WHen this patch goes live, will it invalidate old saves? if it does, how do I turn off auto update on steam?

Meedoc wrote:


Sowers

Further to the discussion you have on the “Save The Sowers” thread (that I keep reading avidly), I decided to do little changes to improve the Sowers, which for me aren’t that weak. It’s not the best early game race, but they can become a true juggernaut. I understand Multiplayer complaints but as some members said, Single player is at least as important as the Multiplayer, so we need a certain diversity regarding the pace of the different factions.

Yeah, Multiplayer can't be the only point that matter.

Meedoc wrote:


Then, you started a discussion around the Tolerant trait. I think the trait is one of the most interesting traits of the game; opening the colonisations’ choices for a drawback brings interesting dilemma. The trait is a bit overpriced, and it has been to avoid too powerful combination.

Clearly in the thread mentioned I saw too many arguing not seeing at all that this possibility can't be purely good or it will be balance break.

Meedoc wrote:


The solution which has been implemented is the following:

[LIST=1]

Sowers have a unique bonus regarding Tolerant: while they haven’t searched a planet-related technology, they benefit from -25% / -50% approval loss on all planets. Thus, colonising a gas planet only hurts them by 10 instead of 20.

Any faction benefits from -50% approval loss for a planet type once the planet-related technology is researched

[/LIST]

As I understand it, one traits "fix" has an effect on all factions, I doubt it can be good. Some factions are already largely above happiness requirement with a fast expansion with that additional happiness bonus it will be just insane.

I installed the patch yesterday and the biggest issue are the extreme lags. After almost every battle when the summary screen is shown i have to wait 1-5 minutes until i can klick again, the music lags too. Also when the game progresses after the turns it takes a few minutes until i can control the game again.



Furthermore i am completely unable to get ahead of a "normal" AI, i just suck at this game i think D:

I like how weapons and defenses work in 1.1.15, the whole combat system is way better than it was in 1.1.14



Here are some things I want to point out:

• The AI still uses old values for terraforming.
  
  
• Razing a system with depleted planets in it brings all planets in the system back to normal condition.
  
  
• Disbanding troops is not available. Let's say I have 5/5 invasion fleet with 1 troop module on each ship and there are lots of empty population slots in the system which the fleet is orbiting. If I remove troop modules from the invasion ships and retrofit the fleet, 5 (or more) units of population will vanish.
  
  

Antera wrote:
Interesting changes, Meedoc!



Looking at the numbers though, there are a few things that don't quite work the way you've described them. You can see it in the thuvian's spreadsheet. I've got a colored bar version that makes the disparity really jump out at me. To be precise, there are two things in the numbers that seem to contradict your design philosophies:



1) You said missiles are the easiest the counter. But the Def per weight and Def per cost of missile is quite a bit lower than shield and deflector. Granted flak has interception, the interception values are quite a bit lower than the missile's interception evasion so it would seem that defense rating is the only thing that determine whether flak is useful. Maybe I'm missing something here but the numbers says flak is in fact the least weight and cost effective and therefore the least effective form of defense.



2) You said kinetic is hard to counter. But numbers says the exact opposite. Despite deflectors being the heaviest they also provide way more defense than shield and flak. Lv 1 Deflector is in fact 17 times more cost effective than Lv 3 flak while providing the exact same def per weight. Once again, maybe there's some other major factor that changes this.



In any case, I'm gonna go play a few games and see how things work out in practice.

1) Unlike Deflector and Shield, Flak protect the whole fleet. Each flak try to intercept a missile every round; so they have 4 tries before a missile reaches a ship. That's why missiles are the easiest to counter. However, if they aren't, the low defence of the flak won't protect the ships that much.



2) They are hard to counter because they are light, and so they can overwhelm the opponent's defense unlike the other weapons family

Nacho wrote:
What about the Harmony? They don't use approval, so are they just SOL when it comes to Tolerant?

Because they don't use approval, they already have a huge advantage by using Tolerant early game. So the uselessness of its new effect compensate their early bonus.



