Power plants and resource drain (1.014V)

[x4000]

See, but you shouldn't be able to afford deep raids right from the start.  You should have to actually take some of the planets near yourself in order to expand further.  You should be having 6-12 planets to sustain your full fleet.  This is intentional.  I think it does need some more adjustments, but the fact is that before it was letting players opt to just keep a home planet and then do all sorts of activities from that position alone.  That's like playing Chess without having to move any pieces.  If you aren't having to take other enemy planets, you aren't having to risk anything for your rewards -- the AI progress doesn't go up, your number of dangerous wormholes does not go up, your forces are not stretched more thin, etc.

I'm not trying to homogenize the game and make everyone play the same, but the strategy of just turtling and keeping a planet or two while wielding great strength elsewhere in the galaxy is more of an exploit than anything else in my opinion.

[eRe4s3r]

If i have to take a planet before going deep raiding then that is no longer viable - it takes 1 hour + to build up a fleet of 1000 ships, now in this version i would need 3 planets to sustain the energy cost alone, not to mention i couldn't then afford a single ship to be built.

How else is one supposed to win? Capturing planets to have a fleet larger than 500 ships? With 500 ships you can hardly defend 1 planet, but 2 or more would be impossible!?!

And my deep raid strategy is not "right from the start"

My first deep raid stats 3 hours in. Keeping AI progression as low as possible and scouting as far and deep as possible, that tactic is now entirely impossible - to defend any planet next to my current games homeworld i'd need twice as many turrets (ie, another 200k energy cost) and the planets wouldn't even cover that energy cost alone.

[x4000]

If i have to take a planet before going deep raiding then that is no longer viable - it takes 1 hour + to build up a fleet of 1000 ships, now in this version i would need 3 planets to sustain the energy cost alone, not to mention i couldn't then afford a single ship to be built.

No, you're missing the point -- thanks to the economic boosts, you can now build up a force of that size -- easily -- within around 10-15 minutes.  That is a big part of the point, is to speed up the game.

How else is one supposed to win? Capturing planets to have a fleet larger than 500 ships? With 500 ships you can hardly defend 1 planet, but 2 or more would be impossible!?!

I will have to check to be sure, but I am not very confident in your math on the energy.  The energy costs for the fleet ships has not changed at all.  The only ships that changed were force field generators, fortresses, tractor beam turrets, counter-turrets, lightning turrets, engineers, mine layers, mobile builders, cruisers, all of the docks and constructors, science labs, metal/crystal manufactories and harvesters.  Now, potentially harvesters or something need to not have this, but I'll need to look and see.

That's supposed to be a tradeoff with wargames -- good defenses or good offenses, or, over time, finally building up to both.  Am I saying the current system in U is 100% perfect?  No.  But I think it's not quite as bleak as you are painting it, either.

[eRe4s3r]

Yes it is bleak - see attached save - my energy math is good ^^, i would need 3 planets to spread energy in-efficiency to even supply the amount of ships you see in that save (And the build infrastructure to rebuild them). And i have build the energy requirement in my head, i would need apr 500 resources or so to supply the energy, please take a look at my current income, the planets around me and tell me that is not bleak ;p

Before the change i was 60k + now i am 450k negative

450k is not something you can just "whip up" quickly. And the energy balance before that was already hard-pushing on seriously bad-efficiency.

Ah i see, Shipyards are now 10k - each, even if they are paused, and starship docks and engineers got a raise as well  

So well, it is not game-ending, but it is still badly balanced imo ;p because even after shutting that all down, my income is now insanely low, at 100% boost

[x4000]

eRa -- I'll check out your save.

Kal -- for your save, I see that your teammate (Solaryn) has a ridiculous number more reactors than he needs.  As in, he had a net energy balance of 1.8 million even in the new higher-energy mode, I'm not kidding.

When I got rid of the harvester efficiency penalties, I'm able to get +187 metal and +153 crystal for Solaryn's civ with still a crazy balance of 1.2 million net energy just sitting there.

