After Action Report - Romulans

[Warp Core Breach]

Hi Team,
Happy new year! Been a bit of a rough patch the last few weeks, so I've not had much time for Supremacy, but I'm moreorless back again. Managed to get through a game as the Romulans, several thoughts/issues to share. Played in a spiral galaxy, middle starting tech. Game was started using the Dec 24 build. I did continue the game using the Dec 29 build which may have helped with one issue (diplomacy) but may have caused another (garrisons).

1. Romulans didn't crash, and all my ships stayed in the game this time!

2. Spiral galaxy shape worked out nicely. Definitely could see the spiral pattern as I played and could predict which direction to send my scouts to find new systems.

3. Had a crash part way through. In the attached game, if you attack the defense satellites with the taskforce at Ligave, you'll crash at the end of turn processing. I was able to work around it by simply bombarding the planet to eliminate the energy sources, but could never attack the def sats, even when all were non-powered. (I was able to wipe out the inhabitants and recolonized, so this didn't end my game). I didn't have this problem at other systems I attacked, though. Note: in previous games, after destroying all def sats, the galaxy map would display 1/0 def sats remain. That seems resolved, but could be related?

4. Borg did nothing. By turn 220, they had taken 2 systems, one had a population of 4, the other 67. Looks like they built no ships, and never attacked a major power. It appears their population never grew, perhaps they starved after assimilating the system?

5. I had a major problem with troops. My systems built up their garrisons normally from first colonization, however, once I built a Troop Transport, the planets never replenished their garrisons. After well over 100 turns, Romulus still has a garrison of 0. (being located at the far ass-end of the galaxy was a blessing! ). After 220 turns, I had few planets capable of building transports, so decided to end my game. I did not have this issue in prior games.

6. Romulan ships are *slow*. Seemed like all the major powers had larger ships capable of speed 2, while I still had to level up tech multiple times to get anything better than a destroyer with speed 2. I'm guessing that is a play-balance trade-off for cloaking, but I never really saw a benefit to cloaking in any of my battles. I won with superior forces and lost with inferior ones. Def Sats really were tough this game, though. Roms were just slow getting around. The pattern I've seen in all my games so far is the Klingons always grow the fastest.

7. Diplomacy *seemed* a little glitched, though it is possible I just don't understand what was happening. There were several minors where I could get to Affiliated status just fine, but then I could never offer membership. It kept giving me "Offer Gift" as the only diplomatic option, even though it had been well over 10 turns since my previous diplomatic message. Then, seemingly randomly, it allowed me to offer membership. In one case, I didn't offer it as soon as the option reappeared, and the next turn, the option was gone again. I eventually was able to get to membership with ALL the minors I met. I was guessing that perhaps their diplomatic status with other majors was the issue, but it was so inconsistent, I didn't see a pattern. On the diplomatic overview screen, the colors of the lines don't seem consistent when choosing Romulans vs. Majors vs. Minors. Do the colors change meaning? Having a color key on this screen would be really helpful.

8. On the galaxy map, the lower right side tells you what species inhabits the system. When on the colony screen, however, there is no way to tell which species is in the system. I can kinda guess by the names of the facilities, but that's not convenient. It would be nice if the species name appeared near the lower right side, above the system map on the colony screen, just like on the galaxy screen. That lower display is otherwise the same in both screens, so hopefully this is an easy update to make.

As always - thank you for the work making this game playable and fun! I see you just posted a new version (hooray!), so will d/l momentarily.

rom-crash.sav

(677.83 KiB) Downloaded 67 times

[Iceman]

Hi Team,
Happy new year! Been a bit of a rough patch the last few weeks, so I've not had much time for Supremacy, but I'm moreorless back again. Managed to get through a game as the Romulans, several thoughts/issues to share. Played in a spiral galaxy, middle starting tech. Game was started using the Dec 24 build. I did continue the game using the Dec 29 build which may have helped with one issue (diplomacy) but may have caused another (garrisons).

Hi WCB, HNY too!

