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Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 8:48 am
by MatGB
Observation: the flux hull is stealthed when stationary, including arriving at a system.

If within 80uu of the next destination, it will get the full stalth bonus you've researched if you order it to move to that system. For some reason if you've ordered it to move through that system to another system, even if it's stopped there, it won't get the bonus, but that's not a major problem. It's intentional that it's not too powerful early, but it can sneak past most early game sentries without much problem.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 9:19 am
by Geoff the Medio
Oberlus wrote:Could it be possible that colony ships where able to colonise allied outposts? That would fix the problem.
They already can (if "allied" means "that the same empire owns").

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 12:01 pm
by Oberlus
MatGB wrote:Observation: the flux hull is stealthed when stationary, including arriving at a system.

If within 80uu of the next destination, it will get the full stalth bonus you've researched if you order it to move to that system. For some reason if you've ordered it to move through that system to another system, even if it's stopped there, it won't get the bonus, but that's not a major problem. It's intentional that it's not too powerful early, but it can sneak past most early game sentries without much problem.
Hmm... Well, what I tried was sending a bubble coloniser through a system with one of those monsters with 12 damage and 35 hull points. The ship was forced to stop in the system and the monster killed it. I had no extra stealth techs (active radar was up, nothing else). So I am missing something or the hull just doesn't help to sneak past enemy blockades.

Geoff the Medio wrote:
Oberlus wrote:Could it be possible that colony ships where able to colonise allied outposts? That would fix the problem.
They already can (if "allied" means "that the same empire owns").
Great, never tried that. Now I see nothing stopping my Sly to take the whole galaxy.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 3:10 pm
by Ophiuchus
Oberlus wrote:
MatGB wrote:Observation: the flux hull is stealthed when stationary, including arriving at a system.

If within 80uu of the next destination, it will get the full stalth bonus you've researched if you order it to move to that system. For some reason if you've ordered it to move through that system to another system, even if it's stopped there, it won't get the bonus, but that's not a major problem. It's intentional that it's not too powerful early, but it can sneak past most early game sentries without much problem.
Hmm... Well, what I tried was sending a bubble coloniser through a system with one of those monsters with 12 damage and 35 hull points. The ship was forced to stop in the system and the monster killed it. I had no extra stealth techs (active radar was up, nothing else). So I am missing something or the hull just doesn't help to sneak past enemy blockades.
If I got it right our problem was - you wanted to go through that system. You should have set it as destination. In the next turn you would be able to hop away.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 3:26 pm
by Ophiuchus
With so huge populations, if you exploit the growth techs, you get overwhelming amounts of RP and go cocky with all good tech lines.
Was that still that way with BAD_RESEARCH (which should have made into round 3)
So answering your question, I think a VERY_BAD_POPULATION trait for Sly is the way to go, to make their GGs not so growth-tech exploitable (I'm assuming that a 50% population modifier will give you 2/3 of what I'm seeing with the current 75% modifier, and that the modifier also affects the increases you get from growth techs).
I thought about making the gas giants only adequate for them. Besides lower limits that would mean less boni, slower growth and also no gaia gas giants.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 4:31 pm
by Oberlus
I've tried adding a VERY_BAD_POPULATION trait for Sly and it does not work. They still get the full bonuses from SELF_SUSTAINING_BONUS (+18) and HOMEWORLD_GROWTH_FOCUS_BOOST/HOMEWORLD_BONUS_POPULATION (+12). I guess there is the problem (they get that from start, and unmodified by the population species trait).
Removing the self-sustaining trait would do the trick, then?

Edit: Tried changing self-sustaining for organic, then they are screwed up. Homeworld becomes +12 and the colonies +0 (plus growth tech bonuses), and homeworld focus does not help because you most probably have one supply group per system.

Maybe organic but with good environment for GGs? Currently it is adequate.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:42 pm
by Oberlus
More heavy playtesting of the IS.

Overall, it works. I think you are got the right way to do it, or minimum you're on the good track.
I've been playing stealthy, expansionist, unarmed Laenfa, and it is doable. Using my playstile, you can stay on par with the best AIs in number of colonies and population, have a good research output and average production output and keep all the time ahead in the detection vs planetary stealth race for a at least 150 turns (and probably 250 if you like) while you are researching edge combat techs before starting to pump out invisible asteroid capital ships armed with DR and fighters.

The current IS mechanics allows for this kind of expansion but it takes its trade-off. For high stockpiling use you need some planets to focus on stockpiling, so you lose the research/production focus bonus of those planets, and the numbers seem to allow for a reasonable balance (should I have gone in a successfull military expansionistic campaign instead of stealthy, I would have more planets and less technologies, with research non-stealthy strategy I would have less planets but better techs). I think the main goals of balancing are achieved, although much more playtesting by different players is needed.


Bubble hull is actually useful, faster and cheaper to get than the camouflaged asteroid hulls. It becomes obsolete once enemies have many forces (they scatter them and makes it really hard to pass through, looks like AI is actively trying to hunt down my bubble colonisers, and there is always a lane with more than 80 uu that you must cross). Then the way to go is camouflaged asteroid hull (four internal slots makes up for awesome colonisers).

Main problem is that I can't colonise planets when armed ships/monsters are in the system, despite being undetected. I don't know if that is intended/unintended, good/bad or realistic/unrealistic. Even with this the strategy is possible against AI.
However I bet this makes it terribly hard against aware human players, since you just need one tiny armed ship on every system where you don't want the sneaky Laenfa/Sly to colonise, making stealthy colonisation mid/late game just impossible. If that is right, something else must be done here to allow stealthy colonisation in the face of armed enemy forces.


