Breaking a lance for Wide:

Yes, the +40 science is ridicolous, and needs to go.

The flat food/industry on the admin hero is absolutely ridicolous (How to win a 'all negative traits' run on Endless? Roll three of those!). Scaling %/Per pop bonuses, possibly with a cap, would be

I'd leave the planetary institute alone, and mantain the heavy isotope, but increase the dust cost of it.



In all that, please remember that there's no internal trade in ES, and some flat bonuses (For controlling the territory) should be awarded.



Science victory at the moment feels way too easy, and if the occasion arised, i'd do the following:

Rule out the +40 building.

Nerf the +20/40% buildings to 10/20.

Diminish accordingly the scaling on tech-tiers, so that researching a tech two tiers old isn't <1 turn while current tier is 6+.

Plus buffing the required science points for the win-techs. Substantially. (Wonder victory usually takes about 10-15 turns after the tech, science can sometimes take as little as three)







As for 3): It's more of a internal problem than a modding solution, and we should really ask for said improvements to be 'disabled' while ineffective, using the same code that renders them unbuidable.

One thing I did experiment with regarding heroes was changing it so they gave a bonus to production rather industry. Now I haven't looked at it but is it possible to increase the effect of a specific building through a hero? +15 production becomes +20 or something. The hero improves the existing infrastructure rather than bringing its own attached bonuses. It would reduce the bootstrapping of underdeveloped colonies. I'm also of an opinion that if it were possible a hero should accumulate bonuses for staying in one place. Every 10 turns receives a stacking bonus or something along those lines, I dislike having to move a hero constantly to achieve maximum efficiency.

I agree. A hero benefits as in XP from being moved around is a strange concept. I'd even say that there should be some penalty for moving a hero. Like paying the cost you would also have to pay when he is wounded. With maybe the exception to moving it from a fleet to another fleet in the same system.

Ail wrote:
A hero benefits as in XP from being moved around is a strange concept.

What specifically causes a hero moving around to gain XP? Do you mean that a hero gains XP from building small buildings, and if he is always on a newly settled planet then he is around when a lot of small buildings are built? So it is not the *moving*, it is the *gaining XP from small buildings*. I have suggested for a long time that the way XP is granted to heroes should change. Specifically, don't grant XP after a ship battle in which the hero's 4 DN fleet crushes a scout. And don't grant XP after building a small building, when the hero is already 5th level. Only big battles, and big buildings, should grant XP to a higher level hero. This would solve a lot of different problems involving pirate farming too.

davea wrote:
What specifically causes a hero moving around to gain XP? Do you mean that a hero gains XP from building small buildings, and if he is always on a newly settled planet then he is around when a lot of small buildings are built? So it is not the *moving*, it is the *gaining XP from small buildings*. I have suggested for a long time that the way XP is granted to heroes should change. Specifically, don't grant XP after a ship battle in which the hero's 4 DN fleet crushes a scout. And don't grant XP after building a small building, when the hero is already 5th level. Only big battles, and big buildings, should grant XP to a higher level hero. This would solve a lot of different problems involving pirate farming too.

I believe they gain XP from being assigned to a new place but it's extremely minor. I agree with the rest of what you've said regarding hero XP changes. Either way the admin still needs to have his abilities nerfed is the general consensus I think.

I don't believe they gain XP simply from a transfer. Try an experiment game like this. Hire wo heroes at the same time. Don't build anything on any of your planets. Keep one hero stationary and move the other one as often as you can. The stationary one should never level up. Does the moving hero level up?

Great feedback here. I agree with postes that the +10 industry should stay and the +40 science is the biggest problem. I think they key to making interesting choices would be to make growing very tall and have a high food surplus system give you bonuses would counterbalance vs the expansion spreading players somewhat. I have to think abit more on how to do this.

davea wrote:
I don't believe they gain XP simply from a transfer. Try an experiment game like this. Hire wo heroes at the same time. Don't build anything on any of your planets. Keep one hero stationary and move the other one as often as you can. The stationary one should never level up. Does the moving hero level up?

Actually, I believe a hero gains XP simply for being assigned to a planet or fleet. It's not 'gain some XP at the time he is assigned', it's 'gain 1 XP/turn if he is a governor or admiral'. So, both heroes will level up eventually.

Eysteinh wrote:
Great feedback here. I agree with postes that the +10 industry should stay and the +40 science is the biggest problem. I think they key to making interesting choices would be to make growing very tall and have a high food surplus system give you bonuses would counterbalance vs the expansion spreading players somewhat. I have to think abit more on how to do this.

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.

Together with Eysteinh I have talked about making a mod that has the purpose of giving the player more interesting choices when it comes to the way he researches the tech-tree and more valid decisions to what buildings to pick and when.



While I haven't started to actually change things, there already is a rough outline on what is going to be done with it.



I want to post these here in order to fetch some feedback.



The basis of everything is an "ROI"-list made by Eysteing.

The ROI-list is an partially mathematical and partially hypothetical assumption of how many turns it takes for a building to become profitable.



The aim is to bring buildings of the same tech-level more in line with each other in this regard so the decision about the build-order becomes less 1-dimensional and hopefully more need-driven.



This will most likely cause a revamp of almost all buildings production-cost, maintainence and in some cases effect aswell.

I will try to leave the effects alone for the most part so the buildings still do what everyone has gotten used to.

However, there are some buildings which are that far out of line, that I feel the effect has to be changed.



While there's nothing specific about the buildings yet, there's also some general ideas, I'd like to impement.



1. Food

The food-ressource, as it is, loses all of its value at the moment when a system reaches its population-maximum.

I don't really like that because it devalues food too much.

The solution to that problem already exists and is called Adaptive Industrial Systems.

