Balancing Champions

[keith.lamothe]

To some extent having both champions and going deep into the FS progression is supposed to be pretty stiff.  There's actually an extra journal entry that's supposed to show up when the spire refugees figure out you're using the other-spire-relic champion.

But yea, the +20% thing doesn't seem to work especially well for anyone (though I should repeat it does not actually cause an effective AIP increase, that would lead to extra bonus ships for the AI, higher tech levels, and so on), so I'm thinking of better ways to handle that.

[Dichotomy]

I may be in the minority here, but I like the 20% + nemesis balance. It is a way to transfer difficulty from early/mid game to endgame, which is where it is the most fun.

[snelg]

I think the ai bonuses when the players have champions should be something that mostly affects the champions rather than just sending more waves. Toranth makes a very convincing argument in my opinion that as it is now the champions would either be just another extra bunch of firepower if you were already winning or doom you if things are already bad.

Still, I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to them so thanks for the reply Lancefighter for shedding a bit of light on some parts. Here's some thoughts I have, take them with a pinch of salt since I'm not 100% on how things go lategame.

for the most part beyond level 1/2 theres not much xp in buildings (outside of nebulas). Sure, from a min/maxers perspective, its ideal for the champion to always be there. But its not that big of a deal. Its somewhat important to note that higher mk give slightly better rewards. I believe the design here was to provide the champion with something to do while he is not in a nebula (as in, solo neutering a system or something)

It might just be that I'm trying to min/max too much, I think I might tend to do that as soon as there's a limited resource of something. Same reason I don't use the spirecraft built from asteroids too often, or missiles (might need them later).

The three sided nebula mission is a pain in the ass early on. If you arent familiar with how to do it, it seems impossible to force a victory. Even if you are, its not exactly the quickest. For the most part, getting that before destroyer at least makes me pretty sad..

We noticed, noone really seemed to get anything done after the first buildings went down and it was only after one champion continuously suicided on various bases that things started to move.

Normal ships dont really give xp because it creates this odd infinite farm scenario. Sure, some might say thats not a bad idea, but for the most part its not required. the idea is to put champions in nebulas to progress - and for the most part, thats the only way to do it.

I think the game might be more enjoyable with the infinite farm as an option, perhaps it could give a very low gain compared to the nebulas. I might be wrong here, but it seemed like you could get the infinite farm anyway in the nebulas. And it's not like a bunch of expereince is an "I win button" either if I understand how it works. Since you still need to get the nebula missions done to get the larger hulls it will still be a high priority.

I'm not sure (can't remember) if there's actually a point to the experience except for the turret upgrade points though. Perhaps some very small boosts could be given to stats like hp based on level. It will probably not mean too much but would give a feeling of progress at least, which I find important with rpg games or hero/champion systems.

I'm finding champions feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the game with almost everything that's worth anything for them being in the nebulas. And while they would still be the big juicy targets I don't think it would hurt if the rest was still worth fighting over for them. Or not really worth it but at least something in compensation for helping the building player(s) with a wave or clearing out a system.

as for the per-system requirements - It used to be a fair bit worse. It used to be possible to kill things with certain modules from a range where you didn't get xp. Thats thankfully been changed,

That sounds like a nightmare so I'm glad it improved, the question I have is just if it would improve more if it was made galaxy wide. Or if there's a reason not to except because that's why. If there wasn't for the lack of renewable sources of experience I wouldn't mind that much though.

There are limits on how high level a module can be to fit on certain hulls - The standard frigate can only fit up to mk2 modules, for instance. Its I believe written in the tooltip of the ship itself. Also, certain weapons just plain dont fit on some hulls.

Is there a way to use a mk2 module if you have unlocked a higher level? I might've just missed it but otherwise it feels like a problem.

By the way, is there any detailed information on how the champions work (or guides etc.) to be found somewhere? I looked around the wiki a little but didn't really find much.

[LordSloth]

Let me quickly rephrase the following with a less whiny tone of voice.

Partially off-topic, and beating an old horse, but I'm quite tired of the nebula rubber-banding. I have one champion on difficulty 7, normal ship cap... and unfortunately, EPIC game speed.

My first champion mission, with the three factions, and I went in with Shields 2 unlocked. The first thing I did (mistake?) was take down ALL the small starbases. I did so quite successfully. I suspect this was the mistake that caused them to primarily focus on my guys.

However, going from a strong lead position, to rapidly losing with my large starbase going from near 100% to 25% is just painful, especially when I'm perpetually outnumbered 2:1, consisting almost entirely of heavy hulls that take forever to go down even with all mk2 lasers. Going after the spire starbase itself with dual missile modules - even with circular kiting is also an ineffective proposition, perhaps again because of epic?

I suspect that if I played this on normal, I wouldn't be bothering to complain. It hasn't irritated me enough in the past. It's been considerably better since the last time balance has been changed, though not at my personal sweet spot.

Frankly, at this point I'm tempted to either give up on Champions in this game, or suicide my frigate a half-dozen times to bring this to an end, all the while hoping that my starbase outlasts theirs.

