Hi all,



I recently bought ES (when disharmony released) and am loving it so far

Currently playing my first game of ES and I have the DLC enabled. I'm totally confused by the Expansion Disapproval game mechanic though. I can't find an explanation of how it works. Here is what I found on the wiki:

Your empire gets -6 to -10.5 Approval (1.5 * difficulty modifier) for every colonized system above 2. This penalty applies only to systems within your own influence area, so outposts cause disapproval, but are not affected by it. This can be reduced by up to 88% by technology from the Standard Exploration & Expansion (bottom) technologies tree.

However, the above appears to be incorrect. It says outposts cause disapproval but are not affected by it. In my game the outposts are affected by it, in-fact the are affected by it twice as much as the two systems I actually have within borders. Here is a breakdown of my Empire:



2 Colonies with -12.7 expansion disapproval

6 Outposts with -30.7 expansion disapproval



I'm playing as the United Empire.



I know how to decrease the disapproval with techs etc I just don't know what causes it in the first place. I'd really like to be able to plan in advance in my next game so I need to know what my disapproval will be *before* settling the planet. Anyone know how I can determine what my disapproval will be? What causes it (mathematic explantion if possible)? Why are some planets affected more than others?



Oh, and does colonizing within a system causes expansion disapproval too, or just colonizing new systems?



Cheers all!







p.s. And hello, my first post

Since Disharmony the wiki is a bit out of date. I believe I read somewhere that the outpost mechanic is now changed. Instead of only planets in your influence being affected, now your outposts outside the influence are affected and more heavily influenced. I tried to find where I read this and I couldn't find it, but maybe someone else will come along and give you some specific answers.

(Hey, my first post too. )



I just bought ES this weekend from the Steam sale, and am playing with the Disharmony pack. As far as I can tell, systems within your empire's influence are subject to a much lower expansion disapproval than systems outside, as your observed. This includes outposts (i.e. settlements that haven't graduated to actual colonies yet, i.e. do not contribute to borders). The value of the expansion disapproval seems to increase with empire size but I don't know how it works.



Earlier in my current game I had 13 settlements, 10 inside my empire's borders, 3 outside. Out of the 10 inside the borders, 7 were actual colonies, 2 were definitely outposts, and 1 I'm unsure of. The 3 outposts outside the borders had an expansion disapproval of -52.5 and the colonies and outposts within my empire borders had an expansion disapproval of -15.3. Other relevant stats: I had researched 2 techs that reduce the expansion disapproval by -22% each, playing on easy so have an x4.5 expansion disapproval difficulty and am playing Horatio which has a +11 expansion disapproval trait. I have no idea how all those numbers add up to produce the disapproval numbers I see. But I would like to understand it better myself too.



Colonizing additional planets on inhabited systems doesn't affect expansion disapproval that I've noticed (at least not on easy ). Once one of my outposts graduated to a colony, it's expansion disapproval dropped from -52.5 to -15.3. The nearby outpost that was included in my newly expanded borders also saw the same expansion disapproval drop. Next I colonized a uninhabited system within my empire's borders. That new colony had an expansion disapproval of -16.7, as did all the other systems within borders (up from -15.3). The lone remaining colony outside the borders increased from -52.5 to -57.2.



Take away lessons:



Colonizing other planets within a system doesn't seem to have any effect on expansion disapproval.

The expansion disapproval penalty is huge for systems outside borders compared with systems inside borders.

Colonizing new systems increases the value of the disapproval in both situations.

Colonizing new systems within borders uses the in-border number, however that is calculated.

Aggressively researching and building tech to expand your influence borders to encompass unsettled systems makes expansion to those systems much easier.



I'm not sure what the expansion disapproval reduction techs really do. I'm at a point where new colonies outside empire borders are instantly on strike more often than not. I'm using heroes to mitigate that since there's no other way to these colonies off the ground.

/#/endless-space/forum/33-strategy-guides/thread/14056-beginner-s-guide-to-disharmony-improving-your-game



This has info on disapproval, the techs multiply directly the disapproval you get. So a total of -88% of disapproval youd be getting without techs. Once you get enough systems you gotta pretty much buyout the approval buildings, but by then you shuld be so huge it is cheap.

I don't get -22% expansion disapproval penalty reductions with each of those techs. It's more like 15% for outposts outside my empire's influence. Comparing the numbers before and after researching the one of the techs it's obvious you don't get a -22% reduction as you would expect.

From the XML it looks like both techs and influence are percentage modifiers.



In own influence: -25% expansion disapproval

In ally influence: +25% expansion disapproval

No influence: +50% expansion disapproval

In enemy influence: +100% expansion disapproval



So in no influence it starts at 150%; 22% / 150% = 14.7% which is what you saw.

I understood about the influence percentage modifiers but I was trying to calculate the 22% reduction differently (and coming up with different numbers). Thanks for the explanation.