The Horatio have the advantage of having more heroes, if you really care about that. I like having a limited number because it makes then feel like heroes.



If you put in a soft cap in the number of heroes based on increasing upkeep costs, it would have to be massive because as it stands it is insignificant compared to the bonuses provided. I like a hard cap because it is so much simpler.



Having the pool refresh periodical could work, but I prefer having them replaced when they are recruited instead. The problem of not having what you want could be mitigated by requiring the shared heroes to always have one pure civilian hero, one pure military hero, and one hybrid, with the 2 that are unique to you being random. That way, if do do not see the trait you want, you can just wait until someone takes a hero out.



Additionally, I would like to see a 3ed civilian trait that would deal with approval and possibly trade. That way Administrator would provide bonus food and industry and Corporate would provide bonus science and dust, as well as allowing a discount for buying ships/improvements in the system, etc.

I don't think a hero would have to worry about putting food on the table and I think a good hero would be willing to take up command again if needed.



Again, it does not matter much. Gameplay considerations should come first.



PS: I addressed that problem by putting a wait time after changing your academy.

well there's lotality then their is putting food on the table as well >.> plus you would need a valid reason to draft them back into service if its a proper retirement. plus you could abuse that system if there were always their.

Personal, I hope my heroes are loyal to more than just their paycheck



Anyway, I want to retire my heroes, not fire them. I don't think they would be too angry about long relaxing days at their private villa.

you got to rember you fired him so he's looking for work and the other nation comes with a job offer ofcource he will take it

I don't like the idea of heroes being taken by other empires.



Lent to friends, maybe. But if you make it so that they can be taken by other players, you discourage players from retiring them.

i have another possiblity from what was on the poll on this:-



"(4) Instead of expelling heroes, heroes are retired in which case they are put back in the recruit pool in addition to the 5 recruits who would always be in the pool. They can be reactivated by you and are only available to you"



you could also have the hero recruitible to other nations that are frendly to the heros race giveing a penaty for retiring the hero as another nation could recruit hero this should help with balancing as it will make them less incline to boot them durring peace time.

sagittary wrote:
If there's a bidding system, I would say to borrow from Small World which also has an initial bidding system (to choose race, in that game's situation) where if you bidding doesn't just give you something but also gives your opponent's something too. In SW, if you bid high (or buy a race that's far down in the pile), your bid doesn't just disappear, it is accumulated as bonus gold on the remaining races. This gold is acquired if someone decides to pick up that race (minus the cost of their own bid).



Thus bidding high or early has the trade of getting a short term advantage of one kind but also providing your opponents their own short term advantage. But it also benefits the player who ends up going last or who wants to wait and see what strategy the other people are doing by not penalizing them for waiting (other than the chance that they may end up with an average starting situation).

The only thing of consequence with heroes is their traits and there are so few there is a high chance of having the ones you want. Thus, I do not see the need for a complex bidding system. If Amplitude likes and implements my system or some variant there of, I doubt it will be a problem. As I discuss below, I am open to eliminating the shared pool which would eliminate any need for such a system.



In games you must adapt to the circumstances, it is OK to not always get everything you want.

Preacher wrote:
I think a pool of heroes is a horrible idea unless there are 30 heroes or so in the pool. I agree the 3 heroes three slots is weak. I also don't think heroes should be able to be retired into your own private cabinet, but you should be able to hire them back on if no one else does. I think the MoO 2 system of providing you with heroes was great and a similiar style would work great here. Another idea is heroeless fleets that win a few battles may provide a leader internally allowing you to promote from within allowing you to recruit more cheaply and wandering heroes prices should go up. If you were to start with only 4-5 in a pool I would want to see their hire prices dramatically increase to at least 2000 to 3000 or even more so it wouldnt be just snatch and grab and you would have to develop your civ for money at the cost of food and prod. if you wanted first dibs. This initial hire price should further increase say 250 per level of the hero that way you wouldnt fire heroes so wantonly and other civs would have to pay for the levels you provided.

