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...