Matrix Games Forums

Spiffing Up the Economic Model

There have been more than a few complaints about the economics model of Armada 2526, mostly concerning the humans given their unrest problem, and several suggestions for fixes. Hopefully this will become the primary thread for addressing these issues.

I suggest, though, that we spend some time figuring out what the problems really are before getting into specifics for fixes. This is not just a question of an economics model because how players approach the game is critical here. Fixes which do not consider the latter might make things worse in addition to simply not working very well. With that in mind here is:

Nature of the Problem

IMO there is a fundamental design flaw in Armada’s economics model in that its colony management screen focuses players on the wrong thing – a colony’s population – concerning its industrial productivity. Players look at the boxes for possible buildings (Structures) on the colony, which are directly related to its population, and think those show how productive the colony can be. They also expect that a colony’s mineral wealth affects this, but fundamentally the colony management screen tends to make them think population is what makes a colony productive.

And this is simply not the case. Rather a given colony’s productivity is based solely on the degree to which its mineral wealth is exploited, and everything else depends on an empire’s tax income as a whole. A given colony’s tax income is simply irrelevant. This is counter-intuitive for players, who tend to believe that a colony’s local income is another important element of its industrial production.

And players are used to enhancing a given colony’s industrial productivity with buildings, as that is normal in these types of games. Armada does that too, but it adds a new feature not present in past games of this genre- really significant maintenance costs for buildings. Many buildings in Armada are quite counter-productive – they cost scads of money but their benefits are either minimal or greatly outweighed by their on-going expenses.

It is one thing for a given building to simply be ineffective, and by its presence keep more beneficial buildings from being constructed, but quite another for buildings to wreck a player’s economy through high maintenance expenses.

The tutorial and sucky manual do not at all alert players to the rather striking degree to which Armada’s economic model deviates from the normal for turn-based space 4x games.

Players’ misconceptions about Armada’s economic model leads them to play it in a way which tends to get them killed. Overbuilding has not before been a problem in this genre, but it is for Armada and players right now are losing because they don’t understand that.

This is a leading cause of the complaints to date. Another is that some things are overdone, or done badly, in the Armada design. The negative unrest modifier for humans is clearly excessive, and playing the humans first while learning the game is what almost every new player does. Another problem is that bureaucracy is tied to popularity and unrest rather than directly affecting productivity. The latter strikes me as another design flaw for reasons I have described in another thread, but my point here is that its present implementation flat out adds to complaints about the economic model. IMO each of these points should be considered separately.

And, IMO, the first question to ask before proposing fixes for the economic model is how that relates to the preconceived expectations of most players as to how things ought to work. I.e., keep the market in mind when doing anything.

The next questions are whether a problem is overall so great that fixing it both requires that something fundamental in the game system be changed, and whether the cost of doing that is so great that living with the problem, or a lesser fix, is desirable.

Among the things that I regard as unchangeable (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) are:

a) there may only be one building per Structure box on the Colony Management screen (though it might be possible to allow more than the existing number of 16 Structures per planet through use of a vertical slider bar like the one on the Defenses panel appearing to the right of the Structures panel);

b) individual colonies do not have treasuries;

c) a given colony’s current tax income has nothing to do with its productivity.

I believe Bob should reconsider the degree to which his economic model is counter-intuitive. He’s not dealing with a market new to turn-based space 4x games. Almost all people who buy this game will have had some experience with other 4x games and, given this game’s almost complete lack of advertising, most buyers will have some experience with turn-based space 4x games. Players’ experience with other 4x games shapes their expectations of how Armada works.

And those expectations do include a priority on building structures on colonies as the path to success. Players absolutely, positively, will want to fill up every available slot on the Structures portion of the Colony Management screen, and without considering maintenance expenses. This expectation is, more than any other single thing, causing the financial problems for player empires which have resulted in the most complaints. I doubt that any tutorial or bold-faced warning in an instruction manual can change this.

Players’ experience with other 4x games, but particularly space ones, also leads them to expect that the chief purpose of colony management is to maximize ship production for war. They want to maximize ship production. Pumping out as many ships as possible, as fast as possible, is how they think they should win. They just don’t see any downside to that. I am not aware of ship maintenance expenses, per se, being a problem in any other space 4x game. The limitation has always been production.

Bob is asking an awful lot in going against the two biggest player expectations for this game genre. But, given that his economic model relies on major maintenance expenses, I just don’t see how it is possible to dump that entirely in this game. It might be possible in a second edition, but this game has to be a success first.

I recommend Bob at least decrease the maintenance expenses of planetary Structures, plus those of planetary defenses, while keeping (or even increasing) the present maintenance expenses of ships. That way empires which suddenly lose most of their ships will experience a sharp drop in maintenance expenses and so have the sudden increase in overall revenue necessary to produce a replacement fleet fairly quickly. Plus scrapping ships will provide a quick, albeit brutal, method of reducing expenses quickly if a player gets into major financial trouble.

