Testing Economic Balance Changes

[Dragar]

Hurrah, I'm a backseat game designer!

I'll certainly take humans for a spin, and maybe Yoral to compare.

[Dragar]

An oddity - Yoral Heavy Cruisers are 17 coin/turn, while Battlecruisers are 18 coin/turn. This seems quite a minor difference (e.g. light cruisers are 11 coin/turn, and advanced destroyers 5 coin/turn).

I'd actually like to see the bigger ships have higher maintenance (especially for Yoral).

[sven]

An oddity - Yoral Heavy Cruisers are 17 coin/turn, while Battlecruisers are 18 coin/turn. This seems quite a minor difference (e.g. light cruisers are 11 coin/turn, and advanced destroyers 5 coin/turn).

Yeah, the exact upkeep numbers are still pretty rough. The final upkeep will vary depending on what equipment you've loaded them up with, but, the base upkeep for a Heavy Cruiser is 12, while a Battleship is 18. But battlecruisers are currently sharing their upkeep class with Heavy Cruisers -- so they're also base 12. I think that's all at least slightly wrong. Battleships should probably be higher than 18, and BCs should probably be put in a class of their own, somewhere between BBs and CAs.

edit: I've adjusted CAs/BCs/BBs/SDs to 12/16/22/40 as of r38005, which I think is a bit more sensible (though you won't see the changes in ships that have spawned under earlier versions of the game).

[Dragar]

Thanks, that seems good! I haven't really reached those classes yet, so my Yoral game can continue.

Has the AI changed at all? It seems (even on Hard) very unwilling to attack undefended planets and outposts.

[zolobolo]

Could humans just have lower maintenance costs for their ships? They look like rust buckets that don't get much time in dock anyway!

This seems perfect!

Smack this as perk to the faction selection screen (as a hull with a downward arrow with coin or something top of it) and its golden
Fits right in with the lore

[sven]

Has the AI changed at all? It seems (even on Hard) very unwilling to attack undefended planets and outposts.

It hasn't changed. The AI has never been as aggressive as it could be though; and it's possible that working with smaller fleets is making it even more timid. If you'd upload your playthrough, I can take a look, and see if there's any places I could tweak the logic a bit.

[Dragar]

I'll figure out somewhere to upload...

[sven]

I'll figure out somewhere to upload...

If you open up the Options pane, there's a button that says "upload game logs" -- that should send a copy of your save to a place where Arioch and I can look at it; provided you haven't blocked SiS in your firewall settings.

[Dragar]

Ah, cool. I've done that; it's a Yoral save. It's mainly the war with the Tinkers that had some odd behaviour (I'd pretty much lost, while the AI dallied instead of striking, I managed to find some tech on a planet that let me snag railguns way earlier than I should have, and that's swung it around for me).

[sven]

Ah, cool. I've done that; it's a Yoral save. It's mainly the war with the Tinkers that had some odd behaviour (I'd pretty much lost, while the AI dallied instead of striking, I managed to find some tech on a planet that let me snag railguns way earlier than I should have, and that's swung it around for me).

This is a bit weird. When the Tinkers first approach Grumium, they just arrive there, but never attack. However, if I replay some of the events in the war from your perspective, the Tinkers do attack. There's certainly a bug here, but, I'm having a hard time replicating it... Do you remember if you were using the undo system at all around the time this first encounter happened?

edit: Then something similar happens at Toliman a few turns later. This one I can replicate, so hopefully a fix isn't far off...

[Dragar]

This is a bit weird. When the Tinkers first approach Grumium, they just arrive there, but never attack. However, if I replay some of the events in the war from your perspective, the Tinkers do attack. There's certainly a bug here, but, I'm having a hard time replicating it... Do you remember if you were using the undo system at all around the time this first encounter happened?

I used 'undo' once - I think at 1247, when I was curious about how bad a fight would go. But it was not the turn they first approach Grumium.

There are plenty of other examples of that behaviour.

[sven]

There are plenty of other examples of that behaviour.

Ok, I have a theory. It looks like the AI is pretty insistent that if it's sending ships into an enemy system, it waits for the whole fleet to arrive before attacking. This is often sensible, as you want to gather all your forces before starting a fight. However, it's also occasionally a terrible rule, as if you've managed to make it to an undefended colony or outpost with any amount of ships, you really want to take advantage of the opening, which the AI's rigid attack triggering rules were failing to do.

I've updated the logic so that the AI should start attacking in these kinds of situations (r38006). Thanks for the playtesting help.

[Dragar]

Thanks for the playtesting help.

It's a real pleasure to help such communicative developers! Thanks for making, and working on such, a great little game.

[Dragar]

So far I'm certainly feeling much more constrained by research and coin than industry and metal. I didn't used to bother upgrading (it was often less hassle just rebuild the ship and scrap the old one, or send it into a dangerous combat, and it was very expensive to do it the 'easy' way by coin), but the changes have made me focus on upgrading ships quite a bit.

[sven]

So far I'm certainly feeling much more constrained by research and coin than industry and metal. I didn't used to bother upgrading (it was often less hassle just rebuild the ship and scrap the old one, or send it into a dangerous combat, and it was very expensive to do it the 'easy' way by coin), but the changes have made me focus on upgrading ships quite a bit.

Yeah, the balance has certainly shifted towards having a more carefully "curated" set of warships. That said, I ran a Yoral playthrough the other day, and did manage to succeed by just spamming heavy destroyers. The upkeeps didn't stop me from getting together a fairly large doom-blob that just rolled through the rest of map. It's probably a strategy that wouldn't have worked with most other races though; Yoral are fairly unique in the number of weapons they can cram onto smaller, lower upkeep hulls.

On the flip side of things, I think both Ashdar and Phidi have gotten weaker post-patch, as their relatively low-weapon count hulls still cost about as much in upkeep as the more heavily armed ships that other races field. I've started thinking that it may make sense to decrease the upkeeps on some of the more obviously "under gunned" designs.