Why do some people not like Administrative Capacity?

[ThePangaean]

You can't build something larger than McDonalds without at least some form of internal accounting system (bureaucracy).
How are you going to have an Empire across multiple star systems without a few bureaucrats here and there.

Like I'd welcome a rework for admin cap that also dives into internal strife to make the game feel more alive (actual civil wars etc) but removing what little content there is about managing a growing star empire by removing bureaucrats from the equation feels like going backwards and I do not understand why that's even an option.

 

[Methone]

It's because it's too simple to manage. The old system, where growing no matter what incurred the same penalties at the same rate for everyone, was working just fine. Now just have a dedicated bureaucrat planet or two and you have basically no penalties no matter how large you grow.

 

[Dire]

I am personally "fine" with them conceptually, but when they were introduced, large empires were already able to overcome Sprawl penalties simply by producing more unity and science. Now they can have pops work bureaucrat jobs instead, and I don't know how it works out numerically, but my feeling was that it made science growth even more snowball-y for large empires.

I'm not a close forum reader though this is just the impression I got.

 

[ThePangaean]

It's because it's too simple to manage. The old system, where growing no matter what incurred the same penalties at the same rate for everyone, was working just fine. Now just have a dedicated bureaucrat planet or two and you have basically no penalties no matter how large you grow.

And you think not having to manage that recourse is not too simple?

I think it's quite stupid to remove a feature because it only half finished.
Larger empires should have penalties based on internal strife (actual civil wars and pirates that scale with your fleet power) and the bureaucracy could be linked to the deeper internal gameplay. Removing game content by taking away bureaucrats does not make any sense to me.

 

[Serenity84]

The idea is fine. The implementation is not.

Even before sprawl was its own number it was always part of the game and a bigger empire inevitably had higher research costs. Now with bureaucrats you can completely compensate sprawl, which means that science is way too easy. You're through the tech tree extremely fast and can stack repeatables every few months.
There are also some conceptual oddities like being able to turn new colonies into administrative centers rather than having your bureaucracy centered on your capital planets (including sector capitals).

I don't think they need to be removed entirely, but there need to be some significant changes. Though I also like the idea of using Unity for this.

 

[ThePangaean]

It feels like some people are angry at bureaucrats because they just want to penalise a playstyle they hate other people doing instead of actually putting content in the game that would balance things properly.

 

[Less2]

It's just a flat tax on production in the end. Everyone has to pay the same tax and everyone suffers the same. You could abstract it away and lower base production slightly and basically nothing would change. Pops are also millions/billions of people already, it's not unreasonable to assume that a farmer pop also represents the mid level managers for the food production.

 

[Methone]

And you think not having to manage that recourse is not too simple?

I think it's quite stupid to remove a feature because it only half finished.
Larger empires should have penalties based on internal strife (actual civil wars and pirates that scale with your fleet power) and the bureaucracy could be linked to the deeper internal gameplay. Removing game content by taking away bureaucrats does not make any sense to me.

No, I don't. Because right now, that resource is so incredibly easy to manage, it's basically not there at all and you get empires spanning half the galaxy using all of their research with max efficiency even compared to tiny ones. That's... busted. The whole point of the Admin Cap was to reign in larger empires, but the introduction of Bureaucrats made it do precisely the opposite, made them stronger than ever.

The smart thing to do would be to toss the Bureaucrat jobs entirely. Go back to when expanding imposed penalties, no ifs ands or buts, and you had to keep that in mind when expanding.

You say 'removing game content by taking away bureaucrats' doesn't make sense, but bureaucrats themselves take away game content.

 

[ThePangaean]

You created this thread, because you seemingly wanted to have an honest discussion about this topic, yet the moment you get someone to start explaining their position to you, you come back with accusations and a dismissal of their position.

How is this useful in any way?

Because penalising playstyles for no reason is very bad!

Also I am going to explain why the worry of a larger empire having the same efficiency as a small empire should not be a problem.

If there is a large empires and a small empire if they are both good at the game the smaller empire will have more science than the larger empire..
Every time you build a battleship or a space station that is alloys that is not going to build a science habitat.
So an entire fleet being built and maintained is going to be the same cost as a whole fleet of habitats.

This worry from being out teched by a larger empire is only a worry if you are bad at the game.

Larger Empires should not have penalties coming from nowhere the penalties should be from reworked pirates and internal strife (civil wars etc). This is something that actually makes thematic sense. Penalties from nowhere does not make thematic sense and is just penalising playing wide for no reason. The only reason I can think of is if you are bad at the game.

