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

[Rocco.40]

Hmm, I don't know if I agree that one should price negative traits separately from positive ones. While negative traits often block positive traits, some negative traits and positive traits can also fully or partially negate each other. So, in my opinion rich home world and -1 production should have some relation to each other. Also aquatic and -1/2 food, -1 science and artifacts HW or poor HW and +1 production should have some relation.

Apart from preventing opening up blatant arbitrages, when valuing racial traits I treat negatives and positives mostly as seperate worlds. [not seperated by a chinese wall, but by something more like a ditch ] Perhaps this becomes more clear when considering full race construction rather than individual traits and characteristics: A strong race is a 'production race', 'research race', 'balanced economy race', 'blitz race', etc. They are strong because of their focus. Why would you combine -science with an Artifacts world, unless you are intentionally creating a suboptimal race? The -science pick can be used for an ultimate blitz race, not for a science race.

It is possible to approach this from another angle, not from building strong focussed races, but from trying to make a negative trait playable. For example, if I want to play -money, I could pick the Fantastic Traders trait, because I know that a percentage of my worlds is going to be building Trade Goods for the entire game.

But if I had to compare it with a negative trait, then I'd pick -1 production for easy comparison.

Here you have picked one of the worst, if not the worst negative trait for comparison. -prod hurts from the start, on the HW and can never be fixed with a tech. It is so bad that in the VDC mod, -prod was replaced by +3 prod, as nobody would pick it in a MP game. (well, perhaps in some fun-special agreements games, i can't be sure of course). So agreed, comparing -pop with -prod, it can be seen as a generous 12 picks for -pop. It prob. means that -prod should be valued even lower (-15?).

About spying bonus: in a previous edition, i valued it lower at 4 pick for +10 and a had a super +30 spy for 10 picks, until someone showed me, +spy combined with Telepathic can actually be used for fast-win blitz races, that sabotage star bases and then hoover over these planets, mind controlling them with a single cruiser. So yes, gameplay experience remains and this example shows the power of focussed races. It led me to nerf spying back to +20 for 10 picks and +5 for Telepathic.

Back to your original point: perhaps -pop could be valued a bit less, for example at -10? It is just that i feel that Low-G is a better negative to pick than -pop, but I could be biased by my own personal playing styles of course.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Apart from preventing opening up blatant arbitrages, when valuing racial traits I treat negatives and positives mostly as seperate worlds. [not seperated by a chinese wall, but by something more like a ditch ]

You're working in the financial sector I guess.

Perhaps this becomes more clear when considering full race construction rather than individual traits and characteristics: A strong race is a 'production race', 'research race', 'balanced economy race', 'blitz race', etc. They are strong because of their focus. Why would you combine -science with an Artifacts world, unless you are intentionally creating a suboptimal race? The -science pick can be used for an ultimate blitz race, not for a science race.

It is possible to approach this from another angle, not from building strong focussed races, but from trying to make a negative trait playable. For example, if I want to play -money, I could pick the Fantastic Traders trait, because I know that a percentage of my worlds is going to be building Trade Goods for the entire game.

This game (and probably any game which allows a similar player/race construction) rewards focus or finding combinations which work exceptionally well. That's part of the fun. I don't quite see why you're separately valuing the positive and negative traits. It seems like you want to give players a bit more points for negative traits then you think they're worth in comparison to positive traits??? I guess you can do that without greatly upsetting the balance as long as you prevent direct arbitrage as you suggest. It mostly still works because any form of arbitrage costs towards the maximum negative point picks.

Ideally, a point picking system would be so greatly balanced that the -21 point limit (or -10 in the original game) wouldn't really be heavily needed to keep players from munchkinning the system. The negative traits should hurt as much as the positive ones benefit you. You can just create a different playing style.

In reality of course, they're always combinations that strengthen each other and provide a combined benefit greater than the sum of their points would suggest. So a negative point limit is still needed.

Have you ever considered what your ideal race would be if you used your present valuation system without a negative point limit? Always a fun thought exercise.

Here you have picked one of the worst, if not the worst negative trait for comparison. -prod hurts from the start, on the HW and can never be fixed with a tech. It is so bad that in the VDC mod, -prod was replaced by +3 prod, as nobody would pick it in a MP game. (well, perhaps in some fun-special agreements games, i can't be sure of course). So agreed, comparing -pop with -prod, it can be seen as a generous 12 picks for -pop. It prob. means that -prod should be valued even lower (-15?).

Yeah, I agree that it's a very bad pick, hurting you from the start. I can't recall ever playing with it. It must be exceptionally harsh to colonise poor/ultra poor planets with it. Ultra poors start with 0 production per worker I guess and a -20% morale for some governments. Good luck setting up such a planet. This inherent penalty of the trait should maybe give it further negative bonus points.
Because poor and ultra poor planets exist, I value the +1 production trait slightly higher than it's benefits on a normal planet would suggest.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that you'd built your trait valuation on the +1 production pick. But that was a bad comparison for negative traits. Then I compare with the negative version and I get a similar answer: you shouldn't compare it with that. It's a bad comparison. I'm finding a pattern here, which isn't building your case for a strongly internally consistent valuation scheme.

