Streamlining planetary management: try harder

[permeakra]

There are complains about planetary management micro on this forum. Some of them quite loud.
There is also a fact that AI sucks big time in utilizing current model, not in the last part because it has to balance interactions of districts and buildings.
There is me and I think a few other people who think that buildings are weird: sometimes they clearly represent something planet-wide (like energy grid), but sometimes no.


The point is, we have to return to a planet every so often to kick it in the new direction once new building slot is open. So, why not let us do this in advance?

I think, AI can build districts when needed fine enough since most of the time it is "build district for deficient resource or add city district in case of overcrowding", so letting it handle this part should be OK. But building slots host many buildings with planet-wide effect. It is reasonable to think about them as infrastructure networks. For example, energy grid is fairly obvious a network of energy transmission lines and the control hub (btw, why it grants technician job? It should give specialist- or even ruler-level job).

So what if we assume exactly this: that districts represent planetary areas focused on specific production type and that the buildings are infrastructure decisions, deciding role of the planet? This is fairly easy to accomplish, moving most production from buildings to districts and using specialized "buildings" to enable some jobs and not the others. This would help AI to deal with player-designated planet specialization. Also we might have AI capable to specialize planets meaningfully. (ah, sweet dreams)

Spoiler

Example design:
Let's say that we have 6 distic types: 3 rural districts, city districts, industrial districs and government district.
Rural districts remain the same. City districts remain the same, but they might host 1 researcher job per district if there is building "scientific data network" or 2 researcher jobs if there is building "scientific computing network". They might host 1 priest job if there is building "planetary congregation", or entertainer jobs for "planetary holotheater network" And so on. Similarly, industrial districts would host artisans or metallurgist with a chance to increase their numbers and efficiency using specialized buildings. And government districts would host law enforcement, adminstrators and other ruler-class jobs.


There is, of course, the matter of special resources that probably should remain in buildings (there is too much of them and their use is too low to reasonably well implement them as district-jobs), but this is fine as they are rares. Even opening infinite building slots we can limit their use making their production, for example, promote crime and corruption (and this does make sense, as rare and costly resources breed crime) Of course, it would make sense to have them use different building grid, separate from other grids.

Another issues is soldier jobs. They probably should also stay in buildings, similar to rare resources buildings... but maybe they should be folded into government districs.

Now, this would be another overhaul of game economy. But this time we would stay in same general framework, so it should be a lot more smooth than what we had with 2.1->2.2 transition.

What do you think?

 

[Ryika]

To me, your idea seems to be all over the place to be honest, and I'm not quite sure what exactly you're even trying to achieve.

The current system is rather simple in the end, and if we look at it in very generalized terms, there are basically two world "archetypes" that you're aiming for:
- A district-focused world that uses its district slots to create basic resources, and its building slots to fulfill the needs of the people on that world, and whatever slots are left for some extra productivity.
- And a manufacturing-focused world (which includes research worlds, as Science is basically "manufactured" in the new system) that has outsourced most of its housing needs into city districts so it can use a larger portion of its building slots for manufacturing.

The AI is not able to create perfectly specialized worlds like that, but that's not really a problem with the system, it's a problem with the AI not being willing and able to restructure their planets over time. They only ever construct what they need right now in the slots that are available right now. Your overhaul would not address this issue, and I think no overhaul really can, because it's a core part of the AI design to think about now and the near future, not about how its planets might look in 100 years.

But that aside, you now want to create additional districts and make it so the jobs of those districts depend on whether you also have specific buildings on that planet? I don't understand why, it just seems to add complexity that doesn't really add any value to planet management, and certainly doesn't make it easier to understand for the AI. There are also further oddities with the system, such as... if you have 6 city districts and need an entertainer, do you then need to construct that building and disable 5 of the extra jobs that you'd get? That seems... silly. Linking the two systems is bound to run into scaling issues.

