Research Upkeep difference for Gestalt Conciousnesses

[Foromar]

Normal biological empires pay 2 consumer goods per researcher, while ME's and Hives pay 6(!) minerals.

I don't really mind it that much for Hiveminds, but for ME's to pay triple the amount of a biological empire is over the top. And that is without even taking production bonuses into account.

In all of the Threads about how bad ME's are, i also didn't see it mentioned even once, which is quite strange.

Considering how ME's were handeled since their release, quite a few people at paradox must really hate the race/playstyle.

All in all they should really reduce the upkeep to around 2 minerals.

 

[Shirasik]

Normal empires also needs consumer goods as a part of a pop maintenance system.

Simple comparision:
Normal empire - every pop needs 1 unit of food and some of consumer goods, depending of stratum.
Bio hive - every pop needs 1 unit of food only.
Machine hive - every machine pop needs 1 unit of energy credits only.

See? Normals needs another production step with all expenses involved in it, simply to maintain the very existence of pops. So they will need much more goods for all pops that empire needs to keep labs shine and running.

 

[Madzai]

See? Normals needs another production step with all expenses involved in it, simply to maintain the very existence of pops. So they will need much more goods for all pops that empire needs to keep labs shine and running.

You also missing that while Normals, indeed, need another production step, Consumer goods can be transported and produced anywhere, while for GC they have to use super-noneffective maintenance drones as ONLY way to get amenities that cannot be shared between planets and suck precious building space. Also Normals have additional layer of trade value that can be used to empower various things depending on your policy.

 

[Shirasik]

You also missing that while Normals, indeed, need another production step, Consumer goods can be transported and produced anywhere, while for GC they have to use super-noneffective maintenance drones as ONLY way to get amenities that cannot be shared between planets and suck precious building space. Also Normals have additional layer of trade value that can be used to empower various things depending on your policy.

Amenities of normals also can't be shared between planets.
Trade value has a downside of piracy and collection range, so normals needs to waste part of their starbase and fleet cap to collect trade value as well as to hold back piracy.

 

[Madzai]

Amenities of normals also can't be shared between planets.

Yes, but not only amenities production jobs for Normals are much more effective and varied, they almost always produce various resources as by-products.
It result in situations where in the end your specialized planets will be less effective, because maintenance depots takes more building slots and raw resources planets can host almost no by-production because, again - maintenance depot. Also, it severely diminish the effectiveness of GC low housing(at least for normal HM), because again, you'll be limited by maintenance depots.

Trade value has a downside of piracy and collection range, so normals needs to waste part of their starbase and fleet cap to collect trade value as well as to hold back piracy.

A fleetcap that could be squeezed from Soilders jobs, because Normals waste less space on amenities-related buildings and can afford to build them. And again, it very debatable question who will have more Starbases, GC or Normals.

 

[Foromar]

Normal empires also needs consumer goods as a part of a pop maintenance system.

Simple comparision:
Normal empire - every pop needs 1 unit of food and some of consumer goods, depending of stratum.
Bio hive - every pop needs 1 unit of food only.
Machine hive - every machine pop needs 1 unit of energy credits only.

See? Normals needs another production step with all expenses involved in it, simply to maintain the very existence of pops. So they will need much more goods for all pops that empire needs to keep labs shine and running.

Why does everyone forget to even consider production bonuses and raw output?
- 1 food is not equal to 1 energy (1,5:1)
- 1 mineral is equal to 1 cg at the start of the game
- Cg get another round of production bonuses that can easily reach 50% and pay for the extra workers and buildings.
(Ecumenopolis just pushes it further in their favor.)

If you now just take energy and food upkeep out of the equation, you are left with the 3:1 ratio of Minerals to Consumer Goods.

ME's already have to deal with lower research output, since they can't even get close to 100 stability.
So why do they also have to pay triple the amount of minerals compared to any biological empire?

 

[Shirasik]

amenities production jobs for Normals are much more effective

Effective? Doubt it. Productive? Yes. With a downside of CG cost.

It result in situations where in the end your specialized planets will be less effective, because maintenance depots takes more building slots and raw resources planets can host almost no by-production because, again - maintenance depot. Also, it severely diminish the effectiveness of GC low housing(at least for normal HM), because again, you'll be limited by maintenance depots.

