Custom races are broken

Been playing custom races since day 1. Not sure what your problem is though. I have 15 points to choose from. Make sure you use the reset button to get all your points back.

My custom races far outfight the ai ones. I find it harder to use the Stock races then a custom. because with custom race I can fill the parts that I lack in game with bonuses. Of course it takes a few games to find the right style for your game.

you should notice that a blank custom race starts out with Logistics +6. So you are getting something for free(in terms of points).



Anyway the point is moot:
Go to the .\My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar directory.
There is a files that has the following syntax:

[race name].customracexml

Open it in Wordpad. Press CRTL+f and look for the entry for your custom race.

You may freely edit the values for your custom race.
This works very well if you wish to create enemies that are abnormally overpowered. or if you want to cheap and make yourself abnormally overpowered.

The points system is designed to be blanced as you can create some very powerful races with only 15 points. In regards to the built in races, the devs must follow the "Character" of the race (ie, noble humans, evil drengin), and thus for fictional dogma (and game balancing), the point values will not probably not add up.

Besides, you really don't need more than 15 points for a custom race. Anymore is just too uber. Go ahead and try it. You'll find that you can create some very powerful races with only 15 points. Probably you'll end up mopping the floor with the normal AI's. Really, You'll be surprised.

Also, keep in mind that a custom race is often more speciallized. I can, for example, make a race that is a tacticians dream by giving them the first strike ability, a +2 speed bonus, sensors, and possibly additional weapons power. Though I haven't tried, I don't think I can do that by modifying the Arceans... the speed bonus alone is 8 points.

Um, yeah...check the stats for every other race...every race gets at least +6 logistics, if not more...its a wash.



Um...you know that each "stock" race gets 8 to 10 points to dump on TOP of the liberal bonuses they already have, right? Theres no reason you cant also fill in the gaps on a stock race, AND far exceed the maximum possible value in any given stat of a custom race by dumping bonus points on top of a stock race's inherent bonus. Not to mention the inherent bonuses that some stock races get that cant be replicated via the custom system at all ( miniaturization,excessive loyalty) that frequrently add up to more than the 5 extra points in the CR system. You cant even come remotely close to recreating the Yor with the custom race system.

Given the generous inherent bonuses and superior starting tech spread( most of which CANNOT be recreated via custom race creation) a Canned race gets, its not clear why some of them get bonus points at all, in comparison to a custom race.



The custom races get the shaft. I find this strange, considering stardock seems to understand the value of in-game player customization in almost every other area, but they dont seem to understand that player might want to create their own custom race (which honestly youre foolish to do so under the current system).

Its hard to make a sweeping statement about this, because all the stock races are not even close to being balanced amongst themselves, let alone with custom races. Stardocks never made any claim to the races being balanced, but it seems odd that in a factional game that at least a token attempt to balance the factions isnt made. Wouldnt it just make more sense from a gameplay standpoint to build your race creation system first, figure out what # of extra abilities should be given to a stock race to keep them appealing next to a freely made custom race, and construct all your races from that system? There would at least be some measure of parity. But the game's stock races are all created in totally arbitrary fashion.



To be fair, not being able to acheive as high of a bonus in an area is probably a fair trade-off for being able to precisely choose the bonuses ...flexibility is a bonus in its own right. This argument, though, is somewhat diminished by the fact theres already probably a stock race with a stat template close to what you want for your custom race in which youd get all those bonuses you wanted, and then some, with the bonus points. Youre probably not going to be able to make a stat arrangement thats so radically different from one of the canned races thats you dont still come out further ahead using an existing race.


Where Custom Races really get the shaft is with starting techs. The stock races are not required to buy the pre requisite techs with their starting techs and are able to leapfrog ahead. Custom races are severely gimped by comparison in the early game because of their (un)availiable techs.


I wouldnt even ask for MORE points to buy starting techs with...but if custom races were even just allowed to spot-buy techs at the start without having to buy the pre reqs, like the stock races, I would just about call the custom race system fair, or at least tolerable.


Furthermore, unused stat bonus points should be tranferable in some fashion to the Tech buying screen, and vice versa. Because of the non-standard costs of the techs, you can sometimes not be able to use all your alloted "points".



Just to toot my own horn here, heres a post I made suggesting that for flavor and game balance, the stock races be given racial "flaws" as well, to balance out their superiority to "from scratch" races:


WWW Link

I've found it strange/frustrating that the pre-made races have those built-in, non-modifiable bonuses whereas the Custom race does not. I would agree you can specialize quite a bit more which can be an advantage, but some of those hidden/unchangeable values on built-in races does seem odd. Why not bring that into the user level so you don't need to modify values with a text editor? Or is this a bug?

