Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Unofficial patch...
| Unofficial patch... |
Sun, 12 February 2006 12:37  |
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I was browsing the internet, and noticed a certain game I used to play, age of wonders 2, had an "unofficial patch" that people switched to. (aow2.heavengames.com)
In the past they had mods, but it was interesting how people picked some conservative changes from mods to tune game a little in way that everyone liked.
It got me thinking again that if we all could agree on some small conservative changes to stars, we could do the same, call it an "unofficial patch" and everyone including autohost switch to it after testing.
I suggest if more than 2/3 of people like a change, we may throw it in after testing.
I personnally would like:
PP stronger (more points in racial wizard)
CA weaker (less points in racial wizard)
HE bit stronger (perhaps allowed 100/250 gates)
Reduced cost to armour (both in resources and minerals)
Tuning to make LRT OBRM less wanted and GR, BET bit more wanted. (RS would be affected by cost of armour reduction)
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sun, 12 February 2006 16:21  |
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1: I am suggesting conservtive changes that must can agree on. I am not claiming my list is the master list, but giving a starting point, and others and add to or prune till most of us agree. Anything we can't agree on isn't done.
2: "...and isn't just a number change" I am trying to stick to stuff that is numbers changes. So for example if giving HE 100/250 gates isn't just a simple flag, then we would do something different.
3: Just as official patches before, an agreement that we all switch to the latest "unofficial patch"
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but that was quite a radical set of change
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And I am thinking that a modest set of changes and the understanding that this is for everyone rather than a fringe might make the patch fly.
Freestars isn't going to change the need for a debate, we either do it now or later. Anything we can improve now would be automatically there when/if freestars comes out.
[Updated on: Sun, 12 February 2006 16:22] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sun, 12 February 2006 17:57 |
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 Madman |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| multilis wrote on Mon, 13 February 2006 10:21 |
1: I am suggesting conservtive changes that must can agree on. I am not claiming my list is the master list, but giving a starting point, and others and add to or prune till most of us agree. Anything we can't agree on isn't done.
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That makes sense. We might find it's a very short or empty list by the time we intersect people's preferences, but that's fine.
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2: "...and isn't just a number change" I am trying to stick to stuff that is numbers changes. So for example if giving HE 100/250 gates isn't just a simple flag, then we would do something different.
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Giving HE 100/250 gates won't be a simple flag, the others you suggested would be just numbers. There will be people though who claim they can safely change the code without any nasty side effects. I would not want to rely on that.
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3: Just as official patches before, an agreement that we all switch to the latest "unofficial patch"
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The difference here is that with the official patches, there was checking in the code that the right version was being run. Depending on how that checking is done (hopefully it's just a version number stored somewhere), it might or might not be easy to get that behaviour out of an unoffical patch.
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Freestars isn't going to change the need for a debate, we either do it now or later. Anything we can improve now would be automatically there when/if freestars comes out.
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I'd suggest that it changes the nature of the debate somewhat (particularly if there is no resolution to the serial# problem, such as re-availability or pooling, in which case Stars! is on the way out, and Freestars offers the only way forwards). There might be cases of "here's the change we can all agree we'd _like_ to make, but for the moment we'll have to make do with this one instead", or even "here's something we want to fix, but the only mechanisms we agree on are something we can't do within Stars!"
[Updated on: Sun, 12 February 2006 18:02] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Sun, 12 February 2006 18:49 |
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Giving HE 100/250 gates won't be a simple flag
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Looking at the changes by mod from PricklyPea it may easy. I don't know.
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I'd like to change the abilities rather than race wizard points
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Instaforming was turned off in last mod, imo part matter of what we can get most people to agree to.
I think our wars start quicker and end quicker then in times past so minerals don't run out anymore. Perhaps people want useful MA for earlier in game? Would help those trying to go -m.
imo UR is underrated and IFE is overrated based on how people testbed.
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I find myself taking RS less than half the time.
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Armour affects gating, battlespeed, (fuel consumption), who gets last move on battleboard and costs lots.
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Mon, 13 February 2006 21:15 |
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Side note ... lighter armour makes overcloakers harder to make for others but IS and SD and these two PRT-s are really strong enough
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I suspect you means IS and SS - not SD.
And yes, the suggestions for JOAT and CA are valid. In the main, NAS should not give a JOAT points and should be fairly equivelent to what happens with NAS and the PP. CA should not have insta-forming. In a way, I think insta-forming may have been a design error. Terraforming should be cheaper for a CA than other races - just like mineral packets are cheaper for PP's. CA's have the orbital adjuster and this is what should be the main advantage for the CA. The OA though should be quite costly and impossible to build at a space dock - i.e. one orbital adjuster module should weigh 200 kt and the cost should be reasonable - say around 200 resources. OA's should not be cheap to build since they are going to be giving back resources to the CA by automatically terraforming every year.
