Suggestion: Give players manual control of economic Influece

[Ian Doncaster]

It would have resulted in a lot of player systems that do "everything,"

Though that doesn't seem to have been something they have an objection to as such.

Any system with five three-slot bodies (at least one being landable with at least two ground slots) could have had a copy of every primary production economy in the original version. You can get four of the five (not Agricultural) in the same system even under the current design without being that picky about planets (one landable rocky no geo/bio, two landable of any type - or non-landable if you don't mind having a medium pad - and either a belt cluster or a ring system on a fourth body)

 

[Markov Chaney]

Both of my options allow players to set their own limits on their own terms, something the current system doesn't allow us to do.

And that is the issue with all of these suggestions. The absolute core of ED is the Stellar Forge and a feature which completely ignores it is just not appropriate. You are colonising a galaxy, not constructing a hand-built simulation on the holodeck to suit every whim.

That said, there are some very silly rules from a realism perspective; I do think the weakness of the weak links is absurd. Two planets 20ls apart should be trading plenty. I don't understand why a tidally locked moon orbiting a tidally locked planet is deemed tidally locked, when a tidally locked moon orbiting a rotating planet is not. The moon's weather depends on whether the moon rotates, guys.

To Ian's point, both implementations have been a hot mess. I also think this second one is "better" because it at least recognises the basics, like metal rich planets are there to be mined, not farmed.

 

[Kira Goto]

like metal rich planets are there to be mined, not farmed.

I would argue it matters fairly little where you place agriculture that is primarily taking place inside of sealed, regulated environments, though of course it makes sense for it to perform better on worlds where it can be used at larger scale without as much support needed (eg Earth-like worlds, terraformables/water worlds in particular in that latter category).

 

[Raedawn]

My opinion is that the weak links are the problem. If I plan to build a large terrestrial port I only want the things on the surface and in orbit to affect it and nothing else.

 

[Roy Revant]

with 3 T1 Agri now I have a stable supply of water , fruit & veg

And here for Medical Dianostic equip , robotics , structure regulator etc etc

 

[_Flin_]

Imho one can work rather precisely with the current system. While it doesn't allow any "rainbow" system with all economy types and commodities, it allows to concentrate on two or three non-cannibalizing economies and implement them in the system. When you know what your are doing.

After this much time i prefer a decent and stable system, that gets it's remaining flaws removed, to something completely new.
Don't want to waste all the work i put into the existing systems based on patch 3.

 

[Tomsgalaxy]

And that is the issue with all of these suggestions. The absolute core of ED is the Stellar Forge and a feature which completely ignores it is just not appropriate. You are colonising a galaxy, not constructing a hand-built simulation on the holodeck to suit every whim.

Neither of my options ignore Stellar Forge entirely, they make so it can't mess you system up so much. Players are going to want a system with more slots rather than less no matter what. With both of my options you are still going to shy away from colonizing a system with only 3 or 4 ground slots, what my options do is make that your 1 ground slot bodies aren't useless anymore.

Keeping Stellar Forge relevant is the reason i wanted to keep the positive multipliers in place so their is still encouragement for doing a certain economy type in a system.

Stellar Forge should incentivize economy types but is shouldn't force them.

 

[Alice of Altair]

Abolishing weak links is the best easy-and-quick-to-implement option within the constraints of the game framework given that we have to start from where we are rather than being able to start over from scratch with FDev employing Ian Doncaster to design something better.
Weak link effects are large enough to be annoying and not large enough to be useful.

 

[Tomsgalaxy]

Imho one can work rather precisely with the current system. While it doesn't allow any "rainbow" system with all economy types and commodities, it allows to concentrate on two or three non-cannibalizing economies and implement them in the system. When you know what your are doing.

After this much time i prefer a decent and stable system, that gets it's remaining flaws removed, to something completely new.
Don't want to waste all the work i put into the existing systems based on patch 3.

The issue is that some economy types are more prone to causing problems. Industrial breaks almost everything it touches and Agriculture doesn't normally do well with other economy types.

