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[Gothars]

Seems like you can assign an AI to every branch of a planet's administration. What do you guys think the different AI tiers will do? Improve some stats? Unlock new options? Potentially betray you and funnel all profits into the FreedomForMachines fond?

[Althaea]

Bloody hell. I thought I'd gone over ever little inch of those images to find the interface spoilers Alex was talking about, but it turns out they were hidden in plain sight. Didn't think to look at the icons for the structures.

Simple statistical improvements are the obvious effect. It might also be that the simple and obvious solution is the correct one here.

However, based on the state of the Persean Sector and the one use we've seen for an AI Core in the game so far, I have always assumed they are absolutely necessary to hack into UACs and crack the DRM. It would normally take many decades to crack a UAC even if you knew what you were doing - those of you who actually read the tutorial text will remember that this was also the kind of timeframe tossed around for calculating the specific drive-field frequencies needed to stabilize Galatia's jump point. AI cores can enable tasks that would otherwise require many months, years or decades to be done in days or weeks.

Basically, I suspect AI cores will be needed to do all the stuff humans lost the institutional knowledge for during the Collapse. Presumably they can just reconstruct that knowledge from basic principles. Presumably some of the "rare" UAC designs Alex mentioned previously (though in a different context) will only be available if found on ruined worlds and cracked open using higher-level AI cores by some means.

Of course, I suspect that the above has very little to do with what the AI cores are actually doing for those structures. So assuming you can still turn them in to different factions that means you've probably got at least three different ways of using AI cores.

Hm. Note that Eochu Bres has a net positive income and Jangala has a net negative income. Eochu has Alpha cores assigned to farming, light industry and Population & Infrastructure, while Jangala has an Alpha core for farming and seemingly only gamma-level cores on other economic structures. If the space port counts as such, and the bonus from AI administration is not uniform, I suspect the effect there is to reduce the volume of and consequently stability impact from smuggling. (Keeping an eye on the comings and goings of ships, eh?) That would only have an indirect effect on revenue, though.

[FooF]

Seems like you can assign an AI to every branch of a planet's administration. What do you guys think the different AI tiers will do? Improve some stats? Unlock new options? Potentially betray you and funnel all profits into the FreedomForMachines fond?

I noticed that right off.

My assumption is that sectors of an outpost need leadership of some kind, whether human or AI. Depending on said leadership, that sector will perform to some percentage of its maximum efficiency.

Low level officers or Gamma cores are necessary to get anything out of any given sector. Both of these choices give output from that sector but at reduced efficiency. Low-level officers might be as low as -50% while Gamma cores give -25% (from baseline). Gamma cores have no chance of "going rogue." Note that human officers will passively upgrade over time while the AI cores will not. So a low-level officer is initially worse than a Gamma but over the course of a month or two, he/she will bump up to mid-level and then go on to high. AI is more of a quick-fix. On the downside, human officers will demand payment and will eat into your overall profits. AI cores will not.

Next step up is mid-level officers. They bring baseline efficiency (+/- 0%)

Beta Cores are an upgrade over mid-level humans granting +25%. Beta Cores have a slim chance of sabotaging the sector they are assigned to and will permanently lower the "level" of that sector (if you had ultra-rich ores, they're now just "rich"). If you have human administrators somewhere on the outpost, they will alert you to suspicious activity so that you can remove the Core before it does so. Other AI will not alert you, so it behooves the player to have a least one human officer somewhere on the outpost. Due to how the cores are slaved to your personal ID chip, you have to physically be present to remove AI cores. Hence, if you get a warning that a core is about to go rogue, you have to travel there to remove/replace it.

High-level officers excel in their field bringing efficiency up 50%.

Alpha Cores outperform even the best humans, increasing efficiency by 100%. However, Alpha cores, should they go rouge will sabotage the whole outpost, converting it to the Remnant faction and lowering every sector on the outpost by one. Low-level officers will not be able to recognize an Alpha's schemes but mid-level and high-level officers will.

Beta and Alpha cores would have an RNG roll every month. Beta cores have a 5% chance to malfunction while Alpha Cores have a 15% chance. If the RNG roll favors a malfunction, a human officer will alert you (if none are present, you will not be made aware unless you dock with the outpost). Once triggered, Beta cores will have 30 days before they fail while Alpha cores take merely 15 days to overturn the outpost. All things considered, Beta cores, at their worst, are inconveniences but Alpha cores are mischievous little devils that will undermine you at every opportunity. As extremely rare drops, there may be "Locked Betas/Alphas" that will never attempt to sabotage you but these will be very rare indeed.  

[Sendrien]

Alex,
I'd love to be able to manage the ships/patrols my outposts use. However I realize that could be a bit too much micro management.

So How about a compromise? let the outpost automatically generate a defense force and patrols, but allow the player to boost the defenses by allowing them to garrison additional ships?

And to be clear, I'm not asking for control of patrols, or asking for Garrisoned ships to be put in patrols, I think patrols are more likely to take losses or be destroyed and I think that would be annoying if you lost a choice ship in what might be a needless patrol, whereas if you lose ships defending an expensive outpost it's more justified.

