Black Market Balance

I would like to see further refinement of Soren's grouping of BM items. To encourage BM player interaction, I feel that it is necessary that the black market have a weapon to use against every civ. I also feel the black market should always have tools to combat offworld rushing. This would encourage people to seek alternate paths to victory (hacker/engineering). Finally, I would like to see a counter to early founding resource domination. I would like to see a BM balance similar to this:

Tier 1 - Mandatory civ counters (4)

Pirates or Magnetic storm - to counter Scientific remote triangles
Power Surge or EMP - to counter Robotic clusters
Mutiny or Dynamite - to counter Scavenger power plays
New Claim - to counter Expansive sprawl

Tier 2 - Mandatory offworld rush & resource domination counters (2)

Slowdown Strike
Nukes

Tier 3 - Optional random item (1)

Goon squads
Cook books
Mule
Nework Virus
Spies

I am currently not a fan of the following BM items and would like to see them disappear or be heavily modified:

Auction
Holograms

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Mutiny or Dynamite - to counter Scavenger power plays

Since when has scavenger had a power play? Seriously, dynamite and mutinies have always seemed to me to be most beneficial to scavenger, and anti-offworld tools, so what on earth would scav do for power that the COUNTER would be mutiny and dynamite?

What do you mean by encouraging BM player interaction? People use the black market all the time. A system where 'pay $3000, harm an opponent of this faction type' and there is one button for each faction is not a good idea. By the same token, your judging each black market effect as only being good agaisnt a particular faction type, but EMP and power surge are insane against everyone except scientific.

I really don't like your groupings at all, the whole point of the black market being like it is that some factions will become better than others in certain situations, and since you all equally know what the black market is ahead of itme you can plan accordingly. There should never be a black market tailor-made to counter a specific HQ. Your also honestly wanting slow down strike and nukes to be mandatory every single game? I wouldn't be suprised if auctions get used more than nukes. The fact as well that your wanting a black market that helps with alternate victory conditions and then says to remove holograms, the main reason why a hacker array is viable, seems odd at best. Finally, you want goon squads optional, and either power surge or EMP mandatory. Do you realise how broken this would make scavenger if you gave them emp or power surge and you had absolutly no way to stop it?

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Gameslayer, I suspect that by power play he didn't mean power the resource, but the snowballing that takes place when scav found on dream spots with high carbons. Nukes are the best tools to deal with these silly tiles, especially if the scav is an early bird and doesn't have his BM unlocked for a long time. EMP's and PS's also help even though to a lesser extent. Personally, I don't think mutinies are very strong in this scenario, sine the damage caused by it is marginal. If you want to make profit from the stolen carbon, you'll have to sell it anyways which give the scavenger an easier upgrade. If you're gonna hold on to it, the scavenger will sell first and you barely made profit.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there's no way to make the BM balanced pre-game. Its effectiveness is tied to resource gen and thus until everybody founds it's impossible to level the playing field. Given we don't have all BM available. I'm still on the fence re whether I'd prefer that over random pool. I do know, though, that not having a goon squad in the game sucks. Situations like AB+EMP and no goon squads drive me crazy. People throw money randomly. The person who happened to have the right amount at the right point of time comes on top - not something you can plan ahead or prepare for. In 1v1 you can try and watch BM prices change in order to time the use of your purchases, now good luck with that in FFA.

So yeah, IMO, in Beta 5 BM needs some work. But I haven't played enough of Beta 6 to find out if it's been improved and by how much.

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GS, a public forum is a place for exchange of ideas and construstive discusssion. Please read a post with an open mind before ripping it apart. I was hoping that the BM aspect of the game would evolve similar to the counter-units used in conventional RTS. Of course I am not "judging each black market effect as only being good agaisnt a particular faction type" or asking for "one button for each faction". I certainly don't think I arrived at a perfect balancing set of recommendations (I agree I would always like GS, etc). As i said in the first paragraph, i would like to see "something similar".

We witnessed tournament games with very little BM interatction (science vs science) because the BM had little effect. So, I am glad to see that we will always have pirates or MS. I have played games where I could do very little to stop an expansive offworld rush. I have had games where an opponent founded on 3 of 4 silicon tiles and claimed the 4th. I sure wish I had nukes that game.

Some people might enjoy making the decision of which faction to play partially based on which BM items are available. While this might be fine as a design choice... I feel that skilled players are already rewarded for chosing their faction based on random map resources. The first to found with the right faction choice too frequently has a won game before the 2nd player can do anything. GS, you may be skilled enough to play any faction well, but this game will be played by many people who don't have hundreds of hours to refine their play with all factions. The learning curve is already quite steep in this game and making all factions closer to equally playable would go a long way towards increasing game enjoyment for new players.

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I'm quite in agreement with the black market as it is in beta 6 (next_version), with the exception of EMP which I believe is overpowered against nonscientifics and is a lot stronger than power surge because goonsquads hardly protect against it. And god forbid if no goonsquads are available with EMP on the black market, scientific is the only option there.

As of beta 6 next_version, we pretty much have the groupings that guarantee at least 1 of those T1 BM items you suggested. I do think you need a little checking. Robotics are a lot better at power plays than other factions because of their complete lack of life support except for power itself.

Auction definitely can be removed in my opinion but I don't see that it imbalances the game so bad so I don't believe that it is necessary. Most players now are wise to it and won't allow an in the lead player to snowball off of an auction or 2. Offworld rushing is an issue in 1v1 though not much beyond 1v1.

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