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

[neilkaz]

@ Markus and Rocco

So Markus also quickly lost a game where he was strong to the VERY OP Imp 3 Darloks!

Just as in the game I lost to them, they quickly conquered over 1/3 of the galaxy and came after the human player and crushed him.

I think Rocco went too far in designing the Imp 3 Darlok. They have a tremendous economy combined with Spying, Stealth, Telepathic, and Trans!! The negative is Repulsive. This is too many advantages to compensate for Rep!!

Repulsive is bad, and can be really bad for AI's. However, it is lots less bad for Spy races since spying pisses off AI's when you steal a tech or sabotage. If one isn't Repulsive, one will quickly have treaties broken and soon be at war from Spying successes. But when you are Rep, they can't threaten you, and while relations sour, it takes considerably longer. The AI Spy race will steal a lot of techs it could've traded for if not Rep. Net result is that Rep isn't a huge neg for spy races.

How to fix the horrid OP Imp 3 Darloks?

Very simple .. remove Telepathic completely and with no compensation for it. This will still be a very strong race and formidable opponent.

Just my opinions .. neilkaz ..

 

[Markus Ramikin]

Also consider reevaluating Stealthy Ships as an AI pick. It should cost more. It's about the most dangerous thing an AI can have.

I said it before, but this game has enough random variation in difficulty - hell, what starting planets you get in system can make or break a game sometimes! - that adding deliberately different races starts to defeat the point of a difficulty setting.

Markus is playing a few games with early Mass Drivers. Going that route at least means shielding techs and inertial stabilizer if desired. I await Marcus' continued findings.

I think I more or less found everything I wanted. To sum up:
I can make a good early game beam ship by researching up to Class III (or one level earlier, if rushed). This gives me
- Inertial Stabiliser. This, even with everyone and their dog having Battle Scanners, is still a great negator of enemy beams. Add good drives (Ion at least) and Space Academy, and your Beam Defense becomes respectable.
- Class III shield, which isn't as good in absolute numbers as heavy armor or reinforced hull, but with good beam defense it'll soak up what little gets through, and it regenerates. Importantly, you stop dying to races with Ion Pulse Cannons killing your engines.
- Highly miniaturised Mass Drivers. If you bring 2-4 BBs as needed, this can shoot down incoming fighters and missiles and keep you safe until you win. No risk of being trapped by a Warp Dissipator if you run out of missiles.
I once won a battle of like 3 vs 10 BBs, where the BBs threw a swarm of fighters at me... I shot down the ones coming at the least-endangered BB, freeing it to shoot while the other 2 ran away from the rest of the swarm. That BB freed another, and they both freed the last one, then they mopped up the motherships was awesome.

Throw in a couple bombs if the enemy has shields or Radiation Shield.

The weakness of this is
- it takes more research, assuming you still want some fuel cells, pollution techs and/or armor (go Creative Tolerant and just grab the first level, with Tritanium and Deuterium Cells? ). There's very little real advantage to doing that, as Nukes do the job too.
- it's not very good against monsters. Nukes deliver lots of damage in 1-2 rounds. Early game beams depend more on continued fire, as you shoot down missiles and keep hurting that star base/fighter garrison/missile base until it dies. Monsters deliver fast and high beam damage, so you have to kill them NOW and not in 5 rounds.

Mid-game, you can research to Gauss Cannons and go one level above (it's cheap, 3500 RP) and it becomes a different story. But you still need a good computer, and that competes with Autolabs. As non-creative I have to research past Androids to get Cybertronic, which is a significant delay. Though Battle Scanner + veteran/elite experience can mitigate this problem, depending on whom you are fighting.

A way to boost beams would be to have the Battle Scanner be +50 rather than +25

It already is 50. Electronic Computer is 25. It's not killing the game, though reducing it to 25 miiiiight make sense. Late game beam defense becomes kinda hard to get good value from, even with Inertial Nullifier. But it would weaken early game beams, where they already suck...

I don't think beams need a boost as such. It's just the unfortunate reality of the tech tree. You can get very nice beam ships if you put the same amount of research into Fields as you'd normally put into Chemistry. Unfortunately, you'll still need some Chemistry, so it'll just take you longer.