The fixes I propose are:

1) Naval Bases and Reserve status which reduce ship maintenance expenses;

2) addition of new income-producing Structures plus significant reductions in Structure maintenance expense;

3) modifications (mostly reductions) in the maintenance expenses of fixed colonial defenses, plus limitations on their numbers based on colonial population and whether new Planetary Defense Structures are present;

4) modifications to the maximum populations of colonies, and the number of structures which can be built, based on both their initial environment and technological advances;

5) modify the costs of building Structures relative to Ships based on a colony’s exploited mineral wealth;

Fix Number 1 – Naval Bases and Reserve Ships

With that in mind, here are some initial ideas on revising the concept of ship maintenance expenses which will both improve the game AND immediately draw the attention of players to the concept at all.

First, I suggest a new Structure called “Naval Base” which is expensive, takes a long time to build, has its own significant maintenance expense, and can only be built at colonies with a certain minimum population – say 20 million. The maintenance expenses of ships located at a colony with a Naval Base would be reduced by, say, 50%. It might be desirable to limit the total number of ships which a given Naval Base can reduce the maintenance expenses of – say twenty ships total per base – instead of having a requirement that they be built only at worlds with a minimum population size. If you want to cheaply garrison sixty ships at a given planet, you’d need three Naval Base Structures there.

Next I suggest a related feature whereby ships can be put into a “reserve” status which dramatically reduces their maintenance expenses at the cost of the ships being unable to defend themselves plus, if possible, a prohibition on their movement on the turn after their “activation” (and they’d pay active duty maintenance expenses on the turn they can’t move). The concept of space navy ships in reserve is widely used in military science-fiction, and so one which players can grasp.

While the Reserve Ships concept can be done as a stand-alone, I’d tie it to the Naval Base concept, by allowing ships to be put into Reserve only at colonies with Naval Bases. Ships on active duty at colonies with Naval Bases would pay 50% of normal maintenance expenses, while ships in Reserve at such colonies would pay only 10% of normal maintenance expenses. Any limitation on the number of ships a given Naval Base can maintain in reserve would apply here too – if you have 20 ships in reserve and 10 on active duty protecting them and the planet, you might need two Naval Bases to reduce their maintenance expenses.

Another possible new feature in this regard, which would be mostly useful in educating players about the need to pay attention to maintenance expenses, would be to significantly increase the maintenance expenses of older ships, perhaps on some sort of sliding scale as they age, to discourage empires from hanging onto obsolete ships indefinitely. The concept of higher maintenance expenses for older equipment is familiar enough to the public that this would direct players’ attention to the concept of fleet maintenance expenses as something to pay attention to.

IMO the Naval Base and Reserve Ships fixes, if implemented, will considerably enhance game play, educate players about the need to consider maintenance expenses, and dramatically enhance the role-playing part of the game through simulation of real-life war-fighting issues. Players will tend to keep ships in reserve in peacetime, concentrate their peace-time ship construction on “capital” ships (ones with build times of 4-5 turns), as opposed to smaller ships with build times of only 2-3 turns, as the latter can be built faster in wartime and, most importantly, really drive home to them that wars are expensive with all those ships called out of reserve. They’ll be driven to accumulating huge financial reserves in peace, burning those up in war and having to make peace because they can’t afford war any longer. All of which is familiar to players from real life.

I do not see any downside to the Naval Base and “reserve ships” concepts. It looks like those would go very well with Bob’s existing economic model. The only interface changes would be the creation of a new “Naval Base” Structure, and some graphical means of identifying which ships at colonies with Naval Bases are in reserve (probably a little “R” symbol next to them) and which are being Activated (i.e., can’t move that turn – possibly a little “A” next to them.

Fix No. 2 – Structure Income & Maintenance Expense

More than a few people here and on Ntronium’s own forum have requested that additional Structures be created which produce income. I completely agree. The absence of such structures from the present game is one of the causes of player confusion and frustration. They expect Structures to be good things.

More importantly, though, players do not expect Structures to be bad things. IMO Bob is plain asking too much to get his market to swallow both ship and structure maintenance expenses, and the ship ones are more important to preserving the essential character of his economic model.

Figuring out the best blend of reduced maintenance expense and additional income from Structures is pretty much a spreadsheet issue. I’d start by at least halving Structure maintenance expense across the board (ALL of them). If that produces too great an effect with even moderate revenue boosts from income-producing structures, I’d increase ship maintenance expense by however much is necessary to allow significant decreases in Structure maintenance expenses.

If Structures produce income, new ones could be added to the tech trees so that the income of colonies could rise as empires progress technologically. There are many ways the desired effects here could be achieved.

