Ideas for a balance mod? - Suggestions welcome
Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 2:35 pm
How would you go on about balancing the game? Which things do you think should be modded to make all racepicks worth it, and to add enough chance in to the mix, to make repeatitive tactics unsuccessful (both colony and tactical combat wise)?
Let's stick to ideas that can be implemented with current knowledge of the .exe.
Have you tried any of the following, how do you think they would work:
-decrease the number of planets, increase planetary max. pop (anti excessive micro management)
-make the galaxy map more even (currently with prod race you can get anything between 70-150+ pop by turn 3510 depending entirely on the multitude, size, mineral class and gravity of the planets in nearby star systems)
-remove approx. 30-40% of the key techs from the tech tree and give them to leaders (the point with this would be to prevent easy access to cumulative bonuses, make the charismatic pick more worthwhile, repulsive less automatic and add chance to the game, i.e. there's no need to give up yet after a bad start, who knows luck might prefer you)
-return antarans to the game, and make them attack from year 3505 (or so) and make them attack regularly and with increasing hatred. Mod their ships for this purpose. Phasing cloak which is another wise stupid tech, might suite the antaran sneak attacks say with subspace tele and bio weapons. Antarans usually target those who are leading the game. So it's a balance act. This might also make "Lucky" a pick worth consideration.
(One question about this: Antarans and net-mp crashes, do they occur because people have animations on, or do they occur anyway? Never had the crashes in null-modem or local network games).
-Increase the occurrance of random events with the exception of time anomaly. And possibly edit them if you like to, e.g. the mysterious ancient ship crashes. Who could believe that lucky+charismatic might challenge a tolerant...
-Make the entire tech tree a continuum of difficult choice between approx. comparable techs. And mix it a bit to alter the known tactical combat tech combinations. Pulsar could be in one of the first fields, and heavy armor and reinforced hull only come later.
-Improve the early game beams a bit, and the mid/late game torpedoes a bit and possibly missiles, and definitely bombs to make the weapon systems more balanced. Combine this with modding the ship specials, if nothing else, at least space requirements. The same with tractor beams, to prevent empty ship ship initiative capture tactics.
-Make shields a bit stronger (currently emhpasis is on armor and structure, compare multiphased shields to heavy armor or reinforced hull)
-Generally make the ships a bit more stronger structure and ship drives wise to lessen the importance of mid/late game ship initiative and allowing ships to strike back. This will also make Cybernetic a bit more attractive pick, combined with changing advanced damage control into a late game tech. The role of outposts might also be revised in this context.
*(If you believe that this change would make tactical combat drag out even longer, causing those frustrating waiting periods, consider the change to number of planets (and max. pop) mentioned above. It would make sustaining big fleets more difficult, thus balancing it out.)
-Improve colony defenses, especially missile base, ground batteries and fighter garrison. Multiply their armor by a factor of x and their space units by factor of y. A planet that builds all the fortresses and doomstars should have a bit of weapons stored, and a bit more infantry and tanks to defend them.This would also help to prevent abrupt ends to a long scenario when you lose one single battle. Taking over a colony would be a real coup now.
-make early game ship building much easier and faster, so that the first fights (over e.g. the best planet systems nearby, but not over the improved colonies) could occur by say 3503. Balancing this needs to be looked at with care, so that early game home system blockades won't become killer tactics.
-Alter the initial race picks. You might want to mod spying +20 into spying +30 and ship attack +50 into ship attack +75, and see if there would be more takers then. Especially with leader tech randomness and improved planetary defense (see sabotage) spying could be it's worth in gold. Removing/altering the tech minus from feudal (and subsequently altering the racepick value) could be something to consider.
-Beating the Antaran home world? Mod guardian into something that is impossible to beat without a couple of leader techs, but you won't get the same techs every game, so beating Guardian with trusted tactics will never become very easy. Mod Antaran home world so that only with either a) Orion tech (TF74) or Loknar's ship (modded) it is possible to beat the Antaran homeworld. Give Dimensional portal to a late game leader (you might want to switch it to Xyphy's face, and make it an Antaran rebel of a sort). It's also possible to add a third or even fourth key into that lock. Like late tech field interphased drive, that will increase ship initiative that one bit, that the Loknar's ship will get to start against the Antarans. But the first point is that, otherwise you couldn't attack them even with 127 doom stars, because they would get to start and with a sort of a chaos ray (combination of all the flags and bit of damage) 'd take them all down.. But the point is that it wouldn't happen always, getting all the keys would be far from easy, and when other players would notice someone is getting close there, they would have to attack him in a desperate hurry before he gets the dimensional portal built. This would again add a bit of chance into the mix and hope for the less well off.
-You may also want to change the bonuses for colony and ship techs, but I'm not sure if that's necessary. But spying techs are something I'd look at, and possibly something like advanced evolutionary mutation.
.....
-In addition to these there's AI modding. Currently restricted to modding their ship designs (beam, missile/fighter/torpedo, bombs and special space allocations and general ship building preferences, themes and patterns), diplomacy modifiers (e.g. the likelyhood of sneak attacks and back stabbing) and A.I. colony building prefences (although that's something that need to be looked at more in detail). I would also make A.I. take more advantage of sabotage. Something that may be difficitult to find in the .exe are colony bases and artificial planets (which could then be an earlier game tech) added to the AI build list.
......
OK it's a long post, but it's also a complex game, and these are just some of the ideas for modding the game. Currently I'm just looking at different stuff in the .exe, and I'm not sure how one should proceed about modding it.
Have you tried some of those? Can you tell from experience that some of them wouldn't work / would lessen the game experience / take something away from the game?
Are there some ideas that you feel definitely should be added to a mod but are missing from that list?
