Trade and Loopholes

[Clan Elder 'Keen]

Prohibiting the transfering pop to another player won't fix the problem. The replacement tactic will then be to allow your partner to come and conquer one of your in-system colonies. Voila... the same result. I think we need to look deeper. The question at hand comes down to alien pop employed in your industrial complexes.

 

Perhaps a solution is to include a 'racial modifier' to a colony's production. Lets say that aliens are only 25% efficient producing for another empire due to issues such as communication or infamiliarity with non-native technologies. If a colony placed on a trade partner's planet has 100 of your pop supplemented with 1,000 of his, the 'racial modifier' for production would be 31.8%. Is that a sufficient incentive to use your own colonists instead? At some point it will be; if not at base 25% efficiency then at 15 % or 10%.

 

The one wrinkle is what about a conquered player homeworld? The basic reward for conquering an enemy is his population for production, as the resource potential of the homeworld is not any more important than any of your own colonies.

 

In any case, I would prefer providing an incentive for better productivity over a name-calling or wrist-slapping approach.

[WKE235]

What you're stepping leads into a whole mess on POP, Hab Ranges, and growth.

 

1) I've heard Neutrals do not grow in size once you conquer them or absorb them. True?

 

2) Lets say I'm from a 5G -200 Kelvin world and I conquer the homeworld of another player who is 1 G -10 Kelvin. HOW does the computer know the conquered population at the now controlled homeworld is different than my baseline POP? Either it knows the POP and any future grown POP are from a 1G -10 K environment .. or it does not know and I see sudden die offs due to the habit range differences (answer number 2 here would really make conquering others not worth it as the whole population base dies off due to environmental differences) .. or conquered locations become like neutrals, no longer growing (not as much pain to conquerers, but...).

 

Clan Elder Keen's way is how most would carry out building such trade centers. Each player builds another Pop Group on their homeworld, stock it with population and other basics (maybe build up the power supply, industry, etcetera...). Then each player "takes" the prepared pop group from the other using One set of troopers (a very small ship needed for this action). Depending on how conquered Pop's are treated from above you are ready and set to go. You could do this on another planet in the system if desired if rules are implemented against this on homeworlds (which would be very unfair to those players who started with ONE world in their home systems).

 

As long as Population groups can be taken in a relatively whole condition (a needed aspect of the game to support the military aspects) then the above will work. If you do something to prevent the taking of POP groups in such whole conditions, then the whole military aspect of the game suffers to a great degree (why even try to conquer if the opposing POP dies off... except to be a genocidal maniac, just for fun). And since you can't stop this without perhaps ruining the game, why worry about POP transfers when it really isn't a loophole or bug.

[President Guztov]

Hmmmm Im at a loss as to why this may be percieved as a problem. We all agree transferring resources and finished goods is ok right? Or is this in danger as well? I could live without the POP transfer but take away anything else and you take trade out of the picture. After all trading something you have for something you dont with another has been around for thousands of years!

 

The conquering the other players colony plan wont work either as you wont be able to produce any of the items he may have been producing at the colony. Sure you may get what was in the stockpile but thats it.

 

Hobnob are you saying that allowing POP transfer will break the game? In the end the point would be moot I thinks. Regardless of wether you are allowed to transfer POP or not... it matters not. What i think the BIGGEST concern of most people intrested in this thread is the technology bonanza that it allows for both parties involved in such a venture. With or without POP transfer the colony will grow and become large over time and the transfer of items that neither player could produce on thier own will happen.

This is assuming of course thet your relations with your ally stay true which in all likelyhood will since there are so many advantages and so little disadvantage.

[WKE235]

Side note: Trade in this game is pretty useless as designed to begin with.

Can you trade any of the ground combat techs? No. They cannot be manufactured and are instantly available to your troops everywhere, but since you can't make them you can't trade them.

Can you trade installations? No. You can build them in YOUR pop groups, but cannot build them in others, or build them for shipping elsewhere.

Can you trade research techs? No. (Pete has said No to this so often I think I here an echo....)

 

The only things that exist to be traded are ship related weapons and items. Is that all there is to this? Running around trading ship parts?

 

Considering how overpriced high item reseach techs are (rumors are the higher level techs will take 25 RC's per turn for up to 1/2 year or more to get the item, lots longer with less RC's) and adding in the distances involved (UNLESS you are on each others homeworlds), you can probably get the same baseline lower techs as everyone at 1 RC per turn and not have to worry about the expenses required for trading. Then you can sit around like everyone else as research crawls along, getting one advance every 20 years real time or so due to the absurd nature of the research trees in the game.

 

Actually, for this topic, this means there is NO tech bonanza for people who cooperate. Sure you can eventually be trading a few items here and there, after YEARS of work and research. Bonanza... nope, not with the high costs to research anything worthwhile in this game.

