Wartime Economics will be built into the game system as a default rule, but its effects are being changed. The specifics of what we are going to do haven't been completely nailed down yet, but the gist of it is that Gearing Up will allow you to get at most a +50% economic/production bonus (and Recessions can get you as low as a -50% economic/production penalty). This means that an empire at a full Wartime Economy will have only 50% more output than an empire at Peacetime. In 1E the rules gave the Wartime empire a +100% bonus, which was excessive and made everyone want to be at War for the economic bonus.Gareth_Perkins wrote:Quick question indirectly relating to this:Does this mean that the "Wartime Economics" rule is being shelved (as with it the income imbalance in the buildup to war is likely to be roughly 30-92EP as the Interstellar Empire ramps its economy up to invade the Interplanetary faction)?Tyrel Lohr wrote: This creates a situation in which an Interstellar empire could have eight star systems with an output of 123, while the Interplanetary empire would control one system with 60 EP.
Balancing out the Wartime Economy rules this time is the concept of Wartime Fatigue. For each turn that your output is above 100%, you earn +1% Wartime Fatigue. You also earn +1% Wartime Fatigue for each turn that you Gear Up (Gear Up increases output by +5%; limit once per turn; so it takes 10 turns to go from Peacetime to full Wartime). Any time your Wartime Fatigue is > 0, you have to roll a check on a D100 + Fatigue to see what ill effects (if any) your empire has suffered. There will be a chart that will have a range of effects starting at results of 101 and working upwards. As the values increase, the potential results grow more severe. The absolute worst effect will be a complete economic collapse, which will send you into a full Recession but without a meaningful diminishing of your Fatigue. Essentially, at that point your empire collapses from the stress of constant war.
Now, Gearing Down acts as the opposite of Gearing Up, and reduces output by -5% but also reduces Wartime Fatigue by 1. Each turn that you are at peace (no Declaration of War/Total War) you also lose 1 Wartime Fatigue. Thus the mechanic works that when you Declare War, you can begin ordering Gear Up for ten turns then, when your war is resolved, you can start Gearing Down to burn off the excess Fatigue and return to a normal economy. If you have built up too much Fatigue, you might have to Gear Down below your 100% output level, and then wait for your Fatigue to fall to a level where you can once more "Gear Up" to restore your economy to normal levels.
Technically, you could decide to Gear Up at any time, but I would probably make the cost to Gear Up during peacetime incur twice the normal Fatigue. Similarly, Gearing Down during wartime probably should remove twice the normal Fatigue.
Internally we discussed the issues related to keeping the economic outputs at the normal 1E non-Wartime levels and adding Wartime Economies on top of them. Our final determination is that 2E has enough extra infrastructure types, more expensive units, and generally more things to spend EPs on, so the greater income values should balance one another out.
-Tyrel