(too small, http://i.imgur.com/TDzlk.jpg disregard my mspaint skills or lackthereof, premise is what matters)

Something like this



Idea - maybe it costs 2-5 faction points in the custom faction, maybe its a mp game option, i dont care.



Allow players to start with at least ONE predefined hero in our acadamy - this RNG shit of 3x pilot/adventurer one game and then 2 corporate/adminstrator the next is just silly.



one game im pushing 500 science by like the 15th turn, the next i can barely break 100.



having the ability to have at least one predefined hero will add towards the implementation enjoyment of a specific hero (like that new one that just came out) and acutally enrich the game as a whole. this also cuts down some of the terrible rng balance that this game currently faces.





Quote from a different ranting that is important to note about balancing.

kaydiechii wrote:


and yeah my priority is backend>mod/sdk>gameplay balance>shiny (shiny being defined as cool unique features like unique random events or wonders etc.) so im pretty biased, im a competitive player and i prefer more chess/sc like gameplay over gameplay that has a huge random element. losing because someone who got a double admin/corporate quadrupled your science because your starting heroes were shit and forced you into fleeting them or trying to inefficiently use them on your system while you're an early econ based faction is just unfun, and plain stupid. this kind of balance issue is present in a lot of areas in this game, whereas they weren't in the later stages of moo, sure itll take time for these to be ironed out but my point is a game is at its best when they take these things into account when they are developing the game.



easier to prevent a balance issue than it is to go back and fix one already in play.

who voted no? i'd like a valid counterargument to why the shitty RNG academy is okay the way it is? im curious as to design/balance thoughts on that.

I agree wholeheartedly that this is an issue. Starting with ineffective heroes is a huge disadvantage. I think the player should have the ability to request or seek a specific skillset for one hero at the beginning of the game. Perhaps there should be a dust cost or academy penalty to this, but waiting 50 turns for a hero that's compatible with your starting conditions/strategy/faction/play style/color scheme/whatever is ridiculous.



Maybe there should be a feature to simultaneously dismiss two heroes from your academy, which then gives you a "headhunting" bonus that lets you select a skill or both skills and instantly get a random hero that matches.

jdb wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly that this is an issue. Starting with ineffective heroes is a huge disadvantage. I think the player should have the ability to request or seek a specific skillset for one hero at the beginning of the game. Perhaps there should be a dust cost or academy penalty to this, but waiting 50 turns for a hero that's compatible with your starting conditions/strategy/faction/play style/color scheme/whatever is ridiculous.



Maybe there should be a feature to simultaneously dismiss two heroes from your academy, which then gives you a "headhunting" bonus that lets you select a skill or both skills and instantly get a random hero that matches.

actually, if you're like me, youll have several games with even after 100 turns and 5 total heroes, you get none that are corp/admin. kind of sucks when you play a science/peaceful empire mostly.



im kind of fustrated about this person who downvoted in the poll, i want to know the reason why, did they do it just to be a jerk or did they actually have any kind of rational reason for why this severe depravity in balance exists?



and yeah, i'd even take the dismiss 2 heroes to pick one at the beginning of the game thing. my point isn't that i want an OP hero pool, my point is that i want a balanced and controllable start, ive lost several 1v1 games JUST becuase of heroes. it sounds silly and a player lacking foresight might think im being overdramatic, but the truth is when you push produ on a system with a hero, especially something like sowers or a heavily produ based starting planet, those heroes can reach level 7 inside of 25 turns. a level 7 admin(or corp dont remember)hero gives like 100 food and produ.... that kind of early game advantage leads to an exponetnial growth that just is unstoppable in the mid to late game, skill doesn't play a role, at all.



furthermore to add to this desparity more, the early production boon that the admin hero (the +20 to system & +20% to system) increases the exp gained by that hero due to exp being relative to production jobs, thus making the balance even smaller.. its just disgusting, whenever i play a competitive (locked teams etc.) game and i get a bad hero pool, i feel like just leaving.

I always feel weird for saying this, but I hardly ever use hero's, and even then only once have I gotten more then 2.



And a skill/stat or whatever for starting with 1-2or even 3 of a hero type could be awesome.

you should, early game, a hero can literally quadruple or quintuple your production/fleet power



my first 2 playthroughs i didn't get a hero at all, this is how i played in WC3 as well, i was never really a fan of "heroes" or these all powerful annoying things, i'd rather just spend my money on tech and such, but such the same once i got to a reasonable high level of play i realized i had no choice in the matter, its much the same with ES, you cannot keep up with empires that have heroes, it just isn't possible.

Every game is a new story. Thus every game you get a different set of heroes.

divine, sorry, but that isn't good enough. don't make a game multiplayer if you have no intention of having any remote balance, just give one race 1000 points then.

or have heroes appear relative to the focus points of the empire (or even the affinity) or have every player have the same hero if you want that kind of diversity, either way what you just said is completely counter intuitive to multiplayer balance, so much to the fact that it kind of offends me that you'd even play a game with that kind of mentality, you're okay with playing a game that you are guaranteed to be significantly behind your opponent?





thats like loading up a game of starcraft and having a chance of having a 40% handi cap lol

I usually go for the first hero, but I forget em on my homeworld 90% of the time.



What can I say, I like rush buying.

With good reason, rushing buyouts are good too, especially if you specalize in dust early on :P, i don't i generally ride between negative/positive income to plow growth as fast as possible, :P playstyles lol

4X for the win!

indeed!

I think it would be nice to have set heroes for the Standard Empires. But I think for Custom races it should be random. Or you might find custom races metagaming a major edge using starting hero setups.

Starting with a bad hero may be a disadvantage but also think the opposite. If you start with a "perfect" hero it can be a huge boost. Personaly i hire the hero that buffs food profuction in the start even if second skill is pilot. If a better hero comes and i dont have room i ll kick someone even if that means lvling from start (well most times i play as Pilgrim so i get an extra lvl :cool

Bumps, would really like this implemented! maybe ill get mod going