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

[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

[Fishman]

75% is still ridiculously high. People complained when LEIM's corruption was always 50% everywhere, but hrmph. We'll see. Also, why is even the capital corrupt? It has a zero distance from itself, obviously. Or does the distance-from-capital thing work in reverse, sort of like in real life, where you don't find all that much corruption in Nowhere, Alaska, but DC is obviously a festering hellhole of corruption, scum, and villainy?

[Bartje]

Awesome! Thanks guys!
 
I like that comparison Fishman [:'(]

[Erik Rutins]

Distance is only one part of the formula for corruption. Corruption should probably be renamed as "inefficiency" or something like that. The homeworld is highly developed with billions of people and therefore will have some local inefficiency right off the bat. Empire level inefficiency will rise as the number of total systems and population increases. Distance inefficiency is just based on distance from the homeworld and this is only one small part of overall corruption.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Fishman
Or does the distance-from-capital thing work in reverse, sort of like in real life, where you don't find all that much corruption in Nowhere, Alaska, but DC is obviously a festering hellhole of corruption, scum, and villainy?

Actually, it does in the sense that small border planets will not have the population to generate much local inefficiency and the distance factor acts as a modifier to that. So if you don't have much local inefficiency to begin with, the distance is not much of an issue. A large developed planet with billions of inhabitants that's also far from the capitol will however have inefficiency and this will be magnified to a degree by the distance.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

75% is still ridiculously high. People complained when LEIM's corruption was always 50% everywhere, but hrmph. We'll see. Also, why is even the capital corrupt? It has a zero distance from itself, obviously. Or does the distance-from-capital thing work in reverse, sort of like in real life, where you don't find all that much corruption in Nowhere, Alaska, but DC is obviously a festering hellhole of corruption, scum, and villainy?

They stated that the final version of 1.05 will have a corruption slider. It just will not be available in the beta.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
- increased costs for advanced component tech - most advanced tech is roughly twice the cost of starting tech

By the way, this was originally JScott's idea. So thanks to him as we decided this was a great suggestion.

[Fishman]

I'm not sure how the "inefficiency" mechanic makes that much sense, really. And why does the private sector get afflicted by it as well, anyway? Isn't the entire point of having a private sector that it improves efficiency by breaking everything down into small, individual "every man for himself" actors? What would make more sense, rather than creating a global punishment factor, is to do what GalCiv did: Make it so that the revenue of a planet does not simply scale linearly with the development and population of the planet, but rather, to some lesser exponent, to reflect the fact that if you have a large population consuming the same resource pool, you're not actually going to get much more money out of them because you'll have a lot of poor people who don't have much to give, and more rich people, who are better at avoiding taxes.

"Distance" based inefficiency is just silly, on the other hand: It has no real-world counterpart, as in the real world, distance-based inefficiency is created by distance from where something is produced, vs. where it is consumed, this difference being lost in transport costs and delay: Something produced and consumed locally suffers no extra efficiency penalties no matter how big your country is. Since on an empire level, most consumption is going to be occurring at your frontiers, where you are building defenses and whatnot, as opposed to the core, where you are too far away to do anything useful, you'd think the smaller colonies would be more efficient than the bigger ones, which ties into the above, as opposed to everything being 75% corrupt.

Something that is pretty much never implemented in games, for no particularly clear reason: inefficiency due to distance-based response delays should be cut down as the world becomes "smaller" due to the ability of things to go faster! In the old days, when a message from the capital had to be delivered by Pony Express and ship and could take weeks or even months, clearly there was a large execution delay in orders, but when things can be phoned in as if they were in the next room, distance clearly has become somewhat of a nonfactor.

[Fishman]

I thought point 1 was the only really substantive factor: Everything else is already in the game. Derelicts don't have builders, anyway.

[Bartje]

The Private sector is still affected by the government inneficiency. Perhaps think of it that way. (waiting for approval etc..)


I completely agree that "corruption" should become inefficiency.

Distance inefficiency is not silly in my opinion it has a very good real word counterpart. (concerning government that is)

Especially so in DW where travels between planets can take weeks or months.


In essence efficiency / corruption is the measure of administrative efficiency a government has.

This is innately different in each government and culture.

One thing that is true however is that territories that far flung generally have less competent government.

What is also true is that as an imperium expands; its governing bureacracy gets a tougher job keeping track of all the reports and things happening in all the provinces / planets.

