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 3)

Decker22

on Oct 23, 2006

I was thinking that myself about the defense and going thru the weapons. May I add something may want to figure a algotrithm to optimze weapon selection, try to make it more optimal. Either just go weakest weapon up, so a Doom ray isn't wasted on a no defense 10 hp small ship, other possbility is more intesive is select the weapon in according to size of opponent larger ship size pick the bigger weapons first though the algorithms for that type of caculations is almost a knapsack problem. Ceylins suggestion with a order smallest weapon damage up.

Decker22

on Oct 23, 2006

Ack won't let me edit my post, but mean "I think Ceylins suggestion with the weapons fired in order of smallest up is best"

Frogboy

on Oct 23, 2006

The only gotcha I see what that though is that it could make turns take significantly longer.

You could imagine ships with a dozen weapons on them and there being several of them. Late game, that's a lot of rolling. Random numbers are pretty slow when you do enough of them.

Frogboy

on Oct 23, 2006

One tweak I might suggest on that is to have defenses get rolled again each segment but with a reduced amount.

I.e. (this is what I sent to the team)

Capital ship with 6 Photon torpedos (attack of 6) vs. Frigate with 20 defense.

In each segment of a given round:

Round 1: Segment 1:

Photon Torp #1 rolls between 0 and 6. Frigate Rolls between 0 and 20.

Photon Torp #1 rolls a 5. Frigate Rolls a 15.

Result: 0 damage, Frigate Max defense reduced to 15.

Round 1: Segment 2:

Photon Torp #2 rolls between 0 and 6. Frigate Rolls between 0 and 15.

Photon Torp #2 rolls a 3. Frigate rolls a 10.

Result: 0 damage, Frigate max defense reduced to 12.

Round 1: Segment 3:

Photon Topr #3 rolls between 0 and 6. Frigate Rolls between 0 and 12.

Photon Trop #3 rolls a 4. Frigate rolls a 6.

Result: 0 damage, Frigate max defense reduced to 8.

Round 1: Segment 4:

PT #4 rolls between 0 and 6. Frigate rolls between 0 and 8.

PT #4 rolls a 5. Frigate rolls a 4.

Result: 1 damage to HP. Frigate max defense reduced to 3.

Round 1: Segment 5:

PT #5 rolls between 0 and 6. Frigate rolls defense between 0 and 3.

PT #5 rolls a 3. Frigate rolls a 1.

Result: 2 damage to HP. Frigate max defense reduced to 0.

Round 1: Segment 6:

PT #6 rolls between 0 and 6. Frigate rolls 0.

PT #6 rolls a 1. Frigate rolls 0.

Result: 1 damage to HP. Frigate max at 0.

Round 1 results:

4 damage to Frigate’s HP.

Round 2: Everything resets other than HP.

Round 2: Segment 1:

Photon Torp #1 rolls between 0 and 6. Frigate Rolls between 0 and 20.

Photon Torp #1 rolls a 5. Frigate Rolls a 15.

Result: 0 damage, Frigate Max defense reduced to 15.

And so on.

The key would be to make sure it doesn’t take too long for a battle to conclude. It would also take some effort in the battle screen such that if a ship finishes off one sihp with one of its weapons that it can then move onto another ship within a round.

In other words, if the capital ship blows up the frigate in round 4, segment 2. Then it should start targeting the next ship right then and not have to wait until the next round.

The reason this is important is because capital ships are basically a waste because fighters have a huge advantage in that they don’t waste their shots.

Right now, no matter how powerful, a capital sihp can only kill 1 ship per round. By contrast, a fleet of tiny ships can take out one per ship.

MacsenLP

on Oct 23, 2006

Perhaps the amount of ships 1 ship can fire upon and potentially destroy could be based on the individual ship logistics.

eg:

Capitol ship with 10 logistics could fire at 5 seperate ships per turn.
8 logistics=4
6 logistics=3
4 logistics=2
2 logistics=1

Of course it could only target a new ship once the original target had been destroyed.

Lenius.

Decker22

on Oct 23, 2006

Um sorry frogboy but didn't you just double the random rolls for each defensive roll for each segement. One defensive roll at least reduces the number of dies rolled. And dunno couldn't be some method of seeding the numbers first? to speed up the rolling. Though your method certiantly negates a bad or good roll for defense, say a 60 defense ship rolls a 1-5 then you may have alot of weapons going through.

But will say defensive reroll for each ship, one ship weapon fires all at nearly the same time. So could claim they all go against one defense instance, ala one roll

Decker22

on Oct 23, 2006

Say the real key is how crazy you going to make weapon selection. If ship has all diffrent weapons type will , will the simulation pick the efficent weapon first against the ship with a inefficent defense against said weapon.Know already have some intelegence of trying to attack ship with most offense and least defense values first.

Though would imagine all the algroithms for decision making on weapons selection would be slower than alot of random die rolls.

Misaniovent

on Oct 23, 2006

This sounds like it may as well be a sequel, which is excellent considering that it's not. I'm very excited -- you seem to be bringing everything to a truly epic scale.

We'll just need more tiles on planets to fit all these new improvements!

thehandofzarquon

on Oct 23, 2006

Perhaps the amount of ships 1 ship can fire upon and potentially destroy could be based on the individual ship logistics.

eg:

Capitol ship with 10 logistics could fire at 5 separate ships per turn.
8 logistics=4
6 logistics=3
4 logistics=2
2 logistics=1

Of course it could only target a new ship once the original target had been destroyed.

Lenius.

