Ancient Race too powerful?

[PvK]

quote:

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Originally posted by tesco samoa:
...So perhaps the option to hide racial traits should be added to the game.

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Yes, and that's not the only reason it'd be good.

PvK

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Bman:
It becomes even more powerful in Simultaneous games (ie games against other people): In a simultaneous game, your ship stops when it enters a unexplored system. With Ancient Race, your ship moves happily along since all systems are explored.

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Actually your ship doesn't have to stop when it enters an unexplored system. If you give your ship the command to warp into the unexplored system, and then give it a move too command, then click on the unexplored system in the galaxy map in the lower right, then click in the sector in the middle of the unexplored system in the system map.

If you do this you will see in your orders queue for the ship "Move to (current system name) (x,y), Warp, Move to (unexplored system name) (6,6)"

It even gives you the name of the system even though you don't actually know it yet.

Now this doesn't work if two things happen.

One is if there is another race in the new system and you still have the box checked to clear orders when encountering enemy ships.

The other is if you click on the wrong unknown system in the galaxy map. Sometimes in a high density quadrant you can't always tell from the position of the systems and warp points which warp point goes to which unexplored system. If you give it orders to go to a sector that you have not explored, and you don't explore it by warping in before it tries to execute the move to order, it will ignore you.

Also, you could find yourself halfway though a system with no other warp points out and have to burn fuel and time getting back, or I guess if you timed it right you could hit a black hole this way, but hey, that's what exploring is all about right?

I agree that ancient race is very valuable in getting a running start in games. For a time I used it in all my multiplayer games. But recently I have have found that I can usually survive past the point where it serves me any purpose, and then I end up wishing I had the 1000 points in maint reduction or something else that is useful for the whole game.

Plus as someone else said, it's more fun to wonder where everybody is. But that's just a personal opinion.

I guess if my life depended on me winning a game of Space Empires IV and I needed to make absolutly sure I did everything I could do to win, I would probably pick Ancient race. But that's mainly because I am better anyway in the early part of the game. I often get bored, or have trouble keeping track of everything in the later part of the game, so I would want to make sure I won as quickly as possible.

But I don't think it's unbalanced. I think that the cost is just right considering the time depreciation of the trait.

Geoschmo

[ 29 January 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[capnq]

quote:

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They key is that homeworlds have all 3 attributes around 100%.

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That seems to be assuming Average planets; I've played games where my Bad homeworld's stats were in the low 80s. You're also assuming all players' homeworlds the same size.

[MegaTrain]

quote:

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Originally posted by capnq:
That seems to be assuming Average planets; I've played games where my Bad homeworld's stats were in the low 80s. You're also assuming all players' homeworlds the same size.

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True, that's usually how I play my solo games, and the Online games I've played so far have all used that starting scenario. With different starting choices, I'm sure you could determine a pattern, perhaps all three attributes of ~85% for poor, ~100% for average, and ~115% for good (just guessing, i'd have to play some practice games and see what patterns emerged--but I'm sure it's not that difficult to decipher).

What happens if you allow homeworlds to be different sizes? Will one race have an advantage with larger homeworlds? Or will it only start with odd sizes if it can average the number of facilities over, say, 3 homeworlds?

[Krakenup]

quote:

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Originally posted by MegaTrain:
What happens if you allow homeworlds to be different sizes? Will one race have an advantage with larger homeworlds?

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Yep. I've played games where I had a large homeworld and everyone else had mediums, and where I had a medium homeworld and the Aquilaeians had a huge homeworld. That was a tough game!

[geoschmo]

Even with different size home worlds thogh it is possible to pinpoint the homeworlds with a high degree of reliability. It is just statistically unlikely that a planet will have plus or minus 5% on all three resources, and have the same conditions as what ever your homeworld has. It may take a little longer to narrow down if the planets are different sizes, but it can be done. You may have one or two that you aren't sure about in a large quadrant, but unless it's only a couple players in the game, that still gives you a solid idea of where they are.

What might be better, in fact I think I will suggest this to Malfador, is if you don't know exactly what resource percentages a planet has until you actually colonize it or have a robo miner working it. They could have "bands" like poor, below average, average, etc. The bands could be 20 or 30 % wide. Then it would be much harder to know if a planet was a homeworld. You would be looking for planets with all three recources as "average" or "good" or wherever the bands fall. Which statistically shold be a larger group.

Geoschmo

[ 29 January 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[PvK]

I suppose if the players are really concerned about preventing homeworld-guessing, someone (if the group is paranoid, a non-player) could load a random galaxy in the map editor and then specify (or add, if necessary) ample planets of about reasonable attributes in the map editor as the ones to use as homeworlds. I haven't tried this yet, but I assume the idea is this would cause the game to choose existing (random attribute) planets, rather than building new ones that follow a blueprint.

PvK