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Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/27/2020 5:51:38 PM

Dukie

Posts: 18
Joined: 12/19/2008
Status: offline

I've put about 50 hours into this game and find it quite immersive--love the planet generation! I have some questions for the community and comments for the developer as they appear to be quite attentive:

1. Ammo - Why not have an adjustable Min & Max level so that the player does not have to continually monitor ammo. It is just one more micromanagement task. I feel like I'm doing the SHQ Commander's job.
2. Hiring/recruiting leaders - Is there a way to get a new leader any time I want? I don't think I should have to wait for a faction or sect to foist a leader on me, or for one of my councils to generate a stratagem for a leader.
3. Urgent issues. Wish there was some sort of hot link on the urgent issues report to take you where the issue is occurring. Sometimes I can't figure out where or how to fix an urgent issue. Having a mechanism to take me there would go a long way.
4. Leader "decisions". Occasionally I get decisions where the only options have a negative effect on a single leader and NO other implications (put up a statue? Yes = -5, No = -3, wait, what?). Seems like a bug.
5. Regime profiles. Can I do anything to impact these other than to respond to decisions? I hate getting a request to increase say, my democracy profile. If I refuse, I'm penalized but if I accept I need random chance to give me decisions to accomplish this task. Or are there other means to impact these profiles?
6. Assault Guns are lumped in with medium tanks in terms of replacements. How do I keep them separate from each other so that I can have all tank units and/or all assault gun units? Doing unit to unit transfers is a horrible way to do separate them.
7. Artillery, without prime movers, appears to move as far as both mechanized and motorized artillery?!

Post #: 1

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/27/2020 6:46:10 PM

newageofpower

Posts: 261
Joined: 12/3/2020
Status: offline

1. Why not indeed... Your solution/option is pretty good. If we can get Vic to take a look...

2. IIRC, if you have an Empty Reserve Pool you can fire your Secretary to generate a new character (in the Secretary position) without using a Stratagem. Other than that, there's no workaround. And yeah, it's a bit inflexible; but if you don't have approval from your Senate or Parliament (or even Politiburo) it's hard to raise taxes/select a new General, which is what Stratagems sorta represent.

3. Agreed.

4. It's a bit clunky/unrealistic like #2, but it's also hard to model actual actions having an impact on the psychological/political-economic profile of a nation.

5. There are some decisions you can deliberately trigger, like repeatable Governor events and Corporate/Crime Syndicate/Cult meetings. Oh, and invading people raises your Fist profile. Other than that raising profiles is mostly a responsive thing rather than something you take initiative in.

6. Change their quality settings, i.e. set your tank formation to only accept High Quality Units and set the desired tank design(s) to High Quality then set the Assault Gun Formation to only Accept Medium and do the same to the assault gun model(s)

7. Huh. That seems like a bug. Post a bug report in the Tech Support subforum.

(in reply to Dukie)

Post #: 2

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/27/2020 8:54:50 PM

DasTactic

Posts: 1083
Joined: 10/10/2005
Status: offline

1. Agree, this would be nice. Or it should highlight in the start of turn comments when ammo is getting low like it does for $$$. Also don't like that you can make more ammo than you can store - the ammo purchase should be capped at maximum storage.

2. If you get the Interior Coucil early that will help a lot with getting leaders as required and also allow you to manage them better. (Also helps with tax which helps a lot as well).

3. Would be nice.

4. Probably my least favourite part of the game is the random events that pop up and the impact it has on your empire.

5. Same as 4 to a degree. I can see why you need them from the RP aspect but it would be nice to have an option to scale these down a bit.

6. Agree. They should be their own class. Motorbike and Armoured Cars should also be their own classes as well.

7. The back story here is that beasts of burden are used on the planets brought by the colonists from off-world and these are used to haul the heavy equipment. In some planetary formations groups of these escape during the Dissolution War and take over their own territory. These are the Arachnids and this is why you can find Arachnids on planets without life.

