Researching with Factories and Building with Labs is Crazy! » Forum Post by pdesrivieres@yahoo.com

@ ToS -
Why do you still play the game if your opinion of it is so low?

Why do you spend your time here continuosly criticizing the developers?

No flame intended - just really curious.

Apparently you don't know my opinion about the game. So let me try to enlighten you. On a conceptual level, no doubt the game sucks. I'm just being honest here, since you asked. It lacks imagination and depth for a *space* *strategy* game. It does, however, have potential, it's just a shame it's not fully (and efficiently) explored. I think the devs give too much importance to words that have a ring to it, like "new" and "gfx", and are clumsy in implementing what in their little world is classified as sci-fi. I see a lot of excuses being given in here, in the form of self-promoting threads, when there are incisive criticisms; and clumsy replies, generally dodgy and pointing the finger at something else. Even being a small team (though they're 40+ people in the office), I'd expect fixes to be faster, especially because they publish their own stuff. Add to that that the fixes aren't really fixes or create new problems, and that there's a lot of old bugs still to even be addressed, and that everything about the game is unbalanced and isn't taken care of - not because it's hard to balance, mind you, or even to edit the xmls. I find the new additions thread(s) to be nothing but carrots - I wouldn't expect anything but money slider-like improvements (not really an addition) for 1.6 - I mean 1.7.
I love space TBS games. This game, as most TBSs, has the "one more turn" feel, and a potentially good universe feel. Most gfx are good, but as a strategy gamer I don't really care much for that. The game does play nicely. Kryo is a great asset. That's about all the good things I have to say.
I could say a lot more, but I won't. I hope I have satisfied your curiosity. BTW, you're still short of a reply to one of my posts

I see you're not *that* busy to post.

As for the subject of in RL factories producing research and labs actually building stuff, let's remember that we're talking about building *spaceships* and *buildings*, not test runs of alloys, and researching *weapons* and *terraforming* and *trade*, not semiconductors.

Ok thanks. That reply pretty much sums up your attitude. You are smarter than any other person on this planet. I bow down to your almighty wisdom.

I eagerly await your own contribution to the Gaming market...someone with your brilliance should be able to develop, write, code, support, and distribute the perfect Space Strategy Game before eating breakfast.

No sense in a mere mortal such as myself replying to any point you make, since you are so obviously all knowing and all seeing.

Too bad Brad didn't see your wisdom in quite the same way in this thread, thus I understand your constant spinning of any topic to shoot barbs at him and his company.
WWW Link

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As far as my example of a working factory complex at a research facility - this is in answer to the OP's assertion that it is counter to events in the real world. You can get limited production from a research facility in the real world, and research from a manufacturing facility - the example I provided is to answer Mascrinthus.

I do agree the sliders and focus need work - the examples provided by Mascrinthus, Purge, Iztoc, and other exprienced players are very good at pointing out the flaws. If they can be brought up in threads that are not twisted by those with axes to grind, then perhaps Brad will take notice.

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Too bad Brad didn't see your wisdom in quite the same way in this thread, thus I understand your constant spinning of any topic to shoot barbs at him and his company.
WWW Link

Wow, that link is sadly enlightening. Dare I say it: Methinks we have a troll.

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People in this thread loosing a bigger picture. Every game relies on suspension of disbelief. The problem is not that this or that unrealistic / stupid, but the fact that game is not engaging enough to overlook such things. I played many games with far worse AI and much less realistic, but I liked them because they are more engaging. For example,

(1) MoM (master of magic): non-existant AI, non-exitant balance, no realism (game of magic);

(2) MOO I & II (Master of Orion) both unbalanced (the second is the worst), AI non-existant or heavily exploitable;

(3) AoW II (age of wonders II: +expansion), AI for tactical combat is OK, stratigic is pretty much non-existant, little of strategy / development on empire level;

(4) Disiples II (Ultimate Edition) same as AoW II.

I played them on and off and can see myself playing some of them later sometime despite above faults, I do not think I will play GalCiv I or GalCivII: DL and will not buy DA for the reasons I explain below.

In all four examples, games have saving grace:

(1) MoM has tactical combat, +RPG elements;

(2) MOO I & II mostly tactical (ships) combat, +race customization in MOOII;

(3) AoW II and Disiples II: campaign, tactical combat, RPG.

