[MoO] ICEMOD: mod design, race design, strategies

[Rocco.40]

Wait, so not only did you give everyone Bscanners, but you also upped mid-late computers? Why?

* Bscanners = levelling playfield
* There is 1 new, higher computer, very late game (which I think what 24k RP in the Computers branch is)

Apart from the 1 new +125 compu and removal of the +50 compu, other compu's are unchanged.
Also, all computers come at the cost of some great other tech.
Thus, human player makes sacrifices, a.i. just picks 'something'.

+25:

50 RP Classic​

50 RP ICE​

+50:

200​

N/A (removed in ice)​

+75:

1,500​

1,500​

+100:

5,750​

6,250 (more expensive)​

+125:

19,750​

16,750 (cheaper)​

+150:

N/A​

24,250 (new)​

 

[Markus Ramikin]

Ah, I get it.

Still, the BA-BD situation is a little out of hand. Having all those computers downed by 25 after Electronic might be worth considering.

 

[Dukinson]

Dukinson, I still don't know what precisely makes you think missiles are too strong. I maintain that the only reason they can seem stronger than beams is that you automatically get lots of miniaturization on them by researching pollution, cells and armor. And that you need additional research into Fields (or Physics) to get miniaturised beams.

Firstly, I agree with you about missiles being more easily miniaturized by appealing technologies in the chemistry tree. It should be part of the consideration of weakening missiles. When the computer I'm at war with gets an armor technology above me, I go to red alert. I spy, I research, I build ships past my command point maximum... armor is one of the most powerful combative technologies.

Even if you had more desirable force fields or physic technologies, missiles and chemistry will still edge them out unless Rocco radically alters the tech tree.

Re: what you said about how missiles are broken because... you were able to notice the tactic to shoot 2x missiles and retreat, without needing a guide - you know, I and everyone else noticed it too, it's a very obvious thing. Does that make beams broken because I can walk 2 mass driver BBs with Inertial Stabilizers and Shields III up to any enemy Star Base and planet with defenses and a small fleet, and stay parked there as long as I want until I kill everything, without needing to retreat?

No. The enemy has nukes and beams too. It's just that you win by picking an advantage and concentrating on it. Either firing as many missiles as you can per round, without dilluting your ship contents with beams or unnecessary special systems, so that the missiles overcome defenses and do lots of damage, or you get all the beams you can, and all the Beam Defense you can, so you can kill enemy missiles in flight and evade beam fire.

My intention wasn't to brag, quite the opposite. It would be like bragging about discovering there was a mountain if front of me, who would miss it? If I found it even with no help, everyone would and it's just that obvious.

I do use mass driver ships, instead of stabilizers I just use more drivers and point defenses though. With the ship attack giveaways of late, I find ship defense weakened. Is it strong? Yes. It's my favorite ship design early to mid game, but also a bit boring the physics field and beam weapons aren't up to par. Shields make the drivers smaller and they're already fairly small for how strong they are. Beam weapons really don't interest me until I've gotten disrupters or the computers shields start heavily weakening the effectiveness of the low damage drivers. This is probably another balance problem but not as bad as missiles. No one is wasting the guardian or difficult space monsters with mass drivers early on.

You beat a "small fleet" and a start base. Shouldn't you beat a small computer designed fleet? Two missile battleships would shred that fleet like an angry kitty with a box of tissues. You might have to retreat and come back but if the enemy is harder, missiles are the way to go. With mass drivers you have to stick the battle out to deal your damage and take whatever the computer can throw back at you. It's certainly a more fair fight.

 

[Dukinson]

Warlord
Dukinson, as I feel really bad causing you to have so many sleepless nights over this issue, in next edition Warlord will regain its 2 cmd. Maybe I will even speed up the next edition, as X-mas time is still far away...
The Warlord value of either 1 or 2 cmd is quite limited in early game. Then again Warlord was always more a EVO mutation pick than a starting race pick, as it brings instant advantage when chosen for mutation.

In classic MOO2, Warlord can be used for a blitz race (although non-warlord blitz race designs are stronger), a rush race (aggresive or war races) or for EVO mutation. In ICE, only rush race and EVO remain, as the Warlord blitz race is no longer strong enough to do the job (and bringing cmd back to 2 won't change that). I think Warlord as it is now at 5 picks/ 1cmd can be a very interesting EVO change as there are some race designs that have 1 pick spare, in which case you can pick Warlord + 4 picks remaining. Bringing cmd up to 2, just have to think around the pick cost of this trait.

Oh the sleepless nights. I wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares of undertrained crews and small fleets!

