Hey all, been playing 1b, and must say, i'm liking it... Just for reference i've been playing a similar empire setup as my AAR with the stupendious production, just to see the difference... 1. Change to astroids.. very good.. Gives a completely different playstyle where i put them towards my new/smaller planets so as to help them out. Very good change since it brings big and small planets better together.. 2. Even all of them are put towards my main shipyard it's a decent chunk but not overpowering... Below my maxxed out shipyard.. total ship production 8.8k.. which i think is reasonable... (a titan every four turns). Better then the 100.000 production i had previous game 3. Also the other astroid options become viable.. I switched them around a couple of times for volitiles etc... Very nice having options... 4. Lowering of Morale.. again very good... Still have nice positive morale on planets but nothing too much (again playing for the max here, leader has +morale in screenshot) 5. I think Vaults are a bit lackbuster bit since we are curtailing total pop it is probably fine 6. Change costs to creation.. again needed... I didn't have all the points i wanted (had to ditch +growth and really noticed the impact). I would remain in favor of lowering the points gain from repugnant from -4 to -2 (same as creative/uncreative) 7. Had one bug, will post a bug report for it (leader mismatch between colony/ship) 8. Pacing of the game is currently quite sedate... The AI may be more aggresive.. even with me being fifth in shipower no one threathens me... 9. The effect of hardcore (bad starting position) is harsh.. i literally had NO lava planets in the entire quodrant (after remote exploiration ofc)... Not one! Also had to make due with only small/tiny planets.. My point is, it is a bit obvious how you are handicapped and not very fun... Doable, but less fun... 10. One quality of life i would like.. After terraforming the ecology button is greyed out, for no reason.. since mostly after terraforming one will continue with eco-forming... 11. Second quality of life.. being able to queue techs from tiers not yet unlocked but which will be by previously queued techs.. saves some clicking and makes it able to beeline to a tech when wanted... All in all, great changes!
Great feedback. Glad to see the changes have been able to curtail many of the issues you were encountering. I agree that the changes are quite nice, especially the change to how asteroid exploitations are used. I too switched from production to volatiles for the first time in Alpha 1b. I believe they are waiting for the AI improvements first. Apparently the repulsive trait will be more impactful later on, which Is why it gives so many points now. I suspect they also don't want to adjust Moltar race points just yet. I agree, but this is why I plan to play on impossible once the AI is improved. On impossible the player is not artificially hindered. Instead, the AI is boosted (same as they are in hardcore). I prefer impossible, but I play hardcore right now because the AI is still learning to walk (66% completed, and final 10% is probably the most critical to optimizing its play). Hardcore in the end should be more of an alternative way to play rather than the "hardest".
Excellent. It seems the balance changes of Alpha 1b were most needed and production seems to be curtailed which also allowed other areas of the game to flourish (e.g. using volatiles exploitations to speed up terraforming). Yes, let's keep assessing their usefulness going forward. +2POP may not seem much, but on tiny and small worlds it can make a big difference. Offering more pops at this stage could end up not being beneficial. We'll see. Yes, I think we should start by improving the AI before decreasing the penalty of going with the Repulsive trait. Yes, I've seen it, thanks. Yes, this will be addressed when we improve the AI. I remind that we want to have the AI at full speed when we reach Beta. Yes, as @aReclusiveMind says, Hardcore is to be seen as the ultimate challenge, almost like a survival test. Impossible is the highest difficulty level where the conditions remain "fair" for the player. In Hardcore, the player's start is harsher. This is the only difference from Impossible to Hardcore, by the way. What exactly do you think the behavior for the planetary engineering should be when terraforming ends? Could you please clarify? Yes, this was also requested by others, it's in our TODO list. Thank you! This was also possible in part because of your observations and relevant analysis. The feedback we got from you and other community members has been phenomenal. This makes our lives much easier and enables rapid quality changes.
This is great feedback and quite telling... I think these numbers are still too high, bear with me a moment. If the AI gets to a point where it can counter this... it will make many play-styles non viable and reduce the overall appeal of the game. @Culthrasa maximizes his picks to do this, he takes multiple negative picks which are deemed "safe" and uses that to create an "extreme" situation. For example, easily seen is looked at as two free picks right now, and the same with certain other negative picks. And here lies the answer to gaining better balance. Rather than playing with the numbers, here we need to insure that negative picks hurt. Easily seen is meaningless right now if you don't use espionage, but if it also affects your counter intelligence once the AI starts to use espionage against you... the equation changes. Allow the player to create extreme fashions, yes, but it needs to come at an actual cost. We need to look at the negative picks closely, are they really that detrimental? or are they just a way to stockpile additional picks for customizing races? Right now, too many of them are the the latter.
