Okay, so the first thing that has to be done is: make all the party laws cost 1 upkeep! Due to the low early influence production and the importance of minor faction diplomacy all >1 upkeeps laws are impossible to use in the early game. Since I assume this is an oversight that will be fixed soon, I will do my analysis as if it has already been fixed.

I also apologize for the wall of text, but scroll down to the bottom for my list of proposed changes.

With the tier 1 law change, there are now very few laws that are useful in the early game.

* Super tax act (STA) now always turns your system unhappy until you build some happiness things so it is now completely unusable early.

* Larger hosts bill (LHB) is and has always been useless on turn one. Manpower is just not useful, and draining 10% of your population growth is a big price to pay.

* Toys for Boys (TFB) is useful, but the 10% industry penalty is huge in the first turns when you are still building xeno-industrial infrastructure (XII) and public-private partnerships (PPP).

The party specific laws are more complicated because they are restricted to different races. So here is my race-by-race analysis:

Sohpons

Sophons have 2 law slots and access to scientist and religious laws. Dirty Hands Act (DHA) is amazing, -20% building cost is huge. TFB is also very good, since it now gives a substantial boost in science production. It might not be correct to use TFB before you get your Xeno-Industrial Infrastructure (XII) up and running, though, since sophon's early industry production is very lacking.

The sophons can use 1 law on turn one, and another one soon afterwards. This is fine.

Cravers

Cravers have 2 law slots and access to militarist laws. Lower Fleet Costs (LFC) is really good since the cravers is a very agressive race. However, it is not good until you start building ships, which is usually a few turns into the game (after XII at least). Both Toys for boys and Larger hosts bill are also usable laws, but you don't want either of them in the first few turns. TFB is good first when you get problem with happiness (so about 3-4 slave population). LHC is only good when you really need that extra manpower, as it otherwise cripples your food production and population growth.

The cravers has no usable law on turn one, but can start using 1 or 2 laws quite early (in the first 10 turns or so). I would like a usable turn one law, but this is probably fine.

United Empire

The United Empire has 1 law slot and access to industrialist and militarist laws. Both party laws are useful early during their active turns (which is not on turn one). Toys for boys is the only usable law on turn one, but it is also a pretty good one.

The United Empire has one usable law on turn one, and two more to switch to when the time is right. This is good.

Horatio

Horatio is one of the weakest races, so they could need some help just like the sophons. However, they only have 1 law slot and access to only ecologist laws, and Green Fertility Bill (GFB) is usable only if your first planet has anomalies and worthless otherwise. Even if your place has 1 anomaly, Toys for boys might even the better choice, as it gives +15% science/dust and +10% food/influence at the price of -10% industry, and it doesn't cost influence.

Horatio has one usable and one potentially usable law on turn one. I think Green Fertility Bill (the non-republic version) needs a buff.

Riftborn

Riftborn has 1 law slot and access to industrialist and ecologist laws. They also have republic, so the laws are stronger. The republic verson of GFB gives 10% fidsi per anomaly which is potentially insane if your starting planet has anomalies. Other than that, TFB is usable from turn one and New colony is usable after you found your first colony.

Riftborn has one usable and one potentially insane law on turn one, and then another one to switch to at the right time. The problem here is that the republic-version of GFB is way too good if your starting planet happens to have 2 anomalies. It needs a change.

Unfallen

Unfallen has 2 law slots and access to pacifist and ecologist laws. The only reason to use Trusted Broker early is to save influence, so the correct usage is to swap to it for one turn, spend all your influence on diplomacy and then abolish the law. It works, but requires some game knowledge and a lot of law micromanagement which I'm not sure I like. I talked about GFB above.

Unfallen has no consistent early game laws except for Toys for boys. They have some situational laws, but not enough to fill 2 law slots.

Vodyani

Vodyani has 1 law slot and access to religious and militarist laws. They also got a new version of species stability which gives +2 tribute per pop on systems. Of the neutral laws, TFB is the only usable one. Their new version of species stability, was meant to ensure consistent tribute output, but it is unfortunately completely unusable in its current state (more on this later). Lower fleet costs is usable and potentially very good starting from turn 15 or so.

Vodyani currently has only toys for boys available as a usable turn one law. The Species Stability absolutely needs a change.

