Fickleness in Necessity Bonus

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Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
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Re: Fickleness in Necessity Bonus

#31 Post by Oberlus »

quarague wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:31 am Question, where the screen shots in the very first post by wobbly achieved with significant negative stability?
Not sure.

There was a change in Necessity two months ago:
https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... 9ae59ca302
The equation went from ( pop*max(0, 6-stability) )^0.5 to pop*0.02*max(0, 6-stability)^1.5.

And I think by that time there was another change to zeroing output of negative stability planets.

quarague wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:31 am So the maximal bonus would be achieved at Stability 0 and that would 0.02*6^1.5=0.294 times population. The base science rate is 0.2 times population and Eaxaw don't get any adjustments to their research output so if I understand the formulas correctly the bonus from Necessity would be at most around 1.5 times the base population rate (unless the species has a reduction to their base rate) and values as in the screenshot where the Necessity bonus is 4 or even 10 times the base rate are impossible in the lastest build. Is that correct?
Yes.
So using Necessity on an almost zero stability planet grants it +150% PP, or x2.5.
Other early-game research boosts like Nascent AI or Algorithmic gets you around +10%, x1.1.
So it is OP if not considering the stability implications: it's hard to get the right stability mark, and you miss all other boosts that depend on high stability. However, there are few unfocused boosts or RP-focused boosts that can compete with Necessity early to mid game...
I'm still not sure if current implementation is balanced enough.

quarague
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

Re: Fickleness in Necessity Bonus

#32 Post by quarague »

Oberlus wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 11:41 am So using Necessity on an almost zero stability planet grants it +150% PP, or x2.5.
Other early-game research boosts like Nascent AI or Algorithmic gets you around +10%, x1.1.
So it is OP if not considering the stability implications: it's hard to get the right stability mark, and you miss all other boosts that depend on high stability. However, there are few unfocused boosts or RP-focused boosts that can compete with Necessity early to mid game...
I'm still not sure if current implementation is balanced enough.
I think your math for Nascent AI or Algorthmic doesn't check out. Algorithmic gives +0.10 on top of the base rate of 0.20 so in the beginning it is +50%. Of course once you have a bunch of other technologies or boni it becomes much less, however a lot of the other boni have minimum stability requirements so they can be combined with Algorithmic but not with Necessity. Additionally Algorithmic applies to your homeworld which is where early on most of the population is. I'm not sure whether it is even possible to have a stability below 5 on the homeworld and have other colonies above 0 at the same time but it seems tricky/ difficult to achieve. So the Necessity bonus will usually not apply to the homeworld. So if I have to choose between +50% everywhere or +100% everywhere outside the homeworld, +50% everywhere will be better for quite a while.

Nascent AI is a very early tech, usually well before you have the cryo pods so new colonies start at population 1, not 3 and will stay below 3 for quite a while. Even at population 3 and with Algorithmic you have a base of 3*(0.2+0.1)=0.9 so plus 1 is more than 100%. Again, once you population is say 10+ it becomes much less relevant.

Fluffwise I believe stability should work in a way where the player needs to manage things to get it above certain threshholds everywhere and more is always better. Then Necessity should work more like even if your stability is very low it is still sort of okay but not encourage the player to delibarately lower their stability. If that is the general idea it should be nerved further but I still don't think it is nearly as powerful as almost everyone else seems to think.

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Oberlus
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Re: Fickleness in Necessity Bonus

#33 Post by Oberlus »

I agree with all your calculations. I stand corrected.

So maybe it's relatively balanced. Yay.

Any ideas on how to improve the "encourage the player to deliberately lower stability" issue?

quarague
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:00 pm

Re: Fickleness in Necessity Bonus

#34 Post by quarague »

If the goal of Necessity is only to make low stability less bad then maybe something like:

Sets target research to the value it would have if stability were 10 and sets research growth to 1 per turn regardless of stability modifiers.

The wording already says that this is only useful if your stability is low and that using this is can never be better than having a higher stability.

With a value of 10 it also means you do get the bonus from Nascent AI regardless of focus (that seems okay to me) and the bonuses from Algorithmic Research and Diversity (that may be too much, not sure). Liberty would give some bonus but not a lot, presumably not worthwhile to use these in combination. Especially early on the number of policy slots you have available is very limited so maybe this works fine just as written, play-testing needed :D .

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