With your civ, I see you have a 100k balance of energy at the start in version V, and negative metal/crystal balances.  I think that, in this particular game, that is mostly due to Solaryn taking way more than his fair share of the metal/crystal harvesters.  He has an incredible amount of extra resources, whereas you have far too few.  He has 76 each of metal and crystal harvesters, while you have just 55 and 53, respectively.

If I delete enough of his energy reactor IIIs so that he is down to "just" a net balance of 566k energy with a fleet of 2800 ships in force, then he has a balance of +394 metal and +372 crystal per second each.  Splitting some of that massive wealth with you does not seem at all unreasonable to me.

Oh, and I discovered that your metal manufactories were also still running, which is why your metal balance was negative.  When I pause all but 4 of those, your income is actually +72 metal per second and +64 crystal per second.  That's with a fleet of 3,000 ships fielded, and your partner hogging a majority of the resources.

So, just looking at Kal's game alone, it's looking like V is very balanced.  My own savegames were all balanced just fine in U or V, but I tend to play right in the "sweet spot" of where this is being balanced towards, anyway.

Now time to load up eRa's file and see what is going on there in V...

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah, after cooling down, its not game ending at all, but i really do not like this change - i have 44 + BARELY sustaining my economy no shipyards, no engineers, no mobile builders, hardly reach 30k energy surplus.

Well, the large blob of ships is 2 raid groups each 1000 ships.. ah well i don't feel like playing that savegame with that few resources, my expansion options are 0 in that map seed. Sadly i can't move my homeworld, otherwise i'd do that ;p

Edit: And before a comment about the amount of turrets come, the ai type forced me to. Ether planes and Parasites everywhere.

Edit 2: And yes, my playstyle is different in this save - because of quite annoying raids

[x4000]

Yes it is bleak - see attached save - my energy math is good ^^, i would need 3 planets to spread energy in-efficiency to even supply the amount of ships you see in that save (And the build infrastructure to rebuild them). And i have build the energy requirement in my head, i would need apr 500 resources or so to supply the energy, please take a look at my current income, the planets around me and tell me that is not bleak ;p

Before the change i was 60k + now i am 450k negative

450k is not something you can just "whip up" quickly. And the energy balance before that was already hard-pushing on seriously bad-efficiency.

Ah i see, Shipyards are now 10k - each, even if they are paused, and starship docks and engineers got a raise as well  

So well, it is not game-ending, but it is still badly balanced imo ;p because even after shutting that all down, my income is now insanely low, at 100% boost

Okay, I loaded up this savegame.  I see that it's 3:44 in, and you still have not taken a single planet.  Granted, there are some lame planets near you resource-wise (that's really unlucky), but by this stage I would expect you to have at least 3-4 planets in your pocket.  That's basically 1 planet every 45 minutes on average if you play like me, or you could stretch that and really go a lot less -- but not taking any planets is just not intended to be a valid strategy, I'm sorry.

Also, the main drain on your economy is presently the mass of space docks you have.  14 on one planet is just wasteful and completely unneeded.  With a few engineers and the new build speeds, four space docks can churn out 1000+ ships in 10-15 minutes.

I also see that you have 3 mark III reactors right on your one planet, as well as 2 mark II reactors and 3 mark I reactors.  If you take more planets, then you'll have vastly better output from them, and all the energy you need.  Try to have just one of them per planet, that's the goal.  Right now you are losing 128,000 energy in efficiency from that second mark III energy reactor alone.  Just taking two more planets and putting your energy reactors there will fix almost all of your problem, along with not building so many extra space docks so early in the game.

You also have 54 engineers (!?) on a single planet, in a mix of Mark II and Mark I.  As well as a mobile repair station (5,000 energy), 7 mine layers, 85 tractor beam turrets (you only need maybe 10 at most), and 600+ other various turrets (you should be able to do with around 60 of them at most here), 5 force fields, a missile silo (40,000 energy right there, you really can't afford that comfortably until you take another planet).  Plus you have 18 starships, all of which cost a lot of energy.

