[Balance] Research speed

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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Ah...then maybe there is a flaw in the probability calculation.

I understand that you put a probabilty check in, which checks EVERY system vs the 1/600 "odds", right ?
But that means if you have like 10 colonies the total probability ONE such event occurs raises by a factor of 10 !
The more colonies you have - the more chance you have.

Thus probably resulting in my experience of "this shit happens WAaaay too often".

If you intention is to have such an event trigger ONCE per empire ~500 Turns...you cannot allow the check to be done per colony.
I made it 600 turns actually :wink: And they will not hit a system twice. Supernova can only be triggered once per civ. And they all have only a 50% chance to happen.
OK nice it wont hit a system twice - but if it hits another system with in 30 turns - its WAY to strong. I remember I had my first game running until turn 250 around and had at least 5 system deteriorating events getting triggered in that timescale.

Maybe even more than 5...too long ago. But I remember 5 of them. And especially there were 2 events just immediately after each other (like in Turn 199 and turn 200 or so).
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

I understand that you put a probabilty check in, which checks EVERY system vs the 1/600 "odds", right ?
But that means if you have like 10 colonies the total probability ONE such event occurs raises by a factor of 10 !
The more colonies you have - the more chance you have.
Nope. For each eligible civ, one colony is randomly chosen.

EDIT:
There's no 1/600 odds, what I said was that the event can only happen once in each 600 turns; that is, once it happens, it can only happen again after 600 turns.

OK nice it wont hit a system twice - but if it hits another system with in 30 turns - its WAY to strong. I remember I had my first game running until turn 250 around and had at least 5 system deteriorating events getting triggered in that timescale.
That's what you have the
CivilizationRecurrencePeriod
UnitRecurrencePeriod

options for. So that that won't happen. It's the
OccurrenceChance
option that's still puzzling me. I'll have to look into it a little deeper.

Notice that you are talking about the previous release, and I'm talking about the current one, where like I already stated I changed the values in those options to those I mentioned. No use in comparing different situations.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

No use in comparing different situations.
Indeed ! I'll turn random events back on in next game. We'll see how it works out ;). Maybe you find it useful to add some counterbalancing positive random events to add until then as well :-)
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Hehe, maybe. I'm fixing a potential loop in one of the terrorism events right now, and also preventing both of them to happen when an unrest order is in effect in the colony. Also added morale to the equation, and a couple more tweaks.
I might also add the counter-intel code, as it's not in yet.

Checked the OccurrenceChance thingy, and it seems I made a mistake in the "big 3" events... the higher that value, the lower the chance it'll happen. So I actually made them potentially more likely to happen sooner... :???: (I lowered them from 100 to 50, thinking it was the "probability" of it happening; turns out it isn't, but is instead a 1 in x chance... you might want to edit those values to 200).
The changes to the other options (the recurrence periods) are good though, so it's not actually critical.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

OKAY...

Big game stopper right now.

I had to update to the latest AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 Edition driver (v12.2) - the problem is. I cannot start Supremacy now anymore, it completely crashes the driver and I have even to reboot the OS.

I have no clue why and how this happens or whether it is a problem with a specific driver setting I use.

The issue looks like this: When I start the game, the menu comes up quite normally, but whatever I click from here it starts to "flash" my screen (goes black, rsetores back to Supremacy for a second, goes pink, random color, and back to Supremacy...after a few such cycles it then closes down and the entire AMD driver is shut down by Windows.

Win 10
AMD R9 380 with the 12.2 driver

any ideas, anybody else has this problem ?

EDIT: When I try to manually restart the driver control panel I get the error message:
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Iscaran
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

I reported the issue to AMD...it is 100% the new Driver causing this problem.

Reverting to 12.9.2 works all fine. Since driver crashing or even OS-Rebooting occurs in multiple games (Civ 4 BtS e.g.) I think it is a more generic issue, hopefully solved by AMD.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

OK. Confirmed. The Radeon 12.9.2 driver version works normally, the newer 12.12.2 makes the game unplayable.
Reported to AMD.

Just a small report back on the Research Speed and Agent hiring progress:

General info: Reached Turn 160 by now - no contact to major empires. Found 6 table wormholes. Put Surveyors on both ends.

Agent Recruiting
Turn 11: Antaak - Retired in Turn 114
Turn 20: Vorok - Retired in Turn 120
Turn 28: Buka'H - Retired in Turn 132
Turn 39: Goroth - Retired in Turn 142
Turn 51: Klaang - Retired in Turn 158
Turn 60: Korok - Retired in Turn 160
Turn 72: K'Vagh
Turn 145: Korax
Turn 158: Kras

I hope there is an endless amount of agents spawining ? Otherwise one might run into problems in Late game when all agents have been spawned and retired.

