Energy Managament and Fortresses

[keith.lamothe]

And I did not realize you guys were that locked-down on changes already.

That's what the release candidate's forum/blog-post means when it says "This one is the first release-candidate for our 6.0 release. In other words: this _is_ 6.0 (aside from the new Ancient Shadows music, that comes Friday) unless we get a report of a critical bug that must be fixed before the official release."

Anyway, I'm interested in those numbers when you have them; I think the relative difficulty of filling fort caps is pretty constant as HW count increases, but I've been wrong before.

[Diazo]

And I did not realize you guys were that locked-down on changes already.

That's what the release candidate's forum/blog-post means when it says "This one is the first release-candidate for our 6.0 release. In other words: this _is_ 6.0 (aside from the new Ancient Shadows music, that comes Friday) unless we get a report of a critical bug that must be fixed before the official release."

Anyway, I'm interested in those numbers when you have them; I think the relative difficulty of filling fort caps is pretty constant as HW count increases, but I've been wrong before.

Heh. I don't work in programming, I assumed the work on the installer started once you had the actual release code, not while changes were still pending and I figured changing the energy use numbers on the fortress was simple enough.

Anyways, on the energy numbers my feeling is that it is because of the granularity of the current system that causes this. More specifically how quickly energy collectors start producing really big amounts of energy as the multiplier for multiple homeworlds gets applied.

Still only a feeling at this point as it will take me a while this evening to crunch them but that's where I'm coming from in starting this thread.

D.

edit: Wait, official release on the 19th? That's tomorrow. I was thinking it was still a few weeks away for some reason. Bleh.

[keith.lamothe]

edit: Wait, official release on the 19th? That's tomorrow. I was thinking it was still a few weeks away for some reason. Bleh.

I can see why you didn't understand the change-freeze, then

[Nodor]

<snip>

Now, for a single homeworld start an 8 empire system is pretty big. I feel I should be able to support the forts at this point from a game balance perspective.
<snip>

I am continously amazed by Daizo's ability to win with minimal planet captures and ultra low AIP.

For my average 80 planet game, I want to take 15-25 planets.  Occasionally 30 if I can get a good run in with a Superterminal.  Now, most of this is on difficulties between 7.6 and 9.0 and before ancient shadows stuff got really rocking.

However, I am not certain that forts should be balanced around 10 planets for energy.

I feel like forts are an integral part of "carving out and defending" corners of the galaxy.    The 3 forts in system A prevent the waves from getting to systems B, C, D, & E.  In other words, Whipping Boy planet defenses.   (I use multiple forts placed adjacent to each other for cross healing purposes -my forts never fly solo and have anti-polycrystal support - if I have the resources.)  This enables me to put Econ stations in systems B, C, D, & E. (And then I get to ignore a section of the galaxy unless a counterattack guard post decides to be annoying.

Now, the new energy system is giving me fits.  Not being able to build the third Mark 2 energy reactor on every planet makes a HUGE difference in your ability to adjust your fleet/turret/defense etc. base.    You also don't have a way to "shift" resources from energy production to "rebuild everything ASAP".   I do think forts are a significant part of that problem. My take and hold stage just got longer and harder. 

[keith.lamothe]

Now, the new energy system is giving me fits.  Not being able to build the third Mark 2 energy reactor on every planet makes a HUGE difference in your ability to adjust your fleet/turret/defense etc. base.    You also don't have a way to "shift" resources from energy production to "rebuild everything ASAP".   I do think forts are a significant part of that problem. My take and hold stage just got longer and harder.

I'm not sure why it would make it harder overall, as before you had to pay quite a bit of m+c every second to get 150k per planet, and now you get 150k per planet for zero ongoing m+c cost (neglecting the cost of building the collectors).

The converters are painful (though not much more painful, iirc, than the m+c costs you'd be facing to get from 150k to 225k per planet in the previous system) , and have to be scrapped rather than turned off, but you can shift back and forth if it's really important to you.

[Volatar]

The converters ... have to be scrapped rather than turned off...

Wait, why is this?

[Hearteater]

Cheese.  If you can turn them off, there is no reason not to build 50 on your homeworld.  At that point you can instantly meet any energy needs that pop up from losing systems.  As a result, you no longer have any danger of Force Field failure, because the AI can't deprive you of power.  So instead you need to decide what level of energy you want to run, with the associated m+c cost.  A big surplus makes you very resistant to Force Field failure due to system lose.  A razor-thin buffer can result in a cascade of systems falling if you let something slip by.

