SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[DarkHorse]

[quote]Originally posted by Rollo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

...AFAIK:
1) The AI will automatically build one per system, guaranteed.
2) The AI will follow the build instructions for planets including any calls for resupply depots.

AI modders, what say you?

1) nope, only when called for
2) once a resupply is built, the AI will ignore further calls in this system

So yes, the AI treats Resupply Depots as a system wide ability. Not sure if it can be tricked into building more by adding a bogus ability. I never tried.
Which begs the question, cybersol: Why would you like to have the AI build more than one depot in a system? Just curious.

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Why not combine the resupply depot function with the space yard itself? I always wondered why the space yards couldn't have a gas station built in, seems a bit silly to have a completely separate facility just to pump gas and reload weapons.

[Suicide Junkie]

That's more of a design issue...
Spaceyards and resupply depots were separate in SE3, too.

[DarkHorse]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
That's more of a design issue...
Spaceyards and resupply depots were separate in SE3, too.

I'm not sure what you mean by a design issue... is that bad? It would seem to solve the problem neatly, if it would work.

You could always adjust the cost of the space yard to make it take the same number of turns to construct as the facilities would have separately.

[Fyron]

He meant that having those abilities on separate facilities is how MM always intended it to be. It is not really a balance issue.

[PvK]

Proportions makes most Q-reactors mega-supply components. It also extends the tree a long ways - eventually you can get the infinite Q reactor, but it takes a huge amount or research and then is big and expensive. AI Campaign mod I haven't studied, but I gather it uses many things from Proportions and this is probably one of them.

LGM, you're incorrect that doing this drains supplies from fleeted ships. Supplies are shared on the basis of absolute numbers of supplies, not on a percentage basis.

And yes, there is a neat effect in that if a "super-supply" Q Reactor gets destroyed, it has to return to a resupply depot before it will recharge.

PvK

Originally posted by LGM:
Make the Quantum Reactor act like a juiced up supply container. Something like Supply III times 10 or 20. After that, it needs to go to a resupply base to re-engergize it.

Someone else did this in their mod. The AI mod, I think.

The drawback, is that as it become depleted, it would draw supply out of ships with higher percentages of supply that joined the fleet. Using these would increase a fleets range of operations, but a successful sortie on a fleet's Quantum Reactor ships could have a devistating effect. A 20% QR would in this scenario supply the fleet for many turns. However, lose that QR and each ship is carrying only 20%, that means about 2 or 3 turns of movement. However, all of this might make for interesting game situations.

Ship Bomb operations against QR ships could be devistating.

Suggestion: Make Resupply Tech a little cheaper.

[PvK]

I like all of these ideas. Inability to dodge due to need to keep the shrine undisturbed makes some sense. Making Talisman a low-damage armor component so it tends to not work as soon as the ship is "violated" also seems appropriate. Reducing the effect to a unique to-hit bonus I also like, though it does remove the unique ability of the Talisman (which is an unbalancing ability, but maybe it makes more sense to balance it in other ways but preserve its effect).

Net suggestion: Give talisman a -20 defense penalty and make it 10kT "hit first/armor", explaining that it cannot be disturbed by damage or excessive maneuvering without damaging its holy balance and making it not work. Retain the unique "always hits" ability.

PvK

Originally posted by LGM:
[b]

quote:

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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Any more comments on Point Defense? or the Talisman?
Would a significant defense penalty on the Talisman be a good idea?

A defense penalty would be nice for play balance, but it does not make sense that a blessed ship is easier to hit.

In my mod, I made it 10KT armor, so that you can take it out with the first non shield hit. Temporary blessing.

Otherwise, treat it as an improvement to Sensor III: Either Stackable + 20% or Nonstackable +85%. I think that this would make Religious still worth taking as you get a modifer no one else gets. Combine this with War and Death shrines and they will still be tough advesaries, but no longer untouchable.

This would take away my biggest complaint with the Talisman: Range does not matter, which makes it a +1000% to hit and at least a +50% to defense by hanging out a long range.

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[PvK]

Those all sound like good ideas to me.

The HEM should have some improvement in order to keep it being somewhat better than the Torpedo, which presumably everyone agrees should be improved.

PvK

Originally posted by cybersol:

quote:

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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Increase range of WMG & HEM to 10

What about the mental singularity generater (MSG)? It is definitely the same type of weapon as those two.

And I still think the following mentioned earlier is a trivial change to help future AI's:
Add a second dummy ability to Resupply Depots to enable them to be called for in both a system wide capacity and a individual planet capacity.
Rollo, SJ, PvK, what do you think of this change?

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[Taera]

i like it.
to compensate perharps the talisman can function as a mid-tech security system (as in boarding)

[PvK]

Yes, I developed a system kind of like that for Proportions mod, although the math is a little more complicated there. In general though yes, it'd be good for balance to continue defense penaties based on size through the BC->DN sizes which currently have zero-modifiers.

PvK

P.S. I don't know though that I think Q Reactors are unbalanced. I think they are just unpleasant (for my own tastes as a player) because they are so cheap that once they're developed, they practically remove the issue of supply from the game, which I think is less fun/interesting. Is the AI really hurt by the extra cost of putting them on everything? Surely it benefits a lot from having them, since it won't be stupidly running out of supplies like it often does.

PvK

Originally posted by Pax:

quote:

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Originally posted by LGM:
Make Ship defense penalties graduated: Cruisers 0%, Battle Cruisers 10%, Battleships 20%, Dreadnaughts 30%, Baseships 40%.

The best thing, IMO, is what I've done with Small Ships -- pick a mass that gets a 0% defense bonus/penalty -- let's say the Light Cruiser, at 400kT. Then decide what interfal of mass (50kT works) gets what % ECM modifier (5% or 10% might work).

So a 300kT Destroyer would get a +10% or +20% ECM bonus; a 500kT Cruiser would get -10% or -20%.

At the extreme ends, the Escort (150kT ... three mass incremetns underweight) gets a +15% to +30% defense bonus; the Dreadnought, at 1000kT, is 600kT "overweight", earnign it a -60% or -120% defense penalty, and the Baseship (at 1500kT) is 500kT evewn MORE overweight, giving it a -110% or -220% defense penalty.

The benefits of this are that it's intuitive and follows a pattern. The actual modifier per mass-increment can be altered for certain classes of ship (i.e., all transports may have a worse ECM modifier ... all carriers may have a better ECMmodifier than their mass might otherwise indicate ... etc).

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[ July 31, 2003, 22:44: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Suicide Junkie]

You should probably take the square root of those modifiers in order to account for the conVersion from mass to ship profile size. (well, square of the cube root, but you get the idea)

[ July 31, 2003, 22:47: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]