The numbers could be baked in for all that it really matters. Your planets simply use which is the best tech by default for each category. While the idea of exploitations is nice it adds another layer of micromanagement that is burdensome in late game. The selection of an exploitation is not rolled into founding a new colony properly ( https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12328-when-colonizing-a-new-planet-put-me-to-exploitation-selection-immediately.) requiring that after you choose the planet to colonize to click the system then click the planet AND then click the type of exploitation.



While I understand that the close up planet animations might be wanted there is enough detail at the system level. We would still need to drill down to planet level for terraform duties. There have been other suggestions for moving the moon investigation off the planet level as well (https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12107-put-the-explore-moon-function-at-the-system-level.) to reduce that part of the micromanagement that gets tiresome late game.



Even baked in player's will still find have a reason to research the various techs that improve each planet. Perhaps drill downs into the planet level will show all the exploit technologies in use and their bonuses.



This is purely to reduce micromanage. If baked in properly the player will never know what they are missing. Out of all the items we research there are only three that require drilling down to planet level and two are easily removable, exploitation and moons, the third isn't; well I haven't thought of a way to make it easy to remove terraform from planet level selection :P

I will disagree, I use non-synergistic exploits all the time.



I use farming for early growth, and the prod exploit for building infrastructure....sometimes regardless of the planets I settle on.

I agree late game when you have 40+ systems and you unlock a new tech that is good to upgrade, even at the system level it takes a lot of time to go back to all the old systems just to pop that upgrade in. Maybe a main command window where galaxy wide commands are given that all systems will add it to the build list.

Stalker0 wrote:
I will disagree, I use non-synergistic exploits all the time.



I use farming for early growth, and the prod exploit for building infrastructure....sometimes regardless of the planets I settle on.

Definitely agree with Stalker. The exploitations allow you to tailor the planet to the system/planet's needs. If I read your suggestion correctly, you would have an increased production Lava planet... which is absolutely pointless without the pop growth that a food exploitation allows. It makes some kind of sense in the fact that you'd have to ship food in from other systems to grow your 1 lava planet system but that would seem to increase micromanagement, not decrease it.



You seem to have a second suggestion in the OP as well, remove the production options at planet level. You could, I suppose, move all of them to the system improvements screen but that'd turn into a right mess in the late game without another tab to get it to work. Frankly, however, I rather like the zoom into planet to perform planetary specific duties approach, even in the late game.

Yep. I don't change my exploits often, but I don't always follow the "best for the planet." In fact, I haven't used a tech exploit or dust exploit on more than a handful of planets in my last THREE games.

This thread is totally missing the point of exploitation selection. It is often optimal on a system level to use non-specialized exploitations, e.g. low population and L3 farming exploitations.



If you disagree, simply set the optimal exploitation when colonizing a planet, and then forget about it until you terraform the planet-- where you only need to click on one icon one more time on the same screen with the terraforming icons. If your complaint is that it's difficult to move both terraform jobs and exploitation builds to the top of the build queue, well, that sounds like a problem with the build queue (and it is), not the exploitation system.

I have to disagree with this idea as well. Without exploitations customizing your empire and micromanging it yourself is fairly limited.

Also disagree - I have something better: simply allow exploitations to be queued up. What I mean by this is that as soon as you select a planet for colonization and have 'colonize planet X' in the build queue then you should also be able to add 'build exploitation Y on planet X' to the build list. The real micromanage issue stems from not being able to queue the exploitation (having to wait for colonization to complete first and possibly losing industry production in the process if one leaves the build queue empty) and this little change elegantly removes that grievance.

I also dislike this, since it removes strategic variability from the game.

Instead, I'd like a popup on system screen when clicking the exploitation line of a planet, that displays all four exploitation options with the correct summaries as quite a few people proposed (+total line for the specific planet, so the average user does not have to calculate everything themselves), so I just click those without having to resort on the planet screen.

Of course, I'd like something similar for clicking on a moon or the negative anomaly on the system screen, but that's just lazy me.

The planet screen should still exist, though, e.g. for the flavour-effect of looking at the nice graphics. I would not, in a state where the game is often said to be lifeless, even ponder removing anything that helps mend this.

I'm not for this either - I like having choice in what I decide to specialize my planets for. Especially since improvements are systemwide, not planet specific.



Having planets default to their optimal exploitation (bonuses wise, not overall strategy) when colonized wouldn't be a bad idea for new players though.

Well, the complete elimination of the exploitations concept is a quite terrible idea - that only simplifies the game further. The suggestion to make it less burdensome to queue up exploitations on planets that are about to be colonized (as per Shivetya's first link in original post & my own suggestion, essentially the same) is, however, good.

so you get terran planet homeworld and at max pop you still use food exploit? OK.

Apparently the short bus is missing some of its riders.



I know exactly what exploitations are for. I am simply suggesting they are not truly needed because if the numbers were baked in no one would be any wiser. The idea is that your research is what drives system production. Having to drill down after colonizing, let alone going back and fixing systems with max pop who no longer need to produce food, removing a planet from industry production because of its location of the system isn't needed for that, and more, could be reduced without any loss of flavor.



Hell, they could just remove the benefit of any exploitation and no one would be worse off. The game looks as if that features was kept from an earlier design. Three elements at most make use of the planet level screen, nothing else does. Its like a relic.



Oh, I know some people just love min/maxing/micromanaging/etc but in MP I don't care to wait while someone juggles their empire.

Shivetya wrote:
I know exactly what exploitations are for. I am simply suggesting they are not truly needed because if the numbers were baked in no one would be any wiser.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I would notice, when my lava planets are no longer viable as they are not able to (ever) produce their own food.