Fundamentals and Gamey

[Grandpa Kim]

I think we do read you Taera. Its a question of balance. When Aaron first designed the game, I'm sure he did his best to balance the various traits. Only after much play could we observe inequities.

For instance, you can reduce strength, resistance, repair and organics (except for organic races) to 50% with no effect at all on your chances of winning! At the same time, you have all these extra free points to apply elsewhere. Almost everything else (exception: reproduction) you can safely reduce to 80%. And those you do choose to reduce, again free up points to use elsewhere.

But you don't dare reduce aggressiveness, defensiveness or maintenance. Points freed up by reducing these will not give you enough bang in the other areas. You will never overcome the deficit you've created. I'm sure Aaron didn't intend this imbalance, in fact he's probably more disappointed in the result than we are.

Also I'm not saying reducing certain traits is the best thing. What I'm saying is reducing most traits will not hurt your chances of winning the game. For instance setting minerals 80%, organics 50% and rads 80% will not hurt my chances of winning. To compensate I can take an extra advanced trait and still have high numbers in the three key areas and most of the others.

But perfect balance is not there. Nor do I even think "perfection" is possible. But it could certainly be better than the current set up. I have played Proportions and PvK has done much work trying to balance these. I applaud the effort. At first I wanted to scream! He was taking away all my favorite selections. But I calmed down and realized he was changing the balance for the better. How close to the ideal it is I don't know, but I'll bet PvK is always thinking about ways to tweak it.

In effect, Taera, we agree with you, but we enjoy this game too much to quit, so we work with what we have.

Kim