And from a completely different angle... districts were introduced to differentiate the natural resources that are available on a planet in a meaningful way that's easy to show in the UI. As such, the current system seems to work very well, you have three districts that make use of the planetary resources, and a fourth one for worlds that don't want to make use of all the resources that are available. Diluting this very slim system with further districts that are not based on planetary resources seems like a flavor mismatch.

 

[permeakra]

Linking the two systems is bound to run into scaling issues.

There IS a problem of scaling, because the systems are already linked by pops, amenities and crime. We have fixed number of building slots per planet, meaning that slots on a big planet are a lot more valuable than on a small planet because big planet needs more obligatory amenity and law enforcement buildings, but has same amount of slots to build them. On the other hand, the value of districts decreases with planet size.

Planets are big. relative value of the building slots and district slots should remain the same for different planet size or one of them should be of no concern. Linking the systems by sum is indeed bound to create scaling issues - and we already have them, because indeed, districts and buildings are bound via sum values (housing, amenities, crime). If we use buildings to represent planetary infrastructure with indirect effect modifying districts, we actually eliminate scaling issues. (though ideally we should make buildings cost and upkeep scale with planet size as well)

if you have 6 city districts and need an entertainer, do you then need to construct that building and disable 5 of the extra jobs that you'd get? That seems... silly.

Indeed it seems that way because you rarely if ever need 1 entertainer, usually you need a fraction of your planetary population to be entertainers. Using jobs-per-district makes it a lot easier to maintain such arrangement. Actually, creating entertainer jobs per xxx pops might be even better, I'll have to think about it.

Diluting this very slim system with further districts that are not based on planetary resources seems like a flavor mismatch.

Actually, as of now I have hard time finding what a planet specializes in, since I have to check numbers of three districts and compare them with numbers of icons of several buildings types that sometimes are not even sorted.

I would like to have two or three buildings to clearly depict what the planet specializes in and the districts to show the specifics. Manual control of job occupations should be simply gone.

 

[AlanC9]

Trying to find what a planet is shouldn't be a thing unless you've just captured it. If a planet is specialized properly, won't it tell you that it's an Agri-World, Tech-World, etc.? Before I've achieved that, I often tag the planet with a letter code if I've got so many that I can't remember what each is going to be.

 

[permeakra]

If a planet is specialized properly, won't it tell you that it's an Agri-World, Tech-World, etc.?

Only if it is a gestalt-world. Since only for them you can choose composition of districts freely. When I play as a regular or simply have no gestalt-worlds yet I always have at least 2 specializations for each planet (one from natural resources and one from the choice of production/research buildings).

 

[maxp779]

Honestly the current system is fine. I just want the AI to manage some planets of my choosing for me. Or sectors that automatically get sent resources every month so I don't need to keep topping them up. Ability to tell the AI "this is a mineral planet" etc would be good too.

Current system is fine. But needs some quality of life work. Maybe a lot depending on the AI.

 

[permeakra]

But that aside, you now want to create additional districts and make it so the jobs of those districts depend on whether you also have specific buildings on that planet?

I really want to avoid creation of additional districts, it simply might be necessary. But yes, I want buildings to modify districts and nothing else, because as of now we have buildings that do modify districts (OK, technically they modify jobs, but since the jobs they modify in 3 cases are provided mostly by districts and in one more usually are provided mostly districts it is more or less modification of districts) and buildings that do not, but do something else.

The point is, indeed, scaling and meaning of buildings and districts. Districts represents chunks of planetary surface, but what do buildings represent ? Currently some represent infrastructure, because they provide scaling planet-wide bonus (research institute, energy grid, mineral purification plant, etc). But some represent single building or chunk of planet surface (same as districts do!) as they simply provide some jobs or even housing (luxury residence and all production buildings). Naturally they clash.

Current system is fine. But needs some quality of life work. Maybe a lot depending on the AI.