Lumeris

Lumeris has 1 law slot with republic, and access to pacifist and militarist laws. Toys for boys, and Trusted Broker are both usable laws early (in the right situation). Lower Fleet Costs is most often not worth the influence cost, though. Lumeris is also the only race which can actually use Super Tax Act in the early game because of their Optimistic 2 trait.

Lumeris has several usable early game laws to switch between. This is good.

The problem with vodyani starts

Vodyani starts has 2 problems. The first is starting system swingyness. Since the ark population works on all planets simultaneously, having more planets equals having more population. While most other races start with 3 population which is very consistent, the vodyani can either start with 1, 2 or 3 (or extremely rarely 4).

The second problem is tribute generation. If vodyani can find a nearby minor faction or AI in the first few turns, they are set for a great game. Their first population doubles all their planets' fids output. Their first ark is an unbeatable combat ship with 15 movement speed. With a nearby faction you can get the first population around turn 10, and your first ark by turn 20. However, if they start alone they are stuck with 1 population and no second ark for a very long time. This is where they need help.

Tribute Ark modules could be used, but the tradeoff in industry, dust or science production is very significant in the early game, so the correct strategy is most likely to not use them at all, but just hope that you find someone to leech off of asap. So we can safely assume that the base tribute income before laws are 0 in the early game.

Now, the law gives 2 tribute per pop. Assuming a balanced 2 planet start, this gives 4 tribute per turn. Now when does that give you your first population? After 63 turns. 63 turns. That's insanely bad. It needs to change, and it should change into something that gives a consistent amount of tribute in the early game, so it can guarantee you your first population in a reasonable amount of time.

What I would like to see

For laws, I want everyone to have interesting choices to make already on turn one. There should be preferrably several laws that are actually beneficial on turn one. Having in some cases zero laws out of 4 or 5 being worth using on turn one is just not acceptable, but that is now it is right now in some cases.

Proposed changes (laws)

* Change the vodyani version of Species Stability to something that actually helps rough starts, instead of helping already snowbally starts. +20 tribute on systems would be good, since that would guarantee the first extra population in about the same time as other races get their first colony finished (at the cost of some influence).

* Change Green Fertility Bill to be less swingy due to lucky starts (i.e. not depend on anomalies). Example change: +5% fids per colonized planet on system or a flat +10% fids on system.

* Change Super Tax Act to either -15 happiness or back to a population based happiness penalty, so that everyone can use it at ~50 happiness and still be content after.

* Change Larger Hosts Bill to not tax your population growth. Example: +10% food, -10% dust.

* (IMPORTANT) Fix the influence costs of all switched laws, so all tier 1 laws cost 1, tier 2 laws cost 2, etc.

Proposed changes (other)

* Force vodyani starting system to have exactly 2 colonizable planets on turn 1.

About planet happiness penalties:

The vodyani can get up to 9 population on all planet types, has no access to terraforming, and can't move population around to manage happiness on systems with planets that have high penalties.

This means that each tier 3 planet on a fully developed vodyani system now has -72 happiness, up from -20. That change is immense, and pretty much forces you to always enact the Saints & Sinners Bill to solve the happiness problem. No other way exists in the game to handle that amount of happiness penalty.

Transvine system development and all the happiness buildings still give flat happiness increases, and not per population. So in a 4 planet level 4 system with all the buildings, assuming cold war with everyone and no transvine system developments, everything adds up to: 50 base + 10 + 25 + 5 per system level + 5 per planet + 5 per luxury deposit = 125 + 5 per luxury deposit. ONE tier 3 planet is now enough to drive down the happiness to content. Two would make the system mutinous. Isn't that a bit too harsh?

BUGS

Thank you all for this early feedback!

You should consider moving deep epoch scanning tech (the 4th level expeditions that unlocks the 3rd level luxuries) in the 5th era of science and exploration to the 4th era. You've incentivised getting the 4th level of development even quicker with the overcolonization changes (if I understand them correctly) and previously it wasn't worth waiting to get the 3rd level luxuries anyway since it already takes too long. Sophon/Science party may be an exception.

That’s indeed a good suggestion! I’ll look into it!

The ecologist laws still don't make much sense for Horatio (the only ecologist empire) since they encourage racial diversity and ultimately Horatio wants to be a one race (person) empire.

I get your point! I’ll look into providing alternate laws for Horatio for the last 2 laws.

Some of the starting switched faction laws cost 2 influence per pop... intentional or just forgot to alter them?

My bad, will fix that immediately!

