SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[spoon]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Spoon, regarding you intel suggestions. I would merely point out that because of the hinkiness of the current intel system increasing the cost of an intel project makes a project harder to defend against as well.

That is both true but also misleading. The impact of cost increase isn't actually that great on the ability to defend against attack, except under specific circumstances (rare circumstances from my experience, but your mileage may vary).

[Suicide Junkie]

In the APB vs MB arena, I just looked up the stats... MB have a very slight power advantage for range 6 only.
I originally had the impression that MB was really weak, but from the comments and a fresh look at the stats, it does seem decent.
To me, knocking off only 5 points of damage from the APB would be reasonable.

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As for PPB, perhaps an accuracy penalty to reduce the effectiveness and add a bit of flavour at the same time?

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Intel:
The economic procurement sounds like a very good, and almost trivial change.
The AIs pick randomly AFAIK, so it won't be an issue for them.

Food contamination seems OK to me... Its quite effective on small colonies, but to larger planets its only a turn's worth of population growth.

PPP and Comm Mimic are definitely overpowered, but increasing the cost will cause the AIs to get stuck on such projects when they do try 'em.

Trade disruption and crew insurrection aren't too bad.
The trade rebuilds on its own, and a ship or two rarely makes much of a difference.
perhaps 60k or 75k each would be more than enough, IMO

[PvK]

APB at half-damage to shields would use that now-unused ability, and give an interesting disadvantage to the game's most efficient weapon. Shields can be largely countered with Shield Depleters, anyway, so it isn't nearly as crippling a change as it might seem. If that's not a popular idea, then maybe -5 to-hit for APB?

BTW for torpedoes, I'm of the camp that would rather see them do more damage than have a to-hit bonus, for aesthetic reasons. However I think it would do more for balance to give them a to-hit bonus, so I don't mind either way.

I'd give more damage to incinerators, and probably to Ripper Beams too. SE3 Ripper Beams were about twice as powerful as SE4 RB's, but always range 1. Of course, in SE3 this made them almost useless unless defenders, due to the funky movement sequence (defenders could always move to range 2 if they had speed 2+, before the enemy could fire).

However, do we have any indication that MM would ever make the default game to have all these widespread tweaks to weapon performance? I've no doubt most of them would be good for balance, but I'll be surprised if MM will change the default performances much if at all at this point.

PvK

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by PvK:
However, do we have any indication that MM would ever make the default game to have all these widespread tweaks to weapon performance? I've no doubt most of them would be good for balance, but I'll be surprised if MM will change the default performances much if at all at this point.

Honestly? No indication whatsoever. However, I am of the belief that Aaron listens to his customers. And I believe he has no philosophical problem with balance changes per se, but that he simply feels that he does not have the time to make and test a large set of changes as this himself. It is my hope that if we can stick to the narrow framework we have established, test thouroughly to make sure we aren't causing unforseen problems, and state our case convincingly he will consider adopting them. But if I am wrong and he will not we will have a good solid mod with a decent chance of garnering a wide following, as TDM has done.

Geoschmo

[ July 24, 2003, 00:55: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[PvK]

Yeah, it seems like a worthwhile thing to do, even if it doesn't get included in a patch.

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

Problem with the half damage to shields, is the humans could abuse the Shield depleter/APB combo and use more armor, while the AIs would be left in the cold.

Unless there is a very convincing case for it, I doubt that we can use those damage types here.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
To me, knocking off only 5 points of damage from the APB would be reasonable.

Seems worth a try.

As for PPB, perhaps an accuracy penalty to reduce the effectiveness and add a bit of flavour at the same time?

How much of a to-hit penalty were you talking about?

I really think these should be nerfed so that they are only really good against ships that use unphased shields. As it is, unphased shields are only good for preventing ships capture and engine killers because of the prevalence of PPBs in the mid game. It would be nice to see them in the game as actual damage soakers. If PPBs weren't as good a general utility weapon, you might risk putting 4-5 shield V's on your battleships. Changing reload to 2 or reducing it's damage across the board is easier for me to see what the impact would be than giving it a to-hit penalty - though that is still a very interesting idea...

Food contamination seems OK to me... Its quite effective on small colonies, but to larger planets its only a turn's worth of population growth.

It's all too easy to wipe out a whole system in one turn, and then prevent repopulation through ship-capture. I use this all the time, and it is so effective, it almost makes me feel like I'm cheating.

PPP and Comm Mimic are definitely overpowered, but increasing the cost will cause the AIs to get stuck on such projects when they do try 'em.

Would removing them have an impact on ai? (I would think so for PPP, since it is the only item you get for level 4 applied intel, so the ai would waste time researching it, not to mention hapless newbies...)

So I'd suggest raising their cost as high as you think you can before "getting stuck" becomes an issue. 1M doesn't seem that high for PPP, (250% increase). Comm Mimmic - maybe at 100k?

Trade disruption and crew insurrection aren't too bad.
perhaps 60k or 75k each would be more than enough, IMO[/QB]

Sounds reasonable

The trade rebuilds on its own, and a ship or two rarely makes much of a difference.

Heh, I guess you haven't had your minesweepers stolen from your main fleet... Crew Insurrection can completely stall an attack...