Petri Kokko

[quote who="CEOMorgan" reply="7" id="3587475"] For military bases to be relevant, they MUST control space at all stages of the game, otherwise, what's the point of building one? Sure it can be powerful, but if you can just fly around it, again, what's the point? [/quote] One way to get that effect with minimal changes to other stuff would be to add the rule, that entering the area-of-effect of a foreign military starbase is an attack against it and any ships docked t

[quote] making realism arguments is pointless because it IS just a game.[/quote] Exactly. The reason why the colony ship carries billions is because a colony ship is meant to create a colony and for it to be a colony it needs to have a meaningful value in the "population points" variable. It really is just "0.5 points" or "2.5 points" and we just read it "points=billions". Of course, to get the immersion you need to apply some overlaying context, and thus the interpretation of "billio

[quote who="Empress_Fujiko" reply="1" id="3587083"] Personally I like really large maps but with only a few things in and with large voids between stars, so that space actually feels like space. [/quote] I have the same preference. Big map but very sparse. Makes everything more special and valuable and worth fighting over instead of the "yet another, ho-hum" experience. The problem with the "tight clusters" setup is that it's not very good in generating balanced

Throw in some approval buildings, too, and remember to pick up the morale boosting techs. Keeping the pop happy gives a sizable bonus.

- Baby factories to feed your invasion fleets. - Culture factories if you want/need influence. With enough invasion fleets you generally don't. :) Of course, the most common use is to [i]not[/i] switch the yard off but to produce an endless stream of constructors to match the endless need of starbase upgrades so that you develop a bad case of arthritis in your mouse wrist and you start screaming "will this nightmare never end!" and eventually go mad... :)

Aren't border treaties and diplomatic penalties tied to influence borders?

[quote who="Kreissig" reply="1" id="3586667"] You don't own territory in this game. That border you see is an "influence area" and differs conceptually from a defined empire border. [/quote] That premise is quite acceptable but the problem is that the game itself isn't consistent with itself in how it interprets the borders. Sometimes it treats them as political borders, sometimes as influence zones. The game should decide which is the correct in-game interpretation

[quote] is this a boost to the sum amount of empire-wide raw production, or is it merely localised to that one planet[/quote] Localised. Planetary output-enhancing buildings apply to the planetary population only. "Half farms, half factories" (or labs, or market places) is actually a quite powerful mix. The factories only multiply the raw production but don't add to it. A small raw production multiplied by a big bonus can still be less than medium raw production multiplied

To be fair, it's a bit more complicated than that and a lot hinges on how good the governors are and/or how much you can do with the coming focus buttons. Even if we assume "no governors but still must use just the global wheel" then optimal production in a symmetric tile layout is "half farms, half output-buildings" except this symmetry is broken by the need to have some approval buildings plus the fact that the actual tile layout is random. There is, however, a sweet spot betwee

The population on a planet is directly the amount of raw production. The buildings, bonuses, and economic settings applied to it then produce the end result of manufacturing, research, and wealth. Thus, the bigger your population the bigger your output, although bad approval will penalize it. Example: You have a planet with 10 pop and 1 basic factory and you have set your economy to 50% manufacturing, 30% research, and 20% wealth. The 10 pop give you 10 units of raw production. This i

How about allowing explicit upgrades in the build queue? For example: 1) Choose tile A, choose factory, add to queue --> queues T1 factory to be built on tile A 2) Choose tile B, add to queue --> queues T1 factory to be built on tile B 3) Choose tile A, add to queue --> queues explicit upgrade to T2 on tile A 4) Choose tile B, add to queue --> queues explicit upgrade to T2 on tile B 5) Choose tile C, choose market place, add to queue

Could you tell us something about the coming "Expansion 1"? Even if you don't want to publish any details yet how about giving a buzzword describing the theme? Like "Diplomacy", "War", or "Alien Space Bats".

Well, what do you expect from an organization calling themselves "Peacekeepers"? I think we all have seen and read enough sci-fi to know to start running fast when we encounter agencies that favor names like "Ministry of Enlightenment" or "Committee of Public Safety"... :)

The tutorial campaign is a good place to start. It gives advice as you go and introduces the game mechanics.