You seem to not understand the point of a custom race.

Custom races, along with each individual race, can be tailored exactly to the play style of the person playing. It doesn't matter that the customs have only 15 points. If you see it as a drawback, then simply don't play them, and stick to the already created races. But remember that they are pretty much limited to a style of play, and the AI has been scripted to act according to the other races in certain ways. This is easily avoided with a custom, you eseentialy start with a clean slate against all these pre-generated races.

Please try them before you start complaining that they're unfair, underpowered, etc. Yes, I wouldn't mind more points in a few categories, but you know what, I can live without them.

I have made custom races with 30 ability points (No Superability) by directly modding the customrace.xml files. Seems to work great.

Dano

also keep in mind, that even though custom races will have fewer net bonuses, they can choose any super ability. i think that's fairly important. i like the morale bonus that the Krynn get, but i think the super spy ability is a wash.

still, since i don't see medals, i don't think you care about MV scores, and therefore i have no problem saying this: if you don't like it, mod it.

Custom races get 15 points. That's 5-6 more points than a stock race. Most stock races start with better tech than is even possible with a custom race. Some stock races start with (highly valuable) abilities you can't even use with custom races. Stock races can be customized with the extra points and you can change all the graphics and such. The only thing you really get with a custom race is a few extra points to spend, and since every stock race starts with built-in bonuses that usually equate to considerably more than 5-6 points, spent how you'd spend them anyways, you're not really gaining anything with those 5-6 points.

You can pick any super ability with a custom race but chances are that whatever stock race has your super ability of choice has a stronger overall build after you spend it's extra points.

In DL the stock races had far fewer points to use for additional customization, so you really had to like the stock package, and custom races felt more useful even with fewer points, because there were some setups you could only get with a custom race. With the huge bump to points for the stock races in DA, which allows for tons of customization, it makes the custom races with way fewer options seem extremely weak, because you can easily tweak any stock race to be highly customized.

Of course you're free to play whatever race you like, but you can't seriously argue that any custom race can even compare to the superior setups of almost every stock race.

I would think two things would make sense here.

For one, when you pick/adjust techs for custom races it should use the same type of point system as is used for abilities (or there should be a conversion rate, like 1 custom pt = 25/50 tech points).

Two - custom races should start with more points and you should be able to use the points for both abilities and starting tech. This would give you a lot more flexibility to create races more similar (in power) to the stock races, particularly in the tech department where it's impossible to create a custom race that comes close to some of the starting tech of many stock races. There'd have to be some mins and maxes to prevent custom races from starting with too much/little tech and too many/few bonuses. Even then you would have zero ability to have some of the very nice abilities certain stock races have that aren't available for customs. But at least custom races wouldn't be obviously and totally inferior to stock races.

I also personally wish you could add miniaturization as an ability (without modding). It'd have to be costly because I think it's very powerful. Maybe limit this to ONLY custom races so that you can't add it as an ability to an already powerful stock race. All I know is that it sucks to not be able to add +mini to a custom race!

Pick the stock race with the superability you want, add their bonus ability points to "customize" them to suit your playstyle, just in the same way thats supposed to be the balancing factor for why custom races get the shaft.


In almost all cases( except for a couple stock races that are just dogs...altarians you know who you are) you will, still have bonuses that suit your playstyle (maybe even more so because of the absurdly high max ability scores availible for some races), and factoring in both starting techs and bonus points (as well as unrecreatable bonus abilities), come out further ahead.


Ive been comparing race stats since DL came out, so Im not a newb at this. Custom races got the shaft in DL, and they still get the shaft even with the superabilitiy factor. In DL it actually even made a bit more sense, because you got your bonus points by "selling back" the races abilities (to a higher total than you could recreate via custom plus better startech), so you had to give some stuff up. Now they just get all those abilities and starting techs, plus 10 more free points( it kind of invalidates the argument that stock races are better because their identity is "established").


And modding xml files is all good and fine, but surely you appreciate that we would like to see the game systems balanced. Not to mention that modded files rule out metaverse games.



Stock races should not get bonus points at all...they should be what they are, period. Devs, please, figure out what you want the identity stats to be for the canned races, and freeze them (try to use the same amount of "points" in constructing them all too...thats just good game balance). If you want them to be much higher than custom races in exchange for having no control over their abilities,(aside from political party) so be it. But they shouldnt then also be moddable with a generous amount of bonus points...that should be the purview of custom races.

And no matter what, given the way things are scored fifteen points is just *not much customization*! It's no accident that the stock races have scores that usually add up to more than that *before* their bonus points are added. It gives them the ability to have big differences from the other races, to be specialized and distinct.

As for "mod it", that's never a valid answer to a bug or balance issue with an official game feature.