I am not sure if food relocation is really needed if it happens "automatic" (like MOO2). I like the idea if it comes to blockades though.



Imho there is 1 big problem with food as it is apart from other "currencies" the one that grows exponentially - which causes the problem that every 4X game I have played so far suffered.

If you strive for the best race / picks pop growth is the way to go. I hadn't have much time to play the alpha until now but I think this is the factor that needs to be addressed - in which way may be discussed .

I think it is a good idea to have food automatically distributed from full systems to growing ones, because it is way simpler than having to set up trade routs or freighters.



It could work to have the transfer be at 100% efficiency, because you would still be vulnerable to having your systems blockaded which would cut that system off from the transfer. The same could be said for industry.



However, I still think cheap colony ships that can add population and supply ships that move industry to a planet would be very useful, because they allow you to choose where you put that food as well as to quickly develop a good system.

I am interested in your explanation for moving industrial out put to a different system. For example, it makes sense that freighters could ship food from one planet to another because food is an actual thing; a commodity. It is able to be stored and transported to where you need it. The same goes for population, but that part of your idea makes sense. How does one store and transport industry though?

It is simple, pack a ship full of tools, heavy equipment, and building materials.



At any rate, it doesn't matter. As I have said before, gameplay considerations should come first. The explanation can come latter.

Industry is an output. Just like Science. Science and Dust are global things, so there is no need to talk about them in this sense. Food, however, can be in surplus. No matter what you do, you can never surplus Science or Industry. You can not ship the work done on one system to another system. Your industry in each system works together on a single goal : whatever is in your production queue. Shipping materials and supplies does not matter if there is not enough population to use it. By that theory, if I had two hammers, I would be able to build much quicker. Sorry, not the case.



As far as game play coming firsts; maybe, maybe not. I think that goes on a case by case basis. But illogical explanations to ridiculous game play inclusions are what makes gamers upset. Being able to ship industrial output is a ridiculous idea.

I see your point.



Perhaps instead of being a Supply Module, it could be a Construction Module. The idea would be that it has the skilled workers as well as the tools and materials.



I still think that being able to move industry from one system to another, whether with a conversion that shares it with all your systems or a ship that sends it to a specific system, is a good idea. It would give systems that have nothing to do a purpose and would help get new colonies online.



PS: Industry can be in surplus, if you are building stuff that allows others to build stuff and shipping it too them.

Industry output can not be in surplus, as you are always building towards your goal, whether that be an improvement, a ship, or scientific progress.

That goal, however, can be in another system who you send supplies and assistance to.



This is what I mean when I say industry can be a "surplus".

Considering the computer you're looking at these forums (and likely the majority of the things in your house including your house) has parts from probably at least three different countries and built in a fourth, I'd say that while the abstract idea of industrial output may not be transportable, the practice of doing so is valid. Whether this is modular parts, shipping and transport, design, storage, industry can be spread across many places. What can not is the direct manufacturing of any given part - you're not going to use 4 factories to build 1 screw. However, you can use 1 factory to build the engine while another builds the chassis and a third to bring it all together.

sagittary wrote:
... you're not going to use 4 factories to build 1 screw.

I take issue with this assertion that I won't use 4 factories to build 1 screw. I might. Because I'm just being argumentative. Like for instance, one factory could mine metal, another factory could purify it into a usable stock material, another factory could use that material to machine screws, and a final factory could be used for distribution and advertising. That last one's a bit of a stretch, but hey I haven't had my coffee yet.

i agree its a gd idea cos having loads of food directly incressing pop growth isn't the most realistic system other games like deadlock pop growth was based on population which you had to move some popuation to get faster growth and helpt with overpopulation(which you could add transports to move population to other systems for example) and food is and always will be a comodity and major resorce to survie which it was in deadlock and if say a mineing colony was cut off from food then they would start to starve and of cource cut you off from the resorces adding extra strategy.

Could there be a way to "autonomize" the process of stabilizing food resources? Although I like the idea of using ships to move surplus food, in larger games, I don't think this is very feasible.

It is something that is done automatically, by fleets of commercial vessels. This makes me wonder: could the re-allocation of food be added to the tech tree somewhere?

I'm only about an hour into this game, but figured I'd throw in my 2 bits.

