Need a place to get feedback on current build 0.5.73

[temuchin-]

Wow a lot of changes, the booking setup looks to being going in a positive direction.

kinda weird to see mutants having 9,900 pop plus 2000 on a planet w/ only 1 slot?? Not sure why it is necessary to penalize higher level buildings. I have already shown it can be nearly as useful to only use L1 research centers, except for humans. So now humans probably only want to use L1 research centers and titanium factories??? Though the idea of only owning 15 planets can make for an interesting game, unless you are mutant / pirate player. Maybe I am not understanding what you were typing in release notes?

There are a few other things that stand out in the notes, I am revamping a server to run testing locally, might create a third server so I can compare everything side by side. Also are you going to reduce all weapon damages accordingly w/ the reduction in buidling hp?? One thing I have enjoyed about the game is that it attempts to balance everything, & everything is interlinked, so you tweak one part then every other piece of the game is thrown off balance. To do this it looks like the basic structure of the game was loosely based on Jackson's play 90 series. I'm thinking that last statement should be very important.

[dahaic]

Thank you for the feedback. for the mutant and it's structures - it's purely AI race, not meant to be human controlled in any way, and thus has some specifics. For example right now, there is nothing like government power in effect for mutant. So population of high level mutant structures is just fluff, symbolizing there are hordes of them :) It has almost no gameplay effect.

For penalizing higher level buildings, I guess you mean the repair changes? Please check #162 for explanation. I don't understand why 15 planets, I don't see anything implying anything like that in the notes, sorry. Can you clarify?

Also for the reduction of all weapons - I can see why the confusion. There is no change in maximum HP. What changes are costs, and initial HP. I.e. it's expected that structure will get up to speed gradually as it repairs.

For the overall balance of the game - I feel my drastic changes still break game less then original introduction of Solar Factory ;) Jokes aside, more organic, and simpler economy is something we discussed extensively with Qark. His view was the game needs to get simpler, that the original complexity was not really fun to play. I am trying to change game in ways that end game has approximately same balance as before, just the journey there is more enjoyable. I am building on top, not destroying and building anew.

[temuchin-]

I have been reading more of the commits. OK so mutants are now running level 1 structures, so my worries of long int conversion failure (huge honking number) is not an issue.

Now I still haven't started up the new server, or finished reading all the commits, so there maybe something that balances out the fact that empires will on average be 1.5 to 3 million pop where they would have been .75 to 1.5 million.

Yes I do run the mutants. Yes I add multipurpose single strong facility to rebel players & then fuse in the mutant Intelligent Scripting to run them (need to pare down their expansionist tendencies). Run the game and I am off to the races. In some games I only drop in to get a feel for how things run. Sometimes I start a game and get a feel for the various approaches to what works. This helps me get a feel for how each race is performing.

as far as balancing & breaking. That will become apparent w/ playtesting. Right now it seems you are trying to encourage more minutia, & darn it I didn't sign up to be emperor, so I can tell my janitors how to sweep their brooms just right or else the lights might go out over the Empire.

Solar factories, weird, that seems to be the thing that makes humans playable (orbital lab complex seems more painfully broken, which is why humans never care about population late game, they just cruise along with about 60 RsrchPnts per facility, laughing at the other pathetic races attempts) Which Yes I fully enjoy the use of my Orbital Labs. Because when I am a cyborg I will make use of my nearly impervious cheap small ships, maybe making a special alliance w/ bionic (preferred) or human player, to go over the top. When I play Bionics I will maximize my planets building hives as soon as I can (legacy god gift); tactically I will make an alliance (preference for cyborg alliance) to help me tactically seal victory. :) it is the all the myriad of ways to gain a small advantage that makes the game interesting. It is all the ways to counter these strategies that makes the game fun.

If I wanted to play a game only to be crowned victorious I would run the following script. for f=1 until f=0 printf "You Win"

Instead I am very focused on keeping a game in scope & balanced. So if I ever seem like I am harping, it is simply that little voice in my head w/ many years of professional / recreational game development speaking out.

[temuchin-]

pre .5.7.3 release I was looking at offering the cyborgs the ability to "mine" the cores of gas giants, in an effort to allow them the chance improve their lots, because right now unless you find a human friend or hit the lottery on mineral resources, the cyborgs are dead out of the gate.

Aspect was reduce gas giant radius for each point of mineral improvement to a planet of your choice in system. A bit like asteroid mining but enough flavor / functional difference to make it feel cyborg.

Another thought was to go w/ the computerized them & the improvements in various properties of material the colder it gets. Yes I was thinking of the SuperFluid Research Complex. Totally not a rip off from the humans.

