What's in a Name?: Total Manufacturing needs to go!

yes even TOTAL Production vs manufacturing would be clearer

Are you sure that is what happened? Since alpha production meant output, yield, etc., i.e. one of the general terms that includes research and wealth. Manufacturing has meant making buildings and ships. Total manufacturing would mean the manufacturing after all boosts and bonuses, but still only applies to building things. It would be seriously surprising to me if Production has been renamed to Total Manufacturing. After all you cannot manufacture research or wealth (well, except through projects).

Yes, I'm quite certain that this is what has happened. I expect that Stalker0 is quite certain that this is what happened, as well. The effect types in the XML files have not been changed, nor have the in-game effects (well, aside from some variations in magnitude over the various patches), only the name has.

Furthermore, actual manufacturing bonuses, such as the one in the Malevolent tree that gives your homeworld +10 manufacturing, show up in the tool tip. The new "total manufacturing" bonuses? They don't show up in the tool tips, just like the approval modifier to production doesn't show up in the tool tips.

Production may have been too similar to manufacturing, but renaming it to "total manufacturing" is strictly worse.

Personally, I'd go for "base" rather than "total" production (actually, I'd sooner just go for "production" as the multipliers and the flat bonuses use the same name, which means that the flat bonuses increase base production and the multipliers increase total production, though since the multipliers are applied to the base production I don't feel that listing them as a bonus to "base" production would be too bad). After all, the flat bonus (or penalty) is applied before multipliers, which are applied before distribution across the three output types and before their multipliers are applied. "Total" production would imply that the flat bonus is applied after multipliers.

Of these, the only one that I kind of like is "resources," and even that's a bit questionable since production isn't directly resource-dependent (unless you class population as a resource). Yields and especially output are better for final values, in my opinion, and bounty doesn't really feel appropriate.

The only thing that I think will really solve the issue, though, has nothing to do with tool tips or changing the names around and everything to do with actually making production easily visible to the player. Maybe put it in the Govern Planet screen rather than in the colony window, but display it somewhere, and have a tool tip break it down. This is a problem which is going to exist as long as production is a hidden value; the only difference renaming things is going to make is in where the confusion lies. "Yield" - why aren't my manufacturing/research/wealth tool tips displaying the bonus? "Output" - same question. "Bounty" - what the hell is that? "Resources" - you mean the strategic ones, or maybe the trade resources on the planets? How does the 10% "resource" bonus from Interstellar Governance come into play? I'm not seeing an increase in my resource stockpiles, in my trade resource stockpiles, or in the bonuses I'm getting from trade resources; it must be bugged.

How about Gross Planetary Product?  GPP.   

Works for me, its clearly different than the other terms.

Yep, GPP, or why not use GDP??

I'm really still not so sure about this. The Governance techs give bonuses to "Total Manufacturing". The icon is an orange hammer, which is the manufacturing icon. Now granted, those bonuses do not show up in any planetary tool tips so it's not immediately obvious in the UI how it is applied. So I won't say I'm certain, but based upon what I see in game, my guess is Total Manufacuring != Production.

Well, find your base outputs before modifiers. I.e. take a planet, set the manufacturing fraction to 100%, read off the raw manufacturing and remember it, then do the same for wealth and for research. If "total manufacturing" bonuses apply to production, then the raw manufacturing, gross income, and raw research numbers should be identical. If the "total manufacturing" bonuses apply only to manufacturing, then raw manufacturing ought to be higher than the other two unmodified output types. If you really need to convince yourself that the bonus isn't not shown in the tool tips but is applied with the other bonuses (either before or after), figure out the multiplier to manufacturing and then multiply the raw manufacturing by that. If the raw manufacturing output multiplied by the multipliers shown in the tool tip gives you the manufacturing output shown on the screen, then the "total manufacturing" bonus clearly isn't being applied after everything else to manufacturing, either. If you still aren't sure after that, the production model in v1.02 is

[total production] = (1 + [approval modifier] + [other production modifiers])*([flat production bonus] + [population])

The approval modifier runs from -0.25 to +0.25, though what exactly it is you'll need to determine with a curve fit using the data points given in GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML since the production modifier from approval no longer matches the approval modifiers to any of the other planet attributes, if I'm not mistaken. Add everything up and see where you think "total manufacturing" bonuses go. Hint: they're production bonuses and modifiers.

