Resdesigning RCI

[ptarth]

Reported Condition Indices (RCI) are a big part of the game. However, RCI has also been rather buggy and unsatisfying. It was hard to know what it was, what it did, and how to change it effectively. Many patches have made to address this, and things are better. However, I'm still unsatisfied. From the issues polls we can acknowledge that a large number of players are also unsatisfied. Further, the efforts by the devs to address RCI are very puzzling to me (and I'm assuming others, although I have no explicit data), they seem to repeatedly miss the problem with the mechanic. This suggests that either I'm not seeing what they are seeing, or they aren't seeing what I'm seeing. Resolving this will help me enjoy tLF or have the devs improve tLF, a win-win situation.

However, I'm just one guy, and so I don't want to post an 20,000 word script about how RCI is wrong and I'm the best thing ever. Instead, I'll do a poll, and get everyone else to post their own 5,000 word scripts about how RCI is wrong. As always, words often make it harder to understand an issue, so I'm going to try to distill the immediate problems I recognize, but not list my solutions. I don't want to bias others with my own thoughts. So, if you would, answer the poll, then take a minute without reading anything else, to list the problems that you see with RCI and (separately) some solutions to those problems. Then post them. Maybe we can figure this out together.

[ptarth]

The Problems that I can recognize

• The range of RCI values are too large.
• It was previously bound (softly) between 100 & -100.
• It was converted to be boundless (values > 20k, 100k have been notice quite often).
• The entire system wasn't updated, so some parts still are using the same 100/-100 range for balance.


• The Player cannot effectively improve RCI.
• The Player can use Dispatch mission to move RCI by 1 per month.
• With even a small deviation of -200, that is too much to reasonable do much about.
• Some races offer 5, 20, 40 unit swings, but that's expensive, and still not really manageable.


• RCI trends are too small.
• An active RCI trend moves the RCI by .02? per month (It's been a while and its obnoxious to check).


• The Races cannot effectively improve RCI.
• Buildings moves the RCI by 0.001/.02? per month.


• The scale of the effects of RCI are inconsistent.
• RCI gives minor bonuses when positive (racial influence, production, technology, birthrate, etc)
• RCI gives major penalties when it goes negative especially when it hits the RNG and goes down to -10k(e.g., everyone dies).


• With concerted effort RCI can be made so negative, it will effectively never get better.
• Destroying a single building can reduce an RCI by 40.
• Using a single negative dispatch can drop RCI by 40.
• That's x40 more effective than the dispatch and x4000 more effective than monthly passives.
• Building a University and then immediately destroying it can put you centuries behind in RCI.


• The RNG dominates, Events are too powerful.
• A doctor shortage can effectively destroy a race.
• A flood can kill 80% of the people on the planet and every single soldier.


• No monthly change summary.
• There is no available summed monthly change (past, current, or predicted).
• You have to add up all of the available bonuses or write down the RCI and subtract from the new month.
• You should have this available on roll-over tooltip from the solar system view and in the planetary view.


• Does RCI do anything other than precipitate planet destroying disaster?
• I'm still not sure that RCI is important other than getting it to be positive on everything (if reasonable).
• The RNG swings are huge, but the gains don't seem to that useful compared to other things you could be doing.

I've talked enough. If I'm on to something, we'll see some more posts on the topic and after some discussion I'll throw up some ideas on how to fix things from how I see it. If I'm crazy. I'll go be quiet in the corner.

[ptarth]

History of RCI
Levels of RCI defined in the localized language file

<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad9">[#f76664]Scarytown[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad8">[#f76664]Apocalyptic[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad7">[#f76664]Pandemonium[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad6">[#f76664]Chaos[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad5">[#f76664]Abominable[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad4">[#f76664]Nightmarish[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad3">[#f76664]Horrible[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad2">[#f68785]Awful[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Bad1">[#f7a5a3]Bad[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good1">[#cccccc]Mediocre[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good2">[#cdddfd]Decent[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good3">[#9bd1ff]Good[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good4">[#86b1ff]Great[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good5">[#86b1ff]Awesome[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good6">[#86b1ff]Spectacular[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good7">[#86b1ff]Illustrious[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good8">[#86b1ff]Fabled[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good9">[#86b1ff]Mythical[#ffffff]</ln>
<ln id="RCIRangeType_Good10">[#86b1ff]Legendary[#ffffff]</ln>

Patch Note History of RCI
I didn't add entries relating to display issues since they aren't important for understanding RCI.