I'm just kidding of course. I really like your mod.

About spying bonus: in a previous edition, i valued it lower at 4 pick for +10 and a had a super +30 spy for 10 picks, until someone showed me, +spy combined with Telepathic can actually be used for fast-win blitz races, that sabotage star bases and then hoover over these planets, mind controlling them with a single cruiser. So yes, gameplay experience remains and this example shows the power of focussed races. It led me to nerf spying back to +20 for 10 picks and +5 for Telepathic.

I believe I read something about that... It seems like a logical progression to come to this valuation. After all the tweaking, I guess we can agree that the original creators of the game didn't even do such a bad job with their valuation. Especially since they didn't benefit from more than a decade of playing experience like we all do.

It is just that i feel that Low-G is a better negative to pick than -pop, but I could be biased by my own personal playing styles of course.

I dislike the Low-G penalty more. It hurts my game more. It of course doesn't hurt the starting planet, but it really slows down most colonised planets. And one typically colonises the planets in your starting system in the early game. Also, the gravity generator takes quite a while to develop and for me that part of the tech tree isn't normally the first one to develop.

So for me a -25% during the early to mid game on almost all planets except the home planet (say -12,5% overall) is worse than the growth penalty which I personally value at around a -10% penalty overall in the early to mid game(but may be valued harsher by others). If the low-G were valued at -12, the I'd value the -50 growth at about 10/12-th of this -12 which is indeed -10.

Back to your original point: perhaps -pop could be valued a bit less, for example at -10?

Given the lengthy posts, you might think it's very important to me. It's not that crucial to me. I just like to present my case well.

If you've seen something in the Excel exercise or in the arguments that lead you to believe that its negative value is a bit high now, then you should adjust it. But it's of course your mod. So, I'll leave that to your own designs. Presently, I'm enjoying 12 points which seem cheap to me.
I'm arguing to make the game harder to my specific play style. Maybe, I should just shut up...

 

[Roland Johansen]

A completely different subject, and one I think is more interesting than -9, -10 or -12 points for a trait... So maybe other like to chime in.

The toughness of ships.

We all like the space battles. Especially the ones which won't have a clear winner in advance. The ones that take a few rounds and where both sides actually could win. The ones where you eventually win by some clever manoeuvring, using shield facings, exploding ships in the lines of many missiles, etc.

For me, these battles often exist more in the early to mid game. At that point in time, ship toughness is enough so that multiple enemy ships aren't destroyed by a first salvo of beam weapons. Later in the game this changes and enemy ships die by the dozens to first salvo's making it a game of initiative.

Of course this is related to getting ahead of the AI, but in my opinion, there exist more fundamental reasons within the game framework resulting in these types of late game battles.

1) (Beam) weapon damage progresses more quickly than armor values in the mid to late game.
2) Armour values double twice in the early to mid game (zortrium = tritanium x2. triatanium = titanium x 2. But from zortrium onward, the armour technologies are quite expensive and don't strongly improve the armour of your ships anymore. The next to upgrades together double hitpoints once more.
3) Defence hitpoint special systems work additive, while offence damage systems work multiplicative.
You can increase armor by 200%, you can increase structure by 200%, you can increase shields by 100%, you can increase the regeneration of armor and structure, you can increase the regeneration of shields. That's 5 special systems to increase 'hitpoints' or hitpoint regeneration which all work additive and don't strengthen each others effects.
The offensive systems work fully multiplicative.
You can pick the Achilles targeting system to ignore armor and hitting systems, you can double damage with the structural analyser, you can effectively double it again with high energy focus and to amplify that first hit in round one, you can double it again with hyper-X capacitors. If you combine this with shield piercing weapons, you do quadruple damage while ignoring armour and shields, directly hitting systems twice in the first round of combat.
You just have to make sure that you have initiative and you'll win.

To improve late game balance between offence and defence, I would adjust some stuff:

1) Improve late game armour and shield progression in hitpoints (not absorption) and maybe tone down the repair rates a bit if ships could regenerate too much (lower percentage of higher hitpoint pool).
2) Only allow 1 or maybe 2 special offensive systems together from the list described above to tone down the multiplicative effect. (similar to disallowing phasing cloak and time warp facilitator in an earlier version of the mod0
3) Cheapen creative a bit as it is weakened a bit due to point 2 above. Creative players typically will be able to have all of these systems.

It would also help the AI as it seems to love armour research.

I already like that you improved shield hitpoints in the present version of the mod, but it's not enough to make late game ships tough.