So even if you love beams as I do, it's optimal to go Nukes at first. But in mid game you'll want Radiation Shield to terraform your planets, and Shield III to not die to Pulse Cannons, and Warp Interdictor to defend your planets in time... so once your research is 1k or better, it makes perfect sense to get Gauss Cannons. Even with nothing but 1 level of miniaturisation, they are very good. Once you add HEF, Hyper-X and/or Autofire, they become the best weapon in the game until Disrupters.

This is what I did in my latest game, where I was Creative DemAquRLA -LowG-Spy-GC (Cre=12). Started with Nukes, cleared a Hydra from a Rich Terra, got some wet planets, filled them with scientists... had a total of 10 planets, exactly enough to fill the Colony screen , half of them good. Researched Gauss with the usual... around 220 I had 12 Gauss BBs running around, fighting a war vs Darloks and Meklars while sending a fleet to Orion and not feeling threatened at all.

_________________________

Which reminds me. Anyone else had this problem where you have bombs on your ship, but you can't deliver them because even siting right next to a planet the game feels you're too far?

 

[Markus Ramikin]

I also did a quick test of Physics beams instead of Fields. 3-refined Laser Cannons with Autofire and NR deliver a goodly amount of damage, but go obsolete instantly as soon as someone has Shields 3. Enveloping Fusion Beams are even more powerful - indeed, they approach being good enough for an anti-monster weapon, though I'd say not quite there yet. (Good enough for an Eel, certainly).

Sadly, this route doesn't give any defense. No Shield III or Inertial Stablizer from Fields, or the ability to stay at long range like with missiles. So it's not very attractive to me. It's just pure firepower.

None of it is a balance problem, just reportin'.

 

[neilkaz]

Yeah, Fusion Beams need to be ENV, but that beam approach doesn't offer as much early on as the Force Field approach, IMO.

 

[Rocco.40]

Something new:
Today I unlocked part of the secrets of random events.
I was actually looking to lower the chance of a time-space anomaly freezing your colony.
Did not find that yet but:
Now able to control the frequency of the events, and some 'minimum turns':
Turns after wich a first random event can happen: 50.
Time after Amoeba can first appear: 100 turns
First Eel: 150
First Crystal: 200
First Hydra: 250
First Dragon: 300

These are the classic numbers. No wonder we never see a Dragon, it can only first appear after T300. In the code the chance for Monsters is part of the chance for a random event. In essence, a 'monster chance' competes with chances for other events. Or in other words, if you lower the times for monsters to first appear, the chances for other events to happen go down.

Obviously, the first game I played was with these settings:
Chance of event 1 per ~10 turns.
Turn when first event can happen: 1
Time that monsters can appear T 2,3,4,5,6 (they have to be in ascending order for the code to work).
Started the game and mayhem started too!
Very funny game, which after a Amoeba, Hydra, Time anomaly, Hyperspace beast, Flux, and a Crystal all happened before T75, it became a 'tad' too much so I gave up
I did receive some money and a research field as well.

Quickly went back to running just simulations with the new settings.
With the frequency so high, it became clear that even in impossible setting some good events come your way, more than I expected. Also, the events target a.i. just as much as the do human player and I have seen strong races suffer under Eel blockades (one game in a small galaxy there were 4 Eels just sitting on all Klackon worlds). Early Hydra's just destroy worlds.

When playing on average level you get showered with good events and on impossible good events are less than 50%, still figuring out the ratio, as I haven't found these chances for good/bad in the code yet.

Offcourse i can't put these aggresive settings in ICE, but it could be cool to see an early dragon or increase the chance for an event by a few percent. Perhaps 'Lucky' can finally become a meaningful pick. For now, I just keep looking for that time-space anomaly setting.

ps -- I also found two events that are not in use:
'Mutiny' it means that a ship of your fleet can have a mutiny, resulting in a change of ownership to another player.
'Warp Funnel' gets your fleet trapped (like a time anomaly at a colony)
pictures:

 

[Markus Ramikin]

You're only reminding me that I wanted to start playing with Random Events Off but keep forgetting to unclick it.