@something blue: Yes I'm aware of that but it seems still a little odd to give orders this way

"You bunch of a million go into any production facility, farm, researchcenter or bank you can find and start working there." as opposed to "You bunch.. theres the factory. lets go."

it all depends. Some games economic is best, some tech. It all depends on how you play and the game. but yes i like pop growth in es as a tactic.

Mimic wrote:
I am not sure if food relocation is really needed if it happens "automatic" (like MOO2). I like the idea if it comes to blockades though.



Imho there is 1 big problem with food as it is apart from other "currencies" the one that grows exponentially - which causes the problem that every 4X game I have played so far suffered.

If you strive for the best race / picks pop growth is the way to go. I hadn't have much time to play the alpha until now but I think this is the factor that needs to be addressed - in which way may be discussed .

I does seem that food is by far the most important resource when a colony is growing, because it forms the base of the colony's productivity.



I think that dust may also be a little off, because if you go for an economic strategy you can crank up the tax rate and gain much while loosing less. I favor making it so that taxes affect dust and industry, and approval affects food and science.



Edit: It then completes the symmetry of the choices. Heroes choose between food and industry or dust and science, and tech chooses between food and dust or industry and science.

i say give a secondary use for food like some of the colony modules costing food resources but not dust this would be for money gaining modules like xenotravel galactic trading center and adaptive taxation since it would make more sense than dust usage.

would put a emphasis on food also be a lighter load on dust. while industry and science modules keep on using dust

(3) Make the food cost of new population points increase based on total imperial population. This would prevent growth from being too slow in the early game and too fast in the late game. Population will be generated quickly on core worlds and slowly on outposts, but you just move it to where it is needed. If food for growth varied with the population of a system then that encourages you to spread out your population, but the idea will be to allow the population to be generated on agricultural worlds and then move to the frontier.

That is already the case, but only system-wide though:

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9708-how-pop-growth-works

(4) Make it so that, when a colony is full, food is distributed among the growing colonies at 50% (possibly higher) efficiency. This is similar to the conversions you can use with industry and is, I think, a better way of dealing with this than the late game building that converts it to industry.

You'd have to rebalance the whole game for that, or your suggestion would break it, consider what I wrote earlier:

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/7423-what-s-surplus-food-good-for

Indeed, for instance I have a system with 170 extra food, with 16 pop and 52% growth per turn (2 turns for a new pop). If I could transfer this food to new size 1 planets, I could add around +600% growth total to them (+6 pop per turn), which is 12 times more efficient! That would break the game...

I have another suggestion : what if you could distribute not food, but population? Sure, if you could do via colonization ships it would be nice, but what about if you could do without them? You could have a colony build a "move population" project, which would for instance transfer population into a empire-wide "population bank", and then you could just redeploy that population on a system you wanted. (probably only one that is not under a blockade...) Redeploying could have additional costs, maybe dust costs, if that was a new underdeveloped system...

I am accounting for the boost in growth to small colonies by making it so that the the surplus food a colony gets is determined by its population and the cost for population increases linearly. The idea is that the increase of productivity from tech is countered by the colonizing of increasingly less fertile planets, also allowed by tech. Pop on small colonies will grow faster with time, but primarily because pop on max ones stops growing.



I am just putting the finishing touches on Food, the Ugly Duckling 3.0 and will release it soon. Consider this a sneak peek

I think that dust may also be a little off, because if you go for an economic strategy you can crank up the tax rate and gain much while loosing less. I favor making it so that taxes affect dust and industry, and approval affects food and science.

Until late game, IMHO, food and industry (and there's also science!) are much more important than dust. So cranking up the tax rate is a bad idea, even with the humans...

BlueTemplar wrote:


I have another suggestion : what if you could distribute not food, but population? Sure, if you could do via colonization ships it would be nice, but what about if you could do without them? You could have a colony build a "move population" project, which would for instance transfer population into a empire-wide "population bank", and then you could just redeploy that population on a system you wanted. (probably only one that is not under a blockade...) Redeploying could have additional costs, maybe dust costs, if that was a new underdeveloped system...

Again, moving population is not the answer. If you move population then you will be in danger of starving the systems. It is possible it could work when you are trying to build a system and need population to produce more food so you can build quicker, but is that really necessary? You can already add a person per colony ship by simply colonizing another planet in the system. I just think using ships to transport population would be redundant.



