Wanted to discuss the biggest problem of the game regardless of what faction you are playing or what strategy you are using.

At some point you get a snowball effect and you don't need to care about anything as your:

1. Fleet cannot be betten by anything regadless of tactic used.
2. Science output gives a tech each turn

SCIENCE:

For science this should be a simple solution and I don't think that increasing the cost of tech's is the only way this should go.

I think the problem is with the science bonuses you get from buildings and heroes that are the biggest contributor to the snowball effect.

Graviton-Shielded laboratories provide a big boost that could be reduced to (+10 flat and +1 per populaion).

Optic Research Labs that give +25% science are also a big deal. Maybe it should be +10% or +15% ?

And once you enter terraforming and combine this with Punctuated Evolution Fundation science really spins out of control with the (+4 per pop on Fetile) as you get more and more Fertile planets (unless you are Riftborn).

Population breading like rabbits is also a significant contributor to all this.

FLEETS:

For Fleets the subject is much bigger but also more significant as space battles are a key part of the game (regardless of how broken they are at the moment).

I don't want to concentrate on kinetic/energy balance, etc but only on the snowball effect.

Command Points

This is a great mechanic that doesn't allow a player to put all their ships into a single kille fleet that nothing can stop.

Problem is that the increases are big jumps (4/7/10) and then you get to something like 22 with the Universal Aerodynamics tech that gives +2 CP per hull. This is just crazy as facing a 22 CP fleet with a 10 CP one is just pointless.

You get increases in CP of +3 for Tier 2 tech, +3 for Tier 3 tech, +2/per Hull for Tier 4 tech, +4 for Tier 5 Tech, +3 for Endless tech.

We need to change this and I think this order would be better:

+2 CP /per Hull as a starting tech for all or a Tier 1/2 tech that for sure everyone will want to grab. 

But even at tier 1 this will give +4 CP so it would be better to have starting CP at a value of 6 or 7 so that this would not be a huge difference or maybe change this to:
+1 CP / per hull to make it more managable.

With 6 CP starting value, +1 CP / per hull and +2 CP per tech's we would end with a total of:

6 + 7*1 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 19 CP (endless tech not included)

This is much lower then the 28 we are able to get now so to counter that I would include bonus CP in more tech's.

So 5 more techs that grant +2 CP and that would lead us to 29 CP (without endless tech).

Fleet life

A big problem is when two great fleets face each other there is only one outcome. One gets obliterated and the other has very little loses if any.
That is the root of the problem. Whoever wins starts the snowball effect and there are a few ways we can counter that.

1. Damage should be lowered (or HP increased) so that space battles don't end in phase 1 and for larger battles should span multiple turns which would allow for reinforcements and meaningfull retreat actions.

2. Focus fire is an overkill. If damage would be spread more then the end result could be better. Maybe allow for a Hunter ship to "command" 1-2 attacker ships to fire at the same target but the rest firest at a different target? Carrier ships could have a similar role of being able to "command" 1-2 Hunter ships to foccus fire and those in turn have attacker ships. This also encourages to have a diverse fleet that isn't build from Hunter ships only. Maybe there would be a module that increases this "command" limit and Coordinator ships would trully become engagement coordinators.

3. Don't allow a ship to be repaired in a newly conquered system untill you have full ownership. Or maybe repair only to a percentage or ownership. (you have 50% ownership then you can repair up to 50% of HP). This way a damaged fleet would need to return to friendly territory for repairs.

4. Heroes are a HUGE increase in a fleets power (of course depends on hero and skills). Is that good or bad it is hard to say. But one thing is for sure that fleet with a strong hero is no match for a fleet that doesn't have one. So maybe nerf down some of the skill like fleet having double normal damage (this is with multiple skills not a single one), 80% shield penetration, etc. Don't get me wrong, a hero should still provide bonuses but the increase of those bonuses shouldn't be so huge.

5. Fleet shield. If only they would have 10x the values that have now then we could consider them and maybe they would add to the solution.