Fix No. 3 – Planetary Defenses

I’d also sharply reduce the maintenance expenses of planetary defenses (missile bases, troops, orbital stations, etc.) while limiting their number based on colonial population. Right now the numbers of planetary defenses are limited based on maintenance expense, and this is a bad thing for players, particularly those who like to “turtle up” on defense. I want the latter group to like this game. They’ll overbuild planetary defenses everywhere they can, wonder why their empires have financial problems, and quit the game in disgust. My experience is that space 4x game designers cannot induce “turtle” type players not to be that way. They’re that way because that’s who they are. Game designers have a choice in letting turtle players do it their way or not having them as customers. I’d rather have them as customers.

So, with that in mind, I’d put hard limits on the numbers of local defense items all players can build at any given colony based on population size, accept that a non-trivial portion of the market will build to whatever maximum they are allowed, and limit the damage from the latter doing it their way.

As an example, every colony might be allowed five missile bases, one ground unit and one orbital station regardless of population, and the same number for each ten million population above that, plus the same number for each new Structure on a colony which I'd call “Planetary Defense Centers”. Let the turtle players cover their planets wall-to-wall with Planetary Defense Centers. They’d love it. And they really could hand them nasty aliens their asses when attacked. They wouldn’t be able to do much besides defend, but that’s what they want. Non-turtle players would show more sanity and not build many PDC’s.

But, when the turtle players feel safe, they could dismantle some of PDC's, build other structures and go on the attack and feel good that way. The customer is always right. It’s a game designer’s job to let as many players as possible have what passes for a good time (for the players) doing it their way however that way is.

I believe even normal players would also appreciate a chance to make a big colony in a particularly strategic location pretty much impregnable every few games, and it would certainly be interesting if AI empires occasionally do the same.

Fix No. 4 – Colony Population & Environment Changes

Changes which I strongly advocate involve the colony population and environment models. Much can be done here to enhance the science-fiction feel of the game, and role-playing of the empires, as well as increasing income as technology advances. Some of this might, however, require interfaces change in terms of the population and number of Structures which can exist on any given colony, but that could be handled with the addition of vertical slider bars next to the Population and Structures panels of the Colony Management screen just as the Defenses panel has a vertical slider bar next to it. I’d keep the 6.67 million population per Structure limit.

I would add Oort Habitat and Space Habitats (ringworlds) as places where a given colony can have population and Structures. Those would be accessible only when the technology to exploit them is researched. Only star systems with Oort Clouds could have Oort Habitats, and that would be a lower level of technology than the Space Habitat. Space Habitats could be built around any star, including neutron stars, but Oort Clouds can be mined. It would be possible to have both Oort and Space Habitats at star systems with Oort Clouds.

How much additional population and Structures can be built on Oort Clouds and in Space Habitats is a good subject for discussion. I’d tie that to my request for changes to existing planetary colonies.

Right now we have a distinction between systems with asteroids (5 million maximum population) versus systems with planets (100 million), with habitability differences between colonizable planets showing up only in population growth rates and happiness. I’d differentiate colonized systems between asteroids (five million total maximum population), barren worlds for a given race (twenty million maximum), habitable worlds (fifty million), and ideal worlds (100 million). Oort and Space Habitats might add 50 million each, so the maximum population per system would be 200 million for those with Oort Clouds and 150 million for those without them.

I’d have no population growth on barren worlds for a race, half normal population growth on habitable ones, and normal population growth on ideal ones. I’d also have no population growth for races forming less than a majority of the total population on any given world as it multi-racial planets will pose a problem for this model. Oort and Space habitats would have half normal population growth.

What races form a colony’s population would have to be taken into account here, which would be simple to do. The game system would assign a habitability rating for each race to each world, assuming there is a world in that star system at all. The total possible population on a given world would be determined by whichever race composes a majority of its population provided that no other race has more than four million people there. If no race has a majority, the maximum population is twenty million (it’s barren for all races). But if, say, a world has nine million humans, four million Qa Qa and three million AROM, the humans would be a majority such that, if it was a “habitable” world for humans, the maximum population would be fifty million as long as no non-human race has more than four million people there.

Which also means that a world’s habitability rating can drop if a minority race grows past four million, so I wouldn’t allow such growth, and justify that after-the fact (xenophobia inhibits reproductive activity).

The existing two types of terraforming tech would, here, each have the effect of adding a level to habitability. The first terraforming tech would increase the habitability of a given colony by one level, say from barren to habitable, or from habitable to ideal. The second could take it up another level, so a barren world could go to ideal. Getting above ideal would require the Oort or Space Habitat techs.

Note that the Terraforming I, Terraforming II, Oort Habitat and Space Habitat techs each entails building of a Structure by that name. Those can be destroyed, which would immediately drop the maximum population of that system. There is already a real good unrest penalty for that sort of overcrowding. On the other hand, having both terraforming Structures on a world means that it is an ideal Habitat for all twelve races at the same time, i.e., they can mingle freely with no environment penalty to happiness.

Note that this effective doubling of population per colony due to technological advances would really foster development of empires which are great in taxable income and power, but with no increase whatever in terms of the number of colonies. That could make a very great difference in the adverse effect of bureaucracy if the latter is measured more by numbers of colonies than total population, and that should certainly be something players can mod. Many, many players of turn-based space 4x games prefer to follow a “turtle” defensive strategy in which they concentrate on empire management, and this concept would foster such a strategy.

