Two small fixes for the next patch perhaps

[Buttons840]

We're talking at cross purposes! It's not that I don't understand why one might want always to run at the optimum. What I don't understand is why one would want a game which is supposed to be about there never being one single optimum path in any given situation, to enforce one such 'optimal' path upon everyone. With automated power management, why would anyone ever do anything other than just build half a dozen reactors at every planet and let the algorithm take care of it? And if everyone does that, why have to do it at all? Just make it all automatic. Roll it into a function of the Command Station. Slippery slope.

Why wouldn't you micro manage reactors?  I'd like to hear a potential lore from the game explaining this.  Like, "were just too busy fighting the AI to pause time and manager our reactors."

[keith.lamothe]

Why wouldn't you micro manage reactors?  I'd like to hear a potential lore from the game explaining this.  Like, "were just too busy fighting the AI to pause time and manager our reactors."

If you mean why players wouldn't do the micro, it's because many don't find it fun. 

If you mean why the game doesn't do it for you, in in-game-lore terms then there's no reasonable explanation.  Just as there's no reasonable explanation why the ships are not doing ultra-optimal auto-kiting and auto-targeting: those computations are enough to bog down a modern machine to manage 10,000 ships, but if each ship had a computer of equivalent power to one of our modern computers (presumably not difficult), it could easily do a _ton_ of automated decisions to really eke the maximum performance out of its range envelope and speed and so on. 

The game does offer a decent in-game explanation why the _strategy_ level doesn't play itself: you don't trust high-level AIs very much anymore.  But not a lot of explanation why they aren't smarter on the tactical level (they're smarter than they are in most other RTS's, but there's still tons of stuff they aren't doing).

[BobTheJanitor]

My power strategy is just to build more reactors as I need them. I pretty much never have power issues, and I don't bother to optimize at all. This may mean that I'm playing a bit below my skill level, but it's still fun so I'm not bothered. If I find that I'm straining my power reserves, I'll just build extra reactors on worlds that I already have, until I can conquer a few more and stretch my power production over those worlds. I guess that means that I prefer to transfer the power problem into a AIP problem, which is fine with me. I'd rather be defending bigger waves due to more aggressive expansion than fiddling with managing scant power resources. If I find that I have way too much power, frankly I just ignore it. I figure it will fill out in time, or I'll go look for a golem or something. Fiddling with offlining reactors just never occurs to me as something to do with my time. So this whole problem doesn't bother me too much.

One thing I would be sad about, and that would be rolling power production into command stations and making it a static number. That would take away the option of building extra, inefficient reactors if I need them in a pinch. Then you're basically making total power equal to total number of worlds conquered times the power output of a command station, with no fiddling allowed. That doesn't sound like much fun to me.

[jordot42]

As a man who plays only single-player, I have no problem with the present system.  I pause frequently anyway, so it's no problem to pause the game then adjust

 my reactors using the reactor-selection thing at the bottom of the galaxy screen (I've done that once or twice).

possibly scrape an power-expensive unit if that isn't feasible.

This is the main problem I see with this approach: right now the pause-and-fiddle phase typically involves putting a bunch of stuff in low power mode.  If low-power-mode no longer decreases energy cost, then you actually have to _scrap_ stuff to get your energy cost down.  On one hand that's appealing because there's higher cost to the decision... but it's not sounding like a good thing for player fun.

Though I'm curious to hear what others think.

I don't like the thought of having to scrap my ships to recover energy.  I like to imagine that people actually pilot the ships (I know they don't storywise, but it's my

game, so hey).  Ordering them to self-destruct seems...inhumane to me.

[Nalgas]

I don't like the thought of having to scrap my ships to recover energy.  I like to imagine that people actually pilot the ships (I know they don't storywise, but it's my game, so hey).  Ordering them to self-destruct seems...inhumane to me.

I don't really like the idea of scrapping them to recover energy, but that's just because the ones that use lots of energy take so much time to build in the first place.

I totally don't care about scrapping them for other reasons.  Ships have engine damage and are lagging behind the group and there are no engineers handy?  BALEETED!  They're on the wrong side of the galaxy, and it'd be faster to just rebuild them where I need them rather than schlep them over there in transports?  Sorry, guys, but you're off the team.  I clearly have very little personal attachment to my spaceships, other than the ones that I can't replace (stuff out of Zenith Reserves, Golems, etc.).  Heh.

