Balancing Race Construction
 

I'm considering making a Balanced Mod, and seek your input on a few topics...

Problem 3: Race Characteristics. There seems to be little balancing given to the point costs of racial characteristics. As far as I can see, unless you are role-playing a race, the following characteristics should always be bought up to their normal-cost maximum (ie, stop buying when the point cost is quadrupled):

Intelligence (research)
Defensiveness
Mining
Construction
Maintenance

and the following should always be dropped to at least 80%:

Farming (unless you are organic, of course)
Refining
Repair

Suggested fix: Double the costs of the 5 top traits. Remove "repair aptitude" from the list of traits

Problem 4: Advanced Traits. The point costs here seem a little off too. What do you think of the following changes:

Advanced Power Conservation: 500
Mechanoids: 250
Lucky: 250
Natural Merchants: 250
Propulsion Experts: 1000
Ancient Race: 1000
Advanced Storage: 1250
Hardy Industrialist: 1250
Psychic: 1000
Religious: 2000
Temporal: 1000
Crystallurgy: 750 (alternately, make their armor-piercing weapon a lot stronger)
Organic: 1500
Emotionless: 250

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

Advanced Power Conservation: 500

Maybe..

Mechanoids: 250

Plague bombs are pretty powerful weapons; I'd say 500.

Lucky: 250

Again, this is more important than it might appear. Having your star blow up really, really sucks.. this is more valuble the more events come into play.

Natural Merchants: 250

One free facility per star system, no chance of going broke because you lost a spaceport or three. This is worth more than 250

Advanced Storage: 1250
Not sure what the default point value is; if it's less than the changed value I agree.

Hardy Industrialist: 1250
Remeber that it only affects planet-bound ship yards..

Psychic: 1000
Eep! Two words. Alligance Subverter! This is quite easily worth 1500. Also has training facilities that work anywhere in the system, which means your ships can be training *and* guarding your choke points at the same time.

Religious: 2000
Too expensive for little gain other than the Talisman.

Temporal: 100

Temporal shipyards are quite a nice thing to have, so are the weapons. Compare this to the 1250 point Advanced Construction and remember that temportal gives you more than just fast yards

Crystallurgy: 750 (alternately, make their armor-piercing weapon a lot stronger)

Eep! Check out the Crystalline armor sometime.

Organic: 1500
Good.

Emotionless: 250
heh. This would actually GIVE you points. You get 800 right now for dropping the happyness to min. It needs to be at least 1100 IMO; riots can really ruin your day.

Phoenix-D

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

Hardy industrialist should be equal to or less than 1000 because it is less useful than placing 25 points into construction, which gives more benefit.

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

The value of HI is dependent upon play style. It is more cost effective than 25 points in construction. If you hardly use any ship or base space yards, and a lot of planetary space yards, HI is rather valuable.

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

Popular Characteristics:
Intelligence (research)
- Don't worry about it.

Defensiveness
- Agressiveness is in the same boat as this. Should probably be pricier

Mining
- See below

Construction
- Don't worry about it.

Maintenance
- Definitely fix it. Currently, taking +10% reduction drops your maintenance from 25% to 15%.
I am changing this to be +10% reduction = 22.5% maintenance.
I can tell you how if you like.

Farming (unless you are organic, of course)
Refining
- The way to fix these is to balance the resource costs. In my mod, I have gone and added rads cost to all components that use energy. Shields and engines are the big ones. I've also widened the use of organics, anything that would involve people or computers can count as organics.

Repair
- making ships more likely to survive with damage would fix abuse of this trait very nicely.

Using the leaky shields from the TNG mod, or the leaky armor from the B5 mod, or some other similar option would do great.

The TNG model allows armor and internal damage to build up before the shields fail, leaving lots of lightly damaged ships after a combat. Every ship that gets hit will suffer some damage.

