constructed hull production costs and overall cost balancing

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

Moderators: Oberlus, Committer

Post Reply
Message
Author
unjashfan
Creative Contributor
Posts: 175
Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2011 8:08 am

constructed hull production costs and overall cost balancing

#1 Post by unjashfan »

A few of us have already mentioned that constructed hulls are too expensive, bordering on unusable. I tried to play a few games using just constructed hulls early game and got dominated really quickly. I've already created and tested a new set of numbers in which I think is balanced, but I want some opinions in this regard before I suggest anything. Major changes to ship hulls may break the current AI; I'd rather have our programmers just tweak the AI once instead of having to make multiple small changes (unless you guys would prefer that :?: )

EDIT: Since I've received no responses yet, here's the patch. Feel free to test and experiment :wink: .
2nd EDIT: With further testing, I slightly lowered the build cost of some of the smallest hulls to make them more usable. Here's the updated patch:
ship_hulls_balancing.txt
(9.35 KiB) Downloaded 74 times
Here're the set of numbers I've been playing around with. They're generally based on the external slot count, structure, and starlane speed: **these numbers have been changed**
shiphullcosts.png
shiphullcosts.png (24.35 KiB) Viewed 1508 times

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: constructed hull production costs and overall cost balan

#2 Post by eleazar »

Thoughts on these numbers?

User avatar
Dilvish
AI Lead and Programmer Emeritus
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:25 pm

Re: constructed hull production costs and overall cost balan

#3 Post by Dilvish »

Well, it's impossible to tell much just from those two columns. In our previous discussions I found it very helpful to have yandonman's google spreadsheet with ship info -- the most important columns from my point of view were total slots, PP cost per slot, and PP / (slots^2). I think yandonman also heavily valued the slots / turns column (both total slots and separately looking at external slots); a review of those discussions would reveal if there were any other key data folks were looking at. If we're trying to partly balance things by RP outlay then I suppose that should make it in there also.

I know I found those comparisons helpful before & I think that was a broadly shared view; it's hard for me to imagine having a meaningful discussion without that kind of info. You comment that they're largely based on structure, cost, and starlane speed, so you should present one or more columns for that.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

unjashfan
Creative Contributor
Posts: 175
Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2011 8:08 am

Re: constructed hull production costs and overall cost balan

#4 Post by unjashfan »

Here's a chart that hopefully should cover everything. The PP cost values I suggest are under the "PP cost after" column. The rightmost column is an attempt to differentiate hull performance: How much damage it might dish out, how much punishment it can take, and how fast it can get around. It uses external slot count in the calculation for now because shields haven't been changed yet, and also because the focus is combat performance. Hulls with extensive internal modularity such as the protoplasmic might have lower values when compared to other hulls, since many internal ship parts don't contribute much to a hull's combat performance. That doesn't mean said hulls are worse; they just have different uses or are better designed for other roles. Hope this helps.

Changes to the PP cost of:
  • Constructed hulls: Roughly by half
  • Organic Hulls: Roughly 3-fold to 4-fold
  • Asteroid Hulls: Roughly 8-fold
  • Energy Hulls: Roughly 10-fold
shiphullbalancing.png
shiphullbalancing.png (102.74 KiB) Viewed 1451 times
EDIT: I thought there would be no scrolling if I didn't have to in the preview, but the horizontal scroll bar has shown up, sorry. Fortunately, all the numbers are visible without scrolling.

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: constructed hull production costs and overall cost balan

#5 Post by eleazar »

I'd like to have a clearer vision of what the different hull lines should be as per this thread before pushing the numbers around again.

Post Reply