View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0014673 | The Last Federation | Balance Issue | Apr 26, 2014 12:52 am | Oct 9, 2014 1:57 pm | |
| Reporter | Histidine | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | assigned | Resolution | suspended | ||
| Product Version | 1.005 Beta (Holy Smokes It's Big) | ||||
| Summary | 0014673: Many dispatch rewards are too low / imbalanced with each other | ||||
| Description | From http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15349.0.html 1) Influence Currently, dispatches give you a mere 0.1 influence per month. In other words, it takes 5 solar years of work just to get your influence up by a pitiful +10 that will be completely erased by one technology raid. Exceptions are: Research Technology: +0.3 (despite the fact that it's already giving you a tech) Assist with Armada Construction: +0.3 (despite the fact that it's already the most rewarding credit-wise) Space Outpost Development: +0.3 Property Development: +0.2 RCI dispatches: +0.2 2) Credits Draco18s says: "If you need a lot of money fast and don't feel like going through the process of participating in any kind of tactical combat (due to the timescales between the real world and the gameworld) there is absolutely zero way to generate large amounts of money. The best option is fleet construction, which pays about 1000 credits per year. Or the same as blowing up a single flagship. For the low, low price of 15 years of indentured labor, you too, can buy the Skylaxian senate (cost to join the federation, when I paid it, was just under 15k, and I'm pretty sure it started much, much higher). [...] For the discounted price of 9 years of indentured labor you can buy lost Hydral tech (1) from the black market. Or you can go to pretty much anywhere and loot the ice belt for two, in under a month, and occasionally even get paid for it." 3) RCI effects +1 per month would be fairly good if RCI was balanced with (-100, 100) caps. As it is, it's often too low to be of any use under the situations where you'd actually want to bother spending solar map time on this (i.e. the times when it crashes to several hundred negative points). 4) Mine Uncolonized Moon By mid-game (as early as 3020), a major planet can expect stockpiles in the hundreds of thousands with production of over 1k/month. Individual buildings cost 5000-50000. For the Hydral, 100 resources is 50 credits or +0.5 influence. Compared to this, the +100/+10 you get from the Mine Uncolonized Moon dispatch is basically irrelevant. Proposal Aside from generally buffing the rewards, someone on forum (sorry, can't remember who or where) suggested setting up dispatches so that the rewards are balanced and thematically appropriate. For instance: -Armada construction: good credit reward, low influence reward -Assist research: low credit reward, low influence reward, gives tech -Provide medical assistance: medium-low credit reward, high influence reward -Aid local economy: high credit reward, low influence reward | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
| related to | 0014626 | considering | Chris_McElligottPark | More diversity in dispatch mission rewards |
| related to | 0014952 | resolved | Chris_McElligottPark | Money is poorly balanced: the AFA is crucial to late-game cash flow |
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Another one: Improve/Damage Relations With Other Race. With the generally pitiful speed and credit rewards, the addition of relations buildings that do the same thing passively for you, and the fact that the dispatch can't raise influence past +50 while you need +300 to found the Federation), the relations dispatches may as well not exist. |
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I can't support this enough. Just for a comparison, with permadeath off you can: - Attack enemy armadas. - Destroy two flagships for 2400 credit (using a nuke or something if you're short of time). - Get blown up and spend 20 months recovering. And it will still be more efficient credit-wise than *any* dispatch mission! Granted you lose some influence, but in reality with any sort of weapons you can easily destroy 5 flagships and escape, netting 6000 credit in 1-2 months. Actually you can destroy all 20 for 24000 credit if you are patient. Perhaps the real problem is how easy and lucractive it is to farm enemy armadas for credit - even on Misery tactical difficulty. Compared to that, any reasonable source of Credit will seem meager. But still, 75 credit/month seems very little given the costs you will inevitably incur. |
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I'm not so sure about the RCI one any more now that the natural changes have been slowed down; I'll have to play with it a bit more. |
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Changes (and non-changes) I noticed recently: - Cooperative Research and Space Outpost Development now give +0.6 per month, making them by far the best dispatches (and the "7-12 credit a month" written on the Research action list entry is a lie, it actually gives rewards competitive with the other actions). - Property Development is now +0.4, pretty good. - Harvest Space Junk gives +0.1 while Assist with Armada Construction gives +0.3 (and the former pays less Credit too), despite the fact that Harvest Space Junk gives a bigger ship building bonus. What. - RCI dispatches, moon mining and the race relations dispatch are still pretty much worthless. |
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(can I vote twice to support this effort?) About the single most balance breaking aspect of the game atm, if I'm honest. Other than research and building dispatches (and the infrequent emergency RCI or Armada build) - I've pretty much forgotten about the other dispatches. Credits from tatcical battles have gotten to the point that I don't even hesitate to use goons any more, as long as I don't mind having a few enemies (ie, not going for full federation, which I've gotten now, so not really looking to do it again) my game basically goes like this: 1) Decide on traget federation, note which races will survive and which will die. 2) Start with one of the races hat are going to die (whichever has best weapons, or that I haven't gotten a completion for yet) 3) Dock in first battle for extra techs (this is being fixed it looks like, so I'll probably swap this step with "destroy all ships" in future playthroughs, but this is what I do at this point). 