Tactics

Those just don't have much to add. If the enemy has a stronger force then they win and that's it regardless of the tactics you choose. That should not be the case. Those tactics should have an impact on combat and even with a smaller force you should be able to chip away at an enemy fleet. 

And if your forces are similar then this choice should be critical and have critical effects.

All I see 90% of the time is "Get Lucky" in use as it has an insane +70% damage on critical hit and is a close range tactic so what you need when faced agains missiles, all other tactics don't even get close to this unless you have missiles only (which isn't such a bad idea) and then you go for "Barrage Fire". This system is totally broken and needs a huge redo. I would suggest to have each flottilla be able to pick a different tactic and the same goes for squadrons. On top of that a redo of all the cards is needed.

Early aggresion

Each faction is capable of early aggression (ok, some more then others) and the problem is that the only defence to this is to go for early aggression yourself. If you don't you are dead and the enemy starts his/her snowball effect of capturing systems.

What we lack is some static defence for a system to be able to defend agains early aggressions. Minors have a fleet orbiting that you need to destroy before you can invade them (not that it is a strong fleet). Weapon platforms or something like that could be the answer. Think of them like ships with 0 movement points that have a CP cap just like any other fleet. They would be usefull in early game only and with larger fleets with Hunter class ships would probably have less to offer.

What are your thoughs on this? 

Anything else you would add as a snowball painpoint that could be addressed?

I like the direction of most of these changes. My thoughts on some of the subtopics:

The science issue is a good point. The Graviton-shielded labs + Optics labs is this game's equivalent to Civ 5's classic Universities + National College rush combo, except much more potent and scalable for a big empire and buff-able by laws and traits on top of that. The game might benefit from the power of the early science improvements being more gradual (or shifted to higher-tier improvements). I don't know how long the devs intended a typical game to last, but having nearly all techs done by turn 110-120 on even role-play/unoptimized runs seems too fast.

Universal Aerodynamics is indeed another feature that should get rebalanced; it's too much of a wunderwaffe tech that players know to beeline for. Spreading out its power would be a plus for the game. I dislike having base CP be 6 or 7 though, and would prefer those numbers be gated by at least some science investment lest it give even more power to a military-focused start. Maybe make the new low-tier version of UA strictly inferior to military +CP techs of the same tier? Perhaps split it into 2 lower impact techs on successive military quadrant tiers (or bake half of it into one of the less competitive picks that exist in the next tier). This should somewhat solve the issue of a military minded player unlocking all the CP techs in successcion when preparing for a rush by neutering the effectiveness of the tech without unlocking more hulls first.

For fleet battles, I too would like to see more battles making it to the 3rd phase of battle. Any such feature would make balancing Long vs Short less extreme and introduce more variety into the game. Improved survivability and less focus fire does seem a good way to go about achieving this (although I forsee the repair bots needing to be rebalanced afterwards). 

Tactics should absolutely be redone. They should just decouple flotilla range from the provided bonuses and let us mix and match depending on unlocked tech.

+1 for the idea of garrison ships too

Personally ever since the first free weekend and the inclusion of boarding pods there have been a lot of combat items that are functioning as intended and a few that are not.  I like the idea of spreading CC more widely accross techs, maybe making them tier unlocks, as the jumps are signifigant from 10 to 22, and you can save the tech for a instant.  In many multiplayer games I judge my opponents strength by how many CC he is holding, and I usually wait to unlock universal aerydynamics at the last minute just before the attack to make my opponent 'feel safe' until I show up with double the power he expected.

Some changes here all sound good, personally I could go for just lane countering and expectations of combat to go as intended. You can use a defensive card, stack a top or bottom lane, and use bombers at long range with a defense repair heavy fleet and win against your opponents when outmatched.  Most people have no clue as to why they get beat in some combat scenarios and I think that is most of the problem.  Its a little off the original posters topic but it would be really nice to get a system where fighters and flak are evenly useful, and if your fleet has no manpower (ie vodyani)its not suspect to a easy takeover from the boarding pods of hissho or vaulters.

