The idea of a mathematically simulated loss of efficiency is almost always a bad idea. The main reason this is true is because the actual and opportunity costs are being entirely overlooked or missed by the author of said desire. This is especially true of any situation involving Diminishing Returns.



In short, don't do it. Ever.

ok, after a bit of thinking i come up with this:



Lets say System A is fully developed and produces X amount of surplus Food. System B (almost zero growth, full of Barren Planets, Gas Giants) needs that Food desperatly. So, you build a Trade Port in System A. The needed Technology could be tied into one of the early Trade techs, Relativistic Markets as example or into a already in place System upgrade, like the Borer's Guild.

This will let any overproduction go into the Empire Pool (with a loss of lets say 50% at start, with later available Techs reducing that loss). The loss is due to the spoiling of Food and also to maintain the cost of the Trade Network. System B now also builds a Trade Port, allowing it to access the Empire Pool, granting its citiziens the luxury of actually eating more then once per Day.





System A (excess Food) --> Trade Port (-50% penality) --> Empire Pool --> Trade Port --> System B





There are also other things i have in mind that tie into this System:



- Blockades: Of course, like any other Trade, it can be blockaded making it important to keep Enemies away from such fragile Systems that depend on other Systems supplying them. Or if you have some Systems heavily specced into Food Production, then blockading them could lead to Empire wide starvation. I believe this would add a lot of Depth into the Game as whole (thinking of the Roman Empire that heavily relied on Egypt to feed the Empire and his Troops).



- Rebalancing Food Techs: If this System (or something close to it) would be implemented, there are some smaller problems that will need the rebalancing of some of the Food Techs, since in the current state a Inner Empire Trade isn't supported and the Techs are build around the premise that any given System will be able to produce enough Food for themselves (at least later in-game).



- Balancing the Amount of Food from Empire Trade: If this proves to "powerful" there could be a limit of how many Food a Trade Port could manage. You could always make it so that a Trade Port can only manage X amount of Food, which would lessen their importance. Newly colonized Systems with Planets that don't have a good Food Production would still greatly benefit from it, but at some later point they will have to invest some ressources in building their own little Farms.



- Animated Trade Routes: It would be nice to have a little Animation for it..... like small Trade Ships traveling back and forth between Systems that trade Food. Not "real" Ships, just a animation thingy (nothing big, i believe Lost Empire: Immortals had something like that for Trade Routes)



- Loss/Penality: Another way to balance it could be the loss/penality that occurs when Food goes into the Empire Pool. It could start with a very heavy loss, like 80%, gradually getting better with more and better Techs becoming available. I don't think it should ever be 100%, since part of the loss isn't the Food spoiling, it's the cost of keeping up the System itself.



- Excess Food in the Empire Pool: Food that isn't used that lands in the Empire Pool could give small Bonuses, like others already suggested. A small increase in Happiness for the Empire overall (or maybe only Planets that have the "Trade Port" upgrade). It shouldn't be that big.... and have a rather small cap. Or something entirly different.



- Meaning for Trade even if you don't Trade: In some Games you will be at War with pretty much everyone, rendering most Trade Techs/upgrades useless. The "Inner-Empire" Trade could give meaning to those Techs, if you don't have any Partners to trade with.





Addendum: All numbers presented here are totally speculative and if this system or something similar would be implemented then there would be a lot of number crunching to do to make it work properly.

I have been thinking and now I favor the food system as it is.



The problem is that with my system, you would only want to colonize the best worlds available. I think that colonizing everything is a better system.



There are still things I would like to change, such as making some food boosting improvements cheaper to allow colonies to build them earlier, but I think that Amplitude did good with the food system.



PS: When judging a planets ultimate productivity, we should think in terms of IDS, not FIDS.

Calico wrote:


System A (excess Food) --> Trade Port (-50% penality) --> Empire Pool --> Trade Port --> System B [/B]

I think that the -50% might be a bit steep, or it could be implemented so that it is dependent on what difficulty you are playing at, i.e. newbie difficulty might have it set to -35%, but on impossible it could be set to -85%. This would require that the tech tree upgrade be percentile-based, but that shouldn't be too complicated to implement.

Simple fact is, 50% loss is standard in the game. Industry to dust or science is 50% conversion. I could be wrong about this one, but the food surplus to industry is 50% conversion.

SomethingBlue wrote:
Simple fact is, 50% loss is standard in the game. Industry to dust or science is 50% conversion. I could be wrong about this one, but the food surplus to industry is 50% conversion.

