DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+83

Trying to understand projects

I'm trying to understand how projects (for planets) work and how the numbers are generated.

When I first worked with them, they seemed to be a way to stop the darn idle planet problem at the end of the turn. However, I recently decided I wanted to make sure that they worked the way that I thought they did. My assumption was, that they were like the spending wheel in the governor screen. I assumed that when the planet ran out of things to build, the percent of production that went to manufacturing went to the project. For instance, if I had 33% going to manufacturing, it would instead go to research or economics if I used the right project.

It turns out that I was mistaken. When I investigated, I found they did not work the way I thought they did.

1. Research and economic projects did not work the way I thought they did. I first set the project to economic or research. I then set spending to manufacturing to 100% (to see the output to the project made). I then set spending to research or economics to 100% (to figure out the normal rate). What I found was that projects got me less research and economics than what I would have got had I adjusted the spending wheel manually. I was getting rates that might have been 1/2 or even 1/3 of what I could have been getting (it varied depending on where I did it at). Clearly, those projects are not worth using.

2. Approval project. I toyed with them and found that for every 10 point in manufacturing, I got a 10% approval bonus. If I had 10.2 manufacturing, I got 10% approval. If I had 16 manufacturing, I got 10% approval. If I had 19.8 manufacturing, I got 10% approval. If I got 20.2 manufacturing, I got 20% approval. I haven't exhaustively tested these numbers (I don't know if less than 10 points will get me anything), so I'm check to make sure the rate really is that.

3. I don't have any way to measure the effects of population growth, so it doesn't do me much good to test birthing subsidies.

I was hoping that these projects worked well. It saves me the trouble of setting manufacturing to 0. It also makes it so that my planets will automatically upgrade themselves (since projects are only done if there is nothing else to do). However, if there is going to be waste, then it probably isn't worth my time using them.

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Achronous

Chibiabos

Join Date 02/2006

+59

With research, if you set your econ to 100% research, none of your planets will ever build anything. The idea your planets that are completely developed can instead devote their production to research, while your developing planets can instead devote their production to chewing through their production queues ... setting your slider to 100% research means nothing in your build queues (or ship production queues) would ever be built.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+83

Well, the problem I have is that I am not getting equivalent amounts of output when I use research or economic projects. I'm better off changing my spending rates than using those projects.

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peregrine23

Join Date 02/2007

+79

So I did a bunch of testing on this at least as it relates to Economic Stimulus and Research Project. The projects grant production to their area, which is then modified by any planetary bonuses in the target area. The amount of production transferred depends on your raw production, modified by your planetary manufacturing bonus. The break-even point where projects become as good as setting your production wheel is around +300%. If your manufacturing bonus is more then that you should build a project; if not, you are better off setting your wheel.

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Chibiabos

Join Date 02/2006

+59

Quoting DivineWrath,

reply 2

Well, the problem I have is that I am not getting equivalent amounts of output when I use research or economic projects. I'm better off changing my spending rates than using those projects.

And again, the problem with that is it will impact production on all of your colonies which is not always an appropriate cost when you may have only a few of your colonies that have nothing to build, but others that have a queue to complete.

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peregrine23

Join Date 02/2007

+79

Quoting Chibiabos,

reply 4

I'm pretty sure DivineWrath is setting the wheel on the planetary level and not on the civ level.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+83

Quoting peregrine23,

reply 3

I'll check it out later then.

By the way, did you get those numbers from planet improvements or some other source? I'm thinking that things become less efficient if a manufacturing bonus gained from a planet improvement wouldn't be better done by a research or economic improvement.

Quoting Chibiabos,

reply 4

Why would changing the spending on one of my colonies impact all my colonies?

???? Wait. Are you aware that right now you can set spending per planet differently than the global rate? It is not like it was back in GalCiv 2.

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Guys, these 'projects' are not supposed to be workable in Beta1; however they do have some effect and apart from choosing any one of them for the automatic-upgrade benefit, the 'Fiesta' [something like that anyway] one does give a bonus to Approval of anything between 10% to 70% [probably depends on population levels].

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peregrine23

Join Date 02/2007

+79

Quoting DivineWrath,

reply 6

By the way, did you get those numbers from planet improvements or some other source? I'm thinking that things become less efficient if a manufacturing bonus gained from a planet improvement wouldn't be better done by a research or economic improvement.

From the numbers I have seen, Economic Stimulus and Research Project are only useful in very limited situations. It is very hard to get a planet above the break-even point without manufacturing capital. Even then, it seems that if you have a planet with that much manufacturing, you are probably better off building ships with it. So pretty much only if you have a very production heavy planet, have no use for more ships, and think you will want to use that planet to build ships again in the future.

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Well, I wouldn't dismiss project right out of hand. Because in my test, I managed to make 100% manufac project much more profitable than 100% research (though I abuse the hell of Altarian Dark Research Lab. I didn't know it's a bug before this).

100% Science Slider (~700 beakers)

100 Science

100% Manufac with Research Project (3k beakers)

Galaxy run on the fuel of research project alone (I have about ~5 more mature planets running on 100% manufac research project. Each contributing 1k+). Look, ma, zero science .

Here are the manufac modifier.

And here are the science modifier.

Well, it was fun while it lasted .

________________________________________

On a more realistic note, I loaded up another non game-breaking save using a non-matured planet and checked if project is better than raw research/wealth or not. It is in mid-late game.

100% Science (~70 Beakers)

100% Manufac with Research Project (~140 beakers)

100% Wealth (~70 wealth)

100% Manufac With Wealth Project (~130 wealth))

And this is the base planet.

So, the answer is yes with caveat. From the base planet above, you can see that:

It is not mature. I can still upgrade a few of the improvements.
It was not properly specialized. The wealth or science improvements can be removed and replaced with 1 farm and 2 science/wealth building.
In this game, I only got three ideo trait. So, a lot of passive bonus is not in.
There are still some tech that can improve the buildings further, and tech that can add passive bonus (+manufac, + research bonus).
I still have two more terraform tech not researched.
It can still be enhanced further using starbase.
I did not use manufac/tech capital in the planet above.
The size of the planet is just 15 (mid tier).

So, all in all, I think that project can be better than raw 100% science/wealth, but only in on mid-late game (need time to research the tech, build all the improvements, starbase module, etc.).

A single planet may not be as crazy as to carry the whole galaxy like the Altarian above (Dark Research Lab abuse), but it can definitely be more profitable than raw 100% science/wealth in mid-late game. Project is not recommended at early game at all.

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