I played DoE for ~3 tough hours and died at the 3rd level after being unable to manage defending my science ruins and my choke points. I do enjoy the new science additions and the game is much more challenging now. I have had to pause and contemplate my actions much more now. But overall great work Amplitude Studios!! Kudos!



I thought that the Dust field gen (defense +) and tear gas (enemy defense -) route was the path to success but I quickly learned I had made a big mistake. After doing some calculations it seems that it is more effective to go dust field (defense +) and firebot suppression (attack +). I ended up dying really quickly on the 3rd level and I attribute this to using and powering up the teargas instead of the firebot and getting unlucky with no merchants or unusable items during levels 2 and 3. I'm hoping I just got unlucky but I was wondering, has anyone else actually done the math to determine which is better, attack + or enemy defense - ? I think that attack plus is better at earlier stages and enemy defense - might go well for the later stages possibly.



Hoping my 2nd run will not be as unfortunate. I am actually impressed because I have been beating this game rather consistently with the past few updates, but this is the first time I have really struggled. Hoping it was just bad luck. We will see tonight!

I've been playing around with the new update as well and I have found it much more challenging as well. There is more "stuff" to be aware of and resources to balance. I really like the introduction of the new items because they add so much more strategy to the game.



I personally go for the Atk + because its bonus is effected by gear and can be stacked together. If you get a nice Gatling gun or augmented sword you will be very well off.



The - Mob def doesn't seem worth it because there are only 5 stages to the game and different mobs have differing amounts of defense. The module's worth only seems to shine verse only a couple of mobs (G. crystals, Hero Hunters, and Teal Beatles). If/when there are more stages, its effects could be more substantial on higher/harder monsters.



This could just be my luck, but on my most recent run I didn't research anything till the 4th stage. All the E. Ruins I found where way out there (sometimes 2 next to each other) and would take too much power. When I did get the chance to upgrade, I found that my late start did not hinder me but may have helped me instead. I spent much less science researching because I jumped from level 1 mods to level 3 in a single bound. It seems you can't jump immediately to 4th level mods.



It would be helpful if a popup appeared when you don't have anything researching on a powered E. Ruin.



I was successful because I had some new items: the hipster scarf and aftershave. You can rotate the scarf (has "Me First") to other heroes and the enemy will leave your nearly dead hero(es) alone. You can do the same with the aftershave but it is not as effective at defending. It is, however, great for whittling down enemies as they travel to your defended rooms.

Let's assume Level 1 of each (since I never researched Level 2 of -enemy-defense to know what it's like).



Level 1 Firebot gives you +16% Damage.

Let's say you have 4 heros in the room with really good gear averaging to 100 DPS each, you'd gain:

64 DPS. This, incfact is pretty good but keep in mind it only is that much when you have the luxury to be able to put all your heros in and all of them are well leveled and equipped.



Level 1 Tear-Gas multiplies armor by 0.7.

I haven't looked up how much armor the mobs have so I'll try to calculate it from the other side: How much armor would they have to have in order to make it as effective as Suppressive-Firebot?

Since Dmg=RawDmg*(1-Armor/(Armor+100))

we need to find out the armor where:

1.16*(1-Armor/(Armor+100)) vs. 1*(1-Armor*0.7/(Armor*0.7+100))



But since my math-skills are too low to solve it, I'll try finding the value by guessing...



100 => 0.58 vs. 0.588 ... 100 is pretty close, it must be slightly less than that

90 => 0.610 vs. 0.613 ... 90 is even closer I'd say it's good enough to say that 90 is where it's roughly equal.

84 => 0.6304 vs. 0.6297 ... 84 is already too low...



So monster-armor would have to be somewhere between 84 and 90 to make the Level 1 Tear-Gas as effective as the Level 1 supressive firebot.

I guess it isn't. But keep in mind it also works in the abscence of heros to buff the damage of towers. But then again, simply adding one more tower would almost always be better unless the monsters armor is very high.



Conclusion: Tear-Gas is total crap and not worth being researched or built ever.

Thanks Tainted and Ail! Looks like my conclusion was correct and tear gas is useless at this point in the game. Maybe if there were higher defense enemies or boss mobs (maybe with further updates) then it might be useful, but from now on I will stay away from tear gas. Also, maybe the dev team should make the tear gas more effective (like a 0.5 multiplier at lv 1) in order to make it more useful for us at this point of the game.

Ail wrote:


I haven't looked up how much armor the mobs have

I had a quick look. The tiny little ones have Defense 0. Second lowest are the Chimera with 4.

The highest defense is the big crystal golem - harmony monster with 28. Second highest is the one that goes for the crystal, with Defense 18.



When comparing that to your calculations, no wonder I never noticed the module having any effect

Ah, 28 is the highest that's good to know.



I calculated the damage-boost that tear-gas provides when facing them:



It's a whoopin' 7%... (and even less against all other monsters!)



The effect would probably qualify as a passive-ability of a hero. But not for a building that costs Industry to build.



I suggest the Devs try using that wonderful tool called "maths" aswell when trying to balance stuff against other stuff. Or maybe it is intended to have stuff that is next to useless and they want it to be there to give the players the chance of making the mistake of building/researching it.

If we look at Ail's results, we actually notice that the damage difference when attacking a mob with 84 armor is less than 7/10000, which is pretty negligible. Doing the math, I come out at roughly 85.1 armor, so the guess was pretty close, and in any case an inordinately high amount of armor.



Now, if we had a fixed, reasonably low break point, we could calculate the multiplier for the Tear Gas module to reach that point. With the highest armor value among current enemies being 28 and the lowest being 0, I'll take a value slightly above the average of 14 to make the Tear Gas Module preferable against armored targets. So, for armor value 16, we get:



1.16*(1-16/(116)) vs. 1*(1-16*x/(16*x+100))



Sparing you the steps to solve for x, we get the following result: x=0. Oh dear. That can't be right, can it? Let's check:



1.16*(1-16/(116)) vs. 1*(1-16*0/16*0+100))

1.16*(100/116) vs. 1*(1-0/100))

1 vs. 1



So the module would need to completely negate armor to put the break-even point at 16 armor. Breaking even at lower armor values would require an additional damage bonus (or the application of negative armor values.)



Surely, putting the break-even point at 28 will yield more reasonable results, right? Well, for that armor value, we come out at about x=0.43, so still more than cutting armor in half. And even with that massive reduction, the 16% damage increase would be more useful against every enemy other than the Golem.





For that matter, a 16% bonus is roughly equal to a 7/6 multiplier to damage, so even the Firebot Suppression is highly specialized at best. Unless you already have 6 damage dealers (towers or heroes) in the same room, or one or more heroes with insane damage potential, adding another tower will most likely yield better results.





tl;dr:

Please, Amplitude, check your equations and your numbers. I loved Endless Space, but it was (and still is) horribly balanced. I don't want to see the same thing happen to Dungeon of the Endless and Endless Legend. This isn't even the worst example of Amplitude Math: I just recently found that Power Modules and several Battle Cards in Endless Space use a percent operator on Critical Hit Chance, which is now 0 across the board for all weapons, so those effects most likely do nothing at all. That kind of error is just inexcusable.