Energy System Balance

[TechSY730]

Now that we have had a few months to think it over, what do people think of the current energy balance?


Personally, I think it is OP for the players (too much energy), but not absurdly so.
My reasoning for not hyper OP? If the AI takes out even 1 planet, that is quite a bit of energy lost. Your huge energy buffers are not as huge as you might think when you remember that losing one planet means losing at least 150000 energy, so it is partially a perception issue.
Though one could also point out the extreme disparity between base energy per planet provisions and average unit costs as being a balance issue.Perhaps one "trail" to follow would be looking into ways to reduce this disparity. Possibly by reducing the amount of base energy per planet, but decreasing the costs of getting additional energy on a planet. This would make the difference between buffer for extra units and buffer for planet loss closer to each other (on average), and thus be more visible how much excess and buffer a player really has.

EDIT: Oh, and this is a complicated enough issue that I don't expect resolution by 6.012, or even 6.013 or 6.014.

[Faulty Logic]

Now that we have had a few months to think it over, what do people think of the current energy balance?

I like it. Energy is a concern for for all but the biggest empires, and quite limiting at the extreme low end. The ZPG is an attractive target now, instead of a penalty.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think it could stand a bit of improving so it's less of a case of you being completely screwed at the smaller end, while being untouchable at the larger end. Make energy a bit less scarce for people with few planets, and more scarce for those with like 20.

I mean, look at it this way; At few planets you can concentrate all of your defenses in a few places, and will be suffering smaller attacks, so you are less likely to lose out on power generation. However, because you have less power, you just can't power all of your defenses at all. You have fewer resources as well, so matter converters will hurt. You also can't get decent defenses because of little knowledge. Top this with the fact that if you lose even a single planet, that could well be game right there. There's just no wiggle room.

At many planets, your defenses are more spread out so you have to rely a lot on chokepoints. However, with the use of chokepoints, you fall back into the few-planet advantage of all of your defenses in one place. However, you have more power to power it, more knowledge to research it, more resources for matter converters, and a bit more of an energy buffer to live with so if you do lose another planet then it won't necessarily ruin your defenses. There's the problem of suffering larger attacks, but you needn't worry about that when you already have more advanced defenses as a result of that.

There's more to it than that, as I'm sure someone else will helpfully describe, but that just seems a bit off to me. Don't get me wrong, it's better than being what used to be a completely unstoppable energy goliath, but the curve's weird.

[Diazo]

I think energy is in about the right place.

Energy is the mechanic that makes you expand your empire. You need more systems to support the fleet you will need to be able to tackle the AI homeworlds.

Balance can be argued of course, I do generally agree with Thesaurus that it is a little tight on the low end and not a concern at all on the upper end.

However, in my current experiments with Fallen Spire, I've been getting up to 10 planet empires and still having to worry about energy (hello forts) so I feel it is pretty close.

Maybe boost the production of your home command and the economic command station some, but I would not want to see anything beyond little tweaks to the energy system as a whole.

D.

[Faulty Logic]

Though we did just get about 100,000 free energy from starship cap-e reduction.

[TechSY730]

I think for the most part, the energy mechanic is in a good place; only the numbers need tweaking.

One exception though. Incentive to spread out matter converters. Keith mentioned that this may be worth pursuing later on when the system was first implemented.

[keith.lamothe]

Though we did just get about 100,000 free energy from starship cap-e reduction.

Not a lot different than if you'd simply voluntarily not built 10 of those mkI starships in the previous system, though.  You're paying less, but you're getting less too.

[Winge]

I think for the most part, the energy mechanic is in a good place; only the numbers need tweaking.

One exception though. Incentive to spread out matter converters. Keith mentioned that this may be worth pursuing later on when the system was first implemented.

Agreed on the first point.  I think that the ideal balance may be to increase the energy generated by the Home Command Station, and slightly reduce the energy from Energy Collectors.

I'm a little confused as to why spreading out matter converters is important (beyond making it easier for the AI to horribly ruin your defenses).  The whole idea behind Matter Converters is you don't want to build them unless absolutely necessary.  100 M+C hurts, especially in low AIP games 

[Dichotomy]

Energy works well as is. I don't think its worth developer-time at the moment.

[TIE Viper]

I like it too, it seems like it's in the right place for the most part.  I agree with the opinions about tweaking since the energy is definitely very tight on the low end and not a worry at all at the high end.  I guess I'm just saying a big ginormus ditto... 

[Histidine]

Making econ stations produce a meaningful amount of E would help smaller empires, assuming players are willing to accept the penalty to defense.

If we wanted to, the cascade failure effect from a wave breaching your defenses could be reduced by making Energy Collectors much harder to kill (and removing autopop on command station death).

How do you feel about an unlockable tech for a mini Energy Collector? For a few thousand K and a fair M+C cost, increase the energy production potential of each planet by 20-33%.

[Diazo]

Making econ stations produce a meaningful amount of E would help smaller empires, assuming players are willing to accept the penalty to defense.

This would help, but the issue under discussion is that small empires have more problems with energy, by capturing a planet you are making your empire less small.

If we wanted to, the cascade failure effect from a wave breaching your defenses could be reduced by making Energy Collectors much harder to kill (and removing autopop on command station death).

The thing is, killing your energy is about the only win condition the AI has (short of a wave just being too big). One of the goals of the last energy rebalance was to give the AI a way to make a raid, as opposed to an all out attack, hurt.

The auto-pop on death is because of the requires command station limitation I believe. No more command station in the system means no more energy collector.

How do you feel about an unlockable tech for a mini Energy Collector? For a few thousand K and a fair M+C cost, increase the energy production potential of each planet by 20-33%.

Not worth it I think. Small empires are hurting for Knowledge, by the time you can unlock this, your energy situation is much more stable and not a big worry any more.



Really, the energy system is quite good. If we have to tweak it, I'd add another 20,000 energy production to your home command station. That is a ship cap of bombers Mk II, so adding the capability of your home command to support another ship cap is all I would change.

The only times I have issues with energy beyond the early game is when I unlock forts which are absolute energy hogs. Now, I do unlock forts most games, but that is the only reason I'm remotely worried about energy by the time I'm hitting my 5th planet.

If you are not capturing at least 8 planets (the CSG networks) in your game, you are now (in my opinion) outside the design parameters of the game and I don't think energy is at all limiting once you've captured that many systems, even with my forts.

D.