1.022
Fixed a bug where the rci-explanation-tooltip logic for the effect of Econ on aramda-construction-rate and building-construction-rate was assuming a "compatibility" impact instead of the actual "quarter-compatibiltiy" (a reduced effect, relatively) logic used in the real math.
Thanks to UnfriendlyBG for the report.

1.020
If the RCI value of any planet is lower than -2500, then 100m of the populace will leave to form a new pirate base, and the RCI value in question will improve by 100.
Public Order is one exception -- when this happens, 300m population leaves and forms 3 pirate bases.
For all of these, there must be more than 100m population per pirate base for them to actually form, naturally.

1.019
The RCI shifts from the following types of events are now a bit heavier:
Housing Boom
Repair Parts Shortage
General Rise In Suicide Rate
Mass Riots
Mass Brawls

1.017
RCI-improving dispatch influence-lost-with-enemies-of-client from 1 per month => 0.05 per month. The 1 had been intentional back before the benefit was changed to 0.2 per month.
Thanks to Ragwortshire for the suggestion.

Four new quests, all in the same vein, have been added for most of the races except the Skylaxians and the Andors. These particular quests task you with punching a hole in the military defenses surrounding a planet that has a high RCI value on behalf of a race with a very low RCI value of the same type. The client race winds up stealing RCI from the second, and influences and attitudes shift at the same time. You also gain double credit reward for this particular fight.

1.016
Added a new race action: Collaborate On Self Improvement.
Only happens when a race and some of its friends have really poor planetary conditions (at least one RCI bar < -100 somewhere), and gradually improves the RCI of all involved.

1.013
The RCI-influencing buildings and techs are now 8x more effective than before, and the general RCI trends are now 5x more effective than before. Since the changes in 1.010, they have indeed been too weak rather than too strong. Hopefully this is a better middle-ground, but we'll see how it feels.
Thanks to Warpstorm and Histidine for reporting.
One of the large benefits of being inside the federation is that federation planets get RCI boosts when their values are very negative. The ministry provides more RCI depending on how negative the RCI is:
6 per month when less than -2000 5 per month when less than -1500 4 per month when less than -1000 3 per month when less than -750 2 per month when less than -500 1 per month when less than -250 0.5 per month when less than -100
This logic was there, but invisible and inverted, in the prior version of the game. Being invisible was definitely not good at all, but all of the negative signs were inverted such that you'd always get +6 per month if you were in the federation and had less than 2000 RCI (goodness).
Thanks to Histidine, ptarth, and genrtul for reporting.

1.010
Previously, for every 1 Environmental RCI above 50 that a race had, they would gain 0.1 compatibility with their planet.
Now that has been dropped to 0.02, since the RCI values vary upwards so much higher nowadays.
Thanks to nas1m for a report that helped us find this.
Previously, if a planet's Environmental RCI was below 0, then it would lose planetary compatibility VERY fast until it hit 0.1 total compatibility, or -100 RCI, whichever came first. Then it would actually go bonkers and possibly increase; the math was still assuming that -100 was the lowest RCI could go, which hasn't been true for a long while now.
Now it works more like the positive environmental RCI does. For every Environmental RCI below 0, it loses 0.02 compatibility, until it hits 0.1 total compatibility, below which it will not go.
Thanks to nas1m for a report that helped us find this.
Previously, the environmental RCI impact on planetary compatibility was not mentioned in the tooltips for either the environmental RCI or the planetary compability. Whoops.
Thanks to nas1m for reporting.
Improvements To The Speed Of RCI Fluctuations
The following things now happen a tenth as fast:
Natural RCI trends (positive or negative).
The monthly impact of buildings on increasing RCI values, and the monthly impact of attitude buildings in general.
Monthly RCI value gains from technologies.
In general, some of the "periodic boosts to RCI" from techs were just insanely too powerful. Those have been converted into the more modest monthly gains format.
The following things now happen a twentieth as fast:
The rate at which RCI values change during diseases, and the rate at which population dies during diseases.
The amount that RCI bars are affected during combat at a planet.
RCI shifts during housing booms.
RCI shifts during repair parts shortages.
RCI shifts from rise in suicide rates, mass riots, mass brawls, flooding, and shortages of doctors.
RCI gains from techs and buildings no longer improve a planet anymore if that planet has already reached 2000 RCI for that stat.
The economic RCI gains from destroying enemy fleets has been removed (it was one per armada, before).
If an RCI bar is ever above 2300 in value (unlikely now, but still), then it will drop in value by 1 per month. There is still no absolute cap, but this creates a soft cap.

1.007
The amount of Economic RCI gain from trade routes is now 1/20th as high as it used to be, and the amount of attitude gain is now 1/10th as high as before.

