MammothIL wrote:
That's right! I mean, the Sophons are a race that thrives on research, right? So, they should have boni based on that.

Agreed. Perhaps an edited race affinity that carries over a percentage of their research points to dust/production/food?

Slar wrote:
yeah, i agree some of the races need to be relooked at. The game shouldn't have this many races that require (almost) a rush dominance style approach. 3 of the races so far seem to be this way. If sophon are truly a peaceful race, shouldn't they have a VERY defensive approach to them. Basically reward passive defensive play.



Just a thought.

I favor giving them a unique repair system and a penalty to invasions rather than their one for defense. That would boost their late game combat as well as encouraging them to play defensively.



PS: The repair system that heals a portion of your ships health is totally OP, especially for UE. You simply pack your ship with armor and that module and they can be near invisible. The problem is simply that it multiplies with the armor while other systems don't.



I would make it so that they all heal lump sums so that the 1st repair system works outside of combat, this one works both in and out, and the 3ed one (the glue one) only works in combat. They would be inferior to armor in a single battle or (in the case of the glue) a short battle. The Sophon could then get a bonus to ship repair instead of their discount to support modules.



PPS: Who agrees that the Sophon should start on an Ocean world because they are scientists. It makes sense for the UE to start on a Terran world because they like dust and for the Hissho to start on Jungle because they are militaristic, but the Sophon do not fit the pattern.



Edit: Ether that or they could get a bonus to defense similar to the Hissho but I like this better, it makes then similar to the UE.

That actually seems like a fairly universal option for helping to balance the other races too. Malus that can be eliminated with research.

But thats easy to do away with:

give them a mali that they can eliminate with research.



f.e: Give them a production malus on every planet thats not terran, jungle, arid or tundra (-1 per pop) and explain it that they are frail in nature and dont respond well to harsh climates.

Add the elimination of that malus to some higher tier tech and tadaa: you don't hurt their start (if you dont want that), but make their midgame weaker but instead they get something late.

The whole shield tank, ion cannon idea actually sounds pretty sweet and fits with the fluff.



The only thing is that since the Sophons are so good in early game, and massive changes on their endgame potential might make them imbalanced.

@PyroVortex: I completely missunderstood the tooltip there, thanks it now also makes perfect sense that I couldn't fit my ships with more weapons then usually (besides the reason I had in my head, which was: The tonnage stuff is buggy right now (^^,)) but instead was cranking out suicide destroyers like crazy. But that was just icing on top of the cake that is the Hissho dmg buff (+45% dmg, +15% acc should be more then enough to blow the Sophons to Kingdome come)



Anyways its also a little besides the point i really want to bring across:

A peaceful/good research faction (as it says in their description) should in my opinion have a different playstyle then: Bring everyone to their knees as soon as possible because this is the most effective way to do it with this faction.

Basically it seems like a Civ game where you need to play like Montezuma/Shaka to win because playing peacefully for that science/diplomacy/cultural ending just doesn't seem super viable.

Unless I'm missing something, the Hissho can pack the same number of weapons as everyone else (except the Cravers, who have larger ships); they simply cost less to build (i.e. engineering cost).

The Sophons have the same advantage on support modules, which is why they have cheaper colony ships than everyone else.



I'm personally waiting for custom races, so I can boost the Sophons even further...

Thanks for moving it.. in the beginning it was just a thought and I didn't want to put it into suggestions until I knew that there really is something to think about.



@on topic: Even if they stay competitive when those techs work the race still will favor an aggressive (rush dominance as star called it) playstyle over a peaceful one and from my point of view we have already several of those and the Sophons description reads rather different.

The problem with the tonnage limit on sophons right now is that most tonnage techs in the research part of the tech tree just don't work, at the moment. Once they do, the sophons should become more competitive.

And since this is a game design discussion with suggestions, I'll move it.

yeah, i agree some of the races need to be relooked at. The game shouldn't have this many races that require (almost) a rush dominance style approach. 3 of the races so far seem to be this way. If sophon are truly a peaceful race, shouldn't they have a VERY defensive approach to them. Basically reward passive defensive play.



Just a thought.

The Sophons are imho one of the fastest races in the game. Their research speed makes them able to grab land very quickly and also to pull out the big guns kind of fast.

But: they need some serious help in the late game

As soon as everybody gets the dreadnought (and that happens rather quickly) the air for the Sophons gets a little thin especially when you take a look at the abilities and custom techs of the other races (f.e. +40% health of the UE).

When that happens all you can do is push the advantage of your high levled heroes (because by then you shouldnt have lost an important fight(I think that statement alone tells alot about the problems of the race)) and also the high level ships. If you stop pushing, you loose.



Bottom line: They need help in late game combat



My suggestions would be:

- Move the dreadnought up in the techtree

- Introduce a new class of ship later in the game

- A kind of "doomsday" type weapon

- Maybe a race specific tech that grants them more tonnage for their ships (also higher up in the research side of the tree)



I'm not saying the Sophons are weak in any way, I think they are one of the stronger races because of their lighting quick start. What I'm saying is when playing the Sophons you play against a clock and I think that should be changed.

I agree with higher tonnage, Sophon ships are good early game at expanding outward in a crazy fashion. But mid to late game you just hit a wall.