[dahaic]

Average empire used TL3 structures. There is no benefit of not using them if you researched them. That means average of ~1500 per slot (counting farms and entertainment centers and 1/8 unemployment it needed). With the changes, average slot will be around 1700 on TL3 and 2000 on TL6. I don't see the drastic difference you predict, and I don't understand where it stems from.

For the increase of "minutia" you see in my changes, can you be more specific? Because it's exact opposite of what I am trying to do. My goal is to remove benefits of micromanagement, so it's ok to play well with only taking a look at the game once or twice a day.

Solar factory (note that I was talking about original introduction) was so overpowered that human strategy was "hurry up to TL4, start doing solar factories, hurry up to TL5, start moving planets closer to sun, win".

[temuchin-]

Aaaaaah so it only looks at the tech level of the building there (and defaults to highest possible if no building built). It sounded like it defaulted all building to highest tech researched.

[dahaic]

Pop "penalty" is defined by TL of the player. So it sounded right. Examples: Factory, previous version: 562 Factory, player TL1: 600 Factory, player TL6: 1100 TL3 Factory, previous version: 1686 TL3 Factory, player TL3: 1800 TL3 Factory, player TL6: 2100

[temuchin-]

I still feel really bad for anyone that would play cyborgs now. I will miss being all borgish. Borg only has one food production facility which takes advantage of mineral deposits. They keep farms as this quaint idea, that now takes twice the population/ food to operate.

Maybe the need is to free up cyborg building constraints a little (with the idea of using lack of energy and gas giants as the niche for cyborgs). (or maybe increase produciton of cyborg factories, cause right now Ti factories are the only way to go)

Keep this in mind as test games progress. As good as cyborg endgame ships are, they are still very underpowered. Increasing Factory Complex prod makes them higher variance than before so they will be very powerful of still weak. Giving them the ability to improve mineral deposits at the cost of other planet slots would have to be carefully balanced but if done right would make them solidly more powerful, which is to say competitive. (I am committed to submitting every post w/ a text editor, github and their small text boxes that show me 4 lines)

[temuchin-]

So what does the following statement mean? "Structures are now deteoriating if not utilized to 100 %."

Does utilization mean pop & energy being fully allocated? or does it mean if a building is not tasked w/ a job to complete it degrades?

[dahaic]

If structure has only 60 % of it's needs (pop/en) allocated, it will slowly drop HP to that 60 %.

[temuchin-]

Ok, was sure that was already working (for pop at least), energy it would just ramp down effectiveness.

Also Great news, 17 planets before you hit your empires max pop effectiveness (double that number is about where you cause morale to tank out which means 34 planets max). Now this is assuming you max habitable surface area , if you don't max that you can increase 50% to 100% more.

Greater news, that no longer matters. No more need for entertainment centers or government centers.

Might back up on morale changes, re visit what is trying to be accomplished here then wade in again. Also Spore colony is now pointless. just build 10 cheap adv col ships & keep on expanding. Also morale bonus of adv col now feels redundant.

[dahaic]

Can you explain, what do you consider "empires max pop effectiveness"? I don't get it.

Game I now play, I have 20 planets, and population of 120k. Not having government center would definitely make my bigger planets inefficient and with morale hits. (With gov center, I also enjoy nice efficiency bonus, of course)

[temuchin-]

When the pop of an empire maxes out government type it becomes less efficient for morale. At about 2.3 times limit of government center the pop becomes a major drain on morale & research.

So for this test take 2 empires side by side, have regular backups of game data scheduled. Gen em up with the same seed, because having the same universe for initial conditions is important. Now the control group runs as human (good avg race that is adaptable to most threats). The 1st test group goes on a crash expansion(lots of military pwr, lots of industry) w/ minimalist research (never go beyond level 2, cause nuclear reactor & titanium factory are potentially the best structures in the game.

I have about 3 to 10 pages of text on what happens when you run this test. Feel free to explore it for yourself, it is interesting. If I can get Henry Case to set up his account (he has synced github repository w/ his eclipse client, but i have never seen book the 3 player galaxy game) we can run this ( i recommend the game run twice an hour for speed testing.

