Should Tier 2 Production Buildings Not Require Strategic Resources?

[Amorenkaire]

Something I've noted in almost every game I've started since 2.2. In the phase where my empire starts expanding into colonies I've always suffered a crunch within my Empire's economy. I'm usually trying to buy and sell resources at a premium to make up for a critical shortage in consumer goods and/or energy and food (the later depending on the state of my colony's resource districts). Said glut, however, is quickly solved once the tier 2 consumer goods, alloys, and other buildings start coming online.

So it appears that to cover the massive resource requirements needed for a population growing across 2-3+ planets, you're expected to have those tier two facilities in production (or give up on unique planetary buildings such as the unity momument, robot fabricators, or hospitals on your capital). The problem is to efficiently upgrade to said buildings, you need 2-3 technologies (one for the building, and 1-2 for the resources themselves, depending on if you need to harvest, produce, or both). Which can take quite some time to get lucky with those rolls.

Considering this is such an early game crunch, perhaps the tier 2 production buildings shouldn't require strategic resources and instead said resources are required for the tier 3 or above midgame and later buildings?

 

[Peerless Girl]

If they were to make the tier 2 not require strategic resources, I presume the values they provide would be lowered, then it would only be the tier 3 top that would use them. They'd also probably need to then re-balance the amount of strategic resources. Also the tier 2 Unity building doesn't require strategic resources IIRC, but it's the only one as of yet.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

For me the problem has always been how late "rare resources" technologies show up, but given how rare they are it's not unreasonable to call for halving their upkeep for tier2 buildings.

 

[WangTangManWithGun]

It would be nice if the rare resource buildings have tiers too for increased energy upkeep.

 

[Alastor]

I don't mind the strategic resource requirements. A few refinery worlds can take care of it. My issue is minerals. Unlike energy (trade) and food (meh), there is no reliable way to increase mineral production (at least that I have seen). And those refineries gulp down minerals at alarming quantities. Then shortages happen, shortage in one resource leads to severe production penalties in others, until all of them run out and there is virtually no way out of this spiral.

 

[MightyFox]

If they take away the required rare resource for T2 buildings, then T2 would become the standard baseline for every building slot that uses that building. Why even bother having T1 except as an early game bottleneck? As it is right now, you have to think about upgrading a building to T2. You have to weigh the cost of rare resources (or 5 minerals if your manufacturing) vs. just building another T1 Use a rare resource? Or use another building slot? These are the types of decisions I'm glad they added to the game.

 

[Lamey]

I think each tech should give you 2 separate upgrades - the current one that requires strategic resources and a lesser upgrade that gives less jobs or is less efficient per worker.

Maybe the non-strategic resource requiring version of the research lab could give 2 researcher jobs and 2 hazardous material handler jobs. (which produce only 6 of each science)

I have to admit, I'm less thinking about the particular numbers and balance than the annoying 'chicken and egg' issue with the way those research unlocks work.

Logically - how or why would you invent something that you can't even make? Actually I feel like this was a joke on Futurama at some point.

In order to actually make a t2 building

1) RNGsus must give you the opportunity to research it
2) RNGsus must give you the opportunity to research the tech for the resource
3) RNGsus must give you a source of the resource

Each of these individually is fine, but all three together leads to super annoying outcomes. The random tech card system does not mesh very well with adding a bunch of soft prerequisites to the tech tree.

Other ideas that might help:
Allow us to space mine resources without the extraction tech, but at 50% or 25% efficiency.
Add 1 resource production to each feature that produces a resource - this would be automatic production that occurs just for colonizing the world.
Or how about allowing research vessels to mine strategic resources without the tech. (Like assisting research the vessel w/ scientist would have to be parked there to do this)

 

[evilcat]

You can run nice basic empire with just workers, robots, and civil goods/alloys.
The RNGesus is less moody once you pick Science Tradition and tech with +1 alternative.

The economic crisis happens when you start premium tactics like mass science or gene labs on multiple planets.
Or when at once you get refugees, pirates and war. But then it is bad luck for yo.

 

[Madzai]

I think it's OK. As other people said it's more of an issue of getting those rare-resource techs. And as another people said it's about quirks of research system that now have a lot more of rather early tech you really need. And if you don't get them your issues start to pile up and you don't have free resources to progress your tech. Basically all your POPs go into produce other resources (due to lack of tech that improve production in some way) and Admin Cap start to kick in (while your research is already weak). I dunno if the system is in need of tweaks, or players need to adjust more to new rules. Like Research alternatives being more useful now.

 

[AlphaAsh]

<snip>

Tier 2 production buildings should require strategic resources. This has finally made strategic resources relevant and added considerable depth to economic competition between empires. You now have to fight over them and protect them.

Once the AI is fixed to realise this, it'll get even more mad. Good.

