ridesdragons wrote:

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this isn't a problem if you make the maintenance costs associated with buildings, instead. in fact, you can even add the happiness malus if you build a structure that provides luxuries to the masses (consumes luxuries) and run out of luxuries, or if you decide to tear down the building later. you can even make the malus be variable to how long the structure's been around, providing benefits - if you build it and 2 turns later tear it down, the people will grumble, but that's it. if you build it and tear it down 50 turns later, now they have a bone to pick.

(...)

I agree that those numbers are far too high, but that's why I never specified numbers. At .01 per luxury instance, which is too low, you can support 20 systems with .12/.04/.01 per system for total Empire production of 2.4/.8/.2. At .02 those numbers are doubled, etc. If Luxury improvements were multiplicative instead of additive this would work, which is why it may be best to keep all Luxuries at the same cost, making it .6/.4/.2 across twenty systems if each costs .01

However, I would personally prefer if System Developments worked kind of like what you're suggesting instead? So instead of being a specific System Development that overrides the previous one, you instead increase the number of these Luxury buildings a system is allowed to support, being allowed to implement new Luxuries on each iteration. It also reduces the complexity a bit, since you're not worried about three different constructions as much as the same type of construction repeated three times.

Only one point about balance concerning Vodyanis Archs. In the early game it's really deathful to spawn close to the Vodyani. If they send their Arch(s) to your part of galaxy early, you can't compete with their power. Could be useful, to have Archs with less power (less module slots?) in the early game. I would wish them to have to upgrade by tech research (like with other ship designs) later in game. What do others think about ?

On the other hand Vodyani suffer, if there is no minor faction close to starting system.

 The race stability act seems to have helped the Vodyani’s early essence problem though consider the starting essence generating attachment for there starter ark for the extreme chance that they dont find a miner civ early enough in game. There planet problem still needs to be solved though to fix there early game swing there are three ways to fix the problem. One option is to give them two additional starting pops this does fix the problem but makes there snowball if they have 4 starting planets stronger and easier.  The second option is to give them two starting planets in addition to their home world this also works but lowers the starting planets to a small number lower the randomness of their staring system for better or worse.  Finally you can make hardship ready a unique system improvement which does what the ecology policy currently does but at a higher cost.

 Exp. Holy mandate pops can colonize all planet types cost -2 influence a pop –20% influence generated by the system its effect would be imediate lik alms and to essence but would become a improvment allowing other buildings or ships to be built(a effect that alms could get if it needs further buffing). The number and name can of course be changed to whatever you want it. But it over comes low starting planet games with a negative to make their 4 planet snowball not as powerful.

 The dictatorship government needs changes while I agree with Stalker0 on its changes though I think it should cause small unhappiness from changing the party outside of an election, enough to make it not be used constantly but allow some flexibility in a dictatorship government.  For federations the over colonization change gives them a nice buff. But it think they could use a small passive for when they can’t expand a 5% industry and 5% dust on empire (numbers can be changed). This should help keep people from changing when there under the over colonization limit early game or midish game and need to go to war to expand into good systems. I agree with kynar on law changes but if food and pop get changed as suggested in this tread food laws will hopefully be useful.

The last update to the mod was simply to fix the "battles" folder issue, I'm not aware of any change that could have broken this. I'll run some tests.

EDIT: it seems it can be a bit more likely in endless but the revamped drone networks should cover the loss if the case occurs

With V1.0.36 out It feels like we may be moving on to the next focuses soon, So I thought this would to put out a mega post regarding the next focuses:

Custom Factions (balancing value of the different elements), Heroes (experience gains, and skills) & Trading (company levelling, incomes)

And hopefully this start up some discussion on these areas, as there has been a bit of lull in the conversation recently.

Custom Factions (Balancing Values):

I think it’s best to start of the discussion of Custom Faction balancing by saying that it is hard if not impossible to fully balance a custom faction system due to the way many players will build their faction,

By picking the most cost-effective traits, the traits that boost their play style the most for the least point cost and the negative traits that hinder it the least for the highest point gain.

There is little way to avoid this other than somewhat gutting the system to make all custom factions weaker than the vanilla factions, but that just ruins peoples experience.

I don't actually have too much too say in this area as I am just not sure how to balance all the traits, all I’ll say is that I think that republic and Democracy should cost more (from current 5 to 10 or more?) as there are the cheapest while (admittedly it’s my opinion) being the strong government types, I don't see a reason for pick Federation or Dictatorship (but that might just be because of my playstyles)

The other change I would suggest is that the home planet costs should be made in line with the planets tiers.

