Version .52 really does turn racial growth rates into an abstraction?

[Locarnus]

@Bingeling:
I nerfed the wonders considerably (most to half the effect or more) in my BalanceMod 0.9 update (see signature).
I ll keep a look on them, if they cant be changed to "national wonders" I might nerf them even further in the future.

@Growthrate:
I find the current growth rates better than the old ones, I prefer slower games anyway. That said, balancing is a process, of course.

[ASHBERY76]

Growth rate being linked to tax was never really logical.It's the poor masses with less money that breed like rabbits.

Less tax making the planet good for migration is logical.

[Locarnus]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

Growth rate being linked to tax was never really logical.It's the poor masses with less money that breed like rabbits.

Less tax making the planet good for migration is logical.

While in reality nearly all larger migration streams are from areas with low taxes (and thus nearly always less developed) to areas with high taxes (only rich people tend to migrate to lower tax areas, and there are usually not a lot of them by definition), I think with the current in game mechanics it is better than in was before.

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: Locarnus

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

Growth rate being linked to tax was never really logical.It's the poor masses with less money that breed like rabbits.

Less tax making the planet good for migration is logical.

While in reality nearly all larger migration streams are from areas with low taxes (and thus nearly always less developed) to areas with high taxes (only rich people tend to migrate to lower tax areas, and there are usually not a lot of them by definition), I think with the current in game mechanics it is better than in was before.

Not really comparable to planet scale.They have lower taxes but far less money and standard of living to the places they go to.

[Tehlongone]

ORIGINAL: Locarnus
While in reality nearly all larger migration streams are from areas with low taxes (and thus nearly always less developed) to areas with high taxes (only rich people tend to migrate to lower tax areas, and there are usually not a lot of them by definition), I think with the current in game mechanics it is better than in was before.

Only if you mean current migrations, but that's because they are moving to where the opportunities are, in Distant Worlds terms they are moving to a place with high Development despite high taxes, as their old place is filled yet still poor. Like a planet of low quality would be.

A new colony with low taxes is like a wild west scenario where you can easily make a fortune or at least dream of it. As long as the planet of origin is is mostly full a planet like that should be a huge migration magnet, but once they are there I don't see why low tax would increase growth more than a little.

[Spidey]

@ Jim

I agree in general principle but of course "tax rates" really is an abstraction, as there are many ways to implement taxes aside from raw income taxes, and some of those ways can certainly affect birth rates. What would be better than a simplistic relationship between taxes and population growth is a colony investment factor. A reproduction incentive factor, if you will. The question then becomes whether this is all too much complication at very little gain, but it would make more sense, IMO.

@ Buio

Quite right. But if you think about it, a great many things in this game are fundamentally based on human capitalist values. I'm not sure why a Dhayut would think exactly the same way and I'm pretty sure a hive minded Ghizurean cluster should be more like worker ants than average Americans. But hopefully we'll get there in DW2.

@ Ozone

If you check, say, Humans, you'll notice that they have a specified growth rate of 18%. This is mentioned in the galactopedia and if you check their race files, you'll also see that they're supposed to have a growth rate of 18%. The thing that makes me grumpy here is that there's no way you can ever make humans actually grow at the rate their race file says they should be growing at. So if those 18% that both the race file and the galactopedia claims as a Human growth rate are not in fact achievable, then how can we really call those 18% the Human growth rate? How does a race that can't grow with maybe 12% have a growth rate of 18%? It doesn't, does it? So now those 18% mentioned in the galactopedia and in the race file are still used to calculate the growth rate, but it isn't the growth rate.

So the end result here is that we have a completely abstracted number in the race files that really isn't a growth rate anymore but rather is an abstracted relative growth indicator, and we have a galactopedia that is now giving us outright wrong information. And the growth rates are universally slowed down, of course. Because it sure was imbalanced against all those single players out there that they could growth rush the AI, or something.

Now, you're calling this the best fix in the patch and claiming that maintaining your actual racial growth race was in fact an exploit. I'll be polite and refrain from stating in detail what I think about that comment, but let me ask you this: How can it be an exploit that I'm having a 14% growth rate with a race that is by all accounts supposed to have a 14% growth rate? What's the exploit in that?

And by the way, as I also specified initially, this really isn't the biggest exploit in the game at all. Try ordering a manual retrofit of your 50 civilian mining stations and see what happens. THAT is an exploit. Try selling a tech the AI doesn't have much use of for every last dime the AI opponent has. THAT is an exploit. Zero taxing is simply an informed decision about when to reduce growth and increase income that the AI got wrong every single time. And instead of making the AI smarter, Erik and Elliot decided to nerf the players for no particularly obvious reason.