There are so many ways in which energy are being wasted here, it's unreal.  You can get a positive balance of energy without affecting your ability to expand or defend yourself in so many different ways; it's not out of balance at all.  You can't expect to be able to field your entire fleet from a single planet -- the fact that that was possible for a few releases was a balance issue.  But you only need two, maybe 3 planets to really support your current fleet.  

And, honestly, just by pruning some stuff that is currently being wasted, you can get your energy balance almost back to being net positive without another planet.  That would be really tight, and you would have to lose a few things you would probably rather keep, but that's pretty cool how close it is to being feasible.  I'm not forcing everyone into a single mode of play -- there is still a huge palette of possible options -- but this current game here is so far out of bounds of valid economic strategy in the current model that it's looking unbalanced because of that.

A couple of planets, and you're right back on track.  Or cut the fat in that budget.  Nothing dire at all.  You still have a positive metal/crystal income, I might add, as well as a 500k+ balance of both metal and crystal.  This game is entirely salvageable, as long as you don't take the strategy of trying to take no planets.  That's the one thing that won't fly with the new economic model.

[liq3]

ant,.pha.pr cag.,hp a

eRe4r3r, you're math is TERRIBLE. I want to slap you it's that bad.

I'm running 1.014U, so all this data is gathered from there.

You can build 440 cruisers, 440 fighters, and 440 bombers. This includes Mark I, II and III for each. Having all 9 caps of those maxed out is the kind of you army you shouldn't have until at least 10 planets. Now, lets look at how much energy it costs.

For Mark I, II, III cruisers, bombers ANd fighters, all maxed out, it costs... wait for it... 154,000 energy. OMG so much less then god damn 800,000. You can support that with your home planet! 6 reactors (3 Is, 2 IIs and a III) produce 156,000 power for -61r/s. Remove the Mark I units (they use the most power, and are the weakest) and you can support everything else you need.

What I'm basically saying is, you can have capped Mark II and III cruisers, bombers, and fighters, 2-3 engis, a dock, a starship con, 1-2 force fields and you'll stil probably have power left over. And this is JUST with your homeworld. Not any other planets. You'll still have around +80r/s, depending on your starting harvs.

Everyone who is complaining probably has maxed out docks, maxed out engis and probably 5-6 anti-darkmatter turrets. What I just mentioned uses in excess of 700,000 power by itself. Oh, just checking, you probably have a ton of tractor beams too, which now use up 500,800,1000 power each. Maxing out on tractor beams (mark 1, 2 and 3) uses 111,585 power alone.

Ok, I've calmed down now.

Look, the it works atm I love. I haven't seen any obvious kinks to work out. You can produce 120,000 power on each planet, costing 55r/s for that much. With level 2 Command stations, this means you need 1 metal and crystal, and you're only down 3r/s. With level 3, you're MAKING resources straight off the bat. 120,000 power is tons. Capture 10 planets, that's 1,200,000 power, which could easily power a large, large fleet. And if you have the cash to spare, you can even up it to 156,000 power per planet, at the slightly increased cost of 61r/s.

eRe4s3r you're whining about nothing, or to be more accurate, things have changed and you'd rather whine instead of adapt. Hrm, this gives me an idea... I will make a new post about it!

[x4000]

Well, the large blob of ships is 2 raid groups each 1000 ships.. ah well i don't feel like playing that savegame with that few resources, my expansion options are 0 in that map seed. Sadly i can't move my homeworld, otherwise i'd do that ;p

Yeah, it is a really tough starting world, I'll give you that.

Edit: And before a comment about the amount of turrets come, the ai type forced me to. Ether planes and Parasites everywhere.