Apart from that - it might be worthwhile to slightly slow down spawning. Right now it seems there is 1 Agent per ~10 Turns. Maybe a ratio of 1 every 20 turns would be "better". I had like 5 Agents hanging around until turn 100 doing "nothing". So better spawn slower and have thus "more later" (since they die off anyway after around ~100 Turns.

Research:
Turn 15: Biotech 2
Turn 25: Computers 2
Turn 35: Propulsion 2
Turn 44: Weapons 2
Turn 49: Construction 2
Turn 54: Energy 2
Turn 64: Construction 3
Turn 71: Propulsion 3
Turn 73: Biotech 3
Turn 79: Weapons 3
Turn 87: Computers 3
Turn 106: Construction 4
Turn 112: Biotech 4
Turn 117: Propulsion 4
Turn 120: Computers 4
Turn 126: Weapons 4
Turn 133: Energy 4
Turn 146: Energy 5
Turn 151: Weapons 5

I think research speed would be good - if this was "normal" playmode. But remember I am on slow...for that I still think it is too fast.
On the other hand - I think it is important that the research speed needs to scale with Galaxy size...maybe for small the observed speed is good enough even for "slow". But on a huge galaxy where it apparently requires around 200 Turns to make even contact with some major faction I think it needs to be scaled down even more. Maybe another 50% - at least for the early techs until Tier 5.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Iscaran wrote: Sun Dec 15, 2019 8:06 am OK. Confirmed. The Radeon 12.9.2 driver version works normally, the newer 12.12.2 makes the game unplayable.
Reported to AMD.
Glad you managed to get around it. Let's see if they can fix it.

General info: Reached Turn 160 by now - no contact to major empires. Found 6 table wormholes. Put Surveyors on both ends.
The "fix" for surveying WHs hasn't been released yet. I can upload a patch if you wish.

Agent Recruiting
Turn 72: K'Vagh
Turn 145: Korax
Turn 158: Kras
You've started recruting from the TOS era, as expected.

I hope there is an endless amount of agents spawining ? Otherwise one might run into problems in Late game when all agents have been spawned and retired.
Endless? Of course not. There are only so many characters in the show :wink:
Each era has its own set of agents, and you'll recruit from the set of the era you're currently in. In your case, you only had a pool of 7 to recruit from at the beginning (ENT era), and you recruited all of them. You had yo wait until you got to TL4 (TOS) to have access to more agents.

Apart from that - it might be worthwhile to slightly slow down spawning. Right now it seems there is 1 Agent per ~10 Turns. Maybe a ratio of 1 every 20 turns would be "better". I had like 5 Agents hanging around until turn 100 doing "nothing". So better spawn slower and have thus "more later" (since they die off anyway after around ~100 Turns.
Yes, I already mentioned that I'd make this scale (with research speed and/or galaxy size). I just haven't had the time to code that yet. I was really busy these last couple of days.
Notice this can easily be modded though.

I think research speed would be good - if this was "normal" playmode. But remember I am on slow...for that I still think it is too fast.
On the other hand - I think it is important that the research speed needs to scale with Galaxy size...maybe for small the observed speed is good enough even for "slow". But on a huge galaxy where it apparently requires around 200 Turns to make even contact with some major faction I think it needs to be scaled down even more. Maybe another 50% - at least for the early techs until Tier 5.
I need to get more feedback with other settings, so as to not break the game for anything other than Huge/Slow.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Spocks-cuddly-tribble »

Iscaran wrote: Sun Dec 08, 2019 3:55 amRandom Events and Specials are deactivated. There were just sooo many negative Events triggering all the time in the last games
@ IceCreamVendor :wink:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3TbZ3_q-Y

viewtopic.php?f=300&t=3068&p=49978#p49978
I don't know how many bugs is too many but that point is reached somewhere before however many in BotF is.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Not sure I understand what you're trying to say, but let me post again what I already told Iscaran - just a few posts up, you probably missed it...
Nope. For each eligible civ, one colony is randomly chosen.

EDIT:
There's no 1/600 odds, what I said was that the event can only happen once in each 600 turns; that is, once it happens, it can only happen again after 600 turns.
Oh, this hasn't changed since the beginning. Just in case.
And i've also mentioned that each event has a minimum turn for it to be eligible - some are 30, some are 200+ (guess which).
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Endless? Of course not. There are only so many characters in the show
I suggest you rethink this decision. It might get really "boring" in the late game when one runs out of agents...Maybe just create "random name" / coupled with "random image" Agent when TL 10 is reached every lets say 50 turns or something.
The "fix" for surveying WHs hasn't been released yet. I can upload a patch if you wish.
No need to rush things. Balancing issues can be fixed as time goes by (unless they are severe).

