Distant Worlds 1.0.4 Public Beta 4 Now Available!

[Erik Rutins]

Note that your colony revenue is already modified heavily by your development and your compliance and ability to bear higher taxes is modified by the population's happiness. Interdicting trade routes and destroying local space ports and blockading worlds will create a pretty big economic hit already.

I agree that there's a lot more we can do in the future, but first we have to balance what we already have. I think 1.0.4 Beta 4 does a pretty good job of that based on my experience and most of the feedback so far. The main thing we could improve with the existing system is to add a slider that modifies some of these limiting factors to make economic success easier or harder depending on a player's skill level or playstyle preference. I think it might also make sense to start out the homeworlds with a bit less population on the default settings.

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Wow, you _really_ hate corruption, Jscott.

Corruption is not going to remain a hidden value and the corruption due to distance from Capitol is actually an extremely small part of overall corruption, so getting worked up about that is fairly pointless. The advantage "core" races get from this is minimal. Corruption is also not going away, though it may go through more tweaking. While there are other things that can be done, corruption is a realistic solution to the difficulties that a government which evolved from one planet would find when trying to manage a galaxy. It might more accurately be called "Corruption and Inefficiency" as it does not strictly represent the taking of bribes or such.

I appreciate constructive criticism, so please a bit less of the "lazy" or "poor designers" talk and a bit more of the actual suggestions that you have "too many to list". We really do read and listen and if you come up with a good suggestion we will certainly use it.

It is certainly poor design to use a global, hidden value that cannot be affected by gameplay to accomplish something as vital as economic rebalancing. At no point did I ever to refer to anyone as a poor designer, but I will not back off the assertion that corruption (like anything else that is global and unchangeable) is a shortcut.

And it doesn't matter what you call it or even if we can see the value: as long as players are not able to affect it, it will remain a very suboptimal way to influence the economy.

Governmental inefficiency is also vastly overstated. The true reason large, settled empires tend to become financial quagmires is social spending becomes a larger and larger part of any nation's budget. This, in fact, is the ideal way to take money out of the game, but is probably too radical of a reform to suggest. But if you had a system where larger, developed economies demanded social spending over time, this would take money out of the treasury and limit the size of fleets or whatever you are trying to accomplish by reducing economic growth.

And if distance from the capital isn't a major part of the corruption formula, why even introduce something that would force players to even consider a gamey move, like moving their capital? Why even force that situation? If the advantage to deep core races is small, what's the point of them having an advantage at all? Simply take that dynamic out of the formula.

If you don't like the idea of increasing tech/component costs over time (which I think is the most elegant way to accomplish the same thing you're trying to do, while giving the player some measure of control over the degree that this cash sinkhole will actually operate), there are other possible solutions. Everything in the game is built around the economy, so I don't see why tweaking it required using corruption to begin with.

1. Introduce social spending

2. Increase the cost of crash research

3. Radically increase the effect of tax rates on happiness on undeveloped worlds (essentially making it impossible to tax undeveloped economies). This would simulate 18th century colonialism, where colonies paid no taxes, but also received virtually no government assistance or support.

4. Reduce what aliens will pay for tech (this is a silly part of the game anyway and makes many of your economic changes kind of pointless; personally, I refuse to sell tech to aliens as a means of self-balancing v. the AI).

5. Reduce income from trade (this only affects middle and later empires, though I personally believe trade is too small right now as is).

This is just off the top of my head. The increased tech costs is the way I would go, but I still think if you worked to limit the exploits, people would have far less cash and this would be less of an issue anyway.

[cmdrnarrain]

[font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"]Love the improvements.[/font][/font]
[font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][/font][/font] 
[font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"]Love the pop-up %'s on resources in the exploration screen.  Loved the construction queuing system as it works much better then before, its still not perfect but better.  [/font][/font][/font]
[font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][/font][/font] 
[font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"]Early economy seems easy, but I think it was because I previously conditioned not build many ships.  I now actually have funding to build a fleet.  Hopefully the extra funding will help the AI make stronger empires. [/font][/font][/font]
[font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][/font][/font][/font] 
[font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"][font="times new roman"]Did see the error when trying to patrol a system.  I also noticed a lot more colonies then before.   Love the improvements, but please keep them coming.   [/font][/font][/font][/font]

[Spacecadet]

I think maintenance costs are too high as it is.
When it cost almost as much in yearly maintenance as it does to build a newer model, or it's cheaper to scrap a ship than repair it, then somethings not quite right.
It's working though, so leave it as is, definitely don't increase it.

I agree that trade revenue seems a bit on the light side too.

[Bartje]

Yes, I've never seen high trade revenue either.

How does trade revenue figure in our income? Through civilian / private income?

We only get money from trade tarrifs right? So Freetrade should make our civilians richer and that in turn means that they'll pay more taxes per %.