I hear ya.  That's still a crazy number of them, though.  Playing with a +100% handicap on the AI is going to give you a really different sort of experience than with them being normal, though, so that might be contributing to your dire straights.  Also, I would note -- the cross-planet raids are still there in difficulty 5, though they are less frequent.  So you're not really avoiding them by playing lower.  They have been altered a lot in the 1.014 versions, so that will hopefully make them less of a pain for you.  They scale up/down with the AI difficulty, now.

Edit 2: And yes, my playstyle is different in this save - because of quite annoying raids

I hear ya.

[x4000]

ant,.pha.pr cag.,hp a

eRe4r3r, you're math is TERRIBLE. I want to slap you it's that bad.

Let's be nice, please.  I think tempers are running quite a bit too high in general here.

You can build 440 cruisers, 440 fighters, and 440 bombers. This includes Mark I, II and III for each. Having all 9 caps of those maxed out is the kind of you army you shouldn't have until at least 10 planets.

I would say perhaps 4-6 planets is possible for that -- I frequently do it -- but 10 would be true if you are also building a lot of starships or other expensive items like that.

For Mark I, II, III cruisers, bombers ANd fighters, all maxed out, it costs... wait for it... 154,000 energy.

Yes, this has not changed since 0.94 or before.

What I'm basically saying is, you can have capped Mark II and III cruisers, bombers, and fighters, 2-3 engis, a dock, a starship con, 1-2 force fields and you'll stil probably have power left over. And this is JUST with your homeworld. Not any other planets. You'll still have around +80r/s, depending on your starting harvs.

Correct.

Everyone who is complaining probably has maxed out docks, maxed out engis and probably 5-6 anti-darkmatter turrets.

Yes, I think that's a large part of it.

Ok, I've calmed down now.

Good.

Look, the it works atm I love. I haven't seen any obvious kinks to work out. You can produce 120,000 power on each planet, costing 55r/s for that much. With level 2 Command stations, this means you need 1 metal and crystal, and you're only down 3r/s. With level 3, you're MAKING resources straight off the bat. 120,000 power is tons. Capture 10 planets, that's 1,200,000 power, which could easily power a large, large fleet. And if you have the cash to spare, you can even up it to 156,000 power per planet, at the slightly increased cost of 61r/s.

The one kink that needed to be worked out was the thing for Kal, which I posted about above and whcih is fixed in the V version that I will fix shortly.  Hitting the "resource wall" in late games with many planets was not good.  But I think that the early game is now very close to what I would hope it would be, with a good progression in general, plenty of options for the players, and yet a solid imperative to expand your territory if you want to keep expanding your fleets.  That's the goal, as of course you know and agree with.  Having a game-ending fleet from 1 or 2 planets is not cool, and this release I believe fixes that.

[liq3]

In reply to my own other post, I was trying to fix my power shortage in another save. I had a maxed out fleet (nearly mark III in everything, 2 new ship types, and maxed out starships (yes every kind)). I was negative 480,000 power. Now, I couldn't fix that in my current state. Thing is, I only had 6 planets. I'd need at least another 3 planets to fix my power problem in that save, as well as some quick research raiding to get level 3 Command stations so my economy isn't being drained. I see this as perfectly fine. A late, late game army can be supported by 9 planets with level 3 command stations. Works for me.

Also, I'm talking a fleet with 2000 ships and something like 40 starships in that save, not to mention like 50 engis. And I'd be able to support it with 9 planets. NINE. It's tiny.

Having a game-ending fleet from 1 or 2 planets is not cool, and this release I believe fixes that.

Oh, it'll still be possible to do this (probably need 2-3 planets tho). Just, it's going to be a lot harder. :]

[x4000]

In reply to my own other post, I was trying to fix my power shortage in another save. I had a maxed out fleet (nearly mark III in everything, 2 new ship types, and maxed out starships (yes every kind)). I was negative 480,000 power. Now, I couldn't fix that in my current state. Thing is, I only had 6 planets. I'd need at least another 3 planets to fix my power problem in that save, as well as some quick research raiding to get level 3 Command stations so my economy isn't being drained. I see this as perfectly fine. A late, late game army can be supported by 9 planets with level 3 command stations. Works for me.