Adding some more modules on horatio ships might be an idea too, since they are considered by many to be the weakest empire, and their ships are probably the primary cause, although they are enjoyable to play.

We will look into that!

EDIT: I went in-game and double checked and it's actually nerfed in this mod, the "per hero level" value seems to be gone and now it's flat +4 FIDSI per pop on system and +1 FIDSI per pop on senate. Wasn't in the mod's release notes though so you might want to add that.

It’s actually part of the 1.0.25 release note ^^ (not the mod itself).

But I do share the similar concerns as Macsen above that this greatly increases the incentive of reaching Era 4 Economy and Trade and also disincentives researching the overcolonization techs. I very much like the idea of systems being removed from the overcolonization count when fully developed but I believe that it should not be an extra effect from Level 3 System Development as I feel that if a system is removed from the overcolonization count it represents it being fully centralized with the empire but currently any system can be in a maximum of 7 turns (I think its 7), also if a Level 3 system is taken over they should not be instantly centralized.

So I would suggest having it tied to a new improvement or development level, one with hard requirements, For example:

That’s interesting! I’ll look further into that idea!

Questions & Ideas for the future:

Since this is all about balance changes will we soon be seeing the ability to mod the Registry.xml file due to it controlling a lot of the complicated stuff balance-wise or will the aspects controlled by the Registry.xml file not be balanced with the G2G balance mod?

It will in the future, but we need to first deliver a public version supporting the modding of the Registry file (which has been done for AI modding).

I hope it is not the later for my interest in this is twofold as I would very much like to mod the Registry.xml myself and I'm very interested in certain aspects controlled by it being balanced, mostly the Department of Commerce (Trading Companies)

I even have made an Idea on how to Rework Trading Companies even with details of possible formulas that could be used and how using a relative system will make it scale well independent of most the factors currently breaking it. There is more detail in the Idea post, but I'm more than willing to go in yet more detail if you would like, especially if you plan on focusing on this soon.

So Trading companies is what I think should be the next balance focus as it is rather overpowered right now. (Getting 100+ Tier 3 Luxuries & 1M Dust+ each per turn is not too difficult with certain settings) But heroes being balanced is still a good focus.

I’ll add it to the list for the next focus. We already started to think about changes on that topic. We will look at your idea too, to see how it fits with what we have already planned.

#1: Happiness penalties per pop on planets and the Riftborn

I'm unsure if the happiness gradients are simply reversed for riftborn, or if they still get their flat +20 happiness for sterile planets. If this is the case, with anything more than 2 RB pop on a lava planet, for instance, you will still be losing happiness despite their stated preference for such things. Equally as strange, the RB pop will also be gaining happiness on Green (fertile) planets despite saying how much they hate them.

However, this does allow for some better integration of the RB-based preferences. Since they happiness gains are now population based, instead of getting just the flat bonuses and pentalies to happieness, you can tweak it so that non-RB pop (even if playing as the RB) get the standard planet happiness modifiers, and RB pop get the opposite. This makes WAY more sense than the current system that magically makes organic races suddenly hate lush, fertile planets and love barren ones where they die :P. This creates an interesting choice for the RB player; terraform away from fertile planets to make room for more RB (at the sacrifice of organic populations), or leave the planets alone and allow the organic life to prosper there.

For now, Biophobic has been changed to provide:

 +10 approval per pop on Sterile Planets

-2 approval on Fertile Planets

(keep in mind that by default Sterile Planets provide -8 approval; the net approval will be +2 approval per pop on Sterile with Biophobic). 

The idea is to keep the mechanics attached to a trait for customization and not to the population itself.

I think there should be some midpoint (say tier 1 planets) that give no penalty or bonus for normal pops, and then the happiness goes up or down from there. This strata can then be simply reversed for RB populations:

I removed positive approval from planet types to avoid too big bonuses, as luxury and anomalies already provide positive approval on planets.

#2: Us or Them (in general) and the Cravers

If I were to redesign (and limit the power of) Us or Them, I would have it be "+30 (or maybe even 50) happiness per capital under your control". This rewards militaristic action, like conquering enemy civs (a very militaristic thing to do!) while still limiting its utility. The current version (+20 happiness per war) and the Jingoist Bill are rather silly since they incentivize you to declare war on everyone for no reason other than the happiness bonus

That’s a great suggestion! I’ll change the law for that in the next update of the mod!