GalCiv II seems too have something: campaign, race customization, empire level development, but all that sort of not good enough or misplaced in some cases:

(1) Campaing is pointless if game does not allow for "heroes" units that transfer from one "map" to another -- player has nobody to identify with (played couple of maps kind of boring IMHO);

(2) Race customization is ok in terms of balance it is as bad / good as MOO II (exploitable);

(3) empire level of development is rather sad story: very simplistic (colony rush -- build up -- war -- choose victory type) -- all victory types are easyly achievable on the tip of the sword; amout of wasted production both in military and social query is driving me insane (and crude tool like focus came in very late patch). The game unfolds on the stratigic level worse than MOO: in MOO you need to scout, to think about defending your colonies from cheap strikes, you can guard uncolonized planets to prevent others from settling or take them with your transport. In GalCiv II nothing of this make sense or possible. Scout cost about 60-85 pp, but colony ship ~120 pp, transport is behind very expensive tech and cost as much as colony ship. Plus everybody has insane amout of money on hand to fund colony rush. Result is very simplistic game.

The weak plus side was fleet combat and this rock-paper-scissors system for weapon / defense albeit poorly balanced in favour of weapons. Yet, it was "fixed" (I heard) in DA, so defense is no longer matter; thus, fleet combat goes out of the window.

So, what are plus sides of GalCivII that suppose to be engaging? I, personally, see none and I am just waiting maybe in GalCivIII developers will realize that they need something in terms of game mechanics to keep people intersted in. Because there is no game mechanics. I bought GalCiv I and was disapointed when I realized that it is very simplistic, so I did not buy expansion. It was the first instalment, but maybe second would be better? Later, GalCiv II is the same story: bought DL realized that *again* gameplay very simplistic (some better, but very little), and expansion (DA) is worse than DL, so no reason to buy it.

In my opinion, GalCiv II in game mechanics is as bad as MOO III, the differences that (1) GalCiv II was not hyped up so its failure is not apparent; and (2) better post-release support -- more bugs were fixed.

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@DoJ

The differences are,

Nope, the difference is noone tried to triage your posts (unless they were completely wrong assumptions, which would be natural.

I don't criticize the developers.

Well, I wouldn't want to generalize, but I've seen some replies from "them" that made me go WTF?! Some attitudes are recurrent, and that doesn't help.

If I was part of writing a game like this, would there be fewer bugs of this sort? Probably. There, I said it. But also, new features would be implemented more slowly, and I strongly suspect the overall effect on sales would be negative.

Did you notice that the new features bring a bunch of new problems? How does that impact the game?

Again, if you think that means Stardock has crappy programmers, and I'm an even crappier one, you're welcome to work on your own game.

Yawn. Whatever. But consider this. Every game has a limited life cycle. The way things work with this one, it'll never be "ready" within its life cycle. If that's not a reason to "bitch" about, then I really don't know what is. That it's constantly becoming "different" with changes, that might be a good thing but also a very bad thing. There's no reliability in documented features for instance.

An adversarial approach is fine, but in my experience it's best combined with civility and respect.

Granted. It's worked for me in the past too, and very well. But around here there's too much fanboy-ism, which coupled with the fact that there's so much to say about the game tends to turn reports to slugfests.

As I said earlier, if Brad ever specifically defends the focus status quo, then I'm obviously wrong. But it looks like he hasn't done it so far, at least, so there is some possibility that I'm right.

Like it has already been said, including by Iztok, it's been over a year. Hard to miss, even if he on occasion "misses" an important bug discussion. I haven't seen any comments on regular posts, but there may be something in his journals.

@Oldstatesman

No sense in a mere mortal such as myself replying to any point you make, since you are so obviously all knowing and all seeing.

This is becoming pretty much a standard with you. If you're not going to defend your verbal diahrrea, might as well not start it in the first place, don't you think? You don't reply because you have no answer, is that not the case? But I guess it's easier to dismiss it like that. It even looks like you came out on top.

Too bad Brad didn't see your wisdom in quite the same way in this thread, thus I understand your constant spinning of any topic to shoot barbs at him and his company.

Well, I think he did. TBH, my impression of him really sank in that thread, not because of what he said, but how he tried to distort his own story to fit his point.
I hope you haven't damaged his reputation by bringing up that thread again.

If they can be brought up in threads that are not twisted by those with axes to grind, then perhaps Brad will take notice.

Heheh. I think there may be something about me that bothers you. I'm touched.

BTW, I see Frogboy removed his threat later, good marketing move.

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Hi!

If Brad ever explicitly says something like that, then the issue is settled.

I remember reading his post about sliders: he didn't want to change the way they work because of the AI's sake. Probably he'd need to change too much of the code from the GC-1 to make them "think" properly.

