Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Unofficial patch...
Re: Unofficial patch... |
Tue, 07 March 2006 09:33 |
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Madman | | Officer Cadet 1st Year | Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003 Location: New Zealand | |
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PricklyPea wrote on Tue, 07 March 2006 06:32 | A previous incarnation of my mod had CA with 50% terraform cost. With TT that equates to 35 res and is more or less the same as insta-forming.
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Is saying '35 res is more or less the same as instaforming' looking at a playtest or guessing?
I don't have the mod to play with, but looking at some numbers:
When I colonize a planet, I normally dump about 50K pop on it (usually a little less, but say 50K for argument). If I grab a -10% yellow, that's going to take about 10 years to terraform it to a green (against 20 years for a non-CA), or 7 years for a TT-CA. That's just to green, not to fully terraformed. After it gets to green the pop will start growing and the terraforming rate will speed up. This is several years of no factories, mines, defenses or ships being built. Alternatively, build some factories first (which I'd do for a yellow this deep), and you've still got a fairly long time to get such a planet productive.
OA's _could_ help this dramatically, but they've got to be built (expensive at the start of the game when the ramp up is most useful), moved around (again, engines at the start of the game aren't always great), are very vulnerable (right through the game, not just at the start), and lots of micromanagement. If you want to use OAs for most terraforming, that's an extra colonization expense, and a lot of effort every time a new terraforming tech is reached (unless you leave an OA at each planet).
All this removes the main current CA advantage of 'dump some colonists on a planet that can be made green, and whoosh - instantly productive).
This suggests to me that a 50% terraforming cost for CA is quite weak enough until demonstrated otherwise. Remember this was the CA that was considered too weak and improved (although without sufficient time to see how weak it really was).
it would be interesting if someone could testbed an instaforming CA vs. a 50% terraforming cost CA vs. a roughly similar JOAT.
Let's weaken the CA, not gut it.
[Updated on: Wed, 08 March 2006 00:17] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Fri, 10 March 2006 13:56 |
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Marduk | | Ensign | Messages: 345
Registered: January 2003 Location: Dayton, OH | |
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Ptolemy wrote on Fri, 03 March 2006 23:31 | The solutions I have proposed are based on the simple facts that the the original code is not available to us in the player community. However, Prickly Pear has dissected some of the actual program and was able to turn the instaforming off.
Adjusting it to provide one click per turn would certainly be a major original code change but, changing the starting point values of races apparently is fairly easy.
Ptolemy
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Changing CA to provide one click per turn should be trivial - adjust the 10% chance of a permanent change to a 100% chance. Replacing instaforming with this should get pretty close to balance by itself. Hard to say if they should be weakened a little more or strengthened a little bit from this point, but testing should reveal that pretty quick. This lets CAs avoid the MM of terraforming if they want to, or pay for some to ramp up a bit faster. As I see it, the biggest strength of this change would be much faster conversion of reds into greens compared to other races.
Edit: Admittedly this isn't quite the same as regular terraforming since it involves a permanent change, but I'm not sure that's a problem.
[Updated on: Fri, 10 March 2006 14:07] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Fri, 10 March 2006 18:43 |
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Marduk wrote on Sat, 11 March 2006 07:56 | Changing CA to provide one click per turn should be trivial - adjust the 10% chance of a permanent change to a 100% chance. Replacing instaforming with this should get pretty close to balance by itself. Hard to say if they should be weakened a little more or strengthened a little bit from this point, but testing should reveal that pretty quick. This lets CAs avoid the MM of terraforming if they want to, or pay for some to ramp up a bit faster. As I see it, the biggest strength of this change would be much faster conversion of reds into greens compared to other races.
Edit: Admittedly this isn't quite the same as regular terraforming since it involves a permanent change, but I'm not sure that's a problem.
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I suspect the effecet if this will be to give CA effectively unlimited terraforming, since the "original" value is changed with the permanant change.
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Fri, 10 March 2006 21:52 |
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c64k | | Petty Officer 3rd Class | Messages: 42
Registered: March 2006 Location: .us | |
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gible wrote on Fri, 10 March 2006 18:43 | I suspect the effecet if this will be to give CA effectively unlimited terraforming, since the "original" value is changed with the permanant change.