Well... I think 2-3 depots per planet isn't that much.

Spoiler

Spoiler

And again, it very debatable question who will have more Starbases, GC or Normals.

Don't both has 1 per 10 systems owned + from techs?

Why does everyone forget to even consider production bonuses and raw output?

No one can actually see basic output ATM. Could anyone just pick a value from UI and see empire-wide or at least planet-wide summary of basic production of jobs? No one can. Unfortunately. So most doesn't bother with numbers of basic production at all.

- 1 food is not equal to 1 energy (1,5:1)

Yeah, that's a thing. How do you think, should either basic output of Tech and Mining jobs be increased, or basic output of Agri jobs be lowered?

Spoiler

If you now just take energy and food upkeep out of the equation

Why should I?

ME's already have to deal with lower research output, since they can't even get close to 100 stability.

Aha, you threw the cost of maintaining of 100 stability out of equation too, yes?

 

[Foromar]

The point of this Thread was about the upkeep of researchers, not basic pops.
That is why i said to take Food/Energy out of the equation.

I also never compared ME's to a 100 stability empire. I only wanted to express, that ME's can never hope to reach the same amount of stability. The main difference is faction and pop happiness, which really doesn't take much to achieve and can easiliy be sustained with the increased production.

As for energy and food production:
- more jobs won't help and will just make it a carbon copy of hiveminds
- better output would be better, especially since that was supposed to be their main advantage

 

[Shirasik]

The point of this Thread was about the upkeep of researchers, not basic pops.
That is why i said to take Food/Energy out of the equation.

Your thread touches much more than just upkeep of researchers.
Well.. let's say you want to redesign balancing of ME. K?

a carbon copy of hiveminds

Actually, ME *is* a carbon copy of hiveminds. Unfortunately. Yet a copy.

better output

I hoped you would figure it out yourself.
For now, EC/M/F basic production is 4/4/6 per job. If not modded. For any empire. Correct?
What if for ME's basic production would be 6/4/4 per job? As the start. To figure out what to alter next.

 

[Maethendias]

not to mention bio empires can make consumer goods utterly redundant with trade

 

[Maethendias]

Normal empires also needs consumer goods as a part of a pop maintenance system.

Simple comparision:
Normal empire - every pop needs 1 unit of food and some of consumer goods, depending of stratum.
Bio hive - every pop needs 1 unit of food only.
Machine hive - every machine pop needs 1 unit of energy credits only.

See? Normals needs another production step with all expenses involved in it, simply to maintain the very existence of pops. So they will need much more goods for all pops that empire needs to keep labs shine and running.

this is just utterly and plain wrong, you can sustain your entire empire AND MORE just with trade alone, AND make a massive profit on the side

 

[Melkor Bauglir]

I have to agree with the OP. Obviously, the calculation isn't quite as trivial, but the default conversion rate of minerals to CGs is 1:1. Yes, it needs jobs and furthermore, TV --> CGs is a thing and also there are a lot of production boni, but I honestly doubt that this will justify triple the upkeep. To be fair, GCs are somewhat better at mineral production once set up - HMs have their 3 miner districts and Hive Worlds, MIs at least Machine Worlds. Still, lowering the upkeep to 3-4 really seems to be more balanced.

Simple comparision:
Normal empire - every pop needs 1 unit of food and some of consumer goods, depending of stratum.
Bio hive - every pop needs 1 unit of food only.
Machine hive - every machine pop needs 1 unit of energy credits only.

I don't think the comparison is that simple. There are a lot more variables here that factor in to the upkeep equation, just stating these numbers in a vacuum is somewhat lying by omission, because the economic systems of regular empires, hive minds and machines differ quite a lot.

 

[LeanneKaos]

The point of this Thread was about the upkeep of researchers, not basic pops.
That is why i said to take Food/Energy out of the equation.

The pop is effectively part of the 'upkeep cost' of the job itself, though... so by transitive property, the upkeep costs associated with that pop should be considered part of the upkeep cost of the job.