It might be a good idea to be able to see how important trade with a certain empire is to the civilian economy however.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: jscott991
Governmental inefficiency is also vastly overstated.

We will have to agree to disagree on that score.

The true reason large, settled empires tend to become financial quagmires is social spending becomes a larger and larger part of any nation's budget. This, in fact, is the ideal way to take money out of the game, but is probably too radical of a reform to suggest. But if you had a system where larger, developed economies demanded social spending over time, this would take money out of the treasury and limit the size of fleets or whatever you are trying to accomplish by reducing economic growth.

That's actually part of what "corruption" currently represents. That's why larger, more developed planets have more local "corruption". It represents the overall inefficiency in the system. More developed colonies are willing to tolerate higher taxes in the current system, but at the same time they have more inefficiency as far as how much of their revenue is actual "profit" at the galactic level, per capita.

Seriously, what you are suggesting is what we are already trying to model through corruption. While you would change the name, we're folding that into the same concept and your suggestion would also be a global "shortcut" to reduce the economy of developed worlds.

And if distance from the capital isn't a major part of the corruption formula, why even introduce something that would force players to even consider a gamey move, like moving their capital? Why even force that situation? If the advantage to deep core races is small, what's the point of them having an advantage at all? Simply take that dynamic out of the formula.

Because it's realistic. You brought up the modern-day example of moving the Capitol from DC to St. Louis, but that's a false analogy. It doesn't take a month at best travel speed to get from DC to St. Louis. In DW terms that would be moving the capitol from one planet in a system to another. A better analogy might be the ancient Roman Empire where travel time was more equivalent to a large galaxy-spanning empire in DW and local governnors got away with quite a bit as a result.

If you don't like the idea of increasing tech/component costs over time (which I think is the most elegant way to accomplish the same thing you're trying to do, while giving the player some measure of control over the degree that this cash sinkhole will actually operate), there are other possible solutions. Everything in the game is built around the economy, so I don't see why tweaking it required using corruption to begin with.

I actually like the idea of increasing tech/component cost (it already does to a degree).

1. Introduce social spending

Already modeled as part of corruption.

2. Increase the cost of crash research

I'm not sure this would have more than a minimal effect, to be honest.

3. Radically increase the effect of tax rates on happiness on undeveloped worlds (essentially making it impossible to tax undeveloped economies). This would simulate 18th century colonialism, where colonies paid no taxes, but also received virtually no government assistance or support.

That was already done in 1.0.4 Beta 4 actually.

4. Reduce what aliens will pay for tech (this is a silly part of the game anyway and makes many of your economic changes kind of pointless; personally, I refuse to sell tech to aliens as a means of self-balancing v. the AI).

That was already done in the 1.0.4 Betas as well, they will now pay much less for your tech than they expect you to pay to buy the same tech from them, though many things can modify this.

I agree though that there's a lot that can be improved in terms of what tech can be traded and what advantages is gained from tech trading and discoveries.

5. Reduce income from trade (this only affects middle and later empires, though I personally believe trade is too small right now as is).

I think income from trade is also a minor part of the economic puzzle. If anything, we should try to increase it. If we eliminated trade and made crash research 10x more expensive, I don't think it would have any real effect on reigning in the economy as it was in 1.0.3, whereas the current system works.

Increasing component/maintenance cost is already in to some degree with the intention that as resource demand increases in the late game and wars cause more economic disruption, the maintenance cost of the same ship should go up as well and some rare component resources should be more expensive. This is the real cost of components in DW, it's not as easy as in some games where you just set a fixed cost, here a lot is related to how your economy is functioning.

We've been removing and balancing exploits since release as well, I agree that the more we do here the better, though some of this is player responsibility as well as pretty much every 4x game is exploitable to some degree.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Bartje
Yes, I've never seen high trade revenue either.
How does trade revenue figure in our income? Through civilian / private income?
We only get money from trade tarrifs right? So Freetrade should make our civilians richer and that in turn means that they'll pay more taxes per %.

It does happen. Your own direct trade revenue depends on the kind of trade agreement and how long it has been in place. Mutual Defense agreements, for example, provide more direct trade revenue than Free Trade agreements. Trade in general has a huge impact on your private sector though and you get the indirect benefits of that as they build more ships and bring more resources to your colonies. It's hard to measure outside of the direct revenue though.

It might be a good idea to be able to see how important trade with a certain empire is to the civilian economy however.

Agreed, it's just quite hard to measure, as noted above. Giving more info on what resources and how much trade you are getting from each alien race is one of the things we'd like to do.

[jscott991]

I wasn't too clear on my social spending idea.

I intended the player to have some control over it. Reducing and increasing it would affect happiness, giving the player some visible means of tracking this expense.

I won't harp on this. It is more of a philosophical disagreement than, perhaps, a practical disagreement.

