Post by The Kortl Rheus on Feb 28, 2015 1:34:44 GMT
Although I don't want to jump on the bandwagon too quick, given that there is a lot of the current game left to play, I'd like to pose a discussion for us all to join in on, one I had with the Tau Ceti, about future balancing and some potential changes to the proportions mod.
Map Concerns
The map wasn't very balanced between for starting conditions. Some players had huge areas to expand into, others were forced to play early aggression in order to keep from being hemmed into a small area. I like the idea of Asynchronous play, but I suspect that we can do better next game, particularly by limiting the over-abundant number of anomaly sectors while still making sure players don't start within two or even three sectors of eachother.
I still feel, like last game, that the current game is still a bit too tightly packed. Although it's much better!
Overall, I'd like to propose the following adjustments to the next galaxy we develop.
* More sectors (up to 11 per player, rather than 9).
* Fewer planets per system. Instead of (1-15) make it (3-7).
* Fewer anomaly sectors. (More like 10% rather than 25%).
* Better balance on directly adjacent systems.
-- All players systems should have 4 warps
-- Each 'natural' (systems connected to a homeworld system) should all be planetary systems with roughly the same number of planets (around 20).
-- In each 'natural' there should have be least one world of each type (gas, rock, ice)
With these map adjustments I'd like to suggest we make a few other colony changes.
* Population movement should be easier. (More civilians per transport. 5 rather than 1 per 1000kt of space).
* Make Atmosphere Modification and Planetary Value Improvement plants easier to access. These Plant were not removed in proportions, but they were not re-balanced properly for the economic differences in proportions. ( it takes 300 turns and several million tech pts and resources to change an atmosphere - they are not feasible to ever use).
* Remove transport and colony hulls from warship hull tech tree and make it it's own tech tree, branching into two fields smaller(faster but less efficient/cost-effective) or larger(slower but more efficient/cost effective) and Q-ships.
* Adjust colony archetypes. Currently they don't make a lot of sense. I'd like to propose developing better development archetypes, but this change may be too significant. Generally I'm just unsatisfied with the current colony development options.
The primary idea behind these changes is that, right now colonies are very limited in use, hard to develop and not very fun. Their primary value, their only real value is as supply worlds and a bit of resource income. I think this is due to a lack of options (players are forced to take whatever is habitable, which is rarely optimal). I respect that proportions endorses realism, but there's a line where realism damages gameplay, and I feel colony development went a bit too far on the realism slider. We can slide it back a little bit without damaging the sentiment of the mod. It'll still take quite a bit of effort to develop a colony, but better options and a faster development curve should make them feel more fun.
Ship Hull adjustments (mostly just parsing out transports to their own tree).
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qq8Jq8y-JOO6Pxu63pxlLVcTraZXN4VwCQuNa8nxUfo/edit#gid=0
Map Concerns
The map wasn't very balanced between for starting conditions. Some players had huge areas to expand into, others were forced to play early aggression in order to keep from being hemmed into a small area. I like the idea of Asynchronous play, but I suspect that we can do better next game, particularly by limiting the over-abundant number of anomaly sectors while still making sure players don't start within two or even three sectors of eachother.
I still feel, like last game, that the current game is still a bit too tightly packed. Although it's much better!
Overall, I'd like to propose the following adjustments to the next galaxy we develop.
* More sectors (up to 11 per player, rather than 9).
* Fewer planets per system. Instead of (1-15) make it (3-7).
* Fewer anomaly sectors. (More like 10% rather than 25%).
* Better balance on directly adjacent systems.
-- All players systems should have 4 warps
-- Each 'natural' (systems connected to a homeworld system) should all be planetary systems with roughly the same number of planets (around 20).
-- In each 'natural' there should have be least one world of each type (gas, rock, ice)
With these map adjustments I'd like to suggest we make a few other colony changes.
* Population movement should be easier. (More civilians per transport. 5 rather than 1 per 1000kt of space).
* Make Atmosphere Modification and Planetary Value Improvement plants easier to access. These Plant were not removed in proportions, but they were not re-balanced properly for the economic differences in proportions. ( it takes 300 turns and several million tech pts and resources to change an atmosphere - they are not feasible to ever use).
* Remove transport and colony hulls from warship hull tech tree and make it it's own tech tree, branching into two fields smaller(faster but less efficient/cost-effective) or larger(slower but more efficient/cost effective) and Q-ships.
* Adjust colony archetypes. Currently they don't make a lot of sense. I'd like to propose developing better development archetypes, but this change may be too significant. Generally I'm just unsatisfied with the current colony development options.
The primary idea behind these changes is that, right now colonies are very limited in use, hard to develop and not very fun. Their primary value, their only real value is as supply worlds and a bit of resource income. I think this is due to a lack of options (players are forced to take whatever is habitable, which is rarely optimal). I respect that proportions endorses realism, but there's a line where realism damages gameplay, and I feel colony development went a bit too far on the realism slider. We can slide it back a little bit without damaging the sentiment of the mod. It'll still take quite a bit of effort to develop a colony, but better options and a faster development curve should make them feel more fun.
Ship Hull adjustments (mostly just parsing out transports to their own tree).
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qq8Jq8y-JOO6Pxu63pxlLVcTraZXN4VwCQuNa8nxUfo/edit#gid=0