Although if they mostly consisted of raiding monsters, and not Fluxes, Anomalies and the rest of that garbage, I'd love them.
_______________________________________________

Mini-report! Just one battle in an ongoing game of mine.

Turn 181. 2 early beam Battleships with 34 Mass Drivers, 3 Fusion bombs, Shield III, Intertial Stabilizers (and of course Bpods, Bscanner and Augs) vs 4 Mrsshan ships: 3 BBs and 1 DD.

Mrrshans have those nice combat bonuses and a leader, bringing them up to 205 Beam Attack! With Phasors, that kind of hurts. At least Mrrshan Bean Defense is relatively low.

My own ships have 140 BA and 140 BD, and haven't been upgraded since I built the first one on turn 125. Perhaps a mistake - it would have been easy to add another level of miniaturisation to the Mass Drivers, at least. My only leader is Captain Sparky, giving me nothing useful except Commando.

Mrrshans had initiative (of course) and in round 1 took out front shields and half of the armor on one of my two ships, I'll call it Ship A and the currently undamaged one B. Mrrshans also fired some torpedoes, fighters, shuttles, and missiles.

With the damaged Ship A I approached enough to kill the Destroyer, which had a leader. This dropped the enemy Beam Attack to 190, which should help a bit. Then my ship turned and moved as far back as it could (which wasn't far), turning a full strength shield towards the attackers.

Ship B killed the fighters and missiles, leaving only the torpedo in the air. Then it slightly damaged one of the BBs, and finally turned sideways in order to maintain frontal shield strength for later.

Round 2, both my ships took damage. Ship B, the one that stayed closer to the enemy, got caught in a tractor beam, but is still mobile. Note to self: stay a bit farther away next time.

I came back with Ship A, whose frontal shield partly regenerated, and put in a good deal of damage into the tractor BB.
The ship under the beam managed to turn around, do more damage with mass drivers, immobilising the target. Then it flew close and raided with troops. The enemy ship exploded.

It's 2 vs 2 now...

Round 3, ship B got immobilized, and in a bad position, can't shoot back.

My still mobile ship A came close to one of the Mrrshans, punched through its meager Class 1 shields, immobilised it, and again raided with troops, and blew up the ship drive. All those ground technologies I picked up as Creative are paying off despite me being a weak LowG race, probably mostly the Power Armor I got by way of researching Robo Miners. And of course Captain Sparky's 9x2.5 Commando bonus is very awesome, if situational.

2 vs 1 now, but one of my ships is probably about to die...

Aahaha, despite being immobile, Ship B could still turn around. I took out the armor on the remaining enemy ship, and kept a full frontal shield towards it and the last incoming torpedo.

Remaining enemy attacked ship A with a Pulsar. Made some kind of sense, considering both of my ships are badly damaged, but that one had almost no shielding left after the last explosion.

I flew away in case the Mrrshan ship was about to explode too. I don't think I could live through that. Then both my ships fired and killed that last target. Battle over!

That was closer and a lot more interesting than anticipated. I now regret not trying to capture the enemy ships. Not that I need partial techs when I'm Creative, but still. I wonder what happens if you capture an enemy officer. Do you get to keep him? Anyone know?

(Out of curiosity, I reloaded the autosave and tried this battle a number of times. I never once lost, but I also never once managed to capture the officer and keep the ship intact - nearby enemy ships always exploded and took the destroyer out, and I didn't have enough troops to capture them too before that happened. If I destroyed them first, the Destroyer warped out of the battle. Oh well.)

 

[Dukinson]

Hey Markus. I mean this with the utmost respect, would you make a separate thread for these war reports? They can be quite lengthy and I'm finding myself scrolling through pages to find discussion about the mod. Perhaps title the thread Icemod: War reports or Icemod: Game stories. Others could throw their stories there too.

 

[Markus Ramikin]

Rocco, I don't suppose you know how to mod the Autobuild order? It could save everyone a lot of useless micro if we could rescript it to our typical order of building things.

