You do have a point here.  For whatever reason, just about every other 4X game has just the building part of the equation where you build the building then forget about it.  I.E. in civ you build a library and it produces research for you for the rest of the game without having to allocate citizens to spend time in the library.  In galciv, they insist on not only building the building, but also allocating population to it.  While flexibility is achieved, it also vastly increases the micro in the game.  Flexibility could be achieved by having different projects which galciv 3 does anyway.  I.E., if you are under massive attack, there might be a project where your eggheads on your all research planet go to work in the factories to produce goods at a 25% efficiency, i.e. only 1 production is made for every 4 research points...  Also, this is one reason you have an economy in the game.  A big treasury balance also grants flexibility by permitting rush building when you really need it.

While there is a nice econ 101 post by frogboy, it would be nice if there was a post from the devs that delves into the science of why they chose the economic system to be the way it is.  Did they set it up this way just to be different?  becasue they were worried about a copyright lawsuit from the makers of civilization and other 4X games?  I mean when you delve into the science behind it why not just have the building and not building plus allocating population?

i would not be surprised if they devs simply never went try hard mode and going to manually min/max their empire on a larger map. devs are not playtesters and don't have the time to see how every design and mechanic plays out in vast amount of different settings. developers are also often not that good gamers even at their own games, e.g. i never saw them even with a calculator, let alone a more sophisticated and proper tool, and try to play at a very high level. (these are just generalizations i don't know how good gamers the actual stardock devs are)

 

myself being a mod developer (mostly civ4); i would often test mechanics in an controlled environment and see if it works correctly. but you often get a different picture if a very good player actually plays with the system and articulates the problems. my main problem with current system at it's core is that:

1) you have to use it because it is very powerful (and for some reason i never trust any ai/automation)

2) on larger maps it is a micromanagement hell. you have to readjust all sliders on all planets to their maximum efficiency for every little bonus to your economy (say you upgrade a starbase, or gain access to a tech or a relic, find an anomaly ...)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=401829666

 

Thats what i get when i set up my sliders at 100% research.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=401829639

With that being a layout of the planet.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=401829571

Thats what i get when set my sliders at 100% manufacturing. Note the DOUBLE amount of RPs on planet that is dedicated to science buildings.

Moving sliders from social to military and back does not provide any effect.

I highly doubt that it is intended. Though it was somewhat alike in GCII 

Looks perfectly reasonable.  A maxed-out planet will easily have >> +300% manuf.  Then setting the wheel to 100% manuf, and queueing Research Project, is indeed better than setting the wheel to 100% rp.

Suppose your raw production (i.e. your pop * all bonuses) is X.

• At wheel = 100%  rp, you get X                      * (1 + rp%) rp.
• At wheel = 100% mp, you get X/4 * (1 + mp%) * (1 + rp%) rp.

The 1/4 term is the cost of Research Project: it takes 4 mp to make 1 raw rp.  Eliminating identical terms, if your (1 + mp%)/4 > 1, then you win.  That's why the break-even threshold is at +300% manuf.

That's the GC3 economic design, and it is working as intended.  Anyhoo, 3,000 rp is nothing.  Build more economic starbases and stuff, and you can increase that by at least an order of magnitude

The layout in question have 2 maxed eco starbases, one factory, one powerplant, tech capital, research coordination, research cloisters with rest being discovery spheres.

Whole load of science buildings, only two industrial. And when you have nothing to build you will switch to projects anyway. How this is reasonable? 

Again. There is as much as 15 disco spheres along with tiles that give bonus research and all science-boosting buildings. Against one fac and one power plant. 

Hover over your manuf points and show us your +manuf% bonuses tooltip.  (Also hover over your rp and show the +rp% tooltip.)  That's the critical information we need to assess the math.

If your manuf tooltip is < +300%, you have found a bug.  Until then, we can't tell (and neither can you).

Other testers have ba-roken the economy to generate > 30k rp, so nothing impresses us any more

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=402173335

 Research bonuses

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=402173290

 Production bonuses.

 

Manufacturing bonuses are 449.8 percents.

Science bonuses are at whopping 2777.5 percemts, maybe just a little less with all that specializations possibly not displaying correctly. Around 2000 percents are coming from disco spheres.


Cant find a save game location, so i could provide it for further analysis.

Overall, i got SIX times research multipliers than production ones, though when i move sliders, research focus gives me HALF research points than manufacturing focus.

Does not look right to me. At all. 

It's correct, as intended.  Look at my equation above.  Research Project is defined to create raw rp, which then goes through your entire +rp% pipeline, exactly as if you had that much raw production from the wheel.  You do get the double benefit of both of your pipelines: all of your +mp%, divide by 4, then all of your +rp%.

