Hi,

Not sure if this should go here or in ideas section, so move there if you consider this fits better.

Said that, I think everyone knows the actual issues with influence conversion, which most people feels overpowered. At the point that playing in normal you can have 3 systems in turn 100 and in turn 150 be able to buy a quarter of the galaxy in one turn.

As I see this conversion is a good idea, and I like it, as it offers an alternative to conquer systems for pacifist or not-so warmongering factions, but is actually very unbalanced. At this purpose I created this thread, to make my proposals to balance this, and also to hear yours, in hope Amplitude can balance this properly before release.

Actually my ideas are the following:

• Making mandatory pay to convert a system. In this moment I posted an idea about this, so you can read here a better explanation. to summarize this is what devs put in Update 3, avoiding you ending with lots of systems you don't want at all. Also making this a bit costly.
• Redo the numbers behind this. Take in account that with actual system any 100% converted system costs 250 inf to buy, which is a very low price, considering that you can easily stock 10k+ at about turn 100. thus I suggest making a formula considering those parameters, to fix a final and higher purchase price (while at 100%, obviously as in my idea I consider initial prices should be ridiculously high, not allowing you to buy anything if you don't want to sped all your inf):
  • Population: one with more weight. Think price shouldn't be same for 2 pop system than for 31 pop system. Obvious reasons.
  • Manpower: just following pop. Think that your troops will probably treat people spreading foreign propaganda accordingly. specially if you want to create new patriots.
  • Happiness: I think this should be a multiplier to the um of other factors. A system with 100% happiness should have a very high price, making it almost impossible to buy, while a system on rebellion should be in the opposite situation with a very low price.
  • System level: think like a minor multiplier. system with high lvl, so with important empire investment should be harder to buy.
  • Trade routes: internal trade routes should make higher inf requirements, while foreign trades with the player who wants to buy a system lowers the price (easy to infest with propaganda).
  • Influence production: just with similar weight as MP. A system with high inf production should be harder to buy.
  • Laws: laws that put simple modifier to this cost.
  • Faction traits: obviously Cravers or this kind of factions are less interested in propaganda. Also some minors can give traits to influence this, making them more interesting to collect (not sure if some does with 50 pop bonus yet).
  • Diplomatic status: more closer to alliance lower the price. Think makes sense.
• To previous point, understand to many factors may lead to too complicated management, but take this as what it is: a suggestion.
• Some situations as systems will make purchase with in impossible. For lore reasons and gameplay I consider that should be impossible to buy systems:
  • At war. will you hear enemy propaganda.
  • Homesystem. Think this makes sense. Also makes impossible to completely eliminate a faction using only this way, which actually is.
  • Systems with 100% happiness. Why should they convert??
• Make inf growth more logarithmic. Actually this is exponential. If you need to clarify what I mean, suggested something similar for trade routes growth.
• Allow players to counter inf conversion by using bribes with luxuries/dust/inf or simply manpower, like when you stop rebellious systems. Thus allows some counter to this, which actually is impossible to counter. Also think this should be less effective each time, to motivate players try to stop the "aggressor".

Since here my ideas. Will be glad to hear yours.

---- EDIT:

I'm fully explaining this idea in the posts below. If you want to know more, take a read.

I like your ideas. For my part, I would be happy to have the choice between two territory growth modes :

• an invasive influence mode : actual mode, actual rules.
• a pacific influence : your borders don't "push" other borders, but they resist to enemy border pressures if they are "stronger". It would be cool because sometime you want to be friend with another player but unfortunaly you play influence a lot. 

I would like to see options that boost this two types of using territory when you spend influence. So in the invasive mode you can apply malus to another faction for an influence price. With the pacific mode you can get some boost to you and maybe your pacific neighbours for an influence price. 

lo_fabre wrote:

• 
  
  • Happiness: I think this should be a multiplier to the um of other factors. A system with 100% happiness should have a very high price, making it almost impossible to buy, while a system on rebellion should be in the opposite situation with a very low price.

no disputing much of your post, but regarding happiness multiplier, I think it needs to be reserved for after we have a way to influence the happiness of an opponent's system (i.e. when an espionage system in in place.)

I really like the idea of trade routes having influence depending on whether domestic or foreign.

• Diplomatic status: more closer to alliance lower the price. Think makes sense.

I don't know about the diplomacy effect you suggest.  I like the idea in principle, tho.  I just think that allies should be harder to convert.

• Systems with 100% happiness. Why should they convert??

Hmm...but it can be really easy to institute laws and improvements to get to 100%.  

• Allow players to counter inf conversion by using bribes with luxuries/dust/inf or simply manpower, like when you stop rebellious systems. Thus allows some counter to this, which actually is impossible to counter. Also think this should be less effective each time, to motivate players try to stop the "aggressor".

This is a great idea.  I especially like the idea of it getting less effective.

In short, as per your usual, this is a well-thought answer to the system inf conversion problem.  It is definitely a problem, and kind of feels like the lamest part of the gameplay right now.

