SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

The three objectives:

• To maintain compatibility with existing AIs
• To improve the balance of the game, and increase the effective number of strategic options.
• To make as small of a change as possible to the stock game.

[Captain Kwok]

I thought that Fyron was going to do this...but I'm just as glad to see that you are.

A couple of recommendations is that I'd like to have weapons of equal research cost with similiar damage ratios or at least somwhat equal when compared in their expected roles - weapons like torpedoes should be a viable option later in the game. This will help to encourage creativity in PBW games since no one will be at a disadvantage for choosing different weapons than the typical PBW ones.

The second recommendation is that the talisman should be a mount, so while improving accuracy greatly - it won't hit every time.

[ July 22, 2003, 22:32: Message edited by: Captain Kwok ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, I'm kicking it off anyways...
I believe this will mostly be discussion on what to change and how.

The actual modding should take no time at all, since one of the main points is to keep the changes to a minimum.

[Phoenix-D]

Suggested changes from here:

-Split the Incinerator Beam and Ripper Beam into their own families (IIRC this won't affect the AI, since they already have their own weapon families)

-Increase the effectiveness or reduce the cost of the one-resource improvers (i.e. mineral scanners)

-Tone down mounts a little

-Give the bigger ships penalties to defense (like the smaller ones have bonuses to same- its a steady pattern that just..stops)

-Improve the Tractor Beam III

-PPBs should either be weaker, or harder to get.

EDIT: to help the AI compatability, I would suggest no size or tech tree changes.

[ July 22, 2003, 22:41: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[minipol]

Fighters need to be more powerful too. Now they are useless in the endgame and it takes to long to build large fighters. But that wouldn't be a problem if they where more powerful

[ July 22, 2003, 22:41: Message edited by: minipol ]

[Phoenix-D]

That could be fixed by reducing or removing the PDC's bonus to hit. Currently it's at 70%!

Ah, that's another fix. Make a mention -somewhere- of which weapons get to-hit bonuses. In-game, there is no indication.

[spoon]

Here's a quick list of some over- and under- powered ship components, and what I'd do to modify them

Overpowered
- Phased Polaron Beam (rof 2 or less damage)
- Warp Point Opener (drastically cut distance)
- Talisman (increase cost by a factor of 10 +, and increase size*)
- PDC (reduce to hit bonus)
- Quantum Reactor (increase cost by a factor of 10 +, and increase size*)

Underpowered
- Missiles (decrease cost)
- Torpedoes (increase "to hit")
- Meson BLasters (increase range to 8)
- High-Energy Discharge Weapons (increase damage)
- Tachyon Projection Cannon (increase range)

* not sure if you want to increase size of components, due to possible effects on ai ship design.

And here's a list for facilities:

Overpowered
- Ship/Training facilities (lower rate of increase to 1%, lower max value to 10%)

Underpowered
- Cargo Facilities (greatly increase cargo value, decrease cost to 2k)
- Climate Control Facilities (increase effect amount, decrease cost to 2k)
- Medical Lab (increase plague prevention to level 5)
- Mineral (etc) Scanners (increase effect by 50%)
Value Improvement Plant (increase effect)

After you get a list of what you want to change, I would gladly mod the data files for you, unless, of course, you want to do it yourself.

[ July 22, 2003, 23:28: Message edited by: spoon ]

[Suicide Junkie]

True, the PDC's big advantage is the autofiring, so reducing the accuracy would be reasonable.

As for the fighters, all the prices could be reduced at once with a mount...

-Split the Incinerator Beam and Ripper Beam into their own families (IIRC this won't affect the AI, since they already have their own weapon families)

Is that simply for convenience of upgrades, or is there another reason I'm missing?

For the weapons, I favour returning to scaled SE3 values where possible.

[ July 22, 2003, 23:16: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Phoenix-D]

The Ripper/Incinerator thing it because those weapons are -nothing- like each other, or like the Wave Motion Gun. The Ripper Beam is a short-range high damage beam, the WMG is a long-range low (total) damage beam with good accuracy.

In short, its a pain to design and build Ripper Beam ships when you have Wave Motion guns.

"- High-Energy Discharge Weapons (increase damage)"

Eeep. Ripper Beam: 20 KT/50 damage. This sucker has the highest damage/KT ratio in the game, the only problems being the short range.

[DavidG]

Training facilites are way too Cheap in terms of research cost. I think the base should be way higher that 5000