Questions and QoL suggestions regarding Late-game Manufacturing / Research over-spill waste, bottlenecks

from GalCiv4 Forums

Hello - in the lategame, you often have enough manufacturing/military/research to complete multiple improvements/ships/technologies (hereafter "IST") within one turn. Instead of giving you multiple IST, it appears to give you 1 IST, and save some of the production towards the next IST. It is less of an issue with planetary improvements and buildings, but the way military can be made to scale with manufacturing makes it quite easy to achieve for ships. The lore text of some of the Galactic Wonders and military / manufacturing boosters imply that they are for constructing in a huge manufacturing hub, but if you make such a hub, you end up wasting huge amounts of production each turn because you're producing far more than any one ship or project costs. I've mostly experienced this on 1.7, but 1.8's change to the way population contributes to such things has made it easier to repeat (you no longer need a either a good core-planet location, or a decent core-planet location AND access to galactic wonders, as citizens [especially synthetics] can do a lot of the heavy lifting).

 

Question: I'm not sure how much any IST overflow stacks over multiple turns, so it'd be nice to know that if possible. Maybe it's not being wasted, but instead infinitely stockpiled, so when I eventually build something like a galactic wonder (or the most expensive dreadnought I can possibly design), all that pent up construction will be released.

 

Quality of Life Ask: Allow multiple ships, buildings, projects, citizens or improvements to be constructed in one turn, working its way down the build queue and then building as much of anything set to repeat at the end of the queue.

 

Research is slightly different, but can suffer from the same issue, most prominent when you purposefully neglect something like planetary invasion techs for a long time. I have little idea where overflow research goes; my hunch is that it contributes to, at least, the next turn's technology choice - could anyone tell me? When you gain research during the turn via artifacts, policies etc. it appears that you can research multiple techs in a turn, but I've not seen it happen just based on raw research power. Regarding my above quality of life ask for ships, buildings, projects, citizens and improvements, it is obvious research cannot be treated the same way, as there is no queue, and an interesting research discount system to interact with.

 

Quality of Life Ask: Insert something truly repeatable into the game to allow you to complete a technology and have the chance to pick a new one if you have the raw research power to over-complete some research. The current 50 control pressure scientists seems a bit steep and unrepeatable for that - maybe a no-cooldown policy costing a lower amount of control, some credits and a Promethium?

 

If the lack of multiple IST in a single turn is a design choice incentivising more core worlds, thus more shipyards, then I hope bringing the research workaround to your attention is helpful. 

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Reply #1 from GalCiv4 Forums Top


Hello - in the lategame, you often have enough manufacturing/military/research to complete multiple improvements/ships/technologies (hereafter "IST") within one turn. Instead of giving you multiple IST, it appears to give you 1 IST, and save some of the production towards the next IST. It is less of an issue with planetary improvements and buildings, but the way military can be made to scale with manufacturing makes it quite easy to achieve for ships. The lore text of some of the Galactic Wonders and military / manufacturing boosters imply that they are for constructing in a huge manufacturing hub, but if you make such a hub, you end up wasting huge amounts of production each turn because you're producing far more than any one ship or project costs. I've mostly experienced this on 1.7, but 1.8's change to the way population contributes to such things has made it easier to repeat (you no longer need a either a good core-planet location, or a decent core-planet location AND access to galactic wonders, as citizens [especially synthetics] can do a lot of the heavy lifting).

 

Question: I'm not sure how much any IST overflow stacks over multiple turns, so it'd be nice to know that if possible. Maybe it's not being wasted, but instead infinitely stockpiled, so when I eventually build something like a galactic wonder (or the most expensive dreadnought I can possibly design), all that pent up construction will be released.

 

Quality of Life Ask: Allow multiple ships, buildings, projects, citizens or improvements to be constructed in one turn, working its way down the build queue and then building as much of anything set to repeat at the end of the queue.

 

Research is slightly different, but can suffer from the same issue, most prominent when you purposefully neglect something like planetary invasion techs for a long time. I have little idea where overflow research goes; my hunch is that it contributes to, at least, the next turn's technology choice - could anyone tell me? When you gain research during the turn via artifacts, policies etc. it appears that you can research multiple techs in a turn, but I've not seen it happen just based on raw research power. Regarding my above quality of life ask for ships, buildings, projects, citizens and improvements, it is obvious research cannot be treated the same way, as there is no queue, and an interesting research discount system to interact with.

 

Quality of Life Ask: Insert something truly repeatable into the game to allow you to complete a technology and have the chance to pick a new one if you have the raw research power to over-complete some research. The current 50 control pressure scientists seems a bit steep and unrepeatable for that - maybe a no-cooldown policy costing a lower amount of control, some credits and a Promethium?

 

If the lack of multiple IST in a single turn is a design choice incentivising more core worlds, thus more shipyards, then I hope bringing the research workaround to your attention is helpful. 

This has been discussed many times with no consensus either way the main concern is balance and this being something the AI might not handle making it an exploit by the player.