 

[Verx90]

there are an allarming quantity of ppl that DESTROY theyr economy for some reason .

why its so hard to stop ? , they still play like 2.1 .

rare resource generator consume too much minerals? alloys production take too much minerals ? ; don't build them to oblivion , accept the fact that your territory can sustain only that quantity of resources. ( btw, if you just use basic lvl buildings, you will not need special resources > more minerals for alloys and consumers goods ; there habitats became extremly powerfull for buildings space)

 

[AlphaAsh]

there are an allarming quantity of ppl that DESTROY theyr economy for some reason .

why its so hard to stop ? , they still play like 2.1 .

rare resource generator consume too much minerals? alloys production take too much minerals ? ; don't build them to oblivion , accept the fact that your territory can sustain only that quantity of resources. ( btw, if you just use basic lvl buildings, you will not need special resources > more minerals for alloys and consumers goods ; there habitats became extremly powerfull for buildings space)

Yup. It's almost as if you have to manage an economy in the game now. Terrible. Worse game ever.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

Techs requiring a resource, appearing before the Techs that unlock said resource is the greater issue.

Hopefully this obvious deficiency has already been addressed in the beta?

 

[KDB]

I think the current system with rare resources is quite good. In particular, there are so many building slots on a planet, you can just build a lot of tier 1 buildings. Upgrade all your buildings to higher tiers does not help if you have not enough free workforce. I think you get around 1 building per 5 pops, so buildings that provide more than 5 jobs are not really necessary. And in the beginning of your planet development, you build a lot of districts, anyways.
At least that's my experience from playing the new update: you are always low on workforce, its often easier to upgrade buildings than to get enough workers for them.

 

[WhiteKyubey]

Techs requiring a resource, appearing before the Techs that unlock said resource is the greater issue.

Hopefully this obvious deficiency has already been addressed in the beta?

Just research them as soon as they appear anyway (unless you have anything better to take ofc)
It will be even more frustrating when you have rare resource tech, space mines already working but still no way to use them. I tried to ignore all building techs I cannot build before researching resouce production and it was much worse then just having building unlocked a bit earlier.

there are an allarming quantity of ppl that DESTROY theyr economy for some reason .

People are greedy. Just check your mineral production before any CG/Alloy factory - if you don't want it to be lower, then build mines and stuff it before CG/Alloy factories.

I guess the only situation when minerals are really the problem - when you got boxed as f.pacifist on 5 or less planets. Then you can build hydroponics, trade, ringworlds for energy and food, but without any way to get minerals. But even they can get CG using only trade, use market for minerals/alloys and build 1000 minerals mega.
Still in 2.1 there was a building to transfrom energy to minerals - I guess it can be returned (or is it in the game already? I saw one on FE planets, but nothing like that for regular empires)

 

[Delthor]

They need to move the tech for acquiring the resources to tier 1 and make the techs for the building upgrades late tier 1 requiring the appropriate resource tech.

The only issue is that someone with little experience might not know which resource is used for which building upgrade if they can't see it in game. I even forget, and I've been following the development super closely and playing a ton. I'd add a mention of which buildings it leads to somewhere if possible.

I think trying to balance around the limited job slots from these production buildings is actually a really important part of the challenge in early game, so I don't like the idea of removing the costs entirely. Maintaining a proper balance of jobs, housing, and amenities as your population grows is one of my favorite things about the new economy.

 

[Leylos]

I don't see any issue with the current system. Having the economy spiral out of control is due to excessive min-maxing.

If you make sure you produce plenty of resources of one type BEFORE you build things that deplete them, you will be absolutely fine.

The only thing they need to do is making immediately visible how many rare resources you have on the top bar. Constantly having to click on that little icon is very annoying.

 

[Verx90]

Still in 2.1 there was a building to transfrom energy to minerals - I guess it can be returned (or is it in the game already? I saw one on FE planets, but nothing like that for regular empires)

it is too izy to come up with energy , that building would make all the change to economy go to waste, and min-maxer greedy minerals eaters happy ; but don't realy help the game balance. ( why having a megastructure that give 1000 minerals if you can build 4 habitats full of those buildings do the same ?)

 

[mruuh]

Techs requiring a resource, appearing before the Techs that unlock said resource is the greater issue.

Perhaps you already found those strategic resources naturally occurring in space, and are mining them.

It seems obvious to me that the technology to make use of a resource found naturally (a tier2 building in this case) becomes available earlier than a technology to artificially produce that resource ("Ok, we need more of X than what we found out there, how can we make more of X ourselves? Scientists, give me an answer!").

 

[MightyFox]

Still in 2.1 there was a building to transfrom energy to minerals - I guess it can be returned (or is it in the game already? I saw one on FE planets, but nothing like that for regular empires)

This is still in the game. It's now called the Galactic market.

In all seriousness though, anything that turns energy -> something else, will destroy the entire point of this edition to the game.