Questions About Possible Changes to the Game in Further Expansions (For the Designers)

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'll preface this by saying I love Gal Civ 2. Its literally the only game I play anymore. That said I've got a couple questions regarding game issues that I hope are going to be resolved in the newest expansion.

1. The Flawed (Quartering) Production Model WWW Link does a fairly decent job of summing it up. Now I know your all aware of this (or at least some of you are, Frogboy even commented) but in the end you never actually addressed the major issue, that you have to quarter production for a balanced approach. As a small refresher or intro to the situation for those who aren't aware of it, the situation ammounts to this. If you have 5 Industrial Centers and 5 Labs, they should produce X Indestry (Lets say 60), and Y Research (lets say 30). Instead of producing 60/30, if you balance your sliders (Master Slider at 100%, Social/Research at 50% each) your ending up with 30/15.

Are there any plans to fix this in Twilight? While I understand that on the surface the solution seems simple (Increase the individual sliders so they each go to 100%, instead of each splitting) and isn't (because of all the changes it would necessitate with game balance, A.I.'s, and in general code) I really hope their are some plans for addressing this, either in Twilight or 2.0, and thus far we haven't had any word that this is the case.

2. The Large Ship = Large Part Fallacy. For whatever reason (Probably something balance related) the designers, you, decided that when you increase your hull size you should have to increase the amount of space every part takes up. In some respects I can agree with this. Engines on a huge hull should take up more space then on a small. In other respect, I don't. The Doom Ray which takes up (drawing a blank number here, not an exact one) 10 spaces on a medium hull shouldn't take up 22 on a huge hull. The same can be said of defenses. Basically as it stands researching huge hulls isn't really worth it logesticially because they cost much more, but don't provide nearly as much of an advantage as you would think. If its got three times as much space (in points) I'd like to think it could hold three times as many weapons or defenses. Instead its more like twice as many, or 1.5. Are there any plans to address this?

3. A.I and speed. On the whole the A.I never seems to put any engines in their ships. Its not a big deal on a small/medium map, but once your on the larger maps it takes them weeks to get ships even close to you when you declare war. As a result by the time their ships reach you they are no threat at all because you had 8-10 weeks to build a fleet. Is their any way to code in the use of engines on larger maps for the A.I?
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1. The Flawed (Quartering) Production Model WWW Link does a fairly decent job of summing it up. Now I know your all aware of this (or at least some of you are, Frogboy even commented) but in the end you never actually addressed the major issue, that you have to quarter production for a balanced approach. As a small refresher or intro to the situation for those who aren't aware of it, the situation ammounts to this. If you have 5 Industrial Centers and 5 Labs, they should produce X Indestry (Lets say 60), and Y Research (lets say 30). Instead of producing 60/30, if you balance your sliders (Master Slider at 100%, Social/Research at 50% each) your ending up with 30/15.

Are there any plans to fix this in Twilight? While I understand that on the surface the solution seems simple (Increase the individual sliders so they each go to 100%, instead of each splitting) and isn't (because of all the changes it would necessitate with game balance, A.I.'s, and in general code) I really hope their are some plans for addressing this, either in Twilight or 2.0, and thus far we haven't had any word that this is the case.
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This is not a flaw. Its a set of player decisions, based on the idea that "you can't have it all". It forces you to always make some choices, a theme that is repeated in many ways throughout the game.

drrider
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

This is not a flaw. Its a set of player decisions, based on the idea that "you can't have it all". It forces you to always make some choices, a theme that is repeated in many ways throughout the game.

drrider
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Forcing you to not half, but quarter your production isn't a flaw? Do you have any kind of official statement saying its not a flaw? Or are you just spraying shit all over and hoping it sticks?
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

