Seriously .....

what we have is 

R = (((10+SiS)/Pi)^0.5)*0.75

and it's correct. (10 being the base influence area given at the creation of the colony).

if it's written the way it is it's because there is no choice when dealing with this sequential order of operations.

and the gameplay effect is "so bad" because the team wanted so hard to have something mathematical correct that didn't take in consideration the increasing amount of influence we could gain.

I didn't find any logarithm operation so i settled with using power 0.33 instead of power 0.5 which gave pretty good effects too but this too can be too little depending on how much more influence one will be able to generate in next updates (that why i wanted a log, it suppresses growth better)

Yeah, Pejman, the bug is elsewhere I think. Assuming 10 and 0.75 are just balance numbers, I drew it with a math ploter (https://www.desmos.com/calculator) and the curve should be quite slow to grow.

For 20 , this gives +/-2, for 200 , this gives +/-6.

But I saw ingame 200 circles, these are not just 3x the radius of 20 circles.

It may not be a direct radius calculation but a grow calculation here. There should be this actual real R + that formula somewhere in the code or we should not see those screenshot circles until 1 billion  output or something.

It must be cumulated somewhere.

If it's a growth, then you want a SIS^-0.5 growth, not a SIS^0.5 growth. Accel curve need to be decreasing and kick hard in the begining.

If this is a speed, this could be derivated from position (sorrey for this :p).

There is no R+ calculation, this is the formula and what is important here is SiS

System Influence Stock which is the value of ALL THE INFLUENCE GENERATED BY YOUR SYSTEM SINCE IT HAS BEEN CREATED.

If for instance having a rebellion in a system would lower your total SIS amount, you would see the border shrink

you can easily calculate an approximation of the border radius

for instance with the old formula the border radius is

1.33 at creation  (sis = 10)  (this is actually sis + 10 from the bazse value of border radius, at this stage no influence has been produced yet)

if we produce 14 influence for 10 turns it becomes

5.18  (sis = 150)

if we then produce 20 influence for 20 turns it becomes

9.9  (sis = 550)

Then 40 influence for 20 turns

15.55  (sis = 1350 )

then 100 influence for 20 turns

24.49 (sis = 3350)

200 influence for 10 turns

30.95  (sis = 5350 )

500 influence for 10 turn

43.05 (sis 10350)

These values are quite low (i often produce more than 600 influence per turn in 70 turns, especially with UE) and i think the galaxy width is around 100 units (i may be wrong there though)  but you can see that through normal gameplay the border still increase very fast

Pejman wrote:

There is no R+ calculation, this is the formula and what is important here is SiS

System Influence Stock which is the value of ALL THE INFLUENCE GENERATED BY YOUR SYSTEM SINCE IT HAS BEEN CREATED.

If for instance having a rebellion in a system would lower your total SIS amount, you would see the border shrink

you can easily calculate an approximation of the border radius

for instance with the old formula the border radius is

1.33 at creation  (sis = 10)...

I am confused isn't the radius 10 at creation and the SiS = 0 because no influence is in stock yet?

Pejman wrote:

System Influence Stock which is the value of ALL THE INFLUENCE GENERATED BY YOUR SYSTEM SINCE IT HAS BEEN CREATED.

Nice, this would explain a lot of things, yup. This could be a usefull formula for invasions.

So, your point is with growing SIS, it's easy to be 40x the starting circles, right ?

Then the limit of this radius is +∞, since number of turns is an ∞ number (whereas  generation have a max value, since the game have a finite number of ameliorations & bonuses).

Why SIS should remember the game since the begining and not only the last, say, 20 turns ? (20 turns is election duration, just saying 20 turn like this)

Also why the turn 1 SIS in game start should be a 1 term sum and not an infinite number too ?

If it's working like you say, SIS should only remember a finite turns of SIS with a, say, the sum of a 20 unit FILO stack.

With a finite max  / turn that they can calculate, they could say "ok, cap SIS is X, we want to remember Y turns, so let's adjust our formula whatever-it-is so X.Y gives a max radius of Rmax.".

They can study speeds of R=f(X) by derivating f(X). If they want fast growth for low SiS, and slow grow for high SiS, with a limited SiS, this is just the easy part.

SiS doesn't "remember" anything it's just a value and each turn whatever net influence was produced  by the system is added to it.

it actually has an upper limit that is the memory allocated to it though (but it's not something you should get in a normal gameplay) , but yes any system can end up having a influence border radius spanning the entire galaxy if you give it enough turns

Pejman wrote:

for now i think that the interaction between influence zones is just a visual one, i belive that i would need a complete ovehaul of the system for it to work as what would be the best (that is border growth reduced by an amount depending on the other borders it "fights")

I am confused isn't the radius 10 at creation and the SiS = 0 because no influence is in stock yet?

My bad, i should have been clearer : i wrote sis in my post but it's actually sis + base value of 10. a radius of 10 is much bigger than what you have in the system creation (it's big enough so that you already are trying to push borders from other systems that are outside your vision range)

So each round the radius calculation is basically started by setting the radius to its base value 10 before applying the other sequential operations which then results in the displayed radius (which is obviously smaller than 10 on creation), got it.