 

[Rocco.40]

I don't quite see why you're separately valuing the positive and negative traits.

coz the only reason* to take negatives is to be able to add more positives, the balance of which should result in a stronger race. Usually it just means 'what is the least harmful way to collect my 21 picks'. In that step you are in fact comparing negatives, and depending on play style, strategy, etc you will make a choice. The least harmul way for the autarchic economy (without treaties and trading) is repulsive/-sd/-gc/-spy. For a pure blitz it could be Feud/-res/-gc, Feud/rep/-gc or even -Feud/Uncrea. For balanced eco including diplo, as i understand both -pop or low-g + 9 negs are frequently played.
* well only reason when playing efficient games ofc, coz moo2 is a very cool game for trying out all sorts of sub-optimal plays.

It seems like you want to give players a bit more points for negative traits then you think they're worth in comparison to positive traits???

well, i have nerfed the default negs of -sd and -gc and rep quite a bit, so not sure of I have made it easier really.

I'm arguing to make the game harder to my specific play style. Maybe, I should just shut up...

tooo late!! hahahh
-pop to -6 as per your initial request
but seriously, my first (unpublished) mod version was exactly that: to make my specific play style harder.

Given the lengthy posts, you might think it's very important to me.

yes.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that you'd built your trait valuation on the +1 production pick.

Yeah i did write something like that a few pages back (didn't bother to find it back). P+1 is a kind of benckmark for the other values. It was in a discussion about the P+1 value, and that perhaps it should be valued at 7 rather than 6. (which was another suggestion that kind of sticked). Should have specified I meant yardstick for other positives ..

 

[gibbenzgob]

So I have completed my first game of Ice M for moo2 and want to say "Thank You" for the adjustments you and your predecessors have made. I have also started numerous games on numerous difficulties to see how different things work. On the game I completed I played a race with the following abilities.

1) +50% Growth
2) +1 BC
3) +20 Ship Defense
4) Warlord
5) Subterranean
6) +20 Ground Combat

1) Uncreative
2) -10 Spying

I mainly wanted to see how the changes you made to uncreative were so I chose other abilities that I felt I needed to have in case I didn't get certain techs that I wanted. Also, I noticed production was a big topic on this forum and wanted to steer away from those bonuses (even though extra money is kind of a production bonus in its own way).

I want to discuss bugs I have noticed first then suggestions I have to your modifications. The bugs may or may not be old bugs in the game.

Subterranean +10 ground combat bonus does not stack with +10 or +20 Ground Combat bonus if you are the human player. It works fine for the AI.

If you raid a space station but don't take the planet, the station does not get destroyed.

Troop pods that are destroyed on the ship don't destroy the extra marines.

Elerian's AI make troop transports even if there are no other telepathic opponents in the game. Its a waste of time and resources.

Now to discuss some of the changes.

I am not a big fan of uber missile bases. I find it frustrating that a simple tech is better than space stations and can stop opponents with more ships and better tech. I also believe this hurts the AI. I can't tell you how many ships that should have taken my planet didn't because the AI didn't know how to get around my missile bases. It cost them a lot of resources and slowed their progression. I didn't see movement in my game until I finally... after a very long time... acquired the techs and ship numbers to defeat my first missile base. Afterwards, I gave the required techs to my Elerian allies and watched as they finally started taking stuff over. Now it didn't take them long before they won a junk load of planets and were beating me until the next jump in missile base tech stalled them (and me ) again... stupid zeon missiles. However, when I got around this second round of missile tech I did not share those techs with the Elerians and watched as I progressed forward and won the game and they just sat there and did nothing. So, I am not sure what to suggest to you about crazy missile bases but I do believe it undermines a couple things (even though it does stop crazy blitz tactics).

1) Any ship built with bombs is just wasting space for "Most" of the game. So AI ships are affected the most.

2) Ships in the beginning of the game are there to protect you from blockades only.

3) It gives serious power to expansion type races and detracts from aggressive races who acquire their planets through conquest not build colony ships. Which should adjust the value of those abilities.

How to fix? I have no idea... but here are some suggestions.

1) Weaken numbers of missiles.
2) Move fighter bays up in tech tree by a lot! I would avoid moving bomber bays because that could create serious problems. Also, I would like to see some early use of commanders with bonuses to fighters used or some different early ship builds. Plus, AI loves to use fighters.
3) Move transporters up the tech tree to allow ships to transport bombs to planet surface without having to be adjacent to the planet.

Other things I would like to see.

1) Whenever you don't use all the space on your ship your combat speed moves up. More space you don't use the more speed you get. Maybe adjust this so ships can get to the planet surface faster... maybe double the speed you get for each "chunk" of empty space. That might help with the above mentioned problem as well. Also... why not add boosts to missile evasion and beam defense for not maxing out your weapon capabilities. Might be fun

2) Antarans attack more!
3) More... more... and more random events!
4) Much More hyperspace fluxes to make trans dimensional more desirable to pick.
5) Wide Area Jammer not take up 200 space.
6) Fix computers order of preference for building buildings.