[quote who="naselus" reply="77" id="3585278"] The risk is in lack of redundancy. If Zabulon B is the planet's only cash world, losing it is a disaster; if all worlds are producing some cash, it's not. Presently, however, we have a situation where specialization is vastly more powerful, AND there's no serious, credible threat to our planets, so redundancy is just not required.[/quote] One way to increase the importance of redundancy and to give a real penalty for ultra

[quote who="Frogboy"]Planetary management: The future[/quote] Thank you for the post! This certainly clarified things. So, from the game mechanics point-of-view, basically, "the planetary wheel" will be represented as "choice of governors and maybe adjusting them". I can live with that. Provided your governor mechanics design is good, of course. :) Instead of us all spending 100 pages in arguing about how the functional specification of the governors should be,

[quote who="MacsenLP" reply="58" id="3585098"] If I get what your saying you think that there is going to be zero ways to select individual planets production your interpretation is it's going to be just a Global system? They wouldn't be that crazy surely? [/quote] That is exactly my fear and, yes, it'd be madness... :) Quoting naselus here but as long as the economy is based on "population generates production that is then split into specialized o

[quote who="Khazdek" reply="19" id="3585072"] Ty Petri Kokko for explaining it much better then I could why the wheel has to go. [/quote] If you mean that as in "specialization should be done with some other control than the wheel" then yeah, no big deal. The UI to specialize planets can be whatever works best. OTOH if you mean "you shouldn't be able to specialize planets" then no, complete opposite. The specialization is exactly what brings you the choices. And

[quote who="MacsenLP" reply="53" id="3585074"] A 100% production focus system. Each planet would have to choose from Industry/Research/Wealth and possibly the Industry split into Military and Social Production if the current slider is removed. A planets focus can be changed whenever you want. An absolute MUST is the additional ability to change a planets focus from the main screen without entering each individual planet screen that would save a ton of player time p

[quote who="Khazdek" reply="13" id="3585062"] Can people who like the wheel please elaborate why they like it? In my opinion it doesn't add choice, its just extra bookkeeping. ... How is this choice? Isn't specializing by building buildings enough, what does the wheel really add?. [/quote] Uhm, you may have misunderstood how the production calculation goes... The population does [i]not[/i] produce "1 point of each". Instead the population gives

[quote who="Lord_of_Void" reply="9" id="3585050"] It has been stated several times that this game is not about micro-MGMT, but about CIV level decisions [/quote] Yes, but it's a sliding scale instead of an on-off thing. You really do have to give the player the ability to do stuff, experiment with things, and to generally have fun playing the game. The main objective of any game is to have fun. Everything else is secondary. A perfectly realistic "lead a galactic

When it becomes clear that I have become unstoppable I just declare the game won and move on, unless I happen to fancy a mop-up at that time. The computer doesn't mind :) and I have already seen the victory videos so why bother? The only counter-argument that comes to my mind is the metaverse score but, personally, don't care about it so meh. Hard to see this a big issue myself although I do understand that others might feel differently. If many think that an "official

[quote who="sjaminei" reply="27" id="3584867"] I like specializing right off the bat. So, that means I want to be able to go for the "combos" early on, (whatever they might be) and going for the flying start. Later on, not so much. [/quote] I like to build up tall and micromanage my core worlds, and keep on micromanaging them. It's part of enjoying the game and because the core worlds are only a handful it's not that much. The rest end up being "generic research worl

[quote who="Empress_Fujiko"]Sort by name seems to be missing[/quote] "Sort by name" came up in the yesterday's dev stream. Apparently an oversight. I got the impression they'll add it as well as the reverse sort order choice that was also requested.

[quote]In its place will be something different. We'd like to hear what YOU would like to see in there.[/quote] If you are going for something different and the theme is going to be "less micromanagement", how about turning the buildings vs. population the other way round? In the current system you have a population that produces "generic work" that is then split with the eco wheel and then these are affected by the bonuses from the buildings. The need for the eco wheel co