1.006
There are eight new race-specific political deals for joining the federation that involve having absolutely abysmal (-2000) RCI values in a specific category (each race has a different category). In these deals, the desperation of the race is such that there is very little influence required on your part (-200 or better), and the Credit cost is also quite low.
Universities no longer have such a huge RCI hit when sabotaged.
Thanks to Histidine for reporting.
When a race is in the federation and has a really bad RCI value (less than 100), then it automatically increases that value a bit every month, thanks to being in the federation. Yay team! The more negative it is, the faster it increases, and it gradually slows down as it moves from -2000 or lower to -100.

1.003
When planets are taken over in the solar map, recent rule shifts had made it so that they would be increasingly bad off on RCI values. However, this was something that really could make those planets unrecoverably bad off. Now the RCI values are all reset to between -10 and 0 when a planet changes hands (except via resistance fighters, where it doesn't change at all).
Thanks to Gwan Solo, Geldon, and Raide for reporting.

1.002
Now, for each 1 million population that dies in a bombardment or invasion, a planet has a 10% chance (per million population lost) of losing 1 point in an RCI category (econ, environmental, medical, order) that is currently greater than zero. This helps the attackers make some kind of progress even when being held off by a very large population, etc.

1.0 Release
RCI Value Improvements
Mind Reading no longer prevents negative RCI public order trends, it only doubles the positive ones.
All the various techs and buildings that previously caused either "floors" to be set on RCI values, or which caused a "permanent boost" to RCI values, now just provide a small monthly income to RCI instead. RCI now is internally stored as a floating point number, so this is possible to do much smaller increments, which is very useful for not making things get insane.
Why the shift? Well, some planets were just getting absolutely nuts out of the ranges we had originally desired them to be in, and while that is entertaining to a point it also causes some balance issues.
There are now a lot more RCI value named ranges, going up to very high and very low. Though you won't reach those as often anymore.
Thanks to Azurian for suggesting the names.
Any time a planet changes hands, its RCI values get absolutely _destroyed_.
First of all, if the RCI value is higher than 0, it drops to 0.
Then it loses another amount between -140 and -70. So if a planet that is already negative flips, then it just gets worse and worse.
RCI Values Now Affect More, Giving You More Control
The RCI factors now directly affect more:
The Medical RCI value now affects birth rates.
The Public Order RCI value now affects the skirmisher spawn rates.
The Environmental RCI value now affects the usable land area increase rates.
The Economic RCI value now affects the speed of construction on planets -- including ship construction.
Are you feeling powerless because one race is just absolutely dominating another with their superior ship construction capabilities? Well, you can't completely stop that, but you can now put a dent in them by going and sabotaging their economy.

0.861
The "RCI tutorial" has been rewritten pretty much from scratch, really changing the emphasis from "don't obsess over these" to "opportunities shift at high and low values, so experiment with both."
Thanks to Mick and others for suggesting changes here.

0.857
Four New Dispatch Missions
Added four new dispatch missions:
Aid Local Economy
Improve Local Environment
Provide Medical Assistance
Assist Local Law Enforcement
Each corresponds to one of the RCI bars, and is available when that planet has a negative value there. This allows you to increase that value and earn credit and influence while doing so. On the other hand, races which hate your client won't be pleased.
Thanks to Misery for inspiring these.

0.855
The starting RCI value range for races is now -30 to 10, not -10 to 10.

0.853
RCI Adjustments
The RCI floor on planets is no longer clamped to -100 (and the positive already was effectively not clamped to +100 for quite some time). The techs that increase the RCI floor to certain values now have much lower floors that they set it to, making it so that the game has negative RCI potentials for a lot longer period of the game.
The various things that cause a negative drop in an RCI value from one planet to another now cause much more severe drops, and if there is influence involved, also a much larger loss of influence. This applies to political deals, hostile actions, usage of nukes, and destruction of the various civilian things.
In general, negative RCI trends now go down twice as fast as they go up. Which is still not very fast, but you know -- adds a bit of tendency toward entropy, which is good.

0.817
The trending of the "RCI" values (economic, medical, environmental, and public order) never did get adjusted to have its speed be more reasonable. As such those were still having MASSIVE fluctuations over very short periods of time.
Thanks to Misery for pointing this out.

Descriptive Summary Notes
In the beginning, RCI was a minor mechanic that had little impact on gameplay. As the versions progressed players began obsessing over it. Early attempts by the dev were made to diminish the fascination of players with RCI. Eventually, the devs switched to making RCI have a more prominent role in the game and provide more information to the player. At one point RCI was bound to 100 to -100, which was relaxed to softcap on positive RCI, which was then relaxed to a softcap of 2300/-2300. RCI is currently responsible for some Race production modifiers, Federation joining costs, and quest availability.

