Modeling the fading stars

[Grimly Fiendish 2]

I have some ideas for modeling the decline of the stars and the resulting chaos and its effect on House economies. But I am not sure what method of applicaiton would best suit gameplay or reflect canonical reality.

Survey

EFS is supposed to occur in a context of fading suns and increasingly vicious war and destruction. Supposing the fading of the stars and the deterioration of society into darkness could be modeled by changing data files to mimic

(1) decreased food production from dimming suns

(2) decreased tax income from social breakdown and

(3) increased scarcity of resources.

Should this occur

(a) all at once, in a single, noncanonical (AFAIK) Great Catastrophe affecting food (and other) production, economies, and resources. Prices would not be affected but pay scales for service to a House might rise.

(b) incrementally, so that (say) tax revenues decline by 3% every 10 years or so and food production by about 5%; or some other rate

(c) randomly, so that one decade sees a drop and the next sees a rise in production/revenue, and/or

(d) politically, in that, in addition to the effects of decreasing solar energy, the Houses can vote on instruments to heat or cool the economy.

Should the Catastrophe be fixed or random? What should the period of determination be?

Any comments welcome. I have a number of ideas that can be implemented together or separately.

[domingo]

I think c), but with gradual decrease over long time, different for every star system ... and it should take a very long time ...

[Grimly Fiendish 2]

That does seem best. Unfortunately, I don't have any ideas for separating the effects by system. For the "remake," great idea.

What can be done is to change the default tax rate in the EFS.INI. That immediately changes the graphic, and on the next turn lowers city loyalty. Tax income stays the same, but to increase loyalty back to where it was, you need to lower the tax rate so income is lower. This partly solves the excess cash problem of the later game. I am still testing this—I'm not sure you can keep changing the value up and down without problems. But lowering the default rate by 1 lowers loyalty by 3%. If you start with the default at 30 (starting loyalty is unaffected, either 75% or 95%), then the rate could be lowered by 1 every 10 turns for 300 years, as loyalty decreases from 75-95% to 0-5%.

No idea if this affects the AI—I need to check!

The other instruments are (1) substituting farm/arborium files with lower harvest rates (2) substituting a unit file with higher unit pay. Changing the files that dictate resource costs has no effect.

The political option could involve a substitute unit file that either increases pay or increases resources costs. The point of voting one way or the other would be to force the use of the file that benefits you most and hurts others most. I haven't made such a file yet—it's just an idea.