I think the simplest way to "trade" excess food is an initial set up system between two systems. You create a transport ship and equip it with a new civilian module that has to do with food transportation. Each module takes 2 food per turn from the home system and delivers 1 food per turn to the target system. Then, via a new command, you choose the home system and target system and the ship/s automatically travel back and forth between the system until the transaction is cancelled, and the food on the systems return to normal. These trades would be limited to 1 full turn of moves between systems, and each travel would take a full turn if not all moves are used (In all actuality, each module would take 4 food from the home system, and deliver 2 to the target system, but the transaction always takes 2 turns, so the per turn averages out). In this way, you could set up key farm systems to deliver throughout the empire.



The same could be done with industry if you wish, but it still seems intangible and redundant since there is already an option for non production systems (produce dust/ produce industry)

If you move population then you will be in danger of starving the systems.

Well, maybe it's a good thing it works this way? Makes it harder to grab resources on the worst planets... (which from what I've seen are also usually the most powerful ones) and it's not that hard either, you only need to have 1 food / pop and build that cheap improvement that gives you another 1 food /pop.



What you're suggesting is far from being the simplest way, since it involves real freighter ships moving between systems. And it would break the game balance for the reasons already mentioned. Maybe if food actually transferred was proportional to the quotient of the population of the receiving system per the population of the giving system it could work...

BlueTemplar wrote:
What you're suggesting is far from being the simplest way, since it involves real freighter ships moving between systems. And it would break the game balance for the reasons already mentioned. Maybe if food actually transferred was proportional to the quotient of the population of the receiving system per the population of the giving system it could work...

Explain?



The idea would probably be hard to implement, but once it was, a player would simply have to create a transport ship, load it with freight modules, and then send it to a system that you want to designate as its home (pick up) system. Here, you would click a new button on the very empty Ship tab, and then it would have you choose another system with in 1 turn to ship the food to. From this point on, the computer performs the travel and drop off (turn 1) and travel and pick up (turn 2) automatically until the player actively clicks on the transport ship and cancels the transaction. It would not break balance because there would be a 50% loss. Most probably, a transport ship would be able to handle 2 freighter modules tops, and that is without engine modules which would be useful to reach farther systems. So if command is top, you could take a full fleet of 22 freighters and it would take (at best) 88 food and deliver 44 food. How is that breaking the balance?

Hi All.



Pretty new on this game (a dozen games only) i faced the food issue very early in the game discover.



As it's been said here, food is not like the three other resources : once the system is "complete" it becomes useless (unless the end game tech discovery). For me, useless aspects shall not be in a decent 4x game



But you can't simply do things, gameplay speaking, which are fun to play but without any justification, roleplay speaking.

Automatically transfer exceeding food from a system to another seems pretty boring AND too much communist-like :-)



And, speaking universe coherence, even if planets are from the same culture/empire/dominion, commercial issues should be kept in mind.

You basically can't take food from exceed system expecting people would be happy. For the same reason, transporting people from a system to another is not very RP (it's already the case from planet to planet in the same system but it's the whole "system level" mechanic of the game). Or i guess this could be possible but with considerable damage on system approval. Finding a system which will equally make fun/RP/gameplay co-habitate will be hard to find.



The thing i really wanted to talk about was the original idea of DasKibby : how can you fight with empty stomachs ? Modern games considerably lack of practical issues : why does my hero of XXX RPG game not need to eat like old times ? Food could be a combat variable of fleet efficiency. This would introduce a whole new complex fleet material : cargo ships, necessity to secure supply lines, possibility to attack ennemy supply fleets etc etc.



But the real question is, as Alpha comes to an end, if it's still time to suggest heavily solutions which may requestion all the game balance ? Hope developpers will watch thoose threads !

It always bothered me that 1 colonist produces all the 4 resources.

Why not go back to good old MoO 1 colonist produces 1 resource so i can really specialize my systems and freighters bring the food of the food systems to the rest of the empire.. hmm but that would be a huge design change.. if that is not wanted I would vote for the 4th point: distribute the excess food among the still growing colonies or: let me distribute the colonists themselves (like I could in MoO).