Warlord as an evo mutation has problems. First you already have star bases and communications technologies making the mere 1 point per colony fairly inconsequential. Second, you need time to train your crews and by the time you have evo mutation, you'll likely be winning the game with nothing much more than veteran crews. When you start with warlord, by the time you get evo mutation, you will have some elites and likely even a few ultra elites zipping around if they've survived the improved AI.

By the way, I am enjoying the belligerence of the AI now. They constantly attack and gut smaller neighbor races making them much more difficult.

Battle scanner, BA, BD
Battle Scanner is a must have pick in the game. All human players (should) know that. A.I. does not know it. If BS in the Tachyon field, human player takes the +50 attack and a.i. will get it sometimes. BS was placed for some time together with Holo Sim, which made it an easy pick for Uni races (especially in Strategic games, as Dukinson pointed out). I see many advantages for BS as a pre warp tech; 1. all players get the crucial tech, 2. beams can become effective earlier in the game, 3. some extra ant-missile power from star bases (went from +25 BA in star bases to +50 in previous ICE when Elec was at +50 to now +75 in current version (elec +25 plus bs +50).

Was BS really so crucial? It takes up weapon space and it used to compete with tac communications. I think it was fine in the tachyon physics field. Either you have a larger fleet and limited ability to turn ships around or some accuracy. Infact, now I get tachyon communications everytime, another hit to warlord as I used to forgo the command points and get battlescanners when I used warlord. Now everyone can have both unless the computer is silly and picks tachyon scanners. Usually the AI will research, trade, or steal some targeting computer/battlecanner or get a ship captain to help with accuracy. Otherwise they just close in and start connecting beam hits. The AI will tend to have a variety of weapons, missiles, fighters, etc that don't rely on battle computers anyways. That aside, when I played tactical, I rarely thought "Wow, I'm dodging every shot". I'm really not seeing this beam accuracy problem from the AI's perspective.

 

[Dukinson]

Missiles encore
Missiles have been nerfed with hit points, L3 MIRV mod and +20% space and cost for the x2 shot which I really think is sufficient. Note that for strategic the hit points nerf is meaningless as missiles cannot be shot down. The fact that we all shoot down system monsters with nuke Frigates is not something I would like to see changed, it is just a fun aspect of the game. BTW Dukinson, could be interesting to test the minimum fleet to take down the various monsters in strategic, or perhaps you have already checked it?

Yes you don't need to worry about missiles in strategic, they are just fine there.

When I fight space monsters I try not not lose battleships and it usually goes something like this:

Amoeba: 1 battleship +destroyer escort or 2 battleships
-Tech used: space acedamy, fusion beam, battlescanners, inertial stabilizers, ecm(likely not needed)
Space Eal: 2 batteships +destroyer escort or 3 battleships
Hydra: 3-4 battleships
-Zortium armor recommended or likely to lose battleships
Crystal: around 5 battlehips
-Tech used: Phasers, class 3 shields
Space Dragon: 6-7 battleships
-Will take losses without Neutronium armor, but still doable without

This is from memory and changes slightly from patch to patch but should be fairly current. Usually I hit monsters dragons and crystals with larger fleets than listed here to but dead sure they don't inflict losses at later critical stages of the game. Depends how important what they're guarding is.

 

[Dukinson]

Countering human specialization
When we choose to go all nukes or all beams on tactical designs, it is very hard for the A.I. to counter it. A.I. just has 8 generic design templates to cycle through and a couple of specialization templates, which are chosen at game start based in its personality. There is some code in the exe that should make A.I. able to detect if your strongest weapon is a beam or not-a-beam, but other than that a.i. cannot really counter, it only has brute force. Even in strategic games, which seems to be more 'fair' due to the fixed design templates for all, there are things that can be done if you know how the battle mechanics work; for example in the first two rounds of combat only missiles shoot and not the beams. Thus, strategic brings more incentive to get the Pulson missile, while in tactical you would usually pick Atm. Renewer. in that tech field.

Pulsons are a good technology, but beams and missiles are far more balanced in strategic. If I'm still using fusion beams, I tend to fear neutron blasters and certainly graviton beams more than pulson missiles (keeping in mind I always choose ecm in strategic)

I can go either way in the chemistry field depending on my circumstances. If I have merculite missiles, I will get iridium fuel cells if I'm tolerant. If I'm not tolerant, I get pollution processors and pulson missiles. I almost never get atmospherics unless I steal merculite and have a or several large/huge ultrarich planets. I typically get an environmentalist too. I can place them on the planet with the most pollution and the other planets are likely just fine with pollution processors.

