While we not far away into populous and not a lot of dramas about stealing workforce happened(SW-829b chat, guess developers can look into it - not drama yet, but there was a chance), want to suggest change into mechanic of weekly redistributing of workers - pull only 10% of employed workers into redistribution pool to protect already established colonies from severe workforce losses. I guess no one want to build and develop, for example, big resource tap with 1000 pios and loose half of them when someone else decide to join same planet.
Generally this is part of the the concept of planetary populations. If there arenāt enough workers for everyone, you either need to invest into the populationās growth in some way or find other, less ācompetitiveā regions of space to settle in.
I think your suggestion of only redistributing 10% per week would lead to the same result by the way, just slower? I could maybe see a case for a bonus for long-term citizens of a planet, but then again thatās another thing that has to be explained and made transparent.
Iām not against idea overall. I donāt like 2 facts of current redistribution system - a. other people can use your investments(building infrastructure, supplying it) literally for free - they are can just settle a bit later and get population without spending a single $. b. big losses of workforce what make for example half of your base(if you was alone and another one joined you) uselessly deteriorate. Hard to find more frustrating thing than realizing futility of your efforts. And 10%(can be lower) loss at least can be covered by population growth and donāt make half of your base instantly useless.
PS Also, another topic on futility efforts is current infrastructure upkeep system, which again allow anyone use other money(in form of supplies for upkeep) for free - 90% of players never contribute to cogc/popi and you canāt do anything about it - you are paying for everyone or just loosing colony. ADM fixed this problem but only partially - faction space colonies canāt cover popi upkeep from taxes and ADM itself expensive enough even at current stage of the game, Iām even not talking about future reset and fresh universe.
We are yet to confirm whether taxes can pay entirely for COGC + POPI upkeep. My personal feeling is that it can.
The workforce distribution mechanic allows for increase risk when expanding - something that can be mitigated through collaboration with other players.
I think the system needs slight tweaking in terms of the initial workforce allocation - that is, giving a guarantee that you will be allocated at least 200 pioneers if they are available on the planet.
Overall, we are mostly going to face the issue of āworkforce stealingā during this test run. After the reset, every expansion will be done with populous in mind.
OPs. Edited somehow old post.
The infrastructure required to gain and grow engineers on new planets will likely mean that it is a collaborative effort. I believe it will be extremely rare for a single player to be able to do that alone.
That would be working as intended. Cooperation is a core design principle.
Your current play style (solo elec? ) will not be viable going forward.
How collaborative effort protect you from someone else who come to your planet and build SD after you grow some engineers? For example, you make 1 SD, then SL, then another SD. Someone else coming to your planet making his SD and half of your engineers week later just going to work at his SD. You spend a bunch of cash on growing this population and someone else just can come and take it from you.
At small scale same situation will be at fo-163b in nearest future. Waiting for a long time for settlers, and most likely start loosing weeks and weeks of growth to people who just come later.
The only advantage your opponent would have here is that they save on some infrastructure cost. Theyād get just as many workers as you would - that part would be equal.
What I would do is
- develop reliable supply chains for pioneers, settlers, and technicians on the planet. This makes the planet a desirable place for a colony.
There is then incentive for the infrastructure to develop more organically with the cost spread among a lot more people.
- target engineer growth and transition your colony towards engineers.
Thatās it. You have more people on site, and a higher population. Once you have 70 engineers, the next 70 are easier to get.
In addition there is the political capital aspect. If someone screws you over that way, refuse to trade with them. Lean on your allies, place embargoes, out-compete them.
PrUn is about managing the resources you have, in a resource scarce environment. This means making sacrifices. Sd/sl will first appear on CX worlds where the population is higher enough to support growing engineers and scientists.
Rushing to engi/sci and farming MM sales alone is no longer a viable strategy. Current facilities will be function for a while. New facilities will only rarely be built for a while.
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Only? So you are agree on current situation and think its a normal then you need to pay for building+infrastructure+upkeep while someone else can come and pay just for building and get same income as you?
Yes, itās normal. If you build public infrastructure on your own accord then itās fair for another player to use it.
If you lead the public to provide the public infrastructure via shared investment and governorship programs then you will suffer no feelings of personal loss.
I share CarePandaās position here. 5 people can go painfully invest and setup a planet to support a Technician plus level workforce. Doing so extremely cooperatively.
Then a 6th person shows up and steals a portion of the Techs or Engineers without having done any of the prep work to build that workforce.
