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The more I play through my current playtest the campaign, the more I miss having a separate system resource to tie each of the infrastructure to. I know that there were several players that absolutely hated the idea of having system resources that tied into Industry and Research output, but what I'm wondering what people would think about having a few expanded system resource options as optional rules in a later book?

Right now what I'm looking at are Radioactives (RAD) as an Industry multiplier and Science (SCI) as a Research multiplier. Right now they both are at flat 5x multipliers which works, but means that you'll never have a system that is just better for industrial work or better for scientific research. Some of the special encounters and strategic resources provide limited benefits in this regard, and maybe that's enough. I'm just wondering what people think about the topic to see what direction to head long-term with these ideas.

I've also previously entertained adding Fuel (FUEL) as another system resource that would tie-in with an optional fuel system wherein ships used fuel to perform jumps and the amount of FTL movement you could perform per turn would be limited by your available fuel. This ties in with the appearance of gas giants in the advanced system rules, where you would use the helium 3 siphoning stations to generate fuel (new Refinery infrastructure).

Well, for Research, rather than inventing a whole new resource, you could tie it to the number of Jump lanes. I mean, assuming Jump technology is a big part of what we're investing in, it would make sense that having more lanes to study means more tech. And since jump lanes are associated with systems that aren't particularly habitable, it'll set off a nice tension.

For Industry, and I suppose Fuel, it could be binary. Either there are Rare Elements and Gas Giants, or there aren't. If there are Rare Elements, Industrial capacity is doubled. If there are Gas Giants, ships can refuel without a refinery. Have you ever looked at Traveller?

Tyrel Lohr wrote:... Some of the special encounters and strategic resources provide limited benefits in this regard, and maybe that's enough...

This seems like enough to me.

Agree that special encounters/strategic resources is enough in this regard. Add separate stats for industry and science seems to be increasing the noise-to-signal ratio without a lot of benefit. Right now with cap/raw/bio I can tell at a glance which systems are good colonization candidates and which are not. Adding two more stats will just make this murkier. Plus it seems like it would overly encourage colony specialization- you'd only build science at good SCI sites and industry at good RAD sites, and to be honest mono-industry colonies strike me as pretty boring. A few 'farm worlds' on good BIO worlds are ok, and mining colonies with just Economy is typical, but beyond I'd prefer to see colonies that are more well rounded.

-Will

wminsing wrote:Agree that special encounters/strategic resources is enough in this regard. Add separate stats for industry and science seems to be increasing the noise-to-signal ratio without a lot of benefit. Right now with cap/raw/bio I can tell at a glance which systems are good colonization candidates and which are not. Adding two more stats will just make this murkier. Plus it seems like it would overly encourage colony specialization- you'd only build science at good SCI sites and industry at good RAD sites, and to be honest mono-industry colonies strike me as pretty boring. A few 'farm worlds' on good BIO worlds are ok, and mining colonies with just Economy is typical, but beyond I'd prefer to see colonies that are more well rounded.

True, and if the Industry stat did get tied back into supply in some meaningful way (as per information in the other threads) then there might not be as much reason to have as separate system resource for it. Right now it just almost feels out of place, but I don't really want to combine it back with Economy to recreate 1E's Productivity stat because I do like having some systems that are good for money generation and others that are good production sites.

Sounds like you need a sufficient distinction in terminology between
a) "Infrastructure that generates EP from RAW"
b) "Infrastructure that generates Units from EP"
c) "Infrastructure that generates PP from BIO" -- is that the sticking point?

a = EXTraction, b = PROduction, c=AGRiculture ? So a table of colonies might look like

With TDP = the old Total Domestic Product, CON = Construction Capacity, and NAG = Net Agriculture.

To play devil's advocate here, I'd point out in 'real life' major production centers were often created not based on some special local feature but simply due to being at the right place with the right level of population. The great ship building centers of history required a good harbor and enough population to support all the required industries. The actual raw materials for ship building was often shipped in from distant locations, the resources were not produced on the spot; as one example the British were reliant on ship-building materials from the Baltic and the Americas even in the 18th century.

So basically I'm making the argument that we already have the 'right' stat for Industry; Census. What is required to create a great manufacturing center is not special resources but a large enough population to support enough skilled workers. A planet with a large population is by definition the right location for a manufacturing center.

-Will

That makes sense to me; that table of EXT | PRO | AGR I generated was using PRO * CEN to yield CONstruction Capacity.

The industry stat could be Cap. Do you have the space and resources to build massive industrial complexes. Alternately, you could set it at the higher of RAW and BIO. You either need access to a friendly environment that reduces costs, or have the raw resources right at hand.

Points well taken. I'm currently looking at having Economy, Industry, and Agriculture as the three infrastructure types, with Economy performing the dual roles of income generation and research limits, Industry providing construction limits, and Agriculture performing food production. I have several pages of notes on how to tie supply back into Industry again that I'm going to sort through next week and see if any of it sticks. I'd love for Agriculture to have a secondary effect, but really food production is good no matter what.

I may also decide to split research limits from Economy and tie it back to Census, but that would have to be done in such a way that building up a high Census research colony would make any sense. By using Economy I was going to be able to at least give players a reason to build up a Economy in RAW 1 systems to use them as research bases.