Also, I'm talking a fleet with 2000 ships and something like 40 starships in that save, not to mention like 50 engis. And I'd be able to support it with 9 planets. NINE. It's tiny.

Yeah, that all sounds inline with what I would expect.  In an 80 planet game, the general rule of thumb is that I expect players to take around 20-30 planets.  Problem was, players were previously able to do it with more like 4 or 5, which really unbalanced things for them and let them win much more easily at the expense of having a much slower game -- they had fewer resources to build and expand with, but also the AI Progress was so insanely low that it was uninteresting to fight with in the main because it had so few ships.

Having a game-ending fleet from 1 or 2 planets is not cool, and this release I believe fixes that.

Oh, it'll still be possible to do this (probably need 2-3 planets tho). Just, it's going to be a lot harder. :]

Fair enough.  Like I said, I want to allow a lot of different playstyles.  But if you are to support a game-ending fleet with that few planets, you are going to have to be super-lean in other areas (engineers, docks, defenses, etc).  I think that's a reasonable tradeoff for a situation like that.  If you can otherwise keep the AI Progress low by taking few planets, and there's no penalty in other ways for doing that, then why ever take more planets?  It becomes a perpetual raiding game by nature then, with no incentive to ever do anything else.

[eRe4s3r]

Man, i am at a loss for words. I didn't ask for a comment on my play style by the way.

Different Tactic means Different Tactic. If you do not want to allow different tactics anymore, then say so, is really that simple These gameplay changes FORCE a single tactic to be successful, at no point in recent versions since 1.09 was it necessary to cap planets before being ready to defend them properly. Now i have to cap them to even sustain building a fleet that builds slow as molasses (1 shipyard, that is CRINGE worthy)

14 Shipyards is what my economy can support, thats not crazy thats perfectly balanced to my income.
5 Starship docks are to build 5 starships at once - which my economy could support before, when i was not replacing losses or something

And by the way - load up 1.14Q and play this save , what you call in-efficient and wasteful is HOW THE GAME WAS perfectly PLAYABLE UP TO 1.14Q.

So yeah, thanks for "flaming" me to not have "The vision" to predict absolutely silly balance changes (Like Energy use of paused buildings..) or like (Energy gens using resources as if they are WW2 style coal plants).

I will simply wait and see what comes in 1.14 - only then will i comment on game balance in depth, or consider new tactics.

Like I said, I want to allow a lot of different playstyles.  But if you are to support a game-ending fleet with that few planets, you are going to have to be super-lean in other areas (engineers, docks, defenses, etc).  I think that's a reasonable tradeoff for a situation like that.  If you can otherwise keep the AI Progress low by taking few planets, and there's no penalty in other ways for doing that, then why ever take more planets?  It becomes a perpetual raiding game by nature then, with no incentive to ever do anything else.

Now its a capture planets first and raid maybe later game - But if anything you haven't promoted using more than 5 planets, you have just nerfed raiding completely, that is, depending on the start position and situation with the AI types. Now a fleet of the required size can't be built as easily and quickly anymore and it can't be sustained properly without second or third planets. This means now you cause several balance issues but mostly the one that makes me cringe to the bone > Start Position is now suddenly the entire focus of the game start again, bad start position = as good as lost because first expansions don't consolidate your resource income or defense spending, thus making the game much riskier and easier to loose in that situation.

[Kalzarius]

They are intentionally trying to take over every planet in a 120-planet galaxy, and have been at this for 40+ game hours now.

Thankfully, it's only a 100-planet galaxy.  And while we've played well over 50 hours, the game clock is only at 36 hours.

What difficulty they are on, I cannot remember off the top of my head.