Cheers,

Analysis of combat mechanics is difficult due to the lack of complete documentation and difficulty in creating test situations. Changes in this would be beneficial for analysis.



A summary of the changes as I've observed them thus far, it may prove useful for other's analysis. I don't have the time to commit to this as extensively as I've documented the previous version.



Weapon Weight Progression

+2 per level (0,2,4: 1,2,3)

+2 per range phase (0,2,4: Short,Medium,Long)

Base per weapon (4,6,8: Kinetic, Laser, Missile)



Examples

Level 1 Short Range Missile = 8 + 0 + 0 = 8

Level 3 Medium Range Kinetic = 4 + 2 + 4 = 10



Weight Progression is an additive system. Lighter weapons are less space efficient than heavier weapons.

A long range level 3 missile weighs 16. You can fit 6.25 on a destroyer (100 weight).

A long range level 1 missile weighs 12. You can fit 8.33 on a destroyer (100 weight).



A short range level 3 kinetic weighs 8. You can fit 12.5 on a destroyer (100 weight).

A short range level 1 kinetic weighs 4. You can fit 25 on a destroyer (100 weight).

Damage/weight efficiency relies on the combination of Weight Progression and Damage Progression, so we can't evalute that yet.



Weapon Accuracy Progression

Missile (0.90, 0.65, 0.40, Short, Medium, Long)

Kinetic (1.00, 0.75, 0.50, Short, Medium, Long)

Laser (1.10, 0.85, 0.60, Short, Medium, Long)



It's an additive system. Short Range is the most accurate. Long Range is the least accurate.



EvadeDisorientation

1.1.9 was 5%

1.1.14 was 15%

1.1.15 is 5% (back to 1.1.9)

I still think this is a poor mechanic. All of my previous analyses still hold true.

Because weight now varies so dramatically (4-16) using long weight weapons to fill up the miss quota on a target is more important.

The order in which weapon hitting is resolved is very important. Consider the case of filling up a ship with 20 level 1 short range kinetics and 1 level 3 long range missile. If the short range kinetics "hit" first, it is very likely that many will miss, then the long range missile will be very likely to hit. On the other hand, if the missile "hits" first, then it is very likely it will miss and then no one cares about the short range kinetic weapon damage.



Weapon Damage Progression by Rank for best phase

Long Range Kinetics 1:2.5:5 for 1:2:3

Short Range Lasers 1:2:4

Everything Else 1:3:6



Note: Short Range Missiles actually do 136 damage, not 136.5 as described in the GoogleDoc.

Short Range Lasers and Long Range Kinetics scale poorly in comparison to other weapons.

Weapons increase Multiplicatively in damage.



Weapon Accuracy Range Progression

Long 1 :0.25:0.25 = 1.50

Medium 0.33: 1:0.33 = 1.66

Short 0.10:0.25:1 = 1.35



Medium Range Weapons offer the largest cumulative damage. If EvadeDisorientation was 0, then Long Range weapons would offer a "first strike advantage", but medium weapons would dominate the remainder of the phases (more 2nd phase damage, and more cumulative damage over the course of the battle). However, since we have EvadeDisorientation Accuracy is meaningless if you have sufficient shots.





Damage/Weight Efficiency Progression

Short Range Kinetics dominate the other weapons at ranks 1 & 2. At Rank 3, Long Range missiles catch up.



Weapon Fire Rate

The number of attacks per round is now fixed by weapon type, not by range.

1/2/4 for Missile/Laser/Kinetic



Defenses

Passives

All removed. Even though the code is still in, it is commented out from the defenses and has no effect.



Weapon Specific Effect

The shield is useless 5/10/20 laser absorption.

The deflector is potentially overpowered, 5/12/25 shots absorbed. If shots = salvo = modules blocked = massive cheese.

The flakk bonus is complicated (10/17/34). Since missiles all take 3 rounds to hit and only 1 missile is launched per module. This has the chance of being very bad for the missiles. The flakk system hasn't been documented.



