Swap Xenological Genetics and Symbiotic Biology?

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

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wobbly
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Swap Xenological Genetics and Symbiotic Biology?

#1 Post by wobbly »

Just an idle idea. It seems to me that the current setup gives you a big boost if you are lucky enough to start near a bunch of good planets rather then giving you a solution to deal with an unlucky start.

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Oberlus
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Re: Swap Xenological Genetics and Symbiotic Biology?

#2 Post by Oberlus »

For starts with too few good/adeq. planets around your starting species, current advice is Exobots (adeq. everywhere).

But you (rightly) open a small can of worms.

Symb. Bio. (SB) gives +1 to good, adeq. and poor.
Xeno. Gen. (XG) +2 to adeq. and poor, +1 to hostile.
Sub. Hab. (SH) +1 to all.

SH + XG gives good 4, adeq. 3, poor 2, hostile -2.
SH + SB gives good 5, adeq. 2, poor 0, hostile -3.

I see an improvement there in terms of balancing bad starts, indeed: poor becomes habitable to any species relatively soon in the tech tree.
However this would clash with the (or my) objective of differentiating wide vs tall, making too easy to go wide (once you get access to poor planets with 50% of the population of good planets, or 75% of the population of adeq. planets...). So I would do this kind of change together with that other one about changing bonuses for that tall vs wide thingy.

Side note, that +1 to hostile of XG is mostly useless except for former self-sustaining or (now only for) empires with the three growth specials of its metabolism.
If we swap bonuses between SB and XG, the bonus to hostile should stay in the later tech.

Ophiuchus
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Re: Swap Xenological Genetics and Symbiotic Biology?

#3 Post by Ophiuchus »

We should not put the equalization of starting positions in a reasoning for tech design. Better focus on wide vs tall and assume an "average" start.

Bad start position fixes should be optional and done by universe-generation.

This feature is only really necessary for multi-player.

It is nice to have randomness in the starting position in single-player. Actually it is one main replay reason.
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Oberlus
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Re: Swap Xenological Genetics and Symbiotic Biology?

#4 Post by Oberlus »

+1

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