Eventually, I believe the game would benefit from being more open about corruption and allowing the player to influence the level of it.

A global value is simply odd, considering the divergent government and racial types the game purports to represent (which is another issue altogether).

Thank you for your responses. Don't listen to the people who want a harder economy.

[Bartje]

The game would certainly benefit from disclosing what corruption is and how it affects the Empire.

Its always a good idea to provide the details, as long as they're structured and easy to read / understand.

The fact that social spending is already part of corruption identifies it as governmental inneficiency, something we didn't know / see before. (is this in the galactopedia already?)

Your doing good, this a lovely rough gem of a game!

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: jscott991
A global value is simply odd, considering the divergent government and racial types the game purports to represent (which is another issue altogether).

The race and government modifiers affect the corruption values though, so corruption for some combinations will be much greater than others.

[hondo1375]

I think what corruption in games like this tries to model is the increasing difficulty, with increasing organisational size, of aligning management in that organisation with the directions given out from the leader. The resources available to the leader (you, in DW) to fund activities you see fit reduces for each incremental unit of resource the empire gains. Although corruption, as strictly understood, and bureaucratic or transactional inefficiencies are part of it (although an argument could also be made here for increased efficiencies due to scale in other areas), in organisations in general it is usually that local managers (particularly distant ones) divert resources to programmes they think worthwhile, use resources to build their own influence in a variety of ways, or do not agree with central policy and attempt to derail it in a variety of ways. I think this strategic misalignment is the overall drag that you, the ruler, experience as diminishing returns for each additional unit of resource your empire acquires. That's how I rationalise "corruption" anyway, since I really don't like it in games either.

[murteas]

While I tend to be a casual gamer over a hardcore one, I still love my deep strategy.   I have to say that I am incredibly happy with the response of Elliot and Erik to the community, and their continual improvements to game play.   

Thank you!

Now I just need more time to play. [:)]

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: hondo1375
I think what corruption in games like this tries to model is the increasing difficulty, with increasing organisational size, of aligning management in that organisation with the directions given out from the leader. The resources available to the leader (you, in DW) to fund activities you see fit reduces for each incremental unit of resource the empire gains. Although corruption, as strictly understood, and bureaucratic or transactional inefficiencies are part of it (although an argument could also be made here for increased efficiencies due to scale in other areas), in organisations in general it is usually that local managers (particularly distant ones) divert resources to programmes they think worthwhile, use resources to build their own influence in a variety of ways, or do not agree with central policy and attempt to derail it in a variety of ways. I think this strategic misalignment is the overall drag that you, the ruler, experience as diminishing returns for each additional unit of resource your empire acquires. That's how I rationalise "corruption" anyway, since I really don't like it in games either.

Yes, that pretty much encompasses what we call "corruption", though I'm thinking that perhaps "inefficiency" is a more generic term that might lead more folks to think about this in a larger context too.

[ceyan]

ORIGINAL: jscott991

I wasn't too clear on my social spending idea.

I intended the player to have some control over it. Reducing and increasing it would affect happiness, giving the player some visible means of tracking this expense.

I won't harp on this. It is more of a philosophical disagreement than, perhaps, a practical disagreement.

Eventually, I believe the game would benefit from being more open about corruption and allowing the player to influence the level of it.

A global value is simply odd, considering the divergent government and racial types the game purports to represent (which is another issue altogether).

Thank you for your responses. Don't listen to the people who want a harder economy.

What you want it practically already in the game. Instead of having Variable Spending (Social Spending) + Variable Profit (Tax), which would get cumbersome and to micro-managey (probably not a word) you get Static Spending (or at least no direct control) + Variable Profit. A variable spending function would have to attached to some sort of happiness modifier (even fits with the concept of social spending) which would then be offset by being able to set higher taxes for the higher you set social spending. In a Static/Variable environment, you have a static value constantly affecting your drain on income and you have to use Tax as the variable to control both your happiness and profit values.

You get exactly the same effect either way, but the Static/Variable requires less micro-management, and is easier to balance.

[TheSAguy]

[font=calibri]Two things I noted with Beta 4.[/font]
[font=calibri]A pirate that I had an alliance with attached me. That does not seem right.[/font]
[font=calibri]When you pay the pirate protection fee or Alliance, you can shoot up their base without them retaliating. The pirates has like 8 ships just standing by as I destroyed their base. I think they started shooting once the base was destroyed, but the damage was done.[/font]

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: TheSAguy
When you pay the pirate protection fee or Alliance, you can shoot up their base without them retaliating. The pirates has like 8 ships just standing by as I destroyed their base. I think they started shooting once the base was destroyed, but the damage was done.

Thanks for the report, I thought we had fixed that in Beta 4 but it looks like it needs a bit more work.

