Generally speaking, industry has to be spent on the same turn you earn it.

Wait, that's not quite true.  If you have some leftover industry after finishing your queue, it can be saved into the next turn.  One assumes this is intended to make queue managment more convenient, by only requiring you to add something to your queue once it's completely empty, rather than needing to add something the turn before it becomes empty to avoid wastage.  (I think the rule is that you can save a max of one turn's worth of unused industry into the next turn, but it's hard to be sure of the details because there is no UI for it.)

But while this may have been added for convenience, it has strategic ramifications...

1)  If you want to build something that you're not allowed to add to the queue until next turn (e.g. because you need to finish a research, gather more strategic resources, or meet some other prerequisite), you can get a "head start" on it by deliberately overflowing most of your industry on this turn.  This usually allows you to finish your next-turn's choice one turn earlier than is otherwise possible.  This seems particularly relevant for the wonder victory.

2)  You can keep your options open by waiting a turn to commit to your next build choice; this can be handy, for example, someone declares war on you and you suddenly decide you'd rather build a warship instead of a colony ship.

3)  Things get particularly weird when building things that take a certain number of turns instead of a certain amount of industry, because they block your queue but don't actually consume the industry, so they always push a full turn's overflow into the next turn.  If something costs several turns (e.g. level 4 system upgrade), you can work on it for a turn, then put 2 turns' worth of regular work in front of it and finish it all in one turn, then work on the system upgrade for another turn, then do 2 turns' worth of regular work, etc.  (Note: This isn't how these types of constructions worked in ES1.)

Given that these opportunities exist, some players are going to want to take advantage of them.  But since this mechanic isn't explained and has no UI, discoverability for new players is very poor.

The way I see it, there's 3 general approaches to this issue, each reflecting a different design philosophy:

Option A:  Embrace

If we're going to do industry overflow, let's do it like we mean it.  Build a nice UI that clearly informs the player how much industry has been carried over from last turn, how much industry is going to be carried over into the next turn (based on the current build queue), and the maximum that can be saved up.  Possibly we even look for ways to make it easier or more convenient for players to use; e.g. maybe you can tell your system to save the maximum overflow for next turn even if there's still stuff in your queue?

Option B:  Retreat

We had a good reason for this mechanic, but now that we see it having effects we didn't intend, we should roll back to the simpler and more obvious rule that industry can never be saved up.  This means we'll need to add a notification to warn players when their systems are about to waste industry (even though the queue isn't empty), and we should consider UI modifications that would make it harder to waste accidentally (e.g. maybe the bottom of your queue is always "convert x% of industry into Y", and you can only change which Y it gets converted into).

Option C:  Minimize

The mechanic is accomplishing its intended goal of allowing players to wait until a queue is empty before they need to manage it.  All other effects are unintended consequences and should be played down as much as possible.  Thus, while players technically could use this mechanic deliberately to their advantage, we should make it as obscure and inconvenient as possible to reduce the number of players who actually do that.

We seem to currently be following Option C, though I'm not sure if that's because of a considered decision or simply because it's the default.

I personally feel Option C is the worst of the three--partly because it gives savy players an invisible advantage over naive ones, and partly because it rewards players who spend time fighting against the user interface.  I'd prefer switching to either A or B.

Regardless of which general strategy is pursued, you might want to reconsider how constructions that cost turns instead of industry interact with this mechanic.  I think the most obvious and intuitive approach would be if they consumed whatever industry was available and converted that into completion % at a rate based on current indsutry output; e.g. if a system produces 1000 industry per turn, but there's 500 overflow from last turn, then the improvement gets 1.5 turns' worth of progress in a single turn (but eats the overflow), or if there's no overflow and you put a ship costing 500 in front of the improvement, then the improvement just gets 0.5 turns of progress.

Actually, I lie.  I think the most obvious and intuitive approach would be if you changed everything that currently costs turns to cost some fixed amount of industry instead (possibly zero industry, since that would be closest to the current system where 100% of your industry overflows into the next turn).  I'm not really sure why these items should be more expensive when built in a system with high industry output in the first place.

You could default to Industry converted to Influence for Option B, but make the conversion rate extremely poor.

Also, you could add an Option D:

Keep the system as is but have some decay added to the industry rollover, maybe 25%. This would allow it to be a mechanic but at a cost of efficiency. This should also be made more transparent. If you rollover 800 Industry and it becomes 600 usable Industry next turn, it could have strategic advantages without it being abusable.

DrClaw wrote:

Also, you could add an Option D:

Keep the system as is but have some decay added to the industry rollover, maybe 25%. This would allow it to be a mechanic but at a cost of efficiency. This should also be made more transparent. If you rollover 800 Industry and it becomes 600 usable Industry next turn, it could have strategic advantages without it being abusable.

In terms of UX, that seems like it's got all the downsides of A and B.  You need to teach users the rollover mechanic and provide a UI for them to use it strategically, just like in option A, but you also need to warn them a turn before their queue is empty and explain the (partial) loss of leftover industry at the end of the turn, just like in option B.

I suppose you might do it if you really want to do option A except you think A is too overpowered.  But speaking for myself, that's not my concern.  Industry overflow has been a thing since ES1.  I just think that IF they're going to do it, they ought to do it transparently.

Industry overflow became a bit tedious, especially with the Automatons and their stacking, but I do like the option. And I do agree that a UI element could be put into place to make overflow more manageable, such as it was with the Automatons but possibly better. Perhaps my idea of 25% decay is a bit much, and it could be expanded to 5% decay (cumulative) per turn and allow for multiple turn industryoverflow stacking up to maybe 5 turns.

Automatons actually had regular (invisible) industry overflow ON TOP of their special industry-storing mechanic (which had an actual UI).  It was kind of silly.

Again:  if you add any amount of decay onto industry overflow, you add all the UX problems of option B on top of all the UX problems of option A.  I would only do that if it turns out to be a significant limitation that is important for balance.  Adding a tiny decay percentage is just going to be annoying and create a bunch of extra hassle for both devs and players.

You could just turn the decay into a conversion instead (e.g. 5% INDUSTRY conversted to INFLUENCE) and this could allow another strategy to emerge from the mechanic, namely having a conversion to INFLUENCE that needs to ramp up for 5 turns to max out at 25%.

As far as visibility goes, simple tooltips or a static IND > INF queue item could be added to the end of all construction queues.

"Converts INDUSTRY to INFLUENCE at a rate of 5% per turn, stacking, to a maximum of 25% after 5 turns"

If I already have overflow when I begin a number-of-turns construction, that overflow should not simply be discarded (this was a problem in ES1).  It should either give partial credit on the number-of-turns construction (which should leave me with some leftover when it's completely done), or it should just be carried straight over to the end of the construction.

Antistone wrote:

If I already have overflow when I begin a number-of-turns construction, that overflow should not simply be discarded (this was a problem in ES1).  It should either give partial credit on the number-of-turns construction (which should leave me with some leftover when it's completely done), or it should just be carried straight over to the end of the construction.

Agreed

Good catch.  Will put it to use on the "let's all pretend to be competitive and hardcore using everything that's broken" level.

Yea, a fix to "fixed turn" constructions seems the best for me. I really like industry overflow - it makes the game much better that I dont have to have extra in all of the build ques all the time. It is one of the features about endless space I activly think is excellent!