Just 2 cents, hope it gets polished out to keep people playing multiplayer for years to come.  Often the longevity of a game seems to coincide with the fairness of combat scenario's and the ease of their understanding.  I have absolutely no suggestions other than it is almost become too complicated.  And playing as much as I have its second nature but to somebody new not understanding why there fleet got crushed can be quite disheartening.  I may have pitched a keyboard or too once in a while in a heated match in the same kind of scenario.  

I guess the original poster brings about my feelings on combat which I have shared here.  Cheers

Food Consumption

Currently in the game you have implemented that more population means more consumption.

I mean that population of 10 eats more then two populations of 5.

To be exact a population of 2 has consumption of 13,6 which is 6,8 / pop

Population of 39 has 590,9 consumption which is 15,15 / pop

The problem is that this curve needs to be increased more.
On that 39 population system I have 104 leftover food production WITHOUT ANY food oriented buildings, laws or hero skills (no hero assigned). That is just crazy.
Why would anyone bother with food buildings?

The increase in consumption should gain at around twice current speed. But we need to be mindfull of Vodyani so that they don't starve because of those changes.

With that in play you would need to have food buildings to get to overpopulation so there is no problem to have a bigged approval pennalty for overpopulation.

Influence

This depends on the Government. If you are a dictatorship then you have less choices as you can use laws from only one party and the truth is that not all of them are worth having. I end up having one that I need to pay for and two that are free so that leaves me with 3.6K influence per turn that I simply have no use for. It keeps pilling up without any sensible way to spend it.

In Democracy you have a lot more to choose from and therefore use laws more which provides a meaningfull way to spend influence.

I see two solutions to that:

1. Make up new laws so that each party will have 10-12 of them and then you will be able to pick something you like. They can be increased versions of former ones. For example Star Boogie Bill gives ships +3 movement and costs 2 influence per pop. There could be a law giving +5 movement an costing 3 influence per pop.
2. A different path would be to assign influence points to each party in a similar way that EL does to stages and in this way the more tiers you open up for a faction the more bonuses you get. Election is the same as now and after ellections insted of passing laws you set how much influence you "spend" per turn per pop on a faction.  In dictatorship this would mean you can spend on only one faction that is in power and in democracy you can (or maybe have to?) spread this around.

On that 39 population system I have 104 leftover food production WITHOUT ANY food oriented buildings, laws or hero skills (no hero assigned). That is just crazy.

But is it? I assume you are talking about a system with average base food deposits on several planets. If you think about it in a way, that historically every civ went through a lot of agricultural development, then it seems totally fine that a colonized forest planet has enough food to sustain itself and to produce leftovers for other (more inhospitable) planets in the system. At the point when space travel is a common thing agriculture should really be at that level. I can post a screenshot where I recently experienced a shortage of food on my system of 2 deserts, 1 lava, 1 arid and 1 atoll with Sustainable Farms. I really thought that this is well balanced and forces you to invest into researching Food Specializations and buildings.

And here comes a real problem. Why does average lava have less pop slots than average forest? Population ROCKS in this game. You want 1-2 pop much more than you want +12-24 industry ALL THE TIME.. Because all those bonuses from Specs and Improvements will turn that 1 pop into smth like +10 FIDSI at some point.

I think pop slots need to be the same on all planets. I think that inhospitable planets must have some pop slots locked at first but those should be unlockable upon reaching new eras. For now there is simply no reason to keep your lavas and barrens, you just terraform them all and it kills system managing.

IceGremlin wrote:

Abrasax wrote:

You can slow down population snowballing without changing the Growth Cap.

All you need to do is make each subsequent unit of population consume a greater share of food: ...

I'm going to have to shoot this down and say from experience, it doesn't work. I was of this opinion for a while, and worked together with CyRob to mod the hell out of Consumption to test my theories, including the one you present there. It really, really does not work, because of how badly it affects everything else Food related. This is because you need population to consume such gigantic amounts of Food for it to have the desired effect, that there's none left for other purposes, including Manpower, which plummeted under a similar scheme.