Do you like the idea of returning Orion and Antarans into the game? Personally I always felt it added something to the game experience, until it came too easy and predictable. But that can be modded, as shown above I think(?).
Feedback welcome
Let's stick to ideas that can be implemented with current knowledge of the .exe.
Have you tried any of the following, how do you think they would work:
-decrease the number of planets, increase planetary max. pop (anti excessive micro management)
-make the galaxy map more even (currently with prod race you can get anything between 70-150+ pop by turn 3510 depending entirely on the multitude, size, mineral class and gravity of the planets in nearby star systems)
-remove approx. 30-40% of the key techs from the tech tree and give them to leaders (the point with this would be to prevent easy access to cumulative bonuses, make the charismatic pick more worthwhile, repulsive less automatic and add chance to the game, i.e. there's no need to give up yet after a bad start, who knows luck might prefer you)
-return antarans to the game, and make them attack from year 3505 (or so) and make them attack regularly and with increasing hatred. Mod their ships for this purpose. Phasing cloak which is another wise stupid tech, might suite the antaran sneak attacks say with subspace tele and bio weapons. Antarans usually target those who are leading the game. So it's a balance act. This might also make "Lucky" a pick worth consideration.
(One question about this: Antarans and net-mp crashes, do they occur because people have animations on, or do they occur anyway? Never had the crashes in null-modem or local network games).
-Increase the occurrance of random events with the exception of time anomaly. And possibly edit them if you like to, e.g. the mysterious ancient ship crashes. Who could believe that lucky+charismatic might challenge a tolerant...
-Make the entire tech tree a continuum of difficult choice between approx. comparable techs. And mix it a bit to alter the known tactical combat tech combinations. Pulsar could be in one of the first fields, and heavy armor and reinforced hull only come later.
-Improve the early game beams a bit, and the mid/late game torpedoes a bit and possibly missiles, and definitely bombs to make the weapon systems more balanced. Combine this with modding the ship specials, if nothing else, at least space requirements. The same with tractor beams, to prevent empty ship ship initiative capture tactics.
-Make shields a bit stronger (currently emhpasis is on armor and structure, compare multiphased shields to heavy armor or reinforced hull)
-Generally make the ships a bit more stronger structure and ship drives wise to lessen the importance of mid/late game ship initiative and allowing ships to strike back. This will also make Cybernetic a bit more attractive pick, combined with changing advanced damage control into a late game tech. The role of outposts might also be revised in this context.
*(If you believe that this change would make tactical combat drag out even longer, causing those frustrating waiting periods, consider the change to number of planets (and max. pop) mentioned above. It would make sustaining big fleets more difficult, thus balancing it out.)
-Improve colony defenses, especially missile base, ground batteries and fighter garrison. Multiply their armor by a factor of x and their space units by factor of y. A planet that builds all the fortresses and doomstars should have a bit of weapons stored, and a bit more infantry and tanks to defend them.This would also help to prevent abrupt ends to a long scenario when you lose one single battle. Taking over a colony would be a real coup now.
-make early game ship building much easier and faster, so that the first fights (over e.g. the best planet systems nearby, but not over the improved colonies) could occur by say 3503. Balancing this needs to be looked at with care, so that early game home system blockades won't become killer tactics.
-Alter the initial race picks. You might want to mod spying +20 into spying +30 and ship attack +50 into ship attack +75, and see if there would be more takers then. Especially with leader tech randomness and improved planetary defense (see sabotage) spying could be it's worth in gold. Removing/altering the tech minus from feudal (and subsequently altering the racepick value) could be something to consider.
-Beating the Antaran home world? Mod guardian into something that is impossible to beat without a couple of leader techs, but you won't get the same techs every game, so beating Guardian with trusted tactics will never become very easy. Mod Antaran home world so that only with either a) Orion tech (TF74) or Loknar's ship (modded) it is possible to beat the Antaran homeworld. Give Dimensional portal to a late game leader (you might want to switch it to Xyphy's face, and make it an Antaran rebel of a sort). It's also possible to add a third or even fourth key into that lock. Like late tech field interphased drive, that will increase ship initiative that one bit, that the Loknar's ship will get to start against the Antarans. But the first point is that, otherwise you couldn't attack them even with 127 doom stars, because they would get to start and with a sort of a chaos ray (combination of all the flags and bit of damage) 'd take them all down.. But the point is that it wouldn't happen always, getting all the keys would be far from easy, and when other players would notice someone is getting close there, they would have to attack him in a desperate hurry before he gets the dimensional portal built. This would again add a bit of chance into the mix and hope for the less well off.
-You may also want to change the bonuses for colony and ship techs, but I'm not sure if that's necessary. But spying techs are something I'd look at, and possibly something like advanced evolutionary mutation.
.....
-In addition to these there's AI modding. Currently restricted to modding their ship designs (beam, missile/fighter/torpedo, bombs and special space allocations and general ship building preferences, themes and patterns), diplomacy modifiers (e.g. the likelyhood of sneak attacks and back stabbing) and A.I. colony building prefences (although that's something that need to be looked at more in detail). I would also make A.I. take more advantage of sabotage. Something that may be difficitult to find in the .exe are colony bases and artificial planets (which could then be an earlier game tech) added to the AI build list.
......
OK it's a long post, but it's also a complex game, and these are just some of the ideas for modding the game. Currently I'm just looking at different stuff in the .exe, and I'm not sure how one should proceed about modding it.
Have you tried some of those? Can you tell from experience that some of them wouldn't work / would lessen the game experience / take something away from the game?
Are there some ideas that you feel definitely should be added to a mod but are missing from that list?
Do you like the idea of returning Orion and Antarans into the game? Personally I always felt it added something to the game experience, until it came too easy and predictable. But that can be modded, as shown above I think(?).
Feedback welcome