You don't even need to go that far into the game to test this; Colony Capitals and the Civilization Capital each give +5 "total manufacturing," according to their tool tips. The planets have identical maximum raw manufacturing, raw research, and gross income values before the bonuses listed in the tool tips are applied, these values match the expected value of the planet's production under the assumption that "total manufacturing" is a bonus to production (remember to include the approval adjustment which, just like every other thing associated with production, isn't displayed anywhere), and these values multiplied by the planet's bonuses to the appropriate output type match the listed output on the planet, so clearly the "total manufacturing" bonuses from the colony and civilization capital are not being applied to manufacturing output.

If you look into the XML, you see that the colony capitals have the following effects:

    <Stats>
      <EffectType>ProductionPoints</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>5</Value>
    </Stats>
 
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>GoodsAndServices</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>3</Value>
    </Stats>
 
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>InfluencePerTurn</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>1</Value>
    </Stats>
 
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>Food</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>5</Value>
    </Stats>
 
    <Stats>
      <EffectType>SensorRange</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>5</Value>
    </Stats>

Goods and services is clearly Morale in game; food, sensor range, and influence are obviously not the"total manufacturing" mentioned in the in-game tool tip, which we can readily determine is a bonus to production. We do see a +5 "production points," which matches nicely with the +5 "total manufacturing" displayed on the in-game tool tip, and which we already determined to be a bonus to production rather than manufacturing.

Checking the Durantium Refinery, we see that it offers the following primary effect:

    <Stats>
      <EffectType>ProductionPoints</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>2</Value>
    </Stats>

On the Colony Capital, this effect was used to provide a production bonus and was listed in-game as "total manufacturing." This is the same effect type in the XML, and it has the same tool tip in the game. It seems reasonably likely that this is in fact a production bonus, not a manufacturing bonus, despite the claim made in the tool tip; checking the numbers in the game will probably confirm that, though I see no reason to bother doing so again.

Checking the Thalan Hive, the Thalan Mother Hive, the Durantium Refinery, the Colony Capital, and the Civilization Capital improvements, the Enhanced Production and Interstellar Governance techs, and the Economic Ring starbase module, we see that all of these use the ProductionPoints effect type for the bonus which gets listed in-game as a bonus to "total manufacturing." Factories, the Productive faction traits, and the Relentless trait all use the MaxManufacturing effect type, and all show up in game as bonuses to manufacturing output, with the bonuses being listed in the tool tips. It is very clear that the bonuses claimed within the game to be to "total manufacturing" are in fact bonuses to production.

Okay yes, I see that now, thanks. Though your reply was unnecessarily verbose; the first two sentences sufficed.

That's our Joe:) Though probably too verbose for you, the extra info is educational for many on the forums.

Well seeing as he was replying directly to my question, I have grounds to comment on the excess verbosity. The question was answered in the first two sentences. Everything else may be useful for other purposes, which I may or may not find useful, but not in answering my question.

You demonstrated an unwillingness to believe a direct statement that the in-game effects were looked at and seen to be unchanged, taking instead the evidence of the orange hammer icon (which has been used for both manufacturing and production bonuses in every version I remember) and the name listed in the tool tip, and apparently did not do any check much more involved than that. This indicates that you were unwilling to believe that others had properly evaluated the situation. Moreover, as you indicated that you had evaluated the effects and had seen nothing to suggest that 'total manufacturing' and 'production' were one and the same, it would appear that you did not know how to test the hypothesis that 'total manufacturing' and 'production' are (or are not) the same thing or tested the hypothesis incorrectly. I therefore explained how to check whether or not this was the case, and then provided some evidence for the position that 'total manufacturing' and 'production' are the same thing.

You say unwillingness, I say disinterest. My time is better spent elsewhere while apparently you do not suffer from this condition. Thanks for the unnecessarily detailed response, and for taking the extra time to answer my question while I was doing something productive.

How about Production for ships and Construction for buildings? or Have I got the wrong end of the stick?