This is, however, why I proposed above that we can instead add _Growth_ consumption, which is not technically the same thing as Food as presented in the UI. This way the population could be made to grow ever slower without horribly affecting everything else Food related, only the rate of growth.

How does that affect manpower? Standard manpower conversion is based on base food production, not food surplus.

mamarider wrote:

On that 39 population system I have 104 leftover food production WITHOUT ANY food oriented buildings, laws or hero skills (no hero assigned). That is just crazy.

But is it? I assume you are talking about a system with average base food deposits on several planets. If you think about it in a way, that historically every civ went through a lot of agricultural development, then it seems totally fine that a colonized forest planet has enough food to sustain itself and to produce leftovers for other (more inhospitable) planets in the system. At the point when space travel is a common thing agriculture should really be at that level. I can post a screenshot where I recently experienced a shortage of food on my system of 2 deserts, 1 lava, 1 arid and 1 atoll with Sustainable Farms. I really thought that this is well balanced and forces you to invest into researching Food Specializations and buildings....

If we're gonna talk "realism" then Food should be removed from the game entirely because as you say, space faring civilizations shouldn't be worried about something like that at their level of advancement.

But we're talking about "Food," not actual food. "Food" is the mechanical measurement of our vertical population growth, and as a game mechanic it's pretty much useless past an extremely low threshold. There shouldn't be an entire one of the FIDSI that is just tacked on. As you point out, it took you an entire system of crappy planets to even begin to worry about Food production enough to bother with more than the second, most basic Food building you can research. What about the other 5 or 6 Food buildings, and all the Food hero skills, and Food laws, and Food populations? Why should those all just be unnecessary excess when in most games, you need more Food to produce more Population at the same rate, including ES1 and EL?

Abrasax wrote:

How does that affect manpower? Standard manpower conversion is based on base food production, not food surplus.

Because Food consumption also comes from Food production, leaving less Food for Manpower conversion. It's calculated first. I'm not saying this as a theoretical thing either, I'm saying that when we implemented increased Food consumption, it screwed up everything else Food related. That's just what happens when you increase it.

Example:

Base food conversion to manpower = 10%

Exotic Rations = +10%

Patriot Pills = +20%

Total with both improvements = 40% food to manpower

Food production before consumption is subtracted = 921.1 (405 + 153.5 + 100 + 92.1 + 81.4 + 35 + 30 + 14.1 + 10)

System Conversion to Manpower = 368.4

921.1 * 40% = 368.44

Manpower Conversion is independent from consumption.

1200 Food?

If someone goes to the trouble of producing that much food in a system, they deserve the +1 pop/turn or +0.5 pop/turn.

To the trouble of? 1200 is pretty easy with any sort of Food specialized faction, really easy in fact. Just nobody ever bothers because having that much Food does nothing for you. Case in point, Horatio gets two faction specific Food improvements from his questline, and there's no reason to go for either one because there's two Industry buildings with the exact same output.

Food is a resource where you get no reward for continuing to invest in it more and more, so all the Food sources are bad because they're not providing any actual reward unless you're still beneath that minimum.

IceGremlin wrote:

To the trouble of? 1200 is pretty easy with any sort of Food specialized faction, really easy in fact. Just nobody ever bothers because having that much Food does nothing for you. Case in point, Horatio gets two faction specific Food improvements from his questline, and there's no reason to go for either one because there's two Industry buildings with the exact same output.

Food is a resource where you get no reward for continuing to invest in it more and more, so all the Food sources are bad because they're not providing any actual reward unless you're still beneath that minimum.

I'm going to assume you are talking about post-terraforming, correct?

Abrasax wrote:

I'm getting the feeling you'd rather just argue to argue instead. After all, you'd rather have faith in people modifying code than the basic math that I can present with consistent results from the 50+ save files I still have.

Yeah alright, if you're gonna be like that, there's no point in my participating. You put forward an idea, I told you that others among us have already tested it and it went poorly.

As for "Horatio don't need Food improvements", yeah, that's kind of the problem I'm talking about that Food factions don't feel better for investing in Food like Industry, Dust, and Science factions do. But whatever.