I don't think this is too much micromanagement at all! In fact, a lot of the joy from playing around with different configuration for each ship comes from seeing how your custom variants/custom fleet compositions fare against the stuff that is thrown at you.

If you as a player have no control over that, then it would feel really empty to spend all that time figuring out which configurations work best, only to realize that you're limited to stock variants for the core of your faction defense force.

[Bribe Guntails]

I imagine getting a permanent settlement established would be incredibly expensive, even for the rogue fleet mincing everything into credits.
I envision the world of outposts is a tier above fleet command. You're not dealing with discrete units of stuff anymore, but with abstract values of logarithmic scale. Any entity, player or non-player, considering an outpost needs to perform a massive undertaking with big time, money, and commodity investment.

If fleets are considered tactical, outposts are considered strategic.

Alex,
I'd love to be able to manage the ships/patrols my outposts use. However I realize that could be a bit too much micro management.

So How about a compromise? let the outpost automatically generate a defense force and patrols, but allow the player to boost the defenses by allowing them to garrison additional ships?

And to be clear, I'm not asking for control of patrols, or asking for Garrisoned ships to be put in patrols, I think patrols are more likely to take losses or be destroyed and I think that would be annoying if you lost a choice ship in what might be a needless patrol, whereas if you lose ships defending an expensive outpost it's more justified.

I don't think this is too much micromanagement at all! In fact, a lot of the joy from playing around with different configuration for each ship comes from seeing how your custom variants/custom fleet compositions fare against the stuff that is thrown at you.

If you as a player have no control over that, then it would feel really empty to spend all that time figuring out which configurations work best, only to realize that you're limited to stock variants for the core of your faction defense force.

Bring Auto-fit into the outpost. Either let it generate a preset composition or tinker with it yourself. Bam, done.

[Histidine]

@FooF: Cool writeup!

Beta Cores are an upgrade over mid-level humans granting +25%. Beta Cores have a slim chance of sabotaging the sector they are assigned to and will permanently lower the "level" of that sector (if you had ultra-rich ores, they're now just "rich"). If you have human administrators somewhere on the outpost, they will alert you to suspicious activity so that you can remove the Core before it does so. Other AI will not alert you, so it behooves the player to have a least one human officer somewhere on the outpost. Due to how the cores are slaved to your personal ID chip, you have to physically be present to remove AI cores. Hence, if you get a warning that a core is about to go rogue, you have to travel there to remove/replace it.

[...]

Low-level officers will not be able to recognize an Alpha's schemes but mid-level and high-level officers will.

Alpha cores subtly manipulate events to get humans who might threaten them demoted or fired, thereby protecting their own position.

^{(not a serious suggestion; among other things it wouldn't work in a video game as long as GameFAQs exists)}

[Draba]

I really like the proposed system, on top of being light on calculations it's easy for the player to follow(generally a fan of MoO2 style abstractions using low integers).

The only point that's a bit out of place for me is 1 unfulfilled demand using the same amount of reserves over time for a size 4 and a size 8,
despite the selection mechanics suggesting that they are orders of magnitude different.

Something like each tier using 2-10x as much supplies/time would get out of hand really fast, a suggestion in the spirit of simplicity:
- 4 demand world with no supply uses 1+2+3+4 units each month
- 5 demand, 3 fulfilled: 4+5 units
- 8 demand, 5 fulfilled: 6+7+8 units
Not necessarily good for gameplay, just throwing it out there to bring manual supply/market size models a bit closer.

That said, I totally get what you're saying there. Was actually thinking about having non-exported production give a bit of credits if there's unfilled demand nearby - a small amount compared to being a primary exporter, but something, just for the case you're describing. Not sure whether it'll be necessary (I also don't know right now), but it's an option.

IMO multiple small worlds could even get full price for the pooled production, it'd make sense if there is so much unfulfilled demand nearby.
Guessing that gets back to the performance problem, your idea doesn't need additional checks about who sends what to which planets.
If performance is the reason it could be worked around by sorting demand by size and processing it in decreasing order,
then going through supply and assigning it to wherever there is a shortage(or just going through demand again as it'll have neighbors already built for that tick).

...

Maiming colonies/trade fleets do not need to be "the" solution, costs to cover the operation or relation hits could act as deterrents in all but the most extreme cases.

Don't think the ethics angle is worth worrying about, a space game is not as personal as something like Rimworld.
That one was just some "journalist" needing something to write about and deliberately misunderstanding abstractions anyway.

[gruberscomplete]

@FooF: Cool writeup!

Beta Cores are an upgrade over mid-level humans granting +25%. Beta Cores have a slim chance of sabotaging the sector they are assigned to and will permanently lower the "level" of that sector (if you had ultra-rich ores, they're now just "rich"). If you have human administrators somewhere on the outpost, they will alert you to suspicious activity so that you can remove the Core before it does so. Other AI will not alert you, so it behooves the player to have a least one human officer somewhere on the outpost. Due to how the cores are slaved to your personal ID chip, you have to physically be present to remove AI cores. Hence, if you get a warning that a core is about to go rogue, you have to travel there to remove/replace it.