 

[Rocco.40]

Just so we all get on the same page, below some bits of the Strategy Guide by Cybersaber:

New players are often tempted to select Tritanium Armor, Pollution Control, Irridium and then Zortium. This is a sharply suboptimal path for two reasons. The first is that it leaves you without a decent missile, a handicap at best, and potentially fatal if you run into a Creative player (Radiation Shields are immune to most beam weapons and completely immune to nuclear missiles). Moreover, Merculite missiles are extremely nasty weapons when you can Mirv them at the Zortium level. The second reason is that Atmospheric Renewers eliminate TWICE as much pollution as Pollution Controllers. Accordingly, the tech path that I recommend up the Chemistry Track is Dueterium Fuel Cells (for range), Merculite missiles, Atmospheric Renewers and then Zortium. [...] (the one MAJOR exception is a Tolerant race, whose optimum path is Tritanium Armor for early advantage, Merculite missiles, Irridium Cells and then Zortium)

To get ANY beam weapon to have a reasonable chance of hitting a target, you need to have Battle Scanners aboard. [...] So your earliest military ships should be equipped with Battle Scanners [...]

 

[Markus Ramikin]

My brain must have just woken up, because I only now verbalised to myself the utterly obvious thing, namely where the BA-BD situation comes from: BD from speed doesn't rise as fast as computer tech.

If Interphased Drives are +10 speed compared to Nuclears, that's +50 BD. MC computer is +125 BA compared to Electronic Computer. Things like Rangemaster are just icing on the cake.

Now this may have been intended, since it was like that in vanilla, but again, making Beam Defense even more useless in middle and late game was an unfortunate side effect of trying to fix the early game Bscanner situation. It doesn't matter if you did it by moving a computer, the overall effect is the same.

PS. Don't miss my pm! /impatient git

 

[Rocco.40]

making Beam Defense even more useless in middle and late game was an unfortunate side effect of trying to fix the early game Bscanner situation. It doesn't matter if you did it by moving a computer, the overall effect is the same.

See it like this: BD for A.I. has not changed in middle and late game, as the computers there haven't changed and a Human player working with beam ships would always pick Battlescanner anyway. From their point of view, the situation is unchanged until the arrival of the Moleculartronic computer, which is very late game.
For the human player the situation has changed indeed, as now all opponents will have a Battle Scanner onboard, but it is only a partial deterioration, as A.I. carries not only beams but other weapons on their ships too.

BD from speed doesn't rise as fast as computer tech.

A big reason why beams become dominant later in the game, in classic and in ice too.

icing on the cake.

ice10 on the cake

 

[Markus Ramikin]

For the human player the situation has changed indeed, as now all opponents will have a Battle Scanner onboard, but it is only a partial deterioration, as A.I. carries not only beams but other weapons on their ships too.

But it counts for quite a bit, when you're trying to beat quantity with quality, by putting in an Intertial Stabiliser and a Helmsman leader and manipulating positioning and range to maximise shield use and dodging, while killing all missiles and fighters. A single AI ship may have only some guns, but when there's a whole number of those ships, and beams are the only thing you allow to reach you, then it suddenly matters if you're 140 defense vs 160 attack minus range, or vs 185 attack minus range.

Not to mention Dukinson has a point about SA and SD racial bonuses being near-useless. With some kind of balance between BA and BD there would be more of a point to taking either.

If the reason for this change was to equalize the playing field and fix early blitzing, then my suggestion of lowering all computers except Electronic by 25 would surely not hurt either of your original purposes?

It's not a radical solution. That would be to just remove Battle Scanner from the game, for an (equivalent) +50 boost to defense across the board, then raising Electronic Computer to 50 for an early +25 boost to attack, and equalizing the playing field for everyone just as effectively.

Or Hell, an only slightly less radical solution would be to make Electronic Computer give 20 BA and everything else afterwards +20. I am not actually seriously suggesting this - I do remember the game also has Inertial Nullifiers and cloaks later on (do AI ever use those?). Just sayin', the situation isn't set in stone.