However what struggles me more is the rather "bad" performance of the game engine. There is major "lagging" on the galaxa map when trying to scroll around, theres a even worse sometimes a huge "clicking" delay when trying to click menu items.
Sometimes one cannot scroll the building list for selecting constructible buildings which are on top.
Most of the time some buttons are greyed out (and indeed are unclickable) although they should work (especially in diplomacy). As a workaround I click another menu (like inbox, and the outbox againg in Diplomacy screen) to get the send message button become "clickable". Same with the save game button or when entering ctrl+s and then the save game button is greyed out and unclickable (however one can use the "enter" button instead and it works).

There many more such issues. But the worst is really the lagging in menus and on scrolling the map (or the lag until the right-click menu comes up).

It "feels" as if the game was running with 10 FPS. There must be a reason for that and I hope it is not because my new Ryzen 3600X +32 GB RAM and the R9 380 or my SSDs are "too" fast for it.

Or am I the only one observing this performance issues ? Then there must be an "easy" solution maybe ? Some driver setting or something ?
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Iscaran wrote: Mon Dec 16, 2019 5:05 pm I suggest you rethink this decision. It might get really "boring" in the late game when one runs out of agents...Maybe just create "random name" / coupled with "random image" Agent when TL 10 is reached every lets say 50 turns or something.
Hmm? There are agents for ALL TLs up to 11...
BTW, I just increased the agent spawn interval for Slow (only). (and disabled food bonuses for the Borg)

No need to rush things. Balancing issues can be fixed as time goes by (unless they are severe).
I don't rush things. :wink: I said a patch, not going to make a new release over a couple of changes. These test patches are exactly to test changes before validating them.


However what struggles me more is the rather "bad" performance of the game engine. There is major "lagging" on the galaxa map when trying to scroll around, theres a even worse sometimes a huge "clicking" delay when trying to click menu items.

(...)

Or am I the only one observing this performance issues ? Then there must be an "easy" solution maybe ? Some driver setting or something ?
You should take a look here:
viewtopic.php?f=300&t=3613
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Can't find the post about checking research speed against BotF, but fired it up for a few quick tests (with the Klingons for low research and the Feds for best research), and here are the results:

Starting @ TL1

Klingons
Started with 2 labs activated (16 RPs), and spammed labs in the build queue.
At turn 7, with 5 labs activated, reached Bio1.
At turn 11, with 7 labs activated, reached Com1.
(colonized first system at turn 10)

Federation
Started with 5 labs activated (60 RPs), and built a couple more.
At turn 3, with 6 labs activated, reached Bio1.
At turn 6, with 7 labs activated, reached Com1.
(colonized first system at turn 5)


Starting @ TL2 (default)

Klingons
Started with 4 labs activated (52 RPs).
At turn 3, with 5 labs activated, Bio1 was at 16% (less than 15 turns to finish).


Federation
Started with 10 labs activated (170 RPs).
At turn 3, with 10 labs activated, Bio1 was at 52% (less than 3 turns to finish).



Obviously, Supremacy and BotF have fundamental differences when it comes to building stuff, but TL1 in BotF is pretty damn fast (especially for the Feds), and Sup is very conservative. :wink:
Even TL2 is kind of fast, again especially for the Feds.
So I don't see Supremacy as being too fast, even considering that this was just a few turns.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iscaran »

Yes BotF starts out very fast - but progression is much "slower" later. Starting already at tech 2 going down seriously. I remember I reached Tech 9/10 around turn 500 typically.

Also dont forget ~5-10 Turns for a "single" technology and thus ~30-50 turns for the complete reaching of Tier 2 is "roughly" what we have now in Supremacy ! Before the recent changes it was around quite some factor FASTER.
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Re: [Balance] Research speed

Post by Iceman »

Iscaran wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 5:59 pm Yes BotF starts out very fast - but progression is much "slower" later. Starting already at tech 2 going down seriously. I remember I reached Tech 9/10 around turn 500 typically.
I was going to point out that I was only looking at the first few TLs, as we hadn't really discussed changes to the later TLs in Supremacy. I ended up forgetting to do that...
Also dont forget ~5-10 Turns for a "single" technology and thus ~30-50 turns for the complete reaching of Tier 2 is "roughly" what we have now in Supremacy ! Before the recent changes it was around quite some factor FASTER.
The Feds get there in less than 18... :wink: And the Klingons probably under 25.
At the time I tried to get some "compromise" values that wouldn't create such huge gaps as in BotF... the old values probably wouldn't differ much than those in BotF, since we about doubled them (a bit more). Which isn't surprising, as that was what I was aiming at. :wink: (again, for the first few TLs, as the output formulas are different for both games)
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