Ok... well that's my two cents! Hopefully I didn't step on any toes and keep up the great work! You are doing awesome!!!

Gibbenzgob

 

[Rocco.40]

The toughness of ships. Later in the game this changes and enemy ships die by the dozens to first salvo's making it a game of initiative.
The offensive systems work fully multiplicative.
You just have to make sure that you have initiative and you'll win.

These are very good points. But it is a tough nut to crack. Root cause imo opinion lies in the weak a.i. No matter how I would design the game for late game play, a human player will eventually always find some ship design + tactic that pretty much guarantees a win. A very early ice build had Class XX shields, but I found it made human ships more invincible and it did not really benefit a.i., as I would design my ships to deal with those shields. Note that a.i. is usually late researching the Force Fields branch. So shields are still pretty weak in ice and only get 20% more damage absorption. What also comes into play here is that a.i. cannot make correct tech picks from the tree. I believe a.i. would be stronger if it would play with a tech tree that has many irrelevant or weak techs removed, so their ships do not get cluttered with 20 A-M rockets in late game or unused Death Spores, etc. Ofc it is still possible to give a.i. more raw power by adding race picks, but it makes early game harder, while for late game it still doesn't matter too much.

For me, these battles often exist more in the early to mid game.

For me too, and it is one of the reasons why I like blitz/rush strategies in MOO2. I prefer battles that have 1-12 good quality ships on each side over the 40-100 ships in some very late game battles, when the delta strength becomes increasingly larger.

1) Improve late game armour and shield progression in hitpoints (not absorption).
For armor an option would be to pull Xentronium in the tech tree, but I feel it would reduce the uniqueness of the Antarans too much. Indeed the a.i. loves armor, but I haven't fully figured out yet if they specifically love armor or love researching in the chemistry tree or a combination. In fact I should make a mod where armors and shield techs swap branches to check it

2) Only allow 1 or maybe 2 special offensive systems together from the list described above to tone down the multiplicative effect. (similar to disallowing phasing cloak and time warp facilitator in an earlier version of the mod)
Yeah, it is possible and it would def. level the playing field a bit more. However the reason for allowing phasing cloak and TWF again, is because it is just too much fun to design such ships. (although ofc Phase Cloak was nerfed to 2 turns). Making ship systems exclusive as a way to weaken human ships, would reduce the fun of ship design too much imho. Usually making indivial systems more or less space consuming would be a friendlier way to balance things rather than hard exclusions. For example TWF is quite a bit more space consuming in ice.

 

[Rocco.40]

So I have completed my first game of Ice M for moo2 and want to say "Thank You" for the adjustments you and your predecessors have made.

Subterranean +10 ground combat bonus does not stack with +10 or +20 Ground Combat bonus if you are the human player. It works fine for the AI.

If you raid a space station but don't take the planet, the station does not get destroyed.

Troop pods that are destroyed on the ship don't destroy the extra marines.

Elerian's AI make troop transports even if there are no other telepathic opponents in the game. Its a waste of time and resources.

You are welcome

About bugs:
Subt/GC: I haven't seen that before, can you provide a screenshot?
Raiding platforms: You cannot destroy a platform by a raid, as it has no drive to explode.
Troop Pods: nice find. must be a classic bug.
Elerian: Yeah, very annoying to observe if Telepaths are flying around with a bunch of Transports. Unfortunately a.i. does not have a 'tele strategy' They only follow the generic race personality and objective strategies.

I am not a big fan of uber missile bases. I can't tell you how many ships that should have taken my planet didn't because the AI didn't know how to get around my missile bases.

Yeah this is indeed a good point and will reduce missile base space for next ice version somewhat.

1) Any ship built with bombs is just wasting space for "Most" of the game. So AI ships are affected the most.

bombs have ben reduced by 50% already in ice, but they can be reduced further. (especially for Titans and DS)

2) Ships in the beginning of the game are there to protect you from blockades only.

Not sure what you mean by this? And what is 'the beginning of the game'?

2) Move fighter bays up in tech tree by a lot! I would avoid moving bomber bays because that could create serious problems.

I guess you mean move them down, i.e. make fighters available earlier?
What would be the problem with Bombers over Fighters to have available earlier?

Also, I would like to see some early use of commanders with bonuses to fighters.

hm, ok can take a look at this. Currently we only have Altos and Cyr early.

