Strategic Resources post 2.2

[FlyingPhoenix]

Something I found really bad when I first started playing Stellaris was the implementation of strategic resources, where strategic resources could be located in a different place from the starbases using them, meaning if you lost the strategic resource due to conquest that you also lost the paired strategic resource.

One thing I found good about a previous update to Stellaris was that it removed this, and instead made the effects of strategic resources global. The developers justified this discussion with reasoning I agreed with.

Now in 2.2, strategic resources and planetary buildings are married up in such a way that they aren't likely to be local to one another, and once again, when another player/AI conquers your strategic resource production, you need to go into other areas of your empire to sort out the mess it has left your economy in. This is due to the maintenance cost of strategic resources on these buildings.

Further, the decision to make some decisions upfront costs rather than upkeep costs was justified as being in line with human psychology.

I am therefore confused as to why the developers have flip-flopped on this. I would prefer for the economy to require no upkeep cost and a larger upfront cost of strategic resources for each advanced building.

 

[glee8e]

Here is a mod that does exactly what you want.

Look I don't want to be the mod-does-it jerk here and I know if this change is necessary then it should be in base game instead of as a mod, but why not try the idea first instead of just plain arguing? If you still find a large upfront cost more comfortable, you will have more facts to back your claim, like you got to the same production stat but mentally easier with the changes made by the mod, and devs will be more likely to accept your idea.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

Here is a mod that does exactly what you want.

Look I don't want to be the mod-does-it jerk here and I know if this change is necessary then it should be in base game instead of as a mod, but why not try the idea first instead of just plain arguing? If you still find a large upfront cost more comfortable, you will have more facts to back your claim, like you got to the same production stat but mentally easier with the changes made by the mod, and devs will be more likely to accept your idea.

Yes, you're being the mod-does-it jerk.

It has been a month since Le Guin has been released, and I have played the game extensively both with upkeep costs implemented (Le Guin) and with upkeep costs removed (Pre Le-Guin). The best implementation of strategic resources was when starbase modules did not have an upkeep cost.

When the Contingency conquered my core-strategic resource production worlds, causing an empire wide shortage that required me to completely rebalance my economy, I encountered the very same issue which was present in version 1 of the game - that is, strategic resource production and strategic resource consumption are not coupled

 

[xoxo]

eh? youre aware you can buy them ont he market / produce them for minerals? whats this bitching about? . strat ressources are fun, the only issue i have with them is that dark matter / zro / nanites are somewhat way too lategame. espeically dark matter

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

Yes i am aware, it changes nothing.

 

[-Temple-]

I like it like this, a lot of people like it like this, if you don't just use the mod

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

Making vanilla buildings not cost rare resource upkeep through mods does not play well with buildings from other mods that cost rare resource upkeep.

Solutions:

Distributed rare resource synthesis mitigates the economic damage the loss of a few planets will cause.

Build excess of rare resource production and maintain a stockpile. Dancing on the knife's edge of using all the resources is a player choice of not having emergency funds.

Don't lose your territory. Systems are not meant to be used as some sort of ablative armour. Kill that crisis or enemy empire.

 

[Everstill]

I like it like this, a lot of people like it like this, if you don't just use the mod

I agree with OP in this point.

Stellaris developers removed all the upkeep-based things and used upfront cost instead. You can see this on the Edicts, now the planetary Decision and even the Megastructures building and upgrades are upfront instead of consuming X per month.

So, everything in the game now have upfront costs, except the new Strategic Resource.

They already justified the upfront costs with the Decision making psycology, where you choose how to invest your special resource (like Influence) instead of just ticking something.

Pros:

- Better decision making in where to invest your Strategic Resource.
- Sense of pride and achievement when getting enough resource to upgrade something. (lul)
- Easier to micromanage economy.
- Simpler to plan the economy paying an upfront cost.

And the biggest one: THIS WILL HELP THE AI TO NOT BEING BRAINDEAD.

The AI strugle a lot, imagine balacing the new economy with Strategic Resource upkeep. It's better for the AI to just pay an upfront cost and not implode when something bad happens to them.

I am in favor of this change just because it will help the AI a lot. Some things like Nanites can keep the Upkeep, of course.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

I like it like this, a lot of people like it like this, if you don't just use the mod

According to Wiz, the psychology actually says most people would prefer to avoid the ongoing cost, which is why the developers made the change they did. This is at odds with that philosophy.

To satisfy @glee8e 's curiosity, I could play modded Stellaris, but I doubt my perspective and argument would change.The presumption behind that post was that I was being belligerent about this change.

Mods or no mods really isn't relevant to this thread.

Making vanilla buildings not cost rare resource upkeep through mods does not play well with buildings from other mods that cost rare resource upkeep.

Mod conflicts are the problems of the player installing conflicting mods, and I'm really not interested in discussing mods. I don't play modded Stellaris, my discussion is about Stellaris without mods, end of that line of discussion.

Solutions:

Distributed rare resource synthesis mitigates the economic damage the loss of a few planets will cause.

Build excess of rare resource production and maintain a stockpile. Dancing on the knife's edge of using all the resources is a player choice of not having emergency funds.

