So I read some rave reviews about this game and thought it sounded like something I want to play. Just got it fired up, but I'm a little confused with the information the game provides through some of the interface screens. Just been going through a few of the tutorial screens at this stage, so it's possible that I've missed something, and just left everything on default except changed the difficulty to newbie and speed to fast, so playing as the United Empire.



I opened the planet screen. My planet type is terran, giving +3 food, +2 science, +2 production and +4 dust per population. I have 3 population.



I check out the nominal output mouse over for food and it reports +6 from population and +3 from type? What is the extra from type? And why is the there only +6 from population when I have 3 population supposedly giving 3 each? But the total matches so I move on.



I mouse over the dust section in nominal output and see +10 from population, +4 from type and +1 from faction trait. The +1 from faction trait I saw in the global modifiers in the main interface and the faction selection screen. I know I get a 10% bonus at the system level, but I'm currently only looking at the planet level. So this one shows +4 from type, which I still have no idea where that value comes from, and only +10 from population, neither of which is a multiple of the 3 population I have.



Perhaps this is a result of internal rounding of values that are automatically reduced due to selecting the faster game speed? I'll assume that as a possibility and move on, check it later at normal speed.



So I'm back at the system screen, and there are icons representing my FIDS. It shows my system production as 8. I mouse over that figure and the pop up informs me that it's current value is 9? So is it 8 or 9? The pop up lists each contributing value which totals 9, but the figure displayed next to the icon says 8? The values for dust show 16 on the icon and 16.8 on the popup, so I assume the value of 9 on the production popup is exactly 9, so it can't be rounding.



It's just left me a bit confused as the where these values come from and if they are even correct. Have I got it all wrong and interpreting these numbers incorrectly? Are there other undisplayed modifiers that I've not taken into account?



Any suggestions welcome. I'll be looking through many more of the screen after I post this, so if there are other known mismatches or commonly mistaken values that I can expect, feel free to let me know.

Welcome! Please find one explanation of the tooltip arithmetic here:



/#/endless-space/forum/34-faq/thread/14344-fids-tooltip-arithmetic-explained



It may be helpful to scan the subject lines of other threads in that forum. Also, some larger guides can be found in the guide forum under that, although some of the information there is out of date since it was written during beta.

Excellent, thanks for your response.

davea wrote:
Welcome! Please find one explanation of the tooltip arithmetic here:



/#/endless-space/forum/34-faq/thread/14344-fids-tooltip-arithmetic-explained



It may be helpful to scan the subject lines of other threads in that forum. Also, some larger guides can be found in the guide forum under that, although some of the information there is out of date since it was written during beta.

The link given above is now broken. I've searched the forums for "nominal output" and got 4 topics, but none of them answered the OP's question, which is basically my question too.



On the planet view screen, the 4 values given for FIPS under the Nominal Output section seem correct to me (note I'm new to the game, so I could easily be wrong on that!). However, the tool-tip popup that one gets by hovering a mouse over a FIDS type is confusing at best. I'll give an example from one of my planets.



This is for food on a jungle planet with population 4, the Evolved Soils exploitation, a Bluecap Mold resource, and no system improvements. Based on my current understanding, I'd expect this to give a nominal output of 28, which it does. Now, here is what I get when hovering the mouse over the food section of the Nominal Output listing:



+21 From Population

+4 From Type

+2 From Infrastructure

+1 From Luxury



Ignoring From Population for the moment, the values given for From Type, From Infrastructure, and From Luxury are correct if they are the values per population. It does, however, occur to me to ask why the popup doesn't explicitly indicate that those values are are per point of population? Besides being more clear, it would help new players instantly by telling them that some values used in the game are calculated based on a planet's population.



But From Population is the real problem. I can't seem to come up with any sensible, appropriately simple calculation that would yield the given value of 21. If it was the planet type's base value of food/population * the current population, then, in this example, it would be 16. Further, there is no way the From Population number given in this example could arise from a per population calculation because the number is odd, and the current population is 4, and 4 times any whole number yields a product that is even. This, of course, assumes that the multiplicand is actually a whole number, which is maybe a bad assumption.



After looking at some of the other FIPS popups, it appears that the From Population for a given FIPS is this:



From Population = Nominal Output - (FIPS produced per person for given planet type) - (all other FIPS of the given type produced from Exploitations, etc).



Using the values given for food above, we'd have:

Nominal Output = 28

FIPS produced per person for given planet type = 4 on a jungle world

All other FIPS of given type produced from Exploitations, etc. = 2 from infrastructure + 1 from luxary

This of course gives a From Population of 21.



If this is actually how From Population is calculated, it's hard for me to see how it would be a useful number to have.



In the grand scheme of things, knowing what From Population is isn't important, especially given that all the nominal outputs seem to be correct. But to satisfy my curiosity and also to leave a helpful forum post for future new players, does anyone know what's going on here?



Thanks!

The "from population" amount is actually the total amount produced by all but the first pop and then the other lines are a breakdown of the amount produced by the first pop. So in your case the per pop amount is 7 so the other three pop on your 4 pop planet are producing 21.



It seems the devs were trying to combine a per population breakdown on the same display as the planetary breakdown. I'm sure they did this to try to make things clearer to players, but I doubt they succeeded.

Its clear to me!



Alien engineers don't look at the numbers the same way I was raised to understand numbers. But ultimately, it is kind of run playing a spreadsheet game where you can't really trust the numbers IN the Spreadsheet.

Link still works:



/#/endless-space/forum/34-faq/thread/14344-fids-tooltip-arithmetic-explained



At least for me it does.



But Ill quote in the thread so if the link isn't working for you, you can have an answer.

"Mick" wrote:
ello, I'm not sure if this is a bug, or I'm just misunderstanding what some of the FIDS tooltips are trying to show, but sometimes (often) the breakdown they give don't make much sense to me.



I've attached a screenshot of a simple example:



Name: dust screen.jpg

Views: 144

Size: 27.9 KB



Now, the exploitation I've used gives +2 dust per population on planet, and +1 dust per population on desert. Deserts themselves don't give any dust, and the antonoy rings anomaly gives +2 per pop on planet.



If I put them all together, I get

Anomaly = +2 * 4 = +8 dust

Exploitation = +3 * 4 = +12 dust



8 + 12 = 20, so the total result shown is correct, but the breakdown it gives doesn't make any sense to me. 15 + 3 + 2 adds up to 20, but where is the 15 coming from?

"Davea" wrote:
Good question, I changed the title.



The dev team has decided on this approach, although many people find it "not very obvious". The +3 and +2 displayed in the tooltip match the values you already know, from the planet+exploit, and from the anomaly. The other 15 is where they have done the multiplication of your additional population, the +5 total * 3 additional pop = 15. This way, you can see at a glance the total "per population" values of +3 and +2. Many people are confused by this, some people like it.