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The perma-change happens fairly infrequently. And the change, when it does happen, is miniscule. In my experience, games never last long enough for perma-change to have any sort of noticible effect.
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Fri, 10 March 2006 23:57 |
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I see final goal as a patch people will accept that is better. I see final question as "do you want to switch to this unofficial patch version?" months from now after testing/tinkering. If we get large majority to aggree we likely can switch, "where there is a will there is a way".
From that perspective, if you look at the first poll and comments after there are some (perhaps half) who are attached to instaforming. A patch that loses instaforming may seem inferior to them. A patch that still has instaforming but otherwise balances CA is likely to be seen as superior (to our current version) even by those who hate instaforming.
The logic behind instaforming lovers seems to be it makes the races more different/more replay value, less boring, and less micromanagement.
IMO it is easiest to get majority to accept instaforming + somewhat more expensive OA + resource wizard penalty, based on comments and votes in this thread.
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PP (Packet Physics) PRT... I see giving race wizard more points as easiest solution to make this race more common. Any good alternatives we can hack into current exe?
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 11 March 2006 00:33 |
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Those changes probably wouldn't balance CA out very much. I'd still ban the PRT from most of my games. As I see CA, it is a race that is supposed to be able to tinker with planet environments - hence the OA. I don't see that 2500 people landing on a planet can instantly terraform the entire planet. Instaforming doesn't even make sense since the CA doesn't actually ever need to build an OA. Take the instaforming away and now the CA needs his OA's.
Ptolemy
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 11 March 2006 01:17 |
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Quote: | wouldn't balance CA out very much
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IMO that is like saying AR needs mineral fountain reduced or it never will be balanced (because mineral fountain like instaforming can be so powerful). We haven't said how much to reduce race wizard yet. Can you honestly tell me that CA will be superior even if its race wizard loses 2000 points? Obviously there must be some level of race wizard points that would "balance CA", though I'm not sure we can agree on it.
I personally don't care that much one way or the other, am interested in finding some combo that majority will accept. Either way (instaform race wizard penalized or no instaform) I see an interesting but different race.
[Updated on: Sat, 11 March 2006 01:24] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 11 March 2006 02:01 |
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Finding the right cost for the PRT (or any of the others for that matter) is an excercise that simply requires testing. By adjusting the cost of PRT's we can create a much more balanced game where any given race is equal to any other. Races like JOAT, CA should start in the negative like the IT does. SD shouldn't be getting quite such a boost whereas WM and probably PP should be (or PP starting at 0).
Testing is easy enough by simply running 50 year tests with max minerals turned on. Each race should be able to reach a maximum resource ccount that is quite equal to all the other races. It is useless to have a race capable of 50k by year 50 whereas another PRT is only capable of 22k given identical circumstances.
Ptolemy
Ptolemy
[Updated on: Sat, 11 March 2006 02:02]
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sat, 11 March 2006 19:32 |
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Balancing is not about "Man I hate it when whatever runs me over." (As a person, who's actually managed to make a game that actually IS mathmatically perfectly balanced, in all ways.) The way to balance an anything, is to equally and objectively evaluate how the thing behaves both AS the thing and the things it's effecting. Otherwise you end up with an imbalance... And then the cries "OH NO! Now it's TOO WEAK!" And that's the comment from the user's perspective. My advice as to how to fix CA, is to simply REDO EVERY PRT's points...
Rebalance them all to a new balance. That both revitalizes the game, AND allows you to *Ahem*, objectively predetermine a new function/role/playable nature of each PRT for everyone. So CA might still be strong, pfft! Who cares, if all PRT's are equal? (I think WM's too weak, so if your going to lower strength then I'd suggest also upgrading weakness.) That's what balancing really is anyway..