 

[Rocco.40]

you know how to mod the Autobuild order?

oh boy, the hours i have spent searching for this .. haven't given up on it, but is really hard to find.
if i ever do manage to find & manipulate autobuild, it would be a crown on my work.

 

[neilkaz]

@ Markus,

Although the enemy ship leader shows up when you capture the ship, I've never been able to keep him. I think this may be a bug.

 

[Dukinson]

I've got a bone to pick with you Rocco! In patch 10m you restored outpost ships and warlord to their previous wonderful incarnations. What a glorious patch this was but I had no time to praise you for it in full. Within a week you changed warlord back to 1 command point and tried to tempt me with a cheaper price... but I'm not falling for it! I must ask you, why did you do that sir?!

What's your beef with pick in which no one, including yourself, claimed was imbalanced? Now I have to cheat if I want it at 2 command points. Why do you like mangling this poor unloved racial ability? Explain yourself! 1 point per colony is just not enough to increase your fleet size much. If I have 12 planets that's a mere 3 battleships (I still have to build those battleships too, they aren't feebies). This is nothing compared the massive fleet the computer is capable of generating at the same planet numbers. 10-12 planets is about what I have as a mid game empire in Icecold huge. In normal icemod with com techs and the sheer number of planets, you won't have problems with command points even without warlord. When there are more planets, for some reason the computer is not smart about colonizing them quickly. Not sure why that is.

Warlod is a bit complex in how you make use of it. (Previously) It was weak early on but it's 2 command point bonus can make a decent sized fleet with only a few planets and no need for star bases that are hard to construct early. Later on as your fleet continues to grow and your crews get trained, crew levels become more important and since you can build starbases easily anyways, the command point bonus weakens slightly as you are otherwise paying for subspace communication command points with several racial picks. However (currently), with your mod losses happen far more often than vanilla and it's difficult to train them up to what I'm normally used to. Lastly, mounting early game destroyer fleet attacks is unthinkable. It's really just not up to par anymore and everytime I play with it (strategic combat) I end up starting over and dropping it. When the game is tough, you can't play around with picks that don't pull their weight.

Joking aside, at 5 picks it is fair compared to 25 ship offense and I'm trying to use it but, like you already know, I miss the old 2 command point warlord and I would gladly pay 6-8 picks for it restored. I will change it myself next game but it does feel a bit like cheating changing the game for some reason. As warlord currently stands, I would rather have +1 food or +10 spying (spying is awesome now that the computer has so much to steal!) Just remember that early on all warlord does is give you a few more destroyers with 15/15/7 combat stats with space academies. It does little else for awhile, you're sacrificing 5 picks that could be used on economy or spying. I find +10 more spying give me way more power from the technologies I steal than a little bit of ship combat bonuses and a few command points.

Finally, let me put it this way. You could also take away everything but the colony mind control from the telepathic ability and water it down, making it cheaper in picks as well. However, wouldn't that be boring? The special ability picks should have flare.

Is this horse dead yet? I think he's dead but I'm just going to keep hitting him until I'm sure.

 

[neilkaz]

@Rocco,

I'll side with Dukinson this time, as I'd be fine and not think it unbalanced if Warlord was put back to the way it used to be.

At all re: beams vs missiles. My previous suggestion was in error as I recalled Elec Comp being +50 and Battle Scanner +25 and forgot that they were switched back to default.

Perhaps to improve early beams a bit, Electric Comp could start at +50 and then computers go up +25 per computer and BS could still be +50. This would as +25 to beam attack. My concern is making early Star bases even more deadly with +25 more beam attack, but that may not be a huge issue. Food for thought anyhow?!!

So what I am saying is consider having the computers be +50/75/100/125/150 rather than 25/75/100/125/150

 

[Dukinson]

@Rocco,

I'll side with Dukinson this time, as I'd be fine and not think it unbalanced if Warlord was put back to the way it used to be.

At all re: beams vs missiles. My previous suggestion was in error as I recalled Elec Comp being +50 and Battle Scanner +25 and forgot that they were switched back to default.

Perhaps to improve early beams a bit, Electric Comp could start at +50 and then computers go up +25 per computer and BS could still be +50. This would as +25 to beam attack. My concern is making early Star bases even more deadly with +25 more beam attack, but that may not be a huge issue. Food for thought anyhow?!!