@ Pasty

Currently the racial growth rate is not actually attainable. It's a theoretical abstract that you won't ever see in the game. I don't know what Erik and Elliot have planned, because they sure haven't told me anything about it, so all I do know is what is currently in the game. And that's what I'm reacting to.

There used to be a relationship between taxation and population growth. You can argue that it was silly but that's what was and it's still there. Now, that relationship used to be that 0% tax meant not having a growth penalty and 50% tax easily resulted in population decreases due to people moving away.

After the patch, 0% tax gives a growth rate penalty, albeit a smaller one than higher tax percentages. A race that used to be able to grow at 18%, as specified in its race file that it should, can now not in any possible, imaginable way, outside the use of wonders, reach a growth rate of 18%. The Quameno used to grow at 14%. Now they're stuck at 11% under the best of circumstances. So the race file says 14%, the galactopedia says 14%, but actually the Quameno are now an 11% race, though you won't now unless you've tested it. And once you start taxing, the rate drops to 4% or so. Maybe 5%.

What I'm trying to say here is that the problem isn't fixed. The system isn't more sensible now. The AI hasn't become any smarter or any less at a disadvantage. The system is simply nerfed. Instead of fixing the AI issue that a few people mentioned, they made the advantage of zero taxing smaller. And the system is now arguably even more senseless, because there's still a fairly amusing relationship between growth and tax rates, but now there's even a growth penalty at zero taxes, and the very thing they're calling a "growth rate" in the files is now no longer the actual growth rate said race can potentially achieve, which is a nice way to make things even less comprehensible than they were previously.

@ Tehlongone

That's a fair view to have but then why is there still a penalty to growth at 0% tax rates? Why are all growth rates universally slowed down? Why do the growth rates seen in the game no longer match the growth rates in the race files?

[buglepong]

ORIGINAL: Spidey

Try ordering a manual retrofit of your 50 civilian mining stations and see what happens.

huh? now i'm curious. What actually happens?

[Spidey]

You get money. Lots of money. What I'm pretty sure used to be the case is that if you ordered civilians to upgrade their stuff, you'd have to also pay for it yourself. What happens now is that you order them to upgrade, the game tells you how much it will cost, and then you get that money added to your stockpile.

[Andy06r]

If you order a civilian refit they will commission the upgrade. They pay you, the state, to do this.

You could pork up private ships and stations with things they don't need and then bilk the private sector for their cash. This will increase their maintenance coats (money lost) and make it harder to buy new ships, but it injects money into the system.

Corporate Nationalists and Utopian Paradises van also confiscate the private sector cash directly through tax rates. The utopians will gladly do it, too.

The two "exploits" interact. Zero tax to get huge (unintended?) growth and then refit the civilians to reclaim the money you didn't tax. Now this feedback loop is closed

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: Spidey

You get money. Lots of money. What I'm pretty sure used to be the case is that if you ordered civilians to upgrade their stuff, you'd have to also pay for it yourself. What happens now is that you order them to upgrade, the game tells you how much it will cost, and then you get that money added to your stockpile.

I have never noticed that.But if its true that is called a bug.

[Andy06r]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

ORIGINAL: Spidey

You get money. Lots of money. What I'm pretty sure used to be the case is that if you ordered civilians to upgrade their stuff, you'd have to also pay for it yourself. What happens now is that you order them to upgrade, the game tells you how much it will cost, and then you get that money added to your stockpile.

I have never noticed that.But if its true that is called a bug.

But it isn't. When the private sector purchases or refits a ship, the state gets paid. "ordering it" just puts retrofiting at the top of the list. They would done it anyway without input.

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: Andy06r

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

ORIGINAL: Spidey

You get money. Lots of money. What I'm pretty sure used to be the case is that if you ordered civilians to upgrade their stuff, you'd have to also pay for it yourself. What happens now is that you order them to upgrade, the game tells you how much it will cost, and then you get that money added to your stockpile.

I have never noticed that.But if its true that is called a bug.

But it isn't. When the private sector purchases or refits a ship, the state gets paid. "ordering it" just puts retrofiting at the top of the list. They would done it anyway without input.

Interesting but I'm not sure the auto upgrading stations should.

[Spidey]

ORIGINAL: Andy06r

But it isn't. When the private sector purchases or refits a ship, the state gets paid. "ordering it" just puts retrofiting at the top of the list. They would done it anyway without input.

When the private sector uses your space ports, you'd get paid. I don't think it happened when bases simply retrofitted on their own, which also usually took some time, as it didn't happen until the AI wanted it to happen. Now you can make it happen instantly and make a good deal of money in the process. And you can do it over and over, milking money out of the private sector, which was harder before when it wasn't something that happened instantly.