Its the pain of having central authority really.


In Galciv this was really nicely moddeled in the way governments gave bonusses.

I think governments such as a federation should therefore inherently also give a boost to administrative efficiency.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Fishman
I'm not sure how the "inefficiency" mechanic makes that much sense, really. And why does the private sector get afflicted by it as well, anyway? Isn't the entire point of having a private sector that it improves efficiency by breaking everything down into small, individual "every man for himself" actors?

Inefficiency only affects the planets themselves.

What would make more sense, rather than creating a global punishment factor, is to do what GalCiv did: Make it so that the revenue of a planet does not simply scale linearly with the development and population of the planet, but rather, to some lesser exponent, to reflect the fact that if you have a large population consuming the same resource pool, you're not actually going to get much more money out of them because you'll have a lot of poor people who don't have much to give, and more rich people, who are better at avoiding taxes.

That's exactly the effect that you end up with as a result of corruption/inefficiency. This is a matter of semantics or how well things are hidden in the game design I guess.

"Distance" based inefficiency is just silly, on the other hand: It has no real-world counterpart, as in the real world, distance-based inefficiency is created by distance from where something is produced, vs. where it is consumed, this difference being lost in transport costs and delay: Something produced and consumed locally suffers no extra efficiency penalties no matter how big your country is. Since on an empire level, most consumption is going to be occurring at your frontiers, where you are building defenses and whatnot, as opposed to the core, where you are too far away to do anything useful, you'd think the smaller colonies would be more efficient than the bigger ones, which ties into the above, as opposed to everything being 75% corrupt.

The point is that in DW, there is no instantaneous travel. It actually takes time to get to the other side of the galaxy. The distance-based inefficiency reflects actual corruption or inefficiency in the sense of the distant planets not using their money and resources on the same priorities the central government might choose. Given that it actually can take weeks to cross the galaxy in DW, there is room for the kind of inefficiency or corruption that existed in older times, like the Roman Empire or the Chinese Empire.

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

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Bartje
In Galciv this was really nicely moddeled in the way governments gave bonusses.
I think governments such as a federation should therefore inherently also give a boost to administrative efficiency.

Some government types do reduce corruption, which is where this comes into effect.

[Bartje]

Noted; I spoke before checking [:)]


I find myself thinking occasionally that things are near instantanious too; untill I look at the game time.


Erik I've got a question for you:

How do you view DW's space combat?

Is it a strategical simulation of combat over vast distances that takes days or even months to resolve itself??

Or is this the result of how quickly time passes?

It's an interesting perspective; most sci-fi generally assumes, perhaps for the viewers sake, that battles are adrenaline rushes that take place in days not in weeks or months.

Though it does make sense I suppose, if you see it as a military engagement / operation instead of a classical "battle"... even though it is a battle.

I suppose it's something of a paradigm shift.


Is this in the Galactopedia? It would be a good concept to teach since it's sort of a novel approach.

It would also add alot to immersion if this is made clear to the player quickly.

Perhaps a short story could be included in the galactopedia describing a space battle happening.

We could have a contest! Who writes the best short story!

The winner gets a tech named after him / her!!



Thanks for all the feedback! [:)]

[Kruos]

Thanks Erik for the feedback.

Could you share with us what are your plan/focus concerning the next patch : weapon balance improvments, IAs improvments, eco improvments, research improvments, etc..?

Keep up the good work!

[Bartje]

Are there any..... surprises ??? [:D]

[lostsm]

still nothing for more modding?

[jscott991]

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

Great news.

The only thing better would be getting a mass load troops command.

[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.

[hEad]

Actually, I think instead of it being corruption or inefficiency it should be termed bureaucracy - Corruption seems so civII. Indeed these penalties should be a factor based on a planets population rather than a flat penalty across ones empire. Considering that to manage a large populus requires more resources, the growth penalty should not be associated with the number of planets in ones empire, it should reflect the growing costs of a large population and therefore the calculation should be based on numbers of citizens rather than number of planets... my 2.34c

[jscott991]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
- increased costs for advanced component tech - most advanced tech is roughly twice the cost of starting tech

By the way, this was originally JScott's idea. So thanks to him as we decided this was a great suggestion.

I'm glad this caught on.

But you shouldn't use both this and corruption. That's double simulating the same thing.