Distant Worlds is Way Way Way Too Easy

[Yarasala]

ORIGINAL: Bartje

It wuold be very neat if planets could have an inventory that affects their production levels, population support as well as development level and perhaps defense.


This could even be extrapolated into the abilty to use planetary shipyards instead of space based ?

Infrastructure for population cap raising

Labs for research

Ground based missiles

Ground based fighters

Factories

etc..


private sector freighters could then ferry buildings as well as components & resources to other locations and act as a supply & demand system.



neaaaaaaat.

Seconded [8D]

[Munchies]

Or just pull a page from the Hearts of Iron series where you trade for blue prints in the different techs.

You have lvl 1 shields and your neighbor has lvl 10. Well when you trade for the lvl 10 shield tech, you don't automatically get 2-9, but instead you get the tech 10 design that speeds up research on just that tech. When/if you ever get that far up in the tree.

Or anything along those lines..

And yeah, would require a bit of programming..

[Dadekster]

Fixing the tech brokering and slowing down colonizer spam would do a lot to help the AI out imo. I like the suggestion that a colony ship takes a bit out of your existing population. Frankly am surprised that's not how its done now. I also like the option to disable tech brokering but that is because I am on the side of the camp that likes each race to be a bit unique in regards to their tech. In other words, I like certain races to at least be better in certain fields as it adds to their flavor. This of course is along with how fast they make kids, what they like to build a house on and how mad their Berkley education should make them mad about wars your government is involved in. [;)]

[Barleyman]

ORIGINAL: Dadekster

Fixing the tech brokering and slowing down colonizer spam would do a lot to help the AI out imo. I like the suggestion that a colony ship takes a bit out of your existing population. Frankly am surprised that's not how its done now.

I don't really see how making the 20mil colonists pulled out of the pop are going to seriously limit colony spam. Homeworld has billions of people, so.. Having to recruit the colonists out of population like the troops would seriously limit the ability to expand. Or you could just make fresh colonies big money sinks, now they're maintenance free pretty much. Colony ships are also kind of dirt cheap. It should be a big expensive project to make a fleet of ships capable of carrying 20min colonists + their equipment.

[Yarasala]

About colony spamming: I suggested in the wishlist thread to increase the distances between the systems or at least the fuel consumption. Right now the galaxy feels really small because you can travel from one end to the other pretty soon in a relatively short time. Apart from making the game feel bigger, more epic, greater distances (or strongly increased fuel consumption) could also help avoiding colony spamming, because when there are only a handful of colonies in range as opposed to now, when there are dozens and dozens, there would be nothing to spam to ... [;)]

Edit: even better: make fuel consumption an option so that every player can adjust that to his/her liking. That would be a very minor change in my opinion with the potential to vary the game tremendously. It would be a very big difference if distances take ten times as much time to cover than now, the game would develop much slower and in another way, also resupply ships would gain a lot of strategic importance. And again, make it an option with a slider where you can adjust fuel consumption for travel (not for weapon usage!) between 1 (the current consumption) and, say, 20 (use 20 times as much fuel).

Edit #2: Or make fuel consumption at least moddable! [8D]

[Munchies]

ORIGINAL: Barleyman

ORIGINAL: Dadekster

Fixing the tech brokering and slowing down colonizer spam would do a lot to help the AI out imo. I like the suggestion that a colony ship takes a bit out of your existing population. Frankly am surprised that's not how its done now.

I don't really see how making the 20mil colonists pulled out of the pop are going to seriously limit colony spam. Homeworld has billions of people, so.. Having to recruit the colonists out of population like the troops would seriously limit the ability to expand. Or you could just make fresh colonies big money sinks, now they're maintenance free pretty much. Colony ships are also kind of dirt cheap. It should be a big expensive project to make a fleet of ships capable of carrying 20min colonists + their equipment.

Colony spamming from your homeworld is not the problem. Who cares if you spam colony ships that only colonize continental planets, because you won't find 50 of them in the first year (usually). Or, if you're insects and can spam colony ships for volcanic worlds, because their max pop is way lower than cont. planets.

The problem is when you find an aquatic and insectoid independent at the beginning giving you access to all the other planets.
You will not be spamming colony ships, as much, that can colonize those new worlds when you need to pull the colonists off your new planet. Especially if they start with minimal population.

That, and making colony ships cost more, would help greatly in slowing down the problem.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Munchies

ORIGINAL: Barleyman

ORIGINAL: Dadekster

Fixing the tech brokering and slowing down colonizer spam would do a lot to help the AI out imo. I like the suggestion that a colony ship takes a bit out of your existing population. Frankly am surprised that's not how its done now.

I don't really see how making the 20mil colonists pulled out of the pop are going to seriously limit colony spam. Homeworld has billions of people, so.. Having to recruit the colonists out of population like the troops would seriously limit the ability to expand. Or you could just make fresh colonies big money sinks, now they're maintenance free pretty much. Colony ships are also kind of dirt cheap. It should be a big expensive project to make a fleet of ships capable of carrying 20min colonists + their equipment.