* Change the vodyani version of Species Stability to something that actually helps rough starts, instead of helping already snowbally starts. +20 tribute on systems would be good, since that would guarantee the first extra population in about the same time as other races get their first colony finished (at the cost of some influence).

You’re right! I added a flat value of +15 on systems, and kept the +2 per pop.

* Change Super Tax Act to either -15 happiness or back to a population based happiness penalty, so that everyone can use it at ~50 happiness and still be content after.

It used to be the case but made the law a no brainer law that everybody pushed T1; that’s why we increased the happiness loss. I don’t think we should lower it again.

* Change Larger Hosts Bill to not tax your population growth. Example: +10% food, -10% dust.

Manpower is a critical resource and we need to keep a law allowing to increase its generation!

* Change Green Fertility Bill to be less swingy due to lucky starts (i.e. not depend on anomalies). Example change: +5% fids per colonized planet on system or a flat +10% fids on system.

I’ll look on how to improve the usefulness of the law in early game!

Transvine system development and all the  happiness buildings still give flat happiness increases, and not per  population. So in a 4 planet level 4 system with all the buildings,  assuming cold war with everyone and no transvine system developments,  everything adds up to: 50 base + 10 + 25 + 5 per system level + 5 per  planet + 5 per luxury deposit = 125 + 5 per luxury deposit. ONE tier 3  planet is now enough to drive down the happiness to content. Two would  make the system mutinous. Isn't that a bit too harsh?

I kept some flat bonuses on purpose but Transvine should become a +X per pop indeed! For the total of bonuses, don't forget Hero Skills, and as Vodyani has a lowered quantity of Ark they can maximise, the number of systems with a governor. Still, we will keep an eye on it and adapt the changes if Vodyani is not playay

BUGS

With the mod active,  Vodyani no longer has access to the tier 4 religous law Peace and  Prayer Act. Not that it is any useful anyway, but something probably  went wrong there

We replaced the law by an Vodyani variant but it cannot work without gameplay code; that's why it's not in the mod. The law will immune Ark to pacific conversion and provide Essence per systems under Vodyani influence..

Looking forward to the next balance mod changes i.e. commander heroes and Vodyani Infallible authority skill I modded it in my latest Let's Play to this (below) and it seemed to work well, was strong but not overpowered/broken like the fidsi per pop per hero level version. The version I modded to was pretty much already in the file but was being superceded.

Heroes Balance:

I do believe Heroes are deserving of a rebalance; fleet heroes always seem to level up slower, System heroes sometimes level up rather sporadically and can occasionally reach stupidly high levels (I’ve had heroes with all skills unlocked and have 10+ skill points to spare) I have thought of a possible way of balancing it in my Idea Hero XP & Levelling Rework It is based on a relative system which in my option makes it easier to balance as you control the range the values can be in.

Thank you for this feedback; we won’t expand on it yet as we keep it for one of the next focus, but I want to make it clear that we read you and will be keeping this in mind. :)

Cheers,

On Species stability:

+15 tribute on systems and +2 per pop would be awesome, thanks!

On Super Tax Act and Larger Hosts Bill:

I understand why you don't want no-brainer t1 laws. However, lately people started recognizing toys for boys as a turn 1 law, so the choice was not entirely obvious anymore. I don't think the problem is that STA was too strong, but rather that the other options were too weak. Specifically, that Larger hosts bill did absolutely nothing turn 1 so that one was a non-choice. I still believe the correct design is to make all 3 tier 1 neutral laws useful on turn one, and let people choose between them.

I also understand the need for a manpower law, but I think that it could be moved to tier 2 (so, turn 20) with no problem. I think this set would make for an interesting turn 1 choice for most races:

* Super Tax Act -15 happiness, +3 gold/pop (so it keeps content on 45-50 happiness systems)

* [Larger Hosts Bill-replacement]: +10% food, -10% dust

* Toys for Boys: +25 happiness, -10% on systems (so it reaches happy on 45-50 happiness systems, so the effect is really +15% science/dust, +10% food/influence, -10% industry)

* Current LHB moved to tier 2.

On Transvine:

Heroes only give +20, apart from the class that gives exctatic on systems at the max tier (I forgot which one it is), and while I agree that vodyani is one of the best races to maximize the effect of governors, it's still kinda rough. Happiness per pop would solve a lot of those problems, though, (assuming that the values are not too low) and would probably make for a great tier 3 system development luxury. Thanks!