Thus I think it is critically important that folks build ADMs and setup tax regimes to support their upkeep so that the new player immediately has to start contributing to the upkeep. It is still quite uncool to the people who built the planet up from PIOs to higher tier, but at least the interloper has to contribute via taxes.
I still am not thrilled with our taxation optionsā¦but Iāll keep that for another post at a different time.
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I feel itās unlikely that even 5 people would be realistically able to achieve scientists and engineers.
The main issue here is that we are trying to project our current playstyles onto populous. This will always fail - they are just not compatible.
Pre-populous, we could plant sd/SL in relatively very large numbers. This is not how the devs intended it. Electronics production is designed to be part of the endgame for corps, not an endgame for each individual.
Large groups of players will need to work together to develop each planet, and weāll need to work on squeezing the most out of our economy. There will be far fewer sales of high-end materials to the market maker.
This touches on aspects of āwe shouldnāt be trying to get the largest bank accountsā which we can talk about another day.
PrUn is not a single-player game, neither is it a āsolo with marketsā game. Itās multifaceted multilayer.
Why do you think I have been so involved in setting up ways for players to plan and develop at an above Corp level?
Why does the PrUn logistics server exist?
Why does the Galactic Senate exist?
Why do GDP players collaborate on projects with almost every other Corp?
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Iāll just interject that this āstealingā concept has already been a factor in gameplay. If you build a CoGC, all by yourself, you donāt own it or have any in-game ability to control it. Yet, people still build them with strictly personal investment. The same goes for ADM. It is a risk that must be managed at least partially outside of the game mechanics, through inter-player relationships and negotiation.
This is, clearly, by design.
I have expanded to 20 bases. Comparatively speaking this may be relatively small to some or many of you. I understand that this game is about people joining together with other people, but if Iām honest, I donāt really do that because I donāt really have time - or should I say - make time to put into that as it requires so much time to develop etc.
However, having said that, on any planet I am on I would be happy to help invest in infrustructure - but I donāt. I donāt really have time / take time to play beyond my own game. Is this the way the game was designed? No, possibly not, but itās the way Iāve worked up until now. However, if someone asked to me to invest I would be perfectly happy to work collaboratively; but up to now I donāt really.
I would suggest for more collaboration, more collaborative structure needs to be brought into the game. The planet chat module is all I ever engage with - and very rarely. From the ground up, collaboration needs to be built in - or, I think it will remain focussed towards single players or āsolo with marketsā as Prdgi called it.
nor am I part of a corporation. I donāt see the benefit/need at the moment. Maybe there is one, but Iāve been missing this game aspect if there is. So, if the devs desire collaboration I think it needs to be built into the system more somehow. Iāve been playing this 11 months and maybe Iāve missed something working on my own the whole timeā¦!
Topic not about solo gameplay, collaboration or complication of production chain or whatever. Its about lack of countermeasures to play against free riders. All you can do now is only mitigate consequences. But even for only available tool(ADM) you need to spend big amount of resources. Old players can remember regular CoGC strikes at Katoa/Montem which ended only after few rich players start feed them. And CoGC is relatively cheap in supply and absolutely not necessary to evolution, while supplying POPI is essential and at fresh universe it will make a lot of problems to expansion. For example you can look at how wonderful is going XK-590d(planet without ADM) - no one want to pay for upkeep and same situation will be at all planets at fresh universe except ones with prebuilt ADM. Motivation to move progress further is dying under burden of freeloaders.
My point though was that collaboration is not necessarily intuitive. So, I agree with you that this will occur over and over again. I might even have done it to someone while setting up a new base; but I would be willing to contribute to costs and I think most reasonable players would be ā¦ but there is no way of knowing how / who you might upset or what is required on a new planet until you arrive and set up your base there.
Eventually, someone will fund the upkeep, simply because it will be in their best interest to do so, free-riders be damned.
Eventually, the math of āIf I spend X, I will get more workersā will defeat āIf I spend X, he will get more workers!ā.
Only if your the bigger base. If you build a smaller one the round robin mechanic protects your numbers
Yes, for sure. But, thatās the only scenario in which anyone would fund more upkeep for non-altruistic reasons: they need more workers. Right?
Just a picture about how Iām happy about fact of pops sharing delivered with Populous.
Planet was initially at 180 engi with my solo base. And now I have less than 50. So amazing.