Colony spamming from your homeworld is not the problem. Who cares if you spam colony ships that only colonize continental planets, because you won't find 50 of them in the first year (usually). Or, if you're insects and can spam colony ships for volcanic worlds, because their max pop is way lower than cont. planets.

The problem is when you find an aquatic and insectoid independent at the beginning giving you access to all the other planets.
You will not be spamming colony ships, as much, that can colonize those new worlds when you need to pull the colonists off your new planet. Especially if they start with minimal population.

That, and making colony ships cost more, would help greatly in slowing down the problem.

I think just greatly increasing the costs of colony ships (by weighting the cost of the ship heavily using the cost of the Colonization component) would be the way to go. Colonizing is far to fast as it is. If each colony ship cost you 50k or 100k instead of 5k it would really slow the pace of the game. That is probably a good thing...it would also make the mining ships and stations that much more important.

[Munchies]

I agree

But using existing pop from the planets makes those races with higher reproduction worth taking over the others with lower %.
Maybe give people more of a reason to choose the not so popular races.

But grabbing population out of thin air practically takes away from those bonuses.

[BoredGamer78]

Seems this thread's expanded a little to cover colonization rates in general. In a way, I feel a little guilty seeing the thread name still up here since the creator(s) worked hard and made a nice product. Unfortunately, major changes are still needed to make the game AI competitive along the lines initially outlined and expanded upon by others here. Played another game with fewer, larger AI empires. All of the original problems listed are still problems in 1.049. Targetted colony expansion into enemy held systems in order to sell colonizes nets ~170,000 - 250,000 per colony in trade value immediately following colonization, and turn arounds can be fast enough to avoid relationship penalties. As others have stated, eliminating tech trading by any of a number of methods is still a huge issue for difficulty (as I and I'd imagine others have no real desire to show restraint ingame). I prefer enemy AIs trading with each other only because I've seen it work profoundly well before (though for the life of me I can't recall the game it happened in - AIs traded tech with each other almost as fast as I could, and I had to jealously guard new tech / trade it to multiple AIs immediately to get a return, and couldn't trade exchanged techs as a result as they'd already been shared long since with harder AI settings).

On the issue of colonization, I'd say the best serviceable example would be Stars! (circa 1995). Homeworld populations were minimal (say 1/10th of maximum planetary population starting out, with variance based on growth rate), and while some races could expand like a plague immediately, others had to choose their colonies carefully and move limited populations from the homeworld to colonies, which each often required several years (turns - maybe 7-10) of expansion before they were viable enough to send even a single colony ship of their own off, which would in turn require spreading a limited population. Starting population for a new colony in Distant Worlds is what, 10 million? Make each colonizer require 10 million people from planetary population then (you don't need to bother with the story fluff justification until the rule set's in place). Expansion from Homeworld can be addressed seperately if the rate's still too great (lower homeworld population caps while preserving income?), but this will at least slow down the hub and spoke effect to something the current AI can compete against, and shut down at least part of the indy. race colonization problem noted by others in this thread and elsewhere.

For making the AI truly aggressive, I'd expound first by guessing at limitations. If ships are treated individually, or only reluctantly grouped into fleets, I can see where true AI aggressiveness would be a system hog. Have the AI form fleets at the design stage instead with homogenous speeds and fuel constraints, with specific instructions for Troop Transport behavior so that they'll always be present and go for the throat the moment the coast is clear. For competing against human ship designs, there are only two real rules. If the AI has the tech, make AIs design ships to fight players that have greater range (assuming any kind of damage potential at range) and greater speed. If the AI doesn't have the tech, load down AIs with a greater ratio of short-range firepower + shields and greater speed than human ships, however many engines it takes. If necessary, balance changes can be made to let laser ships go faster than torp ships (less mass carried or somesuch fluff). Whatever the case, AI ship design should be based off of human ship designs at least with respect to firepower, durability, and speed, perhaps with a cost function for efficiency. Generics simply do not cut the mustard against human opponents unless the generics are very, very mean and efficient. In the event that an AI is hopelessly outclassed by human, or possibly even other AI opponents, consider giving them an option to surrender, or ally themselves to greater AIs in a vassal manner. If England invades, ally yourself with France.

[the1sean]

ORIGINAL: Munchies

Or just pull a page from the Hearts of Iron series where you trade for blue prints in the different techs.

You have lvl 1 shields and your neighbor has lvl 10. Well when you trade for the lvl 10 shield tech, you don't automatically get 2-9, but instead you get the tech 10 design that speeds up research on just that tech. When/if you ever get that far up in the tree.

I agree wholeheartedly! That way no tech is "free" just easier to research (in Hearts of Iron series it reduces tech time by 50% I think?). Conversely, I think that reverse engineering advanced components from acquired ships shouldnt just give "X" research points, but instead give a percentile boost to the appropriate tech fields for a certain amount of time, or until the final tech level is reached. A percentile based bonus system would require every tech to still be researched, and solve the tech brokering problem.

