Alpha 1a, random observations

Hi all,
I fired up the latest issue and dove right in.
Two things have caught my eye so far.
First, while the event with Ourobouros may fire later, I found him in a search of ruins at turn 40, this may need some adjustment I think. Perhaps he should only be available by event? I mean what happens now, is the event guaranteed not to fire cause I have him? confused.

The more glaring thing is the adjustment with leader raises. Please note the screenshot, it is turn 60, young Sierra has been in my employ for about 30 turns, now note my income versus the raise requested... maybe it's just me but I don't find this amusing, perhaps we went a bit overboard?

 

I think she acquired greedy during her time with me and I most certainly did not accept to give the greedy little witch her exorbitant raise. I turned her down, she went very negative in opinion and her stats went red... so I shipped her off to my version of Tatooine... let her pound sand there.

 

Not quite, first I can't be positive that she acquired the greedy trait, I could be mistaking this with one of the many other sessions I've played. What I can be sure is this.
She was with me about 30 turns, on her second level up, she asked for the raise.
Considering her starting salary and length of service, I do not see an increase of that kind as justified or fun. Perhaps the raise requests were too low in the past, now indications are that they are too high. My surplus is 3 credits per turn at turn 60, she asked for 14 credits per turn raise. If I accepted, I would be forced to play differently than what I do. I would probably delay some buildings as they need maintenance. 14 credits per turn at turn 60, is too much, especially for Sierra, a low level leader.

I could my friend, but then I wouldn't be playing the way I am comfortable, or with my own style, I would be playing with yours. ISG appeals to me for many reasons, one of those is that multiple approaches work well for the player, I would hate to see that diminished to a single approach only, it wouldn't be a game then, just a puzzle with a single solution, much less fun.

I like to keep research high and the same for Culture, rather than min-maxing my sliders every so often, I set at 25%, 25%, 50% until the first infrastructure level is achieved on my HW. After that, I go 10%, 10%, 80% and forget about it. New colonies have different ratios, and it works for me as I then concentrate more on areas I like to tinker with.

Tax, research, and culture, I leave alone throughout the game. Usually I can stay with credit growth early in the game, have rapid research, and breeze through several culture achievements by doing this, I like this balance. This doesn't mean that your approach doesn't work, it may even be superior... but it isn't my style. I want to see the game retain the flexibility it has where there are many ways to approach it, I think that will please a wider base. Back to Sierra, there are multiple solutions. Delay her first request, reduce the amount of the raise so that it is still higher than in the past but less than now, etc. I was able to turn her down and send her to a backwater while she recovered, I replaced her at Terra with one of my other leaders, this kept things cool, however, this option won't always be there, and it would be frustrating to let her go, not catastrophic mind you, but certainly frustrating

 

In the groove with Alpha1a now and got a game going... an interesting one at that.
While it;s starting to get late for me here, I'll touch on a few things now and get into more details in the morning.
But first the setting. Large galaxy, hardcore, custom race. I took bonuses in science, production, planet size and money... offset by repulsive trait.

Don't be fooled by the screenshot, the money was generated by having my two main colonies produce trade goods for a length of time, what you see now, is with two trade treaties active, notice the surplus being generated now, far more more interesting for my taste... I've also turned down a few raise requests, especially the 14 credit a turn raises, though I did accept some of the more reasonable ones, it's good to see that the player can still exercise a good degree of control here .

Peace reigns for the time being... but that will end soon as I need to check combat... well to tell the truth, even if I didn't need to check, I would just go to war at some point anyway because ... it's what I do.

But let me leave the details for the morning when I'm fresh, for now, have a look at the screen shot, it tells a story all on it's own. By the way, my seven colonies are visible, however, I also have 9 outposts which would normally be high for me, but they have taken on more importance of late, I like that, it makes the game richer.

 

It’s 5 races, the four stock races versus my custom race.

The production you see was a concerted effort using many functions of the game and my experience with ISG. First I gave my race plus 1 in production, then followed it up with over-mining which gives me another plus 1. For the longest time I only had a single colony leader, Kxuta. I assigned him to Terra and his bonus upped the production further. After that, I gamed the system somewhat. I only researched econ capital, waited till Kxuta requested one, and proceeded to construct one at Terra, that increased Kxuta’s production stats and upped construction even further. But I wasn’t done yet, I also built two asteroid mines around large belts and fed them to Terra as well, then I researched freighter ports. Finally I received some morale boosts from the marine garrison at Terra as well as completing the Adventure culture. And there you have it, it wasn’t easy, and it took some effort to get here. H3 and Neutron were both military choices for me, so there is no production bonus from there, I do expect another small increase once I up the ecology on Terra, as you can see, it is already underway.