[Cauldyth]

On a general note, I don't buy the "if you don't like an exploit then just don't use it, the devs shouldn't fix it" argument. The devs should have a keen interest in what the optimal way to play their game is. If strategy articles, Let's Plays, and "game of the week" competitions are all based on the exploits, then that's a problem that affects the game's community.

[Tcby]

The station retrofit thing isn't new at all.at the very least, it was present in shadows. I say 'at least' because I started with shadows and I noticed it long before universe was released.

In some ways i think what it does is remove a layer of inconvenience. Those mining stations don't have plants to construct the parts they utilize in the retrofit. To prevent distribution of parts (ie freighters picking up built parts from spaceports and taking then to the stations) taking forever, the stations build immediately and the spaceport still gets paid.

[Tehlongone]

ORIGINAL: Spidey
@ Ozone

If you check, say, Humans, you'll notice that they have a specified growth rate of 18%. This is mentioned in the galactopedia and if you check their race files, you'll also see that they're supposed to have a growth rate of 18%. The thing that makes me grumpy here is that there's no way you can ever make humans actually grow at the rate their race file says they should be growing at. So if those 18% that both the race file and the galactopedia claims as a Human growth rate are not in fact achievable, then how can we really call those 18% the Human growth rate? How does a race that can't grow with maybe 12% have a growth rate of 18%? It doesn't, does it? So now those 18% mentioned in the galactopedia and in the race file are still used to calculate the growth rate, but it isn't the growth rate.

So the end result here is that we have a completely abstracted number in the race files that really isn't a growth rate anymore but rather is an abstracted relative growth indicator, and we have a galactopedia that is now giving us outright wrong information. And the growth rates are universally slowed down, of course. Because it sure was imbalanced against all those single players out there that they could growth rush the AI, or something.

Now, you're calling this the best fix in the patch and claiming that maintaining your actual racial growth race was in fact an exploit. I'll be polite and refrain from stating in detail what I think about that comment, but let me ask you this: How can it be an exploit that I'm having a 14% growth rate with a race that is by all accounts supposed to have a 14% growth rate? What's the exploit in that?

And by the way, as I also specified initially, this really isn't the biggest exploit in the game at all. Try ordering a manual retrofit of your 50 civilian mining stations and see what happens. THAT is an exploit. Try selling a tech the AI doesn't have much use of for every last dime the AI opponent has. THAT is an exploit. Zero taxing is simply an informed decision about when to reduce growth and increase income that the AI got wrong every single time. And instead of making the AI smarter, Erik and Elliot decided to nerf the players for no particularly obvious reason.

Because there are other worse exploits this one shouldn't be fixed? I'll concede that the growth rate has become an abstracted number and while I think the new growth rate is better the correct way to fix it would be increasing taxed growth rate to remove the exponential effect of the tax rate and then modders can fix growth rate according to their preferences.

Failing that I vastly prefer this fix to no fix to an issue that has annoyed me for a while. I don't see why zero taxing should have a much better effect than say 10%, fixing the AI would equalize them with the player in this regard but it doesn't fix the underlying issue that the mechanic wasn't making much sense in the first place.

There are many exploits in this game but that's hardly an argument against fixing one.

[Cauldyth]

I'm also glad they fixed it.

[OzoneGrif_slith]

Human's growth rate, in reality, is between 1% and 2%.

18% wow... I don't know when human turned into rabbits, but it's quite an amazing orgy down there!

Seriously now, the Galactopedia is often wrong, has a lots of mistakes or errors. If the whole argument is about that 18% in the Galactopedia, then maybe the article should be adressed.

[pasty11]

How can it be an exploit that I'm having a 14% growth rate with a race that is by all accounts supposed to have a 14% growth rate? What's the exploit in that? ]

Because its a maximum growth rate and because of the way that rate is achieved.

If say there was a bug in the game where the only way to achieve 14% was to nuke your own colonies from space, you would not be complaining "hey make nuking from space give me 14% growth rate back now" would you?

In effect though that is exactly what you are doing. As you are asking for a non rational relationship to be instated in the game. There might be some nominal number attached to growth of humans, but we should not want the game to allow us to achieve that via a fundamentally absurd mechanic. We should be asking for mechanics that make sense in relation to the outcome.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Cauldyth
On a general note, I don't buy the "if you don't like an exploit then just don't use it, the devs shouldn't fix it" argument. The devs should have a keen interest in what the optimal way to play their game is. If strategy articles, Let's Plays, and "game of the week" competitions are all based on the exploits, then that's a problem that affects the game's community.

+10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000