Why do some people not like Administrative Capacity?

[Brael]

The main problem with this is that your main source of starbases is the number of systems you have. Which means this will only weaken small empires (who generally have fewer starbase capacity) and relatively benefit large empires, which doesn't deal with the original problem of snowballing, but rather actually causes more snowballing.

Not necessarily, because you have ascension perks such as +5 starbases which greatly change in value. You also have traditions like expansion, which could have a competing branch so that expansion is going wide while something else is going tall. You can also always adjust the formulas for starbases from systems versus more starbase from techs. That tuning would all be relatively easy to implement, and probably balance.

The biggest factor is that if tall is to be a thing, you need a way to have a high concentration of large planets in nearby systems, as well as ways to scale bonuses on resources extracted from them to incentivize staying population dense.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

Not necessarily, because you have ascension perks such as +5 starbases which greatly change in value. You also have traditions like expansion, which could have a competing branch so that expansion is going wide while something else is going tall. You can also always adjust the formulas for starbases from systems versus more starbase from techs. That tuning would all be relatively easy to implement, and probably balance.

The biggest factor is that if tall is to be a thing, you need a way to have a high concentration of large planets in nearby systems, as well as ways to scale bonuses on resources extracted from them to incentivize staying population dense.

It could work, but it still doesn't prevent a tech rush as you can boom technology and then convert your starbases to anchorages when you reach repeatable techs

Likewise bureaucrats do have an advantage over starbases in that they do impose an economic cost, each bureaucrat could be doing a different job and requires consumer goods. It's just that the cost isn't high enough.

Instead I would either make Bureacrats more expensive / less potent, or have admin cost get a scaling multiplier based on distance, so large sprawling empires have a much more difficult time with admin, and likewise large planets near your empires core impose much lower admin penalties. You might want to relocate populations closer to your core and not have large populations in distant regions. This would give smaller empires a much bigger advantage.

 

[Nevars]

How is your definition of tall gameplay? I am asking because I usually encounter two different ideas.

Low number of systems or low population

For me it's low number of systems relative to wide but still have high pops and have massive swarm of tributary to outsource your basic resources from them thus making majority of your pops produce alloys, CG, tech and unity instead of getting tied up in basic resources production.

 

[Mohreb]

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.

How do hate I things that scale with your fleet power (or level or overall anything unrelated).
Pirates scaling with trade power, why not, but please let go this concept of,
"oh it should be challenging for the sake of being challenging, so we should make it scale on player power" (instead of something related to the thingamagingy)
Feels sooooo cheap in each game, and boringly uncreative. Without even starting to speak about the implications on the game play (like minmax your levels, and slow down to "cheese" it)

 

[Dirk_Slamchest]

If it were me, not that this has been a popular idea with players, I would make starbases give admin cap similar to how anchorages work currently. If you want more admin cap in order to expand, you pay for it in fleet size/cost.



I feel like the best way to do that, would be more Worm like events. Create ways where players could give up expanding in terms of system count in order to have more planets inside of a smaller footprint. Habitats and Ringworlds help to get there, but come too late to really matter. Also, the concept of needing to specialize planets works against going tall because you'll not fill out enough jobs of one type in many cases. Balancing those resources tends to reward having the ability to go wide.

Modifiers to going tall would require things like more DImensional Portal Researcher style bonuses, or something like a Mineral Processing Plant that's +25% minerals, and then an additional +1% minerals per 5 worked miner jobs.

I think Admin Capacity actually is the appropriate tool to deal with this. It's just not tuned properly. If there were enough limits on where and how many Admin Offices can be built, and if sprawl penalties were high enough, you would have to actually make calculated decisions about when expansion is worth it. The ability to fill a planet with bureaucrats should be something special, unlocked by a Civic or Ascension Perk.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Either number of pops or number of colonies - both seem sensible to me. It's the linear relationship between number of pops and output of every single resource (but especially science) that makes rapid expansion so strong. Raw number of systems means relatively little.

OK just wanted to know since I have encountered different ideas over time.

If we are talking about relatively equal pop numbers then tall should definitely be viable. I feel like a factor that hasn't come up in this thread is also how profitable conquest is.
The only negative after taking over another homeworld is the -20 % happiness for a couple of years. Doesn't matter how you ethics align or even how you are treating these pops. Make it really expensive to integrate these pops and you will have another way to balance expansion.

 

[hart30]

The february update will include the unity and sprawl overhaul. Look forward to it.

 

[Dirk_Slamchest]

I feel like a factor that hasn't come up in this thread is also how profitable conquest is.
The only negative after taking over another homeworld is the -20 % happiness for a couple of years. Doesn't matter how you ethics align or even how you are treating these pops. Make it really expensive to integrate these pops and you will have another way to balance expansion.

Agree. Hard agree. Extreme agree.

Conquered pops should be ineffective workers for a long time unless they are already a citizen species or their Ethics align with yours. They should be basically useless in Specialist jobs.

