Igncom1 wrote:
That you are a good player?



Right, that kind of boasting won't get the discussion anywhere.

It isn't boasting. Its broken.



I'm simply offering to demonstrate it.

Igncom1 wrote:
HOW THE HELL YOU GET VIP BEFORE M.....not going to be mad, congrats dude!

lol, thanks. Seem my modding attracted attention .

And the AI issue I believe was expected.

Balance is also an issue, anyone managing to enclose their systems in their influence completely negate the expansion malus thus get ahead very quickly. My expansion disapproval system works better in that regard as it's not as crippling.

And as always I would like the new mechanics to be made smarter and more intuitive....what if players could more easily spread culture across the strings? as to prevent a influence invasion from another galactic arm from being so effective, and so to promote the effectiveness of tight clustered empires?

Unfortunately, influence spread in circle around the planet it's emitted from, and i doubt the devs plan to change that.

Foraven wrote:
lol, thanks. Seem my modding attracted attention .

Do you not see your VIP badge???????



lol jk

Igncom1 wrote:
That you are a good player?

Actually that he was able to conclude the Mod-Changes into a new OP-Race-Setup.

By copying his race or at least his races' main-idea one should be able to have a chance.



I think his post would have been more accurate if he had added "without taking the +Influence-Trait".



Because that is what it is all about.

Ail wrote:
Actually that he was able to conclude the Mod-Changes into a new OP-Race-Setup.

By copying his race or at least his races' main-idea one should be able to have a chance.



I think his post would have been more accurate if he had added "without taking the +Influence-Trait".



Because that is what it is all about.

Exactly, as it currently stands if Stellar Guardians allows you to cover ONE additional outpost with influence then it reduces the Expansion Effort penalty by 50%, letting you basically double the rate of growth of your empire before suffering the penalty at high levels. In addition to the Expansion Dissaproval, Dust and Science penalties being reduced.



It really appears to me as though 'Outpost' needs to not be defined as 'Colonized System Outside Influence' and instead be defined as 'System in its first 30 turns of development'. This would allow the Expansion Effort to be decoupled from Stellar Guardians, provide a fixed growth path for 'time vs penalty' and fast expanders would be required to have appropriate food/dust incomes to handle the penalty instead of just focusing industry to produce colony ships.



Edit: To clarify I am not advocating that Expansion Disapproval be defined as 150% effect on outposts, rather I suggest 'influence' be a significant effect on Approval and remain as it is.

It is just not possible to handel effective a empire wide malus of -10 Food and -10 Dust during the first 30 turns.



the influence sphere is the only way to prevent a complet growth stop in your Empires Outposts.

without even that the game would even more slowed down to bullettime speed.





the expand machanism including influence sphere needs an well elaborated overhaul.

I'll try to build a mod to replace this for this weekend and try to arrange a multiplayer game on Sat or Sunday with it.



Right now, I'm planning to replace the expansion system they have and modify the influence mechanics and a few other things. I'm also going to change the Sowers affinity. Balance Heroes, etc. also.

I'm going to try to balance the game with a minimum of changes, assuming SaveTheSowers Mod as the baseline. I'd make them into seperate mods, but inheritance b/t mods is not something I want to bother to research.



Areas that need balance

[LIST=1]

UE needs to do what it says in the patch notes, I've already fixed that.

Influence needs re-balancing (switch to percentiles rather than flat numbers, so yes, you'll still end up doing better but it won't be obscene) [I'vealreadymadethosechangestowhatIwastinkeringwithlastweekend]

Heroes need re-balancing, as they are, they are badly unbalanced.

Combat, with the exception of Heroes, is fine.

Expansion needs re-balancing.

System generation needs to be better balanced. As neat as having different weights for each star is, realistically, for purposes of testing a balance mod it isn't acceptable. So, all stars will be weighted equally and will generate (relatively) good planets.