Fix No. 5 – Making Poor Worlds More Useful

I would make poor worlds more useful by eliminating some of their bad points. Worlds which are habitable or have ideal environments should be important even when mineral wealth is lacking. It is barren worlds which should suffer penalties.

I would first eliminate the 25% disadvantage to tax revenues on poor worlds, and impose it on barren ones instead. Barren worlds have sharply increased living expenses due to far greater life support needs.

I would also change the existing modifications to the costs of building and maintaining Structures as opposed to Ships and planetary defenses/troops. Right now it is based on exploited mineral wealth. Everything built on poor worlds costs more than the same things built on non-poor worlds. All items – Structures as well as ships, troops, etc., cost less on rich worlds than on worlds with average mineral wealth. The presence of mine structures reduces the building costs of everything.

I would keep the existing changes in building & maintenance expenses of ships and planetary defenses/troops based on mineral wealth. Those would still cost more on poor worlds than on average worlds, less on rich ones, etc.

But I propose that the cost of building Structures on colonies be based on their environment, which I would change to the three categories of barren, habitable and ideal. Structures would cost more on worlds with a barren environment (which includes asteroids), and less on ideal ones. Costs would be normal for worlds whose environment is habitable, or on Oort and Space Habitats. IMO any society with the tech to build Oort and Space Habitats would be able to make those at least habitable.

My objective here is to make it easier to build structures on poor worlds so they will be good places to do research and raise revenue (the latter through the new revenue-enhancing buildings). Right now poor worlds are useful mostly as places to dump unwanted alien races. Poor worlds should be useful for things other than building ships, i.e., research and revenue producing Structures. Barren worlds should be the places to dump unwanted aliens. Look at the conceptions of prison worlds in science-fiction movies – they’re all awful places. Cater to that pre-conception held by players of these games, all of whom are familiar with science-fiction stereotypes. This enhances role-playing in Armada 2526.

Long and interresting post, I agree on many accounts. I also think that I found it weird that Armada should be such a very different beast..I guess its nice to stand out from the rest, but the way its done is well not very fun. Also I think it has a very negative effect on the number of ships we can afford aswell..which leads to very small battles...which imho the combat system doesn't lend very well to, given the seriously overpowered nature of some ships in small scale(probably bad in large too)

The poor worlds is something I've noticed too, I have restarted OH so many games when I find that everything nearbye is poor...and useless. I don't mind the penalty on tax and such, but the colony and other colonies should be semi-fixable with terraforming and the like...as it stands now I think terraforming and all that guffaw only does happyness, which leads to very little really

There is no income or efficiency bonuses from happy people...so you can just aswell keep them 1 notch above unrest..of course which may be hard with growing populations, but then again, the micro manage hell of shipping populations...well its not fun either....
Automated features here would be nice..

Again insightful post...

Edit : you just reminded me in another thread...OMG Moo 2 population movement system...SERIOUSLY...its already been done perfectly, whats wrong with just doing the same???????
Reinventing the wheel was the MAJOR mistake moo 3 did...and which broke the 4x genre when nobody wants to make 'good' they just wanna make 'new'

Tom, GalCiv2 has both ship and building maintainence costs which the player must take into consideration and do limit both structure and ship construction. And this is one of the major players in the genre.
 
The problem here imo is the insane bureacratic overhead cost. Play a game as a Walden. You haven't done this, it appears. When you do, you'll realize that it's entirely possible to build massive fleets and even fill up most of your world with structures and defenses...because the Walden don't get hit with buro penalties. These penalties not only hit happiness, which is bad enough, they are a huge direct drain on your finances.
 
I can put throw together 100+ fleets with this race, no sweat. 50 colonies? No problem. And they just get more and more powerful as they increase in size. The Hun Yoon can also pull this off. It's a whole different game when you play as either of these guys, and a much more fun game.
 
Then I tried playing a Klurgu game this weekend. And found myself spending no less than 6k out of my 20k budget towards the end of the game in bureaucratic overhead. That's leaving aside the hefty -3 happiness penalty I got hit with.

Bureaucracy as modeled here is excessive. The power races are those who can ignore it altogether. The middling races like the Klurgu get some orderliness benies. 
 
And then, at the bottom of the barrel, we've got suckers like the humans and Teyes. And it is the Teyes who are the absolute worst race in the game, btw, not the humans. (Who are merely second worst.)
 
The other major issue here is overpopulation, which I flatly think is misconceived in this game and appears to take its cues from soylent green. Pop cannot be managed. There's no technology or social structure to do it. It just grows and grows and eventually explodes on you. All you can do is shuffle it around to some other planet, until, of course, your bureaucracy penalties make even this unfeasible. This is Malthus on steroids and simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense for anybody with a passing of knowledge of how demographics actually work. The game forces you to take the most extreme measures to keep the problem down to a dull roar.
 
