Empire setup and specialization

[Alneyan]

As I see it, the specializations would be as follow:

- Above average: Research, Aggressiveness/Defenciveness, Minerals and Maintenance. (According to my small calculations, Minerals is better for the early game while Maintenance helps a lot later on. It depends on your losses and the presence of trade as well, so in short... Your mileage may vary. *Smirks*)
- May help certain players: Cunning (with a very high bonus), Political Savvy, Construction Aptitude (if you want to be mean, prevent a player from being able to build Colony Ships on Emergency Build in one turn without investing quite a lot of points in Construction) and possibly Organics/Radioactives for Monolith Users and/or resource conVersion.
- Could be useful if made very cheap/gives a huge bonus: Happiness, which may give a small bonus early on or speeds up the process of reaching Jubilant everywhere. It shouldn't cost as much as something like Maintenance obviously.

The rest of them do not quite seem too useful in a vanilla game, though some may become useful under certain circumstances. (For example Physical Strength when facing a player fond of Replicant Centers when you play without glassing)

I am not too sure how Repair works when improved, but I seem to recall it doesn't affect the actual repair rates. Is it so? Otherwise, it could make for an interesting side bonus, but then, a trait would work I guess.


As for the cultures: it would indeed be another way to achieve the same result. There might be another solution as well: instead of altering the game files, this "mod" would be a very nice table, and the players would make their own cultures according to this table (on a point-based system as in SEIV). The game owner would then create a culture per player to make their Empire files, leaving aside the characteristics. If wished, it might even allow the players to hide their characteristics, or at least to only give limited information about them. (So instead of saying that an Empire has 50% offence/defence, it would be something like "this Empire isn't focused on combat")

[ June 09, 2004, 15:34: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

[clark]

Might have to readjust the cultural modifiers... free bonuses afterall.

[Parasite]

If reducing points by a little bit also gave a big (or Bigger) point bonus, you could still have half the abilities reduced and half raised way up.

[Alneyan]

Both values (that is, to raise and to lower) are independent, but it raises a good question I forgot to mention. Should you gain a lot of points based on the same formula when you lower a characteristic, or should it be much more reduced, or even impossible at all?

Now that I am thinking on it, I guess only using specific cultures would make matters much easier to handle. You would need a nice game host to make all the said cultures, but... And remains the small aforementioned problem of balance of course.

[Fyron]

I am not too sure how Repair works when improved, but I seem to recall it doesn't affect the actual repair rates. Is it so?

It works fine if you raise the trait. Just be aware that the trait affects the total repair in the sector, not individual components. If you have components with 1 repair, a 20% bonus would do nothing if it made each of them 1.2, as decimals are lost. Instead, it totals up all repair, then increases by 20%.

[PvK]

I think that specialized empire designs are quite viable in PvK Balance Mod, and in other mods with balanced starting costs.

The reason balance provides this, is that when there are not enough points to buy everything worth buying, then there are choices, and some abilities, anyway, are worth their threshold cost, because they get better the more you get.

Particularly Attack, Defense, Maintenance, Construction, and perhaps some of the others that generate points of various things (research, intel, savvy, resources).

The proposal to set the Normal range to high is interesting, but unfortunately because of the limited options, it will also mean the default choice will be a minor reduction to get a bunch of refund points, since you can't have a different Normal cost for positive and negative.

The cultures though do offer ways to enable enforced specialist types. I would combine with a balanced mod for best effect.

PvK

[spoon]

Originally posted by PvK:
because of the limited options, it will also mean the default choice will be a minor reduction to get a bunch of refund points, since you can't have a different Normal cost for positive and negative.

This is a problem... Though if you only apply the "specialist" formula (High normal cost, low threshold cost) to the items that are dangerous to lower by much(research, aggressive, defensive, minerals, maint, construction) the idea will still work... Then you could address the other stats in the Cultures to make additional specialist types...(like +1000 Repair...)