Sigh, my account got so messed up I was unable to post anymore so I created a new one. Just in case you find the type of questions strangely familiar :)

I'm making a game (Pocket Space Empire, there was a topic about it) and the premise is no micromanagement and abstraction/autononomy instead of automation. So, in short, I'm making planets "hands of" (the player does not build buildings there).

My first attempt was to make generic buildings (farm, light factory, heavy factory, mine, powerplant, city) which are built by the AI governor (where player can set only specialization of planets and give edicts on what to focus). It's not that bad, but...

I'm wondering, wouldn't it make more sense to make instead "development levels"? Like infrastructure level 3, mining industry level 5, etc?

Especially "farms" make low sense... I mean, in real life you don't build farms (it's not a building) but use the land. The amount of land on a planet is fixed (can be increased by drying swamps and the like but this is still limited). And then, once you have covered all the areable land you start to upgrade the farming capabilities (irrigation, fertilizers, harvesters, climate control satelites). So you kind of have two variables: % of land being farmed and level of the farming where land farmed is limited by the planet itself (size, climate, geograpghy) and by population (required farmers) which is rather small limit since around 100m pops on a planet you should have all farmers you would ever need (farmers pop is quite low, assuming mechanization). This also means I would need to track the occupation of pops.. Argh!!!

Help me sort this out :D

Give planets a general development-level which dictates how much of the planet's potential living space is available for immigration and how much of the planet's potential industrial output gets used? possibly make a defensive level as well that gets "fed"by the general development level, and give a player 2 or 3 options of how much this defensive level should be focused on.

Hello hello,

Strip off the narrative, and focus completely on the mechanics. The game mechanics are at the core. You can build a narrative around your mechanics later.

For example (a hypothetical board game):

• How do I win the game?
  The first player to conquer 20 blobs wins the game.
• How do I conquer blobs?
  To conquer a blob, you must move a Thingy on the blob. If the blob is already owned by another player, you cannot conquer the blob.
• How do I obtain a Thingy?
  You can build one Thingy per turn on each blob that you own. For every Thingy you build, you must pay 2 Meows.
• How do I obtain Meows?
  You gain 1 Meow at the start of your turn for every blob that you own. A blob that has a Kitty on it will give 2 Meows per turn.
• How do I build a Kitty?
  To build a Kitty on a blob that you own, you must pay 5 Meows. You cannot build a Kitty on a blob the same turn you build a Thingy on it.
• ...and so on.

Notice how everything derives from need and purpose. There is no narrative and the names are nonsensical, but you can easily complete a whole game with this. You're running into your problem because you're asking the wrong questions. You're asking narrative questions for a game design problem.

Looking at your game mechanics then, you can give the player:

(a) one option to enhance the planet,

(b) two different options to enhance the planet,

(c) three different options to enhance the planet,

(d) four different options to enhance the planet,

(e) five differe.................................

The fewer options the player has to choose from, the more macro the management. Now from here arise interesting questions. What is the maximum number of enhancements a planet can have? Does buying one enhancement unlock a new one? Are new enhancements unlocked linearly or branchingly? Should there be one line of enhancement (simply called Planet Upgrade!), or two, three, four, five ... What resources must be payed for these enhancements? How do you obtain those resources?

Once you start framing your problem mechanically, and start asking the right questions, you gain a much clearer perspective; and where before you were looking for solutions, you now see possibilities. :)

Lastly, I shall spin some space-empire narrative on my hypothetical board game:

• How do I win the game?
  The first player to conquer 20 planets wins the game.
• How do I conquer planets?
  To conquer a planet, you must move a Spaceship on the planet. If the planet is already owned by another player, you cannot conquer the planet.
• How do I obtain a Spaceship?
  You can build one Spaceship per turn on each planet that you own. For every Spaceship you build, you must pay 2 Megacredits.
• How do I obtain Megacredits?
  You gain 1 Megacredit at the start of your turn for every planet that you own. A planet that has a Spaceship Hangar on it will give 2 Megacredits per turn.
• How do I build a Spaceship Hangar?
  To build a Spaceship Hangar on a planet that you own, you must pay 5 Megacredits. You cannot build a Spaceship Hangar on a planet the same turn you build a Spaceship on it.
• ...and so on.

Hope I helped you sort things out. Your name looks strangely familiar. :P

Cheers,

Chris

Thoughts about planets:

* What's the purpose of a planet? Territory (otherwise one could just live on a single - the best - planet), so territory is the key here. Similary, planets is a house for the population and somehow one planet is worse than several planets (for housing purposes). Gameplay wise it's also a source of score (prestige).

* What's the characteristic of a planet? There are different kind of planets (desert, lava, jungle). Also an older planet (owned longer) should be worth more to the player (explanation being that there was built a lot of infractrucure on these planets - note it's not required if the player explicitly builds anything there, it could be a simple function of time).

The simpliest way woudl be probably something like that:

- each planet has "level of development", it increases by +5 each turn you control the planet and decreases -1 each turn it's abandoned (like if an insect non civilized race took it over and everything start to fall apart there)

- what planet produces depends on planet type (like lava produce minerals and terran produce food) * level of development

Still, this does not take into account population (high pop planet should produce more - obvious).

You're asking narrative questions for a game design problem.

From game design/mechanics point of view I just need number of planets :) I don't need "player upgrades the planet", actually I prefer if player can't do it. Unfortunatelly, players would kill me for such lame narrative :D So it's mostly a narrative problem... Somehow I should include elements I don't need gameplay wise (and preferably give these some gameplay purpose).

Actually, ideally I would want if the only decisions regarding planets were "what to conquer/colonize next" and "what specialization set for that planet", the rest being "hands off".