4 already is in the game. You can convert food to production, and production to science; ergo, food to science at 25% rate.



6 (there are two 5's) is similiar to 1, and on your previous topic, I already said it is an OK idea



3, I believe I suggested this aswell.



And 5, I believe I was talking about one of my systems getting 4500 food- which is just ridiculous to me.



Most of these will be done with mods, I believe. I hope developers allow flexibility when it comes to mods.

Thank you for noticing that



As to 4, I think that that improvement comes too late in the game and I think an automatic but inefficient system would be better with this system.



6 is similar to 1 as it is designed to be. If you can move the population to set up a colony quickly, you should be able to do the same with industry.



3 is different from its last equivalent in that now I am saying that the cost for population increase should go up, but based on your total population because population is now a galaxy wide resource.

Zougkla wrote:
Whereas the others produce stuff for your empire, the supply of food simply determines how long it will take for a colony to come fully on line.

Are you saying that the amount of food available to a system has some impact on population growth rate?



My impression was that it is a resource to support a population. IE it takes 2 food to keep one population point from starving. A system with a total of 25 empty population slots will require a grand total of 50 food.



On good worlds, all of that food requirement is created by the population, sometimes even an excess. It's an unusual star system that requires additional support of constructions to augment the food supply.



I haven't tested for it, but I'm theorizing that systems are independent; that there is no shipping of food from a system with a surplus to a system with a shortage.



Or am I just off on a tangent?

Maybe turn excess food into a commodity? Trade it with another empire, or use it to support growing colonies; something like that. It'd be more interesting, I think.

It would be nice, if food could be a shared resource amongst all your planets. Say any planets within X hops of another or along a trade route can share food.

Perhaps excess food from a full system could be distributed among the developing systems, but at 50% efficiency or something like, industry's conversions. I'll edit that into point (4). It is simpler than converting it into dust and science. I still want population to be able to be moved between systems and for the cost for population increase to increase on the imperial level.



Thanks for the suggestion, FridgePanic and Servercat!



PS: My computer shut down while I was playing due to a Windows update that I didn't notice. All I can say is Thank Amplitude for Autosave!

I can't remember MOO2 much, but on MOO3, food was shared between all the planets. Lets say, you have a system generating 150 food alone, while the total food production on the empire is 200. And your empire has 200 population- 200 food is consumed/required so to speak. If your food-system is blockaded, all other planets will start starving, when they run out of their supplies. Some system like this would make some targets priority, especially on multiplayer I guess. But, you don't save food in this game; so it should be added too for something like this to work at all I guess.

I am not even sure population should consume food. I mean, can't they grow it for themselves hydroponically?



That would solve the potential problem of colonizing systems that produce no food and immediately loosing a population.



What does the game currently do in that situation, where a new colony consumes more food than it produces? I haven't tested it...

If a colony consumes more than it produces the population starts to drop.



I do not like the industry idea. Industry is not a commodity. Food can be. Perhaps that is what should happen: create fast, light ships with Food Modules, and then set them to automatically go between 2 systems. I like the idea that it should be at 50% efficiency. Each module on the ship takes 2 food from the starting point and delivers one food to the destination. The range of the transaction is a full turn from the starting position. These ships would be able to be attacked by enemies and pirates, but this would only stop the transaction, no food would be lost. In this case, the food on the different systems would return to normal as the original planet would be able to count the 2 food it normally shipped out. I posted some of that in the last thread, and refined it a bit here.

If food is shared (or otherwise has a use for excess), I would say not only does it see a reduction for being shipped off planet but also reduced further for number of jumps. Perhaps also improvements -don't- factor in; any surplus that gets shipped off planet comes only from natural excess. Alternatively, the other way around -only food from improvements (excluding improvements that provide a percent bonus) gets shipped off planet. Given the sheer amount of excess food even one system can generate (I've had 54-84 excess on a system I wasn't even developing for much food), just a 50% reduction might still be a significant bonus to rapidly jump start or sustain a system.

Food is fine as it is, just that food upkeep for population needs to scale more correctly in systems. Ideally exponentially.



I don't like the idea of stock piling food, they may as well then just remove food altogether and use Dust for it instead.

