PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)

[Cirvol]

very interesting thread...

have you played any pbw games with this yet?
how have players reacted?
so far, i think you're fairly reasonable about balancing things, good work

[PvK]

Not yet with these specific numbers. Once there are no objections I'll do the Cultures and post the files, and we can see if there are changes wanted to the system as a whole.

Proportions has similar balances to starting costs, though not quite the same. Of course, the whole rest of the mod emphasizes different styles of play and people tend to be trying it out more than minimaxing anyway. However, the empires I've seen tend to be much more diverse, with far fewer players using the standard exploits such as maxing combat abilities. There are some who do, or who max out other things like maintenance reduction, or get religious and lower Aggressiveness (but in Proportions PBW that's not a great idea since you will probably never achieve the ultimate Talisman).

Anyway I think the result is much more use of the abilities which are uncommon in unmodded play, and players who try to max out the usual suspects find they have to pick and choose, and need to sacrifice a lot in other areas.

PvK

[deccan]

Hurry up and release this already so that I can use it for my next KOTH game! I hate KOTH clones.

[spoon]

Originally posted by PvK:
Racial Technologies:
====================
* Most remain at 1500 points.

After the many discussions over the years, it seems to me that these are all fairly well balanced and rated at 1500 points. They can all seem too powerful or too expensive if one doesn't appreciate all of their abilities and counter-tactics.
PvK

I was thinking you might want to lower the costs of all the racial traits, and maybe just all traits globally. Since it will be much harder to scrape up "free" points by lowering the unimportant stats, you will effectively have less points to spend. Since you have less points, this means that trait costs will take up a bigger proportion of your available points.

For example, in the standard game, by lowering stuff like Strength, Farming, Repair you could generally eek out another 3000 points with little effect on your empire. So in a 2000 point game, you in effect have 5000 points to spend on stuff, and taking a 1500 point Racial Trait is very doable. However, if you take away those 3000 freebies, the relative costs of many of the Traits might be too high.

Just a thought...

[Loser]

I think PvK intended to make it more difficult, spoon.

[spoon]

Originally posted by PvK:
Repair Aptitude:
================
* Basic cost lowered from 25 to 10.
* Threshold lowered from 20 to 1.
* Positive Threshold cost lowered from 100 to 10.
* Negative Threshold cost unchanged at 10.

Repair aptitude is slightly odd because it works on round numbers. A one-percent reduction will reduce rates by an entire component per turn, while a one-percent increase won't do anything until repair capacity reaches 100 components/sector/turn. It can also be combined with Cultural modifiers. I leave it as exercise for players to experiment and see where the specific relevant numbers are. Some players consider this attribute's value low because repair components are cheap, so just build more. That makes some sense, although there are some counter-arguments. Dropping to 1% reduces all sector rates by 1 component/turn and gains 10 points. Minimizing to 50% gains 500 points. Raising to 1% does about nothing but costs 10 points. Maximizing to 150% costs 500 points.

Much like Strength and Farming, Repair is a prime candidate for dropping to 50% when designing a race.

Personally I'd use these numbers:

* Basic cost lowered from 25 to 5.
* Threshold Stays at 20.
* Positive Threshold cost lowered from 100 to 5.
* Negative Threshold lowered to 1.
* Maximum value raised from 150 to 200

You'd see less 50%'s and maybe even some people who would put points into Repair (though not me - even if cost was lowered to 1 point, I would still drop it to 50%, as it just doesn't seem to have much impact on my play style).

[PvK]

One of the main goals of the mod is to make it so that there are no obvious choices. If there are "freebies" that give more points than they are worth, then that is exactly the kind of imbalance this mod corrects.

There are still thousands of points available by reducing attributes - but now, to get a lot of points back, you actually have to incur a meaningful disadvantage.

Even in a 5000-point game, you shouldn't be able to "get all the good stuff" without taking some major disadvantages that can be exploited somehow. Otherwise, empire setup is unbalanced and limited to the "best" choices. The theory behind this mod is that by giving the "best" and "worst" empire traits balanced costs, most empire setups will be fairly even if played in a way that uses their advantages against enemy weaknesses.

PvK