2. The Large Ship = Large Part Fallacy. For whatever reason (Probably something balance related) the designers, you, decided that when you increase your hull size you should have to increase the amount of space every part takes up. In some respects I can agree with this. Engines on a huge hull should take up more space then on a small. In other respect, I don't. The Doom Ray which takes up (drawing a blank number here, not an exact one) 10 spaces on a medium hull shouldn't take up 22 on a huge hull. The same can be said of defenses. Basically as it stands researching huge hulls isn't really worth it logesticially because they cost much more, but don't provide nearly as much of an advantage as you would think. If its got three times as much space (in points) I'd like to think it could hold three times as many weapons or defenses. Instead its more like twice as many, or 1.5. Are there any plans to address this?
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I disagree that defense should use the same space regardless of hull type. You'd expect to double the cost of armour for a hull double the size (probably not the size usage though). you'd also expect a shield emitter to be larger (and cost more)for a larger hull. Same for point defense i.e. greater surface size to protect.

Weapons I agree should remain the same regardless.

And Engines I agree with also.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm ambivalent on your first two points, as I see multiple considerations affecting point 2, and I don't think I understand point 1 enough to comment. But point 3, I outright dispute.

I'm not sure what what settings you usually play on, but on the higher difficulties where the AI starts out ahead of you on tech, not only do they put engines on their ships, their ships are routinely faster than mine. They don't put engines on early game defensive ships, nor would players. If a ship is designed to be used as a defensive deterrent around a planet, there's little point in using a costly engine component, when you could double up on firepower instead with bulky early-game weapons. What you may be seeing in your first wars, is that civs are using up these early game defensive ships on you, while they produce faster attack craft.

Game settings may make experience differ, but my experience doesnt support this at all. In my games, Im usually playing catch-up with the ship speed of the AI.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Forcing you to not half, but quarter your production isn't a flaw? Do you have any kind of official statement saying its not a flaw? Or are you just spraying shit all over and hoping it sticks?
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Being a flamer does nothing to address any issues you want resolved. It just makes us want to ignore you or treat you as a child.

1. This has been addressed many times and is a design aspect of the game rather than a flaw. If you take the time to read the post you linked to with an open mind, you might find that the economic system in GCIII is to be different. One might consider that to mean that it will be changed for that game rather than this one. The devs designed this game with the economic system it has. While it does not match the systems used by some other popular titles, that does not make it 'flawed', but different. If you can't handle it, play something else.

2. See above. This is how it is designed. Live with it or mod it to your liking.

3. I agree that this can be an issue at times. It is my observation that the AI seems to take too long to focus on engine upgrades to counter my strategy, though I admitedly don't play on full dificulty. Perhaps that is why this is the case. Perhaps this is the case for you as well?


No matter what your concern, this is NOT a place where flames are welcome. Your OP was prefaced with a note of respect and enjoyment of the game. Your response so far has been close minded and rediculous. If you want others to listen to you, do the same for them.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Or are you just spraying shit all over and hoping it sticks?
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Like the Imp (Warlock Pet) says in World of Warcraft... Was that reeeeeeeeeealy necessary?
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree that the economy needs to be overhauled. I think you should just have the master production slider from 0% to 100% and not differentiate between research and production. In other words, if you set the master slider to 100%, you get 100% of all potential research and potential production.

This would make alot more sense, because you are still making tough choices as you use up precious planet tiles.

Of course, I heard from one of the players who plays on suicidal or masochistic, that it is often better just to stock exchange your planets to death and rush buy everything. Using a "defective quartered balanced approach" will give you more money in your treasury since you always have to pay 1BC to get 1 base research or 1 base production. So being efficient means you pay more.

Also, trying the all labs streategy is difficult to get going..... It is powerful in the long run, but a bitch to get it started.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, I'm thinking for GC3 (it may be too late for GC2), that Stardock should hire an economist to help with game design.

I'll send my resume in December 2009. ^_^
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Three points on the Large Ship = Large Part issue that Aluroon raised:

1) Miniturization, miniturization, miniturization. It's a three-fer -- everything gets smaller and you can pack more in to every size hull.