Radius = ((10 + SystemInfluenceStock)/3.14115926) ^ 0.5 * 0.75 as you wrote earlier.

@Pejman : I wanted to say with your hypothesis that since SiS is said to be a sum since the game starts, then it just remembers past time.

This is not an instant value, that's what I wanted to say.

It should be a sum for last T turns.

This just asks like a few more kB memory to fix something that is actually broken.

@AndreasK: R is initialized to 10 (line 15), not SiS. SiS is read from memory from some global object that I would like to examine but couldn't find. Pejmann's point is saying it's a sum from the game start. Since you can play an very high number of turns, then SIS can grow very high and your radius have no real limitation.

I think they made it like that to simplify invasions & use low memory.

Now if the number of turns have a limit, then your radius would have a limit. They could calculate that and renormalize circle to an acceptable size. Or just use an hamster pushing end turn for 10 days :)

To @Kweel_Nakashyn and others interested in numbers, I posted some calculations in this other thread: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/22313-i-think-im-going-to-enjoy-ue.

Is one of the latest posts, but don't know how to link direct.

This compared the costs of increasing same radius units depending on if you pay per radius increase or per surface increase. As you'll see paying per surface increases costs exponentially, at least mitigating this issue.

@AndreasK: Everyone take great care to precision, but we don't even really know how the environnement variables are handled, so...

:)

Another track to balance this issue : the AI could be a lot more aggressive toward ennemy influence.

Currently, UE's best route is empire point, because they get science, dust and industry with it. They can make peace with anyone and passivly take the whole universe with no real problems.

They have a little flaw in food, so in manpower generation. If empire point thus influence gets them wars instead of being at peace with the whole universe, it would help I think.

Also, Cravers. War should be sustainable for them. They prevent a player to be 100% confortable with the peace road, and for now, they are a minor annoyance. They should get a real boost against someone that is at peace with a lot of factions. Their purpose should be to make people hesitate to be at peace with each other.

There should be something to get you in the confort zone with:

- war vs 0/1/2 factions

- ally with 1 faction

- peace with 1/2/3 factions

- cold war with 1/2/3/4/5/6 factions.

There is not enough problems with being at peace with everyone. And Cravers should have no problems with being at war or coldwar with the whole universe.

So today you can let your influence, grow and grow more, until you buy that era 3 invention. Then you can wait to overgrow and one shot the whole universe. This is a no brainer choice.

Peace should cost empire point each turn. If you want to avoid that, be ally. But being ally gives you your ally's wars.

Pejman wrote:

Note that on the 2nd screenshot i used the old value calculation and used it for the vision range so we can clearly see the difference.

I liked this :/

I might mod this back to influence from sphere radius but vision range from circle radius : this is nice, don't you think ?

Anyway, just a quick "meh":

<!-- Influence -->
<BinaryModifier TargetProperty="NetSystemInfluence" Operation="Addition" Left="$(NetSystemEmpirePoint)" BinaryOperation="Subtraction" Right="$(SystemInfluenceUpkeep)" TooltipHidden="true"/>

<Modifier TargetProperty="SystemInfluenceRadius" Operation="Addition" Value="$(SystemInfluenceStock)"/>

<Modifier TargetProperty="SystemInfluenceRadius" Operation="Division" Value="3.14115926"/>

<Modifier TargetProperty="SystemInfluenceRadius" Operation="Multiplication" Value="1.25"/>

<Modifier TargetProperty="SystemInfluenceRadius" Operation="Power" Value="0.33"/>

<Modifier TargetProperty="SystemInfluenceRadius" Operation="Multiplication" Value="1.75" Priority="1"/>

=> 1/(4/3) = 0.75, not 1.25 :)

I'll try this soon, Influence is what makes me waiting for a fix to play. I will use Phi somewhere. ;)

Also, warning, there's a decolonization speed formula, after an invasion hding in this xml.

Just a quick remark after our previous discussion :

If SIS = Total inf since the begining, determining the current size, then inf output in this formula gives the speed of the growth

(dSIS = inf output, and dT = 1 turn => dSIS / dT = inf output / turn).

So, since inf output goes higher and higher to the end of the game, this will accelerate more and more.

The lack of the system's level in this formula is strange, I somehow though that level 1 systems would grow less than lvl 2 or more.

This would be fine to have a quick little documentation about system's var like $(NetSystemEmpirePoint) so I could make my own formula ;o)

Pejman wrote:

i'll make a version with the expanded vision then (or maybe add an improvement increasing vision radius, i mean you should be able to build better planetary sensors and stuff with time)

Or just:

Radius inf = the one from the sphere

Radius vision = the one from the sphere at level 1 up to the one from the circle at ($SystemLevel) 5

( = RSphere * (1 + Rsphere * 0.2 * SystemLevel / RCircle) or something like this, this is quick & dirty calculation)

edit - I have to calculate this better. :)