Happily, all of this can be fixed with minor tweaks. I strongly advise you to try the game as either the Walden or Hun Yoon and you'll understand what I mean here. There's a real game to be savored here, no need for radical surgery.

@Tom,
You are asking for the same gameplay as all the other space 4x games on the market now. Yes it need some tweaks but not gameplay changes in my opinion. Otherwise i could install GC2 again and play that one. Yes i tried the tutorial 3 times before i even could make it because you need to think in another way as all these space games that are now on the market. The mainproblem is that most peeps alway,s fall back to the same old gamplay that exist for alot of years now. Just because this is some other gameplay i like it so mutch. Not the old same concept where you build masses on ships, build masses of buildings to speedup the building time and research time.
Starwars galaxy as an example was once was the best MMo i ever played, but because of WOW and the fans of it also asked to make SWG in the same way because yes WOW was a big succes. Instead of making the game better it was completely ruined.
In my opinion never change the core gameplay. Only tweaks, add-ons, and maby more game settings so you can turn on and off some options like overgrow or give peeps the option to setup the maintenance cost in different levels, etc.

You wrote nice things Tom, and nothing wrong with that but to me it refers to another gameplay.

ORIGINAL: laika

@Tom,
You are asking for the same gameplay as all the other space 4x games on the market now. Yes it need some tweaks but not gameplay changes in my opinion. Otherwise i could install GC2 again and play that one. Yes i tried the tutorial 3 times before i even could make it because you need to think in another way as all these space games that are now on the market. The mainproblem is that most peeps alway,s fall back to the same old gamplay that exist for alot of years now. Just because this is some other gameplay i like it so mutch. Not the old same concept where you build masses on ships, build masses of buildings to speedup the building time and research time.

Agreed 110%

laika, you've managed to put in words exactly what I've been thinking and afraid to say because I'm too blunt for my own good and I don't want to offend anybody.[:D]

This game is great and, IMHO, much better than MOO3 or GalCiv2. I'm really looking forward to see what happens next....

I have not had the problems Tom has had and I have enjoyed the game very much. The economic model seems fine to me and my humans can fight just fine. I do wish there was more info on buildings. If the humans are too difficult to play, just change the unrest modifier from "1" to "0" in the xml file.

I find that Armada design drinks from fountains different from those past designs have. I find especially intringuing the "population game" featured by Armada. It reminds me a lot of AH's Advanced Civilization. And on my book, that was (is) a great game.

However, I feel that if population is to become an asset - such as it is in Advanced Civ - growth rates should be lowered, in my games I find I have too many pop too soon - basically there's no place for them to go at all. Consequently, the pop requirements to support structures should scaled accordingly.

One aspect I feel it's been not fully developed is that of trade. I feel that Trade with neighboring empires - as it is implemented right now in the form of the establishment of Trade Missions - is too obscure (or too transparent) to be useful in designing a playing strategy. Another opportunity regarding trade which I think has been overlooked is that if we're to have our colonies specialized between industrial (shipyards) and agrarian (population centers), our empires do not seem to have any device to tap income from the more than likely - and consistent with the overall game design - trading between such worlds.

I wholeheartedly agree on the issue of bureaucracy. It doesn't makes sense to me that those race whose Star Empires with sophisticated bureaucratic systems have a harder time to develop standing military forces than Empires which doesn't. The whole point of bureaucracy is to produce more income for the State, so it can use these resources into assembling professional - in principle, more efficient - armed forces and develop extensive infrastructure systems to ensure economic growth.

Guys, the 'population game' is not fun...and definitely not fun with current transport system. I don't mind new, but uhm ..fun?

"Fun" as in "deciding whether I eat that Pawn with the Knight or I do it with my Bishop" [:)]

I also find it fun to "assemble improbably huge fleet of starships and throw it into my enemies face" [;)]

The population game is not just unfun, it's deeply silly. I for one don't accept that a planet must automatically riot at pop cap no matter what improvements are in place and what tech you've got, especially when buro jacks up unhappiness. The only way around this Malthusian trap is to pick the right race.

Population in this game isn't a resource, it's a burden and a ticking time bomb.

Edit: of course, the problem with AH Advanced Civilization is that these classic civs were, well, not all that advanced. At least from our perspective.

Malthus actually makes some sense in the iron and bronze ages. Not so much in the modern era, let alone 3 centuries from now.

We need birth control to set max populations on individual planets or simply tweak the effects of various terraforming structures to make an equilibrium possible.

ORIGINAL: The Plodder

ORIGINAL: laika

@Tom,
You are asking for the same gameplay as all the other space 4x games on the market now. Yes it need some tweaks but not gameplay changes in my opinion. Otherwise i could install GC2 again and play that one. Yes i tried the tutorial 3 times before i even could make it because you need to think in another way as all these space games that are now on the market. The mainproblem is that most peeps alway,s fall back to the same old gamplay that exist for alot of years now. Just because this is some other gameplay i like it so mutch. Not the old same concept where you build masses on ships, build masses of buildings to speedup the building time and research time.