[...]

Low-level officers will not be able to recognize an Alpha's schemes but mid-level and high-level officers will.

Alpha cores subtly manipulate events to get humans who might threaten them demoted or fired, thereby protecting their own position.

^{(not a serious suggestion; among other things it wouldn't work in a video game as long as GameFAQs exists)}

I think you're all forgetting that all AI cores are rigged to explode upon treason. Thus our systems could be left without administration at any time, causing stability to drop until human officers get put in charge, or a replacement core is assigned to oversee the outpost until it too betrays you and explodes.

[DatonKallandor]

Forcing players by RNG to fly to their outposts every month or it gets permanently worse sounds absolutely horrible.

[Megas]

Forcing players by RNG to fly to their outposts every month or it gets permanently worse sounds absolutely horrible.

I would defeat unwanted significant random events by reloading the game until that event does not happen.  For example, during 0.6.5, I save-scummed until investigations (caused by buying rare weapons in Black Market) results in not guilty, no way I am grinding for hours to restore 130 or so reputation and access to rare stuff when it is faster to avoid it by reloading a game and rerolling the result.  Unstable outposts may fall into that.  Not saying this is a good thing, just that for more casual players who do not want to play that kind of game do not need to thanks to save-scumming.

[PixiCode]

Sounds like soon we may all be able to make our own Army Without Borders <.<

[FooF]

Forcing players by RNG to fly to their outposts every month or it gets permanently worse sounds absolutely horrible.

Unless you had 20-30 Beta/Alpha cores going at once, the chance of that happening is low. The average Beta core would require nearly 2 cycles before failure. The average Alpha a little less than a cycle. You can always tweak the numbers down or scratch the "need to be there" issue. Point being: there is risk involved in using AI.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think there are much better ways of dis-incentivising the use of AI cores in outposts. First you should remember that there is significant risk already involved in obtaining them. You can always make them rarer and harder to obtain as an indirect method of dis-incentivizing them. You can also incentivize other uses for them, such as the boosting relationships with factions or selling for cash. This might make the player think twice before using their cores for outposts. You could also make certain factions refuse to trade with you if you use AI cores, or maybe just trade at reduced rates. There are a ton of different ways to make player choices more nuanced. I don't think forcing the player to fly back to their outpost and click 'replace AI core' every couple months really adds anything interesting to the game.

[Megas]

As long as battlestations stream Remnant fleets as quickly as a Gauntlet monster generator, and player can farm the fleets for exotics like more plasma cannons, HVDs, fighters, hullmods, and cores, (beta and gamma) cores will be a readily available resource to an endgame player even if it takes some time grinding for them.

Had I continued to play my 0.8.x games, I would probably have plenty of cores to do whatever with them.  Currently, saving cores to reverse Hostile or even Vengeful relations with non-pirate factions can be very useful.  With that, I can take a commission until I am through using that faction, then turn in cores to mollify former enemies.

But... if the final game will support faction elimination like in Nexerelin, then using cores to make factions angry (after they outlive their usefulness) is a good thing (because I want to kill them all and be the last one standing to rule the sector).

[SCC]

Some suggestions that I was too lazy to link to proper posts.
1. Factions should establish new outposts in a nondirect way, by having subfaction (e.g. Tri-Tachyon New Markets Department) which had the same relations as parent faction, but would start at some point after the game starts (perhaps only after you make an outpost?) and would have only 1 small colony at first, so if you're so inclined you could cripple them at the beginning and not care about them later as they wouldn't respawn. Potentially old and big enough colonies could be transferred to the main faction.
2. I think it should be possible to sell your colonies with price increasing exponentially, as a way to create independent markets. You'd either lose money now to earn it later (by selling additional colonies at a loss) or make money normally, but slow down your expansion by having to take care of your colonies. It's possible that nobody would buy them though and you'd either have to develop them or abandon them.
3. This depends on how commission works, but I think one way to do it is that when you take commission from a faction and you make a colony, it counts as your faction's expansion subfaction, with all of their colonies counting as yours for no extra upkeep, but you have to give half of your earnings from colonies to main faction. You'd also eventually lose those colonies.
4. Alex, you should seriously consider a way to give outposts your unused ships, it's not really that hard to get a lot of them and be stuck with a war fleet or two in your storage.
5. Outposts in REDACTED space should be possible, but instead of usual pirate raids they should face either REDACTED or Hegemony attacks (or both!). Actually it'd be nice if every kind of outpost/colony faced an attack sooner or later unless there's other colony nearby, by pirates or other factions if you have a commission (it'd be interesting if Luddic Church would face Luddic Path attacks if your outpost isn't on a habitable planet because THAT'S HERESY).
6. Space station could be some kind of fleet facilitating structure: allowing for more reach, expanding fleets and allowing player to create/reinforce fleets by dumping their spare ships there.