[Volatar]

Cheese.  If you can turn them off, there is no reason not to build 50 on your homeworld.  At that point you can instantly meet any energy needs that pop up from losing systems.  As a result, you no longer have any danger of Force Field failure, because the AI can't deprive you of power.  So instead you need to decide what level of energy you want to run, with the associated m+c cost.  A big surplus makes you very resistant to Force Field failure due to system lose.  A razor-thin buffer can result in a cascade of systems falling if you let something slip by.

Oh, yeah, that's a good reason. Forcing choices is good.

*makes a mental note to revaluate his current defensive setup for energy failure points*

[keith.lamothe]

We at least want the choice to be

"do I want to pay the m+c cost, or do I want to risk ff failure?"

rather than

"do I want to waste my personal wall-clock time pausing the game whenever energy gets low to press the take-reactor-out-of-low-power button enough to get it back to a safe number?"

[TechSY730]

Energy system seems to be fine when in single player, single HW mode (though I wouldn't argue with a reduction in matter converter costs xor a slight boost in matter converter production) However, it does seem to give too much energy in multi-HW or co-op, even though it is scaling presicely like the old system did. Not sure why this is. Do people tend to use less percentage of their cap overall when in multi-HW or co-op?


And fort energy requirements do seem a tad much, but not by a lot.
That, and mini-fort energy requirements seem too low. One mini-fort is effectively 1/5th of a fortress, right? Why doesn't it have around 1/5th the energy usage?

[Cinth]

I have used 90+% of my energy on my multi HW games with no expansion. I usually can't field starships until I expand.

Minis are 1/10th of a Fort I. I think the energy cost is to keep you from putting them on every planet without having to really think about it.

[Nodor]

Now, the new energy system is giving me fits.  Not being able to build the third Mark 2 energy reactor on every planet makes a HUGE difference in your ability to adjust your fleet/turret/defense etc. base.    You also don't have a way to "shift" resources from energy production to "rebuild everything ASAP".   I do think forts are a significant part of that problem. My take and hold stage just got longer and harder.

I'm not sure why it would make it harder overall, as before you had to pay quite a bit of m+c every second to get 150k per planet, and now you get 150k per planet for zero ongoing m+c cost (neglecting the cost of building the collectors).

The converters are painful (though not much more painful, iirc, than the m+c costs you'd be facing to get from 150k to 225k per planet in the previous system) , and have to be scrapped rather than turned off, but you can shift back and forth if it's really important to you.

My personal glacial rate of adaption to change is the issue here.  From a game balance perspective and game design perspective, I like the change.  That doesn't mean I have managed to figure out how to optimize around it yet.

[Toranth]

We at least want the choice to be

"do I want to pay the m+c cost, or do I want to risk ff failure?"

rather than

"do I want to waste my personal wall-clock time pausing the game whenever energy gets low to press the take-reactor-out-of-low-power button enough to get it back to a safe number?"

As Wanderer said, I think the bigger problem with the energy system changes was not how much energy you could produce, or how much it cost to do so.  The bigger problem is that you can no longer put something into low-power mode.  It used to be that if you weren't using those fortresses, you'd just turn them off and save 90% of their energy costs.  Now, even though energy was balanced to be roughly the same cost as before, just more spread out, your consumption has been forced to go significantly up.  Especially Starships energy costs.

Bring back Low Power mode, and lower Starship energy costs, and I think most people would be content again.
If you think low-power mode is too cheesy, you could always add a "Power-up" timer to things... '30 seconds until online!'

[Hearteater]

Low Power mode reducing energy cost is just a pause mini-game that adds a lot of micro and makes energy a trivial and near pointless resource.

[chemical_art]

Turning off energy (powering down) was just micro.

You should not be able to build everything from one planet, nor two.

Forts have been repeatedly shown to be great values for K with a above average cost in M + C but a horrendous cost in Energy.

After you have 3 or 4 planets, about the only thing that can threaten your energy supplies is multiple fortresses.

If you choose to not unlock additional star ships nor forts, energy is never a problem beyond three worlds. After 5 worlds about the only thing threatening your energy is forts.

Its ok to not have everything, otherwise whats the point of energy at all?