Ptolemy
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Tue, 14 February 2006 08:46 |
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| iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1204
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
| Ptolemy wrote on Tue, 14 February 2006 03:15 |
CA should not have insta-forming...
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In the mod from PricklyPea CA has everything you mentioned, but the costs of terra (200 res). I did several simple testbeds and can tell you, that it's really slowed down. With a TT HG CA I'm not able to get much over 30k res at 2450 in a tiny packed uni (with "regular" Stars! my usual mark is 60k-80k). They behave quite like the HPs - until each planet gets the costly CoH (560 res, 200+ of each mineral) they don't grow lots. Even after that, the next level of TT means they'll have a planet fully terraformed in ~5 turns (I haven't done a single bit of costly manual terra, rather invested in instalations, Space Stations and CoHs), and the new (yellow) ones only after green ones are finished. Those yellows take 5-10 turns with 3-5 CoHs in orbit to become decent greens. That's still MUCH faster than any other race, so late game CA with enough CoHs will still be strong.
However in early and mid game it will need Orbital Adjusters for itself (harder to get allies) and because those OAs are now heavier and expensiver, it will be pretty easy to slow down CA's development of border planets just by targeting them. They will be also much more risky to use on attack.
Just a personal note: playing that new one CA is boring. They don't have the thrill of that insane ramp-up speed, they don't have that ocassional permaforming, they don't have OAs for sale... I'd at least give them back 10% of permaforming chance, just to make them feel more distinctive.
BR, Iztok
[Updated on: Tue, 14 February 2006 08:47] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Tue, 14 February 2006 22:12 |
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(space left from autohost not liking poll without text in the body of message)
[Updated on: Tue, 14 February 2006 22:18] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Wed, 15 February 2006 00:50 |
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WHY would anyone choose CA over JOAT?
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OA ships are still powerful diplomatic tool, and tech wise CA isn't that bad IF you go for TT. Later game, CA can terraform reds 10%+ a turn, other races can only manage 0.5 to 3% a turn.
We likely would weaken JOAT+NAS a little.
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| Re: Unofficial patch... |
Wed, 15 February 2006 02:12 |
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| Madman |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| multilis wrote on Wed, 15 February 2006 16:14 |
Here is a survey for changes to CA PRT. We can do others after to try for an unofficial patch most of us would want to switch to.
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I'd be a little conservative about weakening CA too much. At the moment, it is overpowerful, but it would be bad to make it too weak. This would be the beginning of a slippery slope [NOTE: I'm not suggesting any of these, simply indicating a direction I don't want to see]:
CA instaforming too powerful? Weaken it quite a lot.
IT is unbalanced with the inf/inf gates or gating cargo? Take one of them away.
JoaT too much of an economic powerhouse? halve it's auto-scanning range and have only 10% larger planets.
SD can wreak havoc with minefields? take away the auto-detonation
... etc, untill all the races are quite bland.
One of the things that I like about Stars is that the races are _really_ different - the different race abilities _are_ powerful.
With that in mind, here's what I'd ideally do to CA:
(1) Either one of: (a) terrforming some reduced cost (say half?) and OAs more expensive but still gateable or (b) terraforming full cost, but keep OAs cheap.
(2) I'd make CA a little bit more expensive in the race wizard in either case - the good econ races should cost a little more, and CA will be an econ race unless you cripple it completely.
(3) I'd also keep the small chance of permanent hab change - that adds flavour to the race. Also keep the detection of other race's hab ranges.
Perhaps this leaves CA a little stronger than many PRTs, but I'd rather that than cripple it to the point where no-one wants to play it. The point of a patch is to not have it _way_ out in front, it's fine to be a good PRT.
I'm not sure how feasible these are, but those would be my choices if there was complete flexibilty of what to do.
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. It is somewhat boring to meet again and again the same 6 PRTs and 5 LRTs in almost every game. 
(3c NZ after adjusting for exchange rate):
Maybe lets add 50/125 gate to them? "Settler gate"? 
WM is in way worse situation than HE i think.
With JOAT i see it strange that NAS does not cost points or remove their penscanners. With CA i see it strange that OBRM does not cost points or remove their OA-s. With SD i would like to see something like Cruiser, BB and Nubian hull costs 30% more for them.
1 / 5%
"Balancing" means making it difficult to run away with score. If instaforming is removed then its not CA anymore. 
I add that to my post above.
