Facility Mod Idea

[twilight]

Hi,

we all know that our (and their) ministers are sometimes ... kind of silly in matters like building facilites. There are some major problems:

1. Planets Space. Some Planets have not enough space to carry all the facilities the ai would like to build. Or have to build to make sense.

2. The Ai will not scrap facilities. Build three facilites to improve the whole planet in athmosphere, value and condition and on many planets ist not enough space to build something more. No problem if the ministers scrap them after use, but they won't. And even if we only speak about bigger than tiny planets. It's a waste of three slots.

Then again, if acieved in the later game, those facilities will not be build on older planets, which are already full with facilities.

Same problem with temporal and normal Space Yards, planet and system robot factories, mines and monolithes and so on and on. Waste of Space, waste of opportunities, lack of efficiency. The ai needs help.

I'm thinking about solving those problems with a little trick. Ever thought about the following ideas? (I'm sure you have, but I did not found a thread about it)

a) Summarizing the facility-abilities. For Example we create a new facility, let's call it "Ministry for Planet's Welfare". In the ai-facility-construction we find the order to build that item on *every* planet. The first Ministry is available with the first level of the cargo-tech, so it's available at the game's beginning and should to be build on every planet. It has 0 abilities for now.

After every three Level of "Planet Utilization" you get in the unmodded game a new facility. For every tech level in between you can upgrade those facilities. But here our ministry can be upgraded with exactly those benefits. With PU 0 we the Ministry has no abilies. With techlevel 1 in PU we can upgrade it to a new ministry, which is able to improve the planets conditions, with tech level 2 it's able to improve it better, with techlevel 4 the ressources value and so on. On PU level 9 we have 10 Ministries. And they all want only one single slot.

We benefit from that in two ways: There is no planet to tiny to create a genisis-Effect and furthermore the ai does not waste so much space. One little useless facility (afer completing the genisis-efect) does not hurt too much.

Then again, would'nt it be a nice task for a Ministry for Planet's Welfare to protect that planet in case of planet destroying weapons? And so on. Okay, that's normal modding. But I think the base idea of summarizing the abilites in that way is a good thing.

At least you can trust your own ministers without scrapping facilities on each of your 200 planets to be sure they dont waste too much space. And there are many ways to create new facilities. Think about military Bases, with cargo for troops, perhaps military shields, scanners and so on. Or Cities for generating Intelligence, Research, Cargo and Storage (like in proportions).

I created a spaceport with the abilities of spaceport/resupplying/all points generation from mineral ressources to research. This Spaceport works as a systemwide control center. Its computers and administration staffs are able to give bonuspoints to every industry. They help those planets with computer power, experts, ships, robots and so on. On the beginner's level the bonus is zero. But with every computerlevel the bonus increases. Problem: Robot Factories, Mineral Scanners and so on aren't get by the computer technology, so we must change some other techs, but that's okay for me. Now I have 9 SpacePorts and on its higher level it replaces several facilities and no minister is able to mess around.

b) Updating Facilites

How to make the ai build monolithes on planets, where already facilites are build? In upgrading to them. Imagine a monolithe which can be build with the knowledge of stellar Manipulations and Mineral extraction. After achieving the needed levels you're able to build it.

Now, if the mineral facilities and the monolites would be of the same facility-family we could upgrade them to monolithes. Okay, farms and refinieries can't updated then. But the main problem are the mineral ones, I think. But it's a question of ideas. You could upgrade a space port to a planetary shielding base if you want to. The possibilities are great.

The base idea is here to update useless facilities to complete new ones. With a cool modding in tech, costs and gained points the game's balanced isn't endangered.

And think about the possibilities for scenarios and mods.

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Of course these modifications try to minimize the game's facilities. And of course the game will be something boring for those players that want to build several facilities on several planets in several days of hard gamer's work. But for long time players, playing in games with hundreds and more planets it would be a nice idea I think. It could improve the ai significantly. The price may be high, though. But perhaps not necessarily. I have to try it.

What do you think?