 

[ThePangaean]

It's just a flat tax on production in the end. Everyone has to pay the same tax and everyone suffers the same. You could abstract it away and lower base production slightly and basically nothing would change. Pops are also millions/billions of people already, it's not unreasonable to assume that a farmer pop also represents the mid level managers for the food production.

That's a good point that farm managers could be abstracted into the farmer jobs but another role that Bureaucrats fill is letting you pay for edicts (going over your edict capacity) by enabling Farming/Research subsidies.
Bureaucrats fill the role of the public sector in this instance and that's a good little mechanic that would not be in the game without Bureaucrats.

 

[Pancakelord]

There are also some conceptual oddities like being able to turn new colonies into administrative centers rather than having your bureaucracy centered on your capital planets (including sector capitals).

This is actually a running issue with a few mechanics added post 2.2. E.g. trade also sees the bulk of your piracy appearing near your capital (assuming you've not got a starbase-chain, or gateways), where TV throughput is highest. When piracy should really be worst out on the fringes of an empire, not near its core worlds.

The main issues with bureaucrats are:

1. You can make as many as you like with no internal drawbacks - i.e. no bloated Bureaucracy (in addition to them voiding the sprawl penalties)
2. They can be put on any world without issue, be it a fresh colony or the capital. It cheapens your core worlds.
3. You can min max them in a way the AI cannot.

I'm of the opinion that they can do one of three things to try and salvage it

1. For every bureaucrat in your empire, increase the cost of buildings, districts, starbases, ships and armies by 0.x%. so you're getting more tech by bypassing sprawl, but your bloated Bureaucracy is making everything else more expensive - making it harder to implement that tech you've gotten.
   • However this effect could just be added to sprawl/AC itself, without needing to use bureaucrats. As an empire grows, stuff gets more expensive, abstracting various shipping costs and price inflation from near unlimited resources.
2. Constrain bureaucrats to specific worlds - capitals and sector capitals. OR
   • However you could just tweak a bureaucrat-free system to offer +x admin cap with every sector capital (x1/2/3 per sector capital, capital building) - meaning the AI can partake in the mechanic without it falling behind as hard [as humans can't minmax the balls off this method]
3. Constrain Bureaucrats to only spawn on the condition of
   • 'one_per_N_pops'(so the jobs will appear on high density world's only)
   • 'one_per_N_worked_specialist_jobs'(so this means no bureaucrats on a farm world, but you'll see them on tech, forge/refinery etc worlds).
   • One_per_N_city_districts - or roll them in to clerks at lower yield (so they'll appear on urban worlds, urban rings and ecumenopoleis in droves)
     • Problem with all 3 of these is a combination of the first two, plus extra performance losses from more checks and per-pop checks (depending on implementation) - for something that can be done via a more simple script/balance pass on sprawl growth.

All in, bureaucrats 'could' be restricted in a few ways to make the "powergap" between Humans and AIs less, or to increase the 'realism' of where Bureaucrats can spawn - or better portray the economic impacts of a bloated administrative class. But there's also something in the software world called 'impact assessment' where you ask 'is this worth the effort? I have a feeling the answer, from PDX will be no.

I say this as someone that loathes cut content - look at all that we've lost since 1.91 for example. But Bureaucrats, since their addition, have always been a tacked on mechanic with a questionable purpose, more 'cure the symptom' (people complaining about admin cap being an opaque / poorly presented - a lot of the pre bureaucrat complaints about sprawl focused on its presentation from what I remember - mechanic they couldn't do much about) than 'cure the problem'(admin caps poor scaling making wide empires far too easy to play Vs tall ones as it is a linear function whilst resource gains from going wider are non-linear (exponential in some cases? ... and better UI presentation).

 

[drawar]

The problem is not the bureaucrats, they are already a cost to work and they occupy building locations that could be devoted to other productions, including science and unity.

The problem (as with the crime system) is that it is a linear system with simple addition and subtraction.

With a nonlinear system for administrative capacity and empire sprawl, even large empires are going to be penalized with a significant bureaucracy. Bureaucracy which could become essential to prevent the empire from collapsing, but which would be gargantuan and which would weigh heavily on the economy of the empire.

For example : Administrative overhaul: empire sprawl penalty and administrative inefficiency

The objective of this idea is that there are two levels of sanction according to the extension of the empire and that it is not possible to completely cancel the penalties, even with massive investment in the administration. The bureaucrats therefore keep their current role and there would be a significant difference between a "small" and "large" empire or a "large" empire with a lot of bureaucracy or little bureaucracy.

