I think that this is an excellent late-game tech - particularly when you've got systems with 700+ food surplus sitting unused and are trying to crank out dreadnaughts left and right because the Cravers and Hissho are breaking down your door. But I think it's the sort of thing that needs to be converted to a 'toggle' - much like the Ind-Sci and Ind-Dust Conversions. As it functions now, you can only build it in a system where you're absolutely, completely certain that you won't need any food - planets all colonized and terraformed, with every population-increasing improvement built and with every population slot filled. I've run into the issue of building it in a system and then having to scrap it because I terraformed or researched another improvement that increased the population cap, but since there was no food available I obviously had either zero population growth or starvation! The simplest way to prevent players from having to go through all their systems and scrap AIS improvements so that they can conduct terraforming or construct additional population-increasing structures is to rework the AIS into (essentially) a Food-Ind Conversion (in my opinion). (Apologies if someone else has already made this suggestion - it's kinda hard to scroll through 40+ pages of suggestion threads :-)

In a similar suggestion I answered this:

Cadoras wrote:
I do not think this is desirable due to balancing. When you can freely allocate FIDS on which scale whatsoever, the necessity of specialization and custumization of planets will be pushed more to the background. You already have many, many tools to influence the structure and amount of FIDS. I use the Dust Virtualization to use full grown systems as a production base for ships, a certain reward for reaching full maturity i guess.

In my view all the decisions you mention add to the difficulty of the game. It is not a nuisance, it is something of reality: when a war breaks out, or an existing war goes pearshaped, you must transform certain systems and reprioritize their facilities. I think your suggestion will make the game a lot easier on harder difficulty, something what must not be desired.

Furthermore, I already think the existing conversions (ind-res & ind-dust) are not correct and make the game to easy in some aspects. If you want to focus a planet or system to certain use, restructure it.



Don't get me wrong: I understand your grief in this matter, but I see it as an integral part of the difficulty of war in this game.

As it functions now, you can only build it in a system where you're absolutely, completely certain that you won't need any food

I prefer this aspect of it though. Beyond knocking out DR's it's also good for extra cash, though granted you'll only get 25% of the food value converted dust cause your lose 50% in the conversion to industry, but if they went with your suggestion I'm not sure that would still be possible.

Dust-Virtualization should be just this side of being an "I Win" button for the faction that gets it. Why? Because it's right next to the scientific victory. The idea is that once you're building these things, they're the last thing you're building. You're converting your entire economy over to proto-Endless structures. Further growth is unneeded and unwanted. And once you finish the factory, you're setting yourself to Industry-Research conversion to power through the tech victory.



It's just to the left of an "I Win" button in the interface, and the "I Win" button is the next button you're going to push.



EDIT: That said, I think it should double-count food production instead of wiping it. I don't agree with further growth ceasing to be desirable, after all, and I'm not worried about balancing it... Its imbalance is the imbalance of technology.

"I don't agree with further growth ceasing to be desirable" - I've always thought it was intended for systems where growth is no longer an option, or for that mater even desired, at least that's how I use it, on a maxed out system only.

I tend not to accumulate too many fully maxed out systems. Even by the end of the game on a huge map I usually only have two, which makes the AIS kinda weak. I probably need to work on my food optimization strategies more.

I definitely want to be able to toggle the AIS. Right now, if I ever had a population drop in my systems or have additional capacity, I would need to manually scrap each and every AIS. Speaking as the Godking of Everlasting Peace, I would think that I should be able to tell my people "Hey, turn off the AIS so that the population of Foxo could have kids in the aftermath of that horrid disease." From an real-world perspective, provisions to accommodate for that sort of situation would be in place, and in terms of gameplay, I don't think anyone finds scrapping their buildings to be an exercise in fun, nor that with intellect. At best, it would be a form of masochistic make-work.

Duplicate of this bug thread:

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?4195-adaptive-industries-bugged-or-annoyance

This thread closed/