Bay 12 Games Forum

Inside a ruined Cathedral, the Germans had set up sandbags overlooking one of the doors.  Four of them were firing at some unseen British soldiers trying to get in.

Unfortunately for them I was behind them, and I had a shovel.  It was like dominoes.  They really shouldn't have removed the hearing test from the Wehremacht medical examination.

Yeah that's fair.  So if you spam monuments and gene clinics you get a bunch of society research, if you spam some other thing that doesn't exist yet you get engineering research.  Makes sense.

If they cared enough to make a game about it they should care enough to do research 

I'm talking about the original research labs that upgraded into versions that would produce more of one or the other.  It was pointlessly micro intensive and it didn't matter because tech is a global resource and unlike the other global resources, you get no feedback when you run low.  So it was just... not rewarding or interesting.  There's little point to any tech modifiers that are local because they add up to either a lot of work for little effort, or forcing the player to do a bunch of mental math to achieve balanced research (which is broadly better than specialized because of how tech cost works).

I guess space deposits sort of matter, because in the extreme earlygame if you find 10 physics in neighboring systems that can be a huge spike (+33% I believe).  But again in the long term those are going to come out about average.  Ditto for the titanic lifeforms society research.

Edit: In edition to what Dunamisdeos said, if a starbase is in a system only it will collect from that system.  This doesn't really matter unless its within your homeworld's collection range, as all that trade is collected with no need for protection.  The trade collection range of a station is the number of trade hubs on it, so potentially 6 per starbase.  Also small ships are better for patrolling, hangars on starbases are really good (and protect at long range), and the max piracy value of a system is simply the amount of trade passing through it.  Finally, all pops produce trade value based on their social status (and possibly happiness?), so expect any populous world to become a trade hub eventually.

With the alloys + trade value + 3 main uncommon resources, they've added something the exploration system deeply needed: loot.  Seriously, I could never go back to minerals/credits/food at this point.

I do have some eco complaints tho.  Orbital research is really inconsequential relative to planetary research, its still worth getting but I'd honestly prefer if there was some decision making involved with orbital research.  Since its now the only manual way to specialize research beyond pop traits*.  On the other hand planetary special resource harvesting is in an odd place right now.  Since the harvesters are identical to the synthesizers aside from inputs, your mote trap isn't REALLY making 2 motes, its producing 20 minerals.  Which is... great, true, but not what you'd intuitively expect resource deposits to do.  I'd prefer if synthetic production was either less space efficient but also less costly, or if there was a universal resource harvestor that would just grab everything.

Alternately, it would be cool to have special resources that can only be harvested by having enough of a specific district.  So the 3 uncommon resources could be gained by mining districts, and then maybe there could be bonus food/pop growth/happiness resources gained from agriculture, and tech bonuses from generators.  So like you'd go to a planet and it would have like, I don't know, "electric volcanoes: +5 physics research".  And your first generator district would just produce a volcanologist job in addition to what it normally does.  Would make planets a little more special.  Only question would be if there's more than one resource how do you decide which order they're assigned to districts, without cluttering the interface.  Maybe the job could just be there and you don't need to do anything to access it.

*although I think the devs have consciously made society research the only one that can be boosted easily, because it has no techs that improve ship military power

Oh come on now. You haven't lived until you've been a TA, and done your darndest to explain what a strange loop is, and why you should avoid it-- or worse, explain how a student's code contains one, when they INSIST it is just a normal For loop. (Or worse, a While loop.)

God help you if they try implementing recurrence/re-entrant loops.

  I totally understand recurrence, but have suffered enough PTSD from helping other students with it, that I have cold sweats thinking about it still.  (I've used it successfully many times to walk directory and or data structures, but I just cant help but be reminded of the bizarre output and strange behavior I have seen come out of other peoples code, every time I must employ recursion. Mostly because they did not properly segregate their functions into discrete parts before calling them, but still [others, it's because they dont understand how to NOT use global variables for every damn thing]. At least that PTSD causes me to be extra careful when designing functions that I know must be done re-entrantly.)

What is a strange loop?  I might know what it is (I've made some strange loops in my time) but I've never heard the phrase.

Much as I'm for the transfer of wealth from the older generations to the younger generations, Christmas is kinda bullshit to parents.  You shouldn't feel guilty because your kid didn't get the new Nintendo console right when it came out.  Toy advertising in general is designed to make kids harass/guilt their parents into buying shit neither party needs.  So many parents are running around near Christmas legit desperate to find some specific thing.

Halloween is the same basic emotional journey (preparation > social interaction > gifts) but it uses something that kids love (candy) and can be bought super cheap in bulk.

Birthdays are also significantly less cruel because they look inwards instead of outwards.  Since only a tiny minority of kids are going to have birthdays at the same time kids and parents aren't thinking about what other kids got.

The only good thing I'll say about Christmas is that it gives people a lot of time off and makes it socially unacceptable to not give your kids toys at all.  At some point Americans forgot that people aren't just school/work drones, I really think that without holidays we'd try to make the 5 day 9-to-5 grind a year round thing.

Edit: But then, most schools give kids way TOO much time off for Christmas.  And for summer.  Why are we raising kids to be in school 8 months out of the year, when they're going to be in work 12 months out of the year as adults?  A better system would be something like splitting the year into trimesters and having a two week break in between them, and then a one week break after midterms.  That would roughly mirror the vacations adults take although obviously still be more days off.  Oh and any teacher that gives homework for a break should be summarily executed.