(in reply to newageofpower)

Post #: 3

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/27/2020 9:27:21 PM

zgrssd

Posts: 3385
Joined: 6/9/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dukie

I've put about 50 hours into this game and find it quite immersive--love the planet generation! I have some questions for the community and comments for the developer as they appear to be quite attentive:

1. Ammo - Why not have an adjustable Min & Max level so that the player does not have to continually monitor ammo. It is just one more micromanagement task. I feel like I'm doing the SHQ Commander's job.
2. Hiring/recruiting leaders - Is there a way to get a new leader any time I want? I don't think I should have to wait for a faction or sect to foist a leader on me, or for one of my councils to generate a stratagem for a leader.
3. Urgent issues. Wish there was some sort of hot link on the urgent issues report to take you where the issue is occurring. Sometimes I can't figure out where or how to fix an urgent issue. Having a mechanism to take me there would go a long way.
4. Leader "decisions". Occasionally I get decisions where the only options have a negative effect on a single leader and NO other implications (put up a statue? Yes = -5, No = -3, wait, what?). Seems like a bug.
5. Regime profiles. Can I do anything to impact these other than to respond to decisions? I hate getting a request to increase say, my democracy profile. If I refuse, I'm penalized but if I accept I need random chance to give me decisions to accomplish this task. Or are there other means to impact these profiles?
6. Assault Guns are lumped in with medium tanks in terms of replacements. How do I keep them separate from each other so that I can have all tank units and/or all assault gun units? Doing unit to unit transfers is a horrible way to do separate them.
7. Artillery, without prime movers, appears to move as far as both mechanized and motorized artillery?!

1. Agreed. I would add semi-automatic building of Reinforcemens while I am at it. Maybe something like "Ammo is low. Should we build some now?" when hitting end turn?
2. Just properly fund the proper Council and focus it on Leader Card Generation
4. There are two parts here:
- the Leader dislike you disagreeing
- but the leader likes the Profile you are pushing while doing so
Wich end up close to neutral
5. No active way to change profiles and you are not the first to be annoyed by that.
6. You only use Assault guns, if you can not afford full tanks. Assault guns are worse in anything but production cost. so if you got proper tanks, just set teh Assault guns to low quality and tell the Tank units to only toollerate low quality. The same thing you do with any obsolete vehicle model
7. Nope, it moves like Infantry. Currently the weight of the gun indeed has no effect on mobility. So you can make them as big as you can make them for no downside (save maybe ammo).

(in reply to Dukie)

Post #: 4

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/28/2020 12:21:20 PM

Dukie

Posts: 18
Joined: 12/19/2008
Status: offline

Thanks all for the responses. I always learn something new when I come to these forums.

2. Newage--I did the fire Secretary trick and boom, instant new leader. Nice! It really ticked off the old secretary but he got over it when I gave him a new job. DasTactic/zgrssd--I guess I just have never prioritized the interior council. What does trigger the ability to add a council? Number of provinces or something else? I guess I could set the start up with all the councils present. Does that mean you start with enough leader to staff all the councils? It seems to me like that would potentially cost prohibitive in terms of paying salaries and the dilution of your starting BPs if you try to fund all the councils.
6. Newage--I will have to try that, sounds like a pretty good workaround.
7. DasTactic--thanks for the back story. It makes it much more understandable. Now I wonder whether it is worth generating prime movers for artillery. If I need something faster maybe simply use mechanized artillery with no armor?

(in reply to zgrssd)

Post #: 5

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/28/2020 12:59:04 PM

zgrssd

Posts: 3385
Joined: 6/9/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dukie

Thanks all for the responses. I always learn something new when I come to these forums.

2. Newage--I did the fire Secretary trick and boom, instant new leader. Nice! It really ticked off the old secretary but he got over it when I gave him a new job. DasTactic/zgrssd--I guess I just have never prioritized the interior council. What does trigger the ability to add a council? Number of provinces or something else? I guess I could set the start up with all the councils present. Does that mean you start with enough leader to staff all the councils? It seems to me like that would potentially cost prohibitive in terms of paying salaries and the dilution of your starting BPs if you try to fund all the councils.
6. Newage--I will have to try that, sounds like a pretty good workaround.
7. DasTactic--thanks for the back story. It makes it much more understandable. Now I wonder whether it is worth generating prime movers for artillery. If I need something faster maybe simply use mechanized artillery with no armor?

2. You can always create a council. I think you have to call seecretrary or Supreme Command Leader.
However there is a massive surcharge in PP costs if you already formed one in the last ~20 turns.
The question simply happens every ~10 turns, to remind you the option is there
7. Mechanized Artillery has been designed and build as such from the ground up. It is a totally seperate unit. That also costs fuel to move.
Meanwhile the normal Artillery can be put into any kind of formation - including motorized ones - giving it a lot more versatility.