2) Agree with the other commenters that engines and defenses on a larger hulled ship should be larger to reflect greater mass to push and to protect.

3) The weapons should be left the same size OR their power should be increased to reflect larger size of beam generators, mass driver launchers/projectiles, and missiles.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1. This has been addressed many times and is a design aspect of the game rather than a flaw. If you take the time to read the post you linked to with an open mind, you might find that the economic system in GCIII is to be different. One might consider that to mean that it will be changed for that game rather than this one. The devs designed this game with the economic system it has. While it does not match the systems used by some other popular titles, that does not make it 'flawed', but different. If you can't handle it, play something else.
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Sorry, but this is a flaw. What happened is that the developers designed a goal X, and they thought the way to do that is to implement system Y. Unfortunately, they bit more than they could chew, and ended up creating a horribly broken system.

A lot can be said about what better systems can be implemented, but I will only mention one easy fix to the immediate problem - Make it possible to move all sliders all the way to 100%, and rescale the productive potential of facilities accordingly.

I hope StarDock has the common sense to realize their mistake and implement at least this in Twilight of the Arnor. Otherwise, I will be forced to look elsewhere for a properly designed game.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Aluron has a good point about how the AI designs its military ships and doesn't appear to weight ship speed very highly.

At the more difficult levels, the AI does appear to weight ship speed highly for colony ships. It also appears to incorporate ship speed improvements into constructors and freighters.

However, it seldom appears to place a high value on ship speed for military ships in the mid-game and the late game. I routinely put 3, 4, or even 5 engines of the most advanced type available on my military ships. The AI rarely puts more than 2 or 3 engines on and often makes do with just 1. (Note: I tend to play DL most of the time).

Speed, mobility, and logistics are huge differentiators in military operations from the strategic level down to the tactical level. The AI at higher levels appears to adequately value mobility (ship range) and logistics (number & size of ships in a fleet), however it appears to under-value ship speed versus weapons and defenses.

It's the never-ending question of which is more useful most of the time: 20 light-to-medium armed ships that arrive first or 20 heavily armed ships that arrive days or weeks later. The AI appears to prefer more heavily armed and defended ships that arrive later. Smart human players take advantage of this to mass overwhelming force against lightly defended systems and to defeat the AI fleets in detail. The key is not how many total ships you have or how powerful they are individually. It's how many ships you have and how powerful they are as a fleet at the point of attack.

We should be fair to StarDock's developers on this issue: Most of the tribes, empires, and nations throughout human history have failed to understand the full value of speed as a combat multiplier. It's reasonable to assume that many alien species would not grasp its full value either.

But some of them should ----- and the proportion that get it should go up as the intelligence level of the AI goes up.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Forcing you to not half, but quarter your production isn't a flaw? Do you have any kind of official statement saying its not a flaw? Or are you just spraying shit all over and hoping it sticks?


Being a flamer does nothing to address any issues you want resolved. It just makes us want to ignore you or treat you as a child.
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Calling someone a flamer and a child isn't very polite. I didn't personally insult him, I asked him to back up his blanket statement with a fact. Fact, the system is poorly designed, it forces you to halve your production with factories and tech buildings, then half your production from each of those with sliders. "Its the intent of the game" is not a statement of fact, its saying something because you think it sounds good and hoping someone agrees with you, e.g. Spraying shit on the wall and hoping it sticks.



1. This has been addressed many times and is a design aspect of the game rather than a flaw. If you take the time to read the post you linked to with an open mind, you might find that the economic system in GCIII is to be different. One might consider that to mean that it will be changed for that game rather than this one. The devs designed this game with the economic system it has. While it does not match the systems used by some other popular titles, that does not make it 'flawed', but different. If you can't handle it, play something else.
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Please read what I wrote carefully. I didn't ask if the system was going to be changed in GCIII, we all saw that Frogboy wanted the entire production system overhauled in GCIII. I asked if their were any plans to fix the horribly mangled current system.

