SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Supply Storage counts as Cargo for ship restrictions.

Since when?

[Suicide Junkie]

Ok, "should count as"

[spoon]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

High level Intel ops too effective

Since I have this handy, here are some proposed changes to intel projects I came up with a long time ago. Most changes are minor, so if you want to minimize change to stock files, you can safely ignore em. The major changes are in bold. I think the goal was to make intel more of an info-gathering and less of an empire-crippling endeavor. Since that's not really the goal of this mod, feel free to ignore...

General Espionage
Force Concentrations: Lower cost -- 2,000
Queue Concentrations: Lower cost -- 2,000
Ship Blueprints: Lower cost -- 5,000
Covert Recon: Lower cost -- 2,000
Census Thefts: Lower cost -- 2,000
Technological Espionage: no change (150k)
Embassy Taps: Lower cost -- 2,000
Empire Star Charts: Lower cost -- 5,000
Empire Archives: Lower cost -- 10,000
Unit Blueprints: Lower cost -- 5,000
Tech Reports: no change (20,000)

General Sabotage
Economic Disruption: Increase cost -- 30,000
Resource Procurment: Increase cost -- 30,000; Decrease effect to 5k of each resource (instead of 10k)
Technological Sabotage: Increase cost -- 50,000
Intelligence Sabotage: Lower Cost -- 15,000

Planet Sabotage
Weather Disruptions: Increase Cost -- 30,000
Ground Contamination: no change (20,000)
Food Contamination: Decrease effect to killing 5M population (instead of 100M). Or increase cost to 100,000.
Anarchy Groups: Increase Cost -- 20,000
Puppet Political Parties: Remove, or increase cost to 1,000,000
Cargo Maint. Trouble: (no change)
Industrial Sabotage: no change (25,000)

Political Disruption
Trade Distruption: Remove, or increase cost to 400k
Comm Taps no change (15,000)
Comm Mimic: Remove, or increase cost to 500k
Comm Interceptors: no change (10,000)

Ship Sabotage
Ship Bomb: no change (10,000)
Engine Damage: Lower cost -- 5000
Fuel Leak: no change (10,000)
Crew Insurrection: Remove, or increase cost to 100k
Crew Rotation: no change (5,000)
Cargo Bomb: Increase cost -- 7,500
Order Snafu: Lower Cost -- 5,000

[ July 23, 2003, 23:54: Message edited by: spoon ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
PvK, there is logic to your post, but adding a weapon would either require rewriting all the AI research and design files, or we'd end up with a weapon that the AI never uses. I am not sure I like either of those.
...

My main point is that the Meson BLaster has value and fills a niche as is, and is not really one of the underpowered weapons of the game. So I don't think it should be changed for a simple balance mod.

If someone wants a range-8 weapon which competes with APB at max-tech, yet is slightly different (no range attenuation), then I think that niche should either be filled by some other weak weapon (torpedo? a new weapon?), or probably better, the APB should be made weaker (how about making APB a "half damage versus shields" weapon???). By reducing the all-around superiority of the APB, all the other weapons in the game would be more interesting in late-game, rather than just an improved MB.

PvK

[spoon]

Originally posted by PvK:

quote:

---

Originally posted by geoschmo:
[qb]PvK, there is logic to your post, but adding a weapon would either require rewriting all the AI research and design files, or we'd end up with a weapon that the AI never uses. I am not sure I like either of those.
...

My main point is that the Meson BLaster has value and fills a niche as is, and is not really one of the underpowered weapons of the game. So I don't think it should be changed for a simple balance mod.

---

Heh, for some reason, when PvK said "new weapon" I thought he meant one of the underpowered weapons we hadn't really addressed yet, like the hellbore or incinerator. But, yeah, we can't add any new weapons...

...or probably better, the APB should be made weaker (how about making APB a "half damage versus shields" weapon???).

That'd be too much, I think. Unless you mean to increase the base damage to compensate. But then you are changing the APB into something else entirely. Maybe half-dam-to-shields would be a great niche for the Incinerator???).

You can't really lower the APB too much - otherwise the MB and PPB overpowers it.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by PvK:
My main point is that the Meson BLaster has value and fills a niche as is, and is not really one of the underpowered weapons of the game. So I don't think it should be changed for a simple balance mod.

Good point. I am not a strong proponent of changing the MB. I was simply addressing suggestions that had come up.

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.

Originally posted by spoon:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rollo:
just want to point out that any changes to the Talisman is likely to screw up religious AI.

I assume a lot of designs use the 'always hit' ability (I know the UF does). If such a component is not available it will cripple the AI.

Rollo

I assume this is equally true for the Quantum Reactor (ie, if you change the effect, then the ai won't know to put it on their ships).

Since changing the comp size is also bad, and Geo pointed out that greatly increasing the cost might drive the ai bankrupt, what options do we have to balance these two items?

---

After a little digging I think the problem here is not as serious as we thought. The stock Norak AI has a call for combat sensors. This makes sense as you wouldn't want the ships at a severe disadvantage prior to the discovery of the talisman. If we make the talisman a more powerful Version of the combat sensors it will still be used on their designs. It will simply be placed on the ship through a different design call. We won't even have to make a change to the files. The call for the always hit ability will simply be ignored since there will be no component that can satisfy it.

EDIT: Although it appears that the UF specifically do not have the design call for combat sensors. I am not sure for the reason behind this, but being that the custom AI's are not as high a priority for this as teh stock AI it's not a deal breaker I don't think. The custom AI's can always be revised. It's not uncommon for this to need done after a new patch anyway.

The same principle applies for the quontum reactor. All the AI stock ship designs that I looked at have a call in them for supply storage. (EDIT: I shuld have said "Attack ships" here. Not all ship designs have a call for supply storage, but the attack ones do.) If the QR is simply a hign value supply component it will get used and the QR design call will be ignored.

I think these options are much preferable to any sort of increase in cost because of the reasons already stated.

Geoschmo

[ July 24, 2003, 00:38: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[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.

---

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

----

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 ]