Agreed 110%

laika, you've managed to put in words exactly what I've been thinking and afraid to say because I'm too blunt for my own good and I don't want to offend anybody.[:D]

This game is great and, IMHO, much better than MOO3 or GalCiv2. I'm really looking forward to see what happens next....

Its never is my attention to offend peeps. Tom wrote great things but he is asking to mutch for this game i think. Maby a second version of the game it is possible. But for me this concept is great and i can explain why.
First i,m a casual gamer that don,t spend my time only in space games. I alway,s had alot of problems with games like Orion 3, GC2 because they take to mutch time to have fun in a short time. The same problem i also had with games like korsun pocket etc. Thats why i liked the close combat, and Panzer Command series. They have the perfect balance of fun and difficulty for a nice evening of gaming.

And this is how i see Armada 2526. Alot of fun and not endless creation of ships and buildings etc. The maintenance will force you to think what to build instead of endless turns clicking for building structures and fleets and defences. I see it more as a tactical/4x game
Also keep in mind when you have a massive fleet it will be a nightmare to control in this game, and its a mess of ants you see when zooming in and at the end maby most of the system can,t hanle it. Its not like sins. As told before tweaks and a better solution for overpopulation(maby placing goveners in systems that can control the population be giving you advise with a couple of choise you canb choose), and make some great add-ons would be fair(like expanding the tech tree,etc.)

Maby i,m a different gamer that like tactical gameplay in a turnbase style or WEGO style. To mutch micromanagement is not my thing. And in my opinion Armada in the now state is a mix of micromanagement en tactical gameplay and yes this is something i never played before. And as alway,s you like it or dislike it.

ORIGINAL: The Plodder

ORIGINAL: laika

@Tom,
You are asking for the same gameplay as all the other space 4x games on the market now. Yes it need some tweaks but not gameplay changes in my opinion. Otherwise i could install GC2 again and play that one. Yes i tried the tutorial 3 times before i even could make it because you need to think in another way as all these space games that are now on the market. The mainproblem is that most peeps alway,s fall back to the same old gamplay that exist for alot of years now. Just because this is some other gameplay i like it so mutch. Not the old same concept where you build masses on ships, build masses of buildings to speedup the building time and research time.

Agreed 110%

laika, you've managed to put in words exactly what I've been thinking and afraid to say because I'm too blunt for my own good and I don't want to offend anybody.[:D]

This game is great and, IMHO, much better than MOO3 or GalCiv2. I'm really looking forward to see what happens next....

I agree as well. I haven't bought it yet, waiting to see how it pans out. But if gets turned into a clone of all the other ones, I'll stick with SoTS.

laika & Plodder,
 
I wonder whether you read more than the first few paragraphs of my opening post, or the title.  Most of my proposals, notably the first, enhance the existing economic model.  If you disagree, please explain how my first suggestion, for a Naval Base Structure and Reserve Ships, changes the existing model in any way.  None of the existing construction and maintenance costs in the spreadsheets would change under these two proposals, nor do any of the revenue sources.  The only things which do change are that there is one (1) new Structure, and it only reduces the existing maintenance expenses of ships at colonies with this structure by either half, for most ships, or 90% for ships in reserve, but only while the ships are at that colony.
 
This is an exceptionally simple change, but it would create profound changes in game play, particularly in strategy, while educating new players about the need to consider maintenance expenses.  Furthermore I am not aware of any computer space game, anywhere, with something like a naval base which dramatically reduces maintenance expenses.
 
Your contentions that I am asking for the same gameplay as other space 4x games really do make me think you did not read past the first screen page or so of my first post.
 
Now if you only skimmed what I said, and bounced right to the terraforming part of my fourth suggestion, your contention would be correct.  AFAIK, Armada 2526 is the only space 4x game ever which has terraforming affect happiness but not the maximum population a planet can hold, and the only turn-based space 4x game in the past ten years in which all colonizable worlds have the same population maximum when colonized.  IMO these are so counter-intuitive that they tend to make players suspicious that it represents a broken feature.  Car buyers would be suspicious about cars with the positions of the brake and gas pedals reversed.
 
The initial responses of Janster and Flavius well prove that my proposed terraforming changes are intended to make the existing economic model work better, as opposed to change it.  Overpopulation is a major problem in this game.  My revisions to terraforming tech, and additions of Oort & Space Habitat tech, provide room for additional population on colonies as tech advances, and so mitigate the overcrowding adverse effects of population growth.
 
Most of my proposals are intended to make the existing economic model work better.
 
There are reasons why space 4x games tend to be similar in many ways.  It’s called “sales”.  Game designers do not spend years of their lives designing games to express their personal issues.  Game companies do not produce games for the sake of art.  They do so to earn income.  Customers have to buy their games.  That they are in the game business, as opposed to some other business, is almost certainly because it’s fun for them, but it’s their business first, and getting people to buy their games is important.