Yes, the production numbers are expected to come down when the AI is working at full speed. So, we may not be very far from the final production numbers at this point. And even if we are there's little more we can do in this front until the AI is brought up to full speed, in my opinion. Regarding the race customization picks, yes, it may be certainly possible to construct extreme scenarios at the cost of picking negative traits that perhaps don't cost what they should at the moment. That said, and it may come as shock that I say this, I'm not really too concerned in balancing all the race customization perks to a "perfect equilibrium" where all combination of points have the same virtual value. At least not at this stage. It may even be an impossible problem, and in the end it depends a lot on playstyle. I would even go as far as saying that I'm not too concerned, and even expect that there may be some very powerful combinations associated with some particular race picks and playstyles. So, yes, we should work the numbers to remove obvious flaws and things that don't make sense, and not so much on discussing if a certain perk should be -3 or -4, at least at this stage. Sure, Easily Seen is meaningless at the moment if you don't do espionage. However, by not going with espionage the player should lose something in the process, therefore the Easily Seen negative points. In other words, players aren't forced into playing the full espionage game if they don't want to. However, there will be consequences for not doing so. If it's -2 points, -3 or -1 is still too early to tell. Again, it depends on having the AI at full speed before making all the decisions. I remind everyone that the AI does not conduct espionage yet. So, until the AI is brought to full speed, I suggest we curtail our choices if we perceive they may be dependent on the AI being more active, aggressive and dynamic. The production issue we addressed with Alpha 1b was a flaw that in my view would manifest either the AI was playing at full speed or not, and it was largely associated with the prod per pop bonus of the previous asteroid production exploitations. With the change to flat production bonus from asteroid exploitations and several other tweaks I think we reached a good state. And now we need to wait for the AI improvements for most of the balance issues that may surface. That said, we can and should keep discussing if the issues may be AI status dependant or an inherent flaw in the design.
@Adam Solo the number 10 thing... don't have a screenshot right now.. i'll see if i can get one soon.. But basically, the two buttons (the triagle and the bulldozer) get greyed out after terraforming... The bulldozer i get, since you probably will only terraform once towards a ideal planet type. But after that the triagle should remain "colored" (and the production not shifted away from terraforming) so easily to go to eco-transforming... Hope it makes sense without a screenshot
Thanks for the clarification. Yes, it makes sense. The terraforming button is disabled after terraforming but the eco-engineering button could be left enabled if there are eco-engineering options. I took note of this.
It doesn't surprise me at all because it's not what I'm advocating and not what I want. It would be an exercise in futility to do so and remove the reason for having different races to begin with. No, what I'm saying is that creating an Uber-race should come at a price, an Achilles' heel. We all know that player can create a powerful race with 10 picks, with more than that? You've seen the results already. And now maybe I will surprise you Not only do I agree, but I want to leave the numbers as is, the solution isn't there, time for skinning that cat again. Here is a scenario for you I pick repulsive, easily seen and un-creative, that's 10 more picks yes? What did I lose? Repulsive, they still offer me trade treaties but not mining treaties which I would never accept anyway, Khan, and Vxma probably share my style here. I pick easily seen but don't bother with espionage, nothing lost I pick un-creative and suffer to early breakthrough chance...big deal. None of these penalties at this point in time hurt. Now if Repulsive were closer to what it was in MoO2... If easily seen made counter-intelligence hard If un-creative incurred an additional 10-15% cost in all research... Well then, I would think twice So by all means, stop fiddling with the numbers, in some cases I can even say you've gone too far, but a player selecting Repulsive should expect to be fired upon at sight at least half the time, easily seen means don't be shocked when one of your starbases gets blown up by an enemy agent, and if You choose un-creative... expect Homer Simpson to be the head of your research. The AI at 100% will help, to a degree, but it won't be enough by itself if some of these issues aren't looked at.
Pretty much what I do on the picks and I always take Rep in Moo2. That is just to keep the AI from contacting me all the time for trades and such. I do not make mining treaties for sure. I do make trades deals, but not in Moo1 or Moo2. Reason, they always end up in a war. Soon after, I start making money they break the deal. Not much later and they declare war. Not enough data to make any call in ISG, in that regard. I suspect that a bit of a hit to that group of skills makes sense. I just do not know to what extent they should be set at.
"None of these penalties at this point in time hurt." Exactly. At this point they do not, or not much. Making counter-intelligence harder if you have Easily Seen is a great suggestion. When the AI uses espionage this can be handy. Uncreative only affects early-breakthrough at the moment, which can be important, especially in mid-late game (you'll need several scientist leaders to offset this). However, we can think in other ways to spice it up. Repulsive could be enhanced as well. We'll get there.
