ENDLESS™ Space 2 is turn-based 4X space-strategy that launches players into the space colonization age of different civilizations within the ENDLESS™ Universe. Your Vision. Their Future.
The current empire-wide happiness penalty for having too many colonies is unintuitive. Why would your core systems become unhappy because you're expanding your borders? It catches new players unaware when suddenly every system is rebelling, starving, or going into debt because they built one more colony. What should be happening, according to most science-fiction out there, is that the empire gets stretched too thin, the outlying colonies are left to fend for themselves, and they start revolting as a result. So how would we simulate that in-game?
No Planet is an Island
Newly-founded colonies are naturally unhappy, unproductive, and can't feed themselves, lacking most of the tools & services the core planets have. Without support from other planets, they'll never grow and quickly revolt.
In order to sustain them and help them become self-sufficient, they need a stream of supplies from other planets: food, industry (rare materials & complex parts they can't build natively), and Dust.
New colonies get food from one system and industry from another system; which systems, and how much, can be changed at any time.
The ratio of food and industry that successfully reaches the colony depends on its distance from the supplying planets and the safety of the route (using a version of the currently implemented Trade Routes).
Dust is taken straight from the treasury on a per-turn basis; the more Dust-per-population given to them, the happier they are. (This could also be used as a reversed tax rate; instead of lowering taxes to increase happiness across the whole Empire, you could instead spend Dust on a few key troublesome systems.) This is an abstraction of importing luxuries to the colony to keep them happy until more local buildings can be constructed.
Once the colony is self-sufficient and content, the stream of supplies can be cut off or rerouted to a new colony.
Complications
Wars, blockades, and enemy ships can all hinder or even cut off entirely the stream of supplies to colonies, causing them to starve and revolt.
Massive projects undertaken by the core worlds could also force players to choose between building up their outlying colonies or turning all their resources towards the project.
Resource loss due to travel distance can force a player to choose between several nearby colonies or one tempting far-away colony.
Newly-conquered systems may already be self-sustaining, but the populace will be unhappy and sabotage most of the resources until they get used to their new rulers.
Issues to Solve
This is more complex than the current "don't build over X colonies or you'll be too unhappy" mechanics, and would need several slidebars and a map or two to properly convey it to the player and let him change it. This would be quite a bit of work.
Not to mention we would have to teach the player how to use it properly.
How much control should the players have over the amounts of resources sent to the colony? Should they be able to set an exact %? Choose a level of food/industry/happiness to supply the colony with? Or just choose a planet to supply it and let the game handle the rest?
The current resource production/consumption and happiness modifiers would have to be changed so new colonies need some external support to grow & thrive. As it currently is, every system is (nearly) self-sustaining from Day 1. This would (probably) involve tweaking every single resource-per-population-gain and building modifier in the game.
That's a neat idea but it looks difficult to implement.
Maybe an easier solution would be that the overexpansion penalty applies only for outposts and for as long as they remain that way.
Once they form into self sustained colonies, the penalty should start to dissipate, both in the core worlds (they don't need to feed them anymore) and the colony itself.
I like the OP's proposed system, but I'm not entirely sure it would actually act as an deterrent to having lots of colonies. It would, however, suppress having multiple outposts growing at once which is something. Overall, I like the ideas presented as they make sense. Hard to judge wether they're fun though. I do like that it prevents you from squatting outposts deep into enemy territory risk-free.
vahouth wrote:
Maybe an easier solution would be that the overexpansion penalty applies only for outposts and for as long as they remain that way.
Once they form into self sustained colonies, the penalty should start to dissipate, both in the core worlds (they don't need to feed them anymore) and the colony itself.
I think this makes more sense than the current system at least.
I believe the purpose of that over-colinization penalty is to add a disadvantage for spreading too wide, which neither of these proposals really address. For that, I have my own proposal: Add a corruption penalty to FIDSI that's dependant on how far a colony is from the homeworld. You could have planetary improvements and governor skills that would reduce corruption, but generally the idea is that your colonies are getting less efficient the further they spread. This would create a sort of "soft-cap" on colonization that seems to be the purpose of the current happiness penalty.
I believe the purpose of that over-colinization penalty is to add a disadvantage for spreading too wide, which neither of these proposals really address. For that, I have my own proposal: Add a corruption penalty to FIDSI that's dependant on how far a colony is from the homeworld. You could have planetary improvements and governor skills that would reduce corruption, but generally the idea is that your colonies are getting less efficient the further they spread. This would create a sort of "soft-cap" on colonization that seems to be the purpose of the current happiness penalty.
Yes - I admire the OP's direction but it's too complicated IMHO. Cronstintein's proposal is much simpler.
Given that population is tracked independently, the one tweak I would say is that individual population units are unhappy the further they are away from their own homeworld. These penalties could be increased/doubled/etc. if you don't control their homeworld. So for example - if I'm the Craver's and I start capturing Sophon fringe worlds - the Sophon's should be really unhappy - not only because I just took them over but because now they have no access back to their homeworld. If I were to go on to capture their homeworld, that penality would then go away - although distance from the homeworld would always remain a factor.
That's the happiness part (which affects industry and food output - correct?).
I would then have a second part of the equation that is distance from the imperial seat of power. This would be your homeworld in the start of the game - but you should have the opportunity to move it over the course of the game. This is similar in a way ot Age of Wonders 3's "Throne City" mechanic. Moving up your "throne world" to a more central location might reduce dust/science (e.g. corruption) penalties - but would also put your throne world more on the front-line and more at risk. It makes for an interesting tradeoff but with a really simple mechanic.
I don't think it should be distance from home world mainly because sometimes the closest habitable world is really far away. This would be a big handicap to anyone early game. You would either have to research a closer planet type or live with 25 happiness. I think it should be based on the closest distance from the systems influence circle to your continuous home worlds circle.
Consider putting a FID(SI?) penalty on the core worlds until a colony passes some threshold. There can be a slider in the Empire management that is "Colonial support". One end of the slider is full support, where colonies don't have a happiness penalty and perhaps grow faster, but the core worlds take a % loss to FIDSI. The other end is "No support" colonies have happiness penalties and grow slower, but the core worlds have no loss of FIDSI.
I would then have a second part of the equation that is distance from the imperial seat of power. This would be your homeworld in the start of the game - but you should have the opportunity to move it over the course of the game. This is similar in a way ot Age of Wonders 3's "Throne City" mechanic. Moving up your "throne world" to a more central location might reduce dust/science (e.g. corruption) penalties - but would also put your throne world more on the front-line and more at risk. It makes for an interesting tradeoff but with a really simple mechanic.
That would work pretty easily as a unique system improvement. Bureaucratic Center or Capital System, something to that effect.
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