Here's what's coming in the next public beta....

[Mifune]

For a few reasons I have decided on my purchase DW. Mostly after seeing some of the WitP crowd in here and reviewing their posts (however cantanerous we may be we do stick it out and hang together). Also seeing potentialities of expansion/modding and of course having Erik and Elliotg providing us so much feedback that many seem to underappreciate. I will let you know more once I get a few hours under my belt.

[AMF]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Either later today or tomorrow, depending on internal testing:

- Capped maximum corruption at a colony to 75%
- increased costs for advanced component tech - most advanced tech is roughly twice the cost of starting tech
- fixed additional crashes and freezes encountered by some
- fixed bug that sometimes occurred in retrofitting (was not completing)
- fixed bug where ships sometimes could not be destroyed
- fixed resupply ships not mining fuel
- fixed bug where crash research would sometimes not produce a breakthrough

First, let me say these look like great changes.

Now, let me get back on my soapbox and state my belief that these are bandaid fixes that by their simple existence prove the usefulness of modding.

If all the variables in the game were opened up to modders, then rather than go back and forth with arbitrary and untested hard limits (why a 75% cap on corruption? Why not a 50% or 85%? etc...) then the modding community could come up with different mods that fit different players views on what the 'proper' or 'most realistic' or 'coolest' corruption level is.

<end soapbox>

EDIT: oh, I get that a corruption slider is going to be part of the final patch - but I think my point still stands that by opening up the entire set of variables of the game, any and all players could find the mods that they adore...

EDIT 2: and let me also state again that this game is GREAT as it is. I think you guys have done a superb job with it, and all my talk of moddability is really just because I think it has made it 99% of the way and I think increasing the moddability could take it that final 1% to legendary status. And I know you plan on increasing moddability...I'm just a broken record....sorry!

[gargoil]

ORIGINAL: jscott991

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I think you're assuming that because DW is in a future sci-fi setting, that travel and communication times are instantaneous, whereas that's not actually true.

Regards,

- Erik

This is incorrect.

Travel might not be instant in DW, but communication certainly is.

There is no lag when issuing orders to a ship (or at least, no meaningful lag) or giving production orders to a colony.

This is evidence that, like in Star Trek, instantaneous communication is the norm in DW.

We could debate corruption more and more. The real argument against a corruption statistic is that it removes too much of the economic picture from the player's control. A variable that important should be able to be influenced by gameplay (and I'm not just talking about government choice). I won't use stronger language here. My thoughts on this are well known.

But to say corruption is needed because there isn't instant communication is inaccurate because DW does assume that exists.

I can present an arguement to your statement that "This is incorrect."

Just because YOU as the player can instantly contact and order any unit in the game does not mean that communications throughout your empire is instant. It means you are omnipresent. You can communicate to any unit anywhere - but THAT could be considered LOCAL communication. This does not mean the message was sent from your capitol to that unit. Communications by the virtual individuals that make up your empire could still be considered to take time (yet still must be faster than light or it would take many, many year to arrive).

[Bartje]

Perhaps we could have communication techs to somewhat influence corruption ??

[Widell]

A proposal: In order to get out of the seemingly eternal loop in the discussion regarding corruption/(in)efficiency, why not make the cap a user setting? That way, we could all choose if we want the cap to be 100%, 0% or something in between? And while we´re at it, let's make the basis for the calculation a user setting as well: Distance, Population, Random or whatever the drivers may be.....

[RViener]

I look at our present&nbsp;country which with all it's faults is still the best and see the myriad boondoggles both in the government and private sectors and have no problem whatsoever acknowledging that there is waste, fraud and abuse abounding. Just look at the bailouts and Wall Street issues and it is clear to me that Distant Worlds must have some way to represent these issues. As the complexity increases the opportunity for a variety of forms of innefficiency also increases. To absolutely represent this is impossible without creating a separate simulation on the subject. The question is how do you model the result for this game. Is it realistic to assume this is not a factor is wrong. Picking a percentage of GDP is a reasonable starting point adding or subtracting racial personality and form of government, size of population, tech level both plus and minus. It cannot be the same for all. But maybe you need multiple sliders to reflect the variabilities that can be taken at an initial values decided by Elliot and Erik then modified by the player.
Bob Viener

[Cindar]

I had absolutely no problems with corruption before, even with empires of 400+ colonies you could maintain a substantial defensive force.