 

[Dukinson]

New players are often tempted to select Tritanium Armor, Pollution Control, Irridium and then Zortium. This is a sharply suboptimal path for two reasons. The first is that it leaves you without a decent missile, a handicap at best, and potentially fatal if you run into a Creative player (Radiation Shields are immune to most beam weapons and completely immune to nuclear missiles). Moreover, Merculite missiles are extremely nasty weapons when you can Mirv them at the Zortium level. The second reason is that Atmospheric Renewers eliminate TWICE as much pollution as Pollution Controllers. Accordingly, the tech path that I recommend up the Chemistry Track is Dueterium Fuel Cells (for range), Merculite missiles, Atmospheric Renewers and then Zortium. [...] (the one MAJOR exception is a Tolerant race, whose optimum path is Tritanium Armor for early advantage, Merculite missiles, Irridium Cells and then Zortium)

There is a lot of sense in the excerpt but some problems with it as well. Those tech paths are not the hard and fast rules Siron is making them out to be, especially not anymore. It really depends on what's going on. Firstly, this is advise for vanilla and your mod puts greater pressure on early game production as well as (hopefully) meaning to disrupt the advantage of going nuts with missiles. Second if you're not playing tolerant, you may really need those processors pronto with Icemods deadly AI. To deal with all the pollution all the way up to atmospherics, I might as well play tolerant (most did in vanilla because of stuff like this). Third, Siron mentions creative as a problem but how many races are creative? Just Psilons. He even states that creative is a bad pick if you're designing a race! I almost always make quick work of ground defenses with good old mass drivers. Finally, Siron is stating what fuel cells to get and when. You can't do that always. It depends on star distance, your need to expand, and other circumstances as well. An example from my last game:

I had 6 star systems in a relatively tight cluster. With standard fuel cells, I could colonize all 6 of them (which, amazingly, all had planets in icecold). In this case I didn't need better fuel cells while I was still "chewing" on this territory. I went armor and processors. I needed those processors to build colony ships and supercomputers fast. Did I need missiles? No, it would have slowed down expansion to advance them (and this is strategic where I'm forced to have them). Also, if I had spent time on atmospherics research and construction, I would have been threatened by my neighbor. By the time I had colonized all 6 systems, I was ready for iridium and needed it to escape my cluster.

However, starting circumstances are not always so favorable. How often are the stars oddly spaced? What if there is little around me to colonize and standard fuel cells won't get me to the systems I need to scout and colonize? What if an enemy with deuterium or iridium can reach me and I cannot reach them? What if I want to make an early strike on a weak opponent I can't otherwise reach? What if I'm in the corner and know I can skip tritanium and get zortium before encountering an enemy? It's worth mentioning as a small point that strategic also skews this analysis in that you don't have extended fuel cells to play with on military ships.

To get ANY beam weapon to have a reasonable chance of hitting a target, you need to have Battle Scanners aboard. [...] So your earliest military ships should be equipped with Battle Scanners [...]

This is a smart tactic for beam ships, but does this mean it should be handed out to everyone automatically? Again this goes back to the problem with missiles being strong and beams should be boosted in order to combat them. If all you have is +25 beam attack, you will miss and you should! Space academies, ship combat picks, warlord, these are all powers that can substitute for BS and are devalued by a BS handout. One should have to work towards accurate beams, not be handed it automatically. There will always be more intelligent techs than others but the only way to make the computer have them all is to make every tech a singleton or make every AI creative.

Rocco, you have the power to change this long established problem. If both missiles and beams are weak early, you have a level playing field without compromising other game dynamics.

 

[Dukinson]

Is there a way to allow civilian transportation to benefit from jump and star gates? Seems odd they don't know how to use them.

 

[Markus Ramikin]

Is there a way to allow civilian transportation to benefit from jump and star gates? Seems odd they don't know how to use them.

I always felt it silly that my officers take 5 rounds to get to their ships when Star Gates are available. But I doubt this is moddable with reasonable effort.

 

[Rocco.40]

.. already tried it ..
would be a serious code rewrite.

 

[Rocco.40]

Some info on spying .. it is not much:
moo2mod.blogspot.nl/spying-bonuses

And in this link, somewhere in the middle of the thread, post by Overlord2:
spheriumnorth.com/orion-forum/spying and stuff

 

[Dukinson]

I saw that graph too. I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed that spying isn't more complicated. Sometimes I do wonder if there is something more to it though.

 

[Dukinson]

Poor home world is -3 picks. Would any of you pick that? I noticed something about economy picks and I generally like it. They have twice the negative value of their positive counterparts.
Example:
+1 production/6picks
-1 production/-12picks.

Shouldn't poor hw be something closer to -6 or -8 picks if rich is 4?

-1 Food is -6 picks while +1 food is 5 picks. Shouldn't it be closer to -9? I understand it's only half a food but you only have 2 food to draw from so you're losing a quarter of food production so maybe it's not quite worth the double negative a value of -10 but -6 seems a little weak. What picks do I think players are going to be drawn to?

