Hello everyone,



I've played the game since the alpha, and have noticed several wierd things (I tought it would be fixed with the final release but apparently not) :



1. With both "Crowded planet (++)" and "Endothermique structures", my tiny planets can have more population than my medium planets...



2. I got -30 by having 1 opulation: on 2 lava planets and only -15 by having 2 opulation: on 1 lava planet... The final approval of a system should be an average number weighted by the number of people on a planet, I give an example : let's say in my system, I have 1 lava with 4 people living on, and 1 tundra with 5 people living on. Now, there would be a -20 approval due to planets in this system, however, the logical approval should be (4*(-15) + 5*(-5))/9 = -9.4. Idem, if I got 5 jungle planets with 10 pop on each, I don't know how a transfert of a single population on a gas giant on the same system would affect that much the approval of the others... Here it would be (49*0 + 1*(-20))/50 = -0.4 instead of -20. This -0.4 would of course decreases as the gas giant population is growing.

And this should be the same things for the calculation of the empire approval, I mean, why a lost outpost with 1 population, far away from the min system would affect that much the hapiness of the whole empire ? I know this is actually an average number, but the approval in each system should be weighted by the population.



3. How can scouts (and even colony ships !) blockade a system ? This sounds ridiculous. There should be a minimal value of MP needed for a fleet to blockade a system, like for example the "Defense from invasion" value on a sytem.



4. My fleets can invade a system without any invasion module... Yes, I can destroy all the system structures and kill all the population from the space, but then I wouldn't get them when I get the system...

It doesn't seem realistic to me. And now, what's the point of the invasion modules ? I mean, ok it's faster to invade a system, but these invasion ships are also much more vulnerable to an ennemy counter-attack. These modules should be needed and essential to invade a system, like the troop ships in MOO2, but these troop ships in ES would be cruisers equipped with a lot of invasion modules, for example.



5. This is not that much an problem, but I think the +X% min/max/absorbed/etc on fleet weapons/shield/etc given by power modules should be scaled with the size of the ship. How can a destroyer provide as much power for a fleet than a DN ?



(6. I can't set different taxes on my empire, system by system... I know it has already been discussed and the devs said the taxation system won't change, but I keep saying this is very crippling, especially mid/late-game...)



I know some of these issues have already been mentionned, and I apologize for this. I hope these problems will be fixed, because it's not very funny to play with some illogical things wandering around...



The game is still good of course, and it as the potential to be a great game...



PS : Sorry for my English...

1. Population upgrades for smaller planets are mainly a balancing mechanic to even the odds the galaxy generation causes.

2. Balancing again: Early on those planet types profit the most from planetary upgrades so this is some sort of a risk/reward system. The same goes for expansion disapproval. You are encouraged to choose and weigh decisions instead of grabbing everything in sight.

3. Good point there.

4. Not sure on those, but I do see invasion modules as viable for speeding up invading systems.

5. Due to their size they themselves profit less from those modules while occupying space in your fleet, so I am fine with this.

6. A balance issue again. This prevents squeezing ridiculous taxes out of some easily colonizable systems (Terran planets and equivalents) while benefitting from low taxes to boost production in others (Lava only systems, e.g.). You can still achieve what you want on a smaller scale, though: Administrator heroes allow you to boost significantly the approval in some of your normally less happy systems thus enabling you to raise the taxes globally without incurring penalties to those systems.



To sum it up: Most of those mechanics are in place to function as risk vs rewards systems.



At long last: Nice English.

Maybe this is for balance, but it's too bad that balancing involves implementing features that are not really reallistic or illogical, there must be an other way to prevent fast expansion (btw I forgot to mention that expansion disapproval is one of the worst thing i've ever seen on a 4x game...) maybe a higher maintenance cost on distant systems, or technologies in the bottom tree that allows only N systems to be colonized at a moment (something like 5/10/20/infinite instead of the 4 -22% expansion disapproval).

Honestly the disapproval system is much smoother than your proposals. Additionally, expansion disapproval kicks in only if your outpost turns into a colony (20-30 turns after settling) or is within your influence area. So during this time you have plenty of opportunity to exploit/prepare this system.

Furthermore, there are several technologies that reduce your expansion disapproval by 22% each, so these allow you to expand more later on. This is quite similar to your proposal since an 88% disapproval reduction lets you colonize like crazy.

M4lInX255 wrote:


4. My fleets can invade a system without any invasion module... Yes, I can destroy all the system structures and kill all the population from the space, but then I wouldn't get them when I get the system...

It doesn't seem realistic to me. And now, what's the point of the invasion modules ? I mean, ok it's faster to invade a system, but these invasion ships are also much more vulnerable to an ennemy counter-attack. These modules should be needed and essential to invade a system, like the troop ships in MOO2, but these troop ships in ES would be cruisers equipped with a lot of invasion modules, for example.

In the lore your ships land on the planet and unload troops, star wars style.



But in the end the invasion modules turn a 7 tun siege into a 2 turn stomp, allowing your fleet to move onto more important targets in a war.



And the idea of a undefended troop transport is ridiculous, this isn't ww2.

M4lInX255 wrote:




2. I got -30 by having 1 opulation: on 2 lava planets and only -15 by having 2 opulation: on 1 lava planet.

Consider it this way: You are a coming of age, hard working citizen of an aspiring space empire spanning 10 planets. If one of those is a lava planet, as in "molten uninhabitable hot metal rivers running everywhere hell" - lava planet, your chances to get sent there is 10%.

This thought might discomfort you.

If there are two of those hellish worlds among the 10 your chances to be sent over to one are suddenly 20%.

You might be actually twice as unhappy as before.

The guys that are already there don't matter since they have to live with it anyways.

Your reasoning doesn't work when the lava planet is full of population, and still, it sounds rather weird that people on a very good planet would produce less FIDS (i.e work less) because of a distant planet they will probably never live on. Would you be angry if the humankind built an outpost on Mars ? Personnaly I would rather be excited to witness that.

Igncom1 wrote:
And the idea of a undefended troop transport is ridiculous, this isn't ww2.

I never spoke of undefender troop transports, I just gave the example of MOO2... What I was speaking about is the necessity of invasion modules to actually invade a system. Thus, you can build ships with 30% invasion modules and 70% weapons/defenses, but only the MP of the invasion modules would count for the invasion, or maybe a little part of the others MP.

Compared to normal weapons, invasion modules massive speed up an invasion. Most multi-planet systems are downright impossible to invade without invasion mods.

Maybe, and still it's not really true atm, but whatever. Once again, what I'm talking about is how ships invade. You said ships land on planets and unload troops... but I don't remember having put troops in my pure-space-combat-ships when I designed them... I could have instead a bigger engine or a power module because these troops are absolutely useless when I'm not going to invade anything.

Troops come with the ships, they are free.



I personally see even corvettes to be the size of small American towns, all the industry, shops and hospitals needed to produce replacements equipment and people needed for invasions.

Ah-ha! I've finally found someone else that likes making lists of problems.



In a general sense, I agree with every problem you've brought up: tiny planets become better than medium ones by end-game, planetary disapproval is nonsensical, blockades and planetary invasions are too easy with terrible ships, larger ships are underpowered, and the taxation system could be more manageable. I have some different ideas in regards to implementing fixes, however (except planetary disapproval, we have the exact same thoughts there). If you want to read my thread, it can be found here. I warn you, it is a soul-crushingly long read.

I've read your post, good job btw. I hope something will be done to give some punch to the game, however I can't expect the game to be shaped as I would like exactly it to be, but at least a few things really have to be changed/fixed in order to give us the feeling that we're dealing with things that make sense.

While I largely agree with the OP, I'm actually glad that they've eliminated any kind of per-system taxation / funding level micromanagement, as that's easily the worst part of MOO2/MOO3 - or at least the fact that it's required to manage a functional empire. I really like where they've gone with empire/system management in this game, I'd just like to see the existing interface, system of bonuses, etc fleshed out and broken down with more clarity so I know exactly where both a system's production and problems are coming from without guessing at what each of the 7 "FROM IMPROVEMENT"s and "FROM EMPIRE"s in the tooltip refers to.





Invasion could be greatly improved by a mod that simply multiplies both SystemInvasionDefense and invasion module output by 5 or 10. Invading with a normal combat fleet would be very slow, and this would improve MP games, but the AI probably wouldn't know what to do with this change.





As for overpop/expansion approval and planetary approval, both can be easily changed by mods if and when they release mod support. I can't find a reasonable way to actually separate out planet approval by population on a system level, but it only took about 5 minutes to apply a planet's Population/MaxPopulation ratio to its own approval - just add this line to the planetdescriptor XML file, at the end of the section (keeping with other guidelines for modding, like maintaining XML file bytecount):

[CODE] [/CODE]

This is a dual-edged sword-- colonizing -20 or worse planets in a system early on (for resource exploitation, output flexibility, etc) is no longer a problem so long as you keep the majority of your population on 0/-5 planets, and colonizing a -15 to -20 planet in a new system doesn't hurt as badly at first, however planets with crazy +40 artifact bonuses also no longer give an instant huge boost to system approval unless you populate them. Overall, this provides much more flexibility, and I think I'll play with it. Thanks for the suggestion.

M4lInX255 wrote:
Your reasoning doesn't work when the lava planet is full of population, and still, it sounds rather weird that people on a very good planet would produce less FIDS (i.e work less) because of a distant planet they will probably never live on. Would you be angry if the humankind built an outpost on Mars ? Personnaly I would rather be excited to witness that.

Honestly, if my government was going to colonize Mars to economically exploit that barren rock and I might be getting sent there to help said exploitation - well, considering that I am very comfy right now this prospect would make very angry indeed.

And if the colony was filled to the brim that wouldn't make me any happier. In uninhabitable places people tend to die from time to time - calling for replacements.

In terms of game logic those fluctuations might not be big enough to see changes in population level but it does suffice to explain the level of discontent within the whole empire.



Regarding your gripes with the taxation system: It forces you to make trade-offs, make the best of what you got. It's about decisions not spreadsheet maxing all systems.

M4lInX255 wrote:
Hello everyone,



3. How can scouts (and even colony ships !) blockade a system ? This sounds ridiculous. There should be a minimal value of MP needed for a fleet to blockade a system, like for example the "Defense from invasion" value on a sytem.



4. My fleets can invade a system without any invasion module... Yes, I can destroy all the system structures and kill all the population from the space, but then I wouldn't get them when I get the system...

It doesn't seem realistic to me. And now, what's the point of the invasion modules ? I mean, ok it's faster to invade a system, but these invasion ships are also much more vulnerable to an ennemy counter-attack. These modules should be needed and essential to invade a system, like the troop ships in MOO2, but these troop ships in ES would be cruisers equipped with a lot of invasion modules, for example.

I really like your idea in number 3, you should post it as its own seperate idea. It would make invasion defense models much nicer if they can help prevent blockades as well.



As for 4, I completely disagree with you. I like that we are playing a space game, not a planet game. I take out your fleet, I'm going to take your planet. It might take me a while, but its going to happen. I think adding required invasion modules just needlessly complicates things.