Let w be whatever raw production you get from 100% wheel.  Then:

• setting wheel to 100% rp: total rp = (1 + 27.775)w = 28.875w rp.
• setting wheel to 100% mp with Research Project: total rp = (1 + 4.498)/4 * 28.875w = (1.3745 * 28.875)w = 39.69w rp.  Yes, it's higher.

What's the problem?  Your +mp% is greater than the +300% break-even threshold.  Then 1 raw mp * your mp% pipeline / Research Project is simply superior to 1 raw rp (by about 37%).  So you should expect that you minimize total rp by setting wheel to 100% research, and you maximize total rp by setting wheel to 100% manuf.

That's the math.  Welcome to GC3

 

If it is correct by the numbers, it is still EXTREMELY misleading. If you have six times research production than manufacturing, you expect research side of the triangle to be at least somewhat more efficient than manufacturing.

Yes, i know, in GCII was similar system. Yes, more does not always means better.

But with THAT big difference in numbers i bet most of the players will be completely confused. After you reach those sacred +300% mp you are better off.. with what? Building more factories? More labs? Is there even any point in buildinh that many labs if industrial world can crank you RPs and switch to shipbuilding if needed?

Why 1 mp is 37% more effective than 1 rp? Why SHOULD it be? 

If you are trying to maximize your research output, then after you reach the +300% manufacturing bonus, you should add structures that improve the lower bonus unless the structures that improve the higher bonus offer a bonus which is at least (larger bonus)/(smaller bonus) times greater than the structure that improves the smaller bonus. I.e. if you have a manufacturing multiplier of 4 and a research multiplier of 5, and you have the option of building a factory which increases your manufacturing multiplier by 1, then you would only want to build a lab if the lab increases your research multiplier by at least 1.25.

Assuming that you can achieve at least +300% manufacturing, the balance of research and manufacturing multipliers which will produce the maximum amount of research is the balance where the two multipliers are approximately equal, unless one improvement type offers a significantly greater per-improvement bonus than the other improvement type.

I very much appreciate getting this clear in my head.  LoL, I did a great deal of calculations on actual situations to check how the numbers came out and that I was clear.  I can certainly work with the system now that I understand.  +1 to Gilmoy once again.

That being said, there is a problem and I sympathize with the OP that the result doesn't make intuitive sense.   For example, how is a player supposed to guess that >300% manufacturing bonus translates to 100% man/res project producing more research?  It makes sense to me that one can comandeer factories to do research, at a significantly reduced rate because a factory wasn't designed for it.   And I can accept that if one runs an economic project at 100% research that what is actually happening is goods are being produced and sold to give more wealth.   Still, buildings designed for the purpose ought to work better.

Maybe the way to approach this is to compare the production when manufacturing is 100% and all of it is going to ships/buildings.  That number is huge compared to the research output (based on my observation of various actual situations).    So the point is, yes, you can get more research by forcing factories to due some research, but you are throwing away a metric ton or more of potential production (there is no divison by four in output of the factories).   One gimps the heck out of production to push out some more research.

Another thing that is curious is research bonuses.   If the research bonuses are high it seems like they ought to beat out manufacturing bonuses. 300% research bonus ought to be  much better than 300% manufacturing bonuses  when research buildings are used, so that running 100% research ought to win.   But evidently it doesn't. (Also research buildings can't be ordered to produce manufacturing at a reduced rate, but that is another issue).

My conclusion is that I tend to agree with the OP.   My scientists ought to like working in a lab designed exactly to help them solve the problem.  So a factory is optimized to build stuff.   How does an assembly line help one do research?  Having spent my career as a scientist, I will tell you.   Zero.

Don't misunderstand.   Knowing how it works, I can certainly play and enjoy.   But it feels artificial, ad hoc.   I would prefer it not to, that's all.

 

 

its not really in your case it is

the whole thing (which i think is completely broken) is that all your Manufacturing points divided by 4 are multiplied by your research multiplier

while the devs say it is correct as intended i dont think they realize (or they refuse to admit) how overpowered this is 

It occurred to me just before I read androshalforc's post is that the research bonus shouldn't apply to research produced by a manufacturing/research project.  Or, it should be gimped in the same way, i.e. divided by 4.

Or, here's a thought...manufacturing bonuses shouldn't apply when factories are being forced to do research.

One way or the other is perhaps workable.

 

I sympathize with the OP.

Why bother with all the different improvements, build 1 or 2 farms so that your population can reach at least 50B Pop, fill the rest with factories, and then play with the Research Project, the Economic Stimulus and the Panet/Shipyard slider.
This will become rapidly boring.

The system is not very intuitive.
The output of the planet should reflect what you build on the planet.

More research improvements, more research output.
More economic improvements, more economic output.
More manufacturing improvements, more manufacturing output.