On the other hand, reality's unbalanced anyway so imbalance is realistic, therefore balance is unrealstic, but makes nice games. So as far as that goes, why not make a new PRT stronger... Like make PP the big bad boy, change it's % chance change on it's packets (I always thought it took too much ore to remote terraform a world with PP anyway.) Or make up for some of AR's short comings, say... Allow them to pop drop maybe, or loose less in transport, or heck, just reverse their pop loss in transport (I mean IS and SD both share Speed Mines afterall). Or perhaps even better, just give them JUMPGATES! That'd chance the spice of the whole game right there. (They are alternate reality anway so why not?) That right there will alter a whole bunch of stuff! Or adjust HE, or IS, or whatever...
Or perhaps, we should make some tweaks to the 11th PRT... The Mystery Trader... Have him hand out a few other things... Like other PRT's toys or something... (Maybe a ship capturing thing [ha ha, yeah right!] oh well so much for that little wish .) It's a thought anyway.
Basically I'm just saying, take the whole group of PRT's, and renormalize them. If you want to make things kinda realistic, shift the balance somewhere else, or to make it unrealistic but less complainable (which seems the goal here). Create a whole new normal for the game and shift all the PRT's short comings and such that they create what Stars already has, which is a complex series of rock paper scissors circles.. IT is opposite HE (stargates), HE is opposite AR (Population extremes), IS is opposite AR (pop transport), IS is opposite SS (anti/cloaking), WM opposite SD (mines), etc...
[Updated on: Sat, 11 March 2006 19:48]
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sun, 12 March 2006 20:05 |
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Fair point, but I'm just saying that balance is about raising the weak and lowering the strong... I mean or else your just not being fair and balance is about fairness. Isn't it? (Also I just wanted to make an excuse to have a race with native jumpgates )
Degrade CA's terraforming a bit, upgrade PP's a bit? I mean it's REALLY expensive on ore to remote adjust a planet with PP, and really simple with CA... <Thinking> CA.. CA... CA... Everyone talks about them.. I want to see what happens if WM or PP (which I think are the two least common/weak/least winable races) get boosted instead. What if we kept the strong as is, and just picked up the weaker races instead a bit? Make PP and WM more winable? Lowering CA or IS or JOAT I don't think will do that.. I think it'll just make the game more frustrating in someways for those races to be played. You get more winable race variety and ease some player stress on playing the lower end races.
I might also add, that this isn't the first game community I've seen where the players who've been upset decide that "balancing" is roughly translated into "Please make the game harder to play." I really don't know why that happens. (Changing the game as little as possible is also somehow a common delusional attitude. Because when you get down to it. You don't really want that anyway.) The last community I saw this in, had source code access to their game and they... Argued about balancing until the day the game community tore itself apart and died. So PLEASE, BE OBJECTIVE and think about balance as a set of scales not a pair of handguns to shoot the knee caps off your least favorite opponents.
[Updated on: Sun, 12 March 2006 20:20]
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sun, 12 March 2006 22:13 |
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I think kotk is getting fairly close to the mark there. I agree that it is better balance by weakening the econ-strong races a little bit, rather than strengthening the econ-weak races, as it lengthens the period before nubians start to make all the races look similar... The game is not very imbalanced as it stands, so we must be very very gentle. So what if a JOAT/CA gets to Nubs first? It should! However if a SS race gets there 5 years later the JOAT is not in such a great position any more...
Some minor LRT changes are important. NAS definately should not give points to JOATs. OBRM should not give points to anybody, except perhaps AR. If you fix the JOAT NAS cost, then JOAT doesn't need a penalty at all...
I don't think normal-growth HE race should be penalised at all... I wonder if it is possible to reduce the number of points it gets from low growth rates instead...
I'd suggest something like this:
HE +0 AND decrease points gained by going to very low growth rates (say -50 points at 6%)
SD -25
SS +0
PP +50 OR improve packet terraforming efficiency
WM +0
IT -25
CA -150 OR remove instaforming (leave rest unchanged)
AR +0
IS -25
JT +0 AND make NAS cost points
OBRM should be zero or negative cost for all races except AR
Other LRT tweaks would be nice, to make under-used LRTs more appealing (especially UR, GR, MA, ARM)
[Updated on: Sun, 12 March 2006 22:14] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 13 March 2006 03:10 |
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How is this different from the common practice of being required to leave points unused?
