Those burdensome colonists

[Grandpoobah]

One thing I would like to see changed is reducing the need of spending my time moving colonists around between my colonies.

A quick fix would be to add a population cost to the building of Marines and Tanks. This would help keep your populations in check by building ground forces and the marines would help keep order if the population builds up again. This would seem to be more realistic unless your assumption was that the marines and tanks were only just robotic machines.

A harder fix would be to have colonists automatically begin to migrate from over crowded planets to sparsely populated ones. Migrations to undesirable planets for the race you are playing would be slower and faster for desirable planets.

You’ve done a great job of removing a lot of the micromanage aspects you normally find. Handling overcrowding was the only thing I found so far that I don’t like.

I’ve had to resort to building large number of transports, load them with colonists, add the transports to my battle fleets, and then deploy the transports in the forefront of the fleet to draw enemy fire during my assaults. This is easier and cheaper than building some of the structures to control unhappiness. It also provides the benefits of reducing losses to my fleet and increases the happiness of my population. While it is a good gaming solution, it is not very realistic.

PS. It would also be nice to add some additional ground units that could be researched such as special forces, shock troops, mobile infantry, AA units, etc. You might give the Special Forces a greater effect in quelling riots. Shock troops would be more heavily armed marines (more lethal). Mobile infantry would move faster than marines. AA units would have lasers (similar to the transports) that could provide some additional protections against ship bombardment.

Just some thoughts.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Bob,

Players are dumping unwanted populations on Gulag planets, loading them on transports fired at enemy fleets as kamikazes, etc.

Be a pal. Add a feature to Eat 'em too.

ORIGINAL: Grandpoobah

You’ve done a great job of removing a lot of the micromanage aspects you normally find. Handling overcrowding was the only thing I found so far that I don’t like.

I’ve had to resort to building large number of transports, load them with colonists, add the transports to my battle fleets, and then deploy the transports in the forefront of the fleet to draw enemy fire during my assaults. This is easier and cheaper than building some of the structures to control unhappiness. It also provides the benefits of reducing losses to my fleet and increases the happiness of my population. While it is a good gaming solution, it is not very realistic.

[Starfry]

As the Teyes, I just let the planets rebel then bomb them into submission in order to control the population.  

[sage]

ORIGINAL: Starfry

As the Teyes, I just let the planets rebel then bomb them into submission in order to control the population.  

Shades of Rome Total War. Wait for grouchy city to rebel. Attack and enslave: automatic way to spread population (since that what 'enslave') did. Rinse and repeat to their population is managable. Added benefit: easy experience for your legions...

[PDiFolco]

Lol, this shows there's a problem here, pop should be an *asset*, not a liability to get rid of !

[Tom_Holsinger]

It looks like the happiness/unrest system overall is so broken it should be ditched via mods pending an official patch.  We could simply mod every race to have a +5 unrest rating.  This would not affect bureaucracy's effects on budgets.

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: Tom_Holsinger

It looks like the happiness/unrest system overall is so broken it should be ditched via mods pending an official patch.  We could simply mod every race to have a +5 unrest rating.  This would not affect bureaucracy's effects on budgets.

We can as well mod races to have lesser bureau penalties . Think I'll do that !

[Shawkhan]

Basically, if you are human, you shouldn't upgrade mines, as right now there doesn't seem to be a good counter to that much pollution. Don't really understand why asteroid mining and comet mining seem to produce negative modifiers, as by definition they would be off-planet.

[Grandpoobah]

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco

Lol, this shows there's a problem here, pop should be an *asset*, not a liability to get rid of !

Turning them into an asset is the direction I would like to see happen. I would think you would need to use population to build ground units and all types of ships not just arks. After all, the ships need crews. I would have Fleet carriers consume two population points (one for crew and one for pilots). This change would force the production of these large vessels to highly populated planets which seems to make some logical sense anyway. It would reduce some of the micromanagement aspects by not allowing a planets population to build too fast.

I am not of the mindset that the happiness/unrest system or bureaucracy needs to be ditched. I just think that some of the unrealistic elements need to be tweaked.

The current Happiness/Unrest/Bureaucracy system forces you to pay equal attention to the Explore/Expand aspects and not just the Exploit/Exterminate aspects. The system included in this game is very different from other 4X games and that is one of the things that makes this one very interesting.

[Tom_Holsinger]

A lot of us think the happiness system is pretty much busted. There are major conceptual problems in having bureaucracy affect happiness, because fostering unrest and revolts as empire size increases punishes players for success. There are reasons why I listed deletion of the unrest penalty for humans, and making happiness independent of bureaucracy, as the two highest priority fixes for the game.

[Grandpoobah]

I've been following much of the discussion and I have read many of your posts. I know that there are many schools of thought on 4X games. They range from it should be more of a simulation to it should provide a great game experience. I like this game right now because it seems to be trying to hold a middle ground position amongst these various positions.

It currently provides some realism in that to shows why it is extremely difficult to build very large empires because you can't keep all the factions happy and most large empires finally break apart over that. This game simulates that.

It has provided plenty of gaming fun. I have had some awesome fleet battles with each side fielding 80+ ships of various types. I know that I am slowing figuring some things out because each time I play, I manage to build a larger empire than the last.

So, that is why I see things as needing tweaks here and there. I have not reached your conclusion that a major overhaul is needed. You've probably played it more than I have and maybe I might reach the same conclusion after more hours of playing. But right now I just see this gaming system as very different and different does not make it necessarily busted.

Personally, having heard that this is a one man shop, I'd rather see the designer spend his time in filling out the tech trees, creating more than 19 races, and designing more ship/unit types. In my games, by turn 500, I've discovered most things that I can research and I've bumped into all 19 races. Having the ability of really long games with large maps is nice but it loses something once you don't need to discover anything any more.

Just my two cents.

[Aurelian]

I'd rather see bug fixes before changing things that not everyone thinks is broken. I also like Grandpoobah's ideas. More ships, tech.

[Iceman]

Yep, I had suggested making ground units cost pop during beta. I think this would be a good way to go, and have an additional structure, Barracks, to recruit them - freeing up the industry structures. It'd also help with slowing down blitzkrieg attacks with only one marine, if one marine would be demobilized after a conquest, for peacekeeping purposes.
Maybe ground units could even be made to have no upkeep but instead take up population space - so that you face a trade off, recruiting them has the effect of reducing the # of structures you can build (and you get less taxes of course) but increases Security.

[Zakhal]

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco
Lol, this shows there's a problem here, pop should be an *asset*, not a liability to get rid of !

From years back I remember a mentioning about blizzards games and reasons why they are so popular. One of the things that stuck to my mind was that everything you do in the game is "useful" i.e low level potions in WoW.

Players should be rewarded for colonizing and growing large populations. But instead they are punished for it.

[ASHBERY76]

The micromanaging required for this really goes against the design of fast paced turns.There needs to be a better solution.