There would be two types of penalty: empire sprawl penalty and administrative inefficiency level.

Empire sprawl penalty :
The sprawl empire penalty cannot be directly reduced by the use of bureaucrats, but various other factors: ethics, civic, ascencion perk ... can reduce or increase these penalties.
This penalty affects the cost of technologies, traditions, campaigns and edicts. Penalty for each empire sprawl penalty

• +0.2% Tech cost
• +0.3% Tradition adoption cost
• +0.5% Campaign (Subset of Edicts) cost
• +0.5% Rare resource edicts (Subset of Edicts) cost

Administrative inefficiency level :
This penalty is determined by the level of extension of the empire and the administrative capacity of the empire.
This penalty works by level. This value is not a linear progression.
An example of a formula:
AIL = ES^0.5/(AC^0.2+1)

AIL : administrative ineffiency level
ES : empire sprawl
AC : administrative capacity

Example :
0 to 10 000
100% : empire sprawl = administrative capacity
50% : empire sprawl = 2*administrative capacity
View attachment 748966

0 to 2000
View attachment 748967
The value is always rounded down to the lower unit: 1.2 = 1; 3.8 = 3
The level change is not instantaneous. When we change level (goes up or down), there is an alert to prevent and the change will be effective in 24 months, if the conditions are still met. It might be necessary to provide a counter or other mechanisms to prevent people from activating massively bureaucratic jobs (and then deactivating them) to reinitialize the prossessus during these 24 months.
The purpose of this delay is to allow a little time to be left to manage an increase in your empire without directly changing the level with the associated penalties.
It also slows down the descent of level, if we sufficiently improve our administrative capacity, we must make up for all the late paperwork.

At each level (except from level 11 and above), one (or more) new penalty appears, this penalty will increase with each additional level. The higher the level, the more the efficiency of the empire decreases.
Example :

Level 0 :
No penalty

Level 1 :
No penalty

Level 2 :
+100% Leader upkeep, +100% per additional level

Level 3 :
+25% Army, Ship and Starbase upkeep, +25% per additional level
+25% Army, Ship and Starbase build speed time, +25% per additional level

Level 4 :
+25% District and Building upkeep, +25% per additional level
+25% District and Building build speed time, +25% per additional level

Level 5 :
-25% Amenities, -5% per additional level

Level 6 :
+100% Crime, +25% per additional level

Level 7 :
-20 Stability. -10 per additional level

Level 8 :
-3 Influence, -1 per additional level

Level 9 :
-25% Habitability. -25% per additional level

Level 10 :
-3 Edict capactiy, -1 per additional level


Obviously, this is a quick example to give a general idea. An empire becomes more and more handicapped as its administration becomes ineffective. But optimization, technologies, megastructures and others can partially offset the penalties.
A great empire could have an economic power, if it is not too destabilized, but it will have many weaknesses, and it will have to invest a significant part of its economy in administration.

Obviously, what would be interesting would be if there were different styles of playability. For example, we can rely heavily on the administration to limit penalties. Seek to compensate the penalties via bonuses, allowing to have a smaller administration without the empire being too destabilized. Or to have a mixture of both. And that the possibilities vary according to the empire type: machine, hive, megacorporation and the various normal empires, according to ethics, civics ...

Obviously, the formulas and numbers would have to be adjusted according to the system you want.
But the idea is that the administration plays its own role, that of administering the empire, they are no longer indirect researchers and "producers of unity".
And the empire sprawl can no longer be neutralized, you can just lessen its consequences, but it's more and more difficult as the empire grows, the more you want to diminish it, the more it costs.

But, to a certain extent, you can choose to minimize the bureaucracy, but then you will have to compensate for the penalties. This is not insurmountable for small empires, especially at the end of the game, with a sphere dyson for example, to compensate for the additional costs. The question is no longer: "Am I building a research laboratory or an administration office to facilitate scientific research?" The question becomes: "Am I building the laboratory to improve my scientific research or the office to improve the administration of my empire?"

 

[ThePangaean]

The problem is not the bureaucrats, they are already a cost to work and they occupy building locations that could be devoted to other productions, including science and unity.

The problem (as with the crime system) is that it is a linear system with simple addition and subtraction.

With a nonlinear system for administrative capacity and empire sprawl, even large empires are going to be penalized with a significant bureaucracy. Bureaucracy which could become essential to prevent the empire from collapsing, but which would be gargantuan and which would weigh heavily on the economy of the empire.

