How do you feel about Ability Bonuses?

I like creativity too - especially since some civs can even add to it later on. Ditto with luck - if you pick universalists you get +50%! (So my min damage is half my max damage instead of 0? Me likes!)

Lately I almost always max out sensors lately - it's really cheap to do and I find it helps a lot during the colony rush and saves me a lot of moves. I never seem to have room left on my ships for sensors, but with a +4 bonus I don't really need them at all. I also like econ a lot - helps you rush for longer at the start and softens the inevitable over-expansion crash. Morale is pretty good too, either for helping you raise taxes or to drop them for the 100% approval bonus.

Courage seems like it only helps if you're already losing. I could see getting soldiering if you want to be aggressive really early. Everything else I find gets eclipsed pretty quicky by the bonuses you're able to get

I'm hearing that Loyalty is worthless, as it's broken - confirm/deny?

I believe it's only broken in DL, but I'm not positive.

I've been using speed +2 for ages.  I always get morale +10, as it's only one point.  If I have extra points, I'm likely to get it +15 or +20.  Typically I'll get luck +25 for another one point.  The rest is dependent on what race I'm playing, and how many customization points I have left, but I like military +50% for colony rushing, though research +20% is attractive as well.

I've never really favored economics, though I'm not sure why.  Probably because speed has always been more worthwhile to me (keep in mind I used to play DA Thalans, who had an innate econ bonus as well-but only 8 points to spend).  As of late I've been using Super Breeder, so pop growth is not necessary, although it still doesn't hurt.  If I weren't using Breeder, I'd definitely max pop growth, though it's painful that the max is only 40% compared to 70% for DL and older versions of DA.

I've been experimenting lately with -not- using speed so that I can get more of the other things that matter to me, but I haven't discovered the most efficient way to do it yet, while still supporting my overall style.

More time to play would be a good thing, though.

For an idea at what I'm try to do, here's some basics.

First, and something I think that should've been in the game from Day 1, every ability has 'flawed' choices. Economics 'Corrupt' -1 Point -10% Economy. This will allow Custom Races a little more flexibility.

I'd like to bring points to be equal overall, not worth 'more' depending on the ability they're used in. Since I've no limit on options, every ability has some cheap 'starters' (Economics 1 = 1 point, 5% bonus), but they escalate exponentially.

I've neutered Economics quite a lot for starters. Reason being, TA / DA made the economy 'harder' for a reason, and between the cheap bonus and the Federalist / Universalist government (I think Universalist is among the top choices, mainly for Luck too), it was almost too easy to 'undo' a deliberate change to the game. If you'd like to undo the change, you sure can, but be prepared to pay a lot of points and to earn it, pay your way with ability penalties.

As such, I'd like to know what people's overall impression with the abilities are. What is too weak, what is too powerful, what is just ridiculous. Speed is difficult because it's such a profound advantage, but there's no way to lower it beyond just 1 pc/week minimum. Hopefully by the end of the night I'll have something interesting.

And as the devs said whenever this was brought up, this could be used to purposely gimp your opponents and then use the points in craptastics abilities like.....Loyalty :0

Now who would do a thing like that?    Of course I agree completely but besides that, you could use the built in points that arn't too useful to build a super race. What's wrong with that you ask? I mean thats the point of wanting to takle some point penalties. Well, built in races get more points total than custom races, presumably this was because the built in races did have some points spent where they weren't wanted (Yor 100 loyalty for example). So being able to take minuses in useless things to get more points to spend would mean the human player would actually have more total points than the AI or any custom race.

If you want flexibility just use custom races.

As for the actual thread question:  I think it depends on the difficulty level you play. I always max out economy, can't imagine not. I take the first level of research a bit of morale, luck and i think thats all these's room for. I don't take creativity because I don't know if it triggers in DA (what i play) like it does in TA now. For Gov't i take the technologists party. This way I'm maxed in economics and tech speed and i can keep up with the AI on maso and obscene games.

I always thought that the points for speed were too much. I need to have enough points to either max opiut economics or research.

If the bonus for PQ was better i would take that but its a lot of points for not much of a gain in PQ. NOw, I'm not sure if the percent bonus applies only to the initial PQ or the eventual (after terraforming) or how it works if you have an orbital terraformer (for late game comonization ofthe PQ1's) or when you invade. so maybe it could work better.

In my one game as a custom race i did take one point in weapons. Most choices just never get picked by me.

Pop growth is one of my favs.

Well, it's in the early game that speed is noticed the most.  He who has the fastest ships most likely will net the most worlds in the colony rush (depending on ship output, I understand...).  After that and some time to research the various engines...the speed isn't as noticed anymore.  Perhaps the Arcean's tech tree would most benifit from the +speed ability since they mainly run off of passive bonuses.  In ZYW games +speed is king!!

~clicks edit and then curses~

Ok, where I was going with that was, in some maps/game styles/races the points are more important and worth the high cost.  On longer and larger games the point cost vs reward is horrid.  So it has it's place and I think it's point cost is ok.

