Hello everyone,
Today, Meedoc (Game Designer on Endless Space) will explain what are all the changes he made in "The Search for Auriga" add-on to balance the Harmony faction.
"Following the community's feedback, we worked on balancing the Harmony faction in order to make them more competitive.
As you may know, we released a Mod with a lot of work in progress changes to gather your feedback. Thanks to you, we were able to efficiently refine those changes:
There were two main issues:
1. The difficulty progress wasn’t well-balanced
2. The early game was too difficult; making them an easy target for others
The difficulty balancing has been adressed thanks to two changes:
- Instead of increasing the Disharmony Malus up to a hellish value, the difficulty now modifies the number of systems required to trigger it. Thus, it gives more latitude regarding early colonization.
- The Dust Corruption (the malus directly related to the amount of Dust on the system) has been moved per planet instead of being system-centralized. It allows, here again, more freedom in colonization, allowing players to colonize Arid / Desert with important resources with a lower drawback.
Concerning the early game (in addition to the progress tweaks), we did the following changes:
- A new planetary improvement called "Strategical Rock" increases the deposit of a Strategic Resource by 1; thus, it works in synergy with both the "Efficient Stock" trait and the "Metal Memory" technology.
- The "Harmonize Planets" technology has been advanced from the 5th circle to the 3rd one: it allows the Harmony faction to focus on Population in early game, and to be more competitive even with fewer systems than others.
To boost their middle game (when conquest really starts) I removed the drawback related to the ownership. It compensates the inability to buyout by having fully operational systems just after conquest.
The feedback you gave us on the Mod, made us also try out the following changes:
- We tested a reduction to Void Stones; but this was too random to be relevant because Luxury Resources are randomly selected and the number of types is related to the galaxy size; making this bonus potentially useless when playing on large galaxies.
- We also tested a bonus on damage / defense depending on the number of CP within a Harmony fleet to reflect their synergy; and it works quite well! It helps them to be more resistant against pirates and early game rushes, as well as be more competitive against level 20 heroes.
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Finally, we added a new feature in the upcoming add-on which allows you to instantly repair ships by paying Dust / Population depending on your faction. As Harmony is unable to use it, their initial heal rate (without the repair module) is two times better than for the other factions.
For now, the VIPs (thank you guys! 
) have been able to try out those changes but we’re quite excited to let all those changes into your hands to make the final refinements if needed!" - Meedoc
More info on the add-on tomorrow!
skamaks