For example : Administrative overhaul: empire sprawl penalty and administrative inefficiency



Obviously, the formulas and numbers would have to be adjusted according to the system you want.
But the idea is that the administration plays its own role, that of administering the empire, they are no longer indirect researchers and "producers of unity".
And the empire sprawl can no longer be neutralized, you can just lessen its consequences, but it's more and more difficult as the empire grows, the more you want to diminish it, the more it costs.

But, to a certain extent, you can choose to minimize the bureaucracy, but then you will have to compensate for the penalties. This is not insurmountable for small empires, especially at the end of the game, with a sphere dyson for example, to compensate for the additional costs. The question is no longer: "Am I building a research laboratory or an administration office to facilitate scientific research?" The question becomes: "Am I building the laboratory to improve my scientific research or the office to improve the administration of my empire?"

The nonlinearity idea is novel but I think you are making it a bit too complicated for it to still be fun.
It would be much simpler if you used the current system but for example each new pop contributes double what the pop before it contributed to eating into the administrative capacity. This still kneecaps you for growing more to represent growing complexity of the bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy etc.

Also as you said your idea does have the loophole as you stated people might just enable then disable admin jobs ever 24 months. If your system has such a big flaw like that it might not be a good idea.

 

[Methone]

You want to remove content.
I don't know why, maybe you are bad at the game and don't know how to play tall/peaceful because you've never heard of building habitats instead of conquest.
You do not want to balance the game.

How in the actual good lord do you come to this conclusion?

I think you just wanted people to gush over how awesome and smart you are and the moment anyone brings up anything counter to you, you start shouting about removing content and accusing people of just being 'lol bad'.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Because penalising playstyles for no reason is very bad!

It's not "penalising" and it's not for no reason OP

 

[Echo Candor One]

I like it just fine, but I think it's too easy and cheap to trivialize the mechanic, especially for larger empires. Rather than a problem to manage carefully as you expand, it's a matter of deciding which low-habitability world will house your legion of unlucky paper pushers.

 

[drawar]

The nonlinearity idea is novel but I think you are making it a bit too complicated for it to still be fun.
It would be much simpler if you used the current system but for example each new pop contributes double what the pop before it contributed to eating into the administrative capacity. This still kneecaps you for growing more to represent growing complexity of the bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy etc.

Also as you said your idea does have the loophole as you stated people might just enable then disable admin jobs ever 24 months. If your system has such a big flaw like that it might not be a good idea.

No need to get out of the calculator and it's not the only system in play that isn't linear.
And we can always add a system in play to say how much administrative capacity you would need to reduce the current administrative inefficiency one level.

If the formula has this form, it is also to avoid an exponential growth of penalties to allow big empires to exist, even if they will suffer big penalties and will need a large bureaucracy to avoid collapsing on themselves.

Since Stellaris can house large empires, an exponentially growing system can quickly become problematic.
For example, with your "idea" of double the previous pop, that makes: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, and I don't even have added the addition of the pops.
Even doing with x1.01 instead of x2, the 500th pop is 144.77 and the 600th is 391.58. I avoid cumulating. XD
Obviously you have to factor in the modifiers, but yeah, it ends up exploding "pretty quickly".

For example, in my example at 2000 empire sprawl (with equivalent administrative capacity), we are at level 8 of administrative inefficiency, at 10,000, we are at level 13 "only" (13,68). Certainly, at this level, the empire would already collapse no doubt. And it would undoubtedly be difficult to have an administration efficient enough to go down to at least level 10 (but that would depend on the impact of technologies, traditions and other modifiers), at this level (and before), it would undoubtedly be essential to have dependencies to remain viable.

It is not a "loophole", I speak about it precisely so that this loophole does not exist by creating a system which prevents this abuse. Note that currently you can well activate massive bureaucrats to unlock technologies and traditions and then deactivate them. This flaw already exists today.

 

[ThePangaean]

It's not "penalising" and it's not for no reason OP

How is this not penalising to have an unmitigable malus there for playing wide?
That's what the other poster wanted at least, something I think is a very bad idea.

The reason given of being afraid of wide empires having a lot of research compared to a small (tall) empire is a bad reason as I've said before if an Empire is going wide alloys spent on fleets and war is alloys not spent on Science Habitats. That reason is only a reason if you do not understand how to play tall.

A lot has been added to Stellaris since the original sprawl mechanic was replaced by bureaucrats.

 

[Nevars]

Because it failed to do what it is supposed to do.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Because it failed to do what it is supposed to do.

Did it? Wasn't the main goal to make it "interactive" rather than "punishing"?