Military factories vs. industrial factories
In Beta 5, factories come in two different models. Industrial factories are factories producing goods which are then sold thus making money in a transparent manner for the user. Military factories allow to construct turrets and ships.
This quite simple design - separation of factories between two kinds - sounds logical at first: the machines required to produce ships are obviously not the same as the ones producing clothing, for instance. However it lead to numerous flaws.
Indeed, in war time, everyone would love to have more military factories to build ships faster, whereas in peace time, military factories only represent a cost and seldom produce anything.
Moreover some players have the (bad?) habit of dedicating some planets to industrial production and some others to military production. This leads to the painful “military planet to industrial planet conversion” (and vice versa) process. Difficulties here are linked with the limit on the number of factories which can be destroyed in 24h, limit which was added to prevent players from “raping” planets they took from other players in war time.
We’ve thought about it for some time and came to one simple conclusion. What are factories? Well, mainly buildings with more or less specialised machinery. Transforming an industrial factory into a military factory would only require replacing part of the equipment.
Therefore in Beta 6, there won’t be distinct buildings for military and industrial factories. You will get to build factories - which will come with several upgrades depending on technologies. Once built, factories will be assigned a building task, either military or industrial. Transforming a military factory into an industrial factory and vice versa will only take time and require to pay a fee corresponding to the change of equipment, and depending on the upgrade level of the factory.
What do you think of the proposed solution to the exposed problem?
What kind of upgrades can you think of for factories?
Cyliis:
So, say I have 100 factories. I can then set 60 to be industrial, and 40 to military? If that’s the case, I can see how it would help with said problems. It is more realistic, though it does remove the strategy involved in building how many factories you need correctly.
February 17, 2008, 1:09 pmTSeeker:
Re: your question, yes, that’s what we meant.
Well, switching from one type to the other will not be instantaneous either, so the strategy shifts to “how many of each should I keep under which circumstances, knowing it might have to change relatively fast in some cases?”
February 17, 2008, 1:10 pmBuiltom:
Will factories also house research labs? Or will they be a stand-alone building/not require a building? I can see the factories being split between the three types (Industrial, Military and Research), and specifying what will be in each one.
Whether you get to choose what is in each factory on an individual basis, or in blocks of ten, or as a collective should be optional.
February 17, 2008, 2:14 pmju:
The idea with Beta 6 is that you won’t only need to get a new tech with a fixed implementation price when it will come to techs leading to buildings. For instance we now have hospitals as a technology. You implement it and you have hospitals on all your planets.
February 17, 2008, 2:20 pmIn Beta 6 all techs of this kind will only provide you access to buildings you’ll actually have to build on planets, the same way we now build factories and turrets. Research buildings are merely one category of buildings you’ll have the possibility to build and they’ll be independent of factories.
We’ll post something more precise around buildings later on, once we are clearer on the complete list of buildings and construction / destruction process and so on…
Lemorsa:
I would just worry that if you have too many building types, that it would take too long to keep those all updated. Maybe if more vague labels were used, for example: public facilities. That could cover the Libraries and etc… Just a thought.
February 17, 2008, 11:52 pmBuiltom:
Well the problem of having too many building types is just have them fit into catagories: with each sub-catagory able to be managed either as a while or you could go inside and control it on a more individual basis.
February 18, 2008, 5:10 amCyliis:
Will population have such a strong influence in B6? Or will construction potential be more based on living and building space, along with technologies researched?
Also, possibly using a scriptable interface, you could set a certain ratio that you would like to use over all of your planets (as empire sizes will be considerably larger) and it will just auto-build whenever stipulations are met. An auto-build option would have to be selected in order for this to work, otherwise you might be spending money that you would like to use for other purposes.
February 18, 2008, 6:02 amju:
@Lemorsa
The idea is to have “scriptable” build queue. You will just have to say: “update all buildings of type A1 to type A2 on all planets, giving priority to planets of category z” to have them automatically updates when the required resources will be available. It then shouldn’t be too time consuming.
@Builtom
The idea is exactly that: allow macro-management with a quick builder but also fine grain management on a per planet basis if you want to spend more time online and be more efficient (within limits of course).
@Cyliis
It should have a strong influence. Population builds. Population maintain buildings. Population researches. That’s a topic called employment we should talk about at some point.
As for the kind of scripting you suggest i don’t know yet but it could be interesting. We haven’t gone far enough on the scripting side of things to decide much around this topic.
PS: in beta 6 context, when we talk of scripting actions, it will be with an interface similar to the beta 5 quick builder of course and not actually writing code.
February 18, 2008, 9:32 amLemorsa:
oh really, good, i like that… =)
February 18, 2008, 5:15 pmwiles9:
Is it going to make a difference??
Destoying A , building B
Is that not the same as: Removing A, Replacing with B
Both take time, both take money.. I am not really convinced yet. Hopefully catch you on IRC to discuss. I know its not 100% the same, but is it a solution?
Wee Brainstorm: Factories also process ore/metals all that stuff into useable materials. Which in turn get used for building Ships. Would making Industrial factories have the option of whether the government sell the materials for trade/populations needs purposes Or to store the materials for use in processing of War ships.
They make no profit if the material is stored for war. There is also no return, building the ships still costs money. And having a set amount of mil factories is still needed. But the supplies are what counts.
Because of the ’space’ a planet only has, it can only house a set number of mil and indus factories. A player needs both, and more industrial to feed the military.
Would that help eliminate whoring either? What about for players that like to have mil planets. Make it that this works, but you gotta get the materials there somehow, and guess what? Transport costs money
March 13, 2008, 12:13 pmTSeeker:
@Wiles
You don’t actually destroy/build/change any buildings to shift from military to industrial production and vice-versa. The way it works is that you have generic factories which produce “work units”; each planet has a ratio (which is set by the player) which indicates how many of these work units are assigned to financial production and how many are assigned to military production. The ratio doesn’t change instantly - the more work units the planet produces, the longer it takes to reach the desired ratio. Work units assigned to military production go to waste if nothing is being constructed.
Now, regarding destroying / constructing / upgrading buildings - if you have too many factory jobs, some of the workers assigned to construction will be reassigned to factory jobs, which means that everything related to construction gets slower if you are “factory whoring”.
Replacing is not the same as destroying then rebuilding, as you don’t waste the building’s effects during the replacement.
Factories don’t process resources - mines do. However, they employ people just like factories do (most buildings employ people).
March 13, 2008, 12:44 pmwiles9:
ahh again. Cool
March 13, 2008, 1:05 pm