I've played with champions a lot in co-op with teammates on normal game speed. There have been some complaints about the

Spoiler for Hiden:

devourer

scenario, but all in all it works well. In fact, for most of the missions the AI nebula might not be scaling up enough to prevent a challenge. Perhaps during the faction vs faction matches, starbases and large starbases get something like 1+0.5n-1 health, where n is the number of players.  With eight champions, the starbases would go down in roughly half the time, rather than 1/8th the time.

Alternately, might it be something as simple as adjusting the nebula reinforcement spawn frequency to compensate for the epic speed, if it isn't already.[/s]

While we're on the subject of champions, is the game properly compensating for the number of champions and game speed in nebulas? Specifically, does it reduce the spawn rate of ships in faction vs faction matches appropriately? A Human Shadow Frigate on Epic in the three-way battle with mk2 lasers, missiles, and shields has an unusually difficult time clearing that mission, even coming from a commanding position with 1 large and 3 small starbases to two remaining large starbases. Taking down one of those large starbases (albeit with incoming retaliation wave, CPA, etc) took my large starbase from around 100% to around 25%, and I was consistently outnumbered 2:1 in heavies per faction, which seems a bit extreme as far as rubber-banding goes, being outnumbered 4:1 overall.

In addition, the nebula playstyle differs dramatically with multiple champions. With 8 champions in co-op, it is quite feasible to head straight for each starbase and take them down in short order, without covering the allied ships or bases other than the series of shields directly on the champion. Perhaps an additional 50% health (similar to asteroids) for each additional champion (solely for large and small starbases), to curb the change of pace without eliminating the advantages of teamwork.

Edit: After reloading the game, it looks like the ship counts straightened themselves out somewhat? My starbased stopped spawning just heavies, at least, I might have some lights to escort on a final run now. Edit Edit: Ah yes, they didn't last long enough for me to escort.
Edit³ And this time another wave spawned in enough numbers to break past the line of 14 heavies. Won. I guess the RNG just got stuck on a bad streak?

[Lancefighter]

Keep in mind that the champion is primarily means to an end. after completing all of the nebulas, your championship basically does nothing but support the fleet. I've mentioned elsewhere my thoughts on lategame champions, but for the most part I find them to get slightly boring in the endgame.

Min/maxing is kinda a thing. For the most part, you dont really get amazing amounts of xp from non-nebula planets. Sure youll probably get a level or maybe three out of it, but unless its your first few levels, its not going to be very important at all(and keep in mind, this is across the entire campaign). Compared to doing a nebula (which gives like 4+ levels and new toys), babysitting your fleet with your champion is.. not really useful.

The problem with infinite grind is that limited resources make a game fun and interesting. Lets all recall our first runthrough of fallout 3 or something. For most people, your first trip through the metro was a big ordeal - youre often strapped for goods and trying to make do with whatever crummy food and ammo you have on you. This is a good thing.

Lets compare this to your later plays, or even just later in the game. you end up with plenty of resources, you never really end up with any particular shortages.. Sure, the fun is still there, but for the most part its more in exploration and discovery, actual appreciation for the art of the game, etc, than the initial struggle.  Sure, some people might prefer this option (and thats why bethesda's difficulty sliders make things into bulletsponges).

ANyway, on that tangent - If you had unlimited xp, you no longer have to worry about a resource. And worrying about resources is good.

You do otherwise bring up good points - after the nebulas are done, what incentives does the championships have to do anything? Other than winning the game, absolutely nothing. For the most part, id like to see champions just being a little deeper overall..

And yeah - The ship design screen will only show you the modules THAT SHIP can fit, so it will never give you a mk3 module as an option on a frigate. You can still unlock the mk3 module on the unlock screen, but it wont change anything on the design page until you have a destroyer to fit.

[Bognor]

Keith, have you considered the way the benefits of having a champion scale with multiple player homeworlds in single-player games?  From what I've seen, these benefits are not affected by the number of homeworlds:

• Metal, crystal, and energy from the constructors you get in nebulae
• Knowledge from nebulae (added on edit)
• Special rewards from some nebulae, such as the Gatlings and friendly Neinzul Enclaves
• The firepower and abilities of the champion itself
• Allied uncontrollable starships that emerge from completed nebulae (added on edit)

But these benefits scale in proportion to the number of player homeworlds:

• Modular Forts - you get one per type per player homeworld
• The nebula starship fleet - you get 7 starships per constructor per player homeworld

So presumably the number of response points the AI gets per unit time should be something like "X points for the first player homeworld + Y points for every additional homeworld beyond the first", where 0 < Y < X

(Sorry if all that was blindingly obvious, but it seemed like no-one had mentioned it in previous discussions.)

[keith.lamothe]

It's worth mentioning the multi-HW stuff.  These new responses do not pay any attention to multi-HW, and that isn't quite right for the reasons you point out: the mod fort rewards and nebula ship rewards DO scale up on multi-HW.  So I may need to have the offensive-nemesis responses scale up with the number of successfully completed nebulae * extra-HW-count or something like that.  Though that component shouldn't care much about the number of champions.

Anyway, I don't think it's a critical issue right now, but worth addressing once the more common-case (single-HW) situation settles out