As since the point costs where set Terran & Forest have lost their approval bonuses putting them in line with Atoll & Ocean, So those 4 Type should cost the same,

Boreal, Jungle, Monsoon, Tundra, Mediterranean, Steppes & Savannah could at a stretch be said to be the same tier (as they all have 9-5 pop slots) but they have distinct sub tiers;

I would suggest having the set as something like:

12: Ocean / Forest / Terran / Atoll

9: Boreal / Jungle

8: Tundra / Monsoon / Mediterranean

7: Steppes / Savannah

5: Snow / Arid

And maybe have a different selection for Continuum Sculptors with Sterile worlds added and fertile removed and/or have the costs reversed for them, (The higher tier ones' cost less, lower more etc.)

Also feel free to use costs that aren’t divisible by five, you'll never be able to balance it if you don't and otherwise you might as well just divide everything by 5.

Heroes (Experience Gains & Skills):

We have already seen changes to hero skills in this mod and while I'm expecting more I'm going to bow out of that discussion as I don't currently have any thoughts on what changes could be made and I'm sure others do.

But what I'm happy to discuss a little is changes to the Hero XP system,

While I have an existing idea: Hero XP & Levelling Rework 

I won't repeat what I've said there but I'll add a new possible idea.

Currently the Hero XP system in place has a strong bias towards heroes assigned to systems.

Currently Xp is given by: (this is data from the files so I may have missed something)

Assigned = +1 Per Turn

Construction = +0.08*ProductionCost

Node Discovered = +4

Curiosity Discovered = +6

After Battle = +5 Per Destroyed CP (Maser Told me about this one but I can't find it myself, I may have missed it and other bits)

For Systems:

I think its ok for the system heroes to stick with the current system

For Fleets:

They need to have more sources of experience, a common suggestion from others has been to have some sort of Z xp per Y CP of the fleet they are managing per turn.

Trading (Company Levelling & Incomes):

Trading Companies have been rather unbalanced for some time now, large maps often make them crazily over-powered.

This will be a more detailed extension of my Idea: Full Trading Company Rework; Profits, Levelling, Etc. (but also with quite a bit of rework)

The main focus here will be on the contents of the Registry.xml's Department Of Commerce

<ResourceIncome>
        <NeighbourModifier>0.4</NeighbourModifier>
       <TradingCompanyHeadquartersModifier>1</TradingCompanyHeadquartersModifier>
       <TradingCompanySubsidiaryModifier>0.9</TradingCompanySubsidiaryModifier>
</ResourceIncome>
<!-- Number of turns before a company structure (HQ or subsidiary) located on a lost system is destroyed -->
<TradingCompanyStructureDestructionDelay>5</TradingCompanyStructureDestructionDelay>
<!-- Required accumulated income to unlock new HQ.              Vars: Empire -->
<TradingRoutesIncomeThresholdFormula>Floor(250 * Pow(4.2, Property(Empire, AvailableNumberOfTradingCompanyHeadquarters)))</TradingRoutesIncomeThresholdFormula>
<!-- Required experience to level up.                           Vars: Empire, TradingCompany -->
<TradingRoutesExperienceThresholdFormula>(Floor(1000 * (1 + Pow(1.45, Property(TradingCompany, Level))) - 1900)) * Property(TradingCompany, @../ClassEmpire, TradingCompanyLevelUpMultiplier)</TradingRoutesExperienceThresholdFormula>
<!-- TCIncomeMultiplier x TRIncome = TCIncome.                  Vars: Empire, TradingCompany -->
<TradingCompanyIncomeMultiplierFormula>0.75 + Pow(Property(TradingCompany, Level) / 5, 0.75)</TradingCompanyIncomeMultiplierFormula>
<!-- SystemIncome x LengthModifier = TRIncome.                  Vars: TradingCompany, PathLength (int) -->
<TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>1 + $(PathLength) / 5</TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>
<!-- Estimated value of the system in scan view.                Vars: ColonizedStarSystem -->
<TradingLocalCurrentScore>Property(ColonizedStarSystem, SystemLevel) * (Property(ColonizedStarSystem, Population) + Property(ColonizedStarSystem, TradingRouteSystemTotalBaseIncome_Luxury))</TradingLocalCurrentScore>
<!-- Estimated potential value of the system in scan view.      Vars: ColonizedStarSystem, LocalScore (float), NeighboursScore (float) -->
<TradingLocalPotentialScore>(4 * Property(ColonizedStarSystem, MaximumPopulation)) + 40</TradingLocalPotentialScore>
<!-- Estimated quality of the system in scan view.              Vars: ColonizedStarSystem, LocalScore (float), NeighboursScore (float) -->
<TradingQualityScore>(1.2 * $(LocalScore)) + (1.1 * $(NeighboursScore))</TradingQualityScore>
<!-- Thresholds for stars in scan view -->
<TradingQualityScoreRatings>0;428;856;1284;1712</TradingQualityScoreRatings>

And of this I particularly what to focus on how income is calculated; The Trading Company Income Multiplier Formula and Trading Route Length Modifier Formula.