I wanted to update the idea due to the large amount of feedback, so I am rebooting the thread. The original thread at can be found at https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11618-food-to-colony-ships-conversion





The problem is that, at present, food is fundamentally different from the other resources. Whereas the others produce stuff for your empire, the supply of food simply determines how long it will take for a colony to come fully on line.



Developed colonies can produce so much food that they can pump out colonizers, so it doesn’t really limit the rate at which we can colonize new systems. The strategy at present is to colonize as many systems as you can, once your core worlds approach capacity, to grow as quickly as possible. I fear that this oversimplifies the strategy with regard to growth.



After a colony is full, food is useless until the Dust Visualization tech at the very, very end of the game (which I don’t think is a good idea). I propose a few simple changes that would make food (and industry) a galactic resource like dust and science.



And here they are:



(1) Make it so that colonizers add population to colonized worlds simply by hitting the colonize button when in colonized systems rather than colonizing new planets.



(2) Make colonizers cheaper by making the Seed Module free in terms of industry. However, they would take up the entire Transport class’s tonnage at the beginning of the game. Colony ships would not be free, because the hull still costs industry and the Seed Module costs a population point, but they are cheap enough to allow the moving of population from one system to another.



(3) Make the food cost of new population points increase based on total imperial population. This would prevent growth from being too slow in the early game and too fast in the late game. Population will be generated quickly on core worlds and slowly on outposts, but you just move it to where it is needed. If food for growth varied with the population of a system then that encourages you to spread out your population, but the idea will be to allow the population to be generated on agricultural worlds and then move to the frontier.



(4) Make it so that, when a colony is full, food is distributed among the growing colonies at 50% (possibly higher) efficiency. This is similar to the conversions you can use with industry and is, I think, a better way of dealing with this than the late game building that converts it to industry.



(5) Change most improvements from increasing the output of your population to providing resources directly or to providing a proportional boost to all system output. This makes population one way to get resources, but not the overwhelming one. The exception to this could be Sustainable Agriculture which could be used to cancel out the population’s food consumption and allow populations on systems that produce no food, although this may be unnecessary if you have food being shared among systems.



(6) Add another civilian module that costs industry but, when used to colonize a system you own, refunds the industry cost of the module. This Supply Module would allow the movement of industry from system to system and would make it truly a galactic resource. Like with colonizers the transfer is not free, you lose the industry that went into the hull.

Agree with the suggestion of allowing colony ships to increase pop of already colonised planets, this mechanism has been used in quite a few other 4X games, and it would help make late-game over-fed full systems a little more useful.



Another option would be having completely populated systems with an excess of food convert a percentage of that excess into dust, on the grounds that they are basically selling their excess consumption on the galactic markets.

Still not fond of the whole "build transports, then manually send them somewhere to deliver stuff"-idea.



How big are the games you play? Small galaxy, 2 Empires? For with everything larger, it would become very, very unfeasible to ship your population across the galaxy.

I think there are more interesting things to do than to play relocation agent :P



Simply make excess food tradeable and add some nice little transport-animations going to and fro



We could also have the high-level industry improvements reduce food (like many suggested in the other thread), so that we would no longer be able to spam every lava forge world into self sustainability, but have to supply the specialised colonies with food

I really like the Idea of highly specialized food-systems providing other systems, mostly because of the impact blockades or invasion would have on a empire built like that. This could be a System improvement that lets you define "support routes" to another system, with a dust-cost depending on how many hops. I also approve of "improvement kits", system improvements that are constructed on a industry-system, moved by ships and then deployed for around 10% total industry cost at the target system. That would bring a really nice new level of management, civil fleets that need to be protected from pirates for example.

Of course it should be entirely the players choice if he wants self-sustaining allrounder-systems instead.



Another thing that would give nice ne depth would be to give fleets a food requirement, park them over one of your systems for reloading and they tank on the food and industry (spare parts), leave them in enemy space for 15 turns or so, depending on cargo capacity and they get debuffs for faulty equipment and low morale for eating nothing but sex crispies from the food replicators. So while invading the enemy you either have spare fleet to replace the one you are sending on shore leave or some good food-systems to fill resupply cargo-ships...



meh, I'm rambling, better stop here =)

Skurkanas wrote:
Still not fond of the whole "build transports, then manually send them somewhere to deliver stuff"-idea.



