TA beta 2A - Concerning anomalies...

Forget it, just forgot to check an option. Everything's allright with anomalies. *embarrassed*

On a side note, did you think there were enough anomalies in your game? I've got it set to Abundant and it just feels like there's too few of them floating around... maybe just my perception.

Actually anomalies are far too abundant for my taste - they reappear rather quickly which gives them a quite "inflationary" character in my opinion. If it was up to me, I'd have a bunch of anomalies at the beginning of the game when they are really important to keep an fledgeling empire alive, but see diminishing numbers the older the game gets - at a certain point when civilizations have consolidated there's no sense in having dozens of anomalies popping up. In fact, they should just vanish for good in later games.

Odd... the talk used to be:

"Its a shame that anomalies are all used up so early in the game. He's an idea, why don't we have anomalies randomly generate throughout the game?"

Well, the way that I see it is as such:

OLD SYSTEM:
Anomolies are gobbled up and then when the first recessions hit there are no more around and this slows down the game for several months. Then the civilizations work through it and become powerful again.

NEW SYSTEM:
Anomalies are gobbled up in the early game. the recession starts and then anomalies have reappeared by then, so it doesn't hit nearly as hard. When the recession is over the anomalies are still around and have a much smaller impact, but the 1000BC boons can make it so that economy is a much smaller issue than it should be.

***************************************
REVISED OLD/NEW SYSTEM that is sorta in the middle of the current situation:
Make it so that the anomalies are abundant or whatever setting is set, have them reappear throughout the recessions, but after 1.5 - 2.0 years there is no longer any need for anomalies, with the rate of reappearing becoming lower and lower. In a 1/(x^2) pattern, with maximum rate being a low x and minimum rate being 0 or x = infinity. something like that would probably work well.

With ABUNDANT setting having a reappearance modifier of x = 1, RARE modifier of x = 4 or 5, can't remember how many kinds of settings there are.

After a certain period of time x = x + 1, and a diminishing time (t) modifier as well.

The t modifier would start out at a different value based upon system size.

*****EXAMPLE*****
Okay, in this example will use a system of MEDIUM size, Abundant anomalies.

For this example I am going to suppose that the t value at the start of 8.
also, for this example, I will say that the t value is equal to the number of months before the next step increment in anomaly reappearance modifier value.
START --
X = 1
T = 8
8 months later Total time elapsed = 8 months
X = 2
T = 4
4 months later Total time elapsed = 12 months
X = 3
T = 2
2 months later Total time elapsed = 14 months
X = 4
T = 1
1 month later Total time elapsed = 15 months
X = 5
T = 1/2
2 weeks later Total time elapsed = 15 months 2 weeks
X = 6
T = 1/4
1 week later Total time elapsed = 15 months 3 weeks
X = 7
T = T
***************
At this point each week X = X + 1 and T doesn't change. 9 iterations from Abundant Anomaly settings the rate of reappearance should be small enough to be obselete, at this time the total time elapsed would be 16 months 1 weeks, or nearly 1.5 years. At the point of 1.5 years the X modifier is equal to 14, at 2 years X = 38. By the 2 year mark the reappearance value with the equation { 1/(X^2) } would be 1/(38^2) or 1/1444, which has the approximate value of 6.925 E -4. This is a very small value and would be equavalent to a reappearance value of 0.

*************************END EXAMPLE*************************

Okay, I tihnk that what i put is a useful example of how things could be modified. it is not possible to modify the current code for use in 2.0 probably, perhaps if this idea is picked up by many than it will become viable in a later revision of the code.

GalenEvil

Nice example GalenEvil. That's exactly the way I'd like to see anomalies handled. You some kind of Maths-teacher or what?

Haha, nah Trym. I am an Electrical Engineering student, currently a sophomore. I am math-minded though, and that is the best programming example i could think of.

It would be nice if we could have a Dev comment on the feasibility of modifying current code to use this, or if they are thinking along this direction anyways for a future update.

Always willing to give my amateurish point of view on things

GalenEvil

Hmmm...
I rather like this idea.

Amateurish... took me a while just to figure out the basics of your example and still not sure if I even... oh well who cares, as long as anomalies get nerfed in future patches according to your suggestions.

