Rebalancing costs for Dark Avatar

It's a whole new world...

Published on October 22, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals

Because there are asteroid fields that can be mined and provide resources to planets, we have had to relook at the planetary improvements.

Some of the changes have included:

A new type of improvement: Power Plants. These magnify the production coming in by X%.
Fertility clinics to increase population growth.
Much higher population limits so that lots of money can be achieved.
Morale is more affected by population than previously so reaching those limits will be tougher.
Lower level farms produce relatively little food so that new users won't run into big morale problems. Instead, we'll add an additional farming tech to gradually increase farming on planets.
We're adding a Food Distribution Center which will increase the % of total farm production.
Morale buildings will become significantly more powerful at the higher level so that you can keep people happy AS LONG AS you have researched the techs (entertainment networks won't be enough to get some 20+ population).
Vacation Capital Super Project will allow a single world to be a real fun place (i.e. high morale).
A new building called the Planetary Revenue Service PRS (one per planet) will increase the number of citizens that are taxed (right now a planet with 12B population only actually taxes 6B of the citizens, The PRS would increase that to ~9B which is a significant increase in the # of citizens you can get to).
Low-Level Factories won't produce as much as they currently do (making the asteroid fields more important).
Lab Networks (buildings that increase by a % your research)

The overall idea is that at the low level, money is easy to come by when you're getting started. Then it will start to try up if you don't build up your planets properly to get more population, more economic activity, etc.

For casual players, the system should be fairly straight forward -- simpler -- than GalCiv II. But for expert players, the gameplay becomes very sophisticated as planets now require a lot more choices than previous in terms of strategy. A LOT MORE.

In Dark Avatar, the relationship between food production, asteroid fields, and star bases will be very crucial. It does make writing the AI much harder (I'm going to basically toss out the planet improvement code in GalCiv II which I didn't write in the first place and that person isn't with Stardock anymore so we've been patching the planet improvement AI choosing code since release, better to scrap it and write it new with the new strategies in mind).

Another area I'm really enjoying is the re-design of ship values. A LOT More thought and experience has gone into the new values for how much hulls cost.

Basically: The bigger ships will cost a LOOOT more. But they will be a LOOOOT tougher. A capital ship should be a capital ship. It should be a big deal. We want to encourage players to make a choice between fleets of smallish ships OR capital ships and have both be valid paths. It will be very difficult to research both gigantic ships AND ultimate logistics for instance. You may not be able to get to both in a typical game which means deciding to have large fleets of small ships or smaller fleets of very very tough capital ships.

Logistics have changed as well. A huge hulled ship now uses 10 logistics points and costs 320 just for the hull. BUT, it now has 150 space (about double) and 84 HP.

So you could picture a couple of Huge hulled ships (using 20 logistics) with 300 space and 168HP having cost 640 to build...coming up against 16 small ships (48 logistics) with 384 space 128HP and also having cost 640.

The fleet of fighters would pack more punch per round but the hull ships would be able to take a bigger beating. There's so many factors to take into account (the time to research the corresponding techs, the "wastage" on building fighters -- i.e. can't build more than 1 fighter per turn, the "wastage" of a shot from a capital ship on a fighter -- a shot that does 20 damage on a ship with only 8 hitpoints isn't going to make it any deader).

The net result is that it just FEELS a lot better. Those capital ships are a big deal. There shouldn't be tons of them out there. One can imagine the best results being mixed fleets -- a couple of fighters and frigates to picket for the capital ships.

The other value I spent a lot of time on today was spies. We're going to have to put in an espionage branch because we want players to be able to put increasing amounts of money into spying.

By now, one thing you may have noticed is that money is going to be much more under control. At least, that's the intention. That it won't be nearly as hard to have lots of money to do things with but there will be a lot more choices on what to spend money on. But at the same time, we want there to be a real gulf between new players and expert players. A lot more variance in strategic options than previous.

Where before you might just throw tons of farms on a planet or tons of factories, now there are other things to consider -- asteroids? Do you build a food distribution center? Should you build a Quantum Power Plant? And if so, should you re-direct the asteroid mining to that planet instead of the closer one?

Much of the final balancing will be in the hands of beta testers starting next month.

Comments (Page 1)

Cauldyth

on Oct 22, 2006

Wow, I like the sound of all that.

So, with all of these improvements that magnify existing things like production, research, etc. does that mean that specialized planets will be the way to go? For example, a Power Plant on a planet packed with factories will give you a bigger boost than one on a planet with just a few? I like specialized planets.

Vacation Capital Super Project will allow a single world to be a real fun place

Drengo-Disney?

46852

on Oct 23, 2006

So are you considering tweaking the combat system a bit then? The random effect of the "attack/defense roll" weakens the concept of capital ships considerably, and the fact of concentrated fire, ie all weapons fire on one target no matter if it'd die with only 1 Laser MkII shot.

Hope you've read the articles concerning "tweaking defense", some good ideas on the forum on this subject, all of them trying to make the all-attack fighter swarms less viable against big capital ships.

Psiborg

on Oct 23, 2006

Bravo. These sound like very good design decisions to me. Of course, the ability to balance them and get them feeling "right" will be critical but I'm sure that's just a matter of time/tweaking.

Glad to see the game balance priorities heading in this direction!

Cauldyth

on Oct 23, 2006

How about a ship component ("Targeting System?") which skews the die rolls higher? Putting it on small ships would be impractical, but it would help capital ships "be all that they could be" more frequently.

danielost

on Oct 23, 2006

and maybe a multi targeting mod

MacsenLP

on Oct 23, 2006

It does make writing the AI much harder (I'm going to basically toss out the planet improvement code in GalCiv II which I didn't write in the first place and that person isn't with Stardock anymore so we've been patching the planet improvement AI choosing code since release, better to scrap it and write it new with the new strategies in mind).

