[SUGGESTION] How to make the economy (and war) great again, with "cheats" that won't compromise immersion

[malkuth1974]

Best wall of text I’ve read on the subject.

[desiriel]

+1 for the OP. It's a thesis on game design.
I also noted in another thread (with much less argumentative power) that X4 needs to solve its war problems on one hand and to create a resource sink to simulate the constant drain of a civilian economy on the other.

[AdrianB1]

Then the devs should end the limited war caps you describe and allow total war. With changing faction leaders with different competencies as I've suggested the map is guaranteed to be dynamic and exciting. For incompetent faction leaders the algorithm is simply .33 multiplied by any instance a normal faction leader would build a station or ship (33% chance to build any station or capital ship a normal one would build). This would create temporarily stunted factions which allows for power shifting. This simulates the laziness and incompetence factor of real life, making things unpredictable. You could even make a mission from it: a player loyal to his faction could be offered a mission to assassinate his incompetent leader!

You really haven't offered any reason for why this simple system wouldn't work. A faction that is stunted due to the election of an inefficient faction leader will weaken but can rise again when it regains an efficient leader. Meanwhile simple powerful defense towers in the each core faction center will prevent total faction demise. I don't see what is "unpredictable" in this system outside of acceptable game parameters.

That would complicate things even more. Probably the more sensible choice is to define an initial state with sectors of each faction and to have the engine work towards keeping those sectors, so in case a faction invades or conquer a sector from another faction that one should fight to take it back, but not wage a total war. This is how the current world works and keeping some balance in this case is not in any way cheating, just keeping the possessions.

If the number of sectors would be larger and the number of free sectors would be significant, the factions should try to slowly expand (in a sustainable way, not in a direction where they can be cut off easily) in the empty space and maybe some border skirmishes when claiming sectors, but Xenon and Khaak wars should be enough to keep everyone busy with low intensity conflicts that lets you play the game as an economy sim (mine, trade, build) if you don't want to be a warlord.

[Zealoth]

+1 on the idea of extra neutral buffer sectors between factions. Would even make some sense, since the gates were reconfigured...

Now , for the main fun ouf tapping out a tldr post on a crapppy smartphone:

I'm not sure which factions should be fighting which since my universe is apparently sponsored by spaceweed and everyone is just chilling. That being said.

I personally do not understand the fears of massive snowballing. Fire up the reasoning engine!

1.The economy responds surprisingly well to lack of supply or increased demand.

2. Stockpiles of shipbuilding materials in shipyards and wharves are absolutely massive and should last long enough for eventual shortage to be overcame.

3. I assume the ai does frontal assault and doesn't do naughty stuff like back stabbing miners or freighters.

4. If the attacking faction succesfully breaks through, they now have longer routes, slower resupply or reinforcements, while the defenders enjoy faster replenishment

5. Ships get built incredibly quickly. Total pop cap is rather low. The units are almost the same with regards to their combat power. Economies end up pretty similar too. All this severely limits snowball potential.

Faction ais should be heavily disincentivised from teaming up too hard though.

Fighting should flare up and die down as factions rebuild their flees, to prevent a fresh ship stream vs fresh ship stream fight

Also, I'm pretty sure most players would absolutely help out a race that gets really threatened