To me, if you are going to let ships re-target after a target is destroyed... there has got to be some limit on it. Otherwise... the small fighter fleets would get hurt pretty bad by a single capital ship, rather than Capital ships being hurt bad by small fighter fleets...

A limit based on size/logistics as above seems to be the best solution. *shrugs*

Now a question about the current scheme Frogboy has up there... what about ships with multiple defense types? Are they still going to be rolled against the attack at once? If so, how will the reduction of max defense work? Applied to the weapon's direct defense type then down to the others? Split even? Other than that, I think it could work, and it gives more chances for quasi-critical hits/misses, given the amount of individual rolls...

thehandofzarquon

on Oct 23, 2006

Will we really need them? Asteroid fields seem to be effectively "bonus tiles" for planets that need the resources they provide, at least what I can draw from from the previews.

But I agree, I'm looking forward to this more and more with each preview... of course, it would be even better of an expansion with Carriers/Orbital Bombardment (*wink, wink, nudge, nudge*).

Hrm... I really gotta pre-order soon

luckyirishguy25

on Oct 23, 2006

i can't wait for the beta testing to start!

LogicSequence

on Oct 24, 2006

i might make one suggestion for a quick fun thing to add in. In playing the game i've often designed a ship i would designate as military flagship. Cool design, and i'd only build one of that type. But there's no real difference with that ship than any other.

So in my modding of the game, i made a flagship module, which was basically a support module that had a negative hull space value. I tied that to the constructor script so you couldn't have more than one per ship, and set it's cost to 1500 (really expensive). That way i could have a true military flagship that had more room for lots of defenses and more weapons.

What about something like that for DA? With all the talk of big huge uber expensive capital ships (which is what they should be) why not have some sort of flagship module, or deisignation? Something that would give the ship more space than a normal hull of that type, or perhaps multiply the attack and defense values by some number.

If you make it a module you can put on the ship, the only code changes i forsee being needed is another tag like the constructor and trade module tags making it a one item per ship module. And new code making only one module available to all ships, once it's in use, u can't have another until you remove it from the ship it's currently on.

Sound good? As easy as i'm thinking? Frogboy? Kryo?

danielost

on Oct 24, 2006

in the game of star fleet battles a fight between a fighter group (12 ships) and a dreadnought is discribed as this

the fighter group will rip the dreadnought to pieces in secounds and that is how long the fighter group will last

SleekDD

on Oct 24, 2006

@Ceylin: True, you could see that as a critical hit, but it is one that'll have more chances of occurring between evenly matched/sized ships. The idea of a critical hit was to give the little guys a (fixed) chance to do some form of damage. The possible new system might make critical hits superfluous as little craft can swarm a big one.

Having defences weaken as hits come in sounds nice but I'm wondering what the effect will be on ship design and hull selection.
Smaller ships will eventually punch through high defences so we won't be needing to worry too much about invulnerable ships. Also, putting defences on small ships might (I'm not sure on this) become useful, not to enchance their survival but to soak up more damage so other ships might not get shot at using multiple target tracking.

On the other hand, battles will probably become a lot bloodier as defences run out after a few turns. This will probably spark a change in the cost of equipment since defences buy you some time and larger battles will see casualties on both sides. If this is intended, then by all means.

Obviously, this added dimension gives rise to possible future expansions on the combat field. What about combat repair systems or auxiliary power plants that repair some of the damage the defences suffered between rounds? This would give rise to the choice whether you'd be going for a solid but short-lived defence or rather a more modest one that regenerates over time.

What about different effects for different types of defence/offence? Shields could be doing what defences would do under the new system: block incoming damage but get weakened. A tied-in regeneration system could be applied here.
ECM defences could make it harder to be hit (effect should be greater with smaller hulls). Since smaller hulls usually can't put up to the massed weaponry of the big guys, with or without defences, giving the option for a 'dodge' might give some balanced fighters.
Armour could increase the base HP of the hull it was applied to and perhaps knock off a percentage of damage coming through the shields.

Anyway, those are just ideas on top of my head and will probably ask too much in the way of coding to be considered regardless of whether they'd even be appropriate to consider.

As to how to avoid the firing sequence taking too long; if you can detach the mathematical aspect from the graphical (assuming they are now tied), you can first roll all dice you need and then applied them at the same time (or roughly the same time if you're going for cinematic effects) making the ship fire in one go.

Zydor

on Oct 24, 2006

A suggestion on Food Management as it appears to be on its ever increasing march up the richtor scale of importance.

I always find it a real pain in game mechanics terms to track and manage food production, and I find I can very quickly run into food caps mid & late game if I am not alert to regularly checking the little devils have enough to eat - greedy suckers

I mainly use the colony management screen as an indicator of which planet to check the food cap by looking at the population column. However many times the planet is fine as previously I had raised the cap, but of course thats not apparent on the colony management screen as it onbly shows current population, not food cap, and I only find out after opening that planets management screen

Could you add an extra column to the colony management screen showing the food cap next to the population? That way it would cut down considerably the game mechanics click fest of properly managing food. Players can then at a glance look down each column as they are side by side and make quick value judgements on which one to increase the cap on. In a Gigantic game its obviously common to get 200+ planets by game end - and this would make a huge difference in game mechanics terms.

Good luck with Dark Avatar, I have a feeling it is going to be a "tipping point" in GalCiv, and later looking back will prove to be the point at which the game achieved true long term viability and depth that will make it last for many years, with the subsequent versions built on Dark Avatar success.

Regards
Zy

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