White_Mage wrote:
This is the kind of thing I would love to see. Make it something race specific that adds some flavor, not just a ++Research (Not that the current racial bonuses have anything wrong with them)

That's right! I mean, the Sophons are a race that thrives on research, right? So, they should have boni based on that. An Officer Training facility that boosts your hero's EXP, some sort of advanced shipyard that makes ships stronger, some sort of hyper-efficient mining facility that multiplies DUST income. They must have access to several unique scientific advantages that could balance their physical shortcomings.



Stuff like that.

curious wrote:
Maybe the Shopons could get shield strength +50% and get a special cannon like the ion which turn off the enemy ships weapons a little time in battle.



(sorry my english )

This is the kind of thing I would love to see. Make it something race specific that adds some flavor, not just a ++Research (Not that the current racial bonuses have anything wrong with them)

Maybe the Shopons could get shield strength +50% and get a special cannon like the ion which turn off the enemy ships weapons a little time in battle.



(sorry my english )

the Horatio are more broken than united empire hero cloning and crowded planet ability and food bonus which influences faster growth

their cloning ability man and they can also populate tiny planets to the point where they have a medium sized planet population.



also the colony module that gives a science bonus to every population unit that fills a planet the planet is extremely versatile and has increasing returns for the Horatio.



just have to play with them ala modified UE strategy of colonizing planets they have no real late game weaknesses especially when things could be quick build with dust and dust is plentiful later on. imagine having 11 high leveled administrative heroes assigned to FIDS rich systems. this enables them to be highly deadly on the offensive and ensures that they have a sort of cushion when colonies are destroyed.

The only military benefit they get would be that support modules get a -50% discount. This would suggest that something like +regen/+armor on Sophon ships would be an approach the suited them. However, StK brings up a good point that at the end of the day, a Sophon still needs to survive a phase to take advantage of this and they still need to do enough damage in the long run to survive a war of attrition.



Given the last repair module is 2% per phase per ship, you need at least 8 ships to match the healing ability per ship of one of the two repair techs you start the game with. To make this worthwhile compared to the +100 HP per ship per phase ability (third repair ability you can unlock), you need at least 700 HP per ship. This gets you 105 HP per phase with the minimum 8 ships/700 HP. But given that high end weapon salvos can dish out hundreds of damage, 105 still isn't that much. To survive 1 hit from 1 top tier missile, you need 3400 HP to heal 510 HP at 15%.

My point is:

As a Sophon you hit a brick wall when it comes to late game.

Let me just show you what you are up against:



- The Empire dreadnought has 400 hp more to start with and 2(!) techs with ship modules that improve their hp greatly

(+500 and +2% and something.. i dont even want to know where that goes when that ship lvls), not to mention the production boni they get with high tax rates.



- The Hissho have a building that offsets the Sohpons advantage of the won battles (at least as ship xp goes) by them just standing there for some turns, their weapons do 45% more dmg and they can pack 50% more of them and are 15% more accurate



- The Cravers have 30% more space on their ships which cost 20% less, their weapons do 15% more dmg and have more command points





- the only ones that are as screwed as them are the Horatios and I didn't play enough Horatios to know if they can deal with it but I don't think so (Maybe someone that played several games on higher difficulties and on bigger maps with them should open a thread about the Horatios).





Most of these boni the Sophons can outresearch, but when the others hit the dreadnought as well they need to be in a very comfortable lead, because then the catching up starts the weapon research alone isn't enough to keep the lead (They need all the defenses and maybe all of the weapons because they need to fight everyone... (or at least everybody that looks like hes getting into a strongish position) remember you are not allowed to give them a rest... (also that sentence seems awfully weird for a race that should be based on research...)



I usually hit the dreadnought by turn 75-100 (without beelining it) and then the Sophons military progress kind of stops. They hit their best ship after 15% of the maximal game time (500 turns). Thats another thing: Militarywise there is no big reward after the dreadnought, nothing that makes you go "I just need to get there so I can make a big splash again"



- The "clock" of the Cravers is vastly different... they can largely counter the effect by getting new territory and get a special bonus before that for that special malus you get lategame. I can live with -25% fids lategame if my opponent is a Sophone because he won't have a way to stop my ships.



and another thing: If the Sophons dont have titanium-70 and the others do they are kind of screwed from the beginning because they can't get this huge lead they need before the others manage to catch up.



Lets look at a bigger map:

Either they steamroll everything or they loose, if someone even manages to stall them for a while they go down because then there will be a lategame for the both of them.

I don't think that was what the developers intended when they designed the race.



Some other boni then pure strength that would help them is some kind of Bonus to ship production like: Advanced shipyards

and/or another building that gives their more XP like: Officer Academy or sth. (aditional to the existing) and those technologies should be in the research tree

I think you have a good point, but we also have to remember that they aren't the only race playing against the clock. Cravers do too, otherwise they get those horrendous FIDS penalties. An increase in ship speed as an inherent race affinity might help balance the late game by giving them higher mobility with their soft fleets.

UE to be honest have one of the best endgame bonuses and technology like military industrial complex which gains a FIDS bonus based on how many resources there is in a system so its not uncommon to see a large colony make about 6700 dust with a high leveled hero in production and Witt. their colony and system defense is phenomenal especially when stacking defensive structures on invasion prone systems also the module that gives a 20% hp bonus to ships made in that system makes their ships extremely beefy.





the irony of it all is that sophons despite being labled peaceful should be played as a quick dominance class and their race bonuses should be used by expanding as much as they can and deny important materials to rival colonies. they perhaps may need one offensive technology that works the opposite like the cravers bonus when they destroy things.



sort of like a research leach which lowers the enemies research for every colony the sophons capture.