Reply #2 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I would take the reverse option to this issue, do not stockpile manufacturing credits, slow down the production and research. Even on "very slow" I am still producing ships in one turn and getting research done in 2 in the latter part of the mid game. I am having research done in 3 to 5 in the early game. Way too fast, the early techs are just speed bumps into the later ones. On marathon speeds I want to enjoy the early and mid-game as long as possible, not rush my way into the slug fest and repetitive clicking of the later game, by then I usually just quit and start over once a win is assured.

So, my take is slow it down significantly, make research hard to get with eureka moments that mean something and make manufacturing a capital ship feel like something special, a dreadnought should take several months to a year to produce on a specialized manufacturing core world, but when that sucker sails, make it count! A fleet should have one or 2 massive dreadnoughts, a carrier, a handful of battleships, screens of cruisers and destroyers all with their specialized jobs. Give me some cloaked ships at some point also, make destroyers capable of detecting them. Fighters belong on carriers and Frigates are small general-purpose ships useful for near planet and StarBase defense. Invasion fleets can be specialized by including planet bombardment Battleships and troop transports. This however should cost a ton of credits to support and a massive industrial complex to produce. A planet should not be able to produce a massive fleet by itself in a dozen turns.

 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting Wotan1a, reply 2

I would take the reverse option to this issue, do not stockpile manufacturing credits, slow down the production and research. Even on "very slow" I am still producing ships in one turn and getting research done in 2 in the latter part of the mid game. I am having research done in 3 to 5 in the early game. Way too fast, the early techs are just speed bumps into the later ones. On marathon speeds I want to enjoy the early and mid-game as long as possible, not rush my way into the slug fest and repetitive clicking of the later game, by then I usually just quit and start over once a win is assured.

So, my take is slow it down significantly, make research hard to get with eureka moments that mean something and make manufacturing a capital ship feel like something special, a dreadnought should take several months to a year to produce on a specialized manufacturing core world, but when that sucker sails, make it count! A fleet should have one or 2 massive dreadnoughts, a carrier, a handful of battleships, screens of cruisers and destroyers all with their specialized jobs. Give me some cloaked ships at some point also, make destroyers capable of detecting them. Fighters belong on carriers and Frigates are small general-purpose ships useful for near planet and StarBase defense. Invasion fleets can be specialized by including planet bombardment Battleships and troop transports. This however should cost a ton of credits to support and a massive industrial complex to produce. A planet should not be able to produce a massive fleet by itself in a dozen turns.

 

Agree with you have hesitated to voice this myself but have in Discord where total number of ships are concerned. Know at least one long time poster there who Maxs production to extreme levels. 

On reflection I believe the Hexes having adjacency may be a big part of the problem, maybe the only bonuses on the hexes should be the specials and all the "normal" hexes are just for placing buildings.

 

Reply #4 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

I'm certain Wotan1a's issue with speed is one that's not very relevant to this hard cap on number of things per turn you can push through; as they themselves mentioned, it currently (with the cap), feels like you speed through research and construction, so as a technique it's obviously utterly worthless at providing the pace they're wanting.

 

Desired speed of game and impact of different ship classes is a separate issue, ironically one that is negatively affected by the current cap; if you want balanced fleets, you end up wasting a lot of production on smaller ships, so if you want to maximise combat power production over time (the typical war and pre-war-time position), you're currently incentivised to build the biggest ship you can build in one turn and nothing smaller.

 

Gypsy2299's comment on balance and the ai not being able to handle it is interesting; this would appear to mean the the ai never uses queues as can only cope with one thing in for production at a time, and also never rushes, or uses tech-based artifacts, as this would also require multiple items to be chosen in a turn - is this the case? Otherwise there seems to be no particular reason the AI should be unable to iterate mid-turn post-completed construction if it is able to do so when it rushes or uses research boosting event triggers or artifacts or other mid-turn decisions. 

Reply #5 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Quoting aclegg, reply 4

I'm certain Wotan1a's issue with speed is one that's not very relevant to this hard cap on number of things per turn you can push through; as they themselves mentioned, it currently (with the cap), feels like you speed through research and construction, so as a technique it's obviously utterly worthless at providing the pace they're wanting.

 

You are correct that there are two issues being conflated in my reply however I do believe they are relevant. My response indicates that instead of going the route of being able to push multiple ships in one turn to use the manufacturing credits available I would prefer to see the cost of producing those ships increased significantly so that even the late game now requires several turns, in some cases months or years, to produce a capital ship. I would also like to see research slowed down significantly from its current speed, at least when the option to slow it down is selected. The payout being that ships and research should be more meaningful when attained.

I then go into a description of my preferred values and roles for fleet ships and that may have confused the issue. Apologies for that.

Reply #6 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

No problem! I agree with your fleet-construction pacing and composition ideas, and I think that being able to push multiple small ships a turn helps the composition portion of the idea, without harming the pacing portion. I think it's a both/and not an either or situation, as the multiple item proposal is likely to be part of the solution to move things closer to your preference.