Had a chance to finally play it with a friend, I think the values are completely fine. +15 for corporate dust/sci is good. The 10% industry is pretty useless at the start right now though, +10 flat ind would have been fine. Game feels like it plays at a decent pace too.



Nice colouring of categories in this mod too!

Were you trying to merge his AI with your mod before, or after you noticed this problem?

Ail, i'm not sure you have noticed, or ran in the same problem i had, but adding engine to the colony ship design does cause some problem with the AI. The AI think it's colony ship are combat ships and can end up using them to blocade systems. At least that's what happened in my mod and had to remove that change. Anyway, i'm currently trying to merge your AI with my mod that's why i bring this up.

Dementophobic wrote:
Nice colouring of categories in this mod too!

That's actually taken from the Colored-Anomalies Mod. But I carry that around in every mod ever since it was first released. No clue why Amplitude is so reluctant to finally put this into the normal game.

Igncom1 wrote:
You could give every one a limited version of the blockade brakers, leaving the actual trait to be a significant boost to it.

IMO it should be changed such that everyone race essentially starts with blockade breakers (maybe 75% of full trade value). Needing to be at peace to trade is a severe handicap to the corporate and the trading aspect of the game. Have corporate agreements come with relativistic markets (it comes a bit too late on the tech tree with the -15% malus).



Give the pilgrims some other trait.



Other solutions mentioned in other threads is internal trade, tech upgrades, or as you said as hero skill.

You could give every one a limited version of the blockade brakers, leaving the actual trait to be a significant boost to it.

GRiffffiN wrote:
What about making some hero abilities level dependent?

I'm thinking about the flat dust and science boni of the corp hero. Maybe +5 dust/science per level or something like that. Perhaps on higher levels a % bonus on system could be added. This should give these abilities some use in middle-late game.

A corporate's "late game" skills are supposed to be trade route related. It's fine for the most part IMO except that trade routes are too dependent on peace in ES.

What about making some hero abilities level dependent?

I'm thinking about the flat dust and science boni of the corp hero. Maybe +5 dust/science per level or something like that. Perhaps on higher levels a % bonus on system could be added. This should give these abilities some use in middle-late game.

Foraven wrote:
Well, there is one thing i think many players here have forgot about the food surplus; a high food surplus system is the ideal place to build colony ships since they will replace the lost population quickly. Colony ships aren't just good for new planets but also to reinforce new colonies that are not full yet.



Edit: I find this mod ideas interesting, there are a lot of balance issues in this game that need fixing.

To deal with food surplus, I made the food per population related to tax, since the in the later game, most people would lower the tax to reach high approval, so 30% tax will give 100% extra foodperpop. 0% is 500% food consumption. a 40 pop system will need 400 food upkeep. of course in some system it will still be easy, but it will be extremly hard to expand to new system. There I found a balance between approval and expansion.

stasik28 wrote:
Were you trying to merge his AI with your mod before, or after you noticed this problem?

Nah, i guess his AI won't have the problem mine had because he just changed the default designs and not what the AI will design (my mod had that problem and i had to scrap the idea of adding engines to the colonizers).



Anyway, i'm currently trying my mod combined with his. While everything seem to work, the AI seem to be struggling at building up it's colonies and making fleets. I guess the AI has some troubles with the tall system concept as i have fewer systems than all my competitors but still beat them in research and production while not trying very hard (ok, normal difficulty, but still). I like how tall systems makes a big difference, but i believe the AI has some troubles with it's colonizing priorities as it fall behind a lot more than in the stock game.

Ail wrote:
Not so fast! I know the Devs! They might actually do that.

I've done what you asked for.

Ail wrote:
Here's a first Alpha-Version of the Mod.



Nothing is in any form finalized and also it is still based on my other mod.

The complete cost-rebalancing is not in yet.



Here's the stuff so far:



Buildings:



Colony-Base now produces +5 Industry (up from +2).

