When I build any improvement to a star system (especially late game) there are dozens of choices for the upgrades. As cool as that is I run into a very real problem.



Lets take upgrades with negative consequences, specifically, careful sweeping.



If the system in question has only 1 moon (and explored) it gives +2 dust but the dust cost for the improvement is -3. For the upgrade I am getting a -1 to my currency.





Now each time I am cycling through my "many many" systems I have to evaluate each and every improvement on end as I figure out which improves are negative or no longer have a benefit. Food, for example, becomes a waste of money on fully populated systems and planets.



What I would like is a indicator of benefit next to each improvement that follows this scale.



Benefit:

small

medium

large

no benefit (no benefit is specifically for things which do not have the required planet types in the system, I can't tell you how many times I have confused the various types of gas giants.

negative (negative means it cost more than the positive gain)



I believe this would streamline the improvement system allowing plays to make "informed decisions" rather than statistical decisions (which is time consuming)





What do you all think?

Alternatively, perhaps list what the net effects would on the current system. For example, with Xeno-Tourism (+1 dust per person on certain planet types), compute the total that would be added at the current population and tax rate.

Agree on both fronts. I often find myself calculating how much dust or whatever I'll get for this or that upgrade, and I really think that a small addition to the tooltip indicating how much you earn and lose would be a good improvement.

PyroVortex wrote:
Alternatively, perhaps list what the net effects would on the current system. For example, with Xeno-Tourism (+1 dust per person on certain planet types), compute the total that would be added at the current population and tax rate.

I want to express my agreement with this. Having the total calculate for me would be very handy... especially if it calculated after-bonuses, so I could see the REAL effect of constructing a thing. I bet if you had enough bonuses, using 'Careful Sweeping' on a single moon would become worthwhile.



Speaking of Careful Sweeping, I think it ought to give a tiny % boost to Dust production in the system as well. It wouldn't pay off in most systems, but any sufficiently developed system should benefit from such attention to detail.

Yeah, definitely need a way to see end-effects. When hovering over the buildings, it could show FIDS values per population on every planet, and a green/red (positive/negative) markers to show the benefits of the said building in my opinion.

I would love for a color-coded system to be implemented. There were so many improvements by late game, I just started building all of them on every system and just using my mass amount of wealth to auto-build it. But this obviously isn't the best idea for every system...

True. I personally stopped trying to micro everything, as there are many stuff to think about. Right now, all I do is, colonize everything in a system first, then set all system AI's to food till they hit the max cap, then set all of them to production so that they can build everything. Aside from these, I buyout some +production stuff which will speed up this process, and never cared about terraforming so far (Horatio is horribly fast when it comes to doing this - thanks to clones. Colonize a planet, set one of your clones there, and in 10 turns, it'll be self sufficient; around 5-10 times faster than other races)



Especially terraforming needs some sort of information panel, about the end results. How much difference will it make? Aside from exploitations, some buildings also give different bonuses depending on planet type...

I don't see why anyone would object to this. In fact, what is the point of having negative improvements at all? What is the point of building something like Careful sweeping if the outcome is negative? The dust bonus is completely redundant if the construction cost negates the affect.



As for the organization of specific planet types, perhaps it would be simpler if the improvements only affected specific types of planets didn't show up in systems that don't have those planet types. I understand that these tweaks would likely require complex algorithms, and weeks of work to make the system flawless, but this is my philosophy in game development: If you want your amazing idea to become a reality, then you must believe in it 100% and be prepared to do everything you can, every small detail, every major mechanic you can fit. Otherwise; no matter how much effort you put into it, it will merely be a shell of what it could've been."

Well, there is just a few buildings that shouldn't show up in certain cases. For example, if a system doesn't have any tiny/small planets, the research allowing more population on these planets (+2 for tiny, +1 for small was it?) shouldn't show up. Also, since that +dust per moon improvement shouldn't show up if the upkeep is greater than the income - in other words, there are no moons or just one. Aside from that, I cannot think of many. And making these wouldn't require complex algorithms at all; no moon? hide this. just 1 moon? hide that.



Aside from moons and stuff, nearly every improvement affects every planet type. Some receive greater bonuses, but that's it.

That'd be a good feature. On the topic of star system improvement, it would also be nice if you could sort the options. Not an issue early in the game, but late game it can be irritating trying to sift out which upgrades don't take forever to build (in regards to colonising a new system late game).



I'd also like some sort of notification whenever a system is not producing anything (I hate using the automated feature, as it makes some strange decisions and overrides my planetary exploitations with dumb stuff. e.g. had it replace my +construction on a lava planet to +science even though I had it set to prioritize construction (and the game is in alpha so things like that don't bother me too much).

I would like to see the ability to disable buildings (and some of them should disable themselves automatically), instead of just scrapping.

Yep, i completely agree that this would be nice. Even tho it would be a horror to do the code for it for each and every tech and random event there is.