Best short term fix imo.
[Updated on: Mon, 13 March 2006 03:11] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 13 March 2006 04:27 |
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wizard | | Officer Cadet 3rd Year | Messages: 279
Registered: January 2004 Location: Aachen, Germany | |
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I like Kotk's ideas. Their main advantage: those rules are simple, easy to implement and easy to agree on. IMO, that's the way we should go...
tweaking LRTs would be nice too - but, in sake of simplicity, if at all, we should just modify their costs by a fixed value. I.E. lower Value of OBRM and RS, raise value for UR, ARM, BET and so on. I think that's the only way we can have an agreement. Other ideas are mostly just to complicated...
Andreas / wizard
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 13 March 2006 05:08 |
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m.a@stars | | Commander | Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004 Location: Third star to the left | |
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crr65536 wrote on Mon, 13 March 2006 06:04 | From a practical point of view, the calculation of points for low PGRs is partially based on the hab, so it might be pretty hard to change (as suggested for HE).
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They also have a fixed point boost, at least for those below 10% PGR. That could be easily tweaked.
All in all, I vote for *gentle* changes, be them to LRTs, PRTs or whatever.
I also dislike the idea of humbling too much the "econ" PRTs. There must exist the possibility of a "non-econ" race to prey on (or team with) the econ-heavy ones, much as the SS benefits from other's research. Absence of strong econs could mean doom for many "specialist" races, too.
Nubians have been mentioned as the win-all endgame toy which makes everybody sprint for them and encourage "boring" uniformity. As a nubian-addict myself, I'd propose tweaking the overly powerful nubian hull. What if its base armor was halved? What if it was toned down from a whooping 5000 to something like 4500? Would they still be the econ-rewarding mainstay of all navies?
[Updated on: Mon, 13 March 2006 05:10]
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 13 March 2006 07:41 |
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Madman | | Officer Cadet 1st Year | Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003 Location: New Zealand | |
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gible wrote on Mon, 13 March 2006 21:10 | How is this different from the common practice of being required to leave points unused?
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Two reasons:
(1) Most people who want to host games don't want to have to think about points costs for balancing the PRTs like CA - much easier just to ban them.
(2) It means that even for a vanilla game, you have to have someone check the races. The game I'm hosting is a completely vanilla game _except_ for some restrictions and leftover points for CA and JOAT/NAS and because of this I had to go to all the trouble of getting a third party to check the races. If there was an approximate balance to start with, getting that game going would have been much easier.
(3) If you specify leftover points have to be defenses (which is usual), it reduces the options for 'specialty' races. For instance, I was once trying to design a 'mineless' CA race that required 50 points of surface minerals to not be crippled. (OK, it turned out I couldn't quite make it robust enough to want to play it anyway).
[Updated on: Mon, 13 March 2006 07:54] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 13 March 2006 07:50 |
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Madman | | Officer Cadet 1st Year | Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003 Location: New Zealand | |
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m.a@stars wrote on Mon, 13 March 2006 23:08 | Nubians have been mentioned as the win-all endgame toy which makes everybody sprint for them and encourage "boring" uniformity. As a nubian-addict myself, I'd propose tweaking the overly powerful nubian hull. What if its base armor was halved? What if it was toned down from a whooping 5000 to something like 4500? Would they still be the econ-rewarding mainstay of all navies?
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I like the idea of weakening nubians, as it makes RS not such an ovbious advantage for the late game, and at the same time possibly dropping them to tech 25 so BET becomes something worth considering.
However I think ideas like this belong in a patch version 2.
In the first patch, I'd suggest staying with things that can generally be agreed on:
* weakening CA (nearly everyone agrees it should be weakened, the issue is how),
* making NAS less of just 'bonus points' for JOAT,
* Possibly making one or two of the weaker races (PP, maybe WM?) cheaper in the race wizard to encourage more people to play them.
Maybe I'm wrong and there is a broad consensus on some other changes like nubians, in which case sure, put those changes in too
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