When i came up with my 2 options, i was trying to come up with something that would allow more flexibility while breaking as few things as possible. Ian Doncaster still managed to find an edge case where something broke, since my options allow facilities far away from a Starport to have a strong influence, unless you are running out of slots in your system that edge case isn't a big deal.

If Frontier really wanted to make the current system work, they would need to increase the strength of weak links (20% should be enough) and make it so weak links and planetary influence do not affect demand. This would turn some stations into makeshift Trailblazer Megaships, this would still be better than finding half of your stations strongest economy types commodities missing. I would much prefer if they took 1 of my 2 options but if they did this I would be fine with it.

 

[_Flin_]

The issue is that some economy types are more prone to causing problems. Industrial breaks almost everything it touches and Agriculture doesn't normally do well with other economy types.

Yes, industrial is an issue. As is High Tech.

Both are imho only viable in a dedicated system, when you want everything.

Agri on the other hand is great. Unless you are going for large quantities of non-colonization relevant products, it is a very easy economy. I am only aware of two commodities that are hard to produce. Hardest is Beer, which is important for Tourism buildings. And Grain isn't easy, but not as hard.

 

[Tomsgalaxy]

Yes, industrial is an issue. As is High Tech.

Both are imho only viable in a dedicated system, when you want everything.

Agri on the other hand is great. Unless you are going for large quantities of non-colonization relevant products, it is a very easy economy. I am only aware of two commodities that are hard to produce. Hardest is Beer, which is important for Tourism buildings. And Grain isn't easy, but not as hard.

While Agriculture is only needed in small quantities for construction, it is also an economy type that is easy to accidentally ruin by adding 1 too many of anything else. This is worsened by the need for Military economy for good amounts of Security and either Industrial or Refinery for Development Level. Since some Development Level is needed to increase the amount of commodities available, you are stuck choosing between having everything in misery amounts or risk something going missing. Can you get around this with non-economic facilities? It would take 6 Satellites and 5 government installations to get the same development level as 3 Refinery hubs (21). Both of my options would make dealing with this far less work.

I even heard about one station where all the Titanium disappeared after adding a Hi-Tech influence which shouldn't happen. I am really hoping that was a bug.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Can you get around this with non-economic facilities? It would take 6 Satellites and 5 government installations to get the same development level as 3 Refinery hubs (21).

True, though 21 is a lot of development level. My system is still in single figures and has far more stock than I can plausibly use. Refinery is the only economy which really needs high-bulk goods in the first place for onward colonisation, and none of them need high bulk for other purposes.

There are other options, potentially, which are a bit more efficient for development level than a bunch of the non-economic installations
- an Asteroid Base gives +7 and in most cases won't generate weak links (as well as providing extraction goods)
- an Industrial Outpost gives +3 and if the only port orbiting that body won't generate weak links (as well as providing industrial goods)
- the T3s give +9 or +10 for a single slot with no weak links (and a big market in their own right) ... if you have the resources to build them in the first place

I even heard about one station where all the Titanium disappeared after adding a Hi-Tech influence which shouldn't happen.

Plausibly if it already also had some industrial or military influence, the other system variable changes happened to increase Titanium consumption from that more than they increased Titanium production.

 

[Tomsgalaxy]

True, though 21 is a lot of development level. My system is still in single figures and has far more stock than I can plausibly use. Refinery is the only economy which really needs high-bulk goods in the first place for onward colonisation, and none of them need high bulk for other purposes.

There are other options, potentially, which are a bit more efficient for development level than a bunch of the non-economic installations
- an Asteroid Base gives +7 and in most cases won't generate weak links (as well as providing extraction goods)
- an Industrial Outpost gives +3 and if the only port orbiting that body won't generate weak links (as well as providing industrial goods)
- the T3s give +9 or +10 for a single slot with no weak links (and a big market in their own right) ... if you have the resources to build them in the first place


Plausibly if it already also had some industrial or military influence, the other system variable changes happened to increase Titanium consumption from that more than they increased Titanium production.

