Balanced System Mod - 2.0

[geoschmo]

Suicide Junkie said:
--Balanced Random--
Apparently vaccuum breathers get the shaft in all categories at max tech... that's because gas colonization is nearly useless to them, while rock/ice colonization is still useful for gas natives.

This is true with stock as well right? This particular problem didn't even occur to me. I can't even think of a way to balance this.

Suicide Junkie said:Gas gets only 84.5% of the spaceyard rate compared to rock/ice, but gets almost exactly 125% of the resource rate.

Cool. This is what I was aiming for.

Slynky said:

There will only be ONE moon in any given system, correct?

No. There can be only one moon per sector, so none of those planets with two and three moons orbiting them. But more than one planet per system can have a moon.

Slynky said:
Can a person choos NONE as their atmosphere type now (which would be a change over version 1.2)?

Yes. You do lose the stock advantage NONE races have of being the only race able to fully exploit the moons, since the moons are pretty equally distributed among the five atmosphere types. But the idea was to make them no worse of a choice then the other races. As SJ points out though that won't be true in a high tech start. And I guess it could be a problem later in a low tech start game as the other colony techs are researched. By then though I guess you can snag some atmosphere breathers from another player.

Slynky said:
In summary, if I understand correctly, this version of the Balance mod varies generation a bit to still whet the appetite of the person who likes exploring yet NOT so varied that it should affect game balance too much. Would that be a fair saying?

That was my goal. I hope I achieved it.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

While still remaining compatible with stock, it will be difficult.

You would probably have to use somewhat more of a trial and gradual refinement system with heavy use of the map analyser.

What you might do is to add some more none-atmosphere planets & moons.
Then decrease the number of atmosphered rock/ice planets to compensate.
You would be trying to keep the total benefits for breathing rock/ice races the same while adding to the vaccuum breather stats.

In any event, gas giant races will be unique from rock/ice breathers, and also unique from vaccuum breathers.
The trick is then to make those three classes of race all be fairly balanced between each other.

[Atrocities]

Map Analyser.. what is this? And what does it do?

[geoschmo]

Atrocities said:
Map Analyser.. what is this? And what does it do?

This is a cool program SJ wrote that parses a mod's data files and calculates the odd's for different combinations of atmosphere/planet types to see if it is balanced for all types of races.

[geoschmo]

There is one thing that I'm a little confused about regarding moons. I have noticed that occasionally a player will start with a moon in orbit around their homeworld. On one hand I don't think this is such a bad thing, but it might be an advantage for the player that gets one and noone else does. I can understand why it happens based on why the moons are placed in the mod. When it comes time to place the players homeworld, the game looks in the system for an available planet of the correct atmosphere and size and uses that if available before creating a new planet. If that planet has a moon then the players homeworld gets a moon. I've seen other mods that have this "feature" as well.

What I can't figure out thinking about it now is why this never occurs using the stock data files. What is it about the stock system types that prevents this? Has anyone figured this out?

Geoschmo

[Slynky]

Maybe the stock deployment doesn't use an existing planet. Maybe it always creates another one. For example, that's what it HAS to do if one edits a map and clicks on a sector to tell the game where a starting point is. When I set those maps up, I always clicked a blank sector.

[geoschmo]

If you put a starting point in a blank sector in the map editor it will create a planet. It will also create one if it can't find a suitable size and atmosphere, as in the case a lot of times if you do a good planet start, especially a multi planet start. But there are cases where it will use an exsisting planet. I'm just not sure of all the logic it goes through to make the decision.

There are also cases where it will change the atmosphere of an existing planet to use it as a homeworld. For example if you place a starting point in a sector that has a planet, but of the wrong atmosphere.

[Slynky]

I really didn't think there was anything wrong with leaving the NONE (atmos-type) out of the equation and only using atmospheres. If I understand the dilemma a bit, I'd say quit worrying about balancing the NONE types and generate ONLY NONE atmos-type moons while telling any players considering NONE atmos-type to forget it. In this version, the moons only become useful as a single-fac place to post a refuel station, SY, or a single training facility (which helps out stopping the 2-moon/planet NONE atmos-types building both training facilities on all three places).

Just a thought. (grin) I'm reminded of the times I took it upon myself to write a program to do a function people wanted and when I took the time to do it, I got a lot of, "Can you add this?" or "Change this to..." (poor Geo)

[geoschmo]

Suicide Junkie said:
What you might do is to add some more none-atmosphere planets & moons.
Then decrease the number of atmosphered rock/ice planets to compensate.
You would be trying to keep the total benefits for breathing rock/ice races the same while adding to the vaccuum breather stats.

This would be fairly easy to do, but it would give the none races an advantage over the other rock/ice races, at least at the start of a low-tech game. So would the goal be to try to make it so by the time all colony techs are researched they are balanced with the other breathers, which would mean they have a considerable advantage at the beginning? Or merely for them to start out with a slight early advantage which would turn into a slight late disadvantage instead of the large disadvantage they have now?

However you go with balancing the none races, you still have the problem of high tech versus atmosphere only starts though. If you design it so they balance in one, they will be at an advantage or disadvantage in the other.

Slynky said:
Just a thought. (grin) I'm reminded of the times I took it upon myself to write a program to do a function people wanted and when I took the time to do it, I got a lot of, "Can you add this?" or "Change this to..." (poor Geo)

If I didn't want that I wouldn't have asked for feedback. It did take a considerable amount of work to put the 2.0 version together. Most of that was time spent doing it the wrong ways. Once I figured out what didn't work, what did work didn't take all that long to do. Further tweaks to the system shouldn't be too difficult. I'd rather do that then have people not use it and get nothing in return for the work I put into it.