3) Move transporters up the tech tree to allow ships to transport bombs to planet surface without having to be adjacent to the planet.

ok, now i am sure you mean move a tech down

1) Whenever you don't use all the space on your ship your combat speed moves up. More space you don't use the more speed you get. Maybe adjust this so ships can get to the planet surface faster... maybe double the speed you get for each "chunk" of empty space. That might help with the above mentioned problem as well. Also... why not add boosts to missile evasion and beam defense for not maxing out your weapon capabilities. Might be fun

This would purely benefit human players as in a.i.-land there is no such thing as empty ship space. It will always be attempted to fill a ship up completely and any remaining space points will be used to fit in more bombs. In fact, my design ideas go the other way here of reducing bonus speed (especially for early drives) as in blitzes, the use of runner-scouts is quite common and it is a tactic that a.i. does not possess altogether.

2) Antarans attack more!
3) More... more... and more random events!

Random events are fine I think, evey game should have a few of these, bit I wouldn't like an overload of them.
More Antarans, perhaps, would like to hear more opinion on this one, are they enough of a threat?

4) Much More hyperspace fluxes to make trans dimensional more desirable to pick.

No, TD already is a very desirable pick

5) Wide Area Jammer not take up 200 space.

This is the space for a Titan. WAJ is still at classic moo2 space. Perhaps for Titan and DS it could be less indeed. Because it has a fleet bonus, I could flatten out the space/ships class, meaning larger for small ships and somewhat lessened for the large ones.

6) Fix computers order of preference for building buildings.

Do you mean AUTObuild function? It is high on my list of things to change.

Thanks for your two cents and my toes are still fine!

 

[gibbenzgob]

About bugs:
Subt/GC: I haven't seen that before, can you provide a screenshot?

I have a screen shot. I have the save. Tried attaching both but I couldn't attach either to this message board for some reason. It said invalid file... which... it shouldn't be.

bombs have ben reduced by 50% already in ice, but they can be reduced further. (especially for Titans and DS)

Not sure if that's the answer, shrinking space. Problem is getting your ship adjacent to a planet to use those bombs as effective weapons. 99% of the time they are weapons that never get used.

I guess you mean move them down, i.e. make fighters available earlier?
What would be the problem with Bombers over Fighters to have available earlier?

YES. Sorry. Was thinking top of the screen was top of the tech tree. Sorry for the confusion. I would make the fighters an early game acquisition. Problem with bombers is their damage is too much for the "early" game. I would like to see fighters with PD lasers, mass drivers, etc. Bombers even with nuclear bombs might get excessive in early game damage. But that would solve missile base issues

In fact, my design ideas go the other way here of reducing bonus speed (especially for early drives) as in blitzes, the use of runner-scouts is quite common and it is a tactic that a.i. does not possess altogether.

Sad that you had to reduce bonus speed because of blitzes. Silly players. I personally never really blitzed much, occasionally I did I guess. I am guessing this was a problem for multiplayer games?

More Antarans, perhaps, would like to hear more opinion on this one, are they enough of a threat?

In my game, I had a tendency of evacuating planets (scrapping buildings, moving population, etc.) until I had the tech to defeat them... or I knew my 3 population planet wouldn't be destroyed by them. When they attacked and I ran, I noticed their ships kept increasing in numbers by a good amount for the next attack. When I fended them off finally, I noticed every time they appeared after that they had a small number of ships compared to what happened earlier in the game. I was thinking... if they attacked more (or you could manipulate their ship numbers) then their difficulty might increase. Basically, after I got phasors they were never an issue ever again. Not even a cool event that I could hope stomp on my opponents. So yes... too easy.

This is the space for a Titan. WAJ is still at classic moo2 space. Perhaps for Titan and DS it could be less indeed. Because it has a fleet bonus, I could flatten out the space/ships class, meaning larger for small ships and somewhat lessened for the large ones.

Yes... for the titan... Sorry... I meant to say to reduce the space for WAJ for all ships. It is really only a used tech if your opponents are as strong as you. Useless against the antarans since they are above using missiles.

Do you mean AUTObuild function? It is high on my list of things to change.

Yes. I figured that the AI used the same code for order of preference. Might improve their stupidity.

Gibbenzgob

 

[Rocco.40]

It said invalid file... which... it shouldn't be.

just rename the extension to .zip

Sad that you had to reduce bonus speed because of blitzes. Silly players. I personally never really blitzed much, occasionally I did I guess. I am guessing this was a problem for multiplayer games?

sorry if i wasn't clear; speed has not been reduced in ice. it is just something i have in mind to implement in a next version.

Not sure if that's the answer, shrinking space. Problem is getting your ship adjacent to a planet to use those bombs as effective weapons. 99% of the time they are weapons that never get used.

Here i meant to point to the a.i. ships design. in the tables for ship design i have the % allocated for bombs reduced by 50%.
bombs are indeed quite useless and is for a part caused by the fact that you can shoot planets too with beams and missiles, making bombs redundant.

Yes. I figured that the AI used the same code for order of preference. Might improve their stupidity.

it might be like that, at least i am hoping it is, but it could very wel be seperated code as well. still on a quest to find it.

tx...