Don't lose your territory. Systems are not meant to be used as some sort of ablative armour. Kill that crisis or enemy empire.

I like your solutions, and I would prefer to be focused on killing the crisis or enemy empire.

What makes you think there isn't a stockpile? That's a stop-gap measure, it doesn't address the root cause of the problem. I have emergency funds.

However in a strategy game the undesirable outcomes can and should be able to happen, regardless of whether the player is expecting them. In other words, "git gud" isn't actually a solution.

Playing the game requires me to retool my economy so as to ensure that it is possible and feasible to kill the crisis/enemy empire, requiring I'd estimate a hour or twos worth of of tedious micromanagement to do. This is the same issue that was in 1.0, where strategic resources could be cut off from the modules using them, meaning you needed to hunt through all your starports to find which one is missing the required resource.

 

[Derp]

just build your friggin refineries on the planets that use the resources if you're that paranoid about it

 

[Pointyearedgit]

you can make the same arguments for food and minerals or your ecumenopolis or 2, capturing any specialized planet can force you to rebalance your economy, building upkeep or no

if we are talking about nanites, the only strategic resource you can't just produce anywhere that is also used for building upkeep, well I'd say that is WAD. The L-cluster *should* be strategic, and you aren't losing any jobs in the process.

just build your friggin refineries on the planets that use the resources if you're that paranoid about it

basically this, if you are specializing your planets and the enemy takes one, you will need to rework your remaining worlds

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

Why all the passive-aggression guys? If you don't have anything nice to say, don't post in this thread.

Yes, you can, but to lose enough food/minerals/CG requires a lot more losses than just sniping one world which cripples the empire.

basically this, if you are specializing your planets and the enemy takes one, you will need to rework your remaining worlds

which is bloody boring busywork, and the cost of doing that work doesn't reflect the marginal benefit of specialising the world in the first place.

 

[Agamemnic]

Agree with the OP fully. The AI barely even upgrades its buildings and simply cannot manage that upkeep cost from a planning perspective.

Upfront cost is nice and clean and its something the devs have preferred in the past.

Until the AI can manage to upgrade and upkeep, this feature will always be micro-heavy advantage to the player over the AI

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Personally I like the logic of the OP (the developers did say why upkeep based costs were to be avoided) but I'm on the opposite side. I disagree with the both the OP and the devs who wanted to get rid of upkeep based costs.

I want everything that you want on continuously to be paid in upkeep - growth boosting planetary decisions, buildings, edicts etc. otherwise they turn off at annoying times and you may not be able to reapply them for months or years because you can't easily budget these ongoing, predictable and sometimes essential expenses.

I find it extremely annoying having to do mental maths to work out how much I need to be earning per turn to achieve the required stockpiles in say 13 years time (for influence, time varies with each edict duration boost) or to micro the food to be stockpiled and spent over 13 planets (for decisions) or worse have some of my warfare edicts turn off in the middle of a major battle dropping my fleet power significantly and resulting in extra casualties (that's happened multiple times for me, maybe I'm just really unlucky).

I've been finding the planetary decisions an annoying hassle, each time I go to a planet and notice it's been sat at reduced growth for the past 5 or 10 years because I didn't bother to check it I feel a little bit sad. But equally it's frustrating that the UI doesn't show the rare resources or give me any warning that one is running out. I'm also annoyed by the edicts when I'm not quite sure if I'll have enough influence when they run out to apply 2 or 3 edicts or have to wait a few years to reapply the third and then they're all out of sync.

Also since we're talking about rare resources the entire system feels incomplete - no good uses for the extra rare resources. Pathetically tiny amounts needed for the rare resource edicts and ship parts while you need loads for each building.

I'm not sure what the best solutions are... but I think any change will annoy some players. But I do think major changes and additions are needed.

 

[Volapyk]

I agree with DrFranknfurter, I would much rather see all the edicts be something that you toggle on/off with a per month upkeep, the microing is horrendous having to check everything manually is so annoying I usually stop using the planet based edicts after a while.

As for OP I don't follow your logic, you loose a major part of your economy and need to adjust, and that is bad? I don't agree with that, loosing a major agricultural world causing a massive deficit of food should have an impact, and I should be forced to adapt to that change. Same with any other big and sudden loss of any ressource in my economy.

 

[Little Green Mensch]

Having edicts be an ongoing cost makes some sense (or having an option for them to auto-renew but expire if there are insufficient resources).

Having tier 2 buildings cost not only an initial investment of strategic resources but also an upkeep is pretty punishing, especially if you get unlucky with resource extraction/refining techs. I think the reasonable compromise solution is to have tier 2 buildings have an upfront strategic resource cost without maintenance, and have tier 3 buildings have both an upfront and maintenance cost.

This might help the AI keep up for longer, especially given how punishing strategic resource shortages can be - there's at least one thread where a player's economy death-spiralled because of a single rare resource shortage, which snowballed into shortages of consumer goods, etc.

 

[Everstill]

Personally I like the logic of the OP (the developers did say why upkeep based costs were to be avoided) but I'm on the opposite side. I disagree with the both the OP and the devs who wanted to get rid of upkeep based costs.