Heavy Isoptope Refinery now produces +1 Industry/Pop instead of +10 Industry. (the other effects weren't touched)

Magnetic Field Generators now produce +2 Science/Pop instead of +40 Science.

Advanced Industrial Systems now comes with Tectonic Engineering (a 4000 Science-Tech).

Advanced Industrial Systems now cost 500 Industry down from 4000.

Advanced Industrial Systems now cost 5 Upkeep down from 11.

Advanced Industrial Systems now only turns 35% of the converted food into industry. (Note: I'm not quite sure it works, haven't had the time to test it myself)



Heros:



Admin:

Changed +15 Industry to +10% Industry.

Changed +20 Food to +10 Food.

Changed +30 Food to +15 Food.

Changed +30 Approval to +15 Approval.

Changed +40 Approval to +20 Approval



Coprorate:

Changed +10 Science to +15 Science.

Changed +10 Dust to +15 Dust.



AI:

Reduced AI-Value for Heavy Isotope Refineries from 2.5 to 2.

Reduced AI-Value for Magnetic Field Generator from 3 to 2.

Ail if you can, please EDIT you first post and add to him Version info and files to download.

Its should be clear and simple...

MacDante wrote:
Problem with Hero skils is simple:

some skills was used local (to system) industry, food (bonus is only in system where hero is)

and some to global (to empire) dust, science (bonus is sumary to globals values)



For me +15 science/dust is to op in early game and should be +5/+10 max



about industry/Food:

i think should be +5 or +10 or +10%





Heratio faction in early game can have 5 heroes! (i show only 3 hero example).

You sound like you don't want heroes at all, since +5/10 food and +5science and +10 dust is near useless lol. The pace of the game will have already slowed down with the nerf to the +40sci building, slight nerf to +10ind building, and nerf to admin.



I really don't see any problem with the corporate right now it would take 3 heroes with the +15science to match the current +40sci building basically. 3 heroes with +15 dust isn't that great either (there is upkeep for heroes too).



If you think heroes grow too powerful because of legendary heroes then it is the fault of that trait which is just a bit too powerful imo. There are plenty of imbalances concerning custom faction traits and it shouldn't be brought up here, there is another thread for that. The current changes make the corporate and admin about on par with each other (I think the admin should have just had +10 ind because 10% is A LOT late game, it could be +100 ind).



The admin hero is alright, I think crop geneticist should be moved past motivational speaker but I'm not too sure about that, maybe it's completely fine right now combined with the sci building nerf and weakened outpost pop defense.

Ail wrote:
And here we are again at the battle-mechanics...

A fleet with Omni-Defense that is supported by a higher-level hero with quite a few points in defense won't even take a single scratch by any heroless fleet of about the same tech-level.



Why? Because defenses don't reduce the taken damage, they completely negate it if high enough.

Depend on what type of damage you do; Kinetics will be shafted by a high defense hero (each blocked bullet do no damage at all, and some heroes make kinetics miss even more than they normally do), missiles can get through if you have enough of them, and lasers depend heavily on how many and if you have damage mods (shields block an amount of damage, enough damage done and you break through).

And here we are again at the battle-mechanics...

A fleet with Omni-Defense that is supported by a higher-level hero with quite a few points in defense won't even take a single scratch by any heroless fleet of about the same tech-level.



Why? Because defenses don't reduce the taken damage, they completely negate it if high enough.

Affinity wrote:
Well I don't think many would disagree that +30% food is better, thats why the trait costs 40 points compared to 24 for legendary heroes. Administrators are a huge boon for expanding....they make systems that would otherwise be worthless suddenly have 4 pop and all the basic upgrades.



When you say heros are not that powerful, I do hope you are not referring to pilots on fleets. Have you ever fought a 23CP craver fleet with a lvl 20+ pilot on it? pretty tough to beat.

Yes I agree pilot heroes are very powerfull in combat. Crazy powerfull and not only that..if you dont defeat them they grow even more powerfull quickly. I think there should be ways to neutralize them with dust cards for a battle. you pay a dust cost say 100dust scaled to speed of game and they are out cold for that combat. Anyhow just an idea obviously not put a lot of thought into a solution for that. I think in future an espionage system will be perfect for taking out heroes.