[temuchin-]

A quick snippet. Using the optimum human (100 solar energy)

Then: to produce 1 RP (Solar Conv, Hydro farm, Lab complex) used to require 47 pop. Now: to produce 1 RP (Solar Conv, Hydro farm, Lab complex) now requires, 59 pop. (this factors in the pop resources required to produce food, power (plus fractional food requirement for pwr production)) This is a 20~25% increase in pop. Keep in mind This is the ideal empire w/ no productivity& perfect resource utilization, also no space navy (no production no navy) The inefficiency will only get worse when you consider after you get enough pop that you can finally qualify for the pop support penalty ( RsrchPopFreeLimit-Current Pop * 0.0021 = Population support Research Penalty. I highly recommend human players never go beyond factories/Tit fact until you get to (close to)Solar factories & decrease orbit radius. This gets worse as you increase tech, but is generously offset by orbital labs.

Bio gets no such help (in Legacy they get the Hive which is an Uber OP structure) and generally will suffer from steeper slope for diminishing returns as they grow beyond (Govt Struct pop limit *2.5).

Cyborgs. your only research facility beyond research facility, Titanium factory. Use the Titanium Factory to augment your research labs. If you don't have high mineral planets in your area, then why did you pick cyborgs? so assume 1.5 prod mineral mod here (51 production) will give you about 8 RP per turn which is worse than a research lab, but totally better for building things. Once you go beyond level 2, things will get grim until you get to level 6 (this is where you get cool war toys & a halfway decent defense satellite). Only then does titanium hulls really become worthy of the investment (until then save your titanium for factories). Also you never get a better food source or power source (def sat reduces the suckage of building def structs). Cyborgs by dent of being the least structure efficient build really face a steep slope for diminishing returns of keeping RP greater than 0.

Once you consider that your tech will never devolve below level 2. It becomes abundantly clear that maybe keeping your tech at level 2. Or crash research to 6, design cool tools then burn research back to level 2-1.

What this means is w/ much micro managing you can use techniques to keep morale up while either suiciding to level 6, or just power across the universe w/ basic ships.

[dahaic]

Well, checking pop/RP is interesting metric. These are values for Cyborg, with one Food Factory and one Enh. PP per 5x Research Hub (this ratio is kind of worst case scenario). Each line is tech level (of course first two lines are theoretical, as these are utilizing TL3 structures), value is RP penalty per RP point. Old pop model:

>>> for a in range(1, 7):
...  (11250)/125 * sciPtsPerCitizen[a]
... 
0
0.0675
0.135
0.1575
0.18
0.19125

Current pop model:

>>> for a in range(1, 7):
...  (10000 + a * 700)/125 * sciPtsPerCitizen[a]
... 
0
0.06825
0.14400000000000002
0.1785
0.216
0.240125

New model if we account 0.125 bonus for morale, as now pop gives us +10.

>>> for a in range(1, 7):
...  (10000 + a * 700)/(125 * 1.125) * sciPtsPerCitizen[a]
... 
0.0
0.0608
0.1290666666666667
0.1592888888888889
0.192
0.21457777777777778

I don't see the comparison alarming, tbh. Please mind that slowing down high-TL players was one of the side goals. To make rushes to particular TL a bit less of a no-brainer.

[temuchin-]

Well if this is your goal, then all that is left is to test it & move on.

Keep in mind rushes were already viable (and very powerful in the right hands). Now they become utterly devastating, In the right hands it now looks to be the unstoppable tool.

(note when figuring pop per sci point as the metric, i was using total pop so total pop per sci point = pop per sci point + pop per food unit used + pop per power points used+pop per food unit used for power points used (yes vanishingly small, yet significant in the larger scheme of things).

[dahaic]

Keep in mind rushes were already viable (and very powerful in the right hands). Now they become utterly devastating, In the right hands it now looks to be the unstoppable tool.

What do you base this on? Changes to the population and morale benefit low-TL players, while slowing down research of high-TL players. There's nothing to make rushes more powerful than before.

1x Food Factory, 1x Enh OPP and 5x Research Hub has been exacly that - taking into account total population. 1 food factory on 0 mineral planet produces 100 (actually 125 on 3-5, I counted with 100), I took Enh OPP produces 150, which is definitely below average (planet with 40 minerals). So yeah, I picked very unfavorable scenario, checked it's not looking bad, and consider it not a problem.

[temuchin-]

There are three major strategy types early game (ignoring initial colony rush stage, which now happens faster as well & this is not necessarily a bad thing).

1. Quick research to Level X (the final research goals vary as situation the demands.)
2. Balanced approach (where the player attempts to balance prod research mil. While carefully expanding until the empire is in an optimum position.)
3. Rush strategy (where player puts military & production first. With a bigger hit to research more extreme forms of rush gain a boost in success)

/ you could claim an all production strategy, w/ some other pay off. // as stated before, seems like something that should be tested, which means multiple people required. /// BTW Henry case says he is booked, looked earlier & saw 1 player in 9P , 2 players in 3P brawl.