Difficulty level 5, aka "Easy".  

The AI should kill them in these circumstances, otherwise a lot of the "grand strategy" is moot (one of the selling points of this game is supposed to be that you cannot just take everything indiscriminately and win).

It's not really removing any strategy here.  We've had to apply various strategies to stay alive as long as we have.  It's also not been indiscriminate.  We've specifically targeted key locations to reduce the entry-points into our systems.  We're also experimenting with how the AI will react to being completely cut off and surrounded on both fronts.  Of course, after loading our 14B game in 14U, the changes (lack of power, steadily declining resources, and the recent AI tactical enhancements) have led to the not entirely unseen destruction of our frontline planets.  D'oh!

Had we not already put so much time into this game, we'd probably be more open to starting a new one.  I'm sure you can appreciate why we want to finish this game, one way or the other.  Besides, it's provided us with a wealth of corner cases for debugging.  

I really like having people enjoying the game in different ways, tailored to what style of play they prefer.

Ideally, I totally agree.

Except when it messes with the balance of the core game, which binds all of these offshoots together.

In practice, this is the difficulty.  I don't believe our play style goes against the core values, it just challenges them in a different way.  The game is about the war against AI, after all.  We won't feel like we've succeeded in the war against the AI until every one of those little blighters is a pile of space debris.  

I think several balance issues are stemming from the fact that some things are scaling with advancement through the game and some aren't.  People who rush the AI from the start are finding it too easy to do so, so you're increasing the strength of raids and cross-planet attacks (these scale, sometimes disastrously), and introducing more energy restrictions and economic changes (these don't).

Advancement alone increases the AI progress.  In my opinion, AI progress should increase more rapidly for assaults on important planets and especially on those that are closer to the AI home planet(s).  This may mitigate the need for some of the economic changes that have been made over the last series of pre-releases.

Tenative Conclusion:  I think that I need to remove both the multiplayer boosts and the too-many producer penalties for harvesters.  This will encourage expansion, and will be a nice counterpoint to the energy reactor ongoing costs, which are simpler to manage anyway.  This would also remove that artificial resource wall, which right now is putting a cap on the game Kal is playing.  I think it would let him keep playing as he likes, without wrecking the balance of the core game, while giving Haagenti even more incentive to stop turtling quite so much.

Personally, I thought the too-many-producer penalty made sense; however, if removing this helps balance the changes, I'm all for it.  My only concern with the continual consumption of resources by the reactors is that they will always be at odds with expansion.

Perhaps by having energy limited by resources, unit caps may no longer be necessary.

I apologize for taking so long to post this.  Solaryn and I were discussing this all for some time before finding 13 14 more posts we needed to factor in and respond to, following this line.

Kal -- for your save, I see that your teammate (Solaryn) has a ridiculous number more reactors than he needs.  As in, he had a net energy balance of 1.8 million even in the new higher-energy mode, I'm not kidding.

We were more interested in getting out of the negative energy balance than doing the math necessary to realize we were building too many.  It just so happens that he didn't lose as many planets during the raids as I did.

With your civ, I see you have a 100k balance of energy at the start in version V, and negative metal/crystal balances.  I think that, in this particular game, that is mostly due to Solaryn taking way more than his fair share of the metal/crystal harvesters.  He has an incredible amount of extra resources, whereas you have far too few.  He has 76 each of metal and crystal harvesters, while you have just 55 and 53, respectively.

Actually, he did no such thing.  I had slightly more than him until eight of my planets were swept away during our rush to build energy reactors.  We didn't have a chance to trade any because we were still trying to dispatch all of the attacking ships.

Oh, and I discovered that your metal manufactories were also still running, which is why your metal balance was negative.

Sure they weren't my crystal manufactories?  I know I used those.

So, just looking at Kal's game alone, it's looking like V is very balanced.  My own savegames were all balanced just fine in U or V, but I tend to play right in the "sweet spot" of where this is being balanced towards, anyway.