[Lotix1417]

One way to stop it is to have any military ground invasion trigger some destruction of the target world. Basic infrastructure will be blown out, reactors shot up, or sabotaged, and a militia uprising.

 

Occupiers would naturally have a lower production value. The game already stores the original owner of a population group so this should be a no-issue and may already be part of the game.

 

So, if you want to "let" your buddy come in, conquer your homeworld for 4-5 turns, produce tons of MK 7 missiles and then he is willing to give it back (or if you are running both positions, heh) you suffer large amounts of destruction, an inflamed population, and a huge production loss in the meantime. It all still might be worth it for a cheesy way to transport MK 7 missiles, but would, at least somewhat, discourage the swap-a-rama of homeworlds.

 

So a simple fix to the issue at hand is to:

1. disallow transfer of population into an alien population segment

2. ground invasions create destruction of some of the infrastructure

3. production of alien-owned population segments are significantly reduced

 

#2 and #3 may already be in the game... #1 is currently not.

 

-Lotix1417

[President Guztov]

I dont understand your anger over the seemingly slow pace of technological advancement. Im sure we all want Mk2000 Wave Motion Cannons on all our pathfinders but the fact of the matter is that its not going to happen. True you can only transfer finished items which does basically mean only starship parts but so what? Starships are very important. They are your 'tools' for projecting whatever power you which to project be it benign or malignant. If through cooperation you can devote less of your RC's to actual items and more to the important stuff like the nifty Horizon techs then you will make out in the long run and I call that a bonanza. You basically have the ability assuming you have a willing partner, to develop your industrial infrastructure and not fall behind in the very important starship parts.

The best of both worlds IMHO.

[hobknob]

I don't think the "conquer this pop group" idea will work since you can't choose where you attack. In order to attack you have to get past the orbitals and then all of the ground units and fortifications. I don't know many folks that will be too willing to scrapp all of their defenses on the gamble that a "friend" can just take over a single small pop group. Add to that the idea that the conquered pop should be continually trying to be reunited with their homeland .

 

The reason that pop transfers break the game IMHO is that you can immediately have a 10,000 pop colony on any willing allies homeworld. Give me 5 allies and I would gladly give up 50,000 pop so that each of them could give me some nifty tech in return. It doesn't kill the tech tree either since I can then free up some broadbased research to concentrate on a particular area of specialization. For people who are able to cooperate youcould see a war fleet that had the best engines, sensors, point defense, direct fire weapons and fighters even when the owning empire may only be advanced in 1 or 2 of the areas. That is what trade is for. It may or may not work IMHO, only time will tell. Of course actually finding my nearest neighbor would help a lot too.

 

As far as neutrals go, they grow just like any other colony as long as you have the minimum 10-11 pop to start with. It is aslo very apparent that each neutral and each different type of pop is tracked individually. All of the neutrals that I have absorbed by any means all maintain the original position # and lifeform identifiers.

 

 

Back to the pop trade issue. I have fully intended on inviting an ally to build a colony in my system or on my HW if he can an I always intended to do the same thing. To that end I am well on my way to having a 2000 pop world ship to do it. The resources are enourmous and the time it will take is not short. In the end I will have put lots of resources and time into establishing a colony perhaps 10-12 away. Tha payoff is in tech. I feel it is worth it and the benefit outweighs the cost. Being able to short circuit the whole issue with a colony beacon just doesn't seem to go with anything else in the game so far except exploits and bugs that have already been fixed.

 

[Ur Lord Tedric]

Gentle beings,

 

I think this many of you have leaped off into the wormhole!

 

Whilst I would be the first to agree that I would, for reality's sake, like to see you have to take your actual Population/Colonists to the other person's HW, rather than just a Colony Beacon - and I really think we're talking a few hundred people, not '000s, it is only a matter of realism. What it probably does mean is more time and investment by you in the game to do so, for there's no logical reason on earth for the other 'resources' not to be TR'd!

 

This scenario we all seem to be worried about will only apply to your trusted nearest and dearest.

 

TRADE, as I forsee it, is something that will span the galaxy. It is players who you have never met that will be interested in the technology you have researched. Those items may be transferred across the galaxy and through many hands.

 

So, whilst we may all be able to research techs to level 3, or even 4, it is those items that we only have glimpses of that will be the items of trade and the traders out there to achieve it.

 

Forget all ideas of researching the entire tech tree. It isn't supposed to happen. There are other avenues to travel to enlightenment.

 

Play to your strengths and use the skill I suspect you all have - give your scientists a break. Let lesser SF PBMs have magical tech advances that take over the entire game, this one's different........

 

Chief Trader to Ur-Lord Tedric, with interjections by his Chief Existentialist

[President Guztov]

Hobnob Just for the record... you can land that Worldship of yours on my HW anytime. . We have much to offer any potential Ally.

