Ancient Race too powerful?

[MegaTrain]

I've been playing some solo games, and I think I've decided that the Ancient Race racial trait is just too powerful for its price.

In the first turn, you can:
1. Identify the home systems, homeworlds, planet types, and atmospheres of ALL opponents, including neutral races.

To do this, look for medium planets with resources of 100% +/- 5%. If races start with more than 1 home planet, you can even distinguish neutrals from the others (neutrals always start with just 1 planet). The only hitch is the possibility of 2 races close together both on Rock/Oxygen--you wouldn't be able to tell whose planet was whose--but normally they are spread far enough apart to tell.

This knowledge allows you to:[*]plan your expansion/growth/system claiming/empire borders[*]plan a defensive front or early-game offensive attack[*]plan your early trading partners, especially for other colonization types, and even send scout ships straight to their home systems

Obviously, these are all huge advantages.

2. You can also identify every planet in the galaxy with Ruins.

My first colonization ships are always to colonize planets with ruins, even if it takes the ship far away from my home systems. Not only can you get some very cool unique techs, but you can get a huge advantage in early research, getting a big jump in some main research areas that, at this point, would take you many turns or years to develop.

My current solo game (SIEV Gold Demo), I think I've colonized at least 8 ruins worlds, and I'll get at least 5 more once I get Ice Colonization (and its only turn 20!!) I have 4 different unique ruins techs, Gas AND Rock colonization (from ruins, not from trade), and received some great research boost in Physics, Organic Tech, and a couple of weapons areas.

(One ruins planet, incidently, gave me nothing. Was there a unique tech here that I already had? Or was this a bug?)

Proposed Solutions for discussion:[*]Make the Ancient Race more expensive. 2000? 2500?[*]Hide the details of planets. Either until you actually colonize them (don't know if I like this idea), or until you actually get into the system--"sensor range" (other people have made this suggestion: put an "As of 2402.5" -- either the date you Last visited, or some arbitrary "historical" date for Ancient races, but things might have changed since then...)[*]Make the other homeworlds less obvious. With 1 homeworld per race, you're pretty much stuck, but with 3 or more, you could do some averaging. How about a Large HW at 110/92/87, a Medium HW at 88/107/94, and a Small HW at 97/101/108? It averages out, especially if you simply shift research centers to account for the difference (instead of shifing mining facilities)[*]How about: have homeworlds (or maybe ALL colonized worlds?) MISREPORT their %'s - this would be a quick and easy solution to the "find everyone in the galaxy" problem[*]Don't reveal ruins on planets until colonized. (or maybe just until you get into "sensor range"--similar to idea above) or[*]Show MORE planets that HAVE ruins, but FEWER that have any cool new tech to find. Maybe 1/3 have advanced techs, the rest just have stone relics. (I don't know if this reduces the advatage of an Ancient race, it simply reduces the effectiveness of Ruins planets)

What do you think? Maybe the counter argument is as simple as "Well, for the same 1000 pts, you could have THIS racial tech, and look what kind of advantages THIS has..." Any other techs that give you this kind of INSANE advantage for 1000 pts?

[ 23 January 2002: Message edited by: MegaTrain ]

[Phoenix-D]

For 1000 points, you could:

-add 1 speed to all your ships
-add facility space to all your planets (two different abilities for that)
-cut your ships supply needs by 25%
-add substantial bonuses to any attribute

Any of those. IMO Ancient Race is balanced. Some of the other traits- like Emotionless- seem a bit out of wack though.

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

I think in general the ancient race trait has advantages that make sense, but I would prefer that all views of "known but not currently observed" systems to only show the Last known data. Ancient races could be given the data as of before homeworld placement.

On the other hand, it kind of makes sense that ancients would know where the ruins and other races homeworlds would be.

The effect can be reduced by turning off the "homeworlds have the same size" option, but this can lead to advantages for Gas Giant empires.

As for ruins, I definitely think it would be neat (at least optionally) to have ruin location be less immediately visible. I'd like to have to fly by or colonize a planet to detect them. In my Proportions mod I made it so many ruins actually don't provide any technology, which partly helps. Unfortunately I didn't find any way to mod it so that ruins were actually invisible until colonized.

The main reason I rarely use Ancient though is because I think it's a bit less fun not to have to explore.

PvK

[Andrés]

I normally play with large (255) quadrants and find ancient race useless.
Knowing systems in the other side of the galaxy only makes more confusion, and will make it harder to use the send colony ship function (in the planets window).
I normally find some friendly ancient race (like the Eee) that signs a partership at least for a while, so you get to know everything without wasting your points in ancient race.

[Egregius]

OT sorry: why is emotionless out of whack? Too good or too expensive? Too expensive considering -50% happyness?

[Phoenix-D]

Too expensive (IMO).

Dropping happyness to 50% gives you 800 points; that means the total cost the the trait is 2200.

Is having happy population (NOT jubulent, note) really worth 2200 points? Troops are good pacifiers for planets that have the space; any kind of standing fleet does the same. For that price you could have any of the racial tech areas, Advanced Storage Techniques AND Ancient Race, propulsion experts AND advanced power conservation, etc, to say nothing of the regular traits you could buy. IMO it's not worth it at all.

Phoenix-D