And funny enough it is exactly that point you indeed are wrong about, the food surplus conversion with the improvement is 100%.

i suggest add tranport FIDS on other system if not use in this system, but cost of transport lost of part FIDS, each leg of the journey takes 1 year (1 turn) (FIDS*0,9^(number of turn))...no need special transport... lost of FIDS need for civil transport cost)))) enemy ship may blockade transport

Why not just have excess food give happiness?



Currently there are very few ways to get it. It boosts industry levels, and the inability to manipulate it makes the game less interesting.



Food isn't the same as other resources. None are traditionally equatable.





By incorporating it into the system happiness scale, you can make more interesting interactions.









Letssay...

Surplus/Population*5=Local Satisfaction bonus.



If you want to just leave it nice and clean...



Surplus=Local Happiness bonus.







You don't need to over complicate the current system to improve gameplay. Simple is often best.

KNC wrote:
And funny enough it is exactly that point you indeed are wrong about, the food surplus conversion with the improvement is 100%.

Hence my statement "I could be wrong about this one" because I did not recall. A note though, last tie I used the food surplus conversion improvement, it simply set my food to 0 and did not change my industry. I didn't delve to much into it though. And honestly, I think the food to industry conversion should be 50% even though it is not.



This still does not change that there should be a 50% loss to trade food. There has to be a downside.

Ketobor wrote:
Why not just have excess food give happiness?



Currently there are very few ways to get it. It boosts industry levels, and the inability to manipulate it makes the game less interesting.



Food isn't the same as other resources. None are traditionally equatable.





By incorporating it into the system happiness scale, you can make more interesting interactions.









Letssay...

Surplus/Population*5=Local Satisfaction bonus.



If you want to just leave it nice and clean...



Surplus=Local Happiness bonus.







You don't need to over complicate the current system to improve gameplay. Simple is often best.

Here is an idea. Let me expand on it though. Food surplus would give a happiness bonus, yes, but I'm thinking more like a surplus/x, more like 3, 5 or 10, as a lot of my food surplus is 300 -500. Surplus/population is perhaps an answer, but I'm not sure. Anyway, thats part one, and your idea. My input: Food surplus decreases industry by the same rate as it increases happiness. The population is eating so much they are becoming obese, and just can't do as much work as they used to. Perhaps the decrease could be half the happiness increase.

I think we should get back to the OP finding a solution for this problem:



Early food is the central element until a colony is almost near max population. After this excess food is useless.



@OP

I would suppose before you start to vote about a whole system there should be one for solutions directions:

- Convert excess food into one of the other (F)IDS

- Make food (or pop) interchangeable between Systems

- Change amounts needed to get full pop within a system (so there will be no excess)



I'd like to explain some ideas I read / came to my mind for each of those 3. Maybe someone can think of a total different approach (direction).



Excess food -> (F)IDS

- Food would have a meaning besides getting better overall economy

- Using excess food as a bonus resource with which you could buy different "buffs" like happiness, more production...

- Personally I don't like this much. Every race needs growth and there will not be any tactical element for this resource as everyone likes to have as much food as possible early on while optimizing surplus food away in the latter stages.



Trade food between systems

- Freighters, Pop transports are possible

- strategic element like blockade specialized systems

AngleWyrm wrote:
The idea of a mathematically simulated loss of efficiency is almost always a bad idea. The main reason this is true is because the actual and opportunity costs are being entirely overlooked or missed by the author of said desire. This is especially true of any situation involving Diminishing Returns.



In short, don't do it. Ever.

Want to expand on that a little more and how it fits into this game were mathematically simulated loss (industry-sci/dust) is already present? I'll be sure to take your expert advice into consideration.

BlueTemplar wrote:
Either I'm not understanding something, or you're the one not understanding... How is this proposal different from how the system works right now?

BlueTemplar is right. It sounds the same to me as the current system. Food needs an overhaul. Maybe in addition to quantity of food there should also be quality, so import is required for better food. It’s a little in the weeds and too realistic. Automate it if you don't like to micro manage. The post also just calls for the ability to cheaply and quickly colonize other worlds. I think if anything it should be a slower process. Population growth should not be linear for the love of science. Small populations grow slower, medium grow faster, and over population have problems...quantity of food is always a problem for a large population and it should be hard to max a planets population out because there is not enough food available. Make maxing out a population of a planet a total effort of both planet improvement and trade, and not just a matter of time.

SmellyTerror wrote:
Why not just have excess food production increase your empire's happiness? Basically like a scalable luxury, proportional to excess-per-system divided by total empire population.