ORIGINAL: Shawkhan

We need birth control to set max populations on individual planets or simply tweak the effects of various terraforming structures to make an equilibrium possible.

Yes, something along these lines would do the trick. It doesn't require massive game changes, either, this is a tweak that can be accomodated fairly easily, I would think. But it does dramatically change gameplay.

Somebody else suggested eliminating overpop penalties entirely from the Teyes, which I think is a clever idea that fits with their racial profile. (They like each others company. A lot.)

@Tom

Well in all you suggestions you will drop maintenance cost and that invites to build massive fleets(even with ships in reserve)and tons of structures. As with alot other 4x games. You spend most of the time with building your empire and wait for the perfect time to crush the enemy. I played CG2 for some time but spend more time in building structures and fleets and looking at menu,s then having fun to play and use tactics how to defeat the enemy. Now what will happen if you lower the maintenance cost for buildings and ships. Well i think i`m only going to build tons of them not care about any tactics. Overpopulation yes you are right this need to be tweaked as i sayed before. Also the suggestion of terraforming 1 to 2 and 3 etc will force you to only build structures to expand your empire. In other words you will do most of the time micromanagement. As told before maby i,m a different gamer as you are. Never say,d that your suggestions are not great. Maby for the die hard 4x space gamer the suggestions are great. But for me i like to think what to build with care and on witch systems and ships to build. I dont want to play a game that need first a week of building your empire and turtle up and then crush the enemy.
Yes your are telling the truth that game designers need to sell the game and make a profit out of it. But over the past years they are creating more clones then something new because they are afraid of a failure. Thats why i never play a pure RTS anymore. But on the other hand sometimes they are in luck creating something new in a different approch.
Its sad that some great gameconcepts are dead like Battlezone, and Tribes because of communities. i remember tribes 1 and 2 as great games with a great community. Suddenly alot UT gamers tryed Tribes but did,t like it. But they had the overhand and forced the dev. to create Tribes 3 in a UT style. The end result was the end of the series.

Don,t take it to serious. At the other hand when i think about it if they will including your suggestions its not a problem for me. We are free to patch or update the game.

laika,

My experience in these games is that players of space 4x games differ from players of other 4x games in that the space gamers place a much greater emphasis on combat and the military side of strategy, whereas non-space gamers enjoy empire management more.  Space gamers want big exciting space wars and battles, and tend to view space 4x games as vehicles to create the big exciting space wars & battles.

This necessarily entails building big space fleets and having exciting wars.  Armada 2526 strikes me as unclear on the concept here, because it punishes players with unrest and revolts for having big space fleets and fighting exciting wars.  Its economic model very well proves that war does not pay, and this is not a good thing in space 4x games.

Now if Bob Smith and Matrix really intend that Armada 2526 players win by non-military means as much or more often than military means, I'd appreciate it if they would say so, and I'll wish them the best of luck, drop this game, and return to MOO3 plus War Plan Orange.

Edit:

It dawned on me, after I posted the above, that the dispute here concerns what type of game Armada 2526 is to be, and not its economic model. The latter certainly has flaws which some of my proposals address, but the real issue here is the extent to which the game makes it harder for empires to expand by conquest in order to make victory by non-military means more feasible.

This is a much more troublesome issue. IMO players of space 4x games really do like, and generally insist on, the excitement of difficult wars and challenging space battles. Ideally it would be possible to let the majority of space 4x gamers seek their fun in this traditional fashion while providing alternative means of winning for those less interested in space battles, but ideal outcomes are rarely possible, and tradeoffs are required.

So what laika, Plodder and I are really disputing are those tradeoffs in this game. That is a much different matter, and one in which reasonable people can disagree.

Armada 2526 attempts to take the space 4x genre beyond a traditional focus on victory through expansion by conquest, by allowing quite different victory conditions all of which might apply at once for different empires in the same game, with a point system to determine the winner based on the degree of success achieved given each empire’s particular victory conditions.
 
This is an incredibly ambitious objective for such a small company as Ntronium.  Playtesting the various victory conditions for balance, of and by itself, is beyond the resources of designer/developer Ntronium and publisher Matrix Games.  The first wave of post-release buyers must necessarily serve as extended beta-testers of the victory conditions.  This is not a bad thing.
 
It does require, however, an extended commitment by Ntronium and Matrix to post-release development of Armada 2526, and they have made that commitment to their market.  I understood that from the pre-release discussion on this forum.
 
What I did not understand then, and now do, is the degree to which this means game features are open to revision.  It is not merely a question of patching bugs and tweaking things.
 
There really is a feature balancing conflict between the various paths to victory, one beyond mere playtesting of victory points for different victory conditions.  Features and spreadsheet *.xls data which enhance accumulation of victory points for one set of victory conditions can adversely affect the play and strategies for winning by some other means.
 