[/LIST]



Heroes - Heroes will be switched to [AdminorCorporate] + [AdventurerorCommander]

[LIST=1]

Admin - Food + Trade + Dust + Morale (Wit)

Adventurer - Hero Killer (+25% to Stats, Tinker Abilities) [Offense&Defense]

Commander - Strategic (Movement Bonuses, Dust Tactics, Invasion Bonuses) [Offense&Defense&Melee]

Corporate - Industry + R&D (Labor)

Pilot - This just needs to be removed for purposes of symmetry and because the accuracy penalty is broken.

[/LIST]



Flat bonuses will be +15 [IndustryorFoodorScience] or +25 [Dust].





Expansion Re-Balancing

[LIST=1]

Expansion Effort will be tweaked to be 3 Dust from 2 Food/2 Dust.

Colony Module cost is left alone.

Expansion Approval penalties are locked in at +25% regardless of whom it is (you already have 0 defense in an enemy's influence /anyway/) outside the Empire, and -25% inside the Empire (a 50% swing is good enough).

Conversion from Outpost to Colony is reduced significantly to 20 turns to flip from Outpost to Colony.

[/LIST]



Affinity Re-Balancing

[LIST=1]

Sowers Affinity - 50% Industry -> Food, -50% Food.

Amoeba will gain a baseline +2 Movement for Ships (I think that is possible, I'm at lunch) and +50% to all Trade Routes.

Horatio is going to get a Sophon-style Food Buff via Tax Rate (but only half of the buff, so it caps @ 25% at 0%).

Cravers will get their benefits adjusted. Starts with an Ocean and their percentile bonus gets reduced to a flat +1/-1 per population for all FIDS rather than +25%.

Hissho stacking is switched to a flat +.5/-.5 FIDS per Pop rather than +15%, and gets the Sci back (so it caps at +2/-2).

[/LIST]

Thoughts?

ElMew wrote:

(HOLY WALL OF TEXT)SNIP(/HOLY WALL OF TEXT)

Hmmmm. A complete re-blance? That's harder than it sounds. But if it goes well, it looks like it will be pretty good. But really, this will take allot of work to really get it balanced...



I just advise that if this doesn't work out try balancing things on a smaller scale.

Realy well-conceived

many points are simple but grants good solutions.



only in 3 Points i extremly disagree.

ElMew wrote:

• Horatio is going to get a Sophon-style Food Buff via Tax Rate (but only half of the buff, so it caps @ 25% at 0%).
• Cravers will get their benefits adjusted. Starts with an Ocean and their percentile bonus gets reduced to a flat +1/-1 per population for all FIDS rather than +25%.
• Hissho stacking is switched to a flat +.5/-.5 FIDS per Pop rather than +15%, and gets the Sci back (so it caps at +2/-2).
  
  

Thoughts?

Horatios would be OP they have their cloning fine so a extra Food Bonus via Affinity doesnt has to be so high...and the synergy with the Growthplan and or Cloning trait is obviously to strong so a cap of 15% is more then enough.



Cravers:....eh nope...this is more a like a nerf....and cravers are on Fast Speed games since the last patch almost useless (bonus last only 20 turns which is also in fast games still early game and people are colonising cause fast isent realy double the speed of normal games)



The Cravers are fine as they are and need no further nerf.



so imo the cravers got their nerf in the last patch no need to nerf them to death.





Hissho: this would nerf them also to death...far to weak bonuses...they are fine as they are atm(they also got a change in the duration time (AND ALSO NO RESET ANYMORE) of Bushido with the last patch.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Hmmmm. A complete re-blance? That's harder than it sounds. But if it goes well, it looks like it will be pretty good. But really, this will take allot of work to really get it balanced...



I just advise that if this doesn't work out try balancing things on a smaller scale.

I can't balance things on a smaller scale because everything without starting over is the problem. I don't think they are going to say 'Hey, we were working on this expansion pack...but el mew said start over, so lets!'

I agree that there are serious issues here. I like the rebalance ideas ElMew has.