However we're slowly getting some progress with the way sliders work:
- In GC-1 ALL production from ANY empty queue was lost. So in the mid-game it was a mayor PITA to get an undeveloped planet, since social slider was set very low to avoid waste, ant there was no focus.
- Similar situation was in first version of GC-2, but now much bigger comunity became very vocal about that waste. So they introduced first the transfer of unused social spending in military queue (IIRC with 1.0x), and very soon after that also posibility to produce nothing in military queue, so the waste was practically eliminated. The focus was introduced as the last, but before version 1.2.

After writing all this down I realized that regarding sliders there was no progress done in last year or so. Maybe we shoud be more vocal about demands for separating production and reseach financing. Brad did not say the development of the game is over. Maybe in another expansion pack we coud finaly get it? Or at least in GC-3.

BR, Iztok

Please excuse me Iztok, but I read my DA book when I got it and the book calls the sliders employment sliders - meaning that when the industry slider is set at 100% you are employing every citizen in your empire as a government employee. The military, economic, and tech sliders represent how much of your labor force (by percentage) is dedicated in each area. If their is any inconsistency it is with the effects of lowering and raising your industry slider - IAW economic employment theory government is the least efficient employer and lowering this slider (in a valid economic system) should show an increase in taxable income and trade returns as the private sector expands to meet the new demands created by the non-government citizens. Instead nothing happens which is illogical and probably leads to the production misconception. As it stands the taxable income generated by the citizenry exists in a vacuum. No wonder the AI has soo many problems when the underlying principals themselves are in conflict. I'm surprised the game actually works at all.

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They were called employment sliders in the DA manual because of all the talk about the sliders making no sense (and hence Frogboy *must* know about the "problem"). They needed an explanation so people could actually understand how the extremely unintuitive system works, and that's what they came up with. Of course it doesn't make sense in the RW, so doesn't the whole economic system. If it helps people to understand the system...

As for Iztok's statement:
Maybe we shoud be more vocal about demands for separating production and reseach financing.

Maybe if people were more vocal about a whole lot of issues instead of always playing them down, the game would actually have some more fixes - and dare I say, strategy.

@Oldstatesman

Sorry, can't help to rub it in a little further. I see that you have the *time* to dig through my posts, and that's a compliment basically. You took the interest, even if it was only to try to run me down. So howcome you don't have the time to answer my question on that other thread that we know? You're full of it, aren't you?
I guess you missed all the other threads I replied to, or they just weren't in your best interest...

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WTF guys? Instead of all of this bitching back and forth why not be constructive in this argument and tilt it towards what was quoted from Iztok... being more vocal about A LOT of things. There are a dozen (at least) issues with this game, from the truly mundane to the game breaking... they should ALL be addressed. I've read little bits and pieces of other posts which basically state that 'some' of the problems in GCI crossed over into GCII. Now there was some 'minor talk' about GCIII already... will it also include the problems from the first two builds/versions as well? In my opinion, it will, because that's just the way it is I guess.
Tos, your bitching like I 'should' be bitching. Never in my life have I poured so much time and resources into a GAME of all things, so apparently there is something inherent within it that keeps me coming back (dare I say the ship builder?). My issues still aren't straight as I've finally encountered my dreaded CTD's again... after upgrading RAM.
All I'm trying to say is take this thread and try to put a positive on it. You've all brought up good points that had nothing to do with the OT... instead of infighting, we should be doing our best to make sure EVERYTHING gets fixed, not just a few things. For all I know, any one of the various other 'bugs' could be the root of my CTD's, who knows? But if everything within the software was resolved, then maybe I could see if it truly is the rig I have as others have tried to blame it on.

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My real question, and I guess it goes more to Mascrinthus or Iztok, but anyone can answer. Does either of these strategies really hurt the game that much?

- They take a huge amount of money to maintain
- They are difficult to use and take practice
- Using either of these strategies requires planning. You can't get desperate and go 100% military with all labs, or 100% research with all factories, if you get in a war and need tech or ships. You need to know many turns ahead of time what you will need, and you get there slowly.
- Using either of these strategies makes planetary tiles of one type useless. The first time you plow over a precursor library to put up a measly factory, you will feel like you are doing something wrong.

On the flip side, you produce more. A LOT more. But again, you have to figure out a way to pay for it.

Other gripes about the game aside, and not impuning the character of anyone who disagrees with me, does manufacturing with labs REALLY unbalance the game?

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On the flip side, you produce more. A LOT more. But again, you have to figure out a way to pay for it.

