DeathTacticus

Join Date 08/2015

Suggesting minor Balance Changes

Claims

https://puu.sh/zIcJA/89d4e554b5.png

An extra Claim can potentially be really good if you look at the image above. If that set extra Claim is making an average of 120/s throughout the game then after 4,5 Sols the claims already made over 100k, which is basically 4 stocks/1 offworld/1 patent lab with a few patents etc.

If you know the potential of an extra claim then you would always lean to found last or third in a 4FFA, because of what the extra claim can give you. Furthermore, if there are Claims on the blackmarket then you almost always want to found last (or third). Because you will get an extra claim from founding third or fourth and you will get first acces to the blackmarket, which means you can buy a claim from the Blackmarket resulting in having 2 extra claims. the potential profit of 2 extra claims over your opponent(s) is huge. It basically gives you the ability to go into another market early on.

Besides almost every player even the top level ones don't count who got the extra claims. What most players will think is that the player which is an upgrade ahead is the biggest threat meaning that that player will most likely be attacked by an blackmarket item, slowing that player down a lot. And even if the player with the extra claims gets attacked, depending on what the blackmarket item is, he would most likely have 2-3 tiles disabled for a small period of time, meaning that the Player that got attacked still has even (or -1) amount of buildings working as the Player who attacked that player, which doesn't really slow down the player that got the extra claims.

What might be an idea to tackle this "problem", is to change the blackmarket cooldown for getting a bribe a claim from 60s to 90s. What this does is 1. that one player doesn't get the majority of the bribe the claims, 2. aggressive blackmarket items are worth more early on and 3. in some way it makes auction a tile more desirable(60s cooldown).

Also I would suggest of changing the founding bonusses from.

https://puu.sh/zIdG3/7cbd0eece3.png

to

https://puu.sh/zIfd5/a1cfbde0ee.png

Why? Cause nowdays everyone with the highest chances of winning are the ones that found third or last. (because of the potential of the extra claim and slowrolling strategy). The RNG maps of today makes it so that 90% of the time there are enough founding spots for every player that is playing. So by equaling the amount of claims everyone will get there should be less of a incentive to found last. Players will start "bidding" for certain founds again with higher debt costs. There is still a benefit in founding last cause you get the extra claim on HQ2 and not on HQ4 or 5, which basically mean you have an extra claim for 2-3 Sols over your opponent(s).

Pirates

Please buff it from 200 units to 400 units. The Return from what you are getting from pirates is really low which is why no one uses it except when every other blackmarket item is 50k+. Mules are twice as better than pirates, Claims gives you a permanent resource and while aggressive blackmarket items gives you a much bigger return.

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Something to think about. If this were the system, how do you envision player counts other than 4 being handled?

Also, last I checked Pirates are 100. But I might be misremembering.

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I would probably do it like this: https://puu.sh/zIAa3/c77fe7c54a.png

and for Pirates.. ..100 units is just way too little. it doesn't benefit you in anyway except when some scientist has 200$ farms offbase which really never happens. (and there are easy ways to counter that). and even then 200$*100units=20.000, which is still mewh if you compared it to an extra claim

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Reasonable suggestions - I'll think about it after GDC.

Pirates are 200 units, which makes them roughly equal to MULEs in that you are +200 and your opponent is -200.

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(er, I hope they are 200... let me know if I forgot!)

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Quoting Soren_Johnson,

reply 4

(er, I hope they are 200... let me know if I forgot!)

Pirates are currently at 100:

<zType>SABOTAGE_PIRATES</zType>
<iPlunderQuantity>100</iPlunderQuantity>

I'd be interested in bumping back bonus claims an HQ level instead of adding claims to everyone first.

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Giving everyone a claim does feel a bit... dull, though it may be a reasonable thing to do. I'm more interested in the idea of adjusting BM timers for different items. Founding 3rd/4th can often lead to picking up 2-3 cheap claims pretty easily mostly because your opponents don't even have the chance to consider purchasing them, and maybe increasing the timer would be a good way to mitigate that. There are potentially some other items that would be better with adjusted timers rather than the all or nothing that exists now.

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Might be an idea to do it like this: https://puu.sh/zOg0V/53841bf816.png

Adrenaline Boost - Really strong (basically an extra claim for set amount of time), the price rises almost as fast as a bribe a claim.