 

[Rocco.40]

I played a race with the following abilities.
[...]
1) Uncreative
2) -10 Spying

So did you like playing Uncrea?

 

[gibbenzgob]

So did you like playing Uncreative?

Actually I did. Uncreative was always a pick I did in the original when the game got too easy for me. You did an excellent job of addressing some of the issues without destroying what Uncreative was as a handicap.

The penalty I always had the most difficulty playing was repulsive. I never choose that one and probably never will. My game-play relies heavily on interacting with the other races. Maybe if it was -12 but even then I think I would still avoid it. I actually think its the worst ability in the game. But I see not very many people share my sentiment.

I sometimes play with Feudal... but often I find I choose it more as a bonus on medium and small galaxies and find the science penalty is too much on large and huge galaxies. Seems like there is a fine line between when it is too much of a minus.

Oh... here are those files, the save and the screen shot. BTW I played the Alkari.

View attachment Screen Shot.zip

View attachment SAVE5.zip

Gibbenzgob

 

[Rocco.40]

ok thanks for the files!
in this case you were the attacking force.
the +10 GC bonus for Subterranean only applies when defending your worlds, not when attacking someone else. 'Subterranean troops are +10 harder to dig out.'

My game-play relies heavily on interacting with the other races. Maybe if it was -12 but even then I think I would still avoid it. I actually think its the worst ability in the game. But I see not very many people share my sentiment.

well, i think there might be some other people that think repulsive could be a bit more negative than -9.

 

[Roland Johansen]

These are very good points. But it is a tough nut to crack. Root cause imo opinion lies in the weak a.i. No matter how I would design the game for late game play, a human player will eventually always find some ship design + tactic that pretty much guarantees a win. A very early ice build had Class XX shields, but I found it made human ships more invincible and it did not really benefit a.i., as I would design my ships to deal with those shields. Note that a.i. is usually late researching the Force Fields branch. So shields are still pretty weak in ice and only get 20% more damage absorption. What also comes into play here is that a.i. cannot make correct tech picks from the tree. I believe a.i. would be stronger if it would play with a tech tree that has many irrelevant or weak techs removed, so their ships do not get cluttered with 20 A-M rockets in late game or unused Death Spores, etc. Ofc it is still possible to give a.i. more raw power by adding race picks, but it makes early game harder, while for late game it still doesn't matter too much.

I think the AI has a problem overcoming the damage reduction of Class XX shields. -20 damage obsoletes lots of weapons. If the AI happens to skip some of them in the tech tree, then you're immune to their weapons. My idea would be to only increase hitpoints of armour and shields.

So Armour presently has a progression of
Titanium (1)
Tritanium (2)
Zortrium (4)
Andrium (6)
Adamantium (8)
Xentronium (10)

I would suggest increasing those values of 6, 8 and 10 (7, 12, 15 or so as a test scenario). During the first part of the game, armour values double which each breakthrough while weapon damage has a similar progression. Then armour values start progressing linear, while weapon damage keeps increasing exponentially helped by special systems that multiply beam damage.

For shields a similar adjustment in hitpoints. Maybe even decrease damage absorption (and move some to hard shields to make them more interesting and noticeable).

Note that if you choose to increase hitpoints of armour and shields and want to keep regeneration of these systems the same, then you'll have to reduce the regeneration percentages of shields and automatic repair systems/cybernetic. I'm not sure if it's required to reduce regeneration rate.

2) Only allow 1 or maybe 2 special offensive systems together from the list described above to tone down the multiplicative effect. (similar to disallowing phasing cloak and time warp facilitator in an earlier version of the mod)
Yeah, it is possible and it would def. level the playing field a bit more. However the reason for allowing phasing cloak and TWF again, is because it is just too much fun to design such ships. (although ofc Phase Cloak was nerfed to 2 turns). Making ship systems exclusive as a way to weaken human ships, would reduce the fun of ship design too much imho. Usually making indivial systems more or less space consuming would be a friendlier way to balance things rather than hard exclusions. For example TWF is quite a bit more space consuming in ice.

There are so many special systems in ship design. Is it really that limiting to limit 4 of these multiplicative offensive beam systems on a ship to 2 (Achilles targeting system, structural analyser, high energy focus, hyper-X capacitors)? Torpedoes only get overloaded and enveloping, missiles only mirv and fast missile racks. Beam weapons get autofire or enveloping and these 4 special systems. And you're just limiting it to 2 special systems on a single ship; you can still specialise your fleet into ships with various combination of two of these four systems to create ships that deal better with surface emplacements (high energy focus, hyper X capacitors) and ships that deal better with ships (Achilles targeting system and structural analyser).
All of these offensive systems can still be combined with a time warp facilitator to get even more firepower. But that system is really expensive as it helps all weapons and helps in more ways.