As far as the actual topic, I'm sort of in the middle.  I do kind of half-assedly manage my energy reactors, but not to the extent that I run around toggling the pause key after each ship is built and turning reactors on and off one at a time.  I tend to keep around 20-50k extra energy available, but if I'm busy with other stuff going on, I will totally ignore that side of things, especially in Fallen Spire games, where I end up with absurd income whether I intend to or not.

Do I like figuring out the "best" way to do things?  Sure.  I'd rather have fun playing the game, though, and if I wanted to spend the entire time micromanaging everything and constantly clicking on things I'd go play StarCraft.  I'm ok with being inefficient for a few minutes and having 400k energy going to waste after getting a shiny new Zenith Power Generator while I'm doing other things until a lull in the action where I can rearrange my economy.

I very agree with the original post that started this thread, but no one disagrees with that.  Heh.  As far as the rest of it, I think I'm going to stop trying to figure out what to say about it for the moment, because I read this entire thing straight through, and I haven't digested it all yet.  I do agree that having more options instead of only a single good one (like it is now) would be a better solution, at least.  I started doing the "build mk1/2/3 reactor on all planets, enable as needed" thing long, long ago, too, because it just doesn't make sense not to.

[Hearteater]

However, if your energy goes negative all your units start receiving some penalty.  Half damage from units, force fields take double damage, tractors hold only half as many targets, gravity turrets only slow half as much, docks and engineers build half as fast.

I don't think we'd be willing to go in for that kind of added complexity, both for the player and code-wise.

It could be as simple as just -25% damage dealt by your units and nothing else.  Code-wise maybe put it in the routines for handling weapons vs hull damage multiplication which is probably pretty centralized.  That's enough of a deterrent that no one is going to want to ignore power generation completely, but it should be pretty easy to grasp for players, and hopefully not terribly hard to add in code.

possibly scrape an power-expensive unit if that isn't feasible.

This is the main problem I see with this approach: right now the pause-and-fiddle phase typically involves putting a bunch of stuff in low power mode.  If low-power-mode no longer decreases energy cost, then you actually have to _scrap_ stuff to get your energy cost down.  On one hand that's appealing because there's higher cost to the decision... but it's not sounding like a good thing for player fun.

Scrapping stuff would be a last resort for when you cannot afford the time or don't have the resources to build a reactor.  But an option to make scrapping units even more unlikely even during large power lose would be an Emergency Reactor.  A Cap of 3, this is an expensive unit to build.  It does nothing (it is powered down) until your power goes negative at which point it flips on providing a large power boost (maybe 150-250k).  But it is self-destructive like a golem, so it requires engineers and a good chunk of M+C to keep it turned on.  Once it isn't needed, it automatically turns itself back off.  Also, give it the reduced efficiency for stacking it in a single system.

Now you need to pick 3 really safe system to house your power backup (assuming you think you need all three) and as long as those systems don't fall, you shouldn't need to scrap anything if you run out of power.  Running out of power would be bad because it would hurt your M+C income heavily though.

- For all command stations add an amount to their energy output equal to the current energy reactor I + II + III.

I'd prefer not to see this happen, because I think the choice of where to build reactors is good.  I'm not sure this is currently the case however.  I think I'd prefer if the Mark III was the flat-out best but hard to defend (cannot be placed under force shields and slow to build?), Mark I was a really trashy front-line expendable type reactor (quick and cheap to build, but not very efficient), and Mark II was something in the middle.  That would mean instead of # of planets = power generation, the better I can defend my planets the more power I can generate.  Which is I think a better model than power = command centers.

[keith.lamothe]

It could be as simple as just -25% damage dealt by your units and nothing else.

Yea, that alone would be way more complexity than we'd be willing to add just for this issue.  Code-wise it is centralized but that's just a huge change to the game, we don't do ship-type-wide or civ-wide multipliers for a bunch of reasons.

Scrapping stuff would be a last resort for when you cannot afford the time or don't have the resources to build a reactor.  But an option to make scrapping units even more unlikely even during large power lose would be an Emergency Reactor.  A Cap of 3, this is an expensive unit to build.  It does nothing (it is powered down) until your power goes negative at which point it flips on providing a large power boost (maybe 150-250k).  But it is self-destructive like a golem, so it requires engineers and a good chunk of M+C to keep it turned on.  Once it isn't needed, it automatically turns itself back off.  Also, give it the reduced efficiency for stacking it in a single system.