Cook the Books - Players only go for this if they really have to, decreasing the cooldown time would make debt strategies more viable.

Holograms - I can just buy 4 of them for 20k-25k? early on, meaning that others need to spend more and that not every player can afford a hologram later on. (Holograms are like Goons if you use them correctly)

Spies: I can buy 4 of them for 20k-25k? early on, meaning no one can spy me out for cheap later on, I get a lot of information on what they are doing. (if there are holograms it's even more broken, cause they cannot counter me as effective)

Core Samples: only used when necessary, most of the time it's not necessary which means Core Samples will stay at 2k-5k at the end game.

Return a Claim: same story as Core Samples, you only use them if necessary.

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Faction Balance and other things

(I wanted to add this when I made my original post but I didn't had time for that.)

Under here I will write down on what I think is strong in this current version and what is not.

Expansive - Strong (but not OP)
No changes needed

Scientific - Really Strong (sometimes OP)

It's really hard to counter a Scientific nowdays, mostly because they begin with a Goon Squad. (and no MS/Pirates in a lesser extent) Having a free Goon can be a lot! It could mean that you can secure something like a patent, Defend something valuable early game which can snowball you the game or just knowing that someone has goon can make it so that others won't attack the scientific cause of the possible goon pop or because you know it won't deal much damage. Also if there are claims on blackmarket (which happens a lot) founding last means that you get a free goon, a free claim and you can buy the first bribe a claim on the market. 2 extra claims and a free goon on HQ 2 is huge, you can go into an extra market because of this and snowball early on and make a gap between you and your opponents.

Suggestion:

Nerf: removing the free Goonsquad (if you don't like this idea, then the Goonsquad should be given on HQ4)

Possible change: 25% blackmarket resistance

Possible change: a Goonsquad that expires after set amount of time.

Possible change: Free Core Sample

Scavenger - Average - Good (depending on the location)

Scavengers can be good on Ceres/Io, but on Mars it's still awful imo. Not weird cause on Ceres and IO they are getting an extra bonus which is no depletion of mines/quarries/pumps where as on Mars they are not getting that. (also Carbon Scrubbing is available on Mars which doesn't really help the Scavenger either)

Might be an idea to add depletion of mines/quarries/pumps on mars.

Robotic - Good (Still Expansive>Robotic on an even map)

No changes needed

Elite Average - Good

Really slow early on but can be really strong late on. But I never had the feeling that I auto won a map when playing Elite while I do have that with other factions.

Nomad - Strong (OP if glass colony +160$ Glass starting price)

Nomad just dominate whenever there is a glass colony.

Solution?: if glass colony and nomad available then increase the silicon on the map RNG.

Patents

Energy Vault - Kinda weak

Buff Suggestion: 200 power stockpile

Transparent Aluminum - Strong - OP

Nerf Suggestion: 80 chems cost? (tbh I just wanna get rid of this patent)

Nerf Suggestion: ??? but please nerf it, it's sometimes not even fun anymore.

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I would even consider to add pirates/MS to the 30s cooldown list but not sure if that is too much.

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I would even consider to add pirates/MS to the 30s cooldown list but not sure if that is too much.

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Here are the changes we are going with:

last four players to found all get free claims (HQ5 -> HQ4 -> HQ3 ->HQ2), changed black market cooldowns for bribe a claim (90s) and holograms, spies, return a claim, and core sample (30s), Pirates now steal 200 resources

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Someone mentioned copying this into this thread from the discord

Just reading these suggestions I agree with most of them, but would like to point out a few things.

1) Scav is weak in FFA, but relatively stronger in 1v1s. Any sort of buff might make them overpowered in the 1v1 matchup, so I would be cautious about that.

2) If Pirates gave as much resources as mules then they would be flat out better than mules for the reasons I highlighted that got mules buffed in the first place. Mules cost fuel where pirates do not, and they drive down prices which damages the resource value stolen while pirates have net 0 effect on supply (keeping their value high). Pirates can also steal secondary resources while mules cannot. There might be a happy medium below mules and better than they are but I don't think equal net resource changed is it.

3) Energy Vault: Buff Suggestion: 200 power stockpile. No. The stockpile is honestly a disadvantage most of the time because you could be paying down debt instead of stockpiling. This would, ironically, probably make the patent even worse in most situations.

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