Your also doing the "spray shit, hope sticks" with your "designers intent" crap. Back it up. Find a quote that says "We intended for the economic system to force you to quarter your production in all fields". Saying that it is the way it is because the designers intended it to function in that manner is not a valid point. Are there bugs in the game because the designers intended them to be there? Find an actual quote, as opposed to your oh so valuable opinion and I'll drop that point.

Yes, the system is different because it allows you to decide what % of your income your going to spend on production. The system is wrong because it allows you to decide what % if your income your going to spend on military production, research, and social production, then forces you to run seperate buildings for production and research, further dividing your resources.

I'm not going to quit playing the game because of a bug I can work around, but I'd like a response to the existance of the bug.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In response to #1 of the op.

This is not a flaw. Its a set of player decisions, based on the idea that "you can't have it all". It forces you to always make some choices, a theme that is repeated in many ways throughout the game.

drrider
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Exactly.

You cant put 3x the amount of money dedicated to you for research and production into research and production.

Maybe its just me but i find this system makes alot more sense than most.


#2

I agree about the weapon size. Other than that the only large part fallacy i know of is the wierd over sizing(not space but appearance) of parts. lol

#3

I agree the ai needs to put more emphasis on engines. Its kinda anti-climatic(for lack of a better term) to have put together ships that can move at 44 pc/w when the ai can only move 6 and it should be playing to the best of its ability on the tough difficulty level correct?

I wish all those little refresh bugs would be fixed! Have they not been around since as early as 1.1? Its really annoying having to focus/unfocus everytime you go to build something and such. I play DL so i dono if that stuff was fixed in DA if not... ouch.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

In response to #1 of the op.

This is not a flaw. Its a set of player decisions, based on the idea that "you can't have it all". It forces you to always make some choices, a theme that is repeated in many ways throughout the game.

drrider


Exactly.

You cant put 3x the amount of money dedicated to you for research and production into research and production.

Maybe its just me but i find this system makes alot more sense than most.
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I'm just curious, do you have an idea what the issue I'm talking about is? On the whole your post seems to indicate that you have no idea what the exact situation is. I'll try to explain it once again, drawing heavily from feralminded's incredible explination.

Basically it ammounts to 1. You choose to build Factories/Labs. Lets say you split it 50/50. Thats fine, you split your resources. The issue comes in with the mini-sliders that control research and production. Lets say you set them 50/50 (lets say social/labs). Your now funding your factories to half production and labs to half production.

Example. You have 10 labs and 10 factories on a PQ20 world. Each lab produces 10 research and each factory produces 10 production. So in theory you should have 100 Production and 100 Research (200 Total). Instead you have 50 Production and 50 Research, because you can't fund both at the same time, even if you have enough funds (BC)to do so. Your telling me you like that? That you think it makes sense for you to be unable to spend your money to let your buildings produce at full capacity?

Now there is a way around it, by building only factories or only labs, then funding one slider to 100% and using the planetary focus to make up the for the lack of one or the other. To the PQ20 world example, you build 20 labs and get 200 research, or 20 factories and get 200 production.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No no, i understand what your saying but i think your problem is that the sliders have nothing to do with the amount of money you actually make. To me the sliders are almost like an independant budget system if you want to spend all your budget on one area then it will obviously cost you else where and in that i find it makes sense. If you could set all the sliders to 100% then i dont think there should even be any sliders as there really wouldnt be any need to adjust them.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Find a quote that says "We intended for the economic system to force you to quarter your production in all fields". Saying that it is the way it is because the designers intended it to function in that manner is not a valid point.
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Actions speak louder than words. The fact that this economic system has been in place for a long time now, seems like pretty good evidence to me that the design is intentional. AFAIK, there hasn't been any mention of it being changed in the upcoming TA expansion either (unless I missed something).