I personally dislike the option of increasing the ship space of these systems as it means that picking one or two of these beam enhancing systems is a bad pick size wise and you only get their value compared to size investment if you combine them. It forces you even more towards this ultimate combination.
If it were possible to create extra size requirements if you were to combine these systems, then it would work, but that seems far too complicated to achieve with a hex-editor.

By the way, I really like that you increased AI ship size for battlehip+ size. It compensates a bit for the useless junk the AI sometimes puts in its ships. Why not a +20% room for the smaller ships? Is it designed as a late game bonus?

About the discussion about bombs. Human players rarely use them and AI don't use them well. They're just underpowered in their usability. It's too hard to use them. A more revolutionary way to improve them (which might be too much for players who don't want to change too much) would be to increase their range. That would make bombing runs possible earlier in a battle and it would make it easier to bomb a planet with more ships without them obstructing one-another. Transporters could increase range even further. For instance, PD-range for bombs and normal range for transporter enhanced bombs.

About repulsive: I agree that it's one of the most harmful negatives. Mostly because AI interaction can help you avoid war in the crucial starting phase of the game when you're often weak compared to the AI. Also the treaties can help quite a bit.

 

[neilkaz]

It is good to see the continued development and support of IceMod. IceX is a superb game.

I haven't been playing in a while as both my high end gaming computers were down.

One is fixed sort of so I may be back to MOO2 soon.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[gibbenzgob]

I agree! If I had know ICE mod existed before 2 weeks ago I would have been more involved from the beginning. Especially since I have been playing Moo2 since 1996.

In this post I want to list how I rate abilities in the game. By no means do I suggest that you take these statements as "You must impose these values into the game". I have a certain play style that I am sure colors my view on abilities and might differ from others. But I do believe you might be interested in how one player views them. Ultimately I will compare negatives with negatives and positives with positives.

Negative Abilities: #1 being the worst ability and thus should get the biggest penalty. Duplicate numbers mean I value the penalties the same.

1) Repulsive
2) Feudal
3) -.5 BC Money
3) Low G World
4) Uncreative
4) -1 Production
5) -.50% Population Growth
5) -1 Science
6) -.5 Food
7) -25 Ship Attack
8) -10 Spying
9) -20 Defense
9) -10 Ground Combat
9) Poor Home World

Positive Abilities: #1 Being the best ability and thus should get the biggest bonus. Duplicate numbers mean I value the bonuses the same.

1) Creative
2) Lithovore
3) Tolerant
4) Telepathic
4) Unification
5) Spying +20
5) +1 BC Money
6) +2 Production
6) +100% Population Growth
7) Democracy
8) +2 Food
10) +2 Research
11) Subterranean
12) Aquatic

If you noticed, I did not assign values to any of them. I am just stating what I think the ability basically gives to me as a player.

I almost never take creative because, frankly, I believe it to be the Super Power ability that almost guarantees a win for me. I can give away useless techs to AI opponents as ways of manipulating their standing with me and get them to attack others, stop attacking me, trade techs I do not intend to acquire for awhile, or most importantly build trade agreements and Alliances.

Lithovore and Tolerant are excellent abilities but I usually don't choose because I believe there are other combinations of abilities that I value more for their point cost. In essence 24pts and 20pts are just too expensive for me. But I still recognize them for the power house abilities that they are. For example, +2 Food and +2 production I would rather have. +2 food because as I conquer other races it isn't difficult for me to feed them (where as Lithovore does not help me feed conquered races) and the +2 Production though not as good as Lithovore brings me pretty close.

Telepathic I choose often. Just an awesome ability. Makes you immune to other telepaths, saves you resources (no transport ships) and command points, and allows you to take a more consistent aggressive push in the game once you acquire the techs to defeat pesky missile bases.

+1BC I choose often as well. Speed production + Ignore Command Points + Acquire important leaders + Ignore cost of Buildings + as you acquire planets their population instantly gives you more money! How awesome is that!

Anyway, I am not going to state every ability (it would take too long) but I felt that it was important to list the abilities and put some measure of value on them. Notice, I did not talk about abilities with a positive value of less then 10 because that varies for me. I always choose one or two of the big abilities above before choosing the smaller abilities (which for some aren't so small for their point cost).

Gibbenzgob

 

[Rocco.40]

I got this exciting little update for the weekend called ICE 10s

Managed to finally make Biomorphic Funghi into a useful technology.
It now works 'reversed' and adds +1 food to life supporting worlds, where you already can farm.
It no longer functions on lifeless worlds, saving a.i. from great inefficiencies in their economy!

Fair Missiles and Torpedoes
When playing with initiative set to ON (as it should be), missiles and torpedoes will now move at the
end of the turn they are launched instead of at the end of the next turn. In essence their behaviour is
the same as playing with initiative OFF.

Fighter Garrison
The Garrison will now launch ships every other turn instead of once every 4 turns. Reduced number of
Interceptors per launch from 6 to 2, number of Bombers from 8 to 4 and Heavy Fighters from 10 to 6.

