Then try it out and let me know @Culthrasa played the cards very well. The right techs, buildings and culture perks were picked which "broke" the asteroid exploitations system and the production run away. I never saw 10K, but now I know it's possible Of course, the AI isn't complete yet. So, when they start exploiting asteroids more actively for production, you should not have as many belts to explore. However, I remind that all it took were 5 asteroid production exploits for the production to run away.
My question in the original reply is unanswered: Does this mean that they only auto-fire when missiles enter optimal range? That penalizes the player for choosing to manually target with them, doesn't it? I just don't feel that provides an intuitive or enjoyable player experience.
I'm not sure, I'll have to look that up and get back to you. And, there are two scenarios where PDs auto-fire to consider here. When missiles reach the target and when missiles pass in range of a ship with PD "auto-fire" on. How do you think the behavior should be in these two cases? Should the PDs fire only at optimal range, as soon as missiles are in range? other?
As soon as the missile is in range with the same % chance to hit regardless of distance. That'd be my preference, but may not line up with yours.
Let me back up aRM here. You all know what an ABM is right, well these anti-ballistic missiles are similar to a pd, they try to hit the target at optimum range, not when it's right on top of them. PD weapons are short range, keep that, but make them effective within that range. For all intents and purposes, they would create a small bubble around the ship and be just as effective at the edge of that bubble as they would be near its center.
Nothing like a good night's sleep to clear the mind... Based on multiple conversations yesterday, I want to touch upon a couple of subjects. Found ships. Keep smaller ships (FFs, DDs) as they are now, meaning that there is a chance of finding them in ruins upon an initial search. Larger ships like Cruisers and Battleships could be discovered only by an expert doing a second search of ruins. This should insure that no game-breaking ship is found early enough to critically unbalance the game. This would not apply to the Militia Cruiser as that isn't too advanced and is brought into play be event choice. Asteroid exploitations and general exploitations unbalancing the game. Perhaps these can be restricted in a natural manner. Right now, I have a dozen outposts and I am building more, why not, with the exception of asteroid mines there is no maintenance cost involved. Maybe this should be changed. Adam and I discussed this in the past, he reasons that only asteroid mining would require freighters as other outposts (for example one mining dark matter), could ship that same dark matter in a suitcase size package... perhaps they could, or perhaps you would need a containment field the size of a moon... In either case this ignores the fact that outposts are not colonies. A single FF can invade one correct? Well then can we not assume that these are not self sufficient and require a freighter fleet for supply and personnel? This would mean that all outposts requite a freighter fleet to operate, in that case, I don't think I would be spamming them as I am now, giving up dozens of SSPs wouldn't be that attractive. A second option would be to retain the system we have now, where only asteroid mines require a freighter fleet to operate, but each oupost on the map would cost a single SSP to maintain as well. In this case, you wouldn't need a freighter for that dark matter mentioned above, but the outpost itself would consume maintenance. Asteroid mines would obviously consume two, one for the freighter fleet to operate and one more for the outpost itself. We also should look at some of the race picks, as illustrated by @Culthrasa combining large worlds, with caves, high pop growth and mineral rich... leaves little challenge to a player, even on hardcore. I'm not sure how to approach this, but perhaps race picks could be dependent on difficulty level, the higher the difficulty, the greater the cost? Maybe we can even consider certain picks disabling others, or just upping the cost in general... or maybe even disabling some picks if certain others are selected. I'm not sure how to proceed here, but I do see that the numbers put up by Cultrasa indicate a severe problem that needs to be addressed... sooner rather than later. For now, I am going to use some house rules for a new session, No asteroid mines until a starbase is in orbit (1 exploitation only, a second allowed when a battlesation is present, capped at two per colony) No racial unique traits Any ships found early larger than DD to be scrapped instantly Any tech offered by event that is too powerful early ( for example, Adamantium armor prior to turn 200) will be refused Homeworld restricted to average richness Pop growth restricted to normal etc. I'll post the set-up later once I start and give details there, let's see how it goes.
I agree with all of this. It was a wait and see suggestion before, but it sounds like you now feel the same. I'd be fine with this change. I imagine the AI would have trouble coping as they are today though. The vast majority of my asteroid exploitations are the ones I take from the AI. If I build them, I need freighters anyway as it is almost always for production. Same comment for the outposts costing 1 SSP each. I'm fine with that too, but the AI likes to put outposts all over the place and doesn't currently judge the value of them very well. Overall I haven't taken advantage of asteroids in any of my last 3 or 4 games on hardcore and 1 on impossible. It didn't really hinder me not to, but that doesn't mean they aren't too powerful if exploited in just the right way. Good luck! I completely understand wanting to house rule things for now to increase the challenge. I may do the same. Make no mistake though, the crux of the problem is the AI. Once the AI is competitive, what is "too powerful" will come more into focus. The AI doesn't currently look to take, defend, or raid key strategic resources or asteroids in any meaningful way. Once they do it will be riskier to leave them undefended. Right now I also find I can outrun the AI just about anywhere in the galaxy. I am not punished for having a "doom stack" or two because I can always respond to the AI's move and reach their destination before they can. This reduces a need for me to have much of a defense at all. I never build the planetary barriers for instance and rarely keep any ships at home.