Yes, it's somewhat illogical and non-intuitive, but it's not the first non-intuitive game design I've ever seen. As long as the AI has to play by the same rules, I can deal with it. Even if they did change it, they'd have to re-balance so we'd still have about the same money and resources flowing through the economy that we're getting now. So the end-result might not feel that different anyway.

On the huge hull issue... I agree with the others that it makes sense for defense and engines to scale with the ship size, but that it doesn't make sense for the same weapons to take more slots. On the other hand, allowing even more weapons on a huge hull might have undesired consequences. It might end up being the cheapest bang for the buck in firepower compared against ship cost, and then everyone races to build huge hulls and that's all you see in fleets. The current design at least allows different options in how you build your fleets. No one design should be an automatic "I win" strategy.

As a practical matter, at least with my own campaigns, I usually research pretty deep into miniaturization before I get to huge hulls. So I don't feel all that cramped for weapon space.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top



However, it seldom appears to place a high value on ship speed for military ships in the mid-game and the late game. I routinely put 3, 4, or even 5 engines of the most advanced type available on my military ships. The AI rarely puts more than 2 or 3 engines on and often makes do with just 1. (Note: I tend to play DL most of the time).


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Who puts 5 engines on military ships? Maybe in DL, but in DA after the engine nerf, Unless you're playing on such a low difficulty its easy to lap the AI on tech, you generally need that space for firepower against a competitive AI. It's typically one engine, or maybe two ions since theyre cost efficient (early to mid game), then two engines as a late game treat.

I categorically dispute this. The AI puts ships on engines in pretty much manner I would: No engines early game for defensive/deterrent ships, 1 engine early/mid for fleet ships, maybe two eng for late game fleets ships. Utility and transport ships tend to be much faster. Speed is valuable, but since the engine nerf, its generally not worth the firepower it will cost you on fleet ships, against a competitive opponent, until the very end of the game. This of course doesnt apply for specialty ships, like transport snipers, who tend to kill defenselss oponenents.

The only problem as I see it, is that the AI is slow to anticipate the inevitable war and build a mix of attack/defense ships...the result is in its first conflict in early game, its using up a lot of those slow defenders before it turns out significant numbers of attack ships. On slower difficulties this process can stretch out much longer, making it seem like the AI "never" builds faster ships ( since you're so far ahead on tech and the AI is already dead before they switch gears). I would say it might be worth tweaking the mix of attack to defense ships it builds early on, but the AI knows as well as I do, its not even really worth building attack ships until you reach a certain level of technology.

[Edit] I just saw the note that you are indeed commenting in regards to Dread Lords games. I'm not sure this is fair to do, since it's not really the "official" version of the game anymore. Engines were dramatically overhauled in DA.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Bingjack, the reason I mostly play DL games is the highly detrimental nerfage of engines in DA. My preferred game scales are huge and gigantic. Combat ships just crawl across the map in a DA game on those scales.

Brad and the development team chose to do that as a way to re-balance the military portion of the game for the AI players. It was an easy way to restrict the ability of the human players to outmaneuver the AI players.

The alternative was to enhance the probability that AI players would highly value fast ships and would make the research decisions and the ship design decisions necessary to implement a fast ship bias. I believe the Stardock development team could have done that without a huge investment in new algorithms. It's pretty obvious that the higher difficulty AI's are biased toward researching and building fast ships during the colony phase. Why can't they do the same for combat ships in the mid-to-late game?

This issue may be less of a problem in TA. I've seen some commentary on the board about rolling back the engine nerfage. I really hope that's the case.

Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top



This issue may be less of a problem in TA. I've seen some commentary on the board about rolling back the engine nerfage. I really hope that's the case.


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Yes, by all means, lets go back to the super cheesy dread lords and the "be everywhere/don't have to commit to actions ( you know...strategy)/conquer civillizations in a single turn while the AI just stands there and drools, super speed ships, because someone has realized "hey..it takes a while to play really big maps". Im sure there are no better solutions, than to revert to a highly broken version of the game. I hope TA comes with "God Mode" mandatory too.