[Druthlen]

I want to second jscotts idea of increase resource cost for the better tech. just take a 2010 hybrid and a 1970 truck the parts have a vastly different cost. also knowledge lvl to work on them is vastly different so the hybrid tech can demand higher wages. I also like to point out that the begining economy seems to easylowering begining pop by 5% may do the trick.

[drillerman]

yes, also regarding pirates, I had paid them protection money but they still blew one of my bases up.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: jscott991

ORIGINAL: DarkWraith

Been playing around with the new beta. I haven't encountered any significant bugs. I think the economy is too easy again, though.

In Beta 2, the beginning of the game usually had an extremely tight budget. I always expand as fast as I possibly can, and it was normal for me to dip into the red for a bit in the beginning. The economy had a *slight* limiting effect on my expansion then, and if a war broke out the cost to get my military in shape could easily halt my expansion plans. Somewhere around mid game though, my economy would reach escape velocity, and I could throw money around like crazy because it was always coming in so fast. Half a million a year within 20 years was easy to reach.

For Beta 4, the economy seems a lot easier at the start. Still using my usual rapid expansion play style, I was never threatened with running short on money. I was even able to start buying techs almost right out of the gate (I've been playing with other races having and advanced start). My economy never seemed to really reach the ridiculous heights I saw in beta 2 (corruption, I assume?), but money was never a concern throughout the game.

I think this beta moved the mid and late game economies in the right direction, but the early game economy is too easy right now.

I vehemently disagree.

If anything, the economy in the late game in beta 4 is too contracted. The start-up economy is just about right.

I maintain that using corruption as a means to balance the late game is too rigid and limiting. It is simply a black hole that sucks cash, with the player being unable to do anything about it. It's a cheap, hidden trick that imposes "balance" (whatever the bleep that means) and limits gameplay.

If we absolutely must have reduced economic performance, I think the developers should look at ways to create this within the game's system itself; force players to make trade-offs to make more or less money, rather than simply draining money out of the economy with a shadow global value.

Also, in case people did not notice, corruption rises the further out from the capital you are. This produces a situation where empires located in the deep core are able to keep their homeworlds as their capital, whereas races on the galactic edge will probably have to move it (perhaps several times). Doesn't it seem ridiculous that a race would abandon its homeworld as its political center, especially considering that a homeworld will still have many times the population of other large colonies even deep in to the game?

Using corruption smacks of laziness, which is in complete contrast to all the other work Matrix is doing on this game.

I agree with all of it.
But mechanically, the system as implemented right now works well, both in early and late game.

ORIGINAL: Bartje

Yes but in order to change it there needs to be an alternative.

Can you offer one?

1. Smaller empires who are hostile could merge to pose a credible threat to you. (could feel rather cheap)

2. You could just let empires enjoy the fruits of their hard work by becoming filthy rich... There is simply no sensible way to "balance" a 300 planet empire with a 30 planet one. Either you are being heavy handed and silly, or you are not doing enough and the bigger empire wins. Hence victory conditions (you control 30% of the galaxy, you are now unstoppable).

3. Properly enforce breeding... reproduction should have realistic rates, creating a colony ship should deduce population from the source colony, etc... this means that if you spread too quickly you will end up unable to further expand due to lack of citizens (or let them colonize more planets, but with less then the full amount of colonists the ship can carry)... this also makes war a lucrative source of new people to join your empire. (conquest... it means more tax payers)

4. you could call it tax resistance in nicer governments... dictatorships get corruption, democracies get tax resistance ("we are the richest empire in the galaxy, we can afford to pay less taxes"; although technically lower taxes stimulate the economy and produce more income for the state... meh)... monarchies get to have a little of both.... actually all have both, just in different ratios. (maybe make them add up to the same number?)... this is entirely cosmetic though.

My favorite is number 3.

[Grotius]

Erik, I agree that a larger empire should be harder to manage. One possibility might be to tweak your existing civil-war/rebellion system, which already does this to some extent. Maybe you could insert more tradeoffs and costs into this system? E.g., implement more political events that threaten to split your polity in half -- kinda like slavery in the U.S. historically, or the forces that drove apart the Soviet Union. Then give the player costly alternatives to deal with this threat. Some possibilities might include high garrison requirements to keep planets in line; or, alternatively, high subsidy requirements; or, alternatively, an option to force the unhappy planets to accept Imperial law, in exchange for an increase in ongoing corruption/waste/tax resistance; or, perhaps, granting the grumpy planets some degree of autonomy in exchange for less waste/tax resistance; or just waging a full-on civil war.

I dunno, I suppose such a system could get annoying, as the player might spend more time fending off civil war than doing anything else. Tough thing to balance. And I don't have much experience with DW's rebellion system, so maybe you already do all these things.

One other thought: if some players intensely dislike corruption, maybe have an option to toggle that off (perhaps triggering some other option, like higher garrison requirements, instead)? But I know that could be a lot of work.