(in reply to Dukie)

Post #: 6

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/29/2020 8:11:22 AM

KarisFraMauro

Posts: 113
Joined: 12/2/2020
Status: offline

The constant "your workers aren't getting enough renumeration" warnings / penalties seem like they would benefit a bit of tweaking, if only to make it more clear what's going on. It's something to do with the private economy right? But in past experience raising worker salaries only gets you in a an escalating spiral of expenditure without remedying the situation. I'm not entirely sure where exactly the private economy salaries are displayed, or how to fix things. Guess my workers have to resign themselves to being in a permanent sulk, completely at odds with the ever-cheerful beaurocrats we know and love in the real world ;)

Also for some reason I've never had the crime syndicate pay me a visit. Maybe I need to play on higher difficulties? Or turn on the corporation storyline as well? I normally leave that off because the one time I did employ it there didn't seem to be much upside. Vaguely remember reading elsewhere someone else was having a similar issue.

(in reply to zgrssd)

Post #: 7

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 12/29/2020 2:10:30 PM

beyondwudge

Posts: 74
Joined: 12/22/2020
Status: offline

Re: 5. Decisions affecting regime profile.

At this point, it is part of the game. Juggling your profiles with respect to the demands / events pulling them out of balance is a skill that the current versions reward and I think quite intentionally put in your way.

In many respects, that is true for most of your questions. "Micro-management" is something the game gives benefits for. Hedging against trouble or choosing a resilient playstyle that doesn't need everything to be "just right" to work I think is also part of the game. I could be wrong, you would have to ask the dev.

However, my response to these issues was to grow. To, each turn, handle solving more puzzles, remembering more things to do (like buy ammo before a war, check ammo after a war), avoid trying to too finely balance my regime profiles, to store up stratagems and resources for when things go wrong rather than spending them all trying to finish the game off quicker. I won't say that I have mastered all of these things, but getting better at these things makes me feel like I'm getting a reward that I can take with me after I close the game and get on with other things.

The game could use a better UI. There could be many improvements to allow you to remove the small chores and get things done more quickly. It is also the case that this, if done the wrong way, could take away something that I really enjoy about it right now.

(in reply to KarisFraMauro)

Post #: 8

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 1/4/2021 1:02:44 PM

KarisFraMauro

Posts: 113
Joined: 12/2/2020
Status: offline

I vaguely remember hearing about a strategem explanation list somewhere but can't seem to find it so I'll just ask, what does "threaten leader" do? The actual card doesn't seem to say anything more than "it threatens a leader", which is a bit vague. Does the leader leave? Is there a reason I'd want to irritate a leader who doesn't leave? Does it increase anything benficial? I guess I could just try and see what happens but I'm a bit hesitant in case it's bad.

(in reply to beyondwudge)

Post #: 9

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 1/4/2021 3:03:46 PM

Soar_Slitherine

Posts: 426
Joined: 6/7/2020
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: KarisFraMauro

The constant "your workers aren't getting enough renumeration" warnings / penalties seem like they would benefit a bit of tweaking, if only to make it more clear what's going on. It's something to do with the private economy right? In past experience raising worker salaries only gets you in a an escalating spiral of expenditure without remedying the situation. I'm not entirely sure where exactly the private economy salaries are displayed, or how to fix things.

You can check the private economy wages by clicking the population count in the zone tab of the bottom bar. Worker salaries are added to the private economy income (they buy services from the population), so if your ratio of workers to population is too high, the workers will always be dissatisfied with their wages.

quote:

Also for some reason I've never had the crime syndicate pay me a visit. Maybe I need to play on higher difficulties? Or turn on the corporation storyline as well? I normally leave that off because the one time I did employ it there didn't seem to be much upside. Vaguely remember reading elsewhere someone else was having a similar issue.

The crime syndicate is more likely to spawn if your Enforcement profile is low. I've seen it in several games recently where I've deliberately minimized my Enforcement to make room for more Commerce.

EDIT: Spelling.

< Message edited by Soar_Slitherine -- 1/5/2021 2:06:28 PM >

(in reply to KarisFraMauro)

Post #: 10

RE: Newbie Questions/Comments - 1/5/2021 3:18:37 AM

KarisFraMauro

Posts: 113
Joined: 12/2/2020
Status: offline

Thanks for explaining the crime syndicate. I'll start digging deeper into the private wages too.

(in reply to Soar_Slitherine)

Post #: 11