1. Romulans didn't crash, and all my ships stayed in the game this time!

You might have noticed the game is somewhat slower in the mid/late game, as I disabled threading to see if some issues would go away - but this is the price to pay, at least until it is properly addressed.

3. Had a crash part way through. In the attached game, if you attack the defense satellites with the taskforce at Ligave, you'll crash at the end of turn processing. I was able to work around it by simply bombarding the planet to eliminate the energy sources, but could never attack the def sats, even when all were non-powered. (I was able to wipe out the inhabitants and recolonized, so this didn't end my game). I didn't have this problem at other systems I attacked, though. Note: in previous games, after destroying all def sats, the galaxy map would display 1/0 def sats remain. That seems resolved, but could be related?

Heh, good catch, you destroyed the OBs right when they were being upgraded That's what caused the crash, will fix.

4. Borg did nothing. By turn 220, they had taken 2 systems, one had a population of 4, the other 67. Looks like they built no ships, and never attacked a major power. It appears their population never grew, perhaps they starved after assimilating the system?

I'll have to check, but in the savegame (turn 149) it seems they were still in "stasis"; but they should still build ships...

5. I had a major problem with troops. My systems built up their garrisons normally from first colonization, however, once I built a Troop Transport, the planets never replenished their garrisons. After well over 100 turns, Romulus still has a garrison of 0. (being located at the far ass-end of the galaxy was a blessing! ). After 220 turns, I had few planets capable of building transports, so decided to end my game. I did not have this issue in prior games.

This has been fixed in the current patch.

6. Romulan ships are *slow*. Seemed like all the major powers had larger ships capable of speed 2, while I still had to level up tech multiple times to get anything better than a destroyer with speed 2. I'm guessing that is a play-balance trade-off for cloaking, but I never really saw a benefit to cloaking in any of my battles. I won with superior forces and lost with inferior ones. Def Sats really were tough this game, though. Roms were just slow getting around. The pattern I've seen in all my games so far is the Klingons always grow the fastest.

Yes, it is (an attempt at) a balance trade-off. Do you think they should have the same speeds as the other empires?
This kind of differentiation, while it might look cool on paper, might actually hurt the game - this happened with Range too, where the Cards (and the Roms) were being hampered by lower ranges.
The Klingons in this game were lucky, they were the ones starting alone in a quadrant, and so they could expand much more than the others - the smaller the galaxy, the more evident this becomes. This is one aspect of the game that still needs to be improved, the starting locations. But they do tend to be this lucky, yes - I swear there's no bias!

7. Diplomacy *seemed* a little glitched, though it is possible I just don't understand what was happening. There were several minors where I could get to Affiliated status just fine, but then I could never offer membership. It kept giving me "Offer Gift" as the only diplomatic option, even though it had been well over 10 turns since my previous diplomatic message. Then, seemingly randomly, it allowed me to offer membership. In one case, I didn't offer it as soon as the option reappeared, and the next turn, the option was gone again. I eventually was able to get to membership with ALL the minors I met. I was guessing that perhaps their diplomatic status with other majors was the issue, but it was so inconsistent, I didn't see a pattern.

This should be fixed in the current patch. If you see more of this, please report.

On the diplomatic overview screen, the colors of the lines don't seem consistent when choosing Romulans vs. Majors vs. Minors. Do the colors change meaning? Having a color key on this screen would be really helpful.

This is a WiP. The current patch is a step backwards in this regard, as a change I made created other issues, so I reverted. But it should be improved in the next patch.
The colors have specific meanings, yes. The thing is, with the AI now proposing treaties, the existing color code was insufficient to properly display the new plethora of diplo statuses - namely member of another empire, subjugated by another empire. So I added colors for those situations (bluish indigo and yellow respectively, for now), but the code also doesn't handle well those situations. I'll have to add new diplo statuses, but that'll break savegame compatibility, so I'm holding those changes and trying to work with what we have.
The color key is in the ToDo list, actually (since the screen was created, but that's a detail)

8. On the galaxy map, the lower right side tells you what species inhabits the system. When on the colony screen, however, there is no way to tell which species is in the system. I can kinda guess by the names of the facilities, but that's not convenient. It would be nice if the species name appeared near the lower right side, above the system map on the colony screen, just like on the galaxy screen. That lower display is otherwise the same in both screens, so hopefully this is an easy update to make.