Thanks! We'll let you know how it turns out.

We're going to start out from the end of last week's save, though.

As a suggestion to help alleviate some of eRe4s3r's concerns, perhaps it would be good to reduce energy usage when constructors are paused or not producing.

[x4000]

Man, i am at a loss for words. I didn't ask for a comment on my play style by the way.

And I didn't ask to be flamed for making legitimate balance changes, with threats to "not upgrade anymore" unless I change it back.  Tempers run high, especially when stuff like that is posted.  You complained that everything is way unbalanced, did you not expect me to respond at all?  I'm not wanting to flame you or put you down, but I'm also not going to not state my side of things.

Different Tactic means Different Tactic. If you do not want to allow different tactics anymore, then say so, is really that simple These gameplay changes FORCE a single tactic to be successful, at no point in recent versions since 1.09 was it necessary to cap planets before being ready to defend them properly.

Yes, the game forces you to take a certain number of planets now.  The fact that it was not necessary before was an oversight.  The tutorials and everything else train players to play by taking more planets, but a few clever experts like you and Haag figured out a way to game that system.  Haag complained that this made the game too easy for him, very unbalanced in a bad way, so now we're fixing that.  There is still a huge variety of things you can do -- yes, you have to take a certain baseline number of planets, but you can still be mostly a raider and do lots of deep strikes and such.  You just can't easily sustain a large fleet with too few planets.  This is not uncommon to most RTS games, you need territory and resource spots in order to expand outward.

Now i have to cap them to even sustain building a fleet that builds slow as molasses (1 shipyard, that is CRINGE worthy)

One shipyard?  I said 4, and even 6 is doable with your planet.  And with a few engineers assisting them, they shoot out ships at an incredible rate.  You can literally have a huge fleet that is self-replenishing with no more docks than that, without ever having to wait around for stuff to build.

14 Shipyards is what my economy can support, thats not crazy thats perfectly balanced to my income.
5 Starship docks are to build 5 starships at once - which my economy could support before, when i was not replacing losses or something

Fair enough, now I see the reasoning behind this at least.  But it's more than one planet was designed to support, the economy was out of whack in recent 1.014 prereleases.  It's not your fault that you were playing to the game as the rules were before, that's perfectly expected, but part of the nature of these prereleases is that they are experimental.  I've not been 100% happy with the economic balance yet in 1.014 (I am tentatively happy with it now, but I've said that before), and other people have also commented on not being happy with it for the same reasons.

And by the way - load up 1.14Q and play this save , what you call in-efficient and wasteful is HOW THE GAME WAS perfectly PLAYABLE UP TO 1.14Q.

Sure -- when the economy was way out of balance in favor of the players, making the game too easy, this was quite playable -- I believe that.  But I also think that that many engineers and extra things were likely to be inefficient even then.  I can't fathom how that number would be useful, except possibly for rapid repairs, but whatever.  And for the reactors, those were incredibly, hugely, wasteful all on one planet like that.  That's supposed to be the impetus to grow out to new planets.  Again, if it worked for you in 1.014Q, then it worked for you there.  I really don't care what people do with the game if it makes them happy, but when it comes to exploits or imbalances I'm going to try my best to fix them -- and that will invalidate a number of the more borderline strategies, like what you were doing in this particular game.

But that doesn't mean that the game is then broken or unbalanced, for removing the exploitative playstyles from being valid.  Again -- while the exploits are in the game, anything goes and I expect players will use all the tools they have available.  But if I don't fix those exploits then the game stagnates and becomes no fun because there are too-easy tricks to use to win more easily.

So yeah, thanks for "flaming" me to not have "The vision" to predict absolutely silly balance changes (Like Energy use of paused buildings..) or like (Energy gens using resources as if they are WW2 style coal plants).