ElMew wrote:
I can't balance things on a smaller scale because everything without starting over is the problem. I don't think they are going to say 'Hey, we were working on this expansion pack...but el mew said start over, so lets!'

I disagree. Like Sovereign pointed out, some things are fine the way they are. I don't understand why the devs want to re-balance everything in order to buff the Sowers.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
I disagree. Like Sovereign pointed out, some things are fine the way they are. I don't understand why the devs want to re-balance everything in order to buff the Sowers.

The point is, they want to. So the baseline isn't current ES. Its their modded ES.



Do you think the baseline I'm using (The SaveTheSowers mod) is fine the way it is?

Iteration 2 after talking with some ppl on steam that I play with, changes are underlined



I'm going to try to balance the game with a minimum of changes, assuming SaveTheSowers Mod as the baseline. I'd make them into seperate mods, but inheritance b/t mods is not something I want to bother to research.



Areas that need balance

[LIST=1]

UE needs to do what it says in the patch notes, I've already fixed that.

Influence needs re-balancing (switch to percentiles rather than flat numbers, so yes, you'll still end up doing better but it won't be obscene) [I'vealreadymadethosechangestowhatIwastinkeringwithlastweekend]

Heroes need re-balancing, as they are, they are badly unbalanced.

Combat, with the exception of Heroes, is fine.

Expansion needs re-balancing.

System generation needs to be better balanced. As neat as having different weights for each star is, realistically, for purposes of testing a balance mod it isn't acceptable. So, all stars will be weighted equally and will generate (relatively) good planets.

[/LIST]



Heroes - Heroes will be switched to [AdminorCorporate] + [AdventurerorCommander]

[LIST=1]

Admin - Food + Trade + Dust + Morale (Wit)

Pilot - Hero Killer (+25% to Stats, Tinker Abilities, Accuracy Penalty Removed) [Offense&Defense]

Commander - Strategic (Movement Bonuses, Dust Tactics, Invasion Bonuses) [Offense&Defense&Melee]

Corporate - Industry + R&D (Labor)

Adventurer - To be re-built at a later date, removed for now. It will be a hybrid of an Admin/Corp/Commander. Will temporarily be replaced with a combat or non-combat, debpending.

[/LIST]



Flat bonuses will be +15 [IndustryorFoodorScience] or +25 [Dust].





Expansion Re-Balancing

[LIST=1]

Expansion Effort will be tweaked to be 3 Dust from 2 Food/2 Dust.

Colony Module cost is left alone.

Expansion Approval penalties are locked in at +25% regardless of whom it is (you already have 0 defense in an enemy's influence /anyway/) outside the Empire, and -25% inside the Empire (a 50% swing is good enough).

Conversion from Outpost to Colony is reduced significantly to 20 turns to flip from Outpost to Colony.

[/LIST]



Affinity Re-Balancing

[LIST=1]

Sowers Affinity - 50% Industry -> Food, -50% Food.

Amoeba will gain a baseline +10% dust per peace treaty, -5% dust per war. <- changed based on feedback

Horatio is going to get a Sophon-style Food Buff via Tax Rate (20% for 0-50%, so 2% per tick for 10 ticks). <- Nerfed based on feedback, some people said too strong, some just fine. So slight nerf and see.

Cravers will get their benefits adjusted. Starts with an Ocean and going with a different nerf (20/40 instead of 40/20).

Hissho gets left alone as some people liked my solution, some not. The newb farming issue exists (balance wise) but I'm leaving it alone for now, may fix later

[/LIST]



Thoughts?



For clarity, I edited this in:

If you aren't going to be useful in this process (e.g. Stealth_Hawk, who basically wants to write everything off as bugs and/or dev perfection), please don't waste your time or mine.



Thanks!

not bad not bad



quite a work so if somone would make this effort it should be appreciated.

ElMew wrote:

Cravers will get their benefits adjusted. Starts with an Ocean and going with a different nerf (20/40 instead of 40/20)

[/QUOTE]



i not sure what the 20/40 instead of 40/20 means. 40 turns with normal FIDS?