Defense Scaling

Flakk has the worst defense efficiency (15:20:25). Deflectors (25:30:35) and shields (20:25:30) scale similarly in defense efficiency per weight.

Flakk is 100% to 200% more expensive than deflectors and 50% to 100% more expensive than shields.

Flakk is lighter and has the unexplored anti-missile system. Since all missiles take 3 rounds to hit, short range missiles have an advantage in numbers per tonnage spent on weapons. However, long range missiles have a higher evasion chance, however that works.



Weapon Cost Scaling

laser 4/16/48 1/2/3

kinetic 4/12/48

missile 8/16/48



Weapons generally get less efficient over time. Short range lasers are a horrible purchase. Medium Range Missile Rank 2 comes out way ahead on damage/cost efficiency. Missiles in general are stable in efficiency cost.



Missile Evaluation

Long Range missiles have worse accuracy than short range missiles (40% versus 90%).

Long Range missiles have better evasion, whatever that is worth.

Long Range missiles are heavier than short range missiles (12:14:16 versus 8:10:12) (150%,140%,133%)

Long Range missile weight efficiency is better than medium & short (188%, 141%, 100%).

With Evade Disorientation of 5% you'll miss 10 more shots of Long Range Missiles than short range missiles.

However, given sufficiently large numbers of ships/shots long range missiles is the way to go. Assuming the Flakk mechanic doesn't block too many missiles. I suppose that both of these problems can be solved by a mixture of 2 types of missiles on 2 types of ships. The first weapon is level 1 short range missiles. These missiles are designed to miss and be destroyed by flakk. We can't do much about them missing, especially with their higher base accuracy. However, they do dodge much more poorly and thus will draw flakk fire. The second weapon is level 3 long range missiles. These are where the damage comes from. Because we can't have multiple weapons of the same type on a ship, we'll require 2 ships. This is a problem because we need both ships to fire at a single target. To do this, we'll need to choose guillotine and have our short range missile ships be in the first half of the fleet list and our long range missile ships in the second half.



The combination of Evade Disorientation and the Flakk mechanic make predictions difficult without empirical evidence. For players willing to explore the code and do simulation tests an answer will eventually emerge. For the casual player they will no way of determining this without tons of in game battles. This lack of clarity will cause lots of frustration with the game.



Missiles are the weakest defense due to how expensive they are. However, because they have the flakk mechanic, it is unknown how much damage actually gets through.

Based on this, medium ranged lasers seem to be the best bet for glass cannons. They are reasonably efficient and are paired against the worst defense. For an effective glass cannon approach you have to use all weapon types. However, defenses are much more powerful in 1.1.15. They are cheaper, and REALLY cheap for large ships, compared to 1.1.9 and 1.1.14. Given estimates thus far it seems that defenses are overwhelming more powerful than offense. It maybe possible to design ships that cannot be effectively destroyed.

Nasarog wrote:
WHen this patch goes live, will it invalidate old saves? if it does, how do I turn off auto update on steam?

Old savegames are still possible to load as of now, however most of your ship-designs might either be impossible to recreate or leave lots of space on the ship.



For example: If you had designed Armor-Tanks with lots of armor modules those might become mega-overpowered since the way armor works was completely changed and the modules are much bigger now.

What about the Harmony? They don't use approval, so are they just SOL when it comes to Tolerant?

Interesting changes, Meedoc!



Looking at the numbers though, there are a few things that don't quite work the way you've described them. You can see it in the thuvian's spreadsheet. I've got a colored bar version that makes the disparity really jump out at me. To be precise, there are two things in the numbers that seem to contradict your design philosophies:



1) You said missiles are the easiest the counter. But the Def per weight and Def per cost of missile is quite a bit lower than shield and deflector. Granted flak has interception, the interception values are quite a bit lower than the missile's interception evasion so it would seem that defense rating is the only thing that determine whether flak is useful. Maybe I'm missing something here but the numbers says flak is in fact the least weight and cost effective and therefore the least effective form of defense.