[Request to devs/moderators: can you put this post following the first one in the thread, as I'll develop here some aspects of my proposal an this way will be easier to read as a whole? Thanks!]

---> Follows from first post:

Changing influence growth pattern

I propose to change the influence are growth pattern to a logarithmic growth, because what actually is happening is that it starts very slow, being almost useless in early game, but at mid-game it grows very quickly, engulfing every other player system in an unstoppable way. This growth pattern has some important issues and implications:

• Doesn't allow you to quickly cover systems you can colonize with influence in early game, when you want the most. This was done by Horatio in ES1 and was very fun to play, saving these systems for later and nobody could colonize.
• You can make a inf powerhouse in 2-3 systems, putting there all your heroes and inf improvements. Then in mid game the bubble starts growing very quickly and engulfs everything. It's not fun, cause you don't make interesting decisions, just put culture center + Denarque university + conseulor in one system and let this system bubble eat everyone.
• the only way to counter this is conquer the inf powerhouses via war. Still if you achieve this, it destroys completely the inf bubble.

Changing this pattern to a logarithmic growth will have the following advantages:

• Allows to quickly cover neighbour systems in early game, but avoids the mid-game explosions.
• As a result of previous, the growth will be more local, impeding to have this powerhouses.
• As a result too you'll have to carefully plan where to build inf unique improvements and where and when to place/move your main inf-producing heroes. this leads to more interesting decisions for the player, like delaying the construction of this improvements until this outpost near the enemy turns into a colony (and of course having to protect it during this phase).
• This way big bubbles covering lots of uncolonized systems are avoided, making this strategy only valid for closest systems.

Have in mind that when I'm proposing this I'm referring to the size of your bubble, not the neat inf income (everyone likes UE producing 2k inf/turn), and what I think is that the requirements for border growth should be by area and not radius, and have some limiter like the dust inflation to slow their progress.

Sure I missed something, so feel free to post your ideas.

----

EDIT: think was @Kweel_Nakashyn who delved into xmls and found the formula for inf bubbles growth. It was posted in the forums but ATM can't found this. Someone can provide a link?

[Request to devs/moderators: can you put this post following the first one in the thread, as I'll develop here some aspects of my proposal an this way will be easier to read as a whole? Thanks!]

---> Follows from "Countering influence conversion" s post:

Conversion rate: formula proposal

This formula is my proposal to calculate the rate at which systems are converted. Have in mind that this departs from an idea and what I want is explain a concept, so numbers can be highly modified. Also have in mind too that I'm no mathematician or programmer, so can do some things wrong.

Following from previous, and as you can see all that goes with the idea of making this conversion less powerful. Here I want to add that my idea is to use influence production from systems as a protection to conversion from foreign influence. Here I see two paths: making this slow conversion rate, or making this grow the purchase price. As I have no idea on how all that is calculated and think that all other parameters I proposed on first post makes more sense in calculating the purchase price, I wanted this being the way you can try to accelerate / delay the conversion rate (of course depends on which side you are).

This formula should be recalculated each turn, giving the % of conversion that will be changed each turn. This is the way I think should be, but I'm not sure if this may be a hell for programmers, so my apologies in advance if this is.

Here I'll start by the more simple case:

1 vs 1 system conversion

The simplest situation, one system tries to convert another. Here each turn the % that is converted is the ratio of influence production from both systems: "aggressor inf production"/"defender inf production". So if the aggressor produces 100 inf turn and the defender produces 10, the conversion will be 10% each turn.

This gives opportunities to defend, by building influence improvements, or moving your heroes into that systems, as if you consider that this is recalculated each turn, moving a hero that gives you 10 inf per turn, will improve your production to 20 and the ratio will be only a 5% in the next turn, so you earn double time only by moving a hero. Also can buy more time with the counters proposed before.

Remember that this is also applied to aggressor, so if the builds the improvement that enhances inf production, conversion rate will grow to 15%, 20% and so on.

I recognise that there can be extreme cases that leads to 100% conversion in one turn. That's the reason I proposed the counters. This way if you have enough luxuries, you'll be able to delay this for at least 5 turns and look for a solution, like build ding inf improvements to slow conversion rate or approval improvements to increase the price (see next post).

Of course case can be opposed and conversion rate be that low that cannot be achieved.

You'll find that if defending system reaches better inf production that aggressor, with the price formula proposed it will take almost infinite time to purchase, as the conversion will have a very low rate, making this impractical. This is intentional.

Various systems conversion

If a system is trying to convert various system into its are of influence, its inf production will be divided equally by all that systems. If you produce 1k/turn, and try to convert 5 systems, only 200inf/turn will go to each one. This makes defence easier if you're too greedy.

If a system is under influence of two system that tries to convert it, the inf per turn will be added. So simply: 100 from one system and 50 from another will be a 150 on the aggressor side when calculating the conversion rate.

My only worries here is that this can lead to too complex situations, but if you have better ideas, please post.