So what I am saying is consider having the computers be +50/75/100/125/150 rather than 25/75/100/125/150

"This time" haha. You make it sound dubious to side with me. You'd be right!

Actually the second part of your statement about battle computers would go against some arguments I've made about what I've been calling "ship attack giveaways". Rather than boosting beams to fight missiles, the problem should be addressed directly, the missiles themselves. When you give beam attack away for free, everyone hit everything and it devalues BA racial picks, warlord, the attack computer tech itself, battlescanners... This throws off the basic balance of the game which was fairly well thought out despite the copious number of bugs. When it was set up the old way and I tried tactical, I had +100 beam attack very early in the game. My heavy mounts hit for full damage almost everytime from across the battlefield in the first round. There is something wrong with that.

Well, currently Rocco has it set up where everyone gets battescanners and he's decreased the HP of nuclear missiles by 1 as well as making the MIRV tech more difficult to reach. What you mention about boosting attack computers already existed in previous versions of Icemod. I lobbied hard to remove but it was replaced by free battlescanners for all. I joked that Rocco thoroughly enjoys handing out ship attack. This was especially annoying in strategic because ever ship gets it for free, it's even on transports and colony ships . You know what I do when ships are this accurate? I give up on ship defense. I just try to kill them before they kill me.

You're right that this would make starbases even more deadly than they are now seeing as Rocco has already given significant boosts to orbital platforms over vanilla. The solutions are many and interesting, target the missiles directly and fire (balance-wise)!

If someone is using nothing but beam weapons, they can be countered with ship defense (or at least they should be). If someone is using too many missiles, they should be counterable as well. I mentioned weakening missiles in these categories on the previous page and there are several interesting ways to solve this problem without hurting the existing balance of the game in other ways:

-Expense
-Size
-Increased Jamming technology (decreased size/cost and/or increased jamming level)
-Decreased scanner evasion reduction
-Hit Points (Currently in action by Rocco but I worry about this one as it only comes into play when the missiles are being fired upon, it's not an "all around nurf")
-Miniaturization and specials (Rocco has done this already ofcourse)

When someone designs a ship that can't sustain a battle yet can keep attacking over and over again turn after turn packing all their offensive power into only 2 turns, it's a broken dynamic. They should be punished for using such tactics. If you're using missile ships, you should have some gun ships to balance out the fleet incase you get countered. Once you make missiles more counterable, the "avalanche" will gain momentum. Players will use less missiles making missiles less of a problem.

 

[Markus Ramikin]

I've thought of that too, Neilkaz. Since it's just the starting computer, and the remaining ones + bscanner would stay the same, that wouldn't hurt much. It's just that I don't think beams need help. At least not in the accuracy department. Beams' only problem early game is that you can't kill monsters with them efficiently - they don't do enough damage per round.

Again, I don't think that's a problem. Just use Nukes until you've killed monsters, then use beams if you prefer, just gotta sink in a few more thousand RP. I'm writing up a long walkthrough-like report now which I'll post in the other thread, where I use mass drivers to fight an early-ish war and it's even easier than with nukes!

In fact, I wonder if the remaining computers should get downed, so that it's not +25, +75, +100 etc but +25, +50, +75 etc, to help Beam Defense in mid-late game. Not sure.

Or perhaps you could make Electronic +50, but make Bscanner optional again - stick it back into Tachyon research. That would lower mid-game Beam Attack across the board except for those who have Bscanner. It would also make Creative an early beams booster, but that is fine because it would still leave Nukes as a perfectly viable alternative.

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 miniaturisation on them by researching pollution, cells and armor. And that you need additional research into Fields (or Physics) to get miniaturised beams.

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.

Agreed about Warlord though.

 

[Rocco.40]

Sunday and some time to write!

about the IMP3 Darloks
Fully agree they are a really potent adversary. Offcourse I can take a look at shaving off some power of these menacing spies.
If I would take away some points from the Darlok, then these points would be given to the currently weakest a.i. in the game, which probably is IMP3 Sillicoid.
BTW, like to hear your thoughts on which is weakest performing a.i. atm.