I like where this part of the conversation is headed, excess = happiness. Doesn't make much sense for it to go to science or industry, and people do enjoy being well-fed.



Then again just because we enjoy it doesn't mean aliens would enjoy being well-fed. Perhaps they are curiously austere. Their excess food goes to happiness because they are smug about how disciplined they are, allowing the food to go to waste rather than just eat it.



I came here hoping to find where excess food goes now, and learned a lot from these threads.

Perhaps we just need some food to industry conversion at lower tech levels. The 100% conversion is way at the end of the branch. Maybe we could get a 50% conversion halfway through the branch. Or a 25% conversion earlier than that. I find it odd that we can do a ind->sci and a ind->dust conversion at the start of the game, but not a food->ind at the start as well.

My thoughts regarding Food were along the lines of having it simply feed into Trade, and have Trade when it is overhauled also have an Internal component tying your own Empire's planets together. This could regulate the idea of surplus food aiding colonizing a system and also provide a way for benefits like happiness to be linked, yet not arbitrarily but within a specific system with methods of improvement and specialization clearly exposed to the player with broader applicability than just the problem of dealing with Food.



I think this could be made workable via some simple additions/changes focused on things like wastage based on distance (helping balance smaller/larger Empire feasibility a bit more), and made interesting and flexible via some other concepts (I bring up some relevant ones in my Embassies discussion). For example, Import and Export preferences could be targeted based on what you have in excess versus what a friendly Faction has/needs.

food would be good if it raised happieness or 25% of all overall food would end up as dust due to trade or something.

like 5 points of food would equal like .5 happieness could help out growth on slower speed games.

I think food sharing is essential. If i have a system with a very low potential food output but high potential industrial output then i naturally want to maximise the industry by getting a full population. I also think population should be able to move between systems too but that's another story....



I don't think however that we should be expected to directly manage food distribution. There has to already be civilian ships in existance that we can't see (moving population between planets for example) so it's no great stretch to imagine a civilian transport fleet invisibly moving food about the empire for you. Perhaps as someone else suggested you need to build a specific improvement in each system to manage that though.



And the idea of 50% loss of food during transport is frankly ridiculous. You simply wouldn't transport food that was going to have such a high rate of spoiling. You'd move stuff with a long life (rice) or specifically take foods designed for the long journeys. Some loss yeah sure but only maybe 15%.



Oh and the idea of food raising happiness is okay but only to a point. Will a person that has the option of 10 meals a day actually be any happier than someone that has 3 or 4? Not really, unless they are a glutton. Maybe food can increase happiness slightly, or the lack of food reduce happiness.

Berathor wrote:
Why would you lose food throughout the transition from one world to the next?



EDIT: I think if anything the distribution via trading would have to be automated, it would be a drain on production making ships to carry out the trade.



Also the other problem I see is that if you can distribute the food from one giant producer of it it would make expansion rates of new conolies sky rocket compared to the undertaking of establishing a conoly in the present game

The 50% loss represents any spoilage that happens over the year it takes to go to the new system. Its not a world to world idea, it is a system to system idea, and since each leg of the journey takes 1 year (1 turn), then some spoilage is to be expected. Multiple fleets would be needed to skyrocket the development of a system. I think that is actually the basic idea here, to have central food producers who are able to ship food to new colonies and less food producing systems. With my idea, the other systems would have to be within 1 turn's move from the farm systems, which would balance it a little bit. Yes, you would have to create fleets to do so, and yes there would be upkeep on the fleets. But that's the price of doing business.



Just a note Zougkla, on your idea of making seed modules free, I say negative. For the most part, unless you have a particularly bad start, colony ships are very easy to make anyway.

When first introduced to the game you are given the FIDS system and then later you realise that the F in FIDS is basically a factor of population growth rather than an actual commodity or resource. Food is such a broad term and conceptually doesn't actually need to be actual food but instead could be seen as the organic and inorganic "resources" required to generate, maintain and prosper life/population. These resources need, yes "NEED", to be used beyond the scope of merely reaching population cap. As someone famous once said, "An army marches on its stomach.".. and so these resources, while not used for specically building of new ships and technology, should be used as a factor of speeding/enhancing research and military morale to name but one example of how "Food" could be used beyond what it is being used for now.

(2) Make the food cost of new population points increase linearly based on a system’s population. This is because a systems food supply, both local and imported, is based on the size of its population and what worlds that population is on. This would make the population to always take about the same amount of time to grow.

Either I'm not understanding something, or you're the one not understanding... How is this proposal different from how the system works right now?