You can still get to 12 Development level with 3 satellites and government installations each and though it uses more slots it would be less hauling than an asteroid base (same applies with 1 each compared to an industrial outpost). T2 and T3 big stations are normally built for the population increase and have construction point cost increases after the second one, so doing them purely for development level isn't the best idea (still worth it for the large landing pads). With either of my options this would be much less of a problem.

There are some players (such as those in the Orion Colony) who find that other players often use their stations commodities for their construction and need more development level to compensate.

As for that station looking at it more closely, looks like planetary influence really did a number on it (rocky with organics and volcanism). This is why both of my options involve getting rid of most of it. I still think it is stupid that you can lose a commodity completely by building an economic influence that shouldn't affect it.

 

[Steve the Red]

The initial version gave a lot of control to players, but had two main problems: from a player perspective those lovely shiny T2/T3 stations often turned out to be nothing but biowaste factories, and from a realism perspective the type of bodies was largely irrelevant, and only the space available mattered. I think this could be summarised as "not enough economic influence".

The second version addressed that by adding lots of inherent economic influence, so there were no more biowaste factories (to the extent that when I wanted to check something about colony markets I had to head back to the bubble to find one!). I don't think FDev realised how bad having mixed markets is, and I think we'd all agree that the problem now is "too much (mixed/unavoidable) economic influence".

The most recent update doesn't address economies at all.

@Tomsgalaxy is on the right track in wanting a way to limit where economic influences go, but I think there is a better way.

The initial version could be described as "colony ports get influence only from the local body" and the second as "colony ports get influence from everywhere". So why not have a choice available to the architect on each colony port of how far away the colony accepts influence from? Probably below the name change button? Then if you want it to work like the initial version you can select "local body" and if you want your T3 with no local slots to have an economy like the second version you can select "system". And it might make sense to have some extra choices like "local body and moons", "orbit", "star" (for systems with multiple stars) and maybe even "none". Default the choice to "system" and architects who don't go into detail will at least not get biowaste factories while more careful planners can get more careful results.

Economy overrides are a separate issue. To take the most egregious case, 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 that produce random commodities (the only colonisation-relevant commodities guaranteed are some minor tech items) that change every time you build something else in the system. If my previous suggestion of influence range makes sense, then adding another option of which of the available body overrides to accept might also be appropriate. So a colony port orbiting an ELW could choose to focus on agricultural, tourism, high tech or military (or maybe even none, and get a different influence from facilities further afield?). Some might argue for being able to select multiples, but that would probably be too complicated. Or maybe "all" should also be an option, and be the default to keep behaviour as-is until changed? In any case all of the overrides should remain as boosts.

So the options would be
1. "Trade Range" selected from "none", "local body", "local body and moons", "orbit", "star" and "system"
2. "Planetary Economy" selected from "none", whatever the current available overrides are, and "all"
...with the defaults being the last choices in the lists.

And if someone really wants to have a port with a pure colony economy then they can have one!

I'm not sure when changes to these settings should be applied, and it doesn't make a huge amount of difference in the long run. Doing it at maintenance could push out the maintenance window, and a simpler solution might be to just zero all supply and demand whenever a change is made, and then just leave the standard supply/demand refresh to put the new economy into place. That'd also make it harder to exploit.

I'm not going to delve too deeply into specific instances of overrides, as I assume that terraformable bodies not necessarily getting a terraforming economy and non-terraformables getting one if they have organics is an oversight that will be corrected at some point.

TL;DR: If we add two architect choices to colony ports then everyone will be happy and people who don't check their settings will see no difference.

 

[_Flin_]

While Agriculture is only needed in small quantities for construction, it is also an economy type that is easy to accidentally ruin by adding 1 too many of anything else.

Sorry, but you aren't very precise here.
Define "ruin".
And give an example of "1 too many of anything else".

