give 100" buttons, instead of an influence penalty there might simply be a factor of waste. To explain, you hit the button and get 50-80 minerals/energy or something, but the sector loses the full 100. This removes the influence and (I think) the game progress balancing issues. At the same time though, it does effectively just increase your resource cap just less so and with extra button pressing involved, so perhaps never mind.
If only using the increased tax rates, you could also weave collectivism and individualism into this for added ethics significance. Less happiness penalty for overtaxing collectivist pops, or if that's too complex, a collectivist empire for example. More happiness penalty for overtaxing individualists or as an individualist, and a baseline for empires that are neither collectivist nor individualist.
Influence cap inflexibility is a good point, as is unequal value of the trade over the duration of the game. I don't have any ideas apart from implementing influence cap upgrades in some fashion, which has its own issues, to account for these. I also just now realize that I have neglected edicts, and so this is why I have ended up influence capped in the first place.
Perhaps, if a mechanic would be implemented to allow sector inventory raiding in times when the empire at large is on the ropes to provide a mirror to the "give 100" buttons, instead of an influence penalty there might simply be a factor of waste. To explain, you hit the button and get 50-80 minerals/energy or something, but the sector loses the full 100. This removes the influence and (I think) the game progress balancing issues. At the same time though, it does effectively just increase your resource cap just less so and with extra button pressing involved, so perhaps never mind.
I think there are two simple changes that could make sectors work better in that regard.
1) Sectors respect the resource limits. I have seen my sectors showing that they have 9000/4000 energy at times. I think this is only a bug, but still, needs addressing.
2) Once sectors hit the cap, they pay 100% of their income to the empire (i.e. 25% is not "thrown out" if the empire could use it instead).
This way, the system cannot be easily abused as a "bank", AND there would be more of an incentive to keep your sectors small and well developed: If you create a new sector, instead of expanding an existing one, the old sector will not have to spend its reserves in order to develop the new planets, and will continue to pay 100% to you. If you expand the sector instead, you won't have to help a new sector get started, but you will lose the "cap extra" while the sector handles tile blockers and buildings.
1) Sectors respect the resource limits. I have seen my sectors showing that they have 9000/4000 energy at times. I think this is only a bug, but still, needs addressing.
2) Once sectors hit the cap, they pay 100% of their income to the empire (i.e. 25% is not "thrown out" if the empire could use it instead).
This way, the system cannot be easily abused as a "bank", AND there would be more of an incentive to keep your sectors small and well developed: If you create a new sector, instead of expanding an existing one, the old sector will not have to spend its reserves in order to develop the new planets, and will continue to pay 100% to you. If you expand the sector instead, you won't have to help a new sector get started, but you will lose the "cap extra" while the sector handles tile blockers and buildings.
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Point 1 - I had not noticed this, and absolutely should be fixed. I don't know this either, but are sector resource caps independently calculated based on the size/development/buildings of that sector or is there a flat cap for a sector regardless of these factors?
Point 2 - this is good, but still potentially leaves 10s or 100s of thousands of resources effectively worthless, given that once sectors fully upgrade their buildings they have nothing else to do with resources beyond upkeep. They don't have to build armies/navies like the player.
Each and every sector has the same cap on energy and resources as your core systems. So if you have all of your planets in 1 sector, there is only 1 extra "bank" of resources. If you have lots of smaller sectors, each one of them can has as much resources as you can.
There does not seem to be a limit to how many planets a sector can have, but you are limiting how much resources it can have, and so gimping the AI controlling it, as well as gimping your possible stockpile if any change is made to let you access those resources. (Faction and sector politics are also not in the game yet, so eventually larger sectors will be a much bigger issue than it is now.)
There is already a limit on the number of sectors you can have, so the number of resource banks is limited. There is just not currently any method of using those resources.
Of course, with the upcoming patch, the sectors should start managing their resources better and actually building defence stations and the like. So there is no telling how likely you are to have full "banks" after that anyway. This may be a moot point once the sectors start behaving better.
That's exactly what I was thinking after reading the post.
PDS please do this (though 25i for 100m/e seems a bit steep)
My point was exactly that by keeping a "sunk cost" before sectors pay you "full tax" you reduce the potential for exploiting the mechanics. It's better than what we have right now since at some point you WILL get all the resources from a sector, but you can't control exactly when and how, so you can't e.g. spend all your minerals before collecting the reserves from your sectors. On the other end, if you're also capped on minerals/energy, having your sectors full and paying you extra gives no benefit, so there's more reason to keep building up fleets before you reach the cap.
I'd rather see a sector put those to good use and make the the game feel more alive. If they have spare minerals and power and absolutely nothing left to spend it on they should be building a defense fleet and start actively protecting their borders. I'd also like to see sector science ships collecting debris from battles because I like space to be clean.
I also think that players should only get a portion of the sector fleet capacity and that having the tax set to 75% during peace time should cause unhappiness. But thats besides the point