SE IV future

[geoschmo]

You guys are blowing things way way out of proportion here. Really. You are totally overreacting.

If you look at the sum total of the Last several patches it's almost completely about adding features and customizability. Second priority has been fixing bugs. But the overwhelming trend has been towards adding flexibility.

The two specific cases you cite are bug fixes. The fact that you don't agree that they should be done is noted, but many people will say that these bugs were long overdue for being fixed. Everybody has their little list of quirks about this game that they feel shold have been fixed at one time or another. And Malfador takes just as many complaints from players about not ever fixing these things as he does from players complaining when he does finally fix one.

Who gets to decide when the game is "finished"? And no more changes get to be made? Is any game ever finished?

Even if you don't agree with them, they don't change the nature of the game all that drastically. You shold just adapt and move on. The game is still a great game.

Geoschmo

[Q]

Geoschmo I estimate you and your opinion very much but your statement that "these are bug fixes, get over it and adapt" seems a little bit too simple in my very humble opinion.
I don't want to argue about the definition of a bug but why was the skipping shields of engine overloading weapons a bug?? And then are the shields skipping of shield disruptors and weapon overloading weapons also bugs?
The argument that the crew conVersion is not realistic if there is no crew is of course valid. But if you build (and that's what you can make the AI do) a ship with crew and master computer and you destroy the master computer why is the ship still immune to the allegiance subverter? And why can a ship where the crew quarters have been destroyed (but never had a master computer) still be converted?
And why did MM remove the possibility of the allegiance converter to act on units? A possibility that was never used in standard SE IV. I was just an possibility for modders.

I don't say that SE IV is bad or MM does bad work. But you can't deny that in the Last time there have been things removed from the game in an irreversible way. And that's the point I am worried about because it goes against the major advantage of SE IV: it's flexibility and variety.

[geoschmo]

Q, I am not arguing that these changes don't take away some of your choice. Obviously they do. And I am not going to get into a debate over whether or not they are valid changes. We could go around and around on it and argue both sides of it and would get nowhere. If you don't like the changes, by all means email Malfador and let him know about it.

What I will agrue though is your and Arkcon comments that these two relativly minor changes some how show some change in priorities or are some sort of overall effort to "balance" the game. They simply are not that at all. Malfador gets emails all the time from fans with suggestions. Someone at some point suggested these changes and Malfador was convinced enough to make the change.

If you disagree with these changes, please email Malfador and suggest something else. Nobody here knows anymore about thier motivations and reasons for doing things than you do. That's all I am saying.

Geoschmo

[spoon]

I completely disagree with the original poster. We need more game-balance tweaks, not fewer. Most people play generic SE4 - why not keep perfecting it? From a purely number-crunching perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement. Sure, I can tweak them myself, but then who would I play with?

[ October 13, 2002, 20:46: Message edited by: spoon ]

[oleg]

Originally posted by spoon:
I completely disagree with the original poster. We need more game-balance tweaks, not fewer. Most people play generic SE4 - why not keep perfecting it? From a purely number-crunching perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement. Sure, I can tweak them myself, but then who would I play with?

I agree with both spoon and Q - see, it is possible

Relentless play balancing by MM is more than welcome but if it is possible to achive by adjusting values in data files rather than hardcode changes than I would vote for "softer" approach.

[Jmenschenfresser]

Sounds like these problems would be solved if MM introduced multiple damage types to some limited extent.

However, I can see some point to this. There is a line somewhere between expansion and revamping. After a while you just have to take your hands off of what exists and move on.

I'm not for stopping the tweaks, but we've all gotten used to the game as is--exploits, bugs and all. Time is better spent adding things or expanding what is instead of endlessly changing values.

I don't mind the changes that much, although the engine weapon was a fave of mine for defensive purposes.

[Taera]

For one thing, i feel some degree of shame because it is i who had endlessly suggested and supported various changes to game balance because i feel some things are much stronger while others are much weaker. It had never been so in SEIII, in there i had tested and proved in combat that the most useless of weapons in the game (MB, Torpedoes and so on) were useful to an exteme if used correctly. In SEIV there is no such thing, there are several weapons that briefly overpower others and are somewhat easier to research than their counterparts in SEIII if they did exist.
Example? PPB could be a perfect example. To research PPB you had to research shields 3 (i think), APB 6, Physics 2. And the research project itself wasnt any cheap. In SEIV you can rush to Physics 2 and get the PPBV in same cost you would get APBVII.

Yet i consider the changes being done rather logical. Organic armor cannot regenerate over its capacity but it makes sense to have it regenerate itself after combat because it would do so in combat anyway, and one game turn or even move is MUCH more than a combat or even two. Allegiance Subverter - how in name of god can you convert a destroyed computer??? Makes sense, too. Psychical weapons are still one of the best in the game, Telekinetic shows one of the best (size to research to range to damage to cost) ratio and it is easy to research. Mental flailer is also powerful because of early availability compared to its counterpart, Energy Dampener which is lvl.6 racial weapon which is only aviable in late mid game. And so on. I still would like to see PPB and crystalline and so on changed, but i consider all the changes rather logical.

And Last thing, Q - you say this distrupts the current games. Think differently - it makes more challenge for the players to adapt to new tactics in progress. And Q, Ionic Dispenser is in no way useless weapon even after being unable to skip shields. They have a decent damage and 1 ROF and 30kT size and rather cheap cost, and even if only 1 is put to a ship eventually it will overpower similar design with no Ionic Dispenser. Tachyon are weak and only way for them to be powerful is to skip shields, and Shield Distruptor is specialized weapon which costs heck a lot to build and to research and is SUPPOSED to be able to skip all shields.