Problem with Hero skils is simple:

some skills was used local (to system) industry, food (bonus is only in system where hero is)

and some to global (to empire) dust, science (bonus is sumary to globals values)



For me +15 science/dust is to op in early game and should be +5/+10 max



about industry/Food:

i think should be +5 or +10 or +10%





Heratio faction in early game can have 5 heroes! (i show only 3 hero example).

Ok, let's treat the issues one by one.



First about the ship-designs:

As I understood you the AI would use colonizers to blockade systems because they now have MP.

Can you elaborate that thought a little more?

Does it look like that is hindering it's expansion by overdoing that or is it just occassionally doing so with excess colonizers?

If it doesn't actually hurt the AI, I see little reason why it should be reverted.



Second about the AI doing worse than before despite outexpanding you:

I have to admit I haven't actually tested it myself and it sounds imaginable, that the AI, that also was used to getting the OP-buildings relatively quickly gets into some troubles when those are not as powerful anymore.

But to be representative it would have to be tested vs. the AggressiveAI-Mod. Maybe the circumstance that the AIs are more or less forced to go to war with at least one other faction also slows them down compared to the normal game because this means less trade and more systems blocked.



Have you jailbroke the save to see what exactly could be the cause of their bad performance?



Maybe this can be improved by adding Pop-Requirements to the AIPathRequirements for certain buildings. As in: you probably don't want to waste 300 Industry to get 4 Sci/turn on an otherwise underdeveloped system.

Ail wrote:
Ok, let's treat the issues one by one.



First about the ship-designs:

As I understood you the AI would use colonizers to blockade systems because they now have MP.

Can you elaborate that thought a little more?

Does it look like that is hindering it's expansion by overdoing that or is it just occassionally doing so with excess colonizers?

If it doesn't actually hurt the AI, I see little reason why it should be reverted.

From what i understand, the AI don't have any issue with the default colonizers even if they have engines because they are flagged as colonizers. But for some reason, if the faction built colonizers have any MP, it can end up defending it's colonies with it rather than send them to colonize, and that does hinder the AI (didn't play that game very long in my tests, i didn't want the AI to do that at all).

Second about the AI doing worse than before despite outexpanding you:

I have to admit I haven't actually tested it myself and it sounds imaginable, that the AI, that also was used to getting the OP-buildings relatively quickly gets into some troubles when those are not as powerful anymore.

I believe the problem is it takes a lot longer for new colonies to develop early on as they don't have the pop to make use of the per pop bonuses. Also, the AI tend to convert all it's colonies to farms when they are not filled thus lose a lot of production and money it needs to do other things. As a player i did reinforce my new colonies with colonizers thus made the new systems grow much faster; the AI don't seem to do that. Also, i didn't wait my colonies to be filled to change their focus, when they have more than half population on them i start converting them to other purposes, something the AI don't seem to do (at least from what i can see from the governors).

But to be representative it would have to be tested vs. the AggressiveAI-Mod. Maybe the circumstance that the AIs are more or less forced to go to war with at least one other faction also slows them down compared to the normal game because this means less trade and more systems blocked.

Some races NEED to go to war to keep up with the others (cravers, Hisshos(sp)), if they leave the other races build up they will lose. Besides, wars is what spice up this game, otherwise it's just a sim city in space where you get the choice to invade the other players.

Have you jailbroke the save to see what exactly could be the cause of their bad performance?

What do you mean by jailbroke? Some mean to see what they are really doing?

Maybe this can be improved by adding Pop-Requirements to the AIPathRequirements for certain buildings. As in: you probably don't want to waste 300 Industry to get 4 Sci/turn on an otherwise underdeveloped system.

That could not hurt i guess. Sad we can't make the AI use it's colonizers to reinforce it's current colonies rather than start new ones in other systems, that would boost it's performances a bit (since it's probably what made me develop my colonies much faster than theirs).