Before I begin, I just wanted to ask: am I supposed to put a post in the "Game Design Proposal" sub-forum for this topic?



In any case, After playing around 10+ MP games, and beating the game a few times on Endless difficulty, I thought I should post my opinion on the Hero Classes, and offer suggestions on how they could be better balanced.



Overpowered

Administrator

- Frankly, the administrator is the best hero type. It is so overpowered, in fact, that not having an administrator hero against a player who does is basically an instant loss.

- Most overpowering is +25 production. By flipping a hero with this skill to a brand new system, you can reduce production of the initial items (like the +10 production of system building) from 10-13 turns, down to 2. Having such a hero allows you to make brand new systems effective in 5-6 turns, as opposed 20-30 turns.

- And if you start with legendary heroes 2, your heroes start at level 3... beginning with that skill.

- Also of note are the +20% production, and +30 system happiness skills (enough to keep it esctatic, you rarely need the +40 skill as well). +20% production to a primary production planet can be overwhelming, especially combined with the hero's +25 production.



I will note that currently, the ideal hero class would be administrator/commander (switching locations every turn, along with +25production and +20% production and some happiness skills, and the ability to lead a combat fleet decently)



Suggestion

- Don't make the production enhancement skills so easy to get (level 3 hero would have it). Instead, I think they should only show up when you research labour 3 (thus, you need to be level 4 to get 1 of them). Also, the +25 bonus is just way too high.

- The growth skills should appear at labour 1 (currently they aren't used at all)



By making it harder to get the production skills, they won't come into effect until mid or late game, thus severely reducing their impact on games. It would also signficantly slow down games though, as settling new planets becomes much more of a chore.



Commander / Pilot

- Effectively the same. Either class is a very capable fleet commander (and would max out stats at around 20 offense/defense).

- Pilots also offer additional movement speed for the fleet they command. Commanders have more dust-utilizing combat cards (and get a skill that lets them switch between locations every 1 turn, as opposed to 5 - that skill would be overpowered, but it requires level 4 veteran to get, which is hard to reach).

- I did notice that a commander / pilot combination is disgustingly good, as it would max out stats at around 30 / 30 if you put all 20 skill points purely into offense / defense boosting skills.

- High level commanders have a ridiculous impact on battles. Too much so. Here's an example (I should of taken screenshots in hindsight)



Scenario 1

6500 strength fleet of 11 destroyers with a 20/20 commander vs 3500 fleet of cruisers with a 10/10 commander

My fleet consisted of roughly 10 beams, 5 beam defenses, and 3 missile defense (tier 2).

Enemy fleet consistently of heavy weaponry, with significantly lower amounts of defense. I think he had around 14 beams and 5 missiles per ship.

Result: I won with 0 damage



Scenario 2

Same as above, but I removed my commander

Result: I loss, and destroyed 1-2 of his 5 cruisers



Scenario 3

Both sides removed commanders.

Result: I won, lost 4 destroyers (36% of my fleet)



Suggestion

- Reduce the impact of offense/defense traits, and rather dramatically too. Sure, commanders should have some impact on fleet combat. However, in the current state, commandered fleets are nearly invulnerable vs fleets without one, and a higher level commander (i.e. you fought more battles than your current opponent) makes your fleet invulnerable too.



Underpowered

Corporate

- All the corporate skills enhance trading.

- Unfortunately, the game design is such that you can only trade if you are at peace, and you have to have enemy systems scouted (which is also very hard to do, unless you got peace and open borders with someone). This combination tends to mean that you won't get trade routes going until turn 30 or so.

- Thus, effectively, corporate heroes are useless early game, and only have an average impact on mid/late game.

Even then, however, corporate heroes are quite useless. The impact they have isn't that great.

A trade route that produced 1 gold and 5 science might instead produce 3 gold and 12 science with an administrator hero.

It's not until late/end-game, when the trade route is producing 5 gold and 25 science, that the corporate hero bonus has any major impact.

And really, at that point, do you really care about an extra 20 gold and 80 science, when the system already naturally produces like 40 gold and 200 science (in addition to all your additional systems)?



Suggestion

- Redesign the whole corporate tree to mirror the administrator. Make it a set 20% increase to science or dust production, just like how the administrator increases food/production.

- My suggestion would be wit 1 for the trade boost skills, and wit 3 = science boosts



Useless

Adventurer

Utterly useless. They don't have any useful skills. Money leeching and science leeching of very small amounts? Blockade running for 1 system which requires a level 4 hero? Utter crap!



Suggestion

- Another redesign required. Personally thinking, I was thinking adventurers should get skills that boost initial planet setup (albeit much lower values than the current administrator).



For example:

Colony Creation 1 - Gives system an additional 3 food and 3 production bonus

Colony Creation 2 - Gives system an additional 4 food and 4 production bonus

Colony Creation 3 - Gives system an additional 6 food and 6 production bonus

As set values, they won't offer much to established systems, but they would offer a great boost to new systems.





I was also thinking adventurers might get a skill that allows to explore moons in a system, regardless of whether you have the technology (say 3 turns to explore a moon in that system). This skill shouldn't appear until veteran 2 is researched.

I would also suggest that the commander skills: hyper driven and Fearless foe be moved to adventurers. It makes more sense than commanders having these (adventurers countering enemy commanders, and being more active than other hero types).



As for their secondary set of skills, perhaps a reduction of the impact of the enemy commander in combat?

For example:

Counter 1 Reduce enemy commander's offense and defense stats by 2

Counter 2 Reduce enemy commander's offense and defense stats by 2

Counter 3 Reduce enemy commander's offense and defense stats by 3

Interesting ideas. You may be interested in my corporate hero buff mod:



/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/15699-obsolete-corporate-hero-buff



I agree that adventurer also needs to be buffed. There are some related discussions:



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11210-discussion-pilots-and-admirals-hero-classes-assignment

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9149-the-25-industry-hero-bonus-is-too-good.



Personally, I feel that the admin hero could be nerfed a little (as my corp mod does), but the main problem is that the other heroes are too weak. I have come close to reaching the right spot with my corp mod, and if we can get adventurer there, then all of the classes will be equally useful. At least, that should be the goal.