The B5 model encourages the enemy to NOT finish off your ships; a disabled ship, with most weapons destroyed can likely absorb 2 or 3 times more damage than it already has before it breaks up. Ships need to switch targets to the "live" enemies, or die, leaving the partially crippled ships to run or limp around firing feeble shots from secondary guns.

In P&N, I have armor that is as strong as shields. It comes in 1kt chunks, though, so a single BattleCruiser could easily suffer 100 components destroyed and survive.

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

I'm going to echo a lot of the responses here.

Research isn't so important that you would spend a lot of points to max it out. Slight bonus is feasible... but I usually leave it within 5% of default (95% - 105%).

Defensiveness... what SJ said. Agressiveness goes in here too, and both should probably be a bit more expensive.

Resource Production (M/O/R), what SJ said. It's better to balance the components than messing around with race creation.

Construction is fine as it is now. Same with Repair (I build my ships to Last).

Maintenance should either be made a lot more expensive, or use whatever SJ said to make it an actual percentage.

For the advanced traits:
- Advanced Power ConVersion, it gives your ships superior range and combat time until QReactor is researched... probably not worth 1000, but I'd say at least 750.
- Mechanoids, ditto on Phoenix. You'll be glad you have it when you don't have to deal with Level 5 plagues. 500 seems more than reasonable.
- Lucky... well, you obviously haven't played High/Catastrophic events very often. Give Lucky a cost of 500, and add some more events for a bit of incentive...
- Natural Merchants, I pay 1000 for this one every game right now. It's worth it, instant production from distant colonies, a bit of extra facility space, and insurance in case of attack... only way to lose production is to have every planet blockaded.
- Propulsion Experts, I think should be a bit lower, 750. One extra movement point just doesn't seem worth 1000.
- Ancient Race, definitely 1000. Especially if someone's anal enough to go through the entire map and figure out where everyone is based on homeworlds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
- Advanced Storage, I'd even say 1500. It's one of the best values of the advantages, with +20% population, facilities, and cargo.
- All Racial Techs, keep at 1500, or bump all to 1750. You're greatly over-estimating Religious, and under-estimating Psychic, Temporal, and Crystalline.
- Emotionless... in early beta, this one was worth 1000. It was changed because all the testers said it was greatly unbalanced. Emotionless means no riots, no angry worlds, no matter what. You could have a little tiny colony surrounded by a 100-ship enemy fleet, and they'll still go about their business.

--edit: Ok, bullets don't work for some reason... it is supposed to be[*], right?

[ July 24, 2002, 03:02: Message edited by: Will ]

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

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Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

Of the advanced traits, only Hardy Industrialists really sucks. We need something else, like the ability to build ships on ANY planet, without a spaceyard facility, or something else really unique to replace this one. It's so much easier and more effective to just choose additional points of Construction Aptitude that Hardy Industrialists is useless.

The other non-technology racial traits are all pretty much worth 1000 points, and even if they aren't they can be adjusted to be worth 1000 points. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Make the 'Propulsion Experts' trait give a +2 movement for example. Now it's a really nice advantage from the early game. As long as you don't fall behind in propulsion research you'll always be the fastest race around -- other than another Propulsion Expert race. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I think all of the racial technology trees are quite valuable, and of these the one you gave the highest value, Religious, is probably the least! It takes a long time for Religious facilities to give substantial benefits. And it takes a long time to get to the Talisman unless you short a lot of other necessary research. You have to take the 'long view' with a Deeply Religious race. Organic and Temporal give nasty weapons very quickly. Crystalline gives some very powerful defense advantages, and Psychic provides the 'system wide' training facilities that make training actually work for an AI, and eventually gives the very powerful Allegience Subverter. These are all valuable fairly quickly. I would not reduce the value of any of them.

I have to agree that Emotionless is too expensive at 3000 or even 2000, but making it less than 1500 or so turns it into a 'bonus' instead of a cost due to the ability to reduce your happiness levels to minimum.

