Suggestion: split the egassem

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godel
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Suggestion: split the egassem

#1 Post by godel »

The Egassem has two maybe three superpowers.
They have manufacturing to the ultimate.
They have soldiers to the ultimate.
They have the max on supply bonus.

Proposed suggestion: create two: one having max manufacturing, one with max soldiers.
Alternate: cut the manufacturing bonus to 200% or less.

A race needs only one super power to be a good choice. Two or more is excessive.

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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#2 Post by dbenage-cx »

They also have bad research and a narrow environment, which is a difficult combination to overcome.

This is one of the few starting species where the first item I build is not an outpost ship.
Instead I start with a troop ship and hope for some nearby unguarded natives that are ship & colony capable.
In some games, that first colony ship has nowhere to go for quite a long time.
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#3 Post by godel »

In my experience they dominate to a degree that using them is almost cheating.

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labgnome
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#4 Post by labgnome »

FYI: before troop pods were changed the Egassem were one of the most challenging species to play in the game, even with their advantages. This just shows how powerful the invasion mechanic is. It also show how important it is to be able to grab-up native species. Hence why I've suggested a "diplomatic shuttle" in another thread to offset the disadvantage from bad troops.

This could really be solved by toning down their supply or production or maybe both. I'm leaning toward production, as they are the only playable species to get an "ultimate" in that area, and typically that's planet-bound natives, so I would think that's where the issue is.
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#5 Post by labgnome »

This has been mentioned before so here is the Egassem focs.txt file modified to merely have "great" rather than "ultimate" production. Just download and paste into the appropriate folder to overwrite your current one. Let me know if that's a good enough nerf for them.
SP_EGASSEM.focs.txt
Great Industry Egassem
(1 KiB) Downloaded 130 times
Another possible solution might be to give them a respective starting disadvantage like a smaller homeworld or something similar.
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MatGB
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#6 Post by MatGB »

godel wrote:In my experience they dominate to a degree that using them is almost cheating.
What settings are you playing on? What size galaxy, how many systems, how many planets, how many natives, how many AIs?

Because on larger, sparsely populated galaxies Egassem just about hold their own, but I can see on very small maps or on high natives settings they can be a LOT more powerful, getting the balance right between so many possible settings is hard.

For Release 0.4.4, Egassem were the weakest of the playable species by a long way, and the scripters new this: mostly because I kept talking about it. Good/Bad Population traits were ridiculously powerful and applied their modifiers to every single tech and other available bonus. So Bad Population was debilitating, Good Population (eg: Gysache or Scylior) meant the species was incredibly powerful, regardless of other effects: even Setinon would outperform Egassem in many ways. On the other hand, Good/Bad/Ultimate Industry was almost pointless, it only applied to the base output before any techs or other bonuses. Egassem had a major drawback and no real bonus.

So when new traits to differentiate species, such as good/bad supply, or good/bad attack troops, were introduced, Egassem got the best stat to give them a chance.

Then, just before release 0.4.5, it became possible to assign a priority to an effect, so we could determine when an effect would be applied, so we could set some modifiers to apply before a species trait, and others afterwards.

I put a LOT of work into doing this at the beginning of the 0.4.6 cycle, we hadn't had time to do it for the 0.4.5 release. Good/Bad population was toned down and made significantly less powerful, whereas good/bad research/industry was improved to make it more powerful.

Egassem went from the weakest Playable species to the strongest. I knew this and opened a discussion about it (somewhere: probably Scripting and Balancing). I also reduced the power of Ultimate Industry from a 400% bonus to a 300% bonus, which is more in keeping with other traits.

I haven't, yet, decided which way to jump on sorting this problem. I am 100% certain that they are keeping Ultimate Industry, that's their Big Thing and distinctively theirs. I'll probably tone down the attack troop, but I think they need to keep Supply unless we remove the Narrow Tolerance, which I'm loath to do.

The current choices for Good/Bad attack troops were made by Sloth when he created the trait, and we agreed at the time it would need a balance pass, which I have never got around to doing.

Anyone want to guess what my current project is aside from balancing Fighters? ;-) I haven't written it up yet, but I am working on a fairly major balancing pass on the Playable Species mix: if anyone can come up with a better name for radiation powered industrious robots than "The Radons" I'd appreciate it...

(NB: balancing species is a task I can do when I know the AI team are busy on other stuff, as the AI doesn't need much in the way of changes to grok a completely different species mix, not that I'm going that far. I am, however, fairly certain that Mother will be pleased with at least one of my planned changes)
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#7 Post by labgnome »

