Character balance?

[GeeWhiz]

The devs know the game is unbalanced and I am sure they rather have us bring up the fact then just quit the game altogether. I am a high scorer as Warlord but will not continue to spend money if I do not have a chance to win. I do not mind one character being harder to play but needs a good chance to win. No planning on my part will help me win the game.

The reason I give the devs a break on the balance issues is due to the fact they did not have enough keys to allow a thorough play test.

The game is young but in order to grow old there needs to be feedback and complaints. Otherwise the devs can not improve for their player base.

[Leedot]

Ok, so after discussing it internally we're going to be removing Advanced Materials Collection from the game so planets will generate RO at their full capacity and everyone have the same access to that RO. This will mean that over all there will be more RO in the system during the early game but that will be balanced by the new planetary control system which will go into the game at the same time.

(in case you missed that thread the basic idea is to reign in the early game land grab somewhat by adding a shipyard equivalent orbital that controls the number of planets you can control. Also, we'll make sure you can abandon a planet when that's added as well. )

[Royce]

Interesting. Will anything be added in to replace AMC for the trade tree? Maybe you should just change the skill to bring more RO through trade instead of planet production.

[Leedot]

Not at the moment - right now there are three tier 1 trade techs and there's usually only two choices per tier so pulling AMC out of the list doesn't really imbalance things on that front. I don't really see the need to add more RO through trade as this isn't a nerf to the trader in any way, if anything it's a boost for them as well since they don't have to rank up amc either.

[SG7]

The land grab strategy was effective only because few people knew about it. Now I am afraid of any restrictive mechanisms which would prevent expansion.

[Supamand]

Wow Lee that's a way to think outside the box! A big move to take out a skill but it's ultimately takes out the advantage of being a trader. Come to think of it, maybe this will actually balance things and the population will not consist of 99% traders lol!

Love the idea, you guys should do a test server with this to see how it works

[Wrath]

The land grab strategy was effective only because few people knew about it.

Well, i would say this whole game feels like land grab to me, since the trading process is virtually the same as the harvesting process, and unless you are a warlord attacking things, the only other thing to do besides the land grab process is build probes & send them out to scan; and add tech skills to research queue and wait.

[TheWhiteLights]

Come to think of it, maybe this will actually balance things and the population will not consist of 99% traders lol!

I never knew traders were so popular. I only chose it because I am not very good at combat and I like trading, not because it was the most popular.

[Balian]

Once the tech is removed are those of us who invested in said tech going to be at loss?

[JetJaguar2000]

Well, i would say this whole game feels like land grab to me, since the trading process is virtually the same as the harvesting process, and unless you are a warlord attacking things, the only other thing to do besides the land grab process is build probes & send them out to scan; and add tech skills to research queue and wait.

This is a good point that goes back to my original critique of the current gameplay. I do think land grabbing needs to be limited, but mainly because your ability to do ANYTHING in the game right now is directly proportional to the number of planets you own. You pretty much HAVE to land grab in order to do better than the next guy.

I had proposed research options that would allow you to "do more with less," so you could do something like build a much smaller empire of hyper-productive planets, rather than relying on quantity. The problem is that for this to make sense, research and production/expansion would probably need to be mutually limiting endevours (otherwise you could just expand AND become hyper productive, which would be absurd).

My second critique was that there aren't enough meaningful ways for players to interact beyond fighting over planets.
The way I see the game playing out so far involves a semi-tumultuous early game as players scramble to stake their claims. Once equilibrium is reached in this regard, it's purely a race to see who can research their end game tech first (or establish the most trade routes in that case). Assuming you have reached a reasonable equilibrium in terms of expansion and production, nothing about the mid game requires interacting with other players. Then only one specialty, Warlord, requires any kind of contentious interaction with players to end the game (but Warlord balance is way off so who knows if that is even relevant).

This feels unfortunate to me. I feel like player interaction should be encouraged as much as possible, and not just through combat. I'm kind of intrigued by the whole "holding artifacts" concept as a way to encourage players to fight over something beyond just resources, but I have not yet seen any evidence of that mechanic in the game.

Anyways, a lot interacting mechanics and design ideas at work here, so it's hard to imagine a simple solution, but this is one high level issue that should be considered, n my opinion.