By allowing the retirement of heroes, I hope to allow you to adapt your academy, which (1) reduces the effects of not getting exact the heroes you wanted and (2) makes gameplay more strategic by allowing you to shift gears. The main problem with putting expelled heroes back in the pool is that ether the pool grows ever larger with heroes that nobody wants as the game progresses, the used heroes crowd out the recruits, or no new heroes are recruited. I also think that giving your enemies access to a leveled up hero is a significant deterrent to adapting you academy.



I do not see the need for having so many heroes available. There would always be 5 new recruits available so you always have some variety to choose from. Notice that the idea is to have a hybrid system of 3 shared heroes (guaranteeing a civilian, hybrid, and military) and 2 random personal heroes.



However if the Shared pool does not work out, it would work just as well with a personal pool of 5 heroes, 2 being of your race and 3 being random. I still think that it would be good to guarantee one of each category, however. Again, the Cravers could have the penalty of having less heroes to choose from, but that is not required with a personal pool, they could simply have all 5 heroes be Cravers.



I realize the problem of grabbing a ton of heroes, so I propose that we only be able to change our line up at most every 10 turns or pay through the nose and reset the timer. Such large fees are therefor unnecessary.

I think a pool of heroes is a horrible idea unless there are 30 heroes or so in the pool. I agree the 3 heroes three slots is weak. I also don't think heroes should be able to be retired into your own private cabinet, but you should be able to hire them back on if no one else does. I think the MoO 2 system of providing you with heroes was great and a similiar style would work great here. Another idea is heroeless fleets that win a few battles may provide a leader internally allowing you to promote from within allowing you to recruit more cheaply and wandering heroes prices should go up. If you were to start with only 4-5 in a pool I would want to see their hire prices dramatically increase to at least 2000 to 3000 or even more so it wouldnt be just snatch and grab and you would have to develop your civ for money at the cost of food and prod. if you wanted first dibs. This initial hire price should further increase say 250 per level of the hero that way you wouldnt fire heroes so wantonly and other civs would have to pay for the levels you provided.

If there's a bidding system, I would say to borrow from Small World which also has an initial bidding system (to choose race, in that game's situation) where if you bidding doesn't just give you something but also gives your opponent's something too. In SW, if you bid high (or buy a race that's far down in the pile), your bid doesn't just disappear, it is accumulated as bonus gold on the remaining races. This gold is acquired if someone decides to pick up that race (minus the cost of their own bid).



Thus bidding high or early has the trade of getting a short term advantage of one kind but also providing your opponents their own short term advantage. But it also benefits the player who ends up going last or who wants to wait and see what strategy the other people are doing by not penalizing them for waiting (other than the chance that they may end up with an average starting situation).

Christophe_Degoy wrote:
By the way how do we get more academic slots? i'm in an early-mid game, half tech researched or so, but still 3 slots.

Is it an event?

The relevant techs are in the left tech tree. I forget which ones they are.

By the way how do we get more academic slots? i'm in an early-mid game, half tech researched or so, but still 3 slots.

Is it an event?

The dust only chooses so many people, not everyone who snorts their money gains its effects.



When there are beings so powerful, and so few, you have to be willing to look beyond your boarders.

Unless you're Craver. As I said before, they should (if this system is implemented) have the penalty of only being able to choose Craver heroes.

Sparks wrote:
Are we able to recruit enemy faction heroes because it is an Alpha, and the stable of available heroes is so small? Or is that a design concept that is intended.



I think it would be better to have heroes of your own faction. It's a little bit lore breaking for a Sophon to have a Craver hero leading their fleets.

It is a design concept. See the devpost regarding that, here: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11046-announcement-a-brief-note-on-heroes

Are we able to recruit enemy faction heroes because it is an Alpha, and the stable of available heroes is so small? Or is that a design concept that is intended.



