[Updated on: Wed, 08 March 2006 00:17]

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I agree with the Madman; instaforming means that colonists produce resources ANYWHERE they are dumped, right away. Delay that by even a few years (cheap terr instead), and they become more in line with the other races.

Some one said something about not reducing the flavor of races; if terraforming costs 70 resources for CA and OAs become too expensive, then they become a sort of inferior TT; flavorless.

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[Updated on: Fri, 10 March 2006 14:07]

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[Updated on: Sat, 11 March 2006 01:24]

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[Updated on: Sat, 11 March 2006 02:02]

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OA is actually quite fine military toy and ... one of the best diplomacy toys. Still i am against to make it way worse. The game is not boring exactly because of all these toys and abilities. 2 last times i saw CA in game were long ago ... in one the CA was killed by nearby fast growth HE in other by two nearby WMs.

Having somewhat smaller cap between economic mights of different PRTs is good idea in general. That can be adjusted with RW PRT cost changes. The only danger is to change too lot and to turn it upside down so PP is better monster than CA.

If possible then some LRT cost changes are maybe considerable too? My views:
IFE - would often pay 10 points more for it
TT - usually too expensive for others but CA but it seems to be calculated
ARM - would substract at least 10 points to make it worth considering
ISB - OK for these points more or less
GR - would like to get ~20 points more from it
UR - would consider it if it costed ~20 points less
MA - maybe if it costed 30 points less or gave access to some unique gadget
NRSE - would probably take even for 10 points less
CE - lot more pain than NAS so ~20 points more would be fair
OBRM - really gives at least 20 points more than should
NAS - gives lot of points but i still often play without it. 10 points less would be OK
LSP - gives OK points more or less
BET - not sure if i took it if it gave 30 points more
RS - its too cheap or even gives points i always have it

[Updated on: Sat, 11 March 2006 18:38]

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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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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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Captain Maim wrote on Mon, 13 March 2006 03:05

What if we kept the strong as is, and just picked up the weaker races instead a bit?

If to do like you suggested then i think that general trend should be to have less points in RW ... something like this:

HE -50    SD -50
SS +0     PP +50 
WM +0     IT -50
CA -150   AR +0
IS -50    JT -100

Why i think so? Economic strenght of stronger races seems to be the problem, not the weakness of weaks. Strong races advance too quick and run away with score and tech. Nubians are often deciding power even in small games (without slow tech). Nubians are always deciding power in large games regardless of slow tech. Duning most races down would make it harder to reach high technolgies and so the games would be somewhat more interesting.

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[Updated on: Sun, 12 March 2006 22:14]

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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).

Also, I think PP takes a significant disadvantage from OBRM (it needs a lot of minerals to packet with). Perhaps it should not take a penalty for it then?

Of course, issues like the second point in this post are why it's hard to agree on fair ways to balance the game.

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[Updated on: Mon, 13 March 2006 03:11]

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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).

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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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?

I would go with that. halving(or similar) the armor and it still has more than a BB(2000) but much less than a DN(4500)...would revitalise the endgame WM too. Perhaps 3-4000 if half is too much.

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[Updated on: Mon, 13 March 2006 07:54]

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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?

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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m.a@stars wrote on Mon, 13 March 2006 12:08

Absence of strong econs could mean doom for many "specialist" races, too.

You are effectively saying that some "baby" PRTs are "doomed" to boringly easy game because no big tit "mommies" and badass "candymans" around? Its pure demagogy!!!

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