[hobknob]

I would love to. I just need to find somebody, anybody.

[WKE235]

So a simple fix to the issue at hand is to:

1. disallow transfer of population into an alien population segment

2. ground invasions create destruction of some of the infrastructure

3. production of alien-owned population segments are significantly reduced

-Lotix1417

Would items 2 and 3 "fix" anything? Nope.

 

Destruction of infrastructure? Simply send in more construction materials and build it back up. Done!

 

Significantly reduced production? Depending on the reduction, you can boost the POP and transferred in CM enough to make it up. 50% reduction means merely double the POP and CM for Industry. If it's something you really want to trade on, the extra POP and CM is worth the value. ALSO .. if you did reduce the production, imagine the screams and howls from players of a more military bent. You spend huge amounts of time and resources to build ships and transports and troops (they ain't cheap to produce) to land on a world, and take the location suffering some pretty fair losses in the process. And now that you want to build up for your next conquest, you have to suffer a significant production reduction? Talk about a waste of resources. The more you reduce production, the more you would damage the military aspects of the game.

 

Essentially this whole thread is about trying to "fix" something that is not broken. Less creative players who did not think this up are SHOCKED to see it can be done, are SHOCKED to see folks have been talking about this for ... at least 6 months by my mails. And having been out of the loop, they now are hammering to have this stopped, even though NO ONE has colonies like this yet, NO ONE is close to doing this, and now that this is out in the open EVERYONE knows this can be done. No advantage to anyone. No Penalty. Everyone is equal.

[DWillard]

Boy, so many of you have really missed the point.

 

Yes, trade is important. Yes, trade will and should occur. Yes, people will set up colonies on eachother's homeworlds. Yes, players should be able to trade components and tech items.

 

I never once said any of this was wrong or should not be allowed to happen.

 

The only problem I have with this is the pop transfer issue. And just because I'm not trying to exploit it doesn't mean I wasn't creative enough to think of the idea. I dropped the idea a long time ago, thinking that there was no sense in persuing it because RTG would not allow this kind of abuse. When I saw it come up on the board from two different people, I figured there was more going on that just tossing the idea around. Still thinking that it would not be allowed, I called Pete to get an answer on the matter. He said it was pretty much an uninteded loophole but thought it would probably work.

 

I'm with hobknob. If this is allowed, it has a great potential to break the game. IT MAKES TRADING TECHS WAY TOO EASY. We are talking about bypassing everything it takes to set up a colony. No colonial ships needed, no freighters needed, no attrition suffered, no convoy routes needed. All you need is a colony beacon. You are trying to tell me that the cost of a colony beacon is fair trade for techs you can't research. If players want to trade items, fine. But it ought to cost more that a colony beacon. And don't give me this crap about real world business and economics. This is a game and we are talking about game balance.

 

BTW, Ur Lord Tedric, what kind of trading are you going to be doing with a colony that only has a few hundred pop. Let's see, what could you manufacture with 500 Industrial Complexes. That would be 125,000 inputs. That's not enough to put together 16 heavy beam lasers. If that's as big as you are thinking, then no wonder you don't see this as a problem.

 

I'm talking about being able to transfer tens of thousands of your own pop to an ally on your homeworld so he can build items for you --- at essentially no cost! Take a moment and calculate how long and how intensive it would be to set up a 50,000 pop colony a mere 5 systems away. Even with Hobknobs 2000 berthing ships, that's something like 250 turns. 5 turns there and 5 turns back. That's 2000 pop per 10 turn round trip.

 

There is advanced tech in the game to make this easier, faster and more profitable. Tech that will come in due time. Why some of you can't see this as an abuse is beyond me. If it is indeed a loophole as Pete has told me, then he needs to close it.

 

 

And having been out of the loop, they now are hammering to have this stopped, even though NO ONE has colonies like this yet, NO ONE is close to doing this, and now that this is out in the open EVERYONE knows this can be done. No advantage to anyone. No Penalty. Everyone is equal.

 

Ummm, I think President Gustov said he was about to do it.

 

And it doesn't have anything to do with advantages. For all you know, I may be in the best position in the game to take advantage of it. It has to do with it being WRONG for the game and WRONG for game balance. It is just a way to circumvent the 25 research center limit. If you invested the time and resources and orders into establishing a real trade route with a partner, you deserve all the advanced tech you can get out of it. But to get such things for the cost of a colony beacon. That is WRONG.

[RTGPete]

Whoa there. Colonizing is not a loophole. It's part of the game. And this is a colonization and trade issue. Let me run through the design issues so that everybody understands what the thinking was behind item trading. I think this will help to clear up any misconceptions that might be floating around.

