After several multiplayer games, my colleagues and I have concluded we have issues with the initial random hero draw. At the start of a game, Administrators are vastly more powerful than the other heroes, and the player that get one are in a substantially stronger position. Everyone's also looking for a Pilot/Commander for a late-game fleet hero as they're the best combo for actually winning combats. Corporates can be strong late game but are extremely fragile, as all their abilities are trade-route based, and those can be wiped out by declarations of war unless you've got Blockade Breakers. Adventurers sit at the bottom of the heap - their abilities are pretty scattershot and are mostly very late in the upgrade tree.



So we've been spitballing some potential solutions to rebalance them:

• Fix The Random Draw - Ensure every player gets the same combination of heroes at the start of the game, which at least guarantees everyone's in the same position, even if it still doesn't really fix the balance between hero classes.
• Allow Players To Specify Hero Types - Either select the starting heroes, or pay a fee later in the game to hire a specific hero type (to instruct the academy to train a specific type for subsequent hiring).
• Rebalance Their Abilities - This would be the best solution; make all the hero classes equally valuable. We've kicked around a bunch of possible ideas to modify their upgrades, with the most controversial suggestion being giving all classes upgrades that allow them to work in both roles (fleet and system) - we've had a long discussion over whether this dilutes the classes or not, but I've included the suggestions below just to allow for further debate.
  
  

General:

• Move the happiness upgrades ("Ministry Of Prapaganda") to Corporate (to reflect advertising), or Adventurer, or possibly make those upgrades available to all heroes. Having a single hero with food, industry and happiness buffs is still an extremely strong combo though.
  
  

Administrator:

• Move the percentage food and industry buffs ("Motivational Leader" and "Efficient Schooling") to Veteran 2.
• Remove "Emergency Preparedness" and "Black Marketeer" (as they're going elsewhere).
• Reduce "Civil Engineering" to +10 industry rather than +15 so it's not quite so strong (it's still extremely good, but it's now slightly less powerful than the first production building for the same upkeep).
• Give them access to the fleet heal upgrades ("Fast Reboot" and "Rapid Adaptation") - moving them from Pilot would potentially weaken the pilot too much but it makes some sense that an Administrator can repair ships in fleet.
• Give them an upgrade to reduce fleet refit costs.
  
  

Corporate:

• Give them flat Dust and flat Science upgrades at Negotiator 1 and 2. They're never going to match the industry and food ones, but an early flat bonus should help.
• Move some of the trade route bonuses back in the tree; the trade route ones aren't going to pay off until much later anyway.
• Move "Industry-Academic Partnership" out from behind "Dust Wielder 1" as it's not really a dust ability.
• Give them a percentage dust upgrade at Veteran 2 to match the science/food/production ones.
• Give them upgrades to reduce fleet upkeep cost when assigned to a fleet.
• Give them a combat dust ability to hire mercenaries to fight for that round (like the Adventurer's "Illusion" ability).
  
  

Commander:

• "Emergency Preparedness" moved from Administrator to Commander.
• Upgrade to give some attrition to invading fleets while he's the system hero (so they take some damage per turn from the system they're invading to reflect his last-ditch defence/rally the civilians/guerilla warfare actions).
• Upgrade to reduce ship construction cost on system.
• Upgrade to give ships constructed on system extra starting HP or XP.
  
  

Pilot:

• "Black Marketeer" moved from Administrator to Pilot.
• "Blockade Runner" moved from Adventurer to Pilot; give it extra levels to improve his blockade breaking ability.
• Upgrades to give trade route distance bonus on system (to reflect him finding faster ways to service the same trade routes).
• Ideally they'd want another system-hero upgrade as everything's trade-route based at present. Maybe giving ships built on system a small movement/sight buff if that's at all possible? Or an upgrade to give a system a bigger influence area to reflect his control of space/better scouting.
  
  

Adventurer:

• Lose "Blockade Runner" to the Pilot.
• Give them flat dust/science acquire upgrades early in the tech tree when in orbit of an opponent's system to reflect gambling/smuggling/theivery.
• Improve "Insight" and "Inside Informant" so they're a bit better (scale their effect by Wit?).
• Give them an upgrade to convert Outposts into Colonies faster to reflect his general "frontier outpost" adventuring/exploring/defending activities.
• Give them a "random" system upgrade. Every 20 turns they get a new random that lasts for 20 turns (based on the global event randoms but balanced to only affect the system he's assigned to). They could have a set of upgrades that allow them to get a new random faster than 20 turns (so, they could have more than one in effect at once). This could tie in to the "interactive events" feature being implemented for the next free add-on if that's appropriate.
  
  

Good ideas, I'd support them!



Adventurer seems to be fun

nice one

This definitely needs work. Your post moves it in the right direction!

I like your ideas

I definitely would like the ability to choose my heroes' trait-trees/jobs/specialties.

After playing a few games, I agree that the balance between heroes needs improvement. OP is completely right in that the admin hero is simply too good early on with the massive food AND approval bonus, and later on with even industry bonuses too.



It's not fun to be gimped by luck of the draw (esp in a game that is hours long). It is extremely difficult to balance skill trees (my experience from many different games) and OP's suggestion of having everyone start with the same traits on the heroes makes the most sense for a quick-fix.