 

[grommile]

Make it really expensive to integrate these pops

Making a phile/phobe ethos pick compulsory for militarists is an interesting design choice to advocate for, but I'm not sure it would be a good one.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Making a phile/phobe ethos pick compulsory for militarists is an interesting design choice to advocate for, but I'm not sure it would be a good one.

What are you talking about?

 

[grommile]

What are you talking about?

I would naturally expect the non-neutral positions on that slider to provide tools to facilitate dealing with conquered aliens (either by improving your ability to bring them into the fold, or by improving your ability to exploit or exterminate them) that neutral would not.

 

[Dirk_Slamchest]

I would naturally expect the non-neutral positions on that slider to provide tools to facilitate dealing with conquered aliens (either by improving your ability to bring them into the fold, or by improving your ability to exploit or exterminate them) that neutral would not.

Why? Xenophobes already have a tool which is not overpowered: extermination. And xenophiles should have to eat the penalty because they care about the xeno's precious feelings.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

I would naturally expect the non-neutral positions on that slider to provide tools to facilitate dealing with conquered aliens (either by improving your ability to bring them into the fold, or by improving your ability to exploit or exterminate them) that neutral would not.

Why should the ethics of your Empire be solely responsible for how the pops are integrated.

The similarity between the ethics of the conquered pops compared to your Empire should be most important factor. If you are trying to integrate authoritarian aligned pops into an egalitarian Empire you should have a hard time.

Maybe your xenophile pops would get along fine if you conquer other pops but I fail to see why conquered xenophile pops would be happier. Xenophobes should just get negatives when there are any other pops with equal living standards around.

Other factors should be how pops are treated before the conquest and after. It hurts me to see freed slaves have the recently conquered malus when I just freed them.

 

[Brael]

I think Admin Capacity actually is the appropriate tool to deal with this. It's just not tuned properly. If there were enough limits on where and how many Admin Offices can be built, and if sprawl penalties were high enough, you would have to actually make calculated decisions about when expansion is worth it. The ability to fill a planet with bureaucrats should be something special, unlocked by a Civic or Ascension Perk.

I'm not sure that would work out well. Systems are actually more efficient for the admin capacity needed to generate resources for most of the game. Making admin cap more expensive simply encourages more admin planets with resources to fuel those jobs coming from other sources.

 

[Dirk_Slamchest]

I'm not sure that would work out well. Systems are actually more efficient for the admin capacity needed to generate resources for most of the game. Making admin cap more expensive simply encourages more admin planets with resources to fuel those jobs coming from other sources.

It would certainly make players WANT to make more admin planets, but as I also said, there should be limits on where and how many offices you can build.

Specifically, I would require a Planetary Capital (except on the capital planet) and put in a hard limit per planet. Some of the effects which currently give +X% Admin Capacity (from tech, Civics, etc) would instead increase this limit. I would probably also lock Admin Planetary Specialization behind an Ascension Perk, but replace its production bonus with an increase to the limit on that planet. I haven't thought much about how I would handle Gestalts in all this.

The point would be that you simply cannot thoughtlessly throw offices at the problem. If you want to expand rapidly, you either eat the sprawl penalties for a long time while your capacity catches up, or you take the opportunity cost of specializing in admin rather than something else.

 

[Mastikator]

I think Admin Capacity actually is the appropriate tool to deal with this. It's just not tuned properly. If there were enough limits on where and how many Admin Offices can be built, and if sprawl penalties were high enough, you would have to actually make calculated decisions about when expansion is worth it. The ability to fill a planet with bureaucrats should be something special, unlocked by a Civic or Ascension Perk.

You can take this idea even further and limit admin offices to zero. You know it used to be the case that if you wanted really high tech you wouldn't colonize small planets due to their tech cost, someone calculated it to size 18 or higher only. And habitat spam with only research labs.

 

[pryr]

In current implementation it is just pointless. It can be removed from game with zero impact on gameplay. Just tweak some numbers to compensate freed pops and resources and you will have the same game with same balance.

 

[Critical Ethics]

You can take this idea even further and limit admin offices to zero. You know it used to be the case that if you wanted really high tech you wouldn't colonize small planets due to their tech cost, someone calculated it to size 18 or higher only. And habitat spam with only research labs.

I agree with your central thesis of no bureaucrats and no admin buildings, and I think the new infrastructure would make small planets worthwhile since you could just slam down a city per lab and disable all the clerks.

 

[Casko]

One Solution probably would be to limit Bureaucratic buildings to be something akin to 1-per planet. With Mid to late game tech to designate a "Bureaucratic Planet" similar to Resort Planet and Penal Colony decisions in game. But i dunno. i feel this would atleast be a bandaid solution? Thoughts?

 

[Ryika]

One Solution probably would be to limit Bureaucratic buildings to be something akin to 1-per planet. With Mid to late game tech to designate a "Bureaucratic Planet" similar to Resort Planet and Penal Colony decisions in game. But i dunno. i feel this would atleast be a bandaid solution? Thoughts?

I think having a lot of half-empty planets is one of the things that Admin Capacity should punish, so if "1 per planet", then definitely with a requirement for a highly upgraded capital building.

That being said, it would probably still feel extremely artificial.