Furthermore a crtic what goes more in the direction of the Devs-Mod



I recognized recently (and iam not sure if the new planet FIDS system or the 8% higher conversion rate is the origin of this)

that it is incredible easy to get a tax rate of Zero and still getting much Dust if one Industrie System converts Industire into Dust even in early game.



While this is usefull cause with the current influence sphere issue and expansion dissapproval you need Zero Taxes so that systems didnt become Orange or even red.



on the other handside this benefits extremly the Sophons.

and was in the first place also the reason why iam so concerned about your intended Horatio buff.

Sovereign wrote:
not bad not bad



quite a work so if somone would make this effort it should be appreciated.







i not sure what the 20/40 instead of 40/20 means. 40 turns with normal FIDS?





Furthermore a crtic what goes more in the direction of the Devs-Mod



I recognized recently (and iam not sure if the new planet FIDS system or the 8% higher conversion rate is the origin of this)

that it is incredible easy to get a tax rate of Zero and still getting much Dust if one Industrie System converts Industire into Dust even in early game.



While this is usefull cause with the current influence sphere issue and expansion dissapproval you need Zero Taxes so that systems didnt become Orange or even red.



on the other handside this benefits extremly the Sophons.

and was in the first place also the reason why iam so concerned about your intended Horatio buff.

I'm basically trying to make races playable for me and nerfing races that I play (basically). Its not like the Devs are really going to listen to me, honestly. I think they are more like Stealth_Hawk than me.



Anyway, 40 turns normal. 20 turns bonused which will last virtually forever on normal with their tech thing.



I'll build the mod this week. Just a question of trying to build a modest opinion this is the direction first.

Alright, throwing my opinions here:



Affinities:



*Equal amount of trait points for all the affinities would make it inmensely easier to balance.



*Automatons have that massive micro problem that make em unusable. They feel fine before the game grows but when it does its a nightmare. Part of this is because iffy governors or ui difficulties neither which are easy to change. Probly something that would help are things that would let them mismanage later and still not be penalized much. Maybe a scaling deeper stack pool, but that may be too strong.



*Horatio buff goes hand in hand with the hero nerf. Their cloning was their food buff. So if it was to compensate for that its good. But if it was because they were weak to start, then it might not be enough. Think it needs to be playtested.





Expansionism:



*The way the calculation for effort is done in swung massively by influence. It feels like stellar guardians needs to go out altoguether, and possibly move the initial range research deeper to have an equalized earlygame. Using your new values 5 outposts with the homeworld would be -15 dust.. but if you have 1 outpost in range then to hit -15 dust you would need 11 outposts (including the one in range). If you have two thats 17 outposts! The empire wide effect may help balance it out from getting too exponential but...



*The new expansionist effort really does balance things within expansion (you have to juggle tax rate, conversions and expanding) but at least on paper it seems it would strongly discourage any early fleets (that also take dust), combined with how FFA works (trying to stop an expansionist on your own = loss for both), and the shorter time you have to steal outpsots before they flip means aggressive early play seems all but dead. Seems like expansionism is even more the only way to go.. except its a bit slower now.



Not sure what to suggest there.. maybe inbuilt dust on cp kill or dust/sci leech to fund your own expansions as you attack. Maybe im overreacting. Some playtest might be good to see where things stand with those new changes.



Edit: What I didnt mention looks good or I dont know enough to comment. There was a nice suggestion on the dev blog post by another user having the division be (effortfids)*outposts/(colonies+constant#), something like 6*(outposts/(colonies+2)) would greatly curb the exponentiality of the influence area effect.

Well Spoken Scrangos!



Early Game Fleets/rushes are with the current mechanics a no go.



like u said:



Seems like expansionism is even more the only way to go.. except its a bit slower now.

Do the Ameoba really need a buff in terms of adding to their affinity? I mean, the ability to see everything right off the bat is really strong as is. Surely they only need the 65 points...