That level of customisation of effect should allow pretty much anything anyone wants to build - the only problem I see in that sense is that it's potentially a lot of interface, a lot of concepts, and a lot of room for bugs or misunderstandings as to how it's supposed to work, and it's probably more complex than it needs to be in terms of what people actually want to do.
Personally I want to do stupidly complex things
On the other side (starting with the essentials only) arguably all that would be needed in a minimal case (a lot less flexible, yes, but still gives
most of the benefits and compatibility with both previous iterations) would be a single toggle switch per station
- on non-port facilities: enable weak links [y/n]
- on ports: use planetary influence [y/n]
Nice symmetry!
I had thought about putting output controls on facilities rather than import controls on ports. Part of why I decided not to go that way is that I think there will eventually be more facilities than ports. At the moment I think they're fairly equal in number, but that's because the current mechanisms strongly disincentivise building up big systems. If that were fixed by whatever means then I think we'd see more facilities being built than we currently do.
The other part of my reasoning was more aesthetic. While a big driver of update 3 was certainly player dissatisfaction with biowaste factories, I got the impression (they might have actually outright said this?) that FDev didn't want planets to all be the same - that the introduction of planetary boosts and overrides wasn't just a biowaste fix but to add character to systems. In that respect basing weak link control on proximity seemed more thematic. YMMV
The main reason I don't think a simple on/off is sufficient for planetary overrides is ELWs. Earthlike worlds currently get burdened with four economies that all parasitise each other, so rather than being the shining jewels of the colonisation system they're muddy messes. In my experience ELWs and WWs don't often have spare orbital slots so they are quite dependant on those overrides, but they don't want ALL of them. Rocky ice worlds with biologicals and geologicals have it even worse, but are less valuable.
and then on a slightly more complex level to allow a few things not possible under either previous design
- on non-port facilities: enable links [off/strong/strong+weak] (defaults to strong+weak, I suppose)
- on ports: use planetary influence: [all/<list of allowed economies, pick exactly one>/none] (defaults to all for Colony types and none for others)
I thought about doing the pick-exactly-one thing too, but was a little conflicted about disallowing taking multiple overrides. On reflection it occurred to me that in both single- and multi-choice cases the UI needs to list all the possible overrides, but single also has to put in "All" and "None", so maybe the more flexible solution also had the simpler UI.
If you're suggesting allowing changes after a structure had been built - understandable as a way to fix existing systems - then I think it would need those to be on a delay (with the weekly updates, probably) to stop a very silly set of exploits where you buy and sell the same commodity from the station without even undocking, but change its economy in-between. With the right commodities and a large enough baseline station you could probably set up something ridiculous by flipping a single weak link on and off.
I thought about that too. I figured that having to wait for the market tick for commodities to restock / be in demand again would be enough to put people off doing that. I personally would get horribly bored doing that, and that one could fly to a different system and trade there in less time than a market tick seemed sufficient to me. But I guess there are probably people who would rather mess with settings and are immune to boredom who might do that just to avoid the chance of being interdicted :-(
Against that I thought that distributing the load of recalculating economies over the week might be less likely to push maintenance out further than it has sometimes taken, but FDev do seem to have optimised the maintenance process recently.
So I am absolutely OK with queuing changes for a weekly update. But I'm also ok with them happening instantly
Overall I think our thought processes are converging, and I appreciate being able to bounce ideas around. Thanks!