I want everything that you want on continuously to be paid in upkeep - growth boosting planetary decisions, buildings, edicts etc. otherwise they turn off at annoying times and you may not be able to reapply them for months or years because you can't easily budget these ongoing, predictable and sometimes essential expenses.

I find it extremely annoying having to do mental maths to work out how much I need to be earning per turn to achieve the required stockpiles in say 13 years time (for influence, time varies with each edict duration boost) or to micro the food to be stockpiled and spent over 13 planets (for decisions) or worse have some of my warfare edicts turn off in the middle of a major battle dropping my fleet power significantly and resulting in extra casualties (that's happened multiple times for me, maybe I'm just really unlucky).

I've been finding the planetary decisions an annoying hassle, each time I go to a planet and notice it's been sat at reduced growth for the past 5 or 10 years because I didn't bother to check it I feel a little bit sad. But equally it's frustrating that the UI doesn't show the rare resources or give me any warning that one is running out. I'm also annoyed by the edicts when I'm not quite sure if I'll have enough influence when they run out to apply 2 or 3 edicts or have to wait a few years to reapply the third and then they're all out of sync.

Also since we're talking about rare resources the entire system feels incomplete - no good uses for the extra rare resources. Pathetically tiny amounts needed for the rare resource edicts and ship parts while you need loads for each building.

I'm not sure what the best solutions are... but I think any change will annoy some players. But I do think major changes and additions are needed.

I don't disagree with you on the Campaigns and Decisions point.

Campaigns and Decisions are basically things you want to renew everything. Having to every 10 years to renew the Decisions in every world and renew every Campaign is ridiculous.

AND in fact, the Edicts that use Strategic Resource are one that is better with upkeep cost than renewing every time. The ones that should stay with Upfront costs are the Influence based edicts and Ambitions.

I even have a suggestion:

- What if we have a Tech that transform the Campaigns and Decisions to upkeep based on the formula of COST/DURATION every month? This way we get the best of the 2 worlds: upfront cost based decision on the early game and no-micro upkeep based for the late game.

 

[Everstill]

I agree with DrFranknfurter, I would much rather see all the edicts be something that you toggle on/off with a per month upkeep, the microing is horrendous having to check everything manually is so annoying I usually stop using the planet based edicts after a while.

As for OP I don't follow your logic, you loose a major part of your economy and need to adjust, and that is bad? I don't agree with that, loosing a major agricultural world causing a massive deficit of food should have an impact, and I should be forced to adapt to that change. Same with any other big and sudden loss of any ressource in my economy.

The edicts and decisions are ok, I even agree that it should change, but the point is how this will help the AI a lot.

Let's face it, the AI will not be able to handle this amount of resources. They will keep not upgrading things and will implode when they lose the Strategic Resource production.

I really think we should test the upfront cost of Strategic Resource for the upgrades to see how the AI handle it.

Calculations:

- We can calculate an upfront cost of what? 200 years? So if a building cost 12 upkeep, to upgrade a building it should cost 2400 Strategic Resource. We can truncate the value to 2000 or whatever we want to balance the buildings. For example, some buildings have better value than others, but they cost 1 Strategic Resource the same way. With upfront cost we can value buildings better, some costing more and some costing less.

- Translate some of the lost Strategic Resource upkeep to the Energy upkeep, like from 2 energy to 10 energy (Strategic Resource have a relative value of 8.5).

- Increase Strategic Resource cost of Ship parts, because it's laughable low.

EDIT: I forgot about an important one! We can charge Strategic Resource values for things like Ecumenopolis that are OP as fuck and don't use SR.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

As for OP I don't follow your logic, you loose a major part of your economy and need to adjust, and that is bad? I don't agree with that, loosing a major agricultural world causing a massive deficit of food should have an impact, and I should be forced to adapt to that change. Same with any other big and sudden loss of any ressource in my economy.

No.

1. I think it's bad that the devs can't stick to decisions they've made and justified in the past. Firstly that strategic resources were altered in such a way that the Starports didn't require resource upkeep on modules when access to that resource could be lost because of the issues having to hunt through every starport to find the one missing the resource, and secondly the removal of upfront cost in favour of upkeep cost.

The source of the disruption to the economy doesn't matter - the problem is that the disruption can be made and this leads into point 2:

2. I think it's bad that the adjustment which occurs requires such a high level of player attention and horrendous levels of micro. This is related to a post I made last year or possibly even the year before about automation. The player makes a decision, but then the implementation of it takes a long time and requires the player to keep interacting with the system being changed because of arbitrary restrictions on how quickly and effectively you can implement any decision you make.

Other threads have been talking about point 2, and I have raised point 1 in this thread.

 

[Agamemnic]

I find it extremely annoying having to do mental maths to work out how much I need to be earning per turn to achieve the required stockpiles in say 13 years time .

But you already do this for energy, minerals and food with relative ease no?

And is it not more taxing to continually have assess and balance your per turn gain when upgrading buildings? A once off payment allows you to just click and forget about it.

More importantly though is the AI. Any method must be something the AI can handle. And we already know the AI can handle once-off costs (since does so quite well with energy, food etc).