Another option instead of "Nothing"

from Stardock Forums
I think that instead of having to spend money producing "Nothing" when you have a situation where some planets need one type of spending and some need the other, you should have several options:

a) Redirect spending. It should be possible to choose an option on the Social Projects list called "Shipbuilding" or something that redirects social spending to military (ie, it locally acts as if you'd set the sliders so that whatever % is in social globally is in military locally). Similarly, there should be an entry in the ship list for directing spending into the social category. (Of course, you couldn't be allowed to choose both at once.) Also, there should be an option on both to direct the spending that would go to that category into research.

b) NOT spend. "Nothing" would remain, but instead of losing the money on it, you'd simply find that it decreases government expenditures on the planet. This would allow you to do something like this:

1. Set spending to 100%, all on social. At this point, you are losing money per turn.
2. Change all the planets that have all the necessary social improvements to "Nothing". Now, since the tax money you WOULD have spent on those planets is staying in the treasury, you are breaking even (at least) again.

I think both of these are reasonable options, and allow considerably finer-grained management of resources than the current setup.

-EtherMage


~SDC~
536 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I posted a similar idea last week, and feel there should be a penalty for this kind of redirection (production reduced maybe 20-25%), however, your idea of putting this option right into the build lists is *extremely* clever and simpler than what I had in mind.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
This would be cool, would have to be severely penalized
though, like 50-75%, but would still be very useful
in certain situtations, not overpowering and perhaps
not even that hard to code.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Interesting... as soon as I saw the subject line on the main page, this exact same idea occured to me before I even laid my eyes on the post... It's simple, elegant, and should be fairly easy to integrate it into the game, so let's hope somebody sees this and slips it into the next patch or the expansion :P
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Check out the formerly sticky thread with 204 comments on this topic: http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=26410
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks. Apparently Camp Freddie made this same suggestion on 4/25.

The sisue seems to be not implementing something like this, but the need to rebalance the game that would supposedly result. It seems the game balance is predicated on a certain amount of wasted production.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Its funny or sad, but after 200 posts and 2 months, we still have this incredibly wasteful game system. I thought how MOO2 did this was perfect. Building 'trade goods' i think produced money, which was pumped back into your treasury. Certainly would help the situation I always have, running broke b/c your planet costs 2x more than it's revenue, for strange reasons I think due to the population size. Also have you noticed research is more costly than military/social? At end game, i could only run my research at 50% or 40%, while i could run my military or social at 100%. Don't know why.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
It's easier to boost research capacity into the stratosphere than it is military/social production, especially with the computer techs.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
There have been lots of suggested ways to deal with waste. I think I read that the difficulty in implementing any of the many suggested systems is in teaching the AI to use it properly.

Personally the system I would like most is for the governors to each have their own set of sliders. Your planets' differences would actually matter--you could have a research governor in charge of specialized research colonies with research improvements, and a "ships" governor in charge of ship-building colonies and a "wonders" governor and so on. It would give all your worlds more character and add greatly to the depth of empire management. As it is, most of my worlds end up being approximately the same, with the same dull set of social improvements and maybe a couple extra on the best worlds. Also, it this system wouldn't add that much to micromanagement.

Your idea is great too though, and there aren't any UI issues to work out either.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I will ditto Vincible. Something like that is what I was going to suggest when I started reading the thread, it would really help. If you have a planet surrounded by hostiles, it would be nice to be able to set that planet on military alert without screwing the social/research development in the REST of your empire.