eljeffeg
commented
5 years ago Thanks for the feedback! If you want to do a pull request to the repository, @VikingWarriorGaming can take a look. He's working on making the game more balanced. On March 2nd, I pushed an update to try and make the AI research heroes. You can set priority to various research items so I wonder if giving shields and resources a higher priority would also help. One thing I've found with the Asurans is that as soon as the shields run out, you better get moving as their hull goes down quickly.
panzer1b
Well ive been using this mod for some time now (my favorite sins mod period as of this point) and would like to share my experience with attempts at balancing the different factions to not be completely 1 sided.
My testing has thusfar been mostly AI vs AI, 2v2 games where there are 2 locked teams, 3v2 and im on the 3 side but do not actually play agressively (just take 3-4 planets near the home and purely lock them down defensively). Essentially this becomes (i make sure to always have my own spawn between the 2 allys) a 2v2 AI vs AI with no or very minimal human intervention. In this environment ive come to the following conclusions, some of which may be bugs, some of which may be balance issues:
*asurans (happens with goauld too but less often) occasionally get "stuck" early game where they loose their ships (specifically their destiny class or the colony one for goaulds) and then do not build more ships in a timely fashion to overcome their losses. If the enemy capitalizes on this early game they can flatten the asurans by just walking over them unopposed with the exception of defensive structures that wont really do much against a whole fleet even if asurans have the best defenses in game. It doesnt happen always, but when it does its game over for that AI player.
*asuran and human shield research is extremely overpowered, and any AI that does not invest in researching that technology is almost guaranteed to loose (and from what ove seen goauld are the least likely to invest into shield research, which compunds upon them being the weakest faction in the 1st place). Its good that there is a noteable difference between unresearched and fully maxed out, but that difference is so huge and AI doesnt know the fact that it it does not research max shields it is going to be anihilated. Finally, the shield mitigation needs to be lowered by ~50% for both humans and asurans, since it makes it almost impossible to do anything to them late game unless you yourself have that research.
*Continuing the above point, researching has way too much dominance in game results. I know it would be a major undertaking, but i strongly suggest if at all possible to balance factions based on base stats more then end game max research (with some quirks along the way like unlocking human beam guns). This is because the AI is just not smart enough to know what researches are essential to being competitive (specifically you NEED max shields, max resource extraction, and a good deal into weapons for some factions like asurans and their drone shield bypass as well as human beams).
*goaulds are overall way too weak with a few rare exceptions. They have some very powerful abilities and ship combos (hatel disable ships ability especially at LV3, also shared by humans on their achilles), but overall most of their ships, especially capitals like the shutak are just useless in a actual fight against either asurans or humans past early game before they have shield mitigation and high powered guns. Ive found that hatel spam is one of the better tactics (as they can disable ships for a very long time when leveled), supplemented by alot of fodder like the horus purely to keep the enemy's attention off your capitals.
*Along those lines, humans are extremely limited in viable ship choices. They have alot of vessels available to them, but the only viable strat that ive seen working there is rushing the titan research and then spamming 304s (which have the best damage per cost/slots cause of their beams) like crazy supplemented by a handful of capital ships, specifically achilles for the broken disable enemy ships ability and the one with the green asuran beam weapon on it against structures late game (forgot name of this one). Most ships like the morpheus and the other mid game cruisers are nothing more then cannon fodder for the enemy compared to 304s.
Anyways, since i know how to mod games myself (and really liked this mod), i made a few changes to my own version of the game to try and fix this without a complete overhaul of the mod:
*changed asuran and human shields research to have 1/2 as much benefit in every stat. This seems to bring the races shields more in line with each other, and it also makes it so you nolonger have so much crazy shield mitigation that makes the only really effective weapon against it drone spam with their shield bypass capability.
*removed all prebuilt structures from the start of a game around a faction's home planet. This seems to have fixed 90% of the AI hangs at the start of the game (cause they dont seem willing to build colonizer ships or essential research structures otherwise). Also removed any ships that spawn there with the exception of the normal 2 scout vessels when on fast start mode which seems to make the AI upgrade their fleet capacity sooner then when they start with lots of ships.
*made goauld ship research nolonger locked behind heroes. Seems that the AI cant use heroes at all (or well ive never seen them using them) and hforcing the already weakest faction to do twice as much research to get access to all of their capital ships excessively punishing (on both asurans and meatbags heroes are optional research not locked behind anything else which makes it a option and not a requirement to put the points into said research).
Anyways, the above seems to have adjusted the major cause of imbalance and the shield /research change seems to have really helped the goauld be less useless later in the game (they have very good early game capability, but become nothing more then worthless near the end). Not meant to pressure you guys to change the mod or anything, but i just wanted to throw in my suggestions for future development with regards to balance.