PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by PvK:
Environmental resistance is greatly overvalued, but also is not without consequence - it cuts down planet reproduction significantly, which does have an effect even in the unmodded game. Also, it's more interesting if players have to pay at least a bit of attention to planet Conditions, so it should be worth at least a few points.

Fyron said tolerance is pointless, when he should have said it's redundant. The conditions of the planet have no effect. I thought they did too, but I was wrong. Tolerance is just another linear modification to reproduction rate. You lose one point of repro and about for every five points of tolerance. It may also affect happiness, but that appears to be linear as well. Conditions have no effect on this beyond the effect conditions already have on reproduction.

Geoschmo

[ December 22, 2002, 23:16: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Fyron]

I ran a test on Environmental Resistance. I set up 1 system with 16 planets, ranging from a conditions value of 0.0 to 1.5. I colonized all planets on the same turn. Here are the results:

Totally standard, average race:

All planets are Happy

0.0 is Deadly and gets 0% reproduction
0.3 is Harsh, and gets 7%
0.5 is unpleasant and gets 10%
1.0 is mild and gets 12%
1.3 is good and gets 14%
1.5 is optimal and gets 17%

The planets stayed Happy after a number of turns.

The second test had a race with 120 Environmental Resistance trait:

0.0 is Deadly and gets 0% reproduction
0.3 is Harsh, and gets 11%
0.5 is unpleasant and gets 14%
1.0 is mild and gets 16%
1.3 is good and gets 18%
1.5 is optimal and gets 21%

All planets became Jubilant after 1 extra turn.

Conclusion:
ER is linear in effect in regards to Reproduction Rate on all planets, regardless of conditions. Harsh planets are affected the same that Optimal and Mild planets are.

50 points gets 1% Repro and 1% happiness.
125 points gets 5% ER, which has the same effect as the above.
Therein lies the free points exploit associated with ER.

Proposed plan:
To eliminate the free points loop-hole, change ER to cost as much to lower by 5% as it costs to raise Repro and Happiness by 1%. Make ER cost 10 points per percent to lower. But, leave its cost to raise alone. It costs fewer points to raise ER to 105 (125 points) than it does to raise Repro from 110 to 111 (200 points), so ER can serve a good purpose when trying to get really high reproduction.

[ December 22, 2002, 23:38: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[PvK]

Thanks Fryon!

[spoon]

Just some ideas - not really tested...

Double point costs for research, construction, and minerals.
Increase Maint Reduction to 200 per point.
Halve point costs for ground combat.

Let repair range from 50% to 200% - cost maybe 5 points per point of repair, with no increase in cost. (so 200% repair would cost you 500 pts, dropping to 50 would save you 250 pts) (it could probably cost less than that, but 5 is such a nice even number...)

Suggest maxing Defensiveness at 110%, allow aggressiveness to go to 120%.

Eliminate Bezerker, or give it more penalties (less consruction seems good). Ditto with Merchant (suggest more ship combat penalties)

Good luck!

[Krsqk]

Mentioned this in another thread, but changing racial costs will make AIs and EMP files obsolete. Are you (or someone else) going to provide AI_General.txt files with this as well, or will this just be for new empires?

[PvK]

Thanks Spoon.

Krsqk, that's a good point. I'll just do the mod for new empires first, and then hope some brilliant and eager people mod all the AI's. Mainly because it's a lot of time-consuming work to do it.

PvK

[geoschmo]

After thinking about this some more, what Fyron said about the tolerance could almost be applied to everything. The problem most people have with the characteristics isn't so much that they are too cheap or too expensive when raising them, it's that you get too many points back when reducing them and don't hurt your race enough to account for it. I think most of your changes could be made on the minus side of the charatcteristics.

And doing this would have the side effect of making your work in revising the AI easier, as few of the stock AI anyway have much in the way of reductions IIRC.

Geoschmo