For me agri is a secondary economy. It is needed for SoL, and everyone will have some in their system. Agrifarm and M settlements are no-brainer construction point generators. There is two commodities that are needed in higher numbers for colonization. Water and Beer (for tourism). Beer is hard, where i am it is 100ly to the next L-landing pad Brewery. Water is not. And Fruit and Grain aren't hard, either. And neither are the other Tourism commodities like Tea, Coffee, Wine etc.

In the end the current game works likes this:

• play the cards you are dealt. Play the system you have, not the one you want. If you want something else than the system offers, grab another system.
• Focus on two economies max that go along with each other. No, you will probably not do a tourism / agri system. Or pull of an industrial / high tech system.
• If you want a pure High Tech system, built nothing but High Tech.
• For the tertiary installations (e.g. security, depending on economy development or standard of living) built as little buildings as possible to avoid weak links.

 

[Tomsgalaxy]

The initial version gave a lot of control to players, but had two main problems: from a player perspective those lovely shiny T2/T3 stations often turned out to be nothing but biowaste factories, and from a realism perspective the type of bodies was largely irrelevant, and only the space available mattered. I think this could be summarised as "not enough economic influence".

The second version addressed that by adding lots of inherent economic influence, so there were no more biowaste factories (to the extent that when I wanted to check something about colony markets I had to head back to the bubble to find one!). I don't think FDev realised how bad having mixed markets is, and I think we'd all agree that the problem now is "too much (mixed/unavoidable) economic influence".

The most recent update doesn't address economies at all.

@Tomsgalaxy is on the right track in wanting a way to limit where economic influences go, but I think there is a better way.

The initial version could be described as "colony ports get influence only from the local body" and the second as "colony ports get influence from everywhere". So why not have a choice available to the architect on each colony port of how far away the colony accepts influence from? Probably below the name change button? Then if you want it to work like the initial version you can select "local body" and if you want your T3 with no local slots to have an economy like the second version you can select "system". And it might make sense to have some extra choices like "local body and moons", "orbit", "star" (for systems with multiple stars) and maybe even "none". Default the choice to "system" and architects who don't go into detail will at least not get biowaste factories while more careful planners can get more careful results.

Economy overrides are a separate issue. To take the most egregious case, 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 that produce random commodities (the only colonisation-relevant commodities guaranteed are some minor tech items) that change every time you build something else in the system. If my previous suggestion of influence range makes sense, then adding another option of which of the available body overrides to accept might also be appropriate. So a colony port orbiting an ELW could choose to focus on agricultural, tourism, high tech or military (or maybe even none, and get a different influence from facilities further afield?). Some might argue for being able to select multiples, but that would probably be too complicated. Or maybe "all" should also be an option, and be the default to keep behaviour as-is until changed? In any case all of the overrides should remain as boosts.

So the options would be
1. "Trade Range" selected from "none", "local body", "local body and moons", "orbit", "star" and "system"
2. "Planetary Economy" selected from "none", whatever the current available overrides are, and "all"
...with the defaults being the last choices in the lists.

And if someone really wants to have a port with a pure colony economy then they can have one!

I'm not sure when changes to these settings should be applied, and it doesn't make a huge amount of difference in the long run. Doing it at maintenance could push out the maintenance window, and a simpler solution might be to just zero all supply and demand whenever a change is made, and then just leave the standard supply/demand refresh to put the new economy into place. That'd also make it harder to exploit.

I'm not going to delve too deeply into specific instances of overrides, as I assume that terraformable bodies not necessarily getting a terraforming economy and non-terraformables getting one if they have organics is an oversight that will be corrected at some point.

TL;DR: If we add two architect choices to colony ports then everyone will be happy and people who don't check their settings will see no difference.

You idea does have some merit and locking out planetary influence does sound good. The issue with this is that many players prior to patch 3 already built systems assuming that something built around a different moon around the same planet wouldn't affect their station, they may not have enough slots to do what they want with just the local body. Your idea would probably have worked if it was done from day 1 but now we have already completed constructions to worry about. What we need is a solution that is compatible with already built construction.