Now the game itself has been quite interesting so far. Early on, the best world I could colonize was the ultra-rich swamp world in the terra system. I went about the usual exploration and ran into the Moltar first, this was at a time when all I had was my starting Frigates, (useless), and was five turns away from completing my first Destroyer (Large auto-fire laser, MIRV, Fast, nuke missiles, and an auto fire point defense laser with tungsten armor and class II shields).

I sweated the game here as the Moltar started to mass at Sicconus, but I rode it out. Soon afterwards, the Militia event fired and I had just enough to grab the Cruiser, a short while later, I found another Cruiser in some ruins and I felt safe. I built about six more Destroyers and now felt very secure.

I met the Draguul much later and they offered a trade treaty, I jumped on that as money was tight, so tight that I scrapped the starting Frigates for cash along the way. After the Draguul offered trade, the Moltar decided that I wasn’t so repulsive after all, and they too offered a trade treaty I accepted. I breathed a sigh of relief as I could now afford some raises.

Two more events that helped me out was when I was offered to star on TV and turned it down, this made my leaders opinion increase and I was able to be more selective with raises as a result. The second event that helped me, may be game breaking.

I was pushing my research towards military tech, trying to get to the point where I could construct vastly up-graded ships when an offer you can refuse fired, I grabbed Adamantium Armor all for me with 1000 credits. As you can see, I am refitting now, those same Destroyers I had are now coming out with large, auto-fire, shield piercing particle beams (aided by neutronium shells), Adamantium Armor and class V shields (aided by enhanced shields from H3), MIRV Fast Polaris missiles, and auto-fire pd no range lasers aided by beam enhancement.

Then just six turns ago I found Ourobouros who is now at Ivofiks, taking advantage of the fact that two colonies are in the system.

Research has been a bit harder than in the past, but I am taking steps now to accelerate it, Production I have covered already, but that too took more of an effort than before. Wealth is great now, by that I mean it takes some doing to keep a good cash flow, even with traded treaties, this is very welcome as in the past we were all just making too much cash.

I haven’t gotten into any wars soon, but that will change, probably tonight, and once I get home, I will send you that save so you can poke around.

 

Ok, I got into a couple of fights... and I don't get it. The Moltar had some FFs and DDs, class V shields and Polaris missiles, I tried my pd weapons and they showed 0% to hit, I couldn't fire. Meanwhile several of my Polaris missiles disappeared as they approached the target. I presumed this was jamming tech... but where is it on the tech tree?
Anyhow
I'm at turn 202, my freighter ports are completed as well as some eco improvements and I took a Moltar colony, nothing out of the ordinary, but my production is over 2k now

I'm including an earlier save where you can possibly re-create a battle and check the behavior of missiles and PDs.
Apart from this, the missile speed of fast missiles may no longer be worth the space required. Plus 4 speed doesn't translate to much in the battle screen, I'm thinking of dropping them entirely in favor of some good torpedoes.

 

This really doesn't make that much sense to me, especially with my background. Ship defensive rating should have nothing to do with targeting incoming missiles, it doesn't in real life. Ships has separate defensive capabilities than that of a missile, it isn't a shared capability between them, so it never would have occurred to me that a ship with a high defensive rating, passes that rating on to its missiles. (On the other hand, it's easier to target a real ship than it is to target an actual missile).

Is jamming a separate tech, I'm still not clear

I don't know, parts of what you wrote wasn't too clear to me... others were obvious, but my perspective is colored by experience, I should have focused more on the game reality. (you must unlearn what you have learned)

 

OK, I switched research and completed enhanced targeting, big jump between that and the previous tech. Before, I was getting single digit % to hit with my direct fire weapons, now I am between 50%-70%... Improved targeting seems to offer too little practical benefit in this context. Now I still don't know how this translates to shooting down missiles as the Moltar ran away, but I'll find out soon enough when I attack something I know they will defend.
I've taken a pause from shipbuilding while I wait for to research one more weapon, it should allow me to miniaturize Phasors enough to make them appealing.
Now as far as production...
@aReclusiveMind has an excellent point in the other thread. I've got a different approach and haven't exploited Asteroid mining to the utmost degree, but it is still a big part of my production. Asteroid belts are very common, this is the case in the vast majority of games and I don't think that should be changed. However, it would be most helpful if the AI started to use them for production, like aRM, I've yet to see that, usually the AI uses them for either trade or research. I would prefer this over too much nerfing.