I see corruption as representing how unwieldy large empires get, not directly their inefficiency (although that is certainly a part). Consider the United States. Exactly how much can we afford to spend on Military? Its something along the lines of 15% or so. Now, the player in DW is pretty much in charge of nothing but the military. Yes you technically handles colonization as well, but thats a distinctly minor part of its budget. So expecting a major empire to be able to spend 100% of their taxes on their military is ridiculous. If you looked at the U.S., by DW terms it would have 85% 'corruption'. The rest is spent by everything the player isn't doing - social security, education, infrastructure, etc.

It would be interesting if instead of corruption you had a slider that dictated how much of taxes were used on non-military purposes. So if you needed money for military you would increase the percentage you get and decrease the amount spent on other things. This would decrease happiness, of course. The player would have to balance out whether greater protection against outside threats is worth the chance of having to deal with an internal rebellion.

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Widell

A proposal: In order to get out of the seemingly eternal loop in the discussion regarding corruption/(in)efficiency, why not make the cap a user setting? That way, we could all choose if we want the cap to be 100%, 0% or something in between? And while we´re at it, let's make the basis for the calculation a user setting as well: Distance, Population, Random or whatever the drivers may be.....

They are introducing a slider in the full version of 1.05.

The issue, of course, will be if money becomes too plentiful because the game is designed to be played with corruption. In other words, is it a false choice. If the game is unplayable with low levels of corruption because the game design is dependent on it, then having a slider is more gravy than potatoes.

[Bartje]

How about instead of calling it inneficiency or corruption we'll call it Administrative Efficiency (AE)

I think this name fits the concept pretty well.

I remember that Moo3 had the concept of "Heavy Foot of Government" which is somewhat alike I suppose.

Opinions? [:)]

[RViener]

Good addition Cindar. The key is every society may deal with those issues differently, some with government subsidy others out of the private sector so whether you call it inefficiency, corruption or social expenses, it is the "overhead" of that society. Just identify what criteria the game should use in coming up with a number to reduce from the "net".
The amount of discretionary spending will be reduced by inefficiency and entitlements no matter whether domestic or military. Isn't that what we're talking about.

[Athalian]

Will the construction ship loosing its place while building a station on a planet if given que orders fixed? This also sometimes happen to ships under construction when i give it a fleet. Found one of my ships half constructed floating in space :S

[Dadekster]

I see DW about the same as 16th-17th century Britain in scope. They had a world wide empire and it took months in the time of sail to get messages sent. That said, the captain of a ship upon seeing pirates did not send for permission to attack and sink the pirate ship either. That is how I envision what is going on with my ships near border worlds.

For corruption/inefficency/AE or whatever name it is eventually picked I had an idea and I have no idea how feasible it is but what the hell. Is there any way we can introduce (starship component be my guess) which would combat the drag on money making on planets? Some version of the SEC (porn and all) or ICE, CIA whatever. Personally I see corruption/inefficency as something occurring in core worlds and smuggling (which causes lost tax revenue) as something that happens on border worlds where there is just less oversight. Either way to combat that you could just install something on your spaceports to combat this. As far as how the numbers would play out is something I suck at.

I would love to see some background info on how the designers feel their universe functions btw. I realize that as soon as you do that you sort of box yourself in, but in things such as how ships communicate and how the 'world' of DW operates it would add a lot to immersion. The game seems to want to model a living galaxy but that's hard to do when I don't even know humans do for fun these days which is odd since the things that look like Grimlock have some sort of competitive sport they play themselves. [:D]

[Bartje]

Exactly I'd love feedback from the designers on their perspective as well, it could clear up a lot of questions and uncertainties!

