Bombard balance

Creation, discussion, and balancing of game content such as techs, buildings, ship parts.

Moderators: Oberlus, Committer

Post Reply
Message
Author
spikethehobbit
Space Squid
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:24 pm

Bombard balance

#1 Post by spikethehobbit »

I just realized I screwed up the costs of the bombard weapons.
Pull request #655 swaps the cost of the low and high bombard tech costs.
All contributions are submitted under GPL or LGPL v2 or later, or under appropriate Creative Commons licence, consistent with project guidlines.

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Bombard balance

#2 Post by MatGB »

Not just your bad, I merged it in without noticing. Um, yeah, that would make them a bit more usable. Oops. Merged in.

Moving forward, at some point (after the current Release) I want to do a balance pass on bombard weapons, bio-terror and genome banks (or, y'know, agree specs and someone else does the work which seems to be working quite well for us at the moment ;-) ).

I'm thinking the bombard weapons are both underpowered and overpowered, they don't really do enough but they do things too easily. What would people think of the idea of increasing the death they cause but gating it to require no shields on a target planet?

Then there's genome bank and the utterly pointless bio terror system, genome bank definitely needs to not completely negate everything, and possibly be a bit more focused, per metabolism or even per species? And bio-terror needs to either do something useful or be removed from the game, it's the last holdover of the old secret projects proof of concept work and it just isn't useful in the current setup (especially given the AI builds genome banks early and it is thus completely useless anyway).
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

spikethehobbit
Space Squid
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:24 pm

Re: Bombard balance

#3 Post by spikethehobbit »

Requiring no shields for pop loss is acceptable. Early game, a few dedicated PK ships can kill a planet in around 5-10 turns, even with first tier bombard weapons. Late game, a single Solar Hull, loaded to the max with CW, can kill most planets in 1-2 turns. The UI still needs work, which seems more pressing to me. If you could set a ship (or squad) to bombard a planet and then just leave it until the planet is killed off, that would remove the tedium.

The main problem with Genome Bank vs BioTerror is that GB comes so much before BT. It is a prerequisite, in fact, which seems backwards. From a balance perspective, a weapon should come before the defence. There is also the limited usefulness of BT, due to it only being buildable in rare locations (until late game techs) and only affects immediate neighbours (which is useless if there are blank systems in between)
Some other ways to balance it out:
-Require a GB per planet. This seems to be overkill the other way.
-Require a GB per homeworld - GB can only be built on a homeworld, and only protects that planet's species (empire wide).
-Make GB more expensive.

-Make BT affect to a larger area, say limited by supply distance.
-Remove requirement for moon, but reduce happiness without it. Xenophobic races don't care?
All contributions are submitted under GPL or LGPL v2 or later, or under appropriate Creative Commons licence, consistent with project guidlines.

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Bombard balance

#4 Post by MatGB »

spikethehobbit wrote:Requiring no shields for pop loss is acceptable. Early game, a few dedicated PK ships can kill a planet in around 5-10 turns, even with first tier bombard weapons. Late game, a single Solar Hull, loaded to the max with CW, can kill most planets in 1-2 turns. The UI still needs work, which seems more pressing to me. If you could set a ship (or squad) to bombard a planet and then just leave it until the planet is killed off, that would remove the tedium.
I've not really played with except to test, I'm going to use them in my next game and try to play weird and see how it goes, the buggy UI will of course be beyond me but opening issues up for stuff we find that should be easily fixed is a good plan.
The main problem with Genome Bank vs BioTerror is that GB comes so much before BT. It is a prerequisite, in fact, which seems backwards. From a balance perspective, a weapon should come before the defence.
No argument from me here, it's a ludicrously early game building that comes from a core tech you're going to research regardless, and the building is so cheap that putting one somewhere if you haven't already captured a few is completely harmless.
There is also the limited usefulness of BT, due to it only being buildable in rare locations (until late game techs) and only affects immediate neighbours (which is useless if there are blank systems in between)
Some other ways to balance it out:
-Require a GB per planet. This seems to be overkill the other way.
Yeah, that's not happening.
-Require a GB per homeworld - GB can only be built on a homeworld, and only protects that planet's species (empire wide).
-Make GB more expensive.
Both of these are possibly good plans, not sure about the homeworld restriction but it could be a viable approach, it'd mean if you capture someone else's colonies they're more vulnerable.
-Make BT affect to a larger area, say limited by supply distance.
-Remove requirement for moon, but reduce happiness without it. Xenophobic races don't care?
Both of these are good approaches I think. No idea how to script the former with the new system but I'm sure it's doable (or should be), however not sure it'd be the absolute right approach, bioterror should probably be a sneaky thing, whereas getting supply in basically requires a warship or a vast boost in tech.

Hmm, on the other hand the new propagation mechanics mean that it'd make border colonies vulnerable and empires would need to defend them.

Definitely like the happiness malus plan, that's probably worth putting in immediately just to make the existing setup even marginally viable.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Bombard balance

#5 Post by MatGB »

Playing, as I said I would, a game using Laenfa stealthy bombard tactics, it's hard but interesting. Definitely agree that the UI for bombarding needs a bit of work.

One thing I've noted, I have two Trith players near me and there isn't a Self Sustaining targeting weapon.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

spikethehobbit
Space Squid
Posts: 66
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:24 pm

Re: Bombard balance

#6 Post by spikethehobbit »

Currently, Chaos Wave is the only Self Sustaining targeting weapon.
All contributions are submitted under GPL or LGPL v2 or later, or under appropriate Creative Commons licence, consistent with project guidlines.

Post Reply