Starting Planet Type question.

Talenn · #1 November 20th, 2000, 07:47 PM

great.throwdini! et al:

YES! I agree %110!!! I cant believe that there is no option for a 'balanced' start. At the VERY least the Homeworlds should be identical. This is a HUGE gamebreaker if one player starts on a 'Tiny' world while others are on even Medium+.

We have fired up quite a few MP games and had to restart time and time again as 1 or more players is just in a hopeless start position. So much of the game depends on your early buildup that it really should have at least SOME form of rudimentary balancing.

Has anyone found a way to 'edit' the starts yet? I have been unable to find anything in the data or start conditions to provide mirrored starts for all players.

MM? Any chance on a modification?

Thanx,
Talenn

great.throwdini · #2 November 20th, 2000, 08:47 PM

Re: "I have been picking Gas Giants lately myself. It is an advantage early, but certainly not a game breaker in a game against other people whether they also pick Gas Giants or not."

and re: "If you don't have the same number of planets, you have fewer colonies on which to build, meaning fewer facilities/ships being built at one time."

see my comments in the "some questions/comments" thread wrt how larger planets offer unbalanced production output with the current production model in SEIV. I can perhaps buy the "fewer ships being built at one time" argument, but I seem to be able to find enough gas giants (and build enough off-planet shipyards) to get around this limitation.

General Hawkwing · #3 November 20th, 2000, 10:37 PM

Talenn and rest,
Gas giants are usually the "best", however that depends on the quadrant type. Check out a few games with Ancient quad, and you'll see rock/ice far out number gas giants. I had a game with 1 gas gaint per 3 systems, while rock and ice numbered 3-4 per system. That really stretched the border patrol thin.

Arralen · #4 November 20th, 2000, 11:40 PM

Started two games (demo) lately - found "Hydrogen breather/Gas Giants/Biotech" a truely devastating combination.

While there are shurely more rock/ice planets, you shouldn't forget one thing - you must look at "rock" resp. "ice" seperatly .. and than odds aren't that much in favour of them.
And if you count the "facility slots" available in one system, it would most likely come out as a draw at best.

But don't forget - "robo factory" and similar buildings favour the "big ones" ... and you can always put up some Starbases with spaceyards in it to get the same "ship output per time".

Only drawback I found so far is that most "ancient ruins" are on rock/ice planets, but this may be too random to be shure about from 2 or 3 games - any comments?

Arralen

Tomgs · #5 November 21st, 2000, 02:39 AM

A nice thing would be to have an option to have the starting type and atmosphere of your race random as it was in SEIII. Being able to pick the type and atmosphere adds to roleplaying so it should still be possible to pick it also. But sometimes I would like to be surprised and not have to pick it. I do agree that most times that the gas giants gives you an advantage but I have gotten huge rock no atmosphere planets and I have gotten medium gas giant planets. The gas giants do tend to be bigger and I don't think they can be below small, the rock and ice range from tiny to huge.

Seawolf · #6 November 21st, 2000, 05:13 PM

Just an FYI,

There will be an option to have all the players start with the same planets. Also weighing in on the Gas Gaint issue, I find that it balances out since you have to stop building facilities to build ships. Also if there is a player who uses gas giants well you just have to go take them out!

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Seawolf on the prowl

Lupusman · #7 November 21st, 2000, 06:05 PM

I once tried to figure out which would be best. So I started a few games with ancient race to see the entire map, and counted the frequency of every type of planet, and atmosphere in a mid-life system. Then I figured in the number of facilities that each would accomodate. I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but what I got was that rock/none or gas/hydrogen are the best combo's. There are a few other close ones, but those are the highest.
Of course this doesn't figure in gameplay factors such as the ability to concentrate on large gas planets. With rock/none, you can spread out much more, but need to spend more on colony ships, and loose defensive capabilities due to the spreading out.
You can also figure in that later on with gas, research and intel centers can be helped with their percentage increasing counterparts (moreso than rock or ice), but usually by that time I already have the other types of colonies.