It would be awesome to have galactic Football cup btw [;)]


Come to think of it;

losing in the Galactic football cup might be a casus belli to go to war for an aggressive race!


and Intergalactic Hooligans.... Ooooh the possibilities!! [:D]

[ASHBERY76]

Elloit hides in the tech support fourms these days.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Widell

A proposal: In order to get out of the seemingly eternal loop in the discussion regarding corruption/(in)efficiency, why not make the cap a user setting? That way, we could all choose if we want the cap to be 100%, 0% or something in between? And while we´re at it, let's make the basis for the calculation a user setting as well: Distance, Population, Random or whatever the drivers may be.....

the developers already stated that version 1.05 final will have a corruption slider allowing you to set corruption levels in the game, all the way down to 0 corruption.
It will not be in 1.05 beta though.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Mifune

For a few reasons I have decided on my purchase DW. Mostly after seeing some of the WitP crowd in here and reviewing their posts (however cantanerous we may be we do stick it out and hang together). Also seeing potentialities of expansion/modding and of course having Erik and Elliotg providing us so much feedback that many seem to underappreciate. I will let you know more once I get a few hours under my belt.

Keeping in mind that us WiTP'ers fall victim to the classic blunder of starting a land war in Asia...simulated as it may be. [:D][;)]

I will definately agree with you that the amount of work both Erik and Elliotg are putting into this game goes largely under-appreciated, and as with all things, they get more flak than thanks.

[Widell]

ORIGINAL: jscott991

ORIGINAL: Widell
A proposal: In order to get out of the seemingly eternal loop in the discussion regarding corruption/(in)efficiency, why not make the cap a user setting? That way, we could all choose if we want the cap to be 100%, 0% or something in between? And while we´re at it, let's make the basis for the calculation a user setting as well: Distance, Population, Random or whatever the drivers may be.....

They are introducing a slider in the full version of 1.05.

The issue, of course, will be if money becomes too plentiful because the game is designed to be played with corruption. In other words, is it a false choice. If the game is unplayable with low levels of corruption because the game design is dependent on it, then having a slider is more gravy than potatoes.

Well, it seems there are no solutions that cater to everyone's taste, and the more flexible a game gets in terms of what the player can tune at the time of setting up the game, the further from the "mainstream" intent of the devs it may end up. I guess either it's play the game as the devs designed with limited flexibility, or go "full monty" on the modding flexibility, and accept there will be mods that are far from the original intent. IMHO the more things that can be modded, or decided by the player at set up, the better for the game long term -> Make corruption/efficieny/whatever flexible and deal with the consequences in the "core" of the game to avoid as much as possible of late game weirdness.

[taltamir]

corruption is never an issue in the early game. It only comes into play in the "late game" where you are potentially 5x as big as the AI empires... do you want to steamroll them, or do you want them to somehow keep on posing a threat to you. Some people want them to keep on being a threat, so they will set corruption high, I prefer steamroll at that point so I will probably turn it off (I will have to do some experiments to decide which method to go for).

[lostsm]

ORIGINAL: AMF
First, let me say these look like great changes.

Now, let me get back on my soapbox and state my belief that these are bandaid fixes that by their simple existence prove the usefulness of modding.

If all the variables in the game were opened up to modders, then rather than go back and forth with arbitrary and untested hard limits (why a 75% cap on corruption? Why not a 50% or 85%? etc...) then the modding community could come up with different mods that fit different players views on what the 'proper' or 'most realistic' or 'coolest' corruption level is.

<end soapbox>

EDIT: oh, I get that a corruption slider is going to be part of the final patch - but I think my point still stands that by opening up the entire set of variables of the game, any and all players could find the mods that they adore...

EDIT 2: and let me also state again that this game is GREAT as it is. I think you guys have done a superb job with it, and all my talk of moddability is really just because I think it has made it 99% of the way and I think increasing the moddability could take it that final 1% to legendary status. And I know you plan on increasing moddability...I'm just a broken record....sorry!

no one cares about modding the numbers, even though it's numbers that drives this game. it's all about the end all be all corruption

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I think you're assuming that because DW is in a future sci-fi setting, that travel and communication times are instantaneous, whereas that's not actually true.

Actually, I didn't. I was just contrasting extreme endpoints to illustrate how distance and speed affects things. The point remains that as your ability to get somewhere faster increases, the effect of distance should decrease and the administrative efficiency of operating a large system should therefore increase as inefficiencies of size decrease and allow you to better utilize economies of scale.