 

[MortZ82]

Normal Empires require more building slots for a research building thought, seeing as they also need to dedicate 1 Slot for Consumer Goods pr 2,5 Research buildings (2 researchers pr building if not mistaken) . ME doesnt require this and only need to dedicate districts

 

[Shirasik]

stating these numbers in a vacuum is somewhat lying by omission

So better to not state anything at all?

because the economic systems of regular empires, hive minds and machines differ quite a lot

All of them ends up in numbers of result, compared to numbers of expenses needed.

this is just utterly and plain wrong, you can sustain your entire empire AND MORE just with trade alone, AND make a massive profit on the side

Not exactly. Normals kinda aren't allowed to throw away trade value and via that throw away piracy. So normals has to specialize on trade.

 

[Melkor Bauglir]

Normal Empires require more building slots for a research building thought, seeing as they also need to dedicate 1 Slot for Consumer Goods pr 2,5 Research buildings (2 researchers pr building if not mistaken) . ME doesnt require this and only need to dedicate districts

Hmm, that is true, yes. However, CGs can also come from trade which gives EC as a byproduct. Also (using default conversion rates) that's still a 2:6 upkeep which seems excessive.

So better to not state anything at all?

I literally never said anything like this! You posted a counterpoint which I don't think is a valid one - I quoted said counterpoint and gave a counter argument. That's a big difference compared to what you made of it.

 

[Mithkabob]

Between trade value and ecumenopolis, a normal empire no longer needs to use up any building slots for consumer goods or alloy production, and also frees up any slots that would have been in use making special resources for those buildings as well. And past mid game I haven't had the need to build any buildings specifically for amenities. And I've never had to build crime buildings in a normal empire like you HAVE to build to have 100 drone pops on a planet.

Machine world and hive world are nice bonuses, and do allow for quite a lot of raw production, but the empire sprawl needed to maintain your economy will end up with less research than a normal empire. Hive minds it isn't as much of a problem since you have more jobs per district and massive early game snowball potential such that you can't fall behind in research if the whole galaxy is dead, but the machine empires are definitely struggling here.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

Normal empires also needs consumer goods as a part of a pop maintenance system.

Machine empires are forced to sink a lot of minerals upfront when getting pops. That pays for many, many decades of consumer goods consumption (assuming consumer goods needs aren't generated for free from trade).

 

[Less2]

I definitely mentioned it:

By the midgame and on CGs are actually beneficial, since the Mineral->CG->research conversion ratio is better to begin with and you can an extra multiplier to use. When you get an Ecumenopolis up and really min-max CG production a normal empire can literally produce 500% more research from the same number of minerals (6 minerals ->100% production bonus->12 goods-> 24 research vs. 6 minerals -> 4 research).

CGs are a minor penalty for normal empires that rapidly goes away as production modifiers tend upwards. On the other hand amenities are a massive problem for gestalts that never really get fixed. Entertainers are comically better than maintenance drones in every possible way.

 

[Maethendias]

So better to not state anything at all?
Not exactly. Normals kinda aren't allowed to throw away trade value and via that throw away piracy. So normals has to specialize on trade.

NO... considering you can just add a few buildings (and housing districts give those too) to get cleric jobs ... cleric jobs you use when you ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH POPS TO WORK ALL OF YOUR RESSOURCES ON tHE PLANET.... thus scaling with pops.

machine empires (gestalts in general) HAVE NO POP SCALING MECHANIC, meaning you can reach a critical mass of population on a planet... once reached every new pop not only does not produce, BUT INCREASES THE COST OF THE COLONY WITHOUT ANY BENEFITS...

it is not just about the massive income of trade for biopops, its about the USEFULLNESS trade and tradejob provide for biopops.

trade LITERALLY gives a biopop reason to SETTLE EVERY PLANET THERE IS... while gestalts are ONLY RESSOURCE driven, and actually get HURT for growing more population on a planet than ressources would allow...

THE EMPIRES THAT SHOULD SCALE THE MOST WITH POPULATION GET HURT BY POPULATION SCALING WHICH DEFEATES THE PURPOSE OF SAID EMPIRES


ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU CONSIDER THAT GESTALTS COULD HAVE SOME SORT OF " SYNAPSE/PROCESSING POWER" FEATURE THAT WOULD ADD A SIDEGRADE TO "NATIONAL" TRADING


(you know, ai getting more intelligent the more processing power it has, a systemwide brain getting more powerfull the more synapses it can use)