SE4 Stock Balance Mod

geoschmo · #1 July 24th, 2003, 05:01 AM

Regarding PPB, I hadn't thought about the range before Pvk. If someone else mentioned it in the myriad of discussions about it I missed it. Actually decreaseing the range of the early levels might be a decent solution. It would be a fairly AI friendly change as well. This would definetly make them less powerful in the mid game where they currently dominate without neutering them at the end game.

Geoschmo

mac5732 · #2 July 24th, 2003, 05:04 AM

INcrease the AI in use of using Intell, some races don't use it or are very weak in this area, needs to be boosted in regards to AI use, makes it to easy for human player to beat on AI, IMHO only, increase intell for AI's

In regards to ftrs, how about increasing their capacity/size, in order to put more shields & armor on them at least at the med and large levels, thus making them somewhat stronger to take out?

just some ideas Mac

[ July 24, 2003, 04:06: Message edited by: mac5732 ]

geoschmo · #3 July 24th, 2003, 05:13 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by QuarianRex:
Besides, they are not really unbalancing (well not the QR at least). The QR is really just a time saver. You can either equip every ship in your fleet with a supply pod and individually activate them every turn (to be repaited by the fleet shipyard), or you can equip those ships with QR's and save yourself a headache.

I think that most people that object to the QR object to it on the grounds that you don't need one on every ship, just one on one ship in the fleet. This is imbalancing as far as between the AI and human players as the AI is not smart enough to take advantage of this fact and thus spends a lot more resources for their ships then they need to. Some peopel are suggesting making it more expensive, which actually makes this problem worse. I suppose an alternative fix would be to make the assumption every one will use them once they are researched and make them a lot cheaper. This way the AI isn't penalized for doing something it can't be tought not to do anyway. Losing 20Kt per ship isn't as bad as 1000 more minerals per ship to build to buy and 250 more minerals per ship per turn to maintain.

Quote:

Originally posted by QuarianRex:
In short, the abilities should stay (cause I'm sure that they aren't going anywhere). We already have sensors and supply storage, we don't need super sensors (that the AI cannot propperly take advantage of) or big fat supply tanks. If you wqant to balance them make them harder to get, not impossible to use. Increase the research cost so that their acquisition requires a significant investment.

Actually I think we have determined the AI can use the alternative talisman (super sensors) just fine.

Making these comps higher research cost is good, but making them too high can cause problems as the AI will still research them when it always has and could fall behind in other areas because of it. That might require adjustments to the ai reasearch files. Of course that's only a problem if we go really high on those.

Geoschmo

deccan · #4 July 24th, 2003, 06:00 AM

Hmm, I'm a newbie so I acknowledge that my opinions don't carry too much weight, but here they are anyway:

1) It seems to me that we need to decide early so whether or not we are willing to allow the changes to be so drastic as to require rewriting the stock AI. Is it even feasible / realistic / practical to consider only changes that don't require any rewriting of the stock AI?

2) I disagree with the suggestion that we can ignore AI issues on the basis that everyone on this forum plays PBW. If we want this to be considered stock SEIV we had better consider stock AI issues.

3) If AIs are going to be changed at all, I think it would be good if they could rewritten to be the best AI they could possibly be.

4) With regards to the balancing of missiles, how come no one suggested upping the seekers' damage resistance?

P.S. Why isn't TDM included in stock SEIV in the first place? Makes me skeptical about MM accepting a balance mod as stock.

[ July 24, 2003, 05:11: Message edited by: deccan ]

TerranC · #5 July 24th, 2003, 06:36 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by deccan:
P.S. Why isn't TDM included in stock SEIV in the first place? Makes me skeptical about MM accepting a balance mod as stock.

Because TDM is fan made, and was made after SEIV was released. (I assume you mean Vanilla SEIV, not SEIV Gold when you said Stock SEIV.)

Krsqk · #6 July 24th, 2003, 07:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by mac5732:
In regards to ftrs, how about increasing their capacity/size, in order to put more shields & armor on them at least at the med and large levels, thus making them somewhat stronger to take out?

This isn't a bad idea. You would have to increase the cargo capacity of Fighter Bays accordingly. Cargo Bays may then need a tiny tweak as well.

spoon · #7 July 24th, 2003, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Regarding PPB, I hadn't thought about the range before Pvk. ... Actually decreaseing the range of the early levels might be a decent solution. ... This would definetly make them less powerful in the mid game where they currently dominate without neutering them at the end game.

Actually, this would have practically no impact at all on the mid game, since reasearching up to level 4 is only a matter of four turns, the actual research is negligible.

If range was decreased as suggested and research cost drastically increased (like to 50k for level 1) then you might see some mid-game impact. But changing the research cost by that much is probably problematic for ai designs.