[ July 24, 2002, 03:44: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

I disagree that H.I. is useless, but I don't have any numbers to support my position. I have played several games where I was H.I. AND pumped the remaining points into construction. Being able to crank out ships so quickly really can make up for deficencies in a lot of other areas.

The thing about emotionless you got to remember is that it actually hurts you to select it. You pop doesn't riot, but they also can't be jubilant, and that makes a big differance empire wide on your production and research generation. And it's so unessecary too because there are so many easier ways to keep your people happy.

Geoschmo

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">And of course, there's Hardy Industrialists and 150% Construction and Temporal Space Yard III, all at once, on a Jubilant planet.

Heh.

Anyone wanna build at ~15K per turn? Sick, isn't it? Now try putting it on a full Sphereworld.

*chortle*

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

Hardy Industrialists can be worthwhile, depending on how you usually operate, and combined with construction aptitude, can make superlative builders. It is also interesting that it affects only planetary shipyards, so don't replace it. I wouldn't make it any cheaper, either.

I strongly disagree that Propulsion Experts is overvalued. I would say it is actually far too cheap. Should be 1500 or more. Speed, especially FREE speed that is directly ADDED to other speed, is a massive tactical and economic advantage.

I think the racial techs are pretty well balanced with equal points.

Emotionless has the "happiness refund" and yes it does deny you some easy Jubilant bonuses when things are going well. As soon as you get in a serious war and lose a system or two full of planets, though, you will find out why it is an advantage, as all of your planets go to rioting, your 200-planet empire goes bankrupt in a few turns, all your construction queues halt due to lack of resources, your allies' economies are wrecked by their loss of trade income from you you, and your ships start falling apart and have to be mothballed, etc etc.

PvK

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">How is 25 points in construction less valuable than hardy industrialists when they both cost exactly the same amount, both give the same benefit to planets, and the construction points also work on space based shipyards?

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

Because they add up. True, if you want to be inside 25% limit, + to construction is better. But if you want to get really fast builders, say 150%, then HI is a must.

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">By the time your planets get to rioting, it doesn't make a differenace anyway, you are beat. It may accelerate the end a bit, but it won't change the result.

But even at that it is so easy to prevent this from happening. An urban pac center, some warships in orbit, even a couple dozen troops on each planet(my personal fav) will all keep your people quite jubilant right up to the point when the enemy comes and glasses them into nothingness. And a 40% empire wide[EDIT:Oops, this should be 20%, but that's still pretty darn good] bonus to resource production is nothing to snif at. That and a 200 planet empire against a 200 planet empire of emotionless people and you won't have to worry about them glassing your planets and making your people unhappy, cause you will be glassing theirs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Of course with your mod, troops don't make the pop happy, so perhaps there may be more of a use for the emotionless trait. But in the stock game I just dont' see it. Other than maybe for role play reasons. But if you use it, you have to work harder at the economics.

Geoschmo

[ July 25, 2002, 00:30: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Umm... ok, I'm probably missing something here... but I thought Riots = 0%, Angry = 80%, Unhappy = 90%, Indifferent = 100%, Happy = 110%, Jubilant = 120%. So where's that extra 20 coming from?
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• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> SJ, thanks... knew I was missing something http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
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Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No Will, you are correct. It used to be 140%, but it was changed somewhere along the line to 120%. But a 20% empire wide bonus to production is still nothing to snif at. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Not when it is so easy to get, and costs you nothing in racial points.

Geoschmo

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

"But a 20% empire wide bonus to production is still nothing to snif at. Not when it is so easy to get, and costs you nothing in racial points"

Actually only a 10% bonus IIRC. Emotionless gets you Happy effect. Assuming that wasn't changed too?

Phoenix-D

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, as a matter of fact you are right. And I think that is really stupid but emotionless populations do in fact get the 10% bonus as if they were happy. I had assumed they got no modifier as if they were indiferent.