No, it is not. It simply is not bad enough to justify an immediate and complete overhaul. The districts part is a vast improvement over tiles system, but the buildings part is just leftover of tile system in its worst.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I'm not sure about the suggestion, the proposed changes are too broad for me to have any idea how it would work in practice except for one part I love:

City districts remain the same, but they might host 1 researcher job per district if there is building "scientific data network" or 2 researcher jobs if there is building "scientific computing network". They might host 1 priest job if there is building "planetary congregation", or entertainer jobs for "planetary holotheater network" And so on.

Currently we only have the administrator -> science director/merchant/other swap given from Civics.

I'd love a building that swapped the clerk given from city districts to ANYTHING else. My only question is implementation, with civics it's easy as you make them incompatible with each other so it's not trying to swap to two different things but for buildings perhaps the UI would need to be improved to show the buildings are incompatible, or what would actually happen if you built two different clerk-swapping buildings.

Also most jobs are more valuable than clerks and city districts are only limited by planet size so it could be overpowered if available early and if it swaps all clerks. Sounds like a very fun sort of late-game overpowered technology though.
e.g. A dark matter upgrade to each boosting building (energy, food, minerals, research etc.) that converts either ALL or SOME of the city district jobs into jobs of the relevant type. Perhaps ALL jobs for minerals/etc and SOME job for tech/consumer goods/alloys etc.

A version with a more limited job-swap would only convert 1 job per matching district/building or another, fixed number e.g. 8 jobs so you could get the full benefit out of multiple max tier buildings, each swapping 8 clerks on a size 25 world. It would be significantly weaker than converting ALL jobs, but could even potentially allow several upgraded specialization buildings to coexist and still work to their full extent. It would also give some use out of dark matter which would be nice.

 

[AlanC9]

Only if it is a gestalt-world. Since only for them you can choose composition of districts freely. When I play as a regular or simply have no gestalt-worlds yet I always have at least 2 specializations for each planet (one from natural resources and one from the choice of production/research buildings).

What's a gestalt-world?

And the district resource specialization can't be hidden from you; it's inherent in the district colors, right? So the only thing you need to remember or flag is the production specialization. That should be flagged for you if you've done enough to actually get a bonus.

 

[eagletrekkie]

What's a gestalt-world?

And the resource specialization can't be hidden from you; it's inherent in the district colors, right?

Hive or machine world

 

[AlanC9]

Thanks. Don't have DLCs.

 

[permeakra]

And the district resource specialization can't be hidden from you; it's inherent in the district colors, right? So the only thing you need to remember or flag is the production specialization. That should be flagged for you if you've done enough to actually get a bonus.

*rolling eyes*
Yet again: I usually have planets mine whatever resources they have so they usually end as rural worlds, and one production specialization (research or alloys or civ. industries. I rarely bother with advanced resources). Guessing the latter requires me to parse buildings grid first, which is annoying on scanning through planet list.

 

[AlanC9]

Hey, you mentioned the resource specialization. I thought that was for a reason, and I couldn't figure out what that was.

Why are your planets ending as rural worlds? Surely the production bonus takes over later, unless the local resource deposits are really lopsided.

I'm not quite clear what you mean by "guessing the latter." A Tech-world will show as such in the outliner. It's trivial to flag a planet in the outliner if you haven't specialized it enough to get the bonus.

 

[permeakra]

Why are your planets ending as rural worlds? Surely the production bonus takes over later, unless the local resource deposits are really lopsided.

Because habitats. They give place to offload industry/research, but not place to offload mining. Mid-late game I strained with basic resources, not derived resources. Thus planets have all possible resource districts built.

 

[AlanC9]

Ah. Again, no DLC. I get the concept of habitats, but I don't actually play them, so I miss the implications sometimes.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

Buildings to my mind have always been 'what are the prominent building sectors found in each city on the planet', whilst districts are the 'what is the primary use of land on this planet.' In that sense, districts are city sprawl, farmland, quarries/mines and power grids / wind farms.

Buildings are along the lines of 'on this planet, each city has a central political headquarters, power plants, mineral processors, a temple in each city, 10% of housing is for a wealthy elite, with a military fortress. It's vague enough to let you headcanon what's what without really overly complicating the system.