Adjust balance of intermediate and advanced start games?
Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 5:00 am
At present I think intermediate and advanced start games are poorly balanced:
*All players get Auto Facs, Res Labs and other early techs that are seen as important.
*Races' starting tech levels are approximately what they would have been after X turns in pre-warp. I know this is tricky as it depends on players' strategies and research orders - a Mrrshan would want mainly weapons, range and speed techs; a Psilon would want Robo Miners, Spaceport and improved armour and missiles for early defence; a Silicoid would want Clones and Spaceport; Unitol would want Supercomp. The best I can think of would be to give players a research points budget they could spend in a new pre-start phase; but that's big change in coding, and would require a lot of tuning to make the budget realistic for each type of player taking into account racial research (dis-)advantages, especially as research (dis-)advantages have a cumulative effect (player A gets Res Lab X turns earlier, so gets Supercomp X+Y turns earlier, etc.)
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- * Creatives have a big advantage because they get all the earlier techs, and are guaranteed to get Auto Facs, Res Labs and other important early techs.
*Prod races get superior industrial capacity, but tech races don't have the tech lead they would have had in pre-warp.
*All players get Auto Facs, Res Labs and other early techs that are seen as important.
*Races' starting tech levels are approximately what they would have been after X turns in pre-warp. I know this is tricky as it depends on players' strategies and research orders - a Mrrshan would want mainly weapons, range and speed techs; a Psilon would want Robo Miners, Spaceport and improved armour and missiles for early defence; a Silicoid would want Clones and Spaceport; Unitol would want Supercomp. The best I can think of would be to give players a research points budget they could spend in a new pre-start phase; but that's big change in coding, and would require a lot of tuning to make the budget realistic for each type of player taking into account racial research (dis-)advantages, especially as research (dis-)advantages have a cumulative effect (player A gets Res Lab X turns earlier, so gets Supercomp X+Y turns earlier, etc.)
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