[Balance] Research speed

Supremacy; support/discussion/questions

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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Hello there,

took me a while before I could continue with the game :-).

Once again I am heavily struck with asteroids...it seems to me as if the ODDS would start counting EACH TIME you start/load the game from fresh...
I just had a comet strike in 284.

Apart from that I noticed that the overall FPS have now dropper from initally around 20-40 FPS...to around 10-20 maximum 26 FPS.
When being on the map or in some planetery menu etc.
More interestingly - just out of sudden in Turn 319 I had a massive sudden drop to 1-2 FPS...I barely managed to quit the game and reload. The effect was vanished. But still FPS now in turn 320 is roughly 1/2 that of the FPS when beginning the game...WHY ?
I mean the GUI CANT have such an impact right and also the more discovered systems. I mean they are not loaded all the time are they ?

Research
296 - Weapons 6
304 - Biology 5
311 - Propulsion 5

Agents
302 - Koloth

Events
295 - Commercial Terrorism in Boomerang Nebula (-4 Credits)
295 - Plague strikes Gamma Hydra (73 Mio. Dead)
302 - Domestic Terrorism prevented in Iota Bootis (2 Structures destroyed)
309 - Encountered Romulans !
313 - Commercial Terrorism prevented in Trelka
320 - Asteroid Strike in Muphrid (44 Mio. Dead, 15 Structures destroyed, Planet Muphrid II turned Barren)
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Iscaran wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:47 pm Once again I am heavily struck with asteroids...it seems to me as if the ODDS would start counting EACH TIME you start/load the game from fresh...
I just had a comet strike in 284.
Hi again
I think you're getting paranoid with this? :lol:
75 - Embezzlement (-184 Credits)
114 - Donation (+192 Credits)
144 - Religious Holiday in Alpha Ophiuchi
152 - Solar Flare in Alpha Ophiuchi
182 - Plague in Gamma Virginis (25 Mio. Dead)
240 - Religious Holiday in Khitomer
263 - Earthquake on Qo'nos (42 Mio Dead, 19 Structures destroyed)
284 - Comet Strike on Argaya I (11 Mio. Dead, 5 Structures destroyed, Planet destroyed)
295 - Plague strikes Gamma Hydra (73 Mio. Dead)
320 - Asteroid Strike in Muphrid (44 Mio. Dead, 15 Structures destroyed, Planet Muphrid II turned Barren)
It's following all the "rules" as established in the xaml and the code.

Again, Comet Strike and Asteroid Impact are 2 separate events!
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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

:-).
Youre right. I just realized they are 2 different events. But they have so much lasting and severe Impact...something I dont like :-).

It seems also a little odd - that a space faring civilization cant do anything about "slow" moving easily detectable items like asterois. I mean - they don*t travel with warp speed right ?

Could one perhaps make these events work similar to how it is in Stellaris. An asteroid/comet appears and you have x days time to destroy them with your fleet. (or by research or ... ?)

Its just that a destroyed planet is "lost forever" in the game...this is quite a harsh impact in my opinion.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Well, the original design for the game actually had these as missions (and Plague too), that you could intervene in a certain time period. Eventually, it will be like that.

Notice that there are differences between the 2 events; Asteroid Impact only happens in systems with an asteroid belt, so the window is relatively short - and a turn is not exactly days or weeks. :razz:

You do know that these events (Comet Strike, Plague, Earthquake, and even Supernova) are from the original BotF, right? We didn't make them up. :wink:

In Comet Strike, you lose a *planet*, yes. Not an entire system/colony. Most likely, anyway. It's a random planet, and you gain an asteroid belt, which gives you more Duranium. It's still a hit, but it's not a total loss, that's my point.
I increased the non-occurrence period for it to 300 turns a couple of hours ago, and increased the colony count requirement to 30, so as to not affect so much civs that might have been hit pretty hard already (wars etc).

I could make it so that a combat station in the system would destroy the asteroid (or the comet?), but a fleet or OBs? How much firepower is actually needed?...
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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Well...If I consider the advancedness of the technique in the Star Trek universe probably a single cruiser style ship should be enough to destroy asteroids - even if they are bigger (like a few kilometers in size). Just my two cents.

I know these events were in BotF present. But they occurred practically one a match or even not at all...and I played lots of matches far beyond 300 Turns...

Also I dont remember exactly but there were also 2 events in Botf ? One which only reduced population of a planet temporarily and destroyed structures and one that reduced its planet size. The only event, and it was very rare, which really "destroyed" a planet was IIRC the SuperNova which completely destroyed an entire system. I think I had it occur 2 or 3 times, total in my complete years lasting BotF play time.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Random events are a constant WiP. Your feedback is precious in this regard too so that I can iterate and adjust. We don't want them to occur too often (makes them trivial) but we also don't want them to be super rare (IMO kind of defeats the purpose of them existing).
Most 4Xs suffer from late game "boredom" because from a certain point onwards, it's pretty much a slam dunk and you're just MMing your empire. Some of these might "shake the waters" a bit. They're not spectacular or anything (Crisis level of immersion), but that's what we have at this point. They're more annoying than entertaining? Then we must address that.
I'm trying to give them a minimum amount of love while trying to get the rest of the game also advancing (in the grand scheme of things, much more important), so that you can keep using them and providing feedback.