Maybe you can apply mechanics like Rome Total War 2 (which mechanics mostly faded in my memory tbh but)

You can probably apply this region (capital and minor settlements) thing to governing planet and minor planets of a solar system.

Simply upgrading food, entertainment, governance etc buildings increases input with other side effects (more entertainment is more costly & reduces workforce, less food production leads to famine/import)

You can even apply a empire wide basic aggregrated input output for commodities, leading to other events like famine.

I think these kinds of things are best done in "if A then not B" kind of ways, if you're planning on multiple possible development levels per planet.

The problem in design for this is if you make it so you can "level up from 1 to 2" in every facet you'll end up with massive blobs of very generic planets. In a space conquest kind of game this is a huge no-no in my opinion. I'd instead make it so that "leveling up" a planet locks out other improvements/choices, so that an individual choice not only has long and large scale impacts to your entire gameplay but allows a large depth of possible replays, as opposed to the very real danger of having a game that "feels the same" every time you start over.

Got my original account back

You can probably apply this region (capital and minor settlements) thing to governing planet and minor planets of a solar system.

Simply upgrading food, entertainment, governance etc buildings increases input with other side effects (more entertainment is more costly & reduces workforce, less food production leads to famine/import)

You can even apply a empire wide basic aggregrated input output for commodities, leading to other events like famine.

Well, regions won't really work in my game Each system is one planet.

The "empire wide basic aggregrated input output for commodities" part sounds much more interesting.

I think these kinds of things are best done in "if A then not B" kind of ways, if you're planning on multiple possible development levels per planet.

The problem in design for this is if you make it so you can "level up from 1 to 2" in every facet you'll end up with massive blobs of very generic planets. In a space conquest kind of game this is a huge no-no in my opinion. I'd instead make it so that "leveling up" a planet locks out other improvements/choices, so that an individual choice not only has long and large scale impacts to your entire gameplay but allows a large depth of possible replays, as opposed to the very real danger of having a game that "feels the same" every time you start over.

Avoiding generic planets, yes. Promoting specialized planets, yes. Making the player to decide what to build on every single planet, no.

(there are some scenarios in the game where you start with 200 planets under your control, not managing them one by one is absolutelly critical here)

What planet can produce should be determined ONLY by these 3 means:

1) Planet type (on desert/ice planet you won't build agriculture, even if you have technical means), obvious

2) Planet specialization (player selected)

3) Global (empire wide) edicts, like "on all mineral rich planets >3 try to build some mining industry"

Then AI helpers decide what industry to upgrade on each planet based on these three factors.

Note: I'm excluding here military, it's handled separately, just economy/civilian sector.

You can probably apply this region (capital and minor settlements) thing to governing planet and minor planets of a solar system.

Simply upgrading food, entertainment, governance etc buildings increases input with other side effects (more entertainment is more costly & reduces workforce, less food production leads to famine/import)

You can even apply a empire wide basic aggregrated input output for commodities, leading to other events like famine.

Well, regions won't really work in my game Each system is one planet.

Doesn't seem like there's anything saying you can't have more than one region per planet. At its simplest level, small planets (1 region), medium planets (2 regions), large planets (3 regions)? Giving another dimension of decision making over which planets to value/prioritize. Are you more concerned with the 1 region planet in a strategically significant location, or the 3 region planet further from a critical area? That sort of thing.

What planet can produce should be determined ONLY by these 3 means:

1) Planet type (on desert/ice planet you won't build agriculture, even if you have technical means), obvious

2) Planet specialization (player selected)

3) Global (empire wide) edicts, like "on all mineral rich planets >3 try to build some mining industry"

Then AI helpers decide what industry to upgrade on each planet based on these three factors.

Note: I'm excluding here military, it's handled separately, just economy/civilian sector.

It might be helpful if you clarified the core gameplay of your game. Because I would be cautious about some of the things you're trying to do. MOO2 is one of the greatest strategy games ever made, but could suffer from a lot of micromanagement towards the late game. MOO3 tried to solve that by implementing big changes involving autonomous governors and agents and officers that sounded cool on paper – and sounds a lot like what you're doing – but in actual play was terribly, terribly boring, because the game could almost function on autopilot and the player's agency was more or less wasted.

It might be helpful if you clarified the core gameplay of your game.

You know, to be quite honest I don't want the player to deal with planets too much in the first place. It's not the core of the game. You colonize the planet, set its specialization (farming,mining,industry) and that's it. From now on you worry about keeping it safe (military), keeping it loyal (rebels, happiness, propaganda), not about building farms or factories (it's not your problem, that's what the people that live there do, it's their job).

I would either ignore the economic aspect (well, not exactly since you do make an empire and you need it to tun smoothly and produce things but not in terms you getting into details) or by moving the economy to higher level (not planet but imperial institutions, mega projects, corporations, etc). I really, really don't want the player to build farms/factories on planets :)

You colonize the planet, set its specialization (farming,mining,industry) and that's it.

With the large numbers of planets you have, that is literally micromanaging, though. Isn't one of your core principles to avoid micromanaging? I think it would be better if planets were simply classified into three categories: farming, mining, industry. The player doesn't need to set anything, and instead can just focus on conquering the planets s/he wants/needs.

Edit: Can you get your hands on the board game The Starfarers of Catan? Tomonobu Itagaki always emphasizes the need of understanding/analyzing/playing board games and gambling, and The Starfarers of Catan is an absolutely amazing game with a very similar theme to yours. I'm 100% sure you can learn a whole lot if you look very deeply at this game. Plus, it's incredibly fun to play. :)