4) Get all races to spacefaring (in order of their timers) - make sure to get the race that has the "backdoor" quest spacefaring before the "we want terraforming" race. 4.5) After getting the first couple of races and the "backdoor" race spacefaring, hit the terraforming mission. 5) Start building manufacturing stations (use most of starting pot to buy goons and rush production), kep building until station construction reaches it's 6 month hard limit (aprox 80 manu power or 9-10 stations). 5.5) When low on credits, wipe the defenders off all the planets marked for eventual elimination. (Missions and defensive opportunities also help keep the credits coming in). 6) Build science stations (aprox 8 needed, but I usually go to 10 so I can have a couple of spares for vaccine research and to reduce initial science goon needs) **) USED to do station building (and stealing) on the planets of the "wipe em out" races, but the black market makes this WAY easier. :) 7) Research all useful technologies. 7.5) As researched, share the techs with chosen "federation" races. 8) Start building RCI buildings on the federation planets to get the "they're wonderful" reputation flowing. (also helps them to be the strongest). 8.5) Get trade routes started. To help build up resources for buildings and to get the relations started. (Focus first on routes between the initially chosen races) 8.75) Colonize moons and create more trade routes. (Gonna need lots of resources for buildings). 9) Build Attiutude buildings to start polarizing the system as chosen in the beginning. 9.5) Supress enemy planets for credits and influence, while waiting for the necessary relations to build enough to start the Federation. Build less optimal buildings while waiting. 10) Win... Usually by the time my chosen federation races have enough relations, they are wooping everyone and I have MORE than enough credits from farming the enemies to mostly just win the game. 10.5) Farm AFA as needed... Only research and building dispathes in there. And I'm not doing them for the credits or the influence - at least not for the credits or influence the actual dispatch gives. In fact I'm frequntly netting a LOSS after goon costs are accounted for. |
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I'm going to mark this particular one as suspended just because the game has changed soooo much since the original report here. I think we're into territory now where if the discussion needs to continue (which I'm totally cool with), it needs a fresh analysis based on the current state of the game. |
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All righty then! :) * The amount of credit that you gain from ship kills is now 1/10th of the rate that it previously was. * The following dispatches now give more credit than they used to: ** 12x more: *** RCI boosts for planets. *** Harvest space junk (for anyone). *** Expand usable land area (for another player). *** Tactical Support for resistance fighters. *** Support for ground invasion. ** 6x more: *** Mine uncolonized moon (for another player). *** Property development (for another player). *** Cooperative research. ** 3x more: *** Cooperative space outpost development. *** Assist with armada construction. * What exactly do the above mean, net effect, for players? ** Well, first of all, combat is no longer so lucrative, of course. It was really a very solid way to get waaay too much money very quickly later in the game, while not really getting as much in the early game. It also encouraged grinding, to an extent. ** Some of the less-useful-to-you-directly dispatches are now some of the things that pay the most. *** For instance, the most lucrative jobs of all, dispatch-wise, are now harvesting space junk and expanding the usable land area. **** Both of those are a finite resource, though. The races may beat you to the punch on these, and they might not need one or the other for very long or at all, in general. **** That makes one of the best early-game credit-earners now to find the planets with the most unusuable land area, and then suck up the resources there. ** Some of the things that do benefit you, but which really were very single-focus before (such as the positive RCI dispatches or support for ground invasions) now pay you a much more substantial reward in credits. ** It's also much easier to be a war profiteer by helping the takeover of planets. ** Property development and research are now a lot more valuable in credits, whereas they were really quite low-value in the past. This gives secondary incentives for that sort of thing, which is definitely important if you want to play peaceably. ** Some of the other dispatches already either gave decent rewards, or are something that could be farmed endlessly with no real point except credit gains, so are things that don't have as much of a payment boost. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 26, 2014 12:52 am | Histidine | New Issue | |
| Apr 26, 2014 12:53 am | Histidine | Description Updated | |
| Apr 26, 2014 12:55 am | Histidine | Summary | Many dispatch rewards are too low => Many dispatch rewards are too low / imbalanced with each other |
| Apr 26, 2014 12:55 am | Histidine | Description Updated | |
| May 3, 2014 3:34 am | Histidine | Relationship added | related to 0014626 |
| May 3, 2014 3:36 am | Histidine | Note Added: 0037296 | |
| May 3, 2014 3:38 am | Histidine | Description Updated | |
| May 3, 2014 3:38 am | Histidine | Description Updated | |
| May 3, 2014 3:38 am | Histidine | Description Updated | |
| May 8, 2014 11:37 am | Ragwortshire | Note Added: 0037729 | |
| May 8, 2014 12:08 pm | Ragwortshire | Relationship added | related to 0014952 |
| May 8, 2014 12:31 pm | Histidine | Note Added: 0037734 | |
| May 22, 2014 11:36 am | Histidine | Note Added: 0038274 | |
| May 22, 2014 4:32 pm | Drak | Note Added: 0038299 | |
| May 22, 2014 4:33 pm | Drak | Note Edited: 0038299 | |
| May 22, 2014 4:36 pm | Drak | Note Edited: 0038299 | |
| May 22, 2014 4:38 pm | Drak | Note Edited: 0038299 | |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:50 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:50 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0039506 | |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:50 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:50 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:50 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => suspended |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0039568 | |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | closed => assigned |