Yes my friend, I do. we waited and saw... and I received some heavy ships early enough that only my own restraint and curiosity kept me from knocking out AIs early. You we correct when you first suggested this, getting a high tech cruiser or battleship around turn 50 can't be easily countered. True, the AI does make some head scratching moves with outposts and the player can easily outperform them... I'm just thinking that it should come at a cost and eventually keep things from getting out of hand. Thanks my friend, I'll post the opening in a few minutes and I do agree about the AI, it isn't near 100% and we both know that, but even when it is, it will need to pay close attention to certain techs like drive technology, scanning, weapons and defensive components, otherwise it will be more of the same. And yes, it needs to know how to prioritize what it defends and also learn how to execute meaningful raids so that the player doesn't constantly retain the initiative, we need more work in this area. Yes, the old "get there firstest with the mostest" approach, worked like a charm 150 years ago, works just as well today.
I keep forgetting to mention something I really like... It seems that colony events fire less frequently, maybe it;s just me... But this has me looking forward to when I see one, rather than feeling "oh here comes another one"
We didn't change the events firing likelihood. It means that you got less in that session and (I know) you prefer it that way. This is linked with a task where we may consider giving the option to set the events firing chance, and not just on / off. Yes, we should tweak this so that Cruisers don't appear so easily. Regarding asteroid exploitations, the only case identified at this stage to be easily exploited is the asteroid production, especially compounded with Mining Guild, Corporate leaders and Freighter Ports, as reported and demonstrated by @Culthrasa. As I said before, I think the base numbers are fine. The issue is how the numbers scale with the amount of POPs you have. So, a potential solution for this is to not tie asteroid production with POPs but to make it a flat bonus. With a flat bonus you keep your early game experience intact, and the mid game one in good shape, I believe. The late game however will see less and less benefits to assign further exploitations to forge worlds, since the flat bonuses will not add up to crazy figures and the player will probably redirect the exploitations to underveloped colonies. Everything else would remain the same (all bonuses, leaders, etc), the only difference would be changing the bonus from prod per pop to a flat bonus. Let me know what you think. I tend to agree that the crux of the problem for the high production issue, and many others is the AI. Once it is competitive, as @aReclusiveMind suggests, things will change. I will address the high numbers in extreme population cases on another thread.
Let's try this first absolutely, it seems that it would be the least labor intensive solution yes? Give it a go and let us examine the results to determine how effective it is, if we get lucky, it will do the trick!
Yes, we'll analyse the most pressing issues, and the idea is to evaluate the possibility of creating a fast update and put it on an unstable branch for you to assess.
I've been tinkering a lot lately, with many things, Terraforming worlds, race picks, min maxing... I'll drop a few more thought later but right now I have a few things to say about repulsive. For gaining four picks, it isn't punishing enough. I took it many times, no one declared war on me, the only thing I noticed is that it took longer to get some trade treaties. You get 4 picks for taking this, the penalty is nothing, -2... perhaps doubling it to -4 might be worth considering
I concur... the penalty to too low for the points it gives... For me it is a no brainer... not only cause i normally somewhat disregard diplomacy (warmonger/isolationist playstyle) And on average a penalty should give less points then the positive modifier cost. And the penalty itself is rather limited too, i still got trade treaties offered.
Repulsive should offer a serious penalty. A permanent -2 diplomatic modifier doesn't allow you to make treaties so easily or so fast. Trade treaties may be possible soon enough, but Mining Treaties and above are almost off-limits to these races. Although the space culture perk and having emphatic leaders can help offset this, it's still (or should be) a considerable penalty in the early game. We have to take into account the state of AI at the current time (~66%). This includes the diplomatic AI. I expect to see less trade deals being offered and more hostility and indifference when the AI is brought to full speed. That said, we can revisit the diplomatic penalty and the custom race points for Repulsive. For the time being I suggest house rules or not exploiting things you know will unbalance the game too much for you at this time, since the AI isn't complete after all.
Good morning gents, just got in from some field work and I want to mention two more topics before I forget. Leaders When the player completes a request to build an econ cap, science academy, etc. the leader gets a plus2 bonus to either science or production as long as the leader is in the colony. How about reducing this bonus to 1. By itself, it isn't much, but it might be a good start to getting leaders more balanced. Fighters In MoO2 I loved them, so I thought I would try them again here... I'm confused Why do the space requirements go up if i put them on a larger hull, do I gain more fighters? In MoO2, fighters did not miniaturize and the space requirement was the same regardless of what size hull the fighter bays were placed on. This seems far more intuitive to be honest.
Good morning Konstantine. Hope your field work was productive. It's a good suggestion, we can revise those leader desires bonus. However, if they are too low it may disincentive persuing the desire in the first place. Yes, I believe this "Fighters size scalling with ship size" issue was brought up in the past. The size should be the same irrespective of the ship class. We'll address this. Thanks.