Lol. Between the lines I think that means stardock employees take note if your work isn't up to scratch your getting the sack!!!

DA is gonna be like playing a new game by the sounds of it. It looks and sounds great so far but sounds like there could be huge game balancing issues ahead... sure it will turn out great.

Lenius.

Heroine4Life

on Oct 23, 2006

Your so mean...

I read this and i have to smack my head against my head. Because its the only way i can cope with not having DA right now.

DivineWrath

on Oct 23, 2006

Basically: The bigger ships will cost a LOOOT more. But they will be a LOOOOT tougher. A capital ship should be a capital ship. It should be a big deal. We want to encourage ...

Although I like the idea of making the bigger ships a LOOOT more tougher, what about the fragile space stations? Those things already have it tough enough surviving against huge hulled ships as is, let alone these more powerful hulls. Those space station defensive modules are of some use early in the game, but it is difficult to justify the heavy investments if they can't do their jobs in the long term.

Cauldyth

on Oct 23, 2006

and maybe a multi targeting mod

Yeah, that would be good too. The more specialized goodies to put on your ships, the better, IMHO (provided they're useful and the AI can cope with them, of course).

AlphaAsh

on Oct 23, 2006

RE: New improvements.

Please expose the relevant attributes so that modders can use them. Hard-coded attributes dependent on hard-coded improvement IDs suck.

Ta muchly.

AlphaAsh

on Oct 23, 2006

Request 2 - If you're re-writing the improvement AI any possibility of making it more dynamic? - have it looking at improvement attributes rather than specfic improvements. I know I have many more improvements than the base game and the AI clearly doesn't look at values when picking an improvement, so if for example you have more than one improvement with a morale bonus, the AI seems to pick what to place RANDOMLY when it places a morale building.

Ta muchly again

IztokBitenc

on Oct 23, 2006

Hi!

Because there are asteroid fields that can be mined and provide resources to planets, we have had to relook at the planetary improvements.
...

With all those new improvements to put on planets' surface, will there be also on average more tiles available on those planets? Even now, when I've reduced buildings I put on a planet to only factories, labs, trade buildings and single farm, I feel I'm quite constrained. In DA, with even more buildings, and low-tech buildings nerfed, would you consider giving us on average 1 or 2 more green tiles per planet?

Basically: The bigger ships will cost a LOOOT more. But they will be a LOOOOT tougher
...
A huge hulled ship ... now has 150 space (about double) and 84 HP.

Errrrrm, that's IMO not LOOOOT tougher, just tougher. Base HP for huge hull in GC2 is 50 points. DA huge has 70% more. What's that compared to attack 80 from a single end-game heavy fighter? If you don't rework that random attack/defense roll I'm affraid those huge ships will be just money-wasters. Or, like others already suggested, give capital ships multi-targeting capability, allowing them to faster reduce number of shots they'd receive from a swarm.

BR, Iztok

SleekDD

on Oct 23, 2006

I suspect the balance between capital ships and fighters isn't as easy as it sounds at first. One has to take into account that the discrepancy between the attack value on the small craft and the defence value on the large craft is something very fragile. A more predictable system would also make differences in values more pronounced. Small fighters might end up becoming useless against bigger ships.

In the end, variance might be what turns out to be the leveller of the playing field. It gives the little guys a chance to hurt the big guys if they thrown enough numbers at them.

Although I am an advocate to make defences more predictable, the re-balancing of attack/defence might invoke imbalances between hull sizes. This is to be expected when you're dealing this kind of system.

One solution might be to allow missing your target and/or critical hits. If small craft could purchase defences that would allow them to dodge the bullet, they might make a more balanced make-up on fighters desireable. The basic idea behind this is that a hit will pulverise fighters anyway so defences aren't worth it. If defences give a chance to negate a shot, those defences become viable and all-attack fighters might become a thing of the past.

Critical hits would make fighters also viable against larger ships. One possible way to incorporate this would probably be a seperate roll that, if passed, scores a fixed effect such as scoring 10% damage of the hull capacity. This would still mean fighters need to score up to ten critical hits but they are at least assured that if they gang up on the big guys, they will eventually bring them down.

The main drawback about these ideas are that the system will need to be re-worked to allow for effects instead of simply matching one roll with the other and dealing damage accordingly. Depending on how the system is coded, this could be a pretty big change.

Borg999

on Oct 23, 2006

Many of these changes seem designed soley to push back on expert players. I'm concerned that these changes will leave casual players in the dust.

I rememeber playing Simcity 2000 for example. With some careful thought, you could build a viable self-sustaining city, but in SC3000, it became almost impossible to do so (for a casual player). Needless to say, SC3000 quickly started collecting dust on my shelf.

If the changes listed in your post are inevitable, I would suggest adjusting the difficulty levels.

B.

ras1310

on Oct 23, 2006

I think that generally sounds pretty good. I was going through the list thinking about how I could fit all that stuff into my existing strategy, and how to modify it. It also explains some things about the game, like how an increase in population doesn't necessarily mean an increase in taxes. It'll be interesting to see how the new AI manages this stuff as well. The AI is currently good at industry and research, but its population management seems pretty pathetic. The only thing I am not sure about is reducing low-level factory production. I have been playing a game as the Korx instead of the Drath, and it took a long time to get going with those little Basic Factories. Now they are going to be even less effective? Oh well, I prefer playing the Drath anyway.

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