MatGB wrote:I haven't, yet, decided which way to jump on sorting this problem. I am 100% certain that they are keeping Ultimate Industry, that's their Big Thing and distinctively theirs. I'll probably tone down the attack troop, but I think they need to keep Supply unless we remove the Narrow Tolerance, which I'm loath to do.
I've really considered invasion to be more of the Egassem's "thing". Even before the good/bad attack troops. Namely because when they were a bad pic they had to use it excessively, and now they are one of the best at it, they are the go-to for scooping up lots of natives. It is, and has been their primary means of expansion. Because if that I think it's really what makes them "flavorful", or at least their play style the most different from any other species. I really wish I had a better idea or gotten more support for the diploshuttle :oops: as now it's looking like one of the few ways to balance-out good conquerors. Unfortunately I realize my idea wasn't the best put-together, I haven't found helpful feedback and I certainly would not be able to handle the back-end implementation, as that looks like how planet acquisition is handled. That's why I went for something colony-pod/troop-pod like in function, as I was going to try to base it off of whatever the game used for them.
MatGB wrote:Anyone want to guess what my current project is aside from balancing Fighters? ;-) I haven't written it up yet, but I am working on a fairly major balancing pass on the Playable Species mix: if anyone can come up with a better name for radiation powered industrious robots than "The Radons" I'd appreciate it...
Oh I will help with species designs/reworks FOR SURE!
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#8 Post by dbenage-cx »

MatGB wrote:... unless we remove the Narrow Tolerance...
Any thoughts on lessening the gap difference to normal, compared to broad tolerance?
"The Radons"
Fermians? Does "powered by radiation" imply a different metabolism?
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#9 Post by MatGB »

dbenage-cx wrote:
MatGB wrote:... unless we remove the Narrow Tolerance...
Any thoughts on lessening the gap difference to normal, compared to broad tolerance?
Thoughts, yes. Many, but none that seem viable. I've thought the details of both broad and narrow to be relatively unfriendly to inexperienced players for ages but a good rework hasn't occurred.
Fermians? Does "powered by radiation" imply a different metabolism?
Nope, just a bog standard good industry robotic species that fills a gap in the environmental preference roster.

I'll be putting up a WIP PR very soon with the current progress.
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labgnome
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#10 Post by labgnome »

MatGB wrote:Nope, just a bog standard good industry robotic species that fills a gap in the environmental preference roster.

I'll be putting up a WIP PR very soon with the current progress.
So I take it the "remove the radiated planet type" idea is now off the board? :mrgreen:
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godel
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#11 Post by godel »

In the well populated universe games I play the Egassem are dominant.
But i can see that in a sparse populated game they are not, though I have just taken them and beat the original setup for the first time. It was much easier then with any other species.

My concept was to split into two: Max soldiers and max industry. It is the combination that is too strong in high population games.

Most other disadvantages can be overcome by conquering another species.

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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#12 Post by labgnome »

MatGB wrote:
dbenage-cx wrote:Any thoughts on lessening the gap difference to normal, compared to broad tolerance?
Thoughts, yes. Many, but none that seem viable. I've thought the details of both broad and narrow to be relatively unfriendly to inexperienced players for ages but a good rework hasn't occurred.
Here's an idea for planet tolerance patterns:
Narrow Tolerance
  • Hostile
  • Hostile
  • Poor
  • Adequate
  • Good
  • Adequate
  • Poor
  • Hostile
  • Hostile
Standard Tolerance
  • Hostile
  • Poor
  • Poor
  • Adequate
  • Good
  • Adequate
  • Poor
  • Poor
  • Hostile
Broad Tolerance
  • Hostile
  • Poor
  • Adequate
  • Adequate
  • Good
  • Adequate
  • Adequate
  • Poor
  • Hostile
This way all species can take advantage to the early availability of adequate planets and broad tolerance species are good pics for an early starting bonus. Everyone gets planets that are adequate, poor or hostile environments to them, but in different proportions.
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#13 Post by godel »

When I first encountered this game, I was disappointed that the broad tolerance species did not get an early start bonus of at least one other planet type to colonize.
An earlier suggestion, that all get a colonizable planet in easy range could be amended to do so for the broad tolerance ones.

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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#14 Post by Ophiuchus »

MatGB wrote:
dbenage-cx wrote:Fermians? Does "powered by radiation" imply a different metabolism?
Nope, just a bog standard good industry robotic species that fills a gap in the environmental preference roster.

I'll be putting up a WIP PR very soon with the current progress.
Oh please give my radiation-loving travelers a chance ...

https://github.com/agrrr3/freeorion/blo ... S.focs.txt

https://github.com/agrrr3/freeorion/com ... ec84c24d5a
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Re: Suggestion: split the egassem

#15 Post by MatGB »

Not this cycle. Two reasons for them (well, three), one is they're strategically complex and would need some AI work, I'm not doing things that need AI work—Bad Supply specifically is a problem as the AI is already terrible at using the new Supply system well. Second is that I'm trying to fill gaps by having a simple to play and a complex species per environment, the Radons are very simple straightforward industry robots, almost the reverse of the Cray research robots. I've actually put Trith back to Radiated in my working branch as that's where they used to be and they work well there, but they can be in any environment really, might be better in Barren given yours have a flavour reason. Third is that we're basically talking doing stealth/stealthy supply, etc for the next cycle, and these guys would fit in well with that plan, I simply want to expand the basic playable species a bit for the next release, and balance what we've got.

They're going to get more than a chance, but they don't fit in with what I'm currently working on and with both supply and stealth being mechanics of theirs they fit better next release not this one.
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