I think it would be better to have heroes of your own faction. It's a little bit lore breaking for a Sophon to have a Craver hero leading their fleets.

I am the leader of an Galaxy-spanning Empire. There have been how many heroes on this one planet of ours alone? I think we can do well with more than 3 Academy Slots.



I wouldn't mind separate slots dedicated to fleets and slots dedicated to systems...

Edit: I started an updated version of this thread. It can be found at https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13300-hero-system-recommendations-suggestion



I played 22 hours of this game over the weekend and the system that I think could use the most improvement is the process of recruiting heroes.



The problem is that we are limited to 3 heroes to choose from in the first few dozen turns and we have 3 academy slots, we then receive only a few more throughout the game. This leaves us with no real choice as to what heroes we get in the early and mid game, unless you are Horatio (who can clone their favorite heroes). We can expel heroes and replace them once we have a few to choose from, but that requires leveling up a new hero and allows other civilizations to take the hero you leveled up.



I propose that we consider changing the system by which we select heroes thus:

1) Heroes should be recruited from a pool of 4 or 5 heroes shared between every civilization on a first come first serve basis. Whenever a hero is drawn out of the pool, he/she is replaced by another random hero.

2) Instead of expelling heroes and putting them back in the recruit pool, heroes can be retired in which case they are put in a separate pool that allows you to reactivate them but does not allow others access to them.

3) The rate at which players can change the heroes in their academy should be limited. If you must wait, say 10 turns, to change a hero then strategy and foresight become important and you only want to take the heroes you need.

4) Heroes should ether have a hard level cap, for example level 10, to force you to decide your heroes role or the experience to level up should increase exponentially more so that it already does. This makes it so that you can't, or at lease it is not feasible to, have a hero with all the skills and adds in the calculation of when it is better to recruit a new hero to add to the flexibility of your academy and when is it better to keep an elite hero on hand for their bonuses.



Please add helpful suggestions and tell me if you think this would be better than the system as it stands. Who knows, they may put it to a vote!

Personally i would rather have more heroes with less benefit per hero overall. Double all the hero limits and reduce the benefits by half or so or make them more expensive as far as upkeep the more you get. For example you could remove the hard cap on it and put a soft cap where if you go over they all demand more cash reduce their benefits or both. That way the tech is still useful but you also have an option to get extra bonuses in exchange for a bigger hit on your economy or a larger bonus overall but a smaller one per hero. As it stands the hero system is nice and all but being stuck with such a small number is kind of a drag. Most of my games are a simple affair of sticking two heroes on a planet and one in a fleet. A little more flexibility and utility would be nice and it would add a bit of a pro vs con situation instead of a situation where its always a buff all the time.



I also agree with a common pool of heroes also. That is a great idea. Give the pool 3 or 4 heroes per race in the game and refresh and renew the list every x turns.



My biggest complaint with the hero system as it is now is the list as far as i know never refreshes with different heroes. If i have a group of heroes that dont have a builder trait ill never get one. If you dont add a common pool adding a cost to refresh the list would be nice.

I think that the military side still had some abilities left to add in. When I promoted my hero down ether the Assailant or Defender paths (I can't remember witch) there were virtually no abilities that it provided. Do you play Sophon or Horatio, or perhaps Empire?

Well, the optimum configuration (for me) would be three perfectly identical heroes, all with Administrator/Corporate and the highest Labor and Wit scores the game allows to be generated. Fleet commanders = initially useless for me.

I also have odd games where I have three essentially 'identical' heroes to get, or sometimes, there are no heroes at all - nada for the first 50 turns. This is extremely painful. Anything to enrich heroes, add flexibility and add depth to heroes gets a +1 in my book. Great ideas.

I don't think that will be a problem because (1) it is likely that not everyone will want the same thing, (2) I at least tend to develop my heroes to emphasize one of their 2 traits so the other one is not as important, (3) the heroes are replaced immediately so there are always plenty to choose from, (4) they might be replaced by one you wanted even more, (5) all of the heroes should have equal total starting stats, and (6) I think that only 3 of the heroes should be shared the other 2 should be of your race and be only available to you.



