What's coming for spirecraft and golem balance.

[Wingflier]

Thank you for the responses.  Another option for "drawbacks" that I think is often underutilized is energy cost. 

Was a massive energy cost (200,000 or more) ever presented as a solution to giving the golems a drawback?  The nice thing about energy costs is that they hurt your economy as long as they are "active", but only in a "temporary" way once the cause of the costs has been destroyed.

If Golems were merely given a large energy cost to use, as well as a small AIP gain upon activation (say +25 or so), it could be a good way to balance them without causing too much risk for the players, at least the kind of risk that can't be recovered from.

[superking]

I wonder if golems might've worked better if they were non-repairable too

[Nemo]

These are the kinds of simple outside-of-the-box ideas that you need to make golems viable.

Yes, they need to be fun but I'd rather not have them locked into the upper difficulty levels.

Over time, the developer could make it so that, in higher difficulties, the golem was extremely useful for the player, while punishing them significantly, but not nearly as significantly as they were being benefitted by having them.  

I disagree, not every one wants to get punished for using the cool things in a game. Wyvern's idea of an oldschool mode seems like a nice idea, if you liked how they used to be, but I think X's minor faction idea has this covered - just choose the harder one.

On those difficulties, you could probably take 0 golems or 5 golems and the outcome would be the same.

Saying that the outcome would be the same is an oversimplification, if 5 golems doesn't make a difference then they are worthless.

[Ozymandiaz]

That sounds like a great solution to the fundamental balance problem, and I suspect the "harder" factions for each will be a blast. 

I concur!

[Wingflier]

I disagree, not every one wants to get punished for using the cool things in a game. Wyvern's idea of an oldschool mode seems like a nice idea, if you liked how they used to be, but I think X's minor faction idea has this covered - just choose the harder one.

I don't like the idea of either being forced to use golems or not being allowed to use them at all.  This isn't a choice, this is an ultimatum.

[Arcain_One]

Heres some of my ideas:
-Bordering an AI planet with a broken golem increases AI waves to your planet by a small multiplier (+0.2 or about)
-The AI reinforces more on a planet with a broken golem
-Destroying the AI planet with a broken golem removes the additional wave multiplier, capturing the planet (and thus the golem) will yeald an additional 20 to AI progress
-Activating a golem increased AI progress again by 100
-Getting your golem killed or destroyed decreases AI progress by 100

My idea is that the AI knows about the broken golem but cant figure out how to activate it at this time. They also know that it would be devastating in the hands of the humans, thus needing to prevent the humans from gaining the golem. The AI will be threatened very much while the humans use a golem but if the golem is destroyed the AI can relax, hence the increase and decrease of AI progress. But since the AI has seen that humans can use this technology the AI is that much more cautious, via the 20 to AI progress upon capture.

I dislike the supply mechanic. This is Zenith tech, not AI tech, it should not be determined by what the AI has nor what it is doing. This is more valid by the fact that our inner planets are more vulnerable now by counter attack post and using your golem to defend it with should be a viable and practical option.

I also dislike the reinforcement and multiplying waves part, but those make sense. The AI will want to destroy the golem as soon as possible. I just hope it will be toned down.

Another point: how strong should they be? Obviously they should start off by off setting the penalties of using them but if it is 1:1, only being exactly as strong as to equalize the penalties, why would the player use them? Equal penalties will make them only useful in diversion or other high strategies, other wise they will be just for show. I think they need to out weigh the penalties so the player would want to use them but not out weigh so much that it is over powered.

If using golems should be a minor faction then why not let the AI have a few golems on their planets as well? I'm thinking about 1 golem to about 20 planets, that would make a maximum of 6 golems to a maximum 120 planet map. Even better, it should be based upon AI difficulty (very much like the other factions).

Spire should get a similar treatment as Zenith. They seem to be just as powerful. The only issue I have with them is that you can not repair them. Being conservative this will  encourage me to hoard my spire craft and not use them unless I have an emergency. I would rather have a ridiculously high repair cost (and/or ridiculously long repair time). Otherwise they only seem to shine if they are in a suicide fleet. Perhaps they should also not operate under a certain health.

And for a different method instead of using a wave multiplier you could also see my other suggestion: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=1374

[x4000]

Thanks for the thoughts, guys -- while I understand some prefer to have them always be in the game, I'm simply not going to be going that route.  I've been down that road too many times before, and it's simply untenable.  Here's the core key fact:

The golems and the spirecraft are not a core part of the game.  As in, you have to buy an expansion to get either one of them. 

That means that to have it balanced with the golems/spirecraft in the core game in a balanced fashion means one of the following:
A. They have to be some form of self-balancing lame, as in the past, or
B. There has to be some sort of analogue powerful ships in the base game without any expansions, which devalues them, or
C. The expansions have to ramp up the difficulty simply by being enabled, in order to account for the golems' presence.


Suffice it to say, I was one of the players who did not use golems in regular play, and the few times I did even recently were kind of disappointing (an armored golem died waaay too fast, etc).  I've been chasing this for almost a year now, and I've simply had enough with that. 

The minor faction idea isn't just the "simplest idea" for how to solve the problem, I'm pretty convinced it's the only solution. Introducing various penalties and negatives and such are extremely hard to balance, and they tend to just make players not use them at all.

And for those complaining about higher difficulties: you're not losing anything here, you're gaining.  Read my post again, I talked about two minor factions for each.  One that makes the scenario harder, the other which just gives you beefed-up golems without that.

At any rate, I'm not really considering alternate suggestions for ways to make them implicitly balanced with themselves, as I've just been chasing that far too long and I'm convinced there's not a good way to do it.  We've had hundreds of people making suggestions, and I've tried half a dozen or a dozen broadly different approaches, and nothing satisfactory has come of that in a year's time.  That's when it's time to punt.

[Wingflier]

Thank you for your consideration x4000   You've taken us this far, I trust your decision.

[x4000]

Thank you for your consideration x4000  You've taken us this far, I trust your decision.

My pleasure, and thanks for the trust.  By the way:

If Golems were merely given a large energy cost to use, as well as a small AIP gain upon activation (say +25 or so), it could be a good way to balance them without causing too much risk for the players, at least the kind of risk that can't be recovered from.

That's pretty close to my original implementation for them.  It was about 400k or 600k energy for most of them, and the AIP ranged from +10 to +50, I think, but people absolutely balked.  Actually, right at the start they also had an AIP penalty on death, but then later I took that out and it was just the activation one.  People didn't like that, either.

Golems have been all over the place in the last year, which is why I made the decision I did...

[Wingflier]

Like I said I trust you.  It frustrates me that players disliked the energy cost and small AIP boost implementation, because that seems like a fair trade for a gigantic and powerful superweapon, without causing you to lose too much if you end up losing the golem (and in some situations, you might WANT to lose it to get rid of the energy cost once it's served its purpose).

Still the majority isn't always right, and I wish you would add another mode that simply gave golems an energy cost and small AIP boost (on capture, not on death) as before, but once again I respect your decision either way, and if anybody knows what's best for the game, it's you.

[x4000]

Well, there are a lot of things we might could do, