GDD n°7 - Empire Management

As usual, the summary of how the Early Access version is faring will be available at the end of the post .

Economy basics

The FIDSI

As in the previous game, the core of the economy will be FIDSI. For each Resource, we try to focus on different ways to obtain it, even if Food, Industry, Science and Dust will always be on Planets.

Food

Used to compute population growth, it’s localized to a specific system.

Mainly produced by:

• Planets
• Improvements
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Population
• Trade
  
  

Industry

Consumed to build ships and all the improvements, it’s localized to a system.

Mainly produced by:

• Planets
• Population
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Improvements
• Trade
  
  

Dust

Produced within systems, it’s then stocked on Empire, and managed at a global scale. It’s used to buy different elements, and pay the maintenance of Ships and Improvements.

Mainly produced by:

• Trade
• Population
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Improvements
• Diplomacy
• Planet
  
  

Science

Produced within systems, it’s then stocked on Empire and managed at a global scale. It’s consumed to unlock new technologies.

Mainly produced by:

• Diplomacy
• Improvements
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Trade
• Planets
  
  

Influence

Produced within systems, it’s then stocked on Empire, and managed at a global scale. It’s used for passing laws, interacting with the government and Diplomacy.

Mainly produced by:

• Diplomacy
• Improvements
  
  

Can also be produced by:

• Population (Happiness)
  
  

Resources

As in Endless Legend, Resources are going to be stocking up with turns and can then be consumed.

Strategic Resources

We want to dedicate the Strategic Resources to the military aspect of the game: buildings and Ship construction.

Luxury Resources

We want to strongly link the use of luxury to Population and the wealth of the empire. The system we suggest is inspired both by the Empire Plan (defining a specialization) and the boroughs (expanding your city) of Endless Legend.

Luxury resources allow you to develop a blueprints for System Upgrades which can then be applied on a system. Doing so level up your system, which means:

• Your maximum population cap is increased
• The bonus of the policy is given to your system for the rest of the game
  
  

A system can level up 3 times during the game; and a policy can be applied only once on each system.

The bonus the policy provides is directly linked to the luxury used to create it. At the beginning of the game, the policy only uses 1 type of luxury resource, and with each era, the number of luxuries that can be combined for a policy increases. However, only one policy per era can be created!

Empire territory

Colonization Process

In order to expand their empire, the player needs to go through the process of developing outposts. First, on their colony, the players build a colony ship that will not contain any specific populations, and with those they will settle on neutral planets. An outpost can be built in the same system as an outpost from another empire while there are available planets.

Once settled, the outpost is going to provide resources to the empire: Science, Dust, Influence, Luxury & Strategic resources. However, the outpost cannot be developed by building improvements.

The outpost will grow into a conlony after a certain number of turns that players can reduce by spending Manpower, Dust or Influence to boost their outpost's growth. They can also send ships to blockade the system, causing a slowdown/setback in the adversary outposts.

If there are several players with an outpost on the same system, the first to turn their outpost into a colony wins the system and all the outposted planets remain colonized, allowing to effectively start a colony with multiple colonized planets.

Building empire borders

• The influence is generated by star systems and represents cultural development. It’s going to expand passively over the course of the game.
• The influence also defines the territory of an empire: what’s within it is under the empire’s control. More or less.
• The influence is generated by the colonies of an empire. An outpost doesn’t produce influence. It’s materialized by a circle with a radius calculated from the output of Empire Point. The radius is a number of parsecs, starting from the center of the colony.
  
  

Each turn, we add the results to a stock used to compute the influence’s radius.

Influence is territory

The influence zone is defining the territory of an empire, and thus affects the different elements within depending on the relationship between their owner and the empire.

The territory can have additional properties depending on:

• Overall, through Laws and Technologies
• Toward specific empires, based on their relationship or active treaties
  
  

An element is considered within an influence area when its center is.

Influence affects an enemy node

A node owned by an opponent within the empire’s influence suffers from:

• Economic penalties: loss of Dust and Science and slowing down outpost development;
• Defense penalties: the system’s population provides less defensive power than usual
  
  

Moreover, if a certain technology has been researched a passive conversion countdown is triggered: each turn the difference between the influence generated by the influent system and the influenced system is added to a gauge.

• When the gauge reaches a certain positive threshold, the system is ready for conversion, which needs to be bought in Influence.
• When the gauge reaches a certain negative threshold, the system is saved from conversion
  
  

The threshold is defined by the system’s development. The conversion progress of a system is apparent both in system label and in system view.

Technology Tree

The technology tree is going to help the empire progress through the game, enhancing the available gameplay but also unlocking new ones.

We want to give the player freedom on how they approach available technologies, thus the player will be able to freely research technologies within the unlocked Eras, without having to fill other prerequisites.

Era

• The technology tree is divided into Eras containing a certain number of technologies.
• In order to unlock an Era, the player has to unlock a certain number of technologies of the previous Eras. Once an Era is unlocked, all its technologies become available. Moreover, the Era can provide a set of bonus / improvements at the time it unlocks.
• The Era progress can be used to modulate other game elements such as Minor Faction activities, or default experiences…
  
  

Technologies

Each technology is displayed within a form which refers to its category. In addition, the technology has the following properties:

• An Era: the technology is assigned to an Era, defining its accessibility.
• A cost: depending on the number of technologies already unlocked and the era in which the technology is
• A content: a technology can provide different elements: 
  • Empire bonus
  • Constructible (hull, improvements)
  • New gameplay (Market, Diplomatic interactions…) 
• A list of links with other technologies: 
  • Reduction cost: the cost of a technology is reduced when the other is researched;
  • Extra unlock: this link has to be paid for with resources by the player and will provide an extra unlock for both technologies when they are both researched;
  • Era progress: the link generates progress when both technologies are researched;
  • Exclusion: only one of the technologies can be unlocked;
  • Dependency: one of the technologies requires unlocking the other.
    
• A set of prerequisites: 
  • Exclusion: the technology cannot be unlocked if another has been unlocked
  • Dependency: the technology needs a technology to be unlocked 
    
    

Trade system

We want the player to have an active gameplay around trade routes, and to be able to invest time and energy as a player can do when going to war. Still, we want to avoid micromanagement.

For that, we’re going to place him as the manager of trade companies, who has to build their network. By doing this, we push the player to focus on working on the big picture instead of doing micromanagement.

The trade companies

The player unlocks trading companies over the course of the game; one by one. The first one is unlocked by researching the technology allowing trades.

Then, extra companies (up to X; X = 3 / 5) can be unlocked when enough income from trade has been accumulated to reach specific thresholds. The threshold to reach is based on the number of companies the player already unlocked. The progress needed to unlock the next company is tracked thanks to a gauge that is displayed in the trade screen.

When a company is unlocked, the player has to place its headquarters on a colonized system in order to activate it.

For the others companies, their headquarters have to be placed on any available system.

An available system is:

• A system owned by the player
• A system without other headquarters / branches
  
  

Once a company is unlocked and active (headquarter placed), the player can develop its power by:

• Assigning ships to it
• Investing to improve its efficiency
• Signing trade agreements with other empires
  
  

The power is going to directly affect the income generated by the different trade routes as well as the range of exploitation. In order to increment the number of trade routes, the player has to apply laws, or unlock specific technologies.

The number of available trade routes is the same for all companies of an empire and can be increased by:

• Enacting laws
• Unlocking research
  
  

In addition to that, the player can invest to place new branches for its company; this means that the player can extend the company’s network and thus build longer trade routes (explained below in the computing trade route part).

As with headquarters, branches have to be placed on available systems in order to be activated.

Trade routes

The idea behind the company is to build a network; and this network is represented by trade routes.

Trade routes are computed when they're first placed, following the shortest path between the HQ and the branches.

A trade route computes two incomes:

• One for the systems it crosses 
• One for the company that owns the route
  
  

This income is directly applied to the system and is based on the Trade Value of the system. It generates Food and Industry.

This is a percentage of the sum of the Trade Value of all systems linked by the route. In addition to that, each route from another empire crossing a branch or the headquarters generates some Dust as well. Moreover, the crossed system provides Luxury resources and Science in addition to the Dust income.

HOW'S THE EARLY ACCESS VERSION ON THIS ASPECT?

Influence affects an enemy node

• In the Early Access version, Influence conversion doesn't require to pay Influence to convert systems, the passive conversion of the zones of influence begins once the corresponding technology is researched.

Technology

• Technology links and prerequisites are not in the Early Access version, but on the long term this mechanic is subject to change

Trade system

• The first HQ for a Trade Company can be placed in any owned system instead of being restricted to the player's home system
• Colonized home systems are now considered available systems if they don't have a hard point on them already, instead of being outright excluded just for being home systems.
• Since "commercial ships" aren't a constructible anymore and thus cannot be assigned to Trade Companies, players can now invest in their co

• A list of links with other technologies: 
  • Reduction cost: the cost of a technology is reduced when the other is researched;
  • Extra unlock: this link has to be paid for with resources by the player and will provide an extra unlock for both technologies when they are both researched;
  • Era progress: the link generates progress when both technologies are researched;
  • Exclusion: only one of the technologies can be unlocked;
  • Dependency: one of the technologies requires unlocking the other.
    
• A set of prerequisites: 
  • Exclusion: the technology cannot be unlocked if another has been unlocked
  • Dependency: the technology needs a technology to be unlocked 

1) I am really scared by this. I like the current research system due to its flexibility. I regarded high level of customization as an advantage of the new system, but now it turns out that I saw just an alpha version of some other research tree. And it is not only about technological structure: ideology management will be limited as well.

Not only flexibility is endangered but there could also be serious balance issues and a problem of over-planning and, generally, over-complication, i.e. a risk to turn multiplayer into hell unless you learn out all the technology descriptions and links.

This is just a first impression. I hope either you will change your mind or I am wrong and implementation of this system will prove to be great.

2) Will system level-upping be the only application of luxury resources? Will luxury resources be used to pay special upkeep cost of something? Will they be abundant or will the balance be aimed at improbability of upgrading all the systems to their maximum level?