Re: Game balance in 0.4.4 release—feedback needed
Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2015 7:45 pm
Done.Vezzra wrote:Yes.Dilvish wrote:Perhaps this should default to on for 0.4.5?
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Done.Vezzra wrote:Yes.Dilvish wrote:Perhaps this should default to on for 0.4.5?
Well this is what I get when I put them together:Scara wrote:I tried to put Mini Asteroid together with Scattered Asteroids, but it didn't seem as if the Miniasteroids provided any further shield bonus or shield bonus at all when in a fleet without scatted astros.Kassiopeija wrote: Speaking of decoys, does the Scattered Asteroid shield bonus still add up to the Mini Asteroids shield bonus? I remember I once build these together and put only armour on the Mini Asteroids so they were rather cheap to build and had alot of shields and could basically soak in all damage from the main ship....
Ahh, I see want you mean, I thought the miniasteroid would provide a bonus to other ships, but would be nonsense anyway.Kassiopeija wrote:Well this is what I get when I put them together:Scara wrote:I tried to put Mini Asteroid together with Scattered Asteroids, but it didn't seem as if the Miniasteroids provided any further shield bonus or shield bonus at all when in a fleet without scatted astros.Kassiopeija wrote: Speaking of decoys, does the Scattered Asteroid shield bonus still add up to the Mini Asteroids shield bonus? I remember I once build these together and put only armour on the Mini Asteroids so they were rather cheap to build and had alot of shields and could basically soak in all damage from the main ship....
The Scattered Asteroid Flagship only has weapons in its external slots, and a 7 shield which, together with its own bonus of 5 makes it a total of 12 shield. Cost is around 1000 prod.
The other 10 ships are Asteroid Swarms outfitted wit 2*Rock Armour making their hp 52, they have their own shield bonus of 5, and also get the bonus from the Scattered Asteroid Flagship another 5, making it a total of 10. Cost of this ship is ~~50 prod.
It all comes down that, for an increase in total cost of going from 1000 to 1500, I can increase the hitpoints of my flagship/fleet to 300%, and decrease the chance that my precious flagship is hit to ~10%. If there are ever ships to fall it'll very minor losses which can be replaced easily.
The point is that I'll never loose the production of a weapon (!)
Also, because of the flagships enormous hitpoints it'll always repair back via the 10% repair of total hp.
Yes, that's already been noted in a different thread. I have the basic fix ready, but it got held up because we wanted to explore having it take longer to build than other colony buildings, and I haven't gotten to coding that aspect of it yet.Scara wrote:I just saw in the build from today that it might be that Happybirthday Colony build is missing. I didn't find it among the different Colony Buildings even the locked ones.
I meant to mention, there's nothign in teh code preventing them stacking, and I decided not to change that, although I may want to reduce the base miniasteroid self bonus at some point.Kassiopeija wrote:Well this is what I get when I put them together:Scara wrote:I tried to put Mini Asteroid together with Scattered Asteroids, but it didn't seem as if the Miniasteroids provided any further shield bonus or shield bonus at all when in a fleet without scatted astros.Kassiopeija wrote: Speaking of decoys, does the Scattered Asteroid shield bonus still add up to the Mini Asteroids shield bonus? I remember I once build these together and put only armour on the Mini Asteroids so they were rather cheap to build and had alot of shields and could basically soak in all damage from the main ship....
The Scattered Asteroid Flagship only has weapons in its external slots, and a 7 shield which, together with its own bonus of 5 makes it a total of 12 shield. Cost is around 1000 prod.
The other 10 ships are Asteroid Swarms outfitted wit 2*Rock Armour making their hp 52, they have their own shield bonus of 5, and also get the bonus from the Scattered Asteroid Flagship another 5, making it a total of 10. Cost of this ship is ~~50 prod.
It all comes down that, for an increase in total cost of going from 1000 to 1500, I can increase the hitpoints of my flagship/fleet to 300%, and decrease the chance that my precious flagship is hit to ~10%. If there are ever ships to fall it'll very minor losses which can be replaced easily.
The point is that I'll never loose the production of a weapon (!)
Also, because of the flagships enormous hitpoints it'll always repair back via the 10% repair of total hp.
Well, they are meant to be a swarm style line with lots of numbers that're individually more fragile. I'd rate a large number of Ravenous Hulls over a similar production cost Self Gravitiating fleet to be honest.One problem with the whole organic hull branch is (a) less external slot (b) less hitpoints so basically none of these hulls make a good warship (or at least, better what you can do with a Robotic hull), and by the time you'd get to the Bio-Adaptive hull (which is quite nice) you could already also reach the Self-Gravitating hull which is superior (by far).
I just went into the game to check on this hull and I kin dof find it weak... but it kinda depends on the level or number of techs one had aquired and used them to make the hull effective. So what are you using?MatGB wrote: I'd rate a large number of Ravenous Hulls over a similar production cost Self Gravitiating fleet to be honest.
That really all depends on how big your fleet is. If you only have a few big ships, then sure, surrounding them with some decoys doesn't make a huge difference to your future production of big ships. But once you're into the tens of big ships, then trying to surround them with decoys will make your future ship production costs explode. Perhaps that ramps up too slowly now, though -- maybe we should try fleet maintenance at 2% or 3% rather than 1%.Kassiopeija wrote:But the thing is that even when going 5:1 or 3:1 it is still effective and doesn't alter the production costs of the big ships too much.