How big are the games you play? Small galaxy, 2 Empires? For with everything larger, it would become very, very unfeasible to ship your population across the galaxy.

I think there are more interesting things to do than to play relocation agent :P



Simply make excess food tradeable and add some nice little transport-animations going to and fro



We could also have the high-level industry improvements reduce food (like many suggested in the other thread), so that we would no longer be able to spam every lava forge world into self sustainability, but have to supply the specialised colonies with food

You never played Master of Orion did you?

You didn't have to do it manually there.. you just had a pool of freighters the AI would distribute the food automatically among your system as long as you had enough of them and if you wanted to move a colonist you needed to have an extra freighter for that but it would only be drag and drop and a number that would tell you the arrival time

If your going to make food a commodity make it abstract dont force people to build goddamn freighters. None of the ideas addresses the fact that once your planets are full food is useless. It shouldent just become a negative either, just another set of scales to balance. If you have to bother with it then you should get a tangible bonus from it.



It should affect happiness as a well fed population is less likely to rebel and temporary pop should be added if your food has reached high enough levels.



In my current game i'm realizing that there is literally no reason to ever have farms because if its a high food planet in the first place with just a few improvements and techs it will produce enough food to do the job and you can replace the now useless food bonus with something tangible like production/science/dust.

StK wrote:
You never played Master of Orion did you?

You didn't have to do it manually there.. you just had a pool of freighters the AI would distribute the food automatically among your system as long as you had enough of them and if you wanted to move a colonist you needed to have an extra freighter for that but it would only be drag and drop and a number that would tell you the arrival time

That's not the vibe I'm getting from the OP. "Adding population by clicking the colonise button" sounds pretty manual to me

I have played MoO1&2 btw

@Skurkanas I read it again you are right ... it reads like he means doing it manually

but when there was a better solution for that kind of problem years ago (implented in MoO) I think the devs would also be able to find a more practical way then the suggested one.. (^^,)

Skurkanas wrote:
Still not fond of the whole "build transports, then manually send them somewhere to deliver stuff"-idea.



How big are the games you play? Small galaxy, 2 Empires? For with everything larger, it would become very, very unfeasible to ship your population across the galaxy.

I think there are more interesting things to do than to play relocation agent :P



Simply make excess food tradeable and add some nice little transport-animations going to and fro



We could also have the high-level industry improvements reduce food (like many suggested in the other thread), so that we would no longer be able to spam every lava forge world into self sustainability, but have to supply the specialised colonies with food

That is a very good point...



However my 6 original points still stand:



(1) Being able to add more population with colonizers got a good response and would be useful for quickly setting up a colony as well as choosing which systems to prioritize.



(2) Cheaper colony ships facilitate (1).



(3) If you have food being moved between colonies, then you should make the cost of growth based on imperial population because if you don't then small colonies will grow way too fast from the influx of food and large colonies will grow too slowly.



(4) I am open to increasing the efficiency of the automatic food distribution, but I still do not want it to be 100% because you should have some motivation to generalize your systems while allowing specialization. Perhaps 75%?



(5) I feel that population grow is way too important at the moment because many improvements increase its productivity. I want you to be able to have a smaller population, but to have lots of improvements and thus be able to be competitive. Although, if all colonies have some food coming in from the developed systems, then the Sustainable Agriculture idea would be unneeded and it should be moved to a lump rate.



(6) Again, primarily to get new colonies off on the right foot. Perhaps a redistribution option could be added like with the conversions? I am not sure how I feel about that...

In regards to 1 colonists doing all 4 FIDS: You are aware that "1" colonist on the planet is a representative number, correct? It most likely represent a great number, more to the tune of 100,000 or perhaps even 1,000,000 per colonist? So now it is easy to see that "1" colonist can easily produce all 4 FIDS.

After playing a couple of games now I believe that food is one of the first things that needs rebalancing. I found that most of food buildings and hero food perks are redundant as most systems are growing nicely and I am aware that they will just cost me money once the system population is at maximum. There have been some good suggestions in this thread and I personaly would like to see pop growth slowed down as well as some sort of reward for when the system is full, the simplest being that food surplus is converted into dust automatically. Three different buildings could also give you options such as surplus food into dust / industry / science at a 25% conversion. this would encourage the player to seek high food production rather than see it as wasted builds.