2) You said kinetic is hard to counter. But numbers says the exact opposite. Despite deflectors being the heaviest they also provide way more defense than shield and flak. Lv 1 Deflector is in fact 17 times more cost effective than Lv 3 flak while providing the exact same def per weight. Once again, maybe there's some other major factor that changes this.



In any case, I'm gonna go play a few games and see how things work out in practice.

Thank you so much guys Loving what I see

Meedoc wrote:


Defence Type & Hulls

Since the release of Disharmony, the different hulls have a new property called Hull Weakness, which modulate the received damage: the lowest hull weakness is, the more resistant the hull. A large ship has 100 Hull Weakness, a medium 200 and a small 300. The damage modulation is directly related to the value of the defence: the higher the defence value, the more efficient is a low hull weakness. With this new patch, Deflector has the highest defence value, then shield and finally flak. So that means that a large ship receives a better protection from deflector than flak because of the final impact of hull weakness will be lower in the first case.

Despite the new numbers thrown it still means nothing, a defense of 100 and hull weakness of 100 is better than a defense of 200 and a hull weakness of 50? Impossible to say with that partial explanation. And only tedious very high number of tests would allow get an idea.

The google docs link to the weapons and defense comparison

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AugwwpqYDMipdDlPamxYZHpFaWtkUTJjTkM3VmVlR0E#gid=0

Doesnt tolerant for harmony have the drawback of slower population growth? (Built into this beta patch)

Liking these changes so far. Only got into mid game phase but so far it looks like both glass-cannons, balanced and tank style ships have their place.

Autocthon wrote:
So logged in as the Sowers to test this colonization change for tolerant, and my "Bonus Approval From planets" is half what it should be... Specifically half the positive value it should be on my home system.



Other than that, good changes.



Edit: Yup looks like the change is halving the final approval value rather than the penalty associated with planet type.

Thanks for reporting that! I just fixed it =)

I still don't think I follow a lot of the weapon and defense things... Ever since Disharmony I've been really discombobulated by them...

So logged in as the Sowers to test this colonization change for tolerant, and my "Bonus Approval From planets" is half what it should be... Specifically half the positive value it should be on my home system.



Other than that, good changes.



Edit: Yup looks like the change is halving the final approval value rather than the penalty associated with planet type.

Firstly - THANK YOU for this amazing article about weaponry in Endless Space. It's everything an ES player needs summed up in a nice little package. That's perfect!

I'm not sure if I understand how the new Tolernt trait works now - does it no longer allow non-Sower factions to colonize the planets they normally couldn't? (because of the lack of technology) And instead it just gives those factions a lower disapproval? Ugh, I don't think I read this right... Gonna have to go in game and find out how it works myself, lol. I'm so dumb sometimes...



EDIT: Nvm, I get it now! It basically works like it always did, except it penalizes Sowers less for colonizing harsh planets without technology. Brilliant idea!

Btw, does a custom faction with Sower affinity classify as Sower for the "tolerant" trait?

Meedoc wrote:


Let’s Play

I hope you’ll have fun with this new beta patch (which should become a public patch next week if everything is ok =)). We talked about playing with the community for a while, and I think this future release will be a good occasion, so I’ll be available and be glad to play with some of you between the 19th and 21th August (I’ll try to convince other devs to join me!). I’ll create a lobby those 3 days around 7p.m. GMT, and I hope to have fun with you guys!



Cheers,





P.S.: I’ll refuse VIP players (they ruined my empire too many times )

Well... You might be disappointed dear sir. VIPs aren't the only ES players that can defeat 7 Endless AIs...

Yeah, I'll be there. Hopefully, I will get in before the lobby is full. And then I will gladly kill a representative of one of my most favorite devs!

...

That sounds so wrong.

Gonna do it regardless!

ace info there, thank you, going into detail as you did is very much appreciated

Meedoc wrote:
P.S.: I’ll refuse VIP players (they ruined my empire too many times )

Just because I kept blockading half your planets and Eysteinh invaded the rest?