GruulTapul wrote:
Disapproval in its current form is already nearly identical to maintenance. What you usually do is lower your tax rate in order to keep approval high enough so it does not damage the industry/food/science output of any given system. You basically trade dust for "normal" levels of productivity, so what you're suggesting is already present. In the end, the source of the maintenance does not really matter; you could design a system where the improvements would basicially simulate the disapproval we have now, with no advanatage/disadvanatage compared to it.



Besides, expansion disapproval is reduced so much by tehcnologies such that it doesn't matter in the end anymore. It is very easy to maintain a good tax rate and expand like crazy.

1. The difference between maintenance and approval that you cant use excess of approval but you can use excess of dust. That is huge difference.

2. Approval can not go below 0 but maintenance(i mean dust income linked to maintenance) can. As a result you lose your fleets.

3. Approval doesnt matter when you are winning. Who cares when all your planets on strike when you steam roll your opponents with your massive fleets. In case of maintenance the second turn you cant pay cost all your fleets gone.

4. There is no approval penalty before turn 30. Maintenance will work since turn 1.

Hence, as implied, this suggestion was a bit unnecessary and doesn't necessarily make it fun if you decide to lop on more taxes without taking a look at how it interacts with the other systems of the game.

Renamed to become a discussion.



By the way I have to fully agree with Gruul on this matter.

Disapproval in its current form is already nearly identical to maintenance. What you usually do is lower your tax rate in order to keep approval high enough so it does not damage the industry/food/science output of any given system. You basically trade dust for "normal" levels of productivity, so what you're suggesting is already present. In the end, the source of the maintenance does not really matter; you could design a system where the improvements would basicially simulate the disapproval we have now, with no advanatage/disadvanatage compared to it.



Besides, expansion disapproval is reduced so much by tehcnologies such that it doesn't matter in the end anymore. It is very easy to maintain a good tax rate and expand like crazy.

I always thought that outposts should cost money, decreasing overtime of course.

I think something could be done on this.



Not sure about all the suggestions.

Negative bonuses on exploitations is a little limiting, potentially highly difficult to balance (it'll shift with context, i.e. which and how many planets you have available).

Negative multiplier to outposts is a possibility, but you already start out with very low FIDS so not sure how to fix that (unless you got +3 food and industry to start with instead of +2)





Expansion disapproval I can sort of get, though, in general. What I find perhaps odd is that explicitly expansionist races - I'm thinking Sowers and Cravers, especially the latter - suffer just as much (if not more if they actually expand to the extent to which they are capable and are expected to early-mid game) as all the others.

There's no race-specific tech to allow a locust-like species to act like locusts (why are Cravers so unhappy about expansion when they, y'know, basically crave expansion?). This is one of the areas I really agree with you - certain species' lore really implies that they favour expansion and yet their gameplay doesn't reflect that.

Sowers could benefit from something that made them unhappy with a poorly developed planet, but otherwise happy with expansion - they're expansionist, but for the reason that they want to prepare worlds for the Endless and so will be biased towards taking several worlds, getting them started towards development, and then moving one.

{I can't find a discussion on this - for either the Cravers or the Sowers - so if anyone can direct me to one I'd be grateful.}





Here's some suggestions that don't require replacing the expansion disapproval with additional costs, but modify it for certain races - namely the two named above since I've not really experienced other colonialist/expansionist factions like the UE or Horatio:





-- Maybe a morale modifier to new outposts, until they become proper colonies? Lower general expansion disapproval and insert this for new outposts - it limits new colonies's outputs, although not expansion per se.



-- {For Cravers} Early- to mid-game tech that lowers expansion disapproval. Maybe in the slots where other races get stuff to improve their trade since this is somewhat redundant with Cravers. (In the late-game techs governing trade the Cravers could possibly ameliorate the malus for over-exploitation - just a %age point perhaps, to avoid ruining balance, but that's for another discussion.)



-- {Sowers (and perhaps something similar for Horatio?)} An Early-game tech that gives you a new morale improvement. This improvement gives you a per-planet bonus (+5 or something perhaps) for each planet that has filled it's population.

I think this is quite characterful, since it's not massively easy to achieve early game, but once done allows developed planets to overlook the negative effects of expansion - the key being that they're well-developed, and have thus achieved one of the primary aims of the Sower faction.

is this even necessary

it is not necessary

while retaining depth

Define depth. for me the current approval system is like The Salar de Uyuni.

isn't there a more simple way to do it

each next colony cost more maintenance.

Is what you're suggesting at all fun?

Do you think you a fun person? And who cares what do you think? There are things that actually exist and things we are imagine. This question has no sense. I think it is fun. Well?

I am going to keep it short, but is this even necessary and if so isn't there a more simple way to do it while retaining depth? Is what you're suggesting at all fun?