Missile Base
Reduced the space for Missile Base from 500 to 375, starting you with 2x10 ECCM Nukes instead of
2x13 ECCM Nukes. [In classic MOO2, you start with 7 ECCM Nukes.] Note that Missile Bases profit from
'Fair Missiles'.

Fast Missiles Racks and Fighter Bays
Swap places in the tech tree. Renamed 900 RP tech field to "Astro Engineering".

Extended Fuel Tanks space consumption is 1 level down.

Double range to hit penalties
Removed this inherent mod from Fusion Beam, and Mauler Device. Plasma Cannon and Plasma Breath
keep this mod. In effect there is no change for Mauler as it also has the 'always hits' mod.
Fusion Beam should be a bit more competitive with Laser Canon.
Note again that 'double range penalties for damage' does not exist.

A.I. ship design.
Updated ship design tables, to reduce number of bombs in ships (mainly TT and DS).

###---###

Why not a +20% room for the smaller ships? Is it designed as a late game bonus?

Yeah, the +25% on TT and DS is really meant to make late-games a bit more interesting.
Also, if I would give a bonus to FF-BB ships, you would see that in your initial ship designs at start of game.
They too would get more weapons fitted by that same bonus.

A more revolutionary way to improve them (which might be too much for players who don't want to change too much) would be to increase their range.

I have been testing this idea yesterday and being able to bomb a planet before you have reached a star base feels weird imo.
It would be a way however, to mitigate the planet-bombing bug (cannot bomb from south & east, except Tiny planets).
Unfortunately i can only easily mod the current 3-distance for bombs to 6-distance. If I could do 4-dist, I would make the change.

 

[gibbenzgob]

Even though I have played this game for a while I have a quick question about fighters, bombers, and heavy fighters. What exactly affects the damage, to hit capabilities, and defense capabilities? Do "fighter" bonuses from leaders affect all 3 ship types? Does beam defense and beam offense directly affect all 3 ship types? What about transdimentional and warlord? Are there ultra elite fighters, bombers, and heavy fighters?

Gibbenzgob

 

[Rocco.40]

(Heavy ) Fighters Damage:
Fighters get the best weapon fitted that has the Pd mod.
For ICE it means also the Gauss Canon can be fitted, as I gave Gauss the Pd mod.
The beam it gets fitted is not Pd itself but a regular beam.
Mass Driver and Gauss in a fighter do 'regular' damage of (up to) 6 and 18, but for other beams something funny happens. Their effective max damage is 'weapons damage +1'.
So in case of a Laser Cannon the fighter can do 4+1=5 damage.

Fighters Beam Attack = 50 base offensive bonus + best available computer bonus + Racial BA bonus + Weaponry bonus + Fighter leader bonus.

Fighters Defense = Combat Speed * 5 + Racial BD bonus + Helmsman bonus + Fighter leader bonus. Transdimensional also affects Fightes combat speed by +4 and thus Defense by +20.

 

[gibbenzgob]

Rocco,

Thank you for moving the fighter bays earlier in the tech tree. Sorry I was busy and couldn't test it earlier. I tested your shift in the fighter bays technology tree and found it worked really well. However, I cannot tell you if it messed any of your game balancing up. I personally like the shift but you might want to get other opinions.

My Race Had these abilities that affected Fighters: +50 Ship Defense, +25 Ship Offense, Trans Dimensional.

I used 3 ships to assault a Star Base, Missile Base, and Fighter Garrison.

These are the techs I had and used: Fusion Beam, Fusion Bomb, Fighter Bays, Reinforced Hull, Tritanium Armor, Augmented Engines, Ion Drive, and Electronic Computers.

My Opponent had these race abilities that affected the combat: Low G, Trans Dimentional

My opponent had and used these techs: Class I Shield, Reinforced Hull, Tritanium Armor, Heavy Armor, Optronic Computer (+50 BO), Tachyon Scanner (-20 Missle Evasion), Mass Driver / Fusion Beam (not sure which the fighters used)

Among my 3 ships I had a total of 20 interceptor bays, 12 fusion bombs, and 3 nuclear bombs. The bombs were used and helped destroy the missile base and fighter garrison. If I were to redo the battle I probably would have taken 1 less fighter bay and added 5 more fusion bombs to help destroy the ground defenses better.

I also had Commodore Cyr in my fleet (he was the first commander I got and was really happy to get since I was trying out the changes). He had Fighter Pilot +15 and Helmsman +15.

I auto battled, which I did on my first assault, and I lost 2 ships. I reloaded and did the battle manually and only lost one ship (because my fighters were shooting down missiles and enemy fighters.

Hopefully this info helps you improve upon the game.

Gibbenzgob

 

[Rocco.40]

ok- cool. but are you saying that according to your experience, it was too easy / or easier than before?