[GC13]

I keep advocating for a natural tendency towards zero on all of the RCIs. The way the math will work out, a +RCI/month building will then, rather than sending the RCI towards the stars, adjust the base point of the RCI upwards (even though the math is decaying the RCI so it trends towards zero, the constant infusion of points to that RCI means its base point is higher). It also allows a planet to naturally recover from a disease, without forcing the player to waste a hundred years providing medical aid.

[Histidine]

Seconding negative feedback mechanism idea. And observation of RCI dispatch slowness (url=http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=14673]mantis[/url]).

In AI War, when players report funky quantitative behaviours in the game (too large waves, etc.), Keith often sits down with them with, posting source code and collecting debug logs from players so it can be determined whether things are working as they should be and what changes, if any, should be made. I think one such session for TLF's RCI code would be good, for figuring out where issues are occuring and establishing a good baseline for the RCI rebalance.

[Misery]

My thoughts on this are very, very simple:

Dramatically decrease the "range" of the RCI values as a whole.  Honestly, I think this would help the entire game ALOT.

Alot of problems would shatter if this was done.  For example, the fact that dispatches dont affect it much, or that buildings dont affect it much, or the bit where when an RCI value goes berserk  and gets super high and super low, you just cant do ANYTHING about it... the problem WILL persist, and become unstoppable.

TONS of problems with this, and I seriously think that this one small alteration would solve most of them.  I've been repeating this for awhile.... that it's not been altered is baffling, as I certainly aint the only one that's been repeating it.  Ptarth, you may want to write up a mantis ticket for this one after considering all the things in this thread, hopefully that'll get dev attention quicker;  I sense they've been a tad busy lately and havent the time to really go over the forums much.  But one way or another, this aspect of the game does need to be changed.

It'd ease up alot of frustration, and also just offer that many more strategic options to the player that actually DO stuff, and having more possible things to do in a game like this is always good.

All of the current options that you do have, the dispatches and whatever, seem to be balanced around a range of, say, 200 to -200.  As opposed to where it currently is, which is like, 2000 or so.... that's WAY too far.  There's just no way to affect it with that range.

NEEDS to be fixed.  It's very definitely a major problem with the game right now, and it's certainly MY biggest issue with it as a whole.

[I-KP]

RCI is still my biggest bugbear with TLF, and when I play I still turn it off and ignore all RCI-related mechanics; I now view it as being an esoteric, almost meaningless underlying mechanic that I have no control over (which isn't all that far from the reality).  It doesn't need to be this way. 

The subjective terms need to go; the range needs to be reined in (by a factor of ten) and capped there, and within that range RCI needs to be more impactful overall; the RCI value report itself should be meaningful and intuitve, i.e., expressed as a direct percentage modifier.

[Shrugging Khan]

I keep advocating for a natural tendency towards zero on all of the RCIs. The way the math will work out, a +RCI/month building will then, rather than sending the RCI towards the stars, adjust the base point of the RCI upwards (even though the math is decaying the RCI so it trends towards zero, the constant infusion of points to that RCI means its base point is higher). It also allows a planet to naturally recover from a disease, without forcing the player to waste a hundred years providing medical aid.

This.

[PokerChen]

I keep advocating for a natural tendency towards zero on all of the RCIs. The way the math will work out, a +RCI/month building will then, rather than sending the RCI towards the stars, adjust the base point of the RCI upwards (even though the math is decaying the RCI so it trends towards zero, the constant infusion of points to that RCI means its base point is higher). It also allows a planet to naturally recover from a disease, without forcing the player to waste a hundred years providing medical aid.

+1.

 A hard limit on RCI is also good, as they lose meaning beyond +-100 or so (nice round numbers). If -2000 means that the race has reverted to barter economy (Greece post-2008), then it would seem that the normal modifications should be appreciable higher. Although -2000 medical might translate to all-doctors-died-of-a-plague levels, with space-age technology the expertise and equipment should recover faster than the population. Can an economy be worse than barter trade/Great Depression?

[Teal_Blue]

I am part way into a new game, version 1025. and started with only a single race space faring. The Acutians. All the others I do positive or negative things for and stay away from giving anyone else space faring or armadas. also I've been using scientists from the black market to give more benefit when I do the missions to build up tanking or low rci values.

So far I have been much more successful at restoring really low values before the planet goes completely south.

This has helped a lot to balance and save some races. But not all, perhaps it becomes a choice of what to save?