/sarcasm off. I play large-gigantic maps too, and full expect it to take longer, because, you know...it's really big. I play smaller maps, with fewer worlds, when I want a faster game. I'm not saying its perfect, but your proposed solution is wholly unacceptable. It introduces a whole handful of serious issues to salve one minor one.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, Bingjack, it looks like I've pissed in your coffee cup somehow. Hope you like the taste!   

Seriously, I think you've missed the point of what Aluroon, TriPp, myself, and others are suggesting for the AI and ship speed: We want the AI on the more difficult levels to be just as likely to have very fast ships as a smart human player.

We don't want the AI to "stand around and drool" while we jump across 20 - 40 pc/wk. We want the AI to be able to do the same thing to us. And the higher the difficulty level, the more likely it should be that the AI players will do exactly that.

This isn't a request that "dumbs down" the player's strategic choices. On the contrary, it will increase the human player's strategic challenges by an order of magnitude. We will have to keep real reserve fleets deep in our territories against a fast AI. We will have to actually defend many of our planets. We will have to invest in strong military starbases so that our lightly defended systems have a decent chance against a fast AI fleet.

Oh BTW, wouldn't it be great if the AI could rapidly concentrate its fleets against an invading human player's fleet? That would sure make the human player's strategic choices more difficult. With slow AI ships, the human player doesn't have to worry about this danger. With fast AI ships, its a whole new ball game.

A lot tougher game.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No no, i understand what your saying but i think your problem is that the sliders have nothing to do with the amount of money you actually make. To me the sliders are almost like an independant budget system if you want to spend all your budget on one area then it will obviously cost you else where and in that i find it makes sense. If you could set all the sliders to 100% then i dont think there should even be any sliders as there really wouldnt be any need to adjust them.
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I'm still not sure the problem is clear. I'll rephrase the essence of it. In a sensible system, you will have the choice of spending 100% of your resources on research (or production, obviously), or roughly 50% on research and 50% on production (or anything in between). In this system, your choices are:

1. Spend 100% resources on research. So far, so good.

2. Spend 25% of your resources on research and 25% on production. It doesn't take a math degree (which I have, if anyone is interested) to understand there is something very wrong here.

3. Build only research buildings, set research slider to 100%, focus planet on production, and receive 75% research and 25% production. This is not just unintuitive and illogical, it is simply unfathomable. There is no way any player who tries to play strategically, rather than game the system, would ever come up with that. And there is no way any player would feel like they're doing "the right thing" when doing this. And it makes it unnecessary to have production buildings\technology to have, well, production. And it still doesn't allow you to split your resources equally.

The first step is to find a system which is not broken. Once there, we can choose how to tweak it. For example, in Alpha Centauri, you can choose how to split your income between cash and research, and are encouraged to do a balanced 50%/50%. If you do choose to focus on research, you get penalized, so you can only go as far as, say, 80%/0%. Something similar can be implemented here, or the reverse, if it is preferred - say, 100%/0% or 40%/40%. But 25%/25% without exploits is just absurd.

One thing needs to be made clear. I love the way your resources are measured in BC, and your industry\science buildings only determine the rate at which you can convert money into the respective output. So far, StarDock has done great, and this is where the game is "different", in a good way. But then we go on to investigating the specifics of the slider\planet focus system, and find that this part is broken and needs to be changed. It's too bad that StarDock can't come up with a good system, but even the simple fix I have mentioned to the sliders will be enough.

Commenting on some points raised - Yes, with this fix the sliders will normally be all set on 100%, but the option to decrease them should still be there if the player wants to temporarily decrease spending. And, while it may seem like the fix increases the productiveness of the player, in reality, if people currently just do the focus trick, the net effects are simply that they won't need to game the system to get 25%/75%, and that they will be able to go all the way to 50%/50%.