Fundamentals and Gamey

geoschmo · #1 February 4th, 2003, 04:46 PM

Shadowstar, I must say I've played a lot of games too and my experience is not anything like your experience.

I rarely see these highly min/maxed races in actual games. People usually fall into one of two Groups. One believes such a min/max race would be overwhelmingly powerful and as such is cheesy and not worth considering. The other group believes that the min/max race is not as overwhelmingly powerful as it appears and that it has weaknesses that make it not worth considering. The result is it ends up being more of an acedemic discussion than a real in game problem.

Geoschmo

Krsqk · #2 February 4th, 2003, 05:09 PM

In one-on-one games, such as KOTH, there will be drastic differences in what race setup is most effective. These games cannot be compared to MP games like normal PBW, etc.

In a normal game, the advantages from a "superior" setup are balanced out by the multitude of players. If someone were to somehow be an uber-threat, then all other players would band together for their mutual defense. Look at what happens to religious-psychic players on PBW. It's like posting a sign: "Kill me first! I want to die!" Players with superior production or trade or intelligence or research can all get an edge on someone with a 125/125/beserker setup--especially in a 2000 RP game.

Bottom line--there is no "uber" strategy. A while ago, someone tried to prove that 125/125/beserker with enhanced construction was unbeatable--just build frigates with the latest level of DUC. He was right--it was hard to hit his ships--except that he had to remove engines to fit an extra DUC, also lowering his supplies, and his research was slower, and his production was lower, and the enemy had to be within 2-3 systems for his ships to be effective, and the enemy could expand tons faster, and they could just use missile ships/ramming ships/organic armor/PPB/whatever... There are so many ways to play that no one characteristic or trait dominates the game. It does come down to "hitability"--eventually; but there are numerous ways to beat a "superior" player before you face him in combat. A consistently winning race needs to be just as good politically and economically as militarily, at least on PBW. SP against the AI, all bets are off.

Shadowstar · #3 February 5th, 2003, 12:52 AM

I'll admit that SEIV is better than many of the games out there when it comes to this, but it does have its flaws, and what I talked about DOES happen, and it happens more than it should. If you haven't seen it, tell me what games you're playing, please!

The mere fact that this thread even exists proves my point, as well as all the balance mods and race creation mods which have been made and which are being made at this moment.

Ignorance is no solution.

All I'm asking for is a way to make race creation points work on an exponential scale system. I think it would go a long way towards fixing the existing problems.

Taera · #4 February 5th, 2003, 01:06 AM

shadowstar, i agree with your defenition of gamey.

I will be unavailable for a week, i'll continue this discussion when im back. Srry for not attending my own thread.

geoschmo · #5 February 5th, 2003, 02:40 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadowstar:
The mere fact that this thread even exists proves my point, as well as all the balance mods and race creation mods which have been made and which are being made at this moment.

Ignorance is no solution.

I would never try to make the point that SEIV is perfect. But this threads exsistance proves nothing, except that some people agree with your opinion. There are just as many people disagreeing with your opinion as agreeing.

And please direct me to all the balance mods? There have been many suggested in the Last two years, but as far as I am aware none have been completed. Although I think PvK's mod sounds very promising. It sounds to me as if all these people think the game is unbalanced and then realize it's not as bad as they thought.

How does a race creation mod prove the game is unbalanced? If anything that might demonstrate the AI is weak in this game, but I would support you in that argument.

Geoschmo

Fyron · #6 February 5th, 2003, 02:45 AM

Adamant mod (still in the works) has incorporated many ideas proposed by PvK and others for his balance mod. Go check it out (linked in my sig).

spoon · #7 February 5th, 2003, 02:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:

It sounds to me as if all these people think the game is unbalanced and then realize it's not as bad as they thought.

It's pretty bad. But, the game balances itself by being multiplayer, and allowing everyone to exploit the imbalances equally, or to team up against people who have done so.

Unfortunately, this requires knowing a lot of non-apparent factoids about the game. It's sad to me that people invest a lot of time developing and playing empires, only to lose the game horribly because they didn't realize that maintenence reduction subtracts from the base, or that your chance to hit can quite easily drop to 1% unless you pour some points into aggressiveness.

-spoon