For Sly, what I said in my previous comments still stands up, I haven't played with them for a while.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 2:03 pm
by Ophiuchus
Oberlus wrote:I've tried adding a VERY_BAD_POPULATION trait for Sly and it does not work. They still get the full bonuses from SELF_SUSTAINING_BONUS (+18) and HOMEWORLD_GROWTH_FOCUS_BOOST/HOMEWORLD_BONUS_POPULATION (+12). I guess there is the problem (they get that from start, and unmodified by the population species trait).
Removing the self-sustaining trait would do the trick, then?

Edit: Tried changing self-sustaining for organic, then they are screwed up. Homeworld becomes +12 and the colonies +0 (plus growth tech bonuses), and homeworld focus does not help because you most probably have one supply group per system.

Maybe organic but with good environment for GGs? Currently it is adequate.
Phototrophic rather than organic. Sly should minimize bonus from supply networks.

My main gripe with phototrophic is - it is so very Laenfa.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 2:07 pm
by Ophiuchus
Oberlus wrote:you just need one tiny armed ship on every system where you don't want the sneaky Laenfa/Sly to colonise, making stealthy colonisation mid/late game just impossible. If that is right, something else must be done here to allow stealthy colonisation in the face of armed enemy forces.
The "usual thing" there would be a stealth attack to remove that guard and colonize the next turn. Definitly not stealthy nor peaceful though. But doable with a bad military.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 6:07 pm
by Oberlus
Ophiuchus wrote:The "usual thing" there would be a stealth attack to remove that guard and colonize the next turn. Definitly not stealthy nor peaceful though. But doable with a bad military.
Agreed.
Ophiuchus wrote:Phototrophic rather than organic. Sly should minimize bonus from supply networks.

My main gripe with phototrophic is - it is so very Laenfa.
Plus it's hard to get any phototrophic metabolism going on in the thick atmospheres of GG (but that is just about realism, it has more weight for me the excessive similarity with Laenfa).

What about Lithic? I don't really get the "Sly should minimize bonus from supply networks" argument. Since they don't get the bonuses (first because at start they don't get the planets what have the specials, second because the lack of supply range makes those bonuses not very useful. The idea is to make them less populous.

I've been tinkering with this a bit and I don't see an easy solution without modifying how the different population techs are applied. I'm preparing a post on this for a new thread only on Sly.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:14 pm
by Ophiuchus
Oberlus wrote:I don't really get the "Sly should minimize bonus from supply networks" argument. Since they don't get the bonuses (first because at start they don't get the planets what have the specials, second because the lack of supply range makes those bonuses not very useful. The idea is to make them less populous.
For the "distributed empire" race, i wanted to give as few benefits as possible from supply networks. But they should be good at stockpile instead (actually i think their current population boost could be 50% higher or so).
I've been tinkering with this a bit and I don't see an easy solution without modifying how the different population techs are applied. I'm preparing a post on this for a new thread only on Sly.
We could simply lower the gas giant size for purposes of population.
Else I was playing now with poor environment on gas giants. This basically means you have to research growth technology fast. Makes them suck at the beginning, but also distinct. Still playing so I dont know if i can get closer to the pack.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:45 pm
by Oberlus
Ophiuchus wrote:We could simply lower the gas giant size for purposes of population.
Right that is what I was thinking. One idea is to apply the population trait bonus/malus after the bonuses depending on size planet have been applied (so that the -25% or -50% does actually do something). And the other option was to make GGs have size 3 (or variable size if we consider that GGs can have different sizes actually, so using sizes from 1 to 5, as the rest of planets, would also help the balance problem; but using the same numbers only for the purpose of sly population handling, not to actually characterise the GGs sizes as comparable to the other planets).

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:09 am
by Ophiuchus
Oberlus wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:We could simply lower the gas giant size for purposes of population.
Right that is what I was thinking. One idea is to apply the population trait bonus/malus after the bonuses depending on size planet have been applied (so that the -25% or -50% does actually do something).
We dont have currently execution order in effects. Which basically means that mixing multiplication and addition is not feasible, as the result depends on order. So there is no easy way to script a 25% in/decrease on the "total sum of effects". One could use the species tag in the growth techs though.
Not sure if we should script that, as that influences many species, not just the Sly.
And the other option was to make GGs have size 3 (or variable size if we consider that GGs can have different sizes actually, so using sizes from 1 to 5, as the rest of planets, would also help the balance problem; but using the same numbers only for the purpose of sly population handling, not to actually characterise the GGs sizes as comparable to the other planets).
Playing with poor environment, the planet size via tech is too powerful. After getting Xenogenetics in turn 52 the population skyrockets.

I dont think we should do huge, large, medium,... Gasgiants. Such a variation means something only if you play Sly, so it should be almost invisible to other players and well visible if you play Sly. Phototrophic is the best we got here.

Probably we should use a macro instead of Target.SizeAsDouble in the growth technologies.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:14 am
by Vezzra
Ophiuchus wrote:We dont have currently execution order in effects.
Actually, we do: effects priority.

Re: Feedback Imperial Stockpile (round 3) - Limited Input

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 9:37 am
by Ophiuchus
Vezzra wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:We dont have currently execution order in effects.
Actually, we do: effects priority.
Somebody told me not to rely on effects priority. And that it shouldnt be used to coordinate effects in different items. Is that still true?