Anything that you don't understand I will try to put into better words so that you can...

GalenEvil

I'm sorry....I'd really like to see more of an explanation as to why this needs to be nerfed? You say there are too many of them and they need to be nerfed. Then someone draws up his opinion of how they should be respawned and suddenly that is the correct amount.

Why is the current amount too much? Who is benefiting by the too much? The AI or the player? If you consider it money supply and all the players have access to it, the competitive difference can't be considerable.

I'm not trying to be combative about stuff...but I just feel like the dev's have a lot on their table right now and as users I think we need to help prioritize their work. I would rather they spend 5 minutes on ai then 5 minutes on anomalies. What a lot of people seem to feel is that the game needs a more aggressive, combative, intuitive AI. I'd rather they devote their limited resources to that then these kind of modifications.

I have to agree with Chucksled; I don't think minor tweaks to Anomaly spawn rates should be a priority right now.

Besides, once you get far enough into the game, the number of anomalies does slow down, simply because the only anomalies in existence are the ones that are spawning. Early game, I might get two anomalies a week, but once it hits that point I'll generally get one every couple months, depending on how much space I control.

However, this does remind me of one other point: Can the Flagship please, please, please have a small amount of firepower? Even just 1 point would be nice, since you can't upgrade it until you get medium hulls, and it's really annoying to lose your flagship to a tiny little attack craft with 5HP and a laser just because it's completely unarmed.

If the flagship was armed, then you'd be able to use it to blast away the other race's colony ships and miners to gain a competitive advantage in the colony rush, which seems a little cheesy.

Agreed about the potential cheese with an armed flagship right from the beginning. It wouldn't be fun to be on the other side of that either, if the AI is programmed to use that tactic. It might make sense to allow arming the flagship with an upgrade, at the point where you have the appropriate tech researched, bought, or traded. By that time, most of the initial colony rush is over (except on the larger maps), and you have better ways to spend money than sniping at other races' colony ships.

On the number of anomalies... they seem about the same as before. The only minor gripe I have about anomalies, is that pure luck is now more of a factor in the first few turns, because the starting treasury has been reduced. Discovering a few 500bc or 1000bc anomalies can help rush-buy a colony ship or two. I don't like having random luck influencing the game that much.

Part of the problem is that the AIs rarely, if ever, build additional survey vessels. Once they lose their flagship, they simply lose out on all anomalies after that. If a player can eliminate several flagships (or arrange for others to do it for them), most of the later anomalies will go to the player. The AIs relative disinterest in speed upgrades only compounds this problem.

You are right, this isn't a priority at all. Sure, it would be nice to have but it really isn't something I would like the devs to devote a lot of time to. I am stating an alternative to both of the shown techniques for messing with anomalies. If the devs see this as an interesting possibility and choose to implement it I would hope it could be done in just a few minutes, or at most a few hours of programming time. Anything more would make it something that isn't all that viable.

If it can be done very quickly, I say implement it, otherwise leave it as something that is done only after other things are done that are much more important (AI, graphical optimizations, CTD problems, etc).

Hope people have a good night,
GalenEvil

Nobody has ever stated nerfing anomalies should be a priority - actually the discussion started because I made a mistake in identifying a bug that wasn't one in the first place.

GalenEvil and I just happened to agree on the fact that unlike before, anomalies nowadays tend to be spammed on the map throughout the game (and I always set them to occasional) when, according to our opinion, it would suffice if there were plenty of anomalies in early game to help players survive until everyone's economy got going, and let them fade out in later game. I personally am irritated in late games by the abundance of anomalies which nobody seems to care about anymore as their importance becomes increasingly obsolete. That's why I seconded GalenEvil's suggestion about how things could be adapted because it was just what I had in mind (without all the complex computing )

One thing to mind for you fellas, this is but a PERSONAL opinion, you have every right to disagree and discuss things. Let's see if this issue gets adressed by the devs.

I like choices. I like anomalies. I like a lot of them.
We get to choose how many. The AI should build more survey ships
if the game has lots of anomalies.

I hate when choices are taken away. If I like a lot of habitable planets
or very few, there should be a choice for that. I grant you that it makes
it more difficult to come up with a good ai.

Please don't nerf my ai and habitable planet OPTIONS.