Most appealing negatives:
Ship defense
Ship offense
Ground combat
Spying
LowG
Feudal

Somewhat appealing class negatives:
Repulsive
-Pop growth (doable with super production race for housing)

Even though -1 production is -12 picks, who would be insane enough to pick it? Part of it is that if you're picking the negative, you cannot pick the positive. Maybe it should be more picks and perhaps production bonuses should cost more. -Research is the same as feudal (-9), I imagine most would much rather select feudal. The ship combat picks, ground combat, spying, all the non economy picks are what players will tend to pick. The economy picks should be more, the combat and spying, perhaps less. Ultimately I will say again, you should consider breaking the "-12" pick barrier. If a stock race has such a pick, just rebalance their negatives slightly and keep the negative that is most characteristic of that race or mix it up depending on the variant. Example: Silicoids would keep repulsive in some variants, and perhaps other variants of Silicoids would have the pop growth.

On a side note, I think you've done a good job slamming unification. I don't even play with it anymore. The increased price, the easily reached moral bonuses, it may be that 17 picks is too much now.

 

[Dukinson]

I've played several games with 10n and I've noticed there are a very high number of wet worlds. While I did feel aquatic was too weak compared to subterranean in the past, I think it may be too strong now. However, it is closer to fair than it used to be. Also, having so many partially terraformed planets feels unbalanced and somehow unrealistic. Wet planets seem to be a rarity if you consider our own solar system. Ofcourse it's a small sample but I'm sure many scientists would feel it to be the case by theory. Finally, if you really wanted more wet worlds you could select the organic rich galaxy option.

Perhaps the standard galaxy could be just a very slight increase of wet worlds with a decrease to the pick price of aquatic.

 

[Markus Ramikin]

Some info on spying .. it is not much:
moo2mod.blogspot.nl/spying-bonuses

And in this link, somewhere in the middle of the thread, post by Overlord2:
spheriumnorth.com/orion-forum/spying and stuff

Let me see if I have this straight. So this Spying % and Agent % is not actually a percentage of anything? That is what confused the hell out of me, how I can be losing so often with 4 spies to 1 if I'm suffering only a, say, 12% decrease in effectiveness.

So if I have "-12%" and 4 spies, this just means I have -12+8 = -4 defensive score?

And if some race has +20 Spying and 1 spy, they have 22 offensive score and will steal a tech if their roll(0-100)+22 > my roll(0-100)-4+60, which on average will be once in 5 turns. If I build a total of 10 spies, that puts me at roll(0-100)+22 > roll(0-100)+3+60, which merely reduces the chance from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6...

_________________________

Sorta agree about wet worlds being plentiful. But I wouldn't enjoy the return of the previous state of affairs, where you often didn't get any to colonise at all... although with Cre=12 or 13, with a Large HW it would be easier to live without a colony for a bit, and outpost my way into a quick conquest.

 

[Rocco.40]

economy picks ... They have twice the negative value of their positive counterparts.

I did not use this as a 'rule', but yes it is true for pop, prod and tax.

Poor home world is -3 picks. Would any of you pick that? ...Shouldn't poor hw be something closer to -6 or -8 picks if rich is 4?

An excellent pick for an Advanced game start.
[and yes, there are people playing it in ice ]
Also if you make it -8 picks you can arbitrage with Prod+1:
You get P+1 on all colonies except the HW, which stays neutral and have 2 picks spare!

-1 Food is -6 picks while +1 food is 5 picks. Shouldn't it be closer to -9?

-Food can be a good combo with Cyber.
You can also combine with Uni to get some points back.
(Uni, Aqua, F-1/2 = 2 farmers at game start)

Even though -1 production is -12 picks, who would be insane enough to pick it?

They only reason to pick this is to create an Impossible+ game, increase difficulty.

Maybe it should be more picks and perhaps production bonuses should cost more.

Perhaps. Currently I am using P+1=6 as a benchmark for valuing other abilities. (hey, not saying I am always getting it right, but that is the idea)

-Research is the same as feudal (-9), I imagine most would much rather select feudal.

"Feud, -Res, -GC" is a quite interesting Blitz race.

you should consider breaking the "-12" pick barrier.

Perhaps. The barrier is not an absoloute. But no matter how I balance, there will always be some favorite or best combo that arrises. Also, I am more concerned with changes that make the game more difficult than decreasing negative picks further which makes the game easier. On purpose I have broken the classic "Rep, -SD, -GC" combo and it now only gives -15 picks, leaving you with 6 short.

high number of wet world

For 10p (skipping 10o) I took a point off the oceans in mapgen.