That's just adding more units the equation though, more complexity.  I don't want to reduce the "meat" (which something like rolling power into command stations would do), but I'm not looking to add chunks either.  I'm trying to maintain roughly the same complexity.

- For all command stations add an amount to their energy output equal to the current energy reactor I + II + III.

I'd prefer not to see this happen, because I think the choice of where to build reactors is good.

Yea, I think this is a good place for some good choices, and that a relatively simple solution can bring it back from the current of imbalance that promotes just building all marks of energy reactor on all planets. 

[Nalgas]

While we're on the subject, why are mk1 and mk2 reactors so close in efficiency, with mk3 significantly worse, and why are their efficiencies out of order (2 > 1 > 3)?  I'm used to it by now after playing for a while, but it was very, very non-obvious at first.  I didn't notice those details for the first couple games I played, and I don't think anyone I play with noticed at all until I pointed it out to them, either (I'm the most turtly, analytical one of the group, so I end up poking around at things like that while they deal with the business of actually blowing the AI up).

[keith.lamothe]

While we're on the subject, why are mk1 and mk2 reactors so close in efficiency, with mk3 significantly worse, and why are their efficiencies out of order (2 > 1 > 3)?

They're in ascending order of output, and the mkIII is particularly inefficient because it  has the highest output; if you can power everything off mkIIs (which takes more territory or a ZPG or whatever) you're much better off; it wouldn't be a big deal the efficiency of the mkI were changed to be slightly higher than the mkII, but it wouldn't make a big positive difference either.

[Nalgas]

Well, yeah, obviously they're in order of energy output.  I leave all the mk1 and mk2 reactors on all the time and just twiddle the mk3 ones on and off as needed, because, as has already come up repeatedly (over and over), that is the One True Way to play the game efficiently (or something).

I was just wondering if there was some reason they ended up with the relative efficiency levels they have or if it was just arbitrary (other than mk3 being lower intentionally), because it's always kind of bugged me that it doesn't really fit any sort of obvious curve.  Heh.

[Philo]

Not much new has come up. But, I just want clarification.

At Cyborg, what do you mean when you say optimizing power usage? (not your exact words maybe) . Is it keeping the power level close to zero, 5000, 10 000, 20 000 ? If you're trying to optimize it to keep close to zero at all times then yeah, that's one hell of a lot of microing to do, and you need to chill. But I'll let you answer that question first.
I usually micro so I have around 5-20 000 power. Anything between that and I'm good. And anything below that line imo is not even much resources gained by microing around.

I usually have to only fiddle with the reactors when I get surprised and the attack goes deep in to my territory. And, when I start building fortresses. Other than that turning one reactor on/off usually doesn't take more than 10 seconds.

[keith.lamothe]

I was just wondering if there was some reason they ended up with the relative efficiency levels they have or if it was just arbitrary (other than mk3 being lower intentionally), because it's always kind of bugged me that it doesn't really fit any sort of obvious curve.  Heh.

If I were the only player I'd have changed it to have the mkI as more efficient than the mkII.  But there are lots of reasons you don't want me to make changes on that premise

[Cyborg]

Not much new has come up. But, I just want clarification.

At Cyborg, what do you mean when you say optimizing power usage? (not your exact words maybe) . Is it keeping the power level close to zero, 5000, 10 000, 20 000 ? If you're trying to optimize it to keep close to zero at all times then yeah, that's one hell of a lot of microing to do, and you need to chill.

And here is where you get it wrong. It's not about keeping the power level close to zero. In fact, that is the wrong way to optimize. I'm a little irritated at the outrage that's directed at my observation when you clearly don't understand what I'm talking about, especially when I am completely correct about this being deterministic by a small child. Here is the chart, once again:

metal	Crystal	power	Rate(power per resource)
2	2	5000	1250
15	15	40,000	1333
40	40	80,000	1000

If your power bill is 80,000, you need to come up with a way that involves turning reactors on and off to pay that bill. How do you do it?

A novice player may just turn on the Mark three reactor. This would be incorrect. Why? Because the efficiency rating is the lowest on the chart, meaning you are spending 40/40. I echo the other poster's concern that the efficiencies are unintuitive, not that it matters much because there's only three options and there's only one right answer anyways.