It should be simple.

(And it should have no need for this topic).

Hey, I like it for one reason: Because it's counter-intuitive, and I understand it better than my opponents do.  That's how I win every game, in all of my games

So ... all your objections are like music to me, and taste of citrus and honey.  Mu-ha-ha.

I write C++ template meta-programs that way, too.  Seniors and grad students in CS see my code, sputter in shock, and say "How does that even compile?  It doesn't look like C++ any more".  I reply: no it's all in Stroustrup and Alexandrescu, here here and here --

I'd rather ask you what other games you have PvP experience with so i could bring up a correact arguments and comparisons.

Without any science or wealth buildings, this is very inefficient. In order to out perform pure research/wealth worlds, you need to build carefully balanced hybrid worlds. The real counter-intuitive moment comes when you are getting enough bonus production from starbases that even on a pure research world you are better off using research project than the production slider, although I think with the this is much harder to do in the current build. I think the ratio should be increased, but it should not be modified by your research buildings.

Running manufactured resources throught their building bonuses is weird. They should receive a penalty at least to make buildings the most efficient.

 

I agree completly. The system as it is now is very unintuitive, especially for casual and / or knew gamers to the franchise.

It is complex only for complexities sake and adds IMHO nothing fun to the game.

And more to the point, the AI can't cope with it, like it couldn't do all labs or all factories in GC2.

@peregrine23

It's much more flexible. As the research bonuses cannot be "transformed" in manufacturing or wealth bonuses, and the wealth bonuses cannot be "transformed" in manufacturing or research bonuses, unlike the manufacturing bonuses.


It's quite easy to arrive at this "counter-intuitive moment" with all the techs, starbases, research relics, ideology, etc., bonuses, even without realizing it.

Also why should it come? Why should the manufacturing bonuses act on the research, the wealth, others? For which purpose?

The Research Project can simply give "flat" bonuses, or percentage bonuses, or both, or add levels/"flat"/percentage bonuses to all the research improvements built on the planet, or a combinaison of these.

So, if the player wants/needs more research, he simply builds a research improvement, a research starbase, or/and activates the Research Project.

Simple, more intuitive, works for all conditions.

A "KISS" system ("keep it simple, stupid").

Same for the Economic Stimulus and others.


Why try to implement a solution that will work only in half of the cases.

It's better to solve the problem at the root.

It would not even have existed at first.

"KISS"

Is there a way to mod that ratio?

With the planetary resources that will come with b5 that stack across the entire empire and on large maps, the extra bonuses will skew this situation even more.

 

Actually, I checked, and it is no longer possible at all. The best starbase module gives +20% manufacturing and multiple modules on a single starbase no longer stack. That means you need your planet to be in effected by 15 starbases to break even, and 16 to get an advantage. I'm pretty sure the max you can have is 12, and that requires maxing the +starbase range techs and very carefully setting up those bases.

For the same reason it has been in many 4x games: because unlike research and wealth, there is a point where manufacturing is not useful. Once your planet is fully upgraded for your current tech and you have all the ships you want to pay to support, manufacturing drops to zero value. This is why manufacturing worlds get to be a bit more flexible and why the projects should be tied to manufacturing and not just a flat bonus. The obvious cost should be efficiency. The problem with the current system is that at a certain point it is more efficient to have a split manufacturing/research world then a pure research world AND it is more flexible.

Which half of cases does this not work for?

It doesn't matter how the player arrives to the 300% manufacturing bonuses (being on planet or/and outside planet bonuses), what matters is, when the 300% manufacturing bonuses occurs (the "counter-intuitive moment"), the system becomes unintuitive and misleading to use.

In other words. When the player adjusts the planet production and moves the cursor towards the research area, he expects to have more research in return; why, in certain conditions, he must move the cursor towards the manufacturing area to have more research.


Why not just simply redirect the manufacturing bonuses directly to research and wealth (with penalties), in consistency with the player settings for research and wealth, when there is no improvement and no ship to be built.

The manufacturing slider for planet/ship works already this way. If there is no ship to build, 100% of manufacturing is automatically redirected to the improvement construction. If there is no improvement to build, 100% of manufacturing is automatically redirected to the ship construction. And the player setting is preserved for when there is improvement and ship to be built at the same time.

So, the manufacturing bonuses become a small part of research and wealth bonuses (it's not overpowered), it's entirely automatic (less micromanagement), and the player is not surprised by a misleading process (when he adjusts the planet production, it works as expected).


It was not specifically for your proposal, sorry if you took it for it, but rather for the purpose to demonstrate that simple solutions are often the best and bring a solution that may bring other problems requiring other solutions would only further complicate things.

Basically, "Simple from the start and without adjustment needed later".