View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0014854 | The Last Federation | Balance Issue | May 1, 2014 10:26 pm | May 7, 2014 11:10 am | |
| Reporter | windgen | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Product Version | 1.010 (Pacing And RCI) | ||||
| Summary | 0014854: Credit for delivering spacefaring tech should decrease over time | ||||
| Description | This ticket is my suggestion for resolving the following balance issue: Delivering spacefaring tech to a race with less than 1 minute left to discover it on their own, is currently a quick way to score 5000 credit and a big influence gain, with very little risk. This means there's basically a single dominant strategy of "give (almost) everyone spacefaring at the very last minute." I think it would improve the game to have more of a tradeoff, where there are pros and cons to an immediate drop. EDIT: See my second comment below for an updated formula. To fix this, I think the credit for delivering spacefaring tech should drop over time. My proposed formula: The base value should increase a little, to 6000 or so, but only be available for races with 20 minutes or more left. When 20 minutes are left, the credit should drop smoothly from the base value at an accelerating rate, hitting 4000 at 10 minutes, then 0 when 30 seconds are left. Likewise the influence gain you get should drop as well. There should maybe also be a news event when the race crosses the 20-minute threshold, and again when it crosses the 10-minute threshold. These serve the UI purpose of warning/reminding the player that their potential credit from delivering spacefaring is dropping, but also bring the "space race" aspect of the game more prominent (which is good for role-playing / immersion reasons). | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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One way to think about balancing the numbers: Is it worth giving up 6000 potential credits and however many influence with the Thoraxians, in exchange for giving the other races have 20 extra minutes to prepare for the Thoraxians' arrival in space? The numbers should be tweaked such that both "yes" and "no" are plausible answers to the question. Thus, the decision rests on the player's playstyle and the specific situation in an individual game. |
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A final note: It might be better to have the rewards for credit continue to increase for times longer than 20 minutes. But the formula for credit should also take a race's starting strength into account. Since it seems the races with weaker starting positions have a longer time to get into space on their own, it seems wrong to give the player more credit for uplifting the "weaker" race. This line of thinking leads to an alternate formula. A weaker race takes longer to get into space, so should be worth more credit -- but since it's weaker, it should be worth less credit. If we assume these two effects cancel, for a race which takes T seconds to get into space from the beginning of the game, you can move the 6000-credit stop to the beginning of the game, and the 4000-credit stop to the halfway point T/2. Then you need to deal with races that start very close to spacefaring tech -- so let T = max(time_to_get_into_space, 20 minutes). That works well. So you still get 4000-6000 credits for doing most races before their halfway point, but substantially less when it comes to races that start closer to spacefaring tech, or races where you wait until the last minute. This seems to solve the problem. |
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Did you know? There are already several tradeoffs for waiting vs immediate. I'm actually concerned this idea, as it significantly encourages you to give the tech earlier rather than later, when you might have a (legitimate) different strategy in mind could easily create a single "optimal" strategy and reduce variety of strategies. Doing the wait until the last minute doesn't actually benefit you much compared to delievering immediately. There are pros and cons to both. I agree that if they're about to go space fairing on their own anyways and you just swoop in for the creds that is a little jenky. Then again you ARE a sort of "crimianal Mastermind" and that just somehow feels soo right sometimes... Also, dropping off that spacefairing tech immediately means you get the 5000 creds earlier (and can therefore hire more goons and research tech sooner for instance), so waiting already has a sort of diminishing returns imo. This is just how I feel about it of course, but already I pretty much bring all races to spacefairing, and a penalty for waiting would just discourage me from ever trying a different strategy. (I have actually tried the wait till last minute and it was a very different, but still quite enjoyable, experience, so I'm just not for what seems like a disincentive to try different approaches. |
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In my experience delivering spacefaring tech balanced itself fairly well on its own in my games: 1. The credit windfall is spent fairly fast on various goons (I like to stay on top of things as far as outposts and tech are concerned, while resorting from stealing any techs due to the backlash). 2. Doing more than 3 deliveries always causes some backlash in terms of influence due to the *huge* number of spy probes present So, I tend to think its good as it is - at least for now. |
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... I have never had any trouble getting through a deliever spacefaring tech without alerting a single sat, even for the last planet... Do you set all the races to a shield in the little display to the lower left of the screen? Just max speed, min weapons (since you've just turned off their ability to fire anyways), and rest in shields - rarely get hit, but better than into weapons that aren't firing anyways... Add Afterburner or Cloak into the mix (if you were fortunate enough to get either), and it barely even takes any time. I had a bunch of 2-3 turn afterburner delieveries. And like I said, I've never gotten caught on a mission since the change that made it based on getting caught. |
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Honestly I think this adds unneeded complexity. With some of the other changes I'm making to the smuggling spacefaring missions, this isn't something that people will be able to casually exploit anymore. And at any rate, if people want to have a jump-start credit windfall, then by all means. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 1, 2014 10:26 pm | windgen | New Issue | |
| May 1, 2014 10:27 pm | windgen | Note Added: 0037198 | |
| May 1, 2014 10:37 pm | windgen | Note Added: 0037200 | |
| May 1, 2014 10:38 pm | windgen | Description Updated | |
| May 2, 2014 6:25 am | Drak | Note Added: 0037221 | |
| May 2, 2014 7:15 am | nas1m | Note Added: 0037223 | |
| May 5, 2014 3:53 am | Drak | Note Added: 0037349 | |
| May 5, 2014 3:54 am | Drak | Note Edited: 0037349 | |
| May 5, 2014 3:55 am | Drak | Note Edited: 0037349 | |
| May 5, 2014 3:57 am | Drak | Note Edited: 0037349 | |
| May 7, 2014 11:10 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| May 7, 2014 11:10 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0037659 | |
| May 7, 2014 11:10 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| May 7, 2014 11:10 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| May 7, 2014 11:10 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