The Current Formulas allow for trading companies to generate crazy amounts of dust and luxuries (E.G by making a long trade route one end of a huge galaxy arm to the end of another creates routes that can generate 100+ rare luxuries per turn)

(table data is rounded to the closest percent)

Also See:

Formula Graphed (LengthIncomeMultiplier= 1 + Length ÷ 5)

Formula Graphed (LevelIncomeMultiplier= 0.75 + ((Level ÷ 5)^0.75 ))

Even with the shortest trade route with a level 1 trade company you already get a +26% boost to the base income, with a level 20 company and a 20-long route you get a crazy +1690% boost to the base income.

There should not be a +26% boost for the worst case scenario there should be a malus, and boosts like +1690% should not happen, they should never get near that level.

What I propose is changing this system to a relative one so that the modifiers can be reined in and always be within a set range without setting hard limits (such as company levels past 10 having no extra effect)

This allows for the whole system to be much better balanced as the income modifiers can't infinitely increase as they can currently.

The relative system also means that many different variables of the game do not exacerbate any balance issues.

(or at least not close to the same extent)

I'm starting with what changes could be made to the Trade route length income modifier formula

Currently certain map settings greatly change the profits of trading companies, luxury amounts would as expected but also galaxy shape and size have a massive impact.

For example; 8 arm galaxy at the largest size but lowest connectivity has massive profits due to the incredibly long route lengths (can be 20+)

Since the current formula does nothing to account for this the balance issues for trade Companies are severely exacerbated on larger maps.

So let’s make the formula relative,

An example of how you could change it:

<TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>($(PathLength)/$(LongestPathLength))*3</TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>

(3 is how much of a Multiplier you want the longest trade route to have) With this weather you are playing a huge or tiny map the trade route length bonuses will be scaled automatically, all you need to do is decide what you want the longest trade bonus to be.

As for $(LongestPathLength) you could have it so it that empires longest (not blockaded) trade route length but I think it is better to have it as the longest (not blockaded) trade route in the galaxy of any empire, as they you avoid a player making all the trade routes the same length to maximise the Multiplier and you add a new element of strategy, with blockading the longest trade route (if it belongs to someone else) increasing your own trade income

Or Alternatively (I like this method a bit more)

<TradingRouteLengthModifierFormula>($(PathLength)/$(AveragePathLength

I assumed we were getting a new thread for the new changes, but I'll follow your lead CyRob. Also, jhell, sadly the loss of pops lengthens the construction time of Drone Networks so it doesn't finish before everyone starves to death.

Trade: I think it would be easiest to make both Route Length and Company Level provide nice, round percentage bonuses every time they increment; a consistent 5-20% income per level/length unit will be much easier for the average player to parse. I also like the idea of a Company only being able to have a total number of Freighters equal to their level, perhaps??? I don't know as much about that, it could produce wonky results, but it would make for some better specialization and prevent people from using Luxury Freighter investments to prop up Bullion Freighters quite as badly, since heavy investment in Luxuries naturally prevents investment in Bullion and vice versa.

We would also need to look at the mechanics of the Marketplace and Resources I think.

Custom Factions: Our one big issue, to me, is that we need the EL system of being unable to take maluses in an area we don't use. No Riftborn with -15% Food, we all know exactly what they're going to do with it.

Heroes: I think Heroes are a bit too "fast." It could take all game to max out an EL Hero, and you hit a level cap at 20; ES2 has no level cap, and you get bugged with skill point notifications regularly. Where EL had three-level skills as the norm, ES2 only has two level skills at most and relies a lot on Per Level FIDSI bonuses, which can scale forever without a cap; and ES2 skills often seem to produce wonky and thematically inconsistent effects. Like why do we have a skill for just Energy weapons instead of a skill that does something like Science Lover in EL?

As for something new to make Heroes into a more interesting mechanic, I stand by the idea in my signature: Make Influence the resource with which we buy Heroes directly from the Academy, persuading them on the value of our words and ideas to support our cause, and allow us to pay Influence for direct Experience for Heroes. This would finally create the connection between Influence and Heroes that would explain why they both fall under the realm of Religious politics.