I am beginning to believe that the game is not completely open ended or will allow me to do everything or save everything. At least this is a suspicion. If this is so, then the game is more guided on some areas. Which is interesting in the same way that moo2 had me build up first before I could ever even think of taking the Antarans.

I don't know if the comparison is the same, but as an analogy it strikes me in the same way, if a game wants a certain condition before changing something else.

Rci tanking was way out of my control before I started using scientists. And I still have to see how it turns out. But it makes me think that perhaps I just needed to change how I was playing to get different results. 

Or maybe I am misreading this.

But it is a thought to consider.

[Juason]

using scientists from the black market to give more benefit when I do the missions to build up tanking or low rci values.

I don't understand.

Scientists are only used to speed up research.   Only a handful of research options give global RCI bonuses.  Most unlock buildings that must then be built to provide the bonus.  Again, these bonuses are quite tiny and take years to be felt.

Am I missing something?

[Teal_Blue]

using scientists from the black market to give more benefit when I do the missions to build up tanking or low rci values.

I don't understand.

Scientists are only used to speed up research.   Only a handful of research options give global RCI bonuses.  Most unlock buildings that must then be built to provide the bonus.  Again, these bonuses are quite tiny and take years to be felt.

Am I missing something?

Perhaps I am misreading what is going on?

I got 10 scientists and did use them for research, but for areas that were affected by lowering rci values, like falling population. I am trying to remember what tech I researched to help, but it raised the falling pop numbers. I remember thinking that if a medical spiral came up I could try the same thing. I was pleasantly pleased to see the trends balance so nicely.

of course, if that is not what is happening, then I'm a little confused. But I am not a strategy buff, and only learning this game here. perhaps I am mistaken?

or was it dispatch missions?  I can't remember.

sorry,

-t

[Mick]

I haven't played TLF in a while, and RCI is pretty much the reason. It's just not a very fun mechanic to me, but it's so tied in to most of the actions that you have available.

[NichG]

This is a weird thought, but what if instead of working according to a linear scale, each of the RCI elements worked sort of like a model of multicomponent failure? Lets take one RCI parameter just to work out the example.

A planet's Economy rating has 200 cells associated with it. These cells can each be 'broken' or 'functional'. Things that would normally adjust the RCI values down by a fixed amount instead break a certain number of cells at random - however, if they choose an already broken cell to break then nothing happens. Similarly, things that would adjust them up repair random cells with a certain chance.

In this particular set of 200 cells, some of them in particular are chosen ahead of time as being special. When these cells go from functioning to broken, they trigger a negative event. When other cells go from broken to functioning, they can trigger a 'healing' effect on the planet that can remove a negative event. Or maybe they give a particular bonus, or whatever. The player could actually be shown a visualization of this (each cell being a 'sector' of the planet or something), along with being able to read out what certain cells breaking will trigger (so you can plan ahead and figure out the consequences of certain schemes), and maybe could even target their dispatches or attacks. Perhaps this also allows things to be constructed that protect certain subsets of the sectors or other more elaborate systems.

Every broken cell is worth -0.5, every intact cell is worth +0.5. So in this system, the value of the Economy can vary from -100 to +100. 

So what's the advantage of this system? Well, for one thing going from -95 to -100 is much harder than going from 0 to -5. So it allows extreme pressures to exist and be resolved, while at the same time keeping the RCI values fairly bounded. Also, going from -95 to -100 is much harder than going from -100 to -95, so planets don't get locked into unrecoverable states so easily (but of course if you're at -100 you've got all sorts of negative conditions on the planet that may partially lock in the value).

Anyhow, the idea is to make it so that tipping points are kind of explicit and can be recognized by the player. 'If I fix these three sector, then the planet's Economy will keep improving without my intervention'; 'if I bomb these three sectors, the Medicine rating will continue to drop and the planet will tank'.

[MaskityMask]

So uh... I don't know much about RCI mechanics in the game, but there is one problem I do notice.

Its impossible to get the RCI value you want to low or high on purpose <_< I don't know what determines it, but sometimes certain values just keep getting lower no matter what you do(like with boarines in my latest game, the economy just kept dropping despite that I gave all economy research to them, build all economy boost buildins and tried to help with evonomy... And most annoyingly, they always had defense as priority so I couldn't make boarines boost economy on command. I feel like boarines only switch between defense, population and solar unity) and some values get higher no matter what you do. And its just not practical to lower them to -2000 to get race join. So unless you get lucky... Yeah, you are never going to see that happen. It takes less time to just make races like each other. And fastest way to get RCI low is sabotage, but you have to have race like you as well to get them join.