The answer is to turn on two Mark 2 reactors. You would then be spending 30/30. At the end of the time unit, the bill is paid no matter the order you turn on reactors, but one way is clearly better than the other, and it is very obvious at that. If you were to make it an elementary school word problem, select the least amount of coins to add up to one dollar.

So, my complaint here is that the order in which you turn them on is mindnumbing, simpleminded, and forces you to pause the game. There is no other right answer. There is only one right way to do it. I know that must seem incredibly abrasive, how could this person claim there is only one way to do something? But alas, there is only one right way because every other way is always going to be less efficient. Sucks, but it's true, and I guess Keith will solve it at some point to involve more abstract pros and cons besides only efficiency. If you hate the fact that there is only one answer to the problem, then you should be in favor of solving the problem or making it a nonfactor completely in the way I suggested.

I will also reiterate my point that allowing you to autobuild reactors everywhere makes the game easy for you to do something that is the obvious player behavior. I'm asking for the same thing you are- make the obvious behavior easy to do. If you are for auto building, if you are for automatic manufactories, there's no reason you should be against the same easy answer here.

=======

Keith I think you bring up a good point with the knowledge raiding. The game changed a lot when you had to have supply to get knowledge. It was a point in the game where most of the players realized that the one true path was to just amass a huge army by researching everything you need until you have out-produced and out-teched the AI. It was indeed lame, and I supported that change. However, I think this affected the way reactors work. Why? Because reactors are the one variable that ties together army size and infrastructure. You just can't create one giant ball of units if you are restricted on your power requirements. However, the lax rules around power has made it so that power really isn't all that complicated. It's just annoying. That's all it is, a mosquito bite on the side of the player. It doesn't truly limit you, it doesn't affect the way you play, you just have to toggle them on and off (therein lies my annoyance). On top of that, it just slows the game down with resource deductions, which maybe you don't care about but optimizing players will.

So if we were to get back to making power a limiting factor on the army AND infrastructure you can have going at once, if that's what it's meant to do, then we should explain why unit caps are insufficient. If it was meant to prevent the player from researching a whole bunch of stuff and building everything at once, I think you already solved that problem with knowledge raiding nerfs.

[keith.lamothe]

So if we were to get back to making power a limiting factor on the army AND infrastructure you can have going at once, if that's what it's meant to do, then we should explain why unit caps are insufficient.

1) Some units cost a lot of knowledge, some units cost a lot of energy (forts, etc), some units cost a lot of m+c, some both, etc.  The unit caps serve the separate purpose of bounding the choice of how many you build.
2) Energy is one of the drivers for getting more territory.  So is knowledge, but it's a little "softer" due to k-raiding and a variety of ways of getting more units without spending knowledge (adv factories, fabricators, golems, mercenaries, etc).
3) Energy is one of the drivers for _keeping_ territory, whereas with knowledge you can let the planet go as soon as you have the k.

If it was meant to prevent the player from researching a whole bunch of stuff and building everything at once, I think you already solved that problem with knowledge raiding nerfs.

The k-raiding nerfs did help there, but energy and knowledge serve different roles; the first basically works through ship caps and availability, the second through total force costs and territorial requirements.

[Cyborg]

1) Some units cost a lot of knowledge, some units cost a lot of energy (forts, etc), some units cost a lot of m+c, some both, etc.  The unit caps serve the separate purpose of bounding the choice of how many you build.

Okay, but not really a big deal if you can build reactors everywhere, including on your teammates' planets, and multiple reactors if you need it. It's a soft barrier, at best.

2) Energy is one of the drivers for getting more territory.  So is knowledge, but it's a little "softer" due to k-raiding and a variety of ways of getting more units without spending knowledge (adv factories, fabricators, golems, mercenaries, etc).

Also a soft barrier. For the first two or three planets it might be important, but after a few hours goes by it's basically forgotten.

3) Energy is one of the drivers for _keeping_ territory, whereas with knowledge you can let the planet go as soon as you have the k.

Depending on how many planets you lose I guess. During the spire campaign, maybe a bigger deal.

Could we incentivize/disincentive those factors in a more meaningful way? I agree that what you mentioned should exist, but I don't think the reactors accomplish any of that, given with how many we can create.