The problem here is all the *other* exploits. The long term leases (which you won't pay for fully), for example, the tech whoring, etc. There are too many exploits, and you can use them all to make one big exploit.

Other gripes about the game aside, and not impuning the character of anyone who disagrees with me, does manufacturing with labs REALLY unbalance the game?

Again, it's not just a matter of unbalance, but of integrity. Do you find it normal that you have a cargo hull available but you only use it for things that are not meant to be done with a cargo hull? And you use military hulls to do things that you'd use a cargo hull for? A line *has* to be drawn somewhere. A game can't have this many things that don't work as intended.
Why not just call them facility 1, facility 2, etc and have them produce whatever you want, and hull 1, hull 2, and have them do whatever suits you at the moment? Rules and mechanics exist for *something*. If fun is the only factor, you can call anything just about whatever you want, and have as much "fun". Heck, have a game *without* rules. The ultimate freedom!

Result is very simplistic game.

THIS is the major problem IMO. Granted, it's a game "for the masses", but it kinda reminds me of TV and those reality shows where a bunch of idiots are put in a house and do nothing all day except be, well, idiots. The masses love them, because it's "fun", but it has absolutely no content. It's pathetic really, but that's what the "majority" wants to see. I think the gaming industry is going the same way, and that's understandable to a point, since people have less and less time to dedicate to gaming. But there should be a limit to how low you go.

.
BTW, I fail to see how the AI can handle the game with the sliders as they are now, and can't if they're changed to be *simpler*...

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- They take a huge amount of money to maintain

Normally the early game is a balancing act between increasing your throughput ability and making sure you can pay for it. When you need to focus ONLY on income, decisions become easier and less interesting. (One random question: does Star Federation increase income 40% rather than the documented 30%? That's what it looked like the last time I checked the numbers, but I suppose it's possible that my income was already going to increase ~10% that turn for other reasons and switching to SF just added another 10% on top of that, so I may be wrong. SF is expensive enough to research that +40% is probably fair.)

- Using either of these strategies requires planning. You can't get desperate and go 100% military with all labs, or 100% research with all factories, if you get in a war and need tech or ships. You need to know many turns ahead of time what you will need, and you get there slowly.

100% production spending may get to a research objective slowly compared to 100% research spending... but it isn't really any slower than a 50/50 regular slider setting. (25% of 200 = 50% of 100.) You just get triple production with no drawback. If you don't want to pay for the triple production on a planet, and instead just want to do research, you can always leave the military and social queues empty.

- Using either of these strategies makes planetary tiles of one type useless. The first time you plow over a precursor library to put up a measly factory, you will feel like you are doing something wrong.

This is entirely cancelled out by planetary tiles of the other type being twice as useful.

Other gripes about the game aside, and not impuning the character of anyone who disagrees with me, does manufacturing with labs REALLY unbalance the game?

I estimate it decreases difficulty by 1-2 levels. But more importantly, it eliminates a lot of interesting decisions that you'd have to make under the slider system and replaces them with much simpler ones. My intuition is that Brad really likes those decisions and will tweak the game to bring them back; I may be wrong about this.

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One random question: does Star Federation increase income 40% rather than the documented 30%?

The manual says 40% (was 50% in DL).

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Hi!

Researching with Factories and Building with Labs

Does either of these strategies really hurt the game that much?

IMO not. I look at all those "crazy" issues as a problem-solving challenges: I have a goal (win the game), I have tools (game mechanics), I have a problem (I can't do this or that directly), so I manipulate the tools to skip/circumvent/solve the problem to achieve my goal. So whatever Stardock "throws" at me, and it still feels fun, I'll adapt. It's just another challenge. All those different "crazy" strategies are just adaptations to extreme problems in the game. No one forces a player to actually use them.

But if something doesn't feel right, and I have a chance to point at it, I do. The coupled sliders issue is one that doesnt' feel right. I am accustomed to do research with factories: MoO1 and Stars! work that way. However when I have a separate building type for research I'd expect to be able to finance it separeately, period.

What I really can't bear is mindles repetitive grind. That's why I don't play big "epic" games. I had my share of MM nightmare^2 in huge 16-players Stars! game, where each turn took 3-4 hours to complete. That's why I tend to finish my already-won GC-2 games with the fastest/minimum-MM-needed metods possible. That's why I also abandoned the trade-whoring suicidal game with Humans, despite it started well. I'd keep doing 20 minutes of trading each 4th turn only if the earned money would be the real one,

, not some fictive BCs. Eh, I became hard to please. Looks like I'm aging.

BR, Iztok

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Hi!

I read my DA book when I got it and the book calls the sliders employment sliders

They can call them whatever they want, but they don't pass the "duck" test for employment. The test: you can have FULL production from factories and labs with ZERO population.

BR, Iztok

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Hi!

I read my DA book when I got it and the book calls the sliders employment sliders

They can call them whatever they want, but they don't pass the "duck" test for employment. The test: you can have FULL production from factories and labs with ZERO population.

BR, Iztok

SSShhhhh! You are sliding right back into even more things that are crazy again!

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Kyro: Realism is always secondary to gameplay

Agreed! Getting back to my original post (this thread has gone way off topic), I suggested replacing the current 4 sliders (spending, military, social, and research) with 3 sliders (factory output, military/social factory output split, and research output). Planets would have focus buttons for locally focusing factory output between military and social but not research. This would:
(1) make the system more intuitive (in the past 18 months I have read countless posts on the forums from new players confused by the sliders),
(2) allow inexperienced players and the AI to fully fund their factories and labs (not just advanced players who choose to use the all factories or all labs strategy),
(3) add realism
In short the UI change would enhance gameplay and realism!

Hmm, I briefly installed and played an early version of DL before getting Dark Avatar, and I noticed that focus was not broken in that early version of DL. I can try to reinstall and double-check.
As for the rest: suppose, instead of using focus, you just set your spending rate to 75% production/25% research. You'd get practically no research on an all-factories planet.
That is how Purge and I remember focus working in the past (though Mascrinthus' statement implies our memory may be wrong), and it's how I think focus should work in the future. You'll then actually have to THINK about the division of factories and labs in your empire.

I misunderstood Purge's post, I thought he was saying the focus buttons where added in an update rather than their behavior changing. I just recently started playing DA, before that I was playing DL 1.2 where I always built factories for military/social development, even those focused on building labs (e.g., tech capital). Playing DA, I see I can build up my lab focused planets using the lab output via the focus button; I don't know if this was possible in DL 1.2. I think it was in 1.0x that unused social spending was transfered to military to lessen waste (excess military is still lost as is excess research when at the end of a tech branch).

it is possible to build 20 starbases - 4 inside and 16 around it

I don't see how you are getting more than 16 (4 per quadrant where 4 quadrants meet). I think the original rule requiring a minimum distant between starbases made more sense.

p.s. Cheers to Stardock for the many free updates and helpful posts from Kyro!

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I don't see how you are getting more than 16 (4 per quadrant where 4 quadrants meet).

This depends on the precise planet location. Since starbases have a range of 8 while sectors are 15x15, not 16x16, there are a few squares capable of benefiting from more than 16 starbases (the (1,8), (8,1), (8,15), and (15,8) positions can benefit from up to 24).

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now now play nice

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Heheh. You see the ship moving? How is the interface fine if the ship (which could be attacked on its way to the planet and back) stands still? And who said it was an interface issue?

In all honesty I'd rather suck it down, decommission the ship I want to upgrade and build a new one rather than manually move it back to a dock every time. For me, at least, the way it is is "realistic enough".

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Well, at least you just showed you didn't read the rest...

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That was about my limit for bitching.

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I have been staring at this box for like 10 minutes and cannot find the part of the "deal" on it where it says I get free updates at all. In my little book I see where Brian says he will update the AI over time but thats not nearly the same thing as overhauling game mechanics etc. and if I hadn't bought the game and agreed to the deal on the box I would have never read that. As far as the so called exploit of all factories or all labs goes if you have tried it you know its actually pretty hard and can backfire quickly. It takes just as much micro managing as trying to balance your planets or specialize certain ones if not more. If you actually read the AAR you would see the ups and downs of it and how quickly it almost fell apart and also you would see how he had to flip his planets at some point so in actually he still used research and factories he just planned his time and gambled a bit to get an early tech edge quickly enough to dominate. There where a few time in his AAR where he actually says he thinks he may lose IIRC. I can think of a number of random events that could have lost that game for him. If the sliders changed to your suggestion strategies would adjust but the game could be significantly harder because if you lost your lab heavy planets or manufacturing planets with their industry focus early you would be starting over and I am not really sure if it would actually be more intuitive

And of course if you think the all labs/factories strategy makes the game too easy you can always up the difficulty or not play with the strat. As for all the off topic complaints flooding this thread I would suggest you MAKE YOUR OWN THREAD!!!! Pro thread hijackers are so annoying and counterproductive to any sort of real discussion.

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