'The Awesome Collection'

[Ryika]

Alright, I'm currently working on Awesome Affinities, so Awesome Sponsors will be next, so question: What do people want to see from the Awesome Sponsors Mod in Rising Tide?

I'm mainly asking because the original intend of the mod was to make sponsors feel unique - which I'd argue Rising Tide did a great job of. I'm wondering if I should just "balance" the existing Traits (and of course keep the unique Buildings or rather edit them to make them actually feel interesting), or if I should go up another level and push it a bit further to the extreme than Rising Tide does. Or something even more "out there"?

Opinions?

 

[Doviello]

In your old Affinity mod, there were some quite powerful bonuses for each affinity, enough to give me an incentive for going hybrid in vanilla. In RT, going hybrid is almost inevitable, so make sure to balance the hybrid perks with that in mind

I didn't know your awesome sponsor mod had a unique building system, i think it hadn't the last time i played, so i checked it now. I feel the buildings for PAC, FI, SF, Poly and Brasilia aren't very good, they're too much an extension of the sponsor bonus. I specially like KP and AU buildings, they sort of give some personalities for their leaders, i think UBuildings don't need to be OP to be cool.

As for leaders, my 5 cents:

I agree that sponsors now feel unique, much more so than in vanilla. I always play random, and i think most traits are ok in power and coolness. But i don't like Poly, PAC, KP, Brasilia, and Fi, and i often set them as AI players. Poly is too op and the trade micromanagement is boring; PAC is OP if played with your awesome wonder mods, but boring otherwise; Brasilia is like playing with no trait, and FI and KP are too passive traits. My favorites sponsors are SF, AU and AlFalah; SF can spam those cool orbitals, and AU and Al Falah give a sort of different way of playing that i enjoy a lot.

So my suggestion would be, make all the sponsors awesome I'd like to see completely different bonuses for KP, PAC and FI, and a rebalanced Poly and Brasilia.

 

[Azem.Ocram]

Alright, I'm currently working on Awesome Affinities, so Awesome Sponsors will be next, so question: What do people want to see from the Awesome Sponsors Mod in Rising Tide?

I would love it if leader traits were given respect modifiers like normal diplomatic traits. The common proposal is to hate high scores but I also think the sponsors should respect something related to their ability.

 

[gunnergoz]

Not sure this is what your looking to hear, but I'd love to see a new sponsor who is great at pushing science but gets a penalty in other areas to balance it out a bit. This is actually something I'd like to see done with more new sponsors, i.e. having a strong capability in one area while being diminished someone in another or two if need be.

 

[hevans900]

I think you should go all out on Awesome Sponsors. Your latest mods have IMO been your best ever (Awesome Stations/Awesome Pods + Ruins - that midgame quest is so freakin immersive I love it).

I had an idea. I don't know how feasible this is to code but I'll share it anyway:

I want each sponsor to play truly uniquely - give each sponsor a weak starting trait which can only be upgraded through a unique quest for each sponsor upon making planet-fall. Completing the quest gives the player the full trait (could even provide choices between traits??).

I haven't thought about the starting versions of each trait but I've been working on concepts for the unique quests.

I'll just throw some ideas around:

• Al-Falah: 'Generational Divide'
  
  (insert flavour text - something about needing to adapt to an open environment rather than a confined generation ship - maybe a conflict between younger/older generations over how to proceed?)
  
  - appease the older generation (tall play focus) - increase the production yield of the capital to 10 hammers/turn (REWARD - trait upgrade A +% in capital, capital gains a large +% to yield conversions)
  - appease the younger generation (wide play focus) - found a new outpost and connect it with a road (REWARD - trait upgrade B +2 in all cities, flat +% conversion rate to yields)
  

I won't bother writing up more if you don't like the idea - what do you think?

 

[hevans900]

Okay I got really bored at work this morning, decided to write up one of my proposed Sponsor Quests on here, regardless of whether you like it or not

I've got 3 more planned out, I'll flush them out a bit more if you want to hear them. These are all taken from some initial ideas I had for a fan-fiction piece months ago.

I've tried to stick with something similar to the sponsor traits in BERT, while at the same time buffing them a bit to keep the flavour of your Awesome Pack (when fully upgraded with one of the quest rewards)...

American Reclamation Corporation
Base trait: Covert operations are 15/25/35% faster, begin with a free Spy

The Spy Kid:

“We have intercepted an encrypted message sent out from one of our high-frequency transmitters upon planet fall. The encryption pattern, I am told, matches none of our protocols or private keys. We have a spy in our midst. This is something I’ve feared since the day we left Old Earth. We have no choice but to be patient and wait for this intruder to make a mistake…”

• Assign a spy to counter-espionage in Central (Wait 5 turns).

“We have a lead – one of our programmers ingeniously laid a trap on all outgoing EM-chatter and has found a smaller burst communique going out from the city’s arrays every morning at 6:00 AM. We must lie in wait at the arrays' terminals for our perpetrator.”

