View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0014952 | The Last Federation | Balance Issue | May 5, 2014 12:01 am | Oct 9, 2014 1:56 pm | |
| Reporter | GC13 | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 1.012 (War And Spies) | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 1.606 (Credit Bombardment) | ||||
| Summary | 0014952: Money is poorly balanced: the AFA is crucial to late-game cash flow | ||||
| Description | I can reliably acquire around 50-60k credit, maybe a little bit more than that, before forming the Federation, due to the slow grind of building up attitude buildings and taking time off to farm pirate convoys for any bribe items I can find. If I had any reason to spend money in the early game, such as if wars were expensive to call off (the only cost-effective method of intervention), my bank would be correspondingly smaller. However, while founding the Federation is affordable, getting any other races to join it is not. That entire 50-60k nest egg is going to be swallowed up just getting one more race into the Federation, if it's even enough. Later in the game, when races start to really hate each other (or really love each other), any wars are also going to be very expensive to stop. The only way to fund the late game is the AFA, and they certainly provide. I find myself going from member world to member world, hoping that there will be a mission to attack the AFA available to get me more of the credit I need to continue. The AFA aren't a threat, they're a source of revenue that the game would be boring without. Even still, farming them is a somewhat monotonous task. I actually find myself wishing for a special ability to force enemy ships to disgorge MORE squadrons so I could kill them more quickly and get the full amount of money. The AFA needs to be less crucial to the player's credit balance, but costs need to be looked at too. If it costs more to get the Skylaxians to invite a race into the Federation than I made in forty years of constant dispatch missions, then something is amiss; if I get thirteen years worth of dispatch mission income from a single AFA mission, something is deeply wrong. Fighting enemy armadas is also a good way to get credit, but perversely this makes it unlikely you'll have to spend money to invite them into the Federation because you make them mad at you: you'll more likely simply have the Federation kill them and take their world, quickly putting it to good use. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
| related to | 0014673 | assigned | Chris_McElligottPark | Many dispatch rewards are too low / imbalanced with each other |
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Totally have the same experience. Not enough credit making tactical missions. I usually end up deciding which races aren't going to make it ot my federation, then give them all the ship building tech I can, so they'll make more ships for me to farm. One of the races that doesn't make it to the federation is usually the Burlust... Farm the fleets for credits, then return enough pilots to get them to double their warship production, then duel the warlord to get them to focus on it even more, then farm fleets as they're created and bingo, you get a cred production machine, plus you keep them from bothering anyone else, and they pretty much just spit out creds for you as fast as they can for a few years, and never really get anywhere with their attacks, so no need to worry about their relations (if they never manage to actually launch an attack, they never tick enyone off, and when other races "attack of opportunity" on them, you just pay them to stop.) Added bonus: They have one of the best starting ships.. Another one I sometimes pick to fall is the acutians - for one, they're a pain to work with, second, they produce tons of ships (so tons of credits) et. Basically, the way the game is now, ya just have to pick a fall guy to function... (I do have a game where everyone is pretty friendly, but I basically spent all my credits on science goons, researched everything and gave all the tech away... then used the Peltians to start the federation, sice they didn't require credits...) |
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I also have had similar experience... well perhaps I wasn't quite as thorough as Drak when it came to farming optimally! But 80-90% of my credit seems to come from Attack Enemy Armadas at the start and Clean Up the AFA at the end. Even without giving away ship techs, races will still produce ships at a fair clip and you get 1200 for each one. |
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Yeah, if they cut the credit gain from AFA missions or ship kill, they need to decrease the credit cost of things at the same time, or the game will get a whole lot more grindy. |
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I understand this was fixed in recent versions? |
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Not really some perfect ideas here, but we should also suggest some balance changes here. So basically the idea here is to boos all the credit output of the missions or reduce the costs? |
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So a ton has changed since the original reports. A tooooon. ;) Where are we standing at this point in people's opinions? |
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Having started a new game on the recent version to check. I find that the same thing basically exists. Money is tight early on, unless you use combat. Your rewards for research and RCI work are completely eclipsed by how much you can make in a single round of combat. I understand that there is suppose to be some sort of trade off between peaceful but low rewards and damaging and high rewards, but most games of TLF don't aim to get every race into the federation, so they basically turned into attack those that you don't want for money and ignore the peaceful route. Either costs and rewards for the hostile actions needs to be brought downward, or the rewards for the peaceful options needs to be boosted. The different between the two is just too extreme. |
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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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 5, 2014 12:01 am | GC13 | New Issue | |
| May 5, 2014 2:29 am | Drak | Note Added: 0037344 | |
| May 8, 2014 12:08 pm | Ragwortshire | Relationship added | related to 0014673 |
| May 8, 2014 12:12 pm | Ragwortshire | Note Added: 0037731 | |
| May 8, 2014 2:22 pm | topper | Note Added: 0037737 | |
| Jun 15, 2014 1:11 am | Histidine | Note Added: 0038515 | |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:03 pm | Acenoid | Note Added: 0039501 | |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:51 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0039507 | |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:51 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Oct 3, 2014 7:51 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => feedback |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:12 pm | Eternaly_Lost | Note Added: 0039564 | |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:56 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:56 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0039567 | |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:56 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | feedback => resolved |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:56 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 1.606 (Credit Bombardment) |
| Oct 9, 2014 1:56 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