I care nothing for theme, to be perfectly honest.  I'm all about the gameplay, and the thematic elements are there for minor flavor and that's it.  Again, my intent was not to flame you -- however, anyone who makes a lot of wild and angry accusations at me is going to get a long rebuttal.  That's just the way I am, I'm extremely methodical about stuff like that.  I try to back up everything I say with solid facts, evidence, and reasoning, because otherwise it's just opinion.  Or if it is my opinion, I try to make that known.

But I take great offense at comments like "what were they thinking?" or "who thought of this crazy thing?" or "this game is so horribly broken now" (unless that is true, which it was not).  I put a crazy amount of work into this game, I provide an insane amount of content and service for FREE to my existing customers, and I don't need to be heckled like that.  Seriously.  

We can discuss this without getting angry, can't we?  It's just a game, and after all we all want the same thing: for it to be as fun, rewarding, and reasonably challenging as possible.  We all want it to be balanced so that crazy "that's not fair" tactics don't work, while still supporting absolutely as many varied tactics that are fair.  To suggest that I want everyone to play the same way is really just name-calling, which I don't appreciate either.  I think I've made my feelings pretty clear on that.

But by the same token, not every decision is going to be popular with every player.  Because there is so much freedom, players can go all over the place with different strategies, and some of those strategies that are a little more "out there" won't always work forever.  Some of them are exploitative of certain rules or units, or are related to such exploits and thus get nerfed in the process of the exploit being fixed.  This, again, is not unique to AI War -- though it may be more frequent due to the pace at which I am working on the game, the size of the game, and the general flexibility of the game.

I will simply wait and see what comes in 1.14

Another pet peeve of mine?  People threatening me to try to get their way.  "I think I'll just stop getting updates" or similar statements strike me as being counterproductive.  I try to make it known that I am open to well-reasoned feedback, and I'll consider it carefully and give a well-reasoned response at the very least -- or change the design at best.  Everyone has an opportunity to be heard -- but name-calling or threatening are only going to piss me off, which is pretty hard to do any other way.

Your last argument was not convincing because your math was way off (I am not suggesting you are bad at math, but you seemed pretty upset and clearly rushed a response on partial calculations that turned out to have faulty assumptions).  Plus, in looking at your savegame, as I pointed out your strategy was basically too far out there for me to consider it unbalanced when it no longer works -- and it was basically the strategy that I was trying to kill off at Haagenti's suggestion (he uses it too), as it was too exploitative.

Here's why not taking planets is not cool:  The entire grand strategy of AI War is based on the hard decisions that you have to make as you expand into the galaxy and take more planets.  Which planets to take, how many, etc?  

If you can just take every planet without consequence, that is hugely bad because it removes the strategy.  Kal is doing that to a degree, but is having a sufficiently hard time with it that I'm okay with it.  

If you can just avoid taking any planets (or take only one or two), that also removes the strategy of the game.  All that's left are tactics in both cases.  You're using that strategy, and I think that with many fewer engineers, docks, and the various other changes I mentioned, you could still accomplish something near to your current strategy, but it will be appropriately much more difficult given the distance it is from the optimal strategy-bearing way of playing.

And you know what?  I'm cool if you want to keep playing this way, if you can and like to, with the balance shifts that make it harder.  I don't want everyone to play the same way.  But I want everyone to either have to make the grand-strategy style choices, which includes costs for abstaining from taking planets or for taking everything in sight.

I hope you are not too upset over this, I really do value your feedback and you've got a special place in this community.  I'd really hate to drive you away over a rebalancement.  Your feedback, like all the other regulars and anyone else who cares to comment, is definitely valued.  I think neither one of us responds well to antagonism, but let's not let that ruin things if at all possible, eh?  I'd love your thoughts on the new V version, if you have the time and inclination, and hopefully we can all keep a more level head when discussing that one.  So far this community has largely been very friendly and respectful of one another, and I don't see any reason why that can't continue even as we grow as a community.

I guess that's everything.  I hope you stick around, you are valued.