In some way I am indecided if the IMP3 Darlok should be weakened, as I think it is rather cool to have such an evading (fast stealth ships) opponent and they require some specific tactics when they are in the game:
There is an urge to get Battlestation/Sensors, Warp Interdictors and Omniscience as the EVO mutation pick.

Stealth ability
Only the IMP1 Meklar, IMP3 Mrrshan and offcourse the Darlok have the Stealth ability. I have used this trait sparingly, although I have been tempted to hand it out to more a.i.'s as it is quite valuable for them to have it. One Mrrshan variant already had stealth in classic, so only the Meklar have been added in ICE. And I think it is fine as it is now, I don't want to overemphasize this trait by added more races with Stealth but also don't think that IMP1 Meklar and IMP3 Mrrshan are OP.

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.

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).

Let's examine a BB: In classic a human BB has 30 Beam Defense (1 free space). Thus starting BA-BD = -5, giving attacker a 45% chance to hit. In ice, BA-BD = 45, giving a 87% chance to hit, at the cost of having less weaponry onboard in tactical and at no cost in strategic. If we increase the Elec to +50 that chance increases from 87% to 90%, which is not much of a change at game start.

BD +25 trait now decreases the chance to hit by only 17% (87>70%) instead of 24% (45>24%). So the BD race picks can be decreased slightly. Will also take this into account when revaluing Warlord.

In strategic the chance to hit is: 60% + Computer Bonus - Target Defense.
Thus the chance to hit a BB in classic is: 60+25-25=60%
In ice it is: 60+75-25=110% - always hit at game start! Offcourse beams only start shooting in round 3.

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?

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.

 

[Markus Ramikin]

"X-mas time is still far away"
Do I get Cre = 12 or 13 under the X-mas tree?
(earlier is fine too)

Re: Beam Attack vs Defense:
Are you saying that it's a good thing that defense basically doesn't work?
I've been noticing that in mid-game, everyone runs around with like 190 BA and 90 BD. Is that part of the plan?

 

[Rocco.40]

Well, it used to be only human player and some a.i. that have such stats, now all players can have it.

Classic
+25 - 50 RP
+50 - 200 RP
+75 - 1,500 RP
+100 - 5,750
+125 - 19,750

+50 - 450 RP (Battle Scanner)
Human gets it always, a.i. sometimes

ICE 10
+25 - 50 RP
+75 - 1,500
+100 - 6,250
+125 - 16,750
+150 - 24,250

+50 - 50 RP (Battle Scanner)
Human and a.i. get it always
edit: + Tachyon scanner / comm can play a role for human player

 

[neilkaz]

Well, it used to be only human player and some a.i. that have such stats, now all players can have it.

Classic
+25 - 50 RP
+50 - 200 RP
+75 - 1,500 RP
+100 - 5,750
+125 - 19,750

+50 - 450 RP (Battle Scanner)
Human gets it always, a.i. sometimes

ICE 10
+25 - 50 RP
+75 - 1,500
+100 - 6,250
+125 - 16,750
+150 - 24,250

+50 - 50 RP (Battle Scanner)
Human and a.i. get it always

From reading the comments of the other frequent players in this thread, it may be best just to leave these computers and battle scanner the way they currently are in Ice.

Nice discussion here, guys!

EDIT: Rocco, I still think the best way to balance Imp3 Darlok is to remove Telepathic from them with no compensation. This will slow them down as they will require transports and assimilation time for conquered victims. It will also remove +5 spying. As it is now, they can steal many techs and also easily run over AI victims and super expand. When they came at me to crush me, they had at least 1/3 of the galaxy and over 20 higher end ships around T170 and I had no chance vs that. They'd still be one of the top and most threatening AI races in IceX with Telepathic removed!

 

[Rocco.40]

-- hang in there --

 

[Markus Ramikin]

Wait, so not only did you give everyone Bscanners, but you also upped mid-late computers? Why? This isn't an improvement of AI at expense of humans, it's BA at expense of BD, which already tends to be low-ish even with Intertial Stabilizer.