Species balancing

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

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Ophiuchus
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Re: Species balancing

#16 Post by Ophiuchus »

LienRag wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:33 pm
wobbly wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 3:45 pm
LienRag wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 9:32 pm I'd like to, but the first thing needed a is a n/d (n : dislike; d : distance from planet where the building is¹) formula for Dislikes of buildings.
A simpler option would be to make it the same range as xenophobia which I believe is 5 starlanes.
Not good because then piling the buildings would have no consequences further than 5 starlanes.

With an n/d it still has consequences to build a disliked building, it's just a non-interdicting one if it's far enough (that's why I didn't propose n/d² which is the physical formula of most fields).
A hundred buildings, even a hundred starlanes away, would still mean taking a hit to Stability.
That is not necessarily a good thing. I dont think Sly would mind 100 gas giant generators 10 jumps far away while I can imagine humans might mind concentration camps five jumps away the same as two jumps away. Also one might mind such buildings if they are built by a different empire.

A simple cutoff is certainly computationally much less expensive and IMHO would work as well. With your suggestion you have to calculate in the best case the distance between each of such dis/like species and each disliked. With 100 buildings and 100 relevant planets you already have 10000 calculations for little gain. If we envision a mostly colonized galaxy in end game the computationally least expensive way would probably involve keeping a matrix of distances of all planet-to-planet relationships (as planet positions are rarely updated).

So I am for a cutoff; could try n/d if you like inside that cutoff. Not sure how distance based cutoff compares to jump-based cutoff computationally.
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Re: Species balancing

#17 Post by wobbly »

Is this list still correct?

Are there any species that need immediate attention apart from Trith and Replicon?

Daybreak
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Re: Species balancing

#18 Post by Daybreak »

wobbly wrote: Sat Aug 06, 2022 7:31 am Is this list still correct?

Are there any species that need immediate attention apart from Trith and Replicon?
Yes Eaxaw

I believe you need to reduce the malus for all Xenophobic species or give them very good influence, otherwise they are nearly unplayable
I like where this was going - viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12283

I also think Trith and Eaxaw, whould have great influence, as influence plays such a vital part, it will help them to be pure.

I played a SP with Eaxaw - how painful, in the end evacuating most of them to swap to a different species
Although I was working on fixing this, by moving planets around look at this

b
xenophobic stability.png
xenophobic stability.png (41.58 KiB) Viewed 1299 times
and that is with a base stability of 5

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Grummel7
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Re: Species balancing

#19 Post by Grummel7 »

Daybreak wrote: Sat Aug 06, 2022 9:32 am Yes Eaxaw ...
It is obvious that you should not play Eaxaw the way you do, but that does not mean that they are broken.

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LienRag
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Re: Species balancing

#20 Post by LienRag »

I played two games with Eaxaw (one test and the current MP one) and you need to learn how to play them, but I don't believe they're so big of a problem.

Actually if Wobbly didn't get Mu Urshes early, I believe that I could have won against him.

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Re: Species balancing

#21 Post by wobbly »

Daybreak wrote: Sat Aug 06, 2022 9:32 am I also think Trith and Eaxaw, whould have great influence, as influence plays such a vital part, it will help them to be pure.
Great influence doesn't fit well on xenophobes from my perspective. If they need more influence I'd rather see it come from the racial purity policy. Something like +0.5 influence/capital species colony, -1.0 influence/other colony. (Not necessarily the right numbers).

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Re: Species balancing

#22 Post by Daybreak »

LienRag wrote: Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:13 pm I played two games with Eaxaw (one test and the current MP one) and you need to learn how to play them, but I don't believe they're so big of a problem.

Actually if Wobbly didn't get Mu Urshes early, I believe that I could have won against him.
How big did your empire get in each game. The problems occur as your empire gets bigger and you want/need other speices, keeping mind that there are advantages for the empire species so the more empire species you have the better it is, but then that affects your whole empire with
harrassment and reduced PP
stability and Xenophobic Frenzy

Compared to other species, in a multiplayer game, I would not want a Xenophobic species as my empire species ever, unless I went the racial purity route, which then brings in the influence problem.

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Re: Species balancing

#23 Post by wobbly »

o01eg wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 8:11 pm
wobbly wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 5:04 pm Another thought on this: Give both playable Xenophobic species great stability, but penalize them for neutral/other empire neighbours. So that they start with a bunch of "slack" to absorb the penalty and have some incentive to go forth and eliminate.

Edit: also remove any disliked buildings (except stuff like interspecies design academy) and disliked policies (except stuff like diversity). The core of their stability issues should be other species.
Would be nice, I'm trying to play single species xenophobic empire and lack of way to make Trith happy affects my empire.
I'm going to go ahead and put in a pull request to make Trith and Eawax both very good stability. That way if you play them single species you'll have great stability, and if you don't you'll be hit by the stability modifier for nearby species (which is quite high). I'll leave the rest of fiddling around with xenophobia for now. (See: https://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtop ... 15&t=12283 )

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Oberlus
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Re: Species balancing

#24 Post by Oberlus »

I'm working on two new species traits (already suggested and discussed in other threads):

Engineers (ship structure).

Speed (ships speed), or maybe other name, like Engines, but too similar to Engineers.

There is also an idea from Daybreak for a great engineers new species based on Ankylosaurus (which means "twisted lizard"). I'm thinking of calling them Thoraspis (aprox. "armored shield" in ancient greek).


I'd like to hear suggestions on what species could get some bad or good structure/speed traits.

I think Egassem could be good engineers bad speed.

Misiorla could be great speed and bad engineers.
Mu Ursh good speed and bad engineers.
Yes, that would make all native good/great pilots also fast and fragile.

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Re: Species balancing

#25 Post by BlueAward »

Oberlus wrote: Fri Sep 16, 2022 12:20 pm
Speed (ships speed), or maybe other name, like Engines, but too similar to Engineers.
Steerers, navigators, spacefarers, starfarers...

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LienRag
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Re: Species balancing

#26 Post by LienRag »

Nobody should be great everywhere imho.
Great species for warships should not be good anything for warships, only average or bad/very bad (maybe an exception can be made in order to distinguish one species from another, especially if there is an "ultimate" version of the trait for another species).

This so we have a choice between Good at many things OR Great at one thing.

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LienRag
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Re: Species balancing

#27 Post by LienRag »

Also, is it possible FOCS-wise to design a Native Species that can Colonize, but only specific things ?
Like one that could only live on Temporal Anomalies, one that can colonize Asteroids but only with a Special on it, one than can colonize only non-terraformed Oceans ?

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Re: Species balancing

#28 Post by Ophiuchus »

LienRag wrote: Fri Sep 16, 2022 4:57 pm Also, is it possible FOCS-wise to design a Native Species that can Colonize, but only specific things ?
one cant stop colonization as far as I know. but one can make them die selectively (target pop)
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LienRag
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Re: Species balancing

#29 Post by LienRag »

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Sep 16, 2022 7:04 pm but one can make them die selectively (target pop)
Where to put the target pop effect ?
And how ? Especially in order for it to not be counterbalanced by Growth techs ?

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Oberlus
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Re: Species balancing

#30 Post by Oberlus »

In an effect in the species.

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