Yes, please! The Scattered Asteroid Hull is supposed to be a far superior version of the miniasteroid in that regard (AFAIK), so it's bonus shouldn't be less that that of the miniasteroid (even if it grants its bonus to all own ships iin the system). IMO it doesn't make sense otherwise.MatGB wrote:I may want to reduce the base miniasteroid self bonus at some point.
It has been higher in the past, and had been reduced because the cost increase was too much (at least for some situations/mechanics, I don't remember what exactly it was). I don't think we can really get that right, it will always be too low for one thing and too high for another.Dilvish wrote:maybe we should try fleet maintenance at 2% or 3% rather than 1%.
How so / why?Vezzra wrote:Having basically the same maintainance costs for something like the Small Hull and something like the Solar Hull is fundamentally flawed, and screws things up.
There is a complex int valueref that returns the number of parts in a ship design. Almost the same thing.Vezzra wrote:Expose a function to FOCS that simply returns the total count of all slots (regardless of type), so that the cost increase formula can be based on the total sum of slots of all your ships instead if just the ship count. This would use the number of slots as an indicator of "ship size".
Strategic distortion, it is always better to keep maintenance costs low by building merely the biggest warships you can afford, a mixed fleet including picket vessels, light cruisers, destroyers etc is sub optimal because the 3 gunned robotic frigate has the exact same upkeep as the 12 gunned fractal battlecruiser.Geoff the Medio wrote:How so / why?Vezzra wrote:Having basically the same maintainance costs for something like the Small Hull and something like the Solar Hull is fundamentally flawed, and screws things up.
(I assume you refer to the additional cost to produce something else due to having such a ship, and not their own additional cost. If the latter, since it's a % increase, more expensive hulls already do have higher maintenance costs when being produced.)
Actually, parts used might be better than slots, there'd be a marginal benefit to not filling up every slot just because you can, meaning you think more about what you need, etc.There is a complex int valueref that returns the number of parts in a ship design. Almost the same thing.Vezzra wrote:Expose a function to FOCS that simply returns the total count of all slots (regardless of type), so that the cost increase formula can be based on the total sum of slots of all your ships instead if just the ship count. This would use the number of slots as an indicator of "ship size".
Digging through the archive, it looks to me like the change you're thinking of was actually a dual pronged change-- we swapped from 5% per ship upkeep being applied to hull costs only, to 1% per ship being applied to both hull costs and part costs. It seems to me there is still plenty of reason to explore changing the current 1% to 2% or 3%.Vezzra wrote:It has been higher in the past, and had been reduced because the cost increase was too much (at least for some situations/mechanics, I don't remember what exactly it was). I don't think we can really get that right, it will always be too low for one thing and too high for another.Dilvish wrote:maybe we should try fleet maintenance at 2% or 3% rather than 1%.
Screws things up in what way? It does create pressure in favor of larger ships, but it's not at all clear to me that's a significant problem. Certainly the biggest problem anyone is complaining about right now is the dynamic favoring the use of Decoys, which is the opposite problem. I'm afraid that any of your three suggestions by themselves would only make that problem worse.What we really need to do is (besides coming up with a better mechanic), is to find a way to make it dependent on some kind of measurement of "ship size". Having basically the same maintainance costs for something like the Small Hull and something like the Solar Hull is fundamentally flawed, and screws things up.
Code: Select all
FLEET_UPKEEP_MULTIPLICATOR
'''(1 + 0.02 * ShipDesignsOwned empire = Source.Owner)'''
Code: Select all
FLEET_UPKEEP_MULTIPLICATOR
'''(1 + 0.02 * ShipsOwned empire = Source.Owner + 0.01 * ShipSlotsOwned empire = Source.Owner)'''
I totaly agree with Dilvish here. Lots of small ships create more micromanagement in the long run, so creating a penalty for the long run fits perfectly.Dilvish wrote:Screws things up in what way? It does create pressure in favor of larger ships, but it's not at all clear to me that's a significant problem. Certainly the biggest problem anyone is complaining about right now is the dynamic favoring the use of Decoys, which is the opposite problem. I'm afraid that any of your three suggestions by themselves would only make that problem worse.What we really need to do is (besides coming up with a better mechanic), is to find a way to make it dependent on some kind of measurement of "ship size". Having basically the same maintainance costs for something like the Small Hull and something like the Solar Hull is fundamentally flawed, and screws things up.
I don't like this approach. The basic combat mechanics should be very simple, so that a new player can learn what's going on.Dilvish wrote:One more idea on creating a counter-incentive to decoys-- adding another combat mechanic, a chance that when a ship is killed it releases an explosion damaging other ships of the same owner in that battle. If it were something like a 10% or 20% chance, and the amount of the explosion was the same amount as whatever the killing blow had been (maybe up to some maximum) then for a regular warfleet it would not make a big difference to combat I think, but it would drastically change the scenario for decoys. A single such explosion would probably wipe out all the decoys, and cause damage to the main ships, making the decoys dramatically less appealing. It seems to me that coding it up into our combat would not be too bad.
It's not misnamed, in the sense that it also has aDilvish wrote:(BTW, I really think that ValueRef is confusingly misnamed and should be changed from "ShipDesignsOwned" to "ShipsOwned")
A variety of "Targetting Computer" type parts is on my to-do list, to adjust target selection priorities. A species-grudge influence might also be added, eventually. I'd also expect leader / great people to be able to act as admirals, and have a similar effect, but without having to put a part in the design to get it, and being able to change targetting preferences from turn to turn.Sloth wrote:A combat computer tech (or ship part) that increases the chance of weapons hitting the biggest threat (at least only armed ships).