A bidding system would be a needless complexity to solve a problem that will probably be very minor. If there is a problem, then I think a better solution would be to make it so that there is always at least one of each trait in your pool.



Edit: I at least will be playing simultaneous turns because I am not patient enough to wait for other players. Sometimes one person just gets to something first and that is how the cookie crumbles.



Edit Edit: I am now recommending that the shared heroes always have 1 pure civilian, 1 pure military, and 1 hybrid. The 2 personal hero choices would be random. I would also like to see a 3ed civilian trait to round it out.

The turns are simultaneous. That's how the game is built.



There currently exists a hard level cap: level 20 (easily achievable by a commander who sees a fair amount of action).

As far as I've been able to tell, the cost to heal them does, in fact, depend on their level?



The problem I see with the shared pool and bidding system is that it will *guarantee* that one player has an advantage over others, rather than making it simply a possibility.



I think we might benefit more from having the game force all 5 hero classes to be represented at least once in the initial hero pool.

Zougkla wrote:
I agree with scaling the healing cost with the heroes level. In my proposal the main factor limiting you from recruiting new heroes and from bringing them out of retirement is the waiting period, I am not sure a dust cost is even that necessary in that case but I think it is still applicable. Perhaps you could swap heroes in the waiting period, but you would have to give an arm and a leg and it would reset the timer. And finally, I favor a first come first serve system with hero recruitment because it is by far the simplest. The hero would be taken immediately when someone chooses them, I don't think there would be a problem because there would be so many to choose from you can get one you are happy with.



As to Horatio cloning, I think it should give you a level 1 hero with the same base traits as the one you had. That way they have more options but it is not overpowered.

There would be a slight problem with only a first come first serve basis, this would mean (in online multiplayer especially) one particular person would have the advantage of choosing the first hero, and could cause a good deal of discontent amongst the other players that they didn't have a chance to try getting that hero that they really wanted. Its still a turn based game, and I don't think turns will be simultaneous as that would seem incredibly difficult to do and have it remain balanced and without issues.



I think at the beginning of a turn phase, if there are any remaining heroes in the pool, there should be a bidding pool at the start of the turn of the 1st player to take their turn, where everyone has a chance to go for heroes. The very first turn that heroes could be available for example, could be the 3rd turn, since I think its possible by the 3rd or 4th turn to hire a hero with the money you've pooled up.

thelovebat wrote:
Love these ideas, would add far more balance to the game.



Also, the cost for healing heroes if they get injured should be based on their current level, this way later in the game the cost to heal them is adequately proportionate to the stage of the game you're in. That way there wouldn't be a set amount that costs a bunch of your money to heal a hero in the early game but only cost pocket change when you get around turn 70 or so which is imbalanced.



What they should probably do is make the initial starting hero cap higher (like 4 or 5) but make it slightly more expensive to hire heroes and like you said, have them hired from a pool so if you really wanted a hero, you would have to act fast and pay up if you wanted them badly enough.



One thing they'd have to do with a pool system of heroes though is have a bidding system if two or more races want to hire the same hero on the same turn cycle, then the highest bidder would end up getting the hero. This would give players more incentive to focus on accumulating money in the early game rather than production or research giving them the best chance to hire the hero they want, or the hero with the best early game attributes (this would pretty much be governor type attributes).

I agree with scaling the healing cost with the heroes level. In my proposal the main factor limiting you from recruiting new heroes and from bringing them out of retirement is the waiting period, I am not sure a dust cost is even that necessary in that case but I think it is still applicable. Perhaps you could swap heroes in the waiting period, but you would have to give an arm and a leg and it would reset the timer. And finally, I favor a first come first serve system with hero recruitment because it is by far the simplest. The hero would be taken immediately when someone chooses them, I don't think there would be a problem because there would be so many to choose from you can get one you are happy with.



