So. We're running down on time, and I still have a lot of features to implement. It will all work out in the end, but this means I could use more help than usual with balance. So far with the new spire ships and the spirecraft themselves, I haven't even really gotten to the balance yet, but my hope is to be able to start tackling that on Wednesday. Then the Thanksgiving holiday hits here in the US, and Keith and I won't be around for Thursday or Friday. And then we have all next week before we're likely needing to have this fully balanced and ready to go out the door.
Most of the specific stuff about individual spirecraft ships or spire ships or any other ships isn't something we want in a mega-topic like this -- please don't post that stuff here, and please put a link to any discussions in Mantis with your recommendations if you have specific ones (as people have already been doing -- we're very grateful).
This post is about the largest balance challenge that currently remains to me, namely the spirecraft. But, it's hard to talk about the spirecraft without also talking about Golems. So here we are. I'm looking for generalized thoughts and ideas about the ship classes, not discussion of any specific ships inside the classes, to keep this topic undiluted.
Golems
These have always been underused, but largely because of their having AIP costs, etc. Those are gone now and won't be coming back -- again, please don't dilute this discussion with suggesting AIP increases for Golems or Spirecraft, it won't be considered (people are too strategically conservative, and that's been covered in a different topic).
Right now the golem disadvantages are:
1. They are probably weaker than they should be.
2. They cost a ton of resources to repair, and even more in terms of energy to run them.
3. There are only 3 per map.
4. They only have supply when they are within 1 hop of an enemy warp gate (if there's a bug with this, please ignore that for purposes of this discussion, too -- this isn't a bug reporting discussion and that's already in mantis anyhow).
5. They cause stronger waves from the AI at the planets they are on, and they beef up reinforcements when on AI planets, and they cause extra reinforcements when they enter a planet.
My thoughts:
1. They probably need to be beefed up some.
2. They probably also need to cost a lot less energy to run.
3. This may still not be enough to really make them attractive. What do others think?
4. Beefing them up too much has two risks: First that players would use them to create an unbeatable bottleneck. Second that players would use them to just rush the AI Command stations and win with ease. Possibly the addition of the hunter/killers would allow the bottlenecks to be appropriately countered (bottleneck-breaking being the sole hunter/killer function), and possibly making golems unable to hit command hull types might help the other SOME, but that might make them feel kind of lame in a different way.
Spirecraft
These are new, and my two main concerns are making sure that they feel distinct from golems, while also feeling awesome but not game-breakingly so. Same with the golems, actually. There needs to be an "equal and opposite reaction" for every major superweapon players get, as this is a strategy game and not some RPG where you get the superweapon and then one-hit the final boss. The latter is fun, but not exactly strategic because then everyone just rushes for the superweapon.
Right now the spirecraft disadvantages are:
1. There are 5 marks of each kind, and only the highest marks are anywhere near golem level or higher. The lower marks tend to be more like starships-plus-some, which is great.
2. These take a large amount of resources to build, especially at the highest tiers, though not that much energy.
3. They are limited by the number of asteroids that players find, which makes the top tiers very limited and the lower ones not as much.
4. They are very vulnerable while being built, so the AI ships can keep them from being finished if the players are not careful.
5. They can't be repaired (unlike golems), and they don't have regen, so they are gone once they are used.
My thoughts:
1. I'm worried there aren't enough disadvantages, especially if players turtle, hoard the spirecraft, and then use them all in one big raid. This becomes a sort of superweapon they can create from many parts -- an unbeatable fleet, anyway.
2. Some of the upcoming spirecraft, which have a bit more awesome abilities, are the ones I'm most worried about. So, again, don't focus too much on the specific spirecraft already in place.
3. Again, I'm focused on equal-and-opposite reactions, to an extent. Perhaps having some sort of special waves against the planet of the spirecraft while they are being constructed would be a good thing. That would make them harder to get, but that would also potentially make them more annoying to get.
4. Perhaps instead of #3, giving the AI some sort of big ship (again, equal and opposite) when the spirecraft are successfully created by the players. But that seems a bit cheap, and would likely not play out all that well, anyway.
5. Beyond these, at the moment I'm still spinning my wheels a bit, and I'm feeling the time pressure a lot (with still so many ships to create, and so little time). Hence this post, I'm looking for better ideas here in particular.
Thanks, all!