So I guess my whole point is very nearly been made moot. Although I would still never spend 3000 points for it when I can keep my people jubilant for nothing (in racial points anyway). I suppose if it were made cheap enough in a mod it would make some sense, but even then likely not. I guess it just depends on if the 10% empire wide production bonus is worth it to you that you don't mind a little the little bit of micromanagment it takes to make your people love you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif To me it's not.

Geo

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

BUMP!

People are talking a lot about this lately, and I was just doing a search to find prior discussions for my "PvK Balance" mod which I'm working on. So, I thought I'd bump this up so interested folks could check out the old discussion.

PvK

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

Oh, I should add a reply to Geo's later Posts on this thread.

The two 200-planet empires at war, one Emotionless. If the Emotionless one loses any number of planets or ships, it will keep on producing and constructing normally with the remaining planets. If the non-Emotionless one ever has a setback and loses a fair number of planets and/or ships, it will be vulnerable to having ALL of its remaining planets go to rioting and produce and construct nothing. That's pretty valuable (unless you always win http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

PvK

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But what about Urban Pacification centers, Temporal Vacation Facility, Fate shrine, and medical labs which keep the populace happy? Large troop garrisons? Home Fleets? Or just happiness bonuses?

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

They don't do it fast enough to prevent the riots from Lasting at least a few turns. The side-effect of empire-wide riots for even a few turns in a large empire at war can be very important to the outcome of the war. If the losses continue frequently enough, the riots won't clear, or not enough to help.

PvK

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

I have to add something on this. In a PBW where the top player (who had about as many ships as we had combined, and most of them in the dreadnought/baseship range), my ally and I staged a surprise attack. We targeted his spaceports (that player and I had a partnership treaty) and as many valuable planets as possible from our borders. Anything we couldn't take, we glassed.

Basically, between cutting our treaties with this player AND the damage we caused did severely cut his income, but it was the rioting that reduced his own ability to produce anything. Even after two turns of comparatively unopposed strikes, he still had enough firepower to hit us back hard and he had more than enough planets to sustain his forces. It was the rioting which removed his ability to build ships and keep current ships fighting.

Would we have won if his population was emotionless? Probably. But the emotionless trait would have allowed him to stay strong and counter-attack, and he might have disrupted our happiness. Our attack plan relied on rioting his population first and foremost.

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes they do. Stick 140 or more small troops on a planet. It will probably never riot again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

After considering the input from others (and the extra play experience) I think I'd suggest these numbers for the advanced traits:

Advanced Power Conservation: 500
Mechanoids: 250
Lucky: 250
Natural Merchants: 750
Propulsion Experts: 1000
Ancient Race: 1000
Advanced Storage: 1500
Hardy Industrialist: 1000
Psychic: 1500
Religious: 1500
Temporal: 1500
Crystallurgy: 1250
Organic: 1500
Emotionless: 1800

[ December 28, 2002, 06:22: Message edited by: spoon ]

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes they do. Stick 140 or more small troops on a planet. It will probably never riot again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Troops maybe, although I think you can still see a temporary hit that will be signifigant, and say 150 small troops x 200 planets = 30,000 small troops, which is a lot of resources and construction time and planetary cargo room, which an Emotionless race could be devoting to other things.

PvK

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

How can you tell that troops make pop happy (other than through observation) and how can you change it? Thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

SE4/Data/Happiness.txt

For each happiness type, the line:

Our Troops on Planet := -2

Set to 0 to remove the effect. As you can see, the only compromise is to halve the effect, so it's not possible to just make it a minor effect.

PvK

Re: Balancing Race Construction
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Troops maybe, although I think you can still see a temporary hit that will be signifigant, and say 150 small troops x 200 planets = 30,000 small troops, which is a lot of resources and construction time and planetary cargo room, which an Emotionless race could be devoting to other things.

PvK[/QB]</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Only takes 4 or 5 turns to build enough on most planets. Same build rate as a high-tech BB. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif