Fwurg

[Mercury]

As I stated in a different topic, I am seeing a large scale issue that I believe should be something we discuss / think about, and that is late game construction.

We are currently in a phase where many systems have gone through significant development. This has left us with some questions about how to spend vast amounts of wealth we now generate, which outscale most of the basic designs we made. One example spending is that several worlds are currently making some long term, high price deals involving terraformation of entire systems, which were previously thought to be rather out of scale.

To be perfectly clear: I thoroughly approve of these developments! I think it is absolutely awesome, it fits the scale of the game and it allows us to do amazing stuff like this!

What has me concerned is that these amazing and impressive feats might become less impressive and less valuable if overused, which I fear may happen due to a lack of options.

I feel it would be a bloody shame if soon every rock in every system will be terraformed to goldilocks status, with sprawling cities and everything, not because the person running the system thinks its cool to have their system turned into a mega city in this way, but merely because there are no alternative options available and everyone is doing it anyway. It would devalue the coolness of terraformation to me if it became a mandatory thing to get.

We currently have rules for outposts and space habitats. As far as I am aware, nobody is making these. Why is this? Are they too expensive? Are they un-cool? Is there too much of a barrier?

What other options can we offer? I heard talks of Dyson Swarms, and we have someone with an amazingly cool artificial moon. How can we support these kind of projects more general, how can we make it easier to make unique (or semi-unique) grand projects for players to invest in?

[Brend]

I can't speak for others, but I have the following observations:

• I haven't started an Outpost or Space Habitat because I actually still have zones in my own system.
• By now, the Outpost and Space Habitate require large amounts of (800+) which will most likely be very slow to acquire -- special goods aren't usually produced with more than 200 by any single faction.
• Outposts would require me to assign a trade fleet, and I only have 4 of them available (6 actually, but 2 are for military use). This is mitigated with the second upgrade, but it's still a hassle.
• I feel that corporations are better than outposts, so terraforming my system (corps require Atmos 1) is better then building an outpost.
• There are actually very little appealing options, and none of the options require me to take into account other factors than Return On Investment. For example: the Same Sex Reproduction Catalysts could easily be found immoral by other member worlds, prompting a discussion in the senate and possibly even a vote to outlaw such technology...
• I have a lot of ideas for large scale projects, but since I can still invest in starting systems, I see no need to actually start OOCly developing them.
• There are no multiple roads to the same goal. That is, most projects are alone in their class -- no other projects has the same effect unless it is a double-stack. If there would be multiple options to the same effect (with roughly the same Return On Investment) it might be more interesting to choose between one of them. (This ties in with the 'factors other than ROI')

One of my other observations is the 'everybody can build anything' thing. Since technologies are readily tradable (and therefore accesible), everyone can acquire the abilities to build anything. Since most options are simply rated on the Return-On-Investment ladder, you have access to your 'best' option for economic growth.

And finally: people are allergic to upkeep. If there is an upkeep-less option, they will select that over the one with upkeep. (This has to do with the 52 calculation for most ROI's, I think; since most people feel that they will be playing longer...)

Anyway, those are my two cents. I think there is much more to the issue.

[Chriz]

I have not started a outpost either because of the zones in my own system and the war that was hindering every economic development as well.

The reason that people are considering terraformation is not the lousy 50 bonus that you get from atmospheres and oceans together. The reason that terraformation is so expensive and still everybody wants it is that Corporations that double all production are only possible with Atmosphere I.

I think we should actually look into making corporations on hot and cold orbits as a reasonable alternative.

The reason that nobody has done this until now is that it requires a technology that will be extremely expensive due to the amortizing over 8 players and the fact that you are still paying for the cost of the atmospheres probably... If we can find a solution for this it would open up options.

Well I agree on the upkeep but this is due to the fact that we are playing with these projects on longer terms than 52 . These projects are implemented over the course of years and if you are paying additional costs since you only get a price reduction from upkeep of a year it makes everything very expensive.

[Elmer]

And there is another issue: I recognize in myself that I'm often lazy, and it wouldn't surprise me that other people are sometimes lazy as well. Making a new technology that suits your idea requires rather a large amount of effort. First you need an idea, then you need to formulate this in a technology, there is a lot of discussion, there are balancing issues, and when you have done it, other players use your awesome idea for their own good (this is not a reproach btw).

So instead of doing all this effort, you can just pick one of the already existing technologies for your advancement, much easier and faster.

I think it wouldn't be bad if we get multiple technologies which do the same thing, but has other fluff. This allows players to develop their culture in a way they like without sacrificing growth. Just like when I proposed to make a cybernetic tech tree, people told me to make a non-cybernetic counterpart for people who dislike cyborgs. Such technologies then should be mutually exclusive to prevent endless stacking and to make the choice count IC.

[Stuiter]

I do not so much care for ROI.
I want a outpost for more roleplay, but my economy is too small.
My current plan is to first terraform Ah'rak get the production ready for superstructure components and then make an outpost.
But this may take a year.

[Fedor]

I am currently not making outposts because it is not profitable at this time and production of has yet to start up.

Currently I am spending all my money on pleasing the Veolians so that they will give me terraform for my goldilocks planet, this is the best economically as not only is it goldilocks but it also has a lot of population there, and it is what the Astai would want. After this there are still quite a lot of reasonable zones to build in my system.

I see outposts and space habitats as worse in terms of ROI than terraforming a goldilocks world if you can start corporations there, and worse than building zones in your system. I do see it as better than terraforming hot or cold rocks to incorporate those, and better than building metals zones in asteroid belts.

I do intend to start up production of and build myself an outpost soon, but I have had better things to do up to this point.

I have nothing to really add to the last point of discussion about promoting cool unique projects, but I felt I should add my intentions towards outposts.

[Gerben]

The current outpost system is fine in my opinion, it should also meet our needs. The problem with it however is that its very late game content, as long as I still have free zones in my system, no matter what orbit or planet. I would build them first, I'd probably also consider terraformation first, since the benefits it provided concerning corporations.

Eventually however, I will look into development of outposts and I'll admit I'm already planning several options, but these require a lot of time, ia more then 52 , so its really a long term plan. I don't think that's bad and I can imagine scenarios were outposts could be constructed a lot faster ( not in terms of construction, but the actual investments are done faster).

[Dragonmaster352]

Same problem as Stuiter. Want to make colonies but still to expensive for me.

Some relevant points are brought up. I do have to note that I think mutually exclusive technologies would make a very interesting addition to the game. Even with different bonuses.

It would force you to make a choice for your faction, though it would be very complex to work out bonuses of equal value. It would offer great roleplay topics/options. It also makes sense as it is realistic to assume some things make it impossible to.

Of course as the saying goes: "there are more ways that lead to rome."

So let's say you have a tech tree, that splits up into two mutually exclusive paths. You could theorise that follow up techs for these branches, have things in common.

While currently not yet used follow up techs for follow up techs might give even further possibilities.

Example: tech 1 and tech 2 are mutually exclusive and both have 5 levels of follow up techs (level 1 being a follow up for original tech, level 2 a follow up of that follow up, etc.). It could be that for tech 1 a level 2 follow up is a level 5 follow up for tech 2 or vice versa.

Of course neither branch would have a majority of the others techs available though they might have similar effects.

Thoughts on this?

[Mercury]

Thank you all for your feedback. I shall think on this somewhat to see what I come up with (which we can then discuss of course ^_^)