Reconciling Planetary Projects & Player Constructions

[Snipedown]

I don’t often contribute suggestions on gaming communities (even when I may have them) - the fact that I am posting here is an indication of how much I enjoy this game - it’s not every day you find a slow-burn economy sim that has this much depth & thought put into it, with so much future potential!

I wanted to summarize some feedback I had during a conversation in global chat and see if anyone has anything to contribute/thoughts on the matter.

Key points:

1. Planetary/governmental projects and buildings should use (or be) the same systems (Maintenance & Consumables)
2. Repair should be a thing (Previous post noted)
3. Storage should be a building- & contract-driven capability.
4. Government interactions should be contract-driven.

I want to note - these topics can each be independent of one another (and can be addressed independently) but do lend to an intuitive and immersive experience for users if combined.

The idea that planetary projects are a unique system has two main issues.
First, it seems less immersive & intuitive. If a player must construct their own buildings that require some population in order to be staffed and degrade at a certain rate, why would government buildings not also have the same system? I realize some buildings (Chamber of Commerce) do have an upkeep cost, but this seems unnaturally derived.
Secondly, depending on the long-term goals of the planetary projects & player-owned buildings, having two separate systems seems like it might pose flexibility/maintenance issues in the future, but not having insight into the overall design might render that point moot

Maintenance & repair (as requested by the post linked above) have already been requested and would lend themselves nicely to this feature. All buildings would have some maintenance cost which, if not met, would result in decay over time. There are lots of factors that could be played with here, like scaling the cost over time, or having a minimum maintenance vs optimal maintenance tradeoff.

With these systems in place, it would be simple to derive the total upkeep for a government building - simply (Maintenance + Consumables).

Finally, the idea that storage is a government-provided facility seems a bit limiting. Players have the ability to build storage units themselves - why not offer storage space as a contract option? Going out on a limb here, if storage were provided as a contract, then using government storage could be represented by a contract with a government? This idea scales indefinitely, eventually providing the government the capability to requisition goods, request transport, and more.

One goal of these suggestions is to help streamline concepts, mainly to provide a more intuitive & immersive player experience but also in the sense that it might help unify features & facilitate/streamline further development. This coming from a fellow software developer, albeit one who has no insight into the codebase in question.

[I_am_Tex]

Participated in the Global Chat exchange.

Building on the consumables point - The current COGC consumables don’t make any sense to me (why MCG and PE?), and I don’t really understand why COGC has ongoing cost but none of the other planetary projects (thus far) have ongoing cost.

My suggestion would be that each project would require a certain number of “employees” per base on the planet…and that the ongoing cost would match the cost of the corresponding “employee” for your base — e.g. RAT, DW, OVE, PT, EXO, etc.

I would not require the luxury items…but it sure would be an interesting concept to have the COGC bonus increase a couple of percentage points if luxury items were provided

Just to be very clear how I think about this, I would have the COGC need, say, 1 Settler for each occupied base on the planet. I would have the Local Market need 1/4 Pioneer for each occupied base. Etc. (Exact quantities and types TBD by developers based on their much more detailed knowledge of the underlying game economics than I have)

[molp]

First of all thanks for the great feedback!

@Snipedown

Repair should be a thing

I agree. When we designed the building degradation and depreciation we left it out on purpose to test the feature first and see if we want to keep it. Now that it is established a repair feature would be a great help.

@Snipedown

Storage should be a building- & contract-driven capability

There are a few reasons why warehouse storage is a planetary project rather than a contract/building system. First of all it is easier to implement, and hence we can move faster in terms of development of the game. Then there is the issue with all the (messy?) edge cases: what if one rents storage from another player and the first one COLIQs? What if the offering player wants to cancel the contract, but the store still has inventory?

I like the idea of individual players renting storage to other players though! Maybe we can revisit the idea at a later point!

@I_am_Tex

The current COGC consumables don’t make any sense to me (why MCG and PE?), and I don’t really understand why COGC has ongoing cost but none of the other planetary projects (thus far) have ongoing cost.

You are right, the planetary projects are not as coherent as they could be. We do have a feature in planning stage that revolves around a very similar topic and will consider your critique.

@I_am_Tex

I would have the COGC need, say, 1 Settler for each occupied base on the planet. I would have the Local Market need 1/4 Pioneer for each occupied base.

Interesting! I like that idea

[Gladi099]

Let me dig this thread back up.

I have a few points regarding the ADM building.
With POPI and possible future changes to governor power/actions. I think the ADM should no longer be player build.
Much like the main POPI building (which is the only one taking a base plot on a planet, all other POPI are inside this 500 area, even when bigger than 500 Area) the ADM should be constructed by the system.
Before screaming out in complaint read on!

We saw with CUOP how “easy” it is to lockdown a planet with a few players. My idea revolves around the actual planet population, not players or bases but the actual population.

Does a resource tap with 1000 pioneers need a governor? No! The 1000 Pioneers are from 1-3 bases and these folks can easily organize with each other and don’t need to pay taxes if outside of faction space. The ADM would be there but have no use, or if possible act like a town hall (Bulletin board, Planet Chat, tools to organize in-game), but no election would happen.

Once the population grows and diversifies into more tiers the need for governors rises.
After reaching a certain population level the ADM would change from town hall to an actual place of government/administration unlocking voting for governors.
Just like CoGC voting should be tied to population, actual employed population, not available habitation space.

The unlocked ADM would then allow to set taxes, workforce reserves and programs (once implemented) and pledge allegiance to a faction (once implemented).
The town hall features should stay.

With this it would require actual work and growing a planet to unlock the governor part and to “tax lock” a planet.