On the topic of point cost, Creativity should be 2 if not 3 points.  I get that on nearly every game I play because it's so damn cheap for the bonus it provides.

Creativity and Luck both got big boosts in usefulness in the expansions (TA and DA, respectively), but the cost of them was not adjusted accordingly. Creativity is random in its usefulness, however. Some games it will save your butt or fling you way up the tech tree, other games, you might only get it to trigger when you have a few weeks left on a tech anyway. Luck, on the other hand, is a very, very dependable ability. Which is odd, given the way Luck works in any other game...

I've never noticed Loyalty or Courage making any difference at all, even for the Yor with their +100% Loyalty. And Epsionage, bleh. All it does is let you spend more money on Espionage. It doesn't have any (noticable, at least) effect on the cost of spies or the gathering of Intelligence. Sure makes the Iconians feel worthless, no?

The other Ability Bonuses are probably fine as they currently are, but I have to admit, I typically stick to spending my points in Economics and Morale with the left over points going to something that fits more with my game plan. I've never considered taking the Speed bonus, except with the few times I've played as the Arceans.

I find sensors (marginally) for useful than speed - early on you're more likely to actually *find* that planet if your ships can see further. It's not *as* powerful later in the game, but it still means I typically have a few moves warning on things if I keep my eyes open (particularly since the AI doesn't seem to build for speed), plus with "eyes of the universe" I never have to pay for sensors on starbases.

Creativity I'm almost getting to the point of not using - it only kicks in occasionally, but I've seen it just wipe out long tech paths too, particularly early on - this most recent game I whipped from Xeno Research to Invention Matrix in three weeks - Sure you can't count on it and it has a lot less effect in the late game where you can burn out research points, (Ooooh - My creative researchers finished something in one week when it was going to take two - Pft - Good for you, take this weekend off, there will be a bonus in your paycheck.) I think it might be better if it was a standard 1%-10% for all races (0% for the Yor maybe) to give a little variation and have the bonus added to that, but as something that you get at 25% and no one else has, it can range from virtually no effect to (in this case) lets just hand over advanced research facilities to a race with a 20% research bonus anyway.

The Krynn would like to ah, file a bug report "Unbalances game, resulting in Ungodly large Psilon cruisers in our sky while we're researching Laser II!"

Although - I've heard it mentioned before, how exactly do you get higher creativity? I don't recall having come across such? Admittedly I'm a newbie.

Jonnan

Drath tech tree get a creativity bonus at some point in the xeno ethics tree and if they are good aligned.(on the other hand, no point being evil with this drath tech tree since you get nothing for it in the tech tree lol)

this is what I got with my testing with +20%PQ

initial => result after colonization

4 => 4  , 5 => 6 , 8 => 9 , 9 => 10 , 12 => 14 , 16 => 19 , 20 => 24

so what you get is : initialPQ * (1 + PQability/100), result being rounded down this works for all colonized and starting planets, if you build any terraforming building (soil enhancement for example) you still get an unmodified +1 PQ for each of this sort of building

So in fact 10% PQ is almost useless since only planets with initial PQ > 10 will benefit from it. On the other hand 20% PQ is quite nice for big maps

I didn't try out invasion yet, it's probably the same as colonization though I don't know if the initial PQ of planet was already modified by some terraform buildings what will happen...

PQ bonus only works if you are the first to colonize the planet. Invading will not get you a bonus.

I'm addicted to +30% Hit points and +30% defence. But thats because I use the Good alignment and focus on invunerable ships with solid defence values. Luck plays a big part as well.

I realise this may not be the way to min/max the game to its fullest extent but I'm more playing for fun. Theres nothing like seeing your little ship wipe out an entire enemy battle armarda. 100 hp medium hulls rock

Can only imagine how much better this would be if I could get around to ordering TA.

The PQ bonus was a big one for me - 10% is worthless, I suppose the 20% is rather balanced (8 points?). 10% is technically fair, but it just doesn't work in practice.

I didn't test that out yet and don't have much time for it but I'm not so sure about this

because recently I bought some planets from the comp and got my PQ bonus upon buying... (TA not beta2)

Are you sure you were getting an actual PQ bonus, and not Orbital Terreformer/neutral terreforming effects? I haven't played as much as I could have in TA yet, but I know darn well it didn't work like that in DA.

For the record, TA is the first version with working InterestRates, so anything's possible.

But I too suspect that the PQ bonus was not fixed for TA, either.

I should test it...be right back.

EDIT: Confirmed: Buying a planet off the AI or invading it DOES give you the PQ bonus in TA (latest beta, at least, and it's probable this is in 1.96 as well).  Note: This was tested without soil enhancement/etc, and the AI didn't have it yet, either.

yup I'm sure since I'm not neutral (didn't even research xeno ethics yet)

and I just have soil enhancements like the AI, and the planet I bought was already upgraded through soil enhancements, so nothing should change while changing hands,  yet the PQ of the planet increased after I bought it.

Interesting...

Perhaps I should play more TA. Anyone check if the planet shrinks when it gets taken from you?

Will do.

Be right back.