Food

IceGremlin wrote:

Either way, Consumption doesn't work as a solution, because it has to be so mind-numbingly massive. If it reduces 1200 Food to 301, the consumption increase has effectively done nothing for population growth. If it decreases any amount to 301, it's done nothing. And even then you need to lower Food production all the way to 149 just to make a difference of two turns per Pop. If it decreases Food by 10000 but doesn't reduce it past 300, it's done nothing, and to get a mere 3 turn increase requires reducing Food all the way to 75 or lower.

Just increasing Food consumption leads to having no Food to work with, because population growth is the absolute, only FIDSI where progressing to bigger and better things doesn't result in increasing costs. Buildings and ships cost more and more Industry and Dust, Technologies cost more and more Science, Laws cost more and more Influence up to a fairly low limit, but Growth never changes.

I remember working on that Food Mod also and playing with it was ok except it broke Vodyani that halved food production.

If the developers want to they can make Manpower Conversion apply before food consumption, that should not be a problem for them and it would be just a matter of balancing Vodyani so they wouldn't starve at start of the game.

It is not a problem to make the curve increase slowly at the start and then more and more. It is just a matter of getting the correct equastion that fits what we need and we can still have 14 food consumption for population of 2 and end up with 2500 food consumption for a population of 40.

mamarider wrote:

And here comes a real problem. Why does average lava have less pop slots than average forest? Population ROCKS in this game. You want 1-2 pop much more than you want +12-24 industry ALL THE TIME.. Because all those bonuses from Specs and Improvements will turn that 1 pop into smth like +10 FIDSI at some point.

I think pop slots need to be the same on all planets. I think that inhospitable planets must have some pop slots locked at first but those should be unlockable upon reaching new eras. For now there is simply no reason to keep your lavas and barrens, you just terraform them all and it kills system managing.

I fully agree here. The question being why is there a population limit? If it is because of space available? In that case planet conditions don't change it.

If it is food production then why is there a cap at all and we don't have population 20 planets if food production can sustain it? 

Having population slots depend only on planet size would require Terraforming to be available both ways as suddenly you might want to go for a Lava planet. (as additional tech's available)

But this has to go in line with the Food changes. Otherwise with increased population you won't be able to handle approval with planets that have -5 or -8 per pop.

I don't have a problem with a system not being able to reach maximum population without assistance of a hero or a law, or simply the need to have all food improvements with some food specialization on a planet. That would be a good thing and at that point someone might consider that picking #### is a good choice for Level 1 system development.

As a side topic the hero food skills should be trimmed down/changed to something else as there is a lot of them available.

Military

One more thing about Universal Aerodynamics is that Lumeris get less CP from it as they don't have a colony ship. So maybe it would be better to not have something that depends on Hulls and change it into a flat bonus?

I would suggest that maybe this should go a different path.

You get +1 CP for each unlocked Stage (from any science quadrant). That gives you the starting 4 CP and will grow to a maximum of 20 CP (5 stage unlocked on all 4 science quadrants). 

In the military techs you would have a 4 techs that grant +2 CP and the Endless tech would provide +3 as it does now.

This way even if you concentrate on something else then military your CP still increases and there is no huge jump at any point.

I ;like how you didn't add Empregnable Shielding to your original post. That single deed reward renders any ship essentially immune to meaningful damage by default. 3k Shields, 3k Shield Reload and it scales with hull size with a half tier of defense loss over Quadrinix/Orichalchix defenses.

Autochthon wrote:

I ;like how you didn't add Empregnable Shielding to your original post. That single deed reward renders any ship essentially immune to meaningful damage by default. 3k Shields, 3k Shield Reload and it scales with hull size with a half tier of defense loss over Quadrinix/Orichalchix defenses.

I don't want to make this about any specific module but the general problem of snowballing.

Balancing of defence and weapons is a side topic once you agrea on the general picture that you want as the end result.

samsonazs wrote:

I am disappointed that there isn't any space combat simulator available that would allow you to try out different module combinations, tactics, laws, hero powers.