Yes, I have thought the same a number of times! I'll look into it when I get the diplo stuff sorted out.

As always - thank you for the work making this game playable and fun! I see you just posted a new version (hooray!), so will d/l momentarily.

Thank you for the patience and the feedback! It is most valuable

[Warp Core Breach]

Awesome all round - thanks for the info!

Here's the save at turn 220ish. Found a place to start collecting red-matter and was hoping to explore it. Will troops return if I resume this game on the new version, or do I need to start from scratch?

roms.sav

(736.73 KiB) Downloaded 68 times

[Warp Core Breach]

Do you think they should have the same speeds as the other empires?

It seemed to me they were nerf'ed too much. Expansion is everything, though, so this is a pretty severe limit, I feel. (I don't think I choose Roms against a human opponent.) I couldn't see the advantage cloaking has though, so it's hard to say. In this game, it hasn't seemed like much of an advantage. Without more info, I guess I would lean towards same speeds/same ranges and remove any tactical combat advantages for cloaks. Let them be for the strategic map.

[Iceman]

Here's the save at turn 220ish. Found a place to start collecting red-matter and was hoping to explore it. Will troops return if I resume this game on the new version, or do I need to start from scratch?

Yes, you can continue with that game, troop recruitment will resume. It might take one turn to kick in though.
Thanks for the save, I'll check it out!

[Iceman]

6. Romulan ships are *slow*. Seemed like all the major powers had larger ships capable of speed 2, while I still had to level up tech multiple times to get anything better than a destroyer with speed 2. I'm guessing that is a play-balance trade-off for cloaking, but I never really saw a benefit to cloaking in any of my battles. I won with superior forces and lost with inferior ones. Def Sats really were tough this game, though. Roms were just slow getting around. The pattern I've seen in all my games so far is the Klingons always grow the fastest.

Do you think they should have the same speeds as the other empires?

It seemed to me they were nerf'ed too much. Expansion is everything, though, so this is a pretty severe limit, I feel. (I don't think I choose Roms against a human opponent.) I couldn't see the advantage cloaking has though, so it's hard to say. In this game, it hasn't seemed like much of an advantage. Without more info, I guess I would lean towards same speeds/same ranges and remove any tactical combat advantages for cloaks. Let them be for the strategic map.

Can you elaborate on which Romulan ships are too slow? I was checking, and it seems to me that only Scouts have that issue; non-combat ships have no such limitation (as they cannot cloak), and the warships have pretty much the same speeds as other empires (Cards and Feds, as Klings and Dom have some speed advantages*).
I've fixed Scouts for the next patch, which I'll release later today.

*The "thematic" different speeds, maybe they should also be discarded?

Geordie asked quite some time ago for Cruiser IIs (of all empires) to have Speed 2, to make them more interesting/useful. I tend to agree, just don't want Cruisers to make Destroyers useless.
What does everyone think



As for the advantages of cloaking in battle, it allows you to not fight battles you don't want to fight, and gives you a free round of fire, at the expense of shields. It's not supposed to be OP, but balanced - by your words, I guess you find it more or less balanced?

[Iceman]

4. Borg did nothing. By turn 220, they had taken 2 systems, one had a population of 4, the other 67. Looks like they built no ships, and never attacked a major power. It appears their population never grew, perhaps they starved after assimilating the system?

Have you noticed any improvements?

8. On the galaxy map, the lower right side tells you what species inhabits the system. When on the colony screen, however, there is no way to tell which species is in the system. I can kinda guess by the names of the facilities, but that's not convenient. It would be nice if the species name appeared near the lower right side, above the system map on the colony screen, just like on the galaxy screen. That lower display is otherwise the same in both screens, so hopefully this is an easy update to make.

I've placed it right beside the colony name in the colony selection menu, upper left of the screen. That was the easiest way.
Suggestions for improvement are welcome, of course!
I've tweaked the position a bit for the next patch.