Random thoughts after my last Tinker's game

[Danath]

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Increased Market Coin production from 4/7/12 to 5/10/15.
The mining activity now provides +50% output per mine (up from +33%).

-Metal is still everything. Money is near useless unless you are expanding (or just unlocked new defense/improvement slots). The only thing you can do with money is buy slaves and hire mercenaries, which the AI really needs to be able to do. Everyone has 0 metal, but everyone has plenty of money.

(The Phidi lost their homeplanet in my game, with only 4 ships remaining, but still had 10k credits. There were 3 marauder factions they could have hired with that money to turn the tide of war.)


-Slaves and morale: I shouldn't have a morale penalty (you bought <our race> slaves!) if I free them the same turn they reach my planet. I just bought them to save them!. Is a tiny penalty overcompensated by the bonus for freeing them, put when you have the several penalties on morale...

DLC:
-Tinkers are affected by "cloning" technology. Not sure they should get the +100k population growth bonus when their limitation is due to having to manufacture their bodies.

-Vindicator is so OP As long as AI doesn't learn to send interceptors to destroy missiles/torpedos, there is no other weapon I need until I build Super Dreadnoughts.

-Harmonize: unless your planet is a ship building factory, high labor stat is useless once you have filled the planetary improvements. And due to metal limitations, money overabundance (force labor? just buy it), and more high fertitility worlds than mineral rich, I just find that having more Tinkers in your empire is counterproductive. Deharmonization is such a huge penalty on morale is not worth it. Harmonized/Tinker population needs a bigger bonus than being hard workers, because that isn't such a great trait on mid/end game.

Bonus: I love that I can just starve to death "undesirable" native population

[zolobolo]

Agree with Metal: it is the most critical resource at this point but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Building ships is the most important part of the game after all so figures to have this resource the most contested one.

On Harmonization: I found the Tinker pops to be rather useful even on the long-term being immune to moral damage - the only aspect of this I cant get comfortable with is that harmonized Yoral get their research yield reduced to the same level as any other harmonized pop, whereas other pops with bonus yields can keep those bonuses even after harmonization. It just makes harmonized Yoral the same as 4 other harmonized races which is a shame for the unique art.

If there is a system to reduce food capacity of conquered/bombarded planets, food should be in an optimal balance as far as I can see

Also agree that money is the most abundant resource. Though I can mostly find place for them by paying off all the Marauders I meet as well as buying mercs and slaves, in the end this resource dictates how many of the planetary improvements I can buy out. Ships already got an increase in upkeep cost, but starbases are due for one - if they get a nice high-enough upkeep, should be fine (Fortress should cost a golden nose to upkeep maybe this would reduce its spamming)

Now the AI does in fact ignore slaves, harmonization, mercs, Herald, as well as Marauder slave labor import functions I hope these will be addressed in the future

A challenge might actually be that marketplace mechanics currently seem to be tailored towards a single buyer mechanic or at the very least, the effect of ones purchase would not effect others which is not fitting for a marketplace. On the other hand, if everything is of limited stock and can only be bought once, the question arises how this is shown (e.g.: if someone buys a Codex from the Herald it should not be available to others but clearly marked as to why)

[Arioch]

Thanks for the feedback.

-Slaves and morale: I shouldn't have a morale penalty (you bought <our race> slaves!) if I free them the same turn they reach my planet. I just bought them to save them!. Is a tiny penalty overcompensated by the bonus for freeing them, put when you have the several penalties on morale...

The trouble with buying slaves and then freeing them is that your purchase price helps fund the taking of additional slaves; you're still a party to the slave trade. The freed slaves are glad to be freed, but I think they would have preferred not to have been enslaved in the first place, and they're still somewhere they didn't choose to be.

[Danath]

they're still somewhere they didn't choose to be.

That reminds me there should be a moral penalty for sending people to live in inhospitable worlds, they are pretty much imprisoned in habitat biomes. Oh you like this garden world? Too bad, to Siberian gulag with you!... I mean, inferno world!

[Arioch]

they're still somewhere they didn't choose to be.

That reminds me there should be a moral penalty for sending people to live in inhospitable worlds, they are pretty much imprisoned in habitat biomes. Oh you like this garden world? Too bad, to Siberian gulag with you!... I mean, inferno world!

Yeah, there needs to be more morale modifiers, but on the plus side as well as the minus side.

[nweismuller]

A positive morale modifier that occurs to me- Gremak populations should probably enjoy a modest (+5 or +10 or so, I'd think) morale bonus for the presence of slaves. After all, having people to fetch, carry, do the scut work, and take out your sadism on is what every evil snakeman wants in life, right?

[Danath]

Ah, silly me, now I realize how broken OP the Tinkers and harmonized population can be. No food needs, no morale penalties, no problem with overpopulation. Add clone + longevity technologies and enough transport ships, and you can transform that useless small planet with low fertility and low minerals in a huge factory or Trade&Research world. Who needs planet Atmosphere generation or Terraforming.