Such a tool would speed up balancing and identification of snowball triggers very effectively.

Got an IDEA for that.

Just being able to see what a fleets actual loadout and fleet bonuses are would go a long way to making combat less one sided. Throw in automatic in-combat retreat to "save" ships that would otherwise have died and you can manage some attrition mechanics. Flatten bonuses in alot of areas (or change how they stack or the exact mechanics).

First phase combat is way too deadly. Defenses are mostly useless. If flak wasn't *actually* good against missiles themn missiles would basically be free win damage in round 1. That's how much damage fleets are putting out.

Autochthon wrote:

samsonazs wrote:

I am disappointed that there isn't any space combat simulator available that would allow you to try out different module combinations, tactics, laws, hero powers.

Such a tool would speed up balancing and identification of snowball triggers very effectively.

Got an IDEA for that.

Just being able to see what a fleets actual loadout and fleet bonuses are would go a long way to making combat less one sided. Throw in automatic in-combat retreat to "save" ships that would otherwise have died and you can manage some attrition mechanics. Flatten bonuses in alot of areas (or change how they stack or the exact mechanics).

First phase combat is way too deadly. Defenses are mostly useless. If flak wasn't *actually* good against missiles themn missiles would basically be free win damage in round 1. That's how much damage fleets are putting out.

That sounds like a problem with balancing fleet health and damage output. It should take longer than 2.3 seconds to take out 3CP ships, which is what I am currently doing in an ongoing MP game due to certain modules/heroes/laws. It seems like fleet damage output rises much faster than fleet health and damage mitigation. Then when you do boost mitigation with specific modules, they go overboard.

Health needs to be increased by a few times in order to just get a system where a fleet sometimes survives to the third phase.

Really I think combats ideal balance is that any given fleet can survive at least one full battle with an equivalent fleet. That way things like repairing over time, etc. etc. can matter because every engagement isn't a 50/50 chance of being a suicide mission for either your fleet or the other persons fleet. Then probably up the Industry costs by a significant amount so we don't just spam the galaxy with our more survivable fleets.

Fleet life

A big problem is when two great fleets face each other there is only one outcome. One gets obliterated and the other has very little loses if any.
That is the root of the problem. Whoever wins starts the snowball effect and there are a few ways we can counter that.

1. Damage should be lowered (or HP increased) so that space battles don't end in phase 1 and for larger battles should span multiple turns which would allow for reinforcements and meaningfull retreat actions.

2. Focus fire is an overkill. If damage would be spread more then the end result could be better. Maybe allow for a Hunter ship to "command" 1-2 attacker ships to fire at the same target but the rest firest at a different target? Carrier ships could have a similar role of being able to "command" 1-2 Hunter ships to foccus fire and those in turn have attacker ships. This also encourages to have a diverse fleet that isn't build from Hunter ships only. Maybe there would be a module that increases this "command" limit and Coordinator ships would trully become engagement coordinators.

3. Don't allow a ship to be repaired in a newly conquered system untill you have full ownership. Or maybe repair only to a percentage or ownership. (you have 50% ownership then you can repair up to 50% of HP). This way a damaged fleet would need to return to friendly territory for repairs.

4. Heroes are a HUGE increase in a fleets power (of course depends on hero and skills). Is that good or bad it is hard to say. But one thing is for sure that fleet with a strong hero is no match for a fleet that doesn't have one. So maybe nerf down some of the skill like fleet having double normal damage (this is with multiple skills not a single one), 80% shield penetration, etc. Don't get me wrong, a hero should still provide bonuses but the increase of those bonuses shouldn't be so huge.

5. Fleet shield. If only they would have 10x the values that have now then we could consider them and maybe they would add to the solution.

Yes for this, and:

6. Option in all tactic, to battle to death or to automatically run away (warp) to the closer (or predefined) friendly system if fleet take a massive amount of loss and inflict few or no damage to enemy fleet. Amount of damage to trigg the warp could be predefined. So, tractor beam become a really good option to prevent this.

7. Survivors could receive a good amount of experience... something to make them stronger...