However, I feel that it a) comees far too late in the game to have much impact and b) is far too powerful in what it does, as the potential food-production of a system is much higher than it's potential industry-production.

So the plan is to make it available much earlier but also reduce its effectiveness by a big chunk.



2. Flat-Boni

There's a number of buildings that give an instant flat bonus to a system. What those have in common is: Everyone always queues them first and they alone make getting every system worth having no matter how bad it actually is.

I feel this gives too much incentive to colonize everything you can without even considering the drawbacks of such behaviour.

A change to a pop- or percentage-based effects is what I intend here.

As Eysteinh pointed out making such a change to the Heavy-Isotope-Refinery would also change the pacing of the early-game a lot.

That's why I'd like to have some more feedback on it.

There's some solutions I can think of:

a) leave it as it is; Advantage: pacing will not change Disadvantage: defeats the purpose of making it not mandatory

b) giving the colony-base a higher production-flat-bonus; Advantage: pacing will only change slightly Disadvantage: Even getting a colony will boost an empires productivity

c) making all of the very early buildings cheaper to build; Advantage: fullfills purpose of disencouraging too rapid-expansion Disadavantage: noticable change to the pacing



Of course the replacement of flat-boni would also apply to the admin-hero.



3. Obsolete Buildings

Some buildings become obsolete by terraforming because they only give boni to certain planet-types. Having to memorize them in order to raze them or continue paying for their maintainance feels rather tedious. I intend on giving them a small extra-something that remains usefull even when their primary effect becomes meaningless due to terraforming.



Please leave any kind of feedback and suggestions. Thanks!

Ail wrote:


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.

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.
AggressiveAI_Rebalance_Alpha.zip

Everything looks really good to me (y), the +2sci/pop building is a really big nerf/change of pace to the early-mid game though, maybe the colony could have a slightly bigger base sci production too (nothing big, like +3-6). I'll test it when my exams end, good work!

Great work Ail so far Wish I contributed even more Regarding balance I am not sure yet if thats the sweetspot but I think you have some good ideas and your moving in the right direction.

One thing that I also noticed and am probably going to change is that there is a huge difference depending on your starting-world. The Planet-type of that is linked with the Affinity and I feel that starting on an almost-no-science-arid-planet is a huge disadvantage compared to a terran-start.



@Eysteinh: Btw. I just learned that we can finetune balancing much more than I thought. While not properly displayed by the tooltips stuff like "1.3 Ressource per Pop" is entirely possible.

Nice, seem we have the empire building aspect of the game covered. On my part i'm trying to balance the combat; i found how to fix the Kinetics so they are not uterly useless as they are now, but the Missiles spam is trickier. The way missile works, each flak can only stop 3 missiles no matter what; with enough missiles, you get through any defense. Then you have the Lasers; there is no downside to using them, no ship design that make them useless, no battlecard than that negate them. Anyway, it's a work in progress, i may find a clever idea to make it viable to change design strategies...

Good job. this should be included to base game

MacDante wrote:
Good job. this should be included to base game

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

I think it first needs testing and tweaking because it has a massive potential to alter how the game is played.

And it isn't by any means finished yet because no actual math went into it so far.



Also I know something right of the bat, that would be wrong with it. The AI would, as they always did, when AIS was available switch every planet to the food-improvement because of how OP the old AIS was. I think that this is no longer the case with 35% efficiency or if so, then only on worlds with Bonus-food and the +100% Surplus-building. So this AI-part would need some work and since I've worked on that before I know how hard it can be to make it do exactly what you want.

Ail i test it and HERO are still to OP.

If someone have luck and have legendary hero and more gold on start (20 dust)

and hi receive 2-3 administrator/corporate hero (or only corporate) hi can have from beginning +15 to science (and more (+30/+45) if have more heroes.)



i think should be:



Coprorate:

Changed +5 max +10 Science.

Changed +5 max +10 Science.

I think a good way for more fun and strategic early game balance is to boost dust creation somewhat. The dust buyout mechanism is very nice because it is very expensive for costly items but not so for early items. This will cause the pace of early game to be decent and full of choices, (what to buy where) without making it a runaway snowball (totaly unbalanced mechanism that grows exponentially fast.) I think perhaps the key would be for a new trade system or a new outpost system if possible to mod. There could be a mining technology i think as another option.



I think also cooporation pacts needs to be fixed. It is so damaging the loss of income for 30 turns that it is not worth the income generation later.

MacDante wrote:
Ail i test it and HERO are still to OP.

If someone have luck and have legendary hero and more gold on start (20 dust)

and hi receive 2-3 administrator/corporate hero (or only corporate) hi can have from beginning +15 to science (and more (+30/+45) if have more heroes.)



i think should be:



Coprorate:

Changed +5 max +10 Science.

Changed +5 max +10 Science.

IMO that's a problem with Legendary Hero trait rather than the heroes themselves. Should be changed such that Legendary Heroes grants the Legendary Hero status of +XP (and the other bonuses) to a hero once every 30 turns (can only affect a single hero once) starting from when the first hero is hired. The trait is just too powerful, this way you would still have a level 3 hero at the start but the ones after would have to wait 30 turns or so before getting an XP boost.



Something else that I think is needed is having the crop geneticist of the admin require motivational leader (+20% food ability, which reqs director 2 in itself). That should be enough to greatly reduce the power of heroes early on. I don't think the extra 5 science given to the corporate hero right now is a cause for concern since you never get 3 corporate heroes, meaning at most you'll have 10 extra science per turn than you would have before that +5 science boost (insignificant still compared to a food or industry bonus IMO). I think the boost right now is a good number to make it approximately as powerful as the nerfed admin (still weaker by a bit IMO but that's fine).