Ancient Race too powerful?

Phoenix-D · #1 January 24th, 2002, 12:30 AM

For 1000 points, you could:

-add 1 speed to all your ships
-add facility space to all your planets (two different abilities for that)
-cut your ships supply needs by 25%
-add substantial bonuses to any attribute

Any of those. IMO Ancient Race is balanced. Some of the other traits- like Emotionless- seem a bit out of wack though.

Phoenix-D

PvK · #2 January 24th, 2002, 01:48 AM

I think in general the ancient race trait has advantages that make sense, but I would prefer that all views of "known but not currently observed" systems to only show the Last known data. Ancient races could be given the data as of before homeworld placement.

On the other hand, it kind of makes sense that ancients would know where the ruins and other races homeworlds would be.

The effect can be reduced by turning off the "homeworlds have the same size" option, but this can lead to advantages for Gas Giant empires.

As for ruins, I definitely think it would be neat (at least optionally) to have ruin location be less immediately visible. I'd like to have to fly by or colonize a planet to detect them. In my Proportions mod I made it so many ruins actually don't provide any technology, which partly helps. Unfortunately I didn't find any way to mod it so that ruins were actually invisible until colonized.

The main reason I rarely use Ancient though is because I think it's a bit less fun not to have to explore.

PvK

Andr�s · #3 January 24th, 2002, 02:12 AM

I normally play with large (255) quadrants and find ancient race useless.
Knowing systems in the other side of the galaxy only makes more confusion, and will make it harder to use the send colony ship function (in the planets window).
I normally find some friendly ancient race (like the Eee) that signs a partership at least for a while, so you get to know everything without wasting your points in ancient race.

Egregius · #4 January 24th, 2002, 05:15 AM

OT sorry: why is emotionless out of whack? Too good or too expensive? Too expensive considering -50% happyness?

Phoenix-D · #5 January 24th, 2002, 05:55 AM

Too expensive (IMO).

Dropping happyness to 50% gives you 800 points; that means the total cost the the trait is 2200.

Is having happy population (NOT jubulent, note) really worth 2200 points? Troops are good pacifiers for planets that have the space; any kind of standing fleet does the same. For that price you could have any of the racial tech areas, Advanced Storage Techniques AND Ancient Race, propulsion experts AND advanced power conservation, etc, to say nothing of the regular traits you could buy. IMO it's not worth it at all.

Phoenix-D

tesco samoa · #6 January 24th, 2002, 06:37 PM

the thing that bugs me about ancient race is that any time during the game you open or close a warp point they know about it. The maps update accordingly. And their Allies get this information as well. And anyother stellar stuff.

geoschmo · #7 January 24th, 2002, 07:29 PM

quote:
Originally posted by tesco samoa:
the thing that bugs me about ancient race is that any time during the game you open or close a warp point they know about it. The maps update accordingly. And their Allies get this information as well. And anyother stellar stuff.

True, and a bit anoying to me as well. And you dont even have to be ancient race, just have visted both systems at some point during the game.

Geoschmo