As to Horatio cloning, I think it should give you a level 1 hero with the same base traits as the one you had. That way they have more options but it is not overpowered.

Horatios already get around this a little bit by being able to clone existing heros, they even are cloned at the existing level with the existing abilities! This is a very powerful ability that almost makes imo the Horatios the most powerful race, however I think they fall a bit short of those cravers.

Zougkla wrote:
I played 22 hours of this game over the weekend and the system that I think could use the most improvement is the process of recruiting heroes.



The problem is that we are limited to 3 heroes to choose from in the first few dozen turns and we have 3 academy slots, we then receive only a few more throughout the game. This leaves us with no real choice as to what heroes we get in the early and mid game, unless you are Horatio (who can clone their favorite heroes). We can expel heroes and replace them once we have a few to choose from, but that requires leveling up a new hero and allows other civilizations to take the hero you leveled up.



I propose that we consider changing the system by which we select heroes thus:

1) Heroes should be recruited from a pool of 4 or 5 heroes shared between every civilization on a first come first serve basis. Whenever a hero is drawn out of the pool, he/she is replaced by another random hero.

2) Instead of expelling heroes and putting them back in the recruit pool, heroes can be retired in which case they are put in a separate pool that allows you to reactivate them but does not allow others access to them.

3) The rate at which players can change the heroes in their academy should be limited. If you must wait, say 10 turns, to change a hero then strategy and foresight become important and you only want to take the heroes you need.

4) Heroes should ether have a hard level cap, for example level 10, to force you to decide your heroes role or the experience to level up should increase exponentially more so that it already does. This makes it so that you can't, or at lease it is not feasible to, have a hero with all the skills and adds in the calculation of when it is better to recruit a new hero to add to the flexibility of your academy and when is it better to keep an elite hero on hand for their bonuses.



Please add helpful suggestions and tell me if you think this would be better than the system as it stands. Who knows, they may put it to a vote!

Love these ideas, would add far more balance to the game.



Also, the cost for healing heroes if they get injured should be based on their current level, this way later in the game the cost to heal them is adequately proportionate to the stage of the game you're in. That way there wouldn't be a set amount that costs a bunch of your money to heal a hero in the early game but only cost pocket change when you get around turn 70 or so which is imbalanced.



What they should probably do is make the initial starting hero cap higher (like 4 or 5) but make it slightly more expensive to hire heroes and like you said, have them hired from a pool so if you really wanted a hero, you would have to act fast and pay up if you wanted them badly enough.



One thing they'd have to do with a pool system of heroes though is have a bidding system if two or more races want to hire the same hero on the same turn cycle, then the highest bidder would end up getting the hero. This would give players more incentive to focus on accumulating money in the early game rather than production or research giving them the best chance to hire the hero they want, or the hero with the best early game attributes (this would pretty much be governor type attributes).

/signed great ideas

Added to the Summary Suggestion thread /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/13003-summary-of-suggestions-so-far-discussion

+1

AND there is an other threat where the idea was to retire heros to keep them as advisors (maybe with a penalitiy to make them less good as the heros ?)



/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11859-councils-advisers

For you xenophobes out there, we may want to make the first 2 hero recruits members your race and available only to you, with the other 3 hero recruits being shared among the empires. This would allow you to feasibly have an academy made only of your race, if you want to do a little strategy role play. LOL!



This could even be a penalty to the Cravers. As they are so xenophoblic and, in my mind, want to eat/assimilate all other life they could be limited to choosing only from Craver heroes. This gives them 2 heroes to choose from instead of 5 and a 169/512th chance of having a 3ed etc. This could be nice as the Cravers are a little overpowered IMO.



As one final thing, I think the heroes should all have the same total starting stats on them as there is no real reason to have some heroes be better than others, so what if some end up having the same stats and abilities!

I like all of these ideas :P