• Perform an ‘Ambush’ operation (custom covert op: 5 turns, 100% success rate, 0% death rate)

“Our agents have captured an adolescent girl who I am told ‘will not stop chatting’ to our interrogators. She claims her name is ‘Kirsty Monroe’. Our physicians tell us her neural activity is off the charts. She claims that her messages were sent only to draw attention – she wishes to be trained as an official ARC operative. Psycho-analysis has detected no indicators of deceit in her notions.”

Choice A: Train her as a field agent.

“The girl is no older than 15, but has beaten the records on all physical/mental conditioning tests. She will be a visionary field agent and a true virtue to ARC.”

REWARD – TRAIT UPGRADE A: Covert operations require 1/1/2 less intrigue to attempt, Spies can never die in the field.

Choice B: Train her as a data-analyst.

“Initial Intelligence Quotient estimates place Kirsty at 246 – far beyond ‘genius’, the upper bound of the scale. She has been lecturing our cyber-security team on encryption and they all say they’ve been blown away by this girl’s otherworldly intuition. Our analyst academy has never before had such a student. Her thesis on quantum-bit data encryption has essentially made ARC impenetrable to foreign cyber-attacks.”

REWARD – TRAIT UPGRADE B: Spies are always detected when performing hostile covert operations in ARC cities, and there is a 33/66/100% chance that they will die. Intrigue requirements for all covert ops raised by 1/1/2 for foreign agents.

 

[Ryika]

I think unique Sponsor Quests would be cool, but also a ton of work for what then translates into very little actual gameplay, especially when every quest is only active for 1 out of 12 sponsors.

I made a note for if I ever get into the situation that I have tons and tons of time available and absolutely no idea for mods left, but for the moment I don't think that would be a good use of the resource called time. ^^

 

[Starrynite120]

What's planned in the future of the awesome collection? I'm just curious what other mods could appear in this, such as a virtue overhaul or buildings, maybe victory conditions.

 

[Ryika]

Buildings/Techweb/Pacing will probably be next to serve as a "general gameplay overhaul" and tie the existing things together.

But I still have some of the other mods to update first (especially Aggressive Wildlife) and by the time I'm done with that there may very well not be anyone left to even use mods if the subscriber numbers for new mods keep plummeting like that. 8)

 

[gunnergoz]

Don't say that! I use your mods daily - almost all of them, particularly for BERT.

 

[hevans900]

The gaming universe is on hold while everyone orders pizza/doesn't shower and plays Fallout 4 for the next 400 hours straight.

Give it time, people will come back to BE

 

[gunnergoz]

What's Fallout 4? (ducks and runs for cover)

 

[Ryika]

I heard it's a game that has many bugs and exactly 1 dog.

 

[gunnergoz]

Recent plays as Brazil using Awesome Sponsors (updated) and your other mods show Brazil with the wrong traits: instead of 3/6/9 political points per upgrade I'm seeing the African 1/1/2 output per specialist. I do use other mods but none that mess with traits...

 

[Doviello]

Yeah came here to post this, the brasilia description is wrong. But the awesome sponsors is the best mod so far of the whole lot, i really like it.

 

[Ryika]

Yeah came here to post this, the brasilia description is wrong. But the awesome sponsors is the best mod so far of the whole lot, i really like it.

Thanks for reporting, I will fix that soon.

____________________________________


Awesome Stations (Rising Tide) recently got a small update.

Not a huge bit, but I thought I'd take the chance of having to fix it for the new patch to introduce a new, fourth type of Station: Chaotic. This type of Station has a slightly higher than average yield but changes it's yield type whenever it levels up, making it a strong, but volatile Station until it has reached max level.

Overall Changelog:

v3
- Fixed to work with the new Patch
- Some Stations have been changed and now yield Dipmomatic Capital
- 3 new Stations have been added, all with the new "Chaotic"-Type
- Chaotic Type Stations have slightly higher yields than Balanced Stations but their yield-type(s) change whenever they level up

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=396885414

Next up:
I've recently started working on "Awesome Aliens", which will (at least that's the plan) mostly add customizability (if that's even a proper word) to the Aliens and hopefully also satisfy the needs of the people that have been asking me when I update the Aggressive Wildlife mod.

I'm at the very beginning of creating that mod, so if you have some ideas that you want incorporated (and that are not too out of there ) this is the perfect moment to post them.

 

[Starrynite120]

I think making the aliens get tougher over time is a good idea They need to stay relevant (but without being too much of a nuisance, such as being everywhere).

 

[Doviello]

Thanks for reporting, I will fix that soon.

Did you... fix it? Because now my Rejinaldo bonus is "Yields from specialists increase by 1/1/2"

ONly in-game, though.. on the sponsor selection screen, the info seems to be correct.

 

[Ryika]

No, just like gunnergoz wrote that's currently the wrong description, haven't fixed it yet. Did you not mean that in your last post?

 

[Doviello]

Sorry ill explain better. What i mean is that in my second-to-last game, Rejinaldo bonus was +2/3/4 diplo, even though the description says 3/6/9. Now in my just-aborted game, his bonus in-game is the AU increased specialist yield bonus... And i'm not using any other mod that changes sponsors

fakeedit OK now i read gunnergoz post fully, im probably dreaming of a different game here. Yeah i'm getting the AU bonus for rejinaldo