Your idea has many similarities to Option 2 which allows any facility to have economic influence on a station as long as the station has the facilities economy type selected but doesn't suffer from already present other economy type facilities in awkward spots. Option 2 allows up to 2 economy types per station (add a 3rd one and things start getting messy). With both of my options you can make a station colony economy only if you wanted (its not optimal but you could), development level will still affect how much biowaste that station has and for option 1 you would need to make sure no facilities are assigned to it.

Both of my options get rid of most planetary influence since if you kept it, for Option 1 you would have to assign planetary influence for every body in your entire system (the micromanagement is bad enough without this) and for both options you can easily end up with a 12000% economy station from multiple bodies in the system and you would have little motivation to build any facilities, especially if you claimed you system with a Large T2/T3 station.

As for Terraforming yes it only makes sense to have it around Terraforming candidates, with Option 2 you could have Terraforming economy be an option, if around a Terraforming candidate but aside from roleplay I don't see much reason to do this.

Any big changes to how colonization economy works would likely require a dedicated patch and it own specific downtime separate from the Thursday tick like what happened with patch 3. FDev were good to give us some warning before it dropped, its fair to say they would do the same again.

 

[Tomsgalaxy]

Sorry, but you aren't very precise here.
Define "ruin".
And give an example of "1 too many of anything else".

For me agri is a secondary economy. It is needed for SoL, and everyone will have some in their system. Agrifarm and M settlements are no-brainer construction point generators. There is two commodities that are needed in higher numbers for colonization. Water and Beer (for tourism). Beer is hard, where i am it is 100ly to the next L-landing pad Brewery. Water is not. And Fruit and Grain aren't hard, either. And neither are the other Tourism commodities like Tea, Coffee, Wine etc.

In the end the current game works likes this:

• play the cards you are dealt. Play the system you have, not the one you want. If you want something else than the system offers, grab another system.
• Focus on two economies max that go along with each other. No, you will probably not do a tourism / agri system. Or pull of an industrial / high tech system.
• If you want a pure High Tech system, built nothing but High Tech.
• For the tertiary installations (e.g. security, depending on economy development or standard of living) built as little buildings as possible to avoid weak links.

With Agriculture commodities (there are a few exceptions) they have demand for them generated by every other economy type so it you add facilities with any other economy type you run the risk of one of those commodities disappearing when the game recalculates the economy. Due to planetary influence it is impossible to get a pure Agriculture station, so you are always rolling the dice anytime you complete a facility of any economy type (even with Agriculture facilities but those should improve your odds). Anyone with a station around an Earth-like or Water world has likely run into this issue. This has even lead to a station losing all its Titanium from adding a Hi-Tech influence, even though that shouldn't affect it.

With your station plus tourist installation being built around that ringed water world you should be getting a first hand look at this issue soon. When you complete that station make sure you check whats in the commodity market before you finish that tourist installation.

Yes I also build space farms for the SoL increase.

The problem with the current system it that you get railroaded too hard. Since the claiming system is first come first served, it is difficult to find a specific system you with the things you want since it could be sniped from you and searching through all of those systems takes a long time. If you keep getting bad or unwanted cards, many will eventually just walk away. With both of my Options there is much less panic over if a system is suitable and system sniping while still an issue wouldn't be catastrophic.

Yes there are some bad economic combinations, with both my Options you can do Hi-Tech on 1 station and Industrial on another station without worrying about them messing with each other, it is still a bad idea to combine them onto 1 station.

Neither of my Options are a perfect sandbox, what they do is get rid of most of the frustration.

 

[Raedawn]

I personally feel that weak links are causing more problems then the concept is worth having in the game. If we could choose or if the influence of weak links was more for system color (like substituting one item like coffee with; for instance, target practice dummies owing to some weak link security influence) we could build and largely ignore them while they make our systems more interesting, diverse and having local color in things like sourcing missions.