Such a dispute has erupted here concerning what are contended to be excessive maintenance expenses.  Having high maintenance costs for planetary structures as well as ships has come as a shock to space 4x gamers who seek military victories where raw production of everything is generally the key to victory.  I suspect the current, originally designed, levels of maintenance expenses are intended to handicap players who seek military victories so that players/empires with non-military victory objectives have a chance of winning.  This might even be necessary.
 
But it does raise major, major issues for Ntronium and Matrix in terms of how Armada 2526 should appeal to different market segments.  Is it worth sacrificing sales to many traditional space 4x gamers, who really want lots of exciting wars and space battles, to foster the game’s appeal to players with less interest in military conflict?
 
I know how I want that to come out, but my desired outcome might not maximize revenue for Ntronium and Matrix, and it is their game.  Furthermore they might intend that Armada 2526 not be a stand-alone game, and that it instead develop the market for related games, including a later expansion as just as War In The Pacific produced a significantly revised expansion in War In The Pacific – Admirals’ Edition.
 
I personally am all for any game which revives the market for turn-based space 4x games in general, and am willing to sacrifice much to achieve that including, if necessary, Armada 2526 not having the heavy metal fleet-bashing & epic wars I find most fun.  I might even (shhh!) come to like winning by non-military means.  Just don’t tell my science-fiction writer friends about it.
 
On the other hand, my desired outcome for Armada 2526 might maximize the revenue of Ntronium/Matrix too, especially if it produces an expansion game like WITP-AE.  There are no certainties.
 
Here’s where I’d like Armada to go for the moment, and why.
 
IMO it has to succeed first with the traditional, Big Space Battles Good & The More Epic, The Better, turn-based space 4x market, because those guys plain outnumber all the other potential buyers of this game.  It has to succeed with enough of the traditional market to have any chance of surviving long enough to produce sales recovering the investment.  Maybe I’m right here and maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the way I see it.
 
This does not mean that Armada 2526 should not try to expand beyond the traditional market with viable non-military victory conditions, just that such tries should not impede appeal to the traditional market.  I did, and do, the same thing inside the traditional space 4x market through features which appeal to the “turtle defense” variety of gamers provided that such features don’t impede victory by conquest.
 
In other words, Bob and Matrix should try to seduce the traditional space 4x gamer market into experimenting with Armada’s non-military victory conditions.  “Come over to the Dark Side”.  Most of us aren’t into these games to express personal issues the way turtle defense gamers are.
 
But Armada has to work as a traditional military game first before we’ll experiment with its non-military victory conditions.
 
Armada’s non-military victory conditions should not be ignored, though.  Those need to both work and provide fun for players in getting there.  It does mean that military gamers shouldn’t be handicapped.
 
With all this in mind, I stand by the suggestions in my first post in this thread.  Building maintenance expenses should be significantly reduced at all times, and ship maintenance expenses reduced in peacetime, so players can more easily accumulate the treasury balances to periodically fight big expensive wars.  But not LONG big expensive wars.
 
Given that turtle players will overbuild local defenses (missile bases, etc.) regardless of the consequences, and give up on games which punish such expression of their personal issues, I’d drop the maintenance expenses of those and instead install hard-coded limits on the numbers of local defenses subject to overrides by means of Planetary Defense Center Structures.
 
I’d also considerably tweak the different races in terms of bureaucracy.  The latter should affect empire production & maintenance costs directly, instead of via happiness, and bureaucracy should affect every race.  It would just affect some less than others – races with a collective consciousness would suffer from much reduced bureaucracy expenses, etc.  IMO it would be a mistake to make some races immune to bureaucracy.
 
Flavius is correct in stating that the population model needs major tweaking in terms of happiness.  It may be that the happiness model needs significant revision.

@Tom
I really try to follow you and see the points you are missing. About big fleet battles. How do you control these. I only had fleets with only 40-50 ships max. and that was just great enough for me to control and use nice tactics and have great views with the F6 key. I mean this is the first game i ever saw that marines go in pods to the surface or just above suface like in moonraker. How does this look like with more then 150 ships on each site. Can you still control this all. Maby the dev,s had some resons to force peeps not to build massive fleets like in sins. When a fleet battle is in RTS and i want to use tactics then a small fleet fits me very well. I tryed sins but it was to massive in fleetbattles. I couldn,t contol the fleet as i wanted. And most of the time i had to zoom out and saw only pixels and a swarm of logo,s. When you want fleetbattles in massive style then maby in a WEGO style would fit but with this engine i just don,t know. Maby some1 that had already played with a massive fleetbattle can tell us more if u could handle it with sence.

laika, I haven't controlled any yet, but 40-50 ships at a time seems about right for me, that is, 40-50 warships plus maybe 5-10 transports. I like MOO3's epic scale but smaller ones are nice too. I really want this game to be a success so the genre will be revived. I can definitely see Armada empires with several fleets in the 50-60 ship range. I'd like to have wars which last 20-30 turns before the empires involved run out of money.