On the new tier 4 vodyani law:

That law sounds really interesting. I'm excited!

Thanks for the quick response :) It's nice to see the devs being active on the forums.

Hello,

I am by no means an expert and frankly, a bit intimated to post here seeing as my fellow contributors are actually brilliant but here I go. As a disclaimer , I'll say I only played 120 hours, half of which are cooperative with my wife. I kind of appreciate the changes proposed, one does trouble me though it's the four level system being the new key to expansion. 

From all the mechanics, I found the science tree simple, elegant and efficient. Efficient because it pushed me to make trades in every path and adapt to my faction and the context of the game. For instance, if I want to expand fast, I need some influence to sustain laws and that's elegant because if it is also kind of RP. It made to over expand a challenge with for instance the riftborns.  Now if I just need to rush the gold and production, I think I'll get stuck into a 'one-path' scheme over and over again. I' m currently testing it out, maybe I'm wrong and maybe the timing of level 4 system even when rushed is not that early....  

Another question about vodyani laws:

Laws that give "+X per pop" works on systems, so one shipbound population that works on two planets counts as 2 population. However, the influence upkeep is only for individual population, so a system with 1 population that works on two planets still only counts as one population when it comes to upkeep. This means that vodyani has a much easier time sustaining powerful laws than any other race. I kinda like it as a shipbound-specific thing, but with powerful early laws like the new species stability I have a feeling it might be too strong.

Is this intended behaviour? 

Great Changes Guys. I like it. 

One Thing you can quickly change, maybe, is the Reward for Quests. I get a Quest at Turn 100 with a Reward of 80 Influence.... thats no Fun. Please make the Reward more depending on the Turn you reached Ingame.

The changes themselves look alright, really excited to play around with the Vodyani stuff, but from the perspective of just getting back into the game after being away for a while, I would recomend a priority being factional balance. 

Horatio feel weaker than I remembered them, and that's even considering their gene-splice seems to have been improved. Their ships need to be stronger than they currently are or they will remain, by far, the weakest faction. Them being such a heavy outlier should be a priority in my opinion. 

To give some feedback related to the changes being looked at currently. Vodyani Alms for Essence is still a waste of screen space, especially if the proposed changes being are as good as they seem. Re-working or removing it would be a good idea, if just to remove clutter and direct attention to better options that are being introduced.

Macsen wrote:

50% dust to essense conversion what's not to like?  It's not that useful early game but can be pretty useful in many circumstances mid-late game imo when you have not much else to spend production on especially on out of the way colonies and if you've focused on dust e.g dustcidious/proto orchid and improvements.

Personally the the new Voyani Law 2 essense per pop seems negligible to me especially if it's the pop amount in the law screen rather than the actual amount shown on system screens.  Most players probably don't upgrade their first 2 Arks to essense modules as quickly as possible that's why they have issues with the Vodyani currently.  That's 40 essense per Ark equivalent of 20 pop with that law.  It takes a long time to get 20 pop with Vodyani.  Early game that law would be no real benefit.  Production starts to become the most important Ark modules on the third/fourth Ark imo to build leechers/fleet etc.

25% conversion, unless there's a proposed change that I didn't see. 50% would be better, but still, if you're making 1k dust per turn and you activate alms, then you're losing around 2k, most likely, when you consider likely fleet sizes and system upgrades. It doesn't take long to run through your stockpiles at those rates, and there are far better things to spend dust and industry on in the midgame transitions.

And no, people don't really upgrade their first Arks to essense modules because the first ark is the best fleet in the game available in the first few turns.  

NagohShan wrote:

25% conversion, unless there's a proposed change that I didn't see. 50% would be better, but still, if you're making 1k dust per turn and you activate alms, then you're losing around 2k, most likely, when you consider likely fleet sizes and system upgrades. It doesn't take long to run through your stockpiles at those rates, and there are far better things to spend dust and industry on in the midgame transitions.

And no, people don't really upgrade their first Arks to essense modules because the first ark is the best fleet in the game available in the first few turns.

It's been 50% for a while the text is wrong.  If you're in need of dust you obviously don't use it but the primary source of dust in mid-late game is via selling of luxuries not from systems improvements.  It can be worwhile to use the second Ark in a military role for a limited time but you get it a lot quicker by switching to essense modules on the first as soon as possible.