 

First of all, I decided to fundamentally change the nature of the typical Explore, Expand, Exterminate type of space game that you see all too often. Rather than encouraging the total destruction of a selected neighbor, you have to make a choice. And this choice is based on a new idea: you have something that can given away but cannot be taken. You don't see that very often in power games. This means that you are often worth more alive to an enemy than dead, because he cannot take your research. This is the single most important concept behind ensuring that research is, quite deliberately, slow. If you want something bad enough but cannot research it, work up another tree that somebody else cannot research, and trade the finished products. Trade and research are tied together very closely.

 

• You conquer a neighbor's homeworld.
  
• You trade with your neighbor, convincing him to produce for you, perhaps as part of an item exchange deal.
  

 

Let's look at these options. First the conquering one: you produce double what you were cranking out before. You don't get any new technologies, but you have a new and quite large production facility at a distance from your homeworld. This grants an enormous advantage in power projection. It also eliminates a potential competitor.

 

Next, the trade option: if your ally chooses, he can build items on his homeworld and ship them to you. Right now this might seem like an arduous task, but that is only because you have not figured out how to move cargo long distances in a reasonable time frame. It's far easier than you think, actually...you guys just haven't figured it out yet. This issue alone affects many other game systems, and I'm confident that somebody, somewhere, will finally research the thing that opens up the wonders of faster ship movement. It will happen, and it will revolutionize your way of thinking on trade. Utterly. Revolutionize.

 

In the case of trade, you and your ally effectively become a "super" empire, with two homeworlds. It isn't any different than you conquering him, except that you both maintain your ability to continue to research items that you'll never work on. This is a major leap forward in the research tree for both of you, to say the least. Worried about slow research? Trade crushes those concerns.

 

Alternatively, your ally comes along and simply builds a colony on your homeworld. You transfer population and construction materials to him. He rebuilds them as industries and cranks out whatever you need using his alien technology. Your industrial output on your homeworld drops accordingly, but he is building something you want, so you don't consider it a drop. You reciprocate and he also benefits on his homeworld. In this way nothing needs to be physically shipped back and forth.

 

What are the downsides of the cross-colonization strategy? It sure seems sweet. But there's trouble brewing. First, you had better trust that guy and I mean trust him completely. He could very, very easily use the resources you're giving him (or letting him mine) to build ground forces. If you don't give him the right resources for troop construction, he'll just scrap the industries, rebuild as stripminers, and get the water, grains and so on himself. He can build troops and cause you enormous grief, right on your own homeworld. Second, and this is also a major issue, his pop center on your world is a colony of his. It has to survive. He better be one heck of a colonizer, or you guys are incredibly lucky and have nearly identical homeworlds - or he's going to lose a lot of population to attrition each turn. Your population. If you give him 50,000 Industrial Complexes worth of pop and construction materials and he loses even a tiny amount - say, 3% - per turn, that's a lot. Cover it with extra pop transferred to him from your growth if you like. That's a price you'd have to pay to keep those industries running - no more full pop growth for you. Third, if he's sneaky and wants to cause you massive industrial grief, he simply scraps the industries and rebuilds them as Iron Mines. Now you don't have your 2,000 Iron Mines operating, but instead have 52,000 Iron Mines on the world. Plays merry heck with the resource extraction formula Finally, he can do all sorts or irritating things with the gift of construction materials that you've granted. How about loading it onto poorly-armed cargo ships that he builds, and attacking your defenses forces? Many fascinating possibilities

 

Side note: Trade in this game is pretty useless as designed to begin with.

 

I'm sorry, but this statement is fundamentally incorrect.

 

Out of curiousity, and since nobody has actually had the time to do this, are these rumors another example of Bat-lines and private tips by the game master to the select elite?  There seems to be an awful amount of information leaking from the game master to selected players and never posted online.

 

Is this for real? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but colonizing is not exactly a closely-guarded Gamemaster secret. I know there are things that could have been done better in the game, but there are far more that could have been done a lot worse. I'm pretty pleased with how this truly gigantic game has turned out. Why harp on every conceivable little issue, and fabricate more that don't even exist? Argh.

[RTGPete]

We are talking about bypassing everything it takes to set up a colony. No colonial ships needed, no freighters needed, no attrition suffered, no convoy routes needed.

 

Why would you assume that there is no attrition suffered? You have a colony on an alien world. Those pop units are yours now. Of course they suffer attrition.

[WKE235]

Pete

 

With your last comment, are you saying that if I take over, by force, the pop center of some other player, those Pop Units become owned by the conquerer and they start to suffer attrition per whatever my rate would be on that world? For example, lets say my race is from a Hot Terristrial world and I conquer the major Pop group of some player on their homeworld Frozen Rockball. Would the POP in the captured group become mine and begin to suffer attrition losses due to the massive temperature differences between my race's starting point and the actual environment (barring any tech improvements to reduce the impact of course)?