Economics Mod Proposal

[FoxURA]

While I'm not programmer I used to moonlight as a game designer and even ran my own indie studio until recently. I've just dropped fighting through the indie world and found my true passion as a writer and am over half-way through the first draft of a sci-fi novel. While that's all sort of beside the point it means that I'm no longer so concerned about guarding aspects of some of the game ideas that I developed and this proposal reflects the sort of mechanics I wanted to put into any turn-based strategy that I developed. The reason why I want to share it is because I believe the mod elements are a perfect fit for BOTF and would allow people to focus less on micromanagement while devoting more of their time to what's most important, CONQUEST! Erhrm. Well, here it is. I just put it together over the course of an hour or two after I got annoyed at how long my turns were taking so it is by no means perfect so if anyone has ideas to add just throw them in.

BOTF Economic Mod Proposal

Primary points:
-Introduction of system specialties into the system manager
-Streamlining overall gameplay interface
-Making the game more accessible to a wider audience.

The system manager would be modified to contain four settings: Research, Intel, Balanced, and Forge
-Intel balances between constructing only the minimum needed Food Structures, the equivalent output of 7 Energy Structures factoring system bonuses, and Industrial and Intel structures should be roughly equally balanced with any extra slots going to Industry Structures
-Research Focus is identical to how Intel Focus works but with a focus on Research Structures.
-Balanced would roughly develop both Research and Intel equally while still seeking to have the same energy production level.
-Forge Focus would forgo all development of Intel and Research to focus entirely on maximizing industrial output for ship production but still has the equivalent output of 5 Energy Production structures.

Additional Mechanics:
-For all modes the build manager would stop constructing structures once there are enough slots for the maximum population of a system to be fully allocated.
-After the system is developed enough for all population to be fully allocated the build manager will let the system sit idle unless there are upgrades or structures related to the systems purpose that can be constructed such as Phoenix Facilities in Intel Systems.
-Auto-pruning. As food production facilities are upgraded to the point where fewer are needed extra food production structures would be pruned and the additional structure slot would be used by another structure according to the setting of the System Manager. This would automatically free excess population working on food sources to be assigned to other more productive areas. It would also allow for food structures to be upgraded more quickly as only the minimum number of food structures would be present at any given time.
-“Planetary Rehabilitation”. If a planet in a system has a type change an item will appear in the system’s build menu called Planetary Rehabilitation.” Once enacted there would be a 5% chance each turn of the planet being returned to its previous class. Once the planet is returned to its previous class “Planetary Rehabilitation” would no longer be available as an option or would be unselectable.
-“Population Incentives” and/or “Immigration Incentives”. For each native system that is below full population “Immigration Incentives” would appear in the build menu and for each minor race system “Population Incentives” would appear in the build menu. When either option is active in the build queue the system would have a 5% chance of an “Immigrants flock to (system name) for the promise of long term prosperity” event triggering at the end of each turn. This would reduce the time it takes for systems to reach full population without being an overpowered mechanic. Once a system reaches full population the option would vanish from the build menu or would be unselectable.

Change to Existing Mechanics:
-The Economic Prosperity event would no longer provide systems random additional structures. The bonus would relate directly to what is in the build queue at the time. When the event occurs whatever the first item in the build queue is at the time will have a production bonus amounting to 20% of the original full cost being deducted from the buildings remaining cost. If the bonus exceeds the remaining amount any extra industry will either be applied to the next item in the build queue or be converted to credits.

GUI Changes:
-Clicking on the System Manager for a system would cycle the setting between Off, Balance, Research, Intel, and Forge
-Selecting the Military tab on the GUI will cause the system names of Forge Systems to be highlighted on the galactic map by default to make it easier to assign ship production to systems
-The options to highlight Intel, Research, Balanced, and Forge systems would appear in the overlay options tab along with the existing options like showing or hiding system names and populations.
-The system summary screen should be given the option to sort and hide systems according to type.

Justifications:
-The 7 Energy Structures, or equivalent if system energy bonuses are present, would ensure that Research, Intel, and Balanced systems would have enough power to operate both structures like Trade Centers and defensive structures like Orbital Batteries.
-Forge systems would have fewer extra structures because of the focus on ship production and wouldn’t have as many additional structures so it would have a lower energy requirement.
-This would streamline gameplay to the point that even managing a massive empire would take little effort.
-If the mod is created it may be that it could be applied to any other mod that doesn’t alter the specific mechanics adjusted within this mod.

[thunderchero]

sounds like a nice plan and I wish you luck with your mod.

But my fear since you stated "While I'm not programmer" the changes you propose will take massive assembly changes that that are very difficult to do, if not impossible.

[FoxURA]

I'm glad you like the idea but as I mentioned, I'm not a programmer and can't make the mod myself. My hope was that if a someone here did like the idea who was an experienced modder they might take up the challenge themselves. Beyond that, honestly my time will be taken up mostly by writing my book.

However, I did have some programming experience, albeit it was in Java years ago in high school, and if the programming for BOTF is anything similar most of the changes are intended to be akin to conditional statements or changing values here are there with minimal graphical changes. Like I said, my experience was limited to Java and working through a compiler so I have no working knowledge of how the coding looks for BOTF.

And since it is a related topic, I do have a question. I've tried using the system manager before and my first impression was that it build a lot of unnecessary structures and more than once would let new systems sit idle to the point that I had to purchase food structures because populations outpaced the initial food production capability of systems. How has the system manager worked for you? I typically get annoyed early on when trying it and switch everything to manual before I get a good idea of how well it works in practice.

[thunderchero]

My hope was that if a someone here did like the idea who was an experienced modder they might take up the challenge themselves.

that is a shame since I doubt anyone would be able to make these changes. assembly changes like this are almost impossible. And assembly changes is nothing like java.

How has the system manager worked for you?

it doesn't work for me, the only time I use it, is when I am in clean up mode at the end of the game when system will never be useful.

[FoxURA]

So then I'm not the only one that generally finds the system manager to be useless, then. At the very least maybe these things could be applied to Supremacy. Isn't it almost out of Beta?

[Iceman]

Except for the proposed "projects", Supremacy's colony management AI already does much of what you propose. There isn't a governor system yet, but it will eventually work pretty much like the AI. There isn't a focus on Intel vs Research yet, which will have to be looked at once Intel is working.
To notice that in Supremacy, shipbuilding is separate from industry (though the latter might increase the former), and the starmap already shows which systems have a shipyard.

I'll add the Economic Prosperity event, good idea! You don't happen to have the description text at hand, would you? Would save me the time.
Instead of the mentioned production bonus though (which would vary according to what was being built, doesn't make much sense IMO), I will double the system's production for the turn - double overtime!!!

I might look into the governor thing after the next release, which should be soon.

Posted this on BitBucket.