I'll halve their occurrence rate and we'll see how that goes.
Some of these are meant to keep you on your toes though, at least until some other implementation is done - like Plague to make PopulationHealth buildings more useful/required, or the Terrorism events to "force" you to keep your Intel PFs manned (and thus keep your research in check in some way) [in Huge Slow you get some 200 turns of intel free play in your own games]

As soon as I get the damn ExternalAffairs issue solved, I'll see about adding those Planet Type Shift events, and some others that might be easier to implement.

I can only thank you and hope you don't despair! :grin:
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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Most 4Xs suffer from late game "boredom" because from a certain point onwards, it's pretty much a slam dunk and you're just MMing your empire.
This is in my opinion MOSTLY a problem of bad choice of "Game Target". Just an example:
If that "rolling over the enemy, but it takes a long time" (boredom in late game) is a problem. Then ask yourself, WHY is the goal to capture 100%.
Does it not suffice to conquer 60% to have the "rolling over" effect trigger in ? One can just "skip" the remaining 40% conquering. Even getting those 60% is hard enough.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

In Supremacy, capturing 100% is not *the* goal. There are 5 victory conditions, and eliminating all other major civs is simply the default (6th) VC.
If the catastrophic events were only meant to harass you while you march to complete elimination, then pushing them to the 500~600 turn mark would help. But is that what we really want?
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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

But is that what we really want?
No. Actually I think we don't want either of these options.

Btw. one has to improve overall performance - it sure can't possibly be that you get 20-30 FPS in such a game...and then dropping this value by 50%, in the main screen seems also a little weird.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Iscaran wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 2:41 pm HOWEVER, this is NOT identical to the more generic laggin which I reported earlier. So this seems to be more or less fixed (at least with the settings I have in game:
Animated Stars on Galaxy Map = OFF
High quality image scaling = OFF
User Interface Antialiasing = OFF
Are you sure about this?
The game is really unresponsive for me if I disable AntiAliasing. From turn 1 on a small map!
The other settings don't seem to have much of an effect.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Any feedback on Research Rate, and Random Events frequency? On 20200521.
Iscaran, anyone?
Are they better? Worse?
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

The RPs provided by science ships, do you find them to be ok, or do we need to tweak them?
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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Hi,

sorry for not reporting back for a few weeks now....as a matter of fact my 2nd child has been born recently and thus I am seriuosly hindered :-).

I promise I will get back to Supremacy in a few months - but until then it may really take time and I will have to restart then with whatever version is recent then.

As for the science ships. I found the rate provided for the one time researching of the anomalies quite ok. Maybe a little "up" as it is now really just a one time thing (or perhaps it needs to scale with the average empire tech level ? As otherwise the impact on higher levels is so much diminishing).

Btw. It would be really really NICE if one had a feedback WHICH anomalies where already researched and which not. I think there was a label in the system note (lower left or so that it is researchable if NO science ship was there). BUT revisiting the same anomaly with a higher level science ship allow to research it again - is that intended ?

IF YES then the system note needs to be "updated" somewhat to reflect that situation better.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Iscaran wrote: Wed Jun 10, 2020 2:24 pm Hi,

sorry for not reporting back for a few weeks now....as a matter of fact my 2nd child has been born recently and thus I am seriuosly hindered :-).
Congrats!! :up: RL is always more important than a game. Uh, right? :twisted:

As for the science ships. I found the rate provided for the one time researching of the anomalies quite ok. Maybe a little "up" as it is now really just a one time thing (or perhaps it needs to scale with the average empire tech level ? As otherwise the impact on higher levels is so much diminishing).
Notice that you can survey again when you get a survey ship with a higher science ability. So if you've surveyed an anomaly with a science ship 1 and later in the game you research science ship 2, you can use that ship to survey the same anomaly again, and this time you get more points than in the first survey, because the ship has a higher SA. Rinse and repeat for science ship 3.
The %s might need a bit of tweaking though, and that's what I need to know.

Btw. It would be really really NICE if one had a feedback WHICH anomalies where already researched and which not. I think there was a label in the system note (lower left or so that it is researchable if NO science ship was there). BUT revisiting the same anomaly with a higher level science ship allow to research it again - is that intended ?
Yes, see above.
If the hint shows, then it has not been surveyed yet. If not, it has.

IF YES then the system note needs to be "updated" somewhat to reflect that situation better.
It is now :wink:
I added the current survey % in the hints section in one of the recent patches (or was it the latest release?). It was annoying the hell out of me too :wink:


Take your time, enjoy the new baby!
And thanks!
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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Notice that you can survey again when you get a survey ship with a higher science ability. So if you've surveyed an anomaly with a science ship 1 and later in the game you research science ship 2, you can use that ship to survey the same anomaly again, and this time you get more points than in the first survey, because the ship has a higher SA. Rinse and repeat for science ship 3.
The %s might need a bit of tweaking though, and that's what I need to know.
Yes, see above.
If the hint shows, then it has not been surveyed yet. If not, it has.
Yes I figured that out - but there is NO feedback to the player that this is possible. The message in the text for anomalies that they can be researched disappears once you have researched them ONCE (and does not reappear when you research Science Ships 2 etc.)

That what I meant is a little irritating. It correctly shows as long as you have ONLY science ships 1 - but the hint is not "reset" once you have Science ship 2 available.
(EDIT: at least this was in the version I as running in the last game) (which is Mar14 patch to the feb12 version)
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