Also, I think that trade techs should only be tradeable if you have a trade treaty with that empire, and weapons/defense techs should only be tradeable if you have a defense or protectorate treaty. It would be nice to see research treaties that give a small boost to max tech percentage as well.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Munchies

I agree

But using existing pop from the planets makes those races with higher reproduction worth taking over the others with lower %.
Maybe give people more of a reason to choose the not so popular races.

But grabbing population out of thin air practically takes away from those bonuses.

but you would not lose anything from conquering low reproduction races... you still gain "free" population.

[OberonDark]

I think the underlying problem is that all the resources in the game are far too plentiful to everyone. Strategic resources aren't strategic if they're available practically everywhere, or can be shipped across the galaxy within a real life minute or so. It would add a new layer of depth if you could strike at your enemy's largest steel producer, crippling his colony ship construction, etc. But steel is available on every other planet, and you can extract so much it isn't relevant anyway.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: OberonDark

I think the underlying problem is that all the resources in the game are far too plentiful to everyone. Strategic resources aren't strategic if they're available practically everywhere, or can be shipped across the galaxy within a real life minute or so. It would add a new layer of depth if you could strike at your enemy's largest steel producer, crippling his colony ship construction, etc. But steel is available on every other planet, and you can extract so much it isn't relevant anyway.

It needs to be that way in order for the game to be playable by a human... there are far too many ships being build all the time. We are talking about more than 10 private ships per colonized planet (which need to be rebuilt often as they are weak and are destroyed often... and upgraded to newer designs). Since private ships use the same components and are of similar sizes...
Note that the situation you describe only occurs if you have races that can colonize all planet types, and colonize all planet types. Shortage is a real and serious danger to, say, a peaceful human empire that didn't conquer the right races (happened to me) and thus cannot colonize ice, ocean, and volcanic planets

However, a FEW specific resources can be made rare... I have noticed that as time progresses and the amount of colonies planets increases above ~500 in the entire galaxy, hydrogen fuel becomes extremely rare, because every COLONIZED planet is a mine, you cannot colonize gas planets... thus you must keep on building an ever increasing number of gas mining stations on those to supply the galaxy... this does not happen, and wars constantly destroy those and construction ships... Note that hydrogen IS used to construct some components... which means your ship construction is delayed due to hydrogen shortages.
As a result, a late game would have a huge hydrogen deficiency.. I have mitigated that by having certain ships designs use quantom reactors (the best calson consuming reactors)... but calson also comes from gas giants...

It would be possible to limit some critical resources to barren moons... barren moons cannot be colonies, you may only build a mining station there. Meaning that the same limitations on production (and shortages) occur as a result.
Recall, that planets once colonized remain colonized forever (unless nuked, but that is extremely rare).

Thus you would have 2 tiers of strategic resources:
1. Common resources on populated planets... those would only be an issue if you do not have a race capable of populating certain planet types (since they are limited to certain planet types)
2. Rare resources on populated planets... those are not that big of a deal as the game progresses, as enough of those are found randomly (and colonized) to provide the galaxy.
3. common/rare resources on impossible to populate planets. Those are the limiting resources, like hydrogen currently is.

The problem with such an approach is that is difficult to manage yourself and feels like a "bug", where the economy spontaneously collapses in later games due to lack of resources due to lack of automatic building of enough construction ships / mines. it will be too cumbersome to explain to everyone exactly what they need to do (build lots of constructors and then build lots of mines on those specific resources that are limited to non colonizable planets)...
Such a change would also have far reaching economical impact and require a total rebalance of the economy.

BTW, if you have had your colony ships price go over 100,000 (heck I have gone over 200,000) then you have experiences the gas collapse... its so expensive because it requires lots of hydrogen to build, and hydrogen price shot up from 1 credit a unit to a ridiculously high number due to shortage.

[BoredGamer78]

Different types of resource access would be a neat idea. Maybe moddable?

Something I forgot to mention since I take it for granted. When tech brokering (or selling planets in hostile systems) you have near total control over AI relations with your empire. Perhaps the AI is capable of raiding and even attacking and taking over worlds when it's stronger than you are, but I've shorted out war attempts early on with a pitiful token offering of 150,000 creds to an empire with far more firepower than I had at the time. I mean, 15 minutes in my Galaxy Map goes for 200,000. Not only do you gain the benefits of free tech and free currency, you get positive relations with every single empire, and this is something even Civilization and GalCiv corrected at their worst (not completely, or well, but there was always that odd faction that would attack you under the right circumstances and not respond to diplomacy until they'd sacked you). Warlike AI factions that start out naturally disliking my race and desiring my colonies still love me overall because of petty tech trading.

[jam3]

Well one of the reasons I shelved it as well as it just being too easy was that there are no graphs or anything at the end so you can't even do the "play yourself" thing and try and max your stats. The victory screen is easily the most hollow part of the game.

The game would easily have legs with multiplayer.