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