Scylior over-powered?

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

Moderator: Oberlus

Post Reply
Message
Author
Telos
Space Squid
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu May 09, 2013 4:46 am

Scylior over-powered?

#1 Post by Telos »

I think that Scylior have recently been added as a playable (not just independent) race? My sense is that they're significantly over-powered, with two strong buffs as compared to "basic" humans, and no corresponding handicaps. One buff is 200% research, which is a very good boost. The other buff is a 25% boost to population. This multiplies with their research-boost, and adds up to very significant economic advantages later in the game, making this a quite good industry race too. Currently the Scylior feel like a flavorless "Mary Sue", good at pretty much everything with no flaws to make them interesting or balanced.

I would suggest the following changes (though all the numbers could of course be tweaked for balance).

(1) More expensive (+25%) colony ships and modules. This is thematically justified due to their being aquatic, which requires moving more mass than gas-breathers. There is also some precedent for this in their fellow aquatic species, Happybirthday (whose colonies are slower to build, not more expensive, but I think Exobots for some reason do have more expensive colonies).

(2) Slower Scylior-crewed ships (-20 starlane speed). This is again thematically justified by their being aquatic and hence requiring more massive ships, and it also is intuitively easy to remember that the space snails are slow. In early game, this nerf will be very noticeable and will definitely make it feel like you're playing space snails. Later in the game, it can be offset with speed techs, or Scylior could follow the path of many other non-combat-oriented races and try to recruit some better race to crew their warships.

(3) More expensive Scylior-crewed ships (+25% PP cost for hulls, but not for other ship parts). Thematically, this can be justified by the costs of maintaining a watery ship-board environment, including the costs of buff (4) below.

(4) Shield boost (+1) to Scylior-crewed ships. This can be thematically justified due to their being a science-oriented species who needed to develop structural redundancies to maintain an aquatic environment on acceleratable starships, and it is also intuitively easy to remember that the space snails have better shells. This buff is currently exclusive to the technologically advanced independent Acirema, without handicaps (2) and (3). Once speed techs are available, players without access to Acirema might decide that this shield boost is worth the costs in (2) speed, and (3) price, making Scylior-crewed warships an interesting strategic option after all.

User avatar
EricF
Space Dragon
Posts: 357
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2016 10:12 am

Re: Scylior over-powered?

#2 Post by EricF »

I like all the ideas myself, but I'm not a developer.
Just one nit pick. Scylior are not snails. They are more like Nautilus' (Nautilusi?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus
I like how you got creative with their limitations and didn't just suggest the
usual nerf their Industry or Ground Troops. Although being Aquatic I could see
how it might be more expensive for them to build Troop Pods.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5713
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Scylior over-powered?

#3 Post by Oberlus »

Scylior have a hidden (not mentioned in their description) drawback: they start at a medium size homeworld (instead of the standard large size), so they start with 17.3 population, 8.63 production and 11.9 research (instead of 20 population, 10 production and 9 research of Humans), and that helps make them not so overpowered, but if they get a lucky start and doesn't make bad tactic decisions in early game they grow to unstoppable late game.

I like the OP's sugestions.

Good idea to have a (FTL) speed species trait, -20 for bad, +20 for good, +40 for great (that's beginning to be overpowered, so caution) and +60 for ultimate (only for some natives with CannotColonize and average or bad pilots, since +60 seems way overpowered).

The extra PP cost of ships mimics a production penalisation. Blindly guessing you invest roughly 33% of your PPs in hulls (rest in ship parts and buildings), 25% extra cost for hulls is roughly equivalent to -8% production penalisation (notice that it's not the same effect of the species industry traits because those don't affect the production from flat bonuses like Adaptive Automation and GG generators, however very similar on late game when flat bonuses are less relevant). Something like -5/-10% is nearly negligible, so I would include the ship parts cost on the penalisation and that may be similar to a -15% production penalisation. Still less of a drawback than bad industry so maybe make it +33% extra PP cost of hulls and ship parts. And then we would be merging together OP's (1) and (3), as well as EricF's idea of more expensive troop pods (ships parts).

Jaumito
Space Kraken
Posts: 189
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 3:42 am
Location: Catalonia, France, Europe, Earth, Sol, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Virgo Cluster

Re: Scylior over-powered?

#4 Post by Jaumito »

Oberlus wrote: Mon Dec 31, 2018 10:05 am Scylior have a hidden (not mentioned in their description) drawback: they start at a medium size homeworld (instead of the standard large size), so they start with 17.3 population, 8.63 production and 11.9 research (instead of 20 population, 10 production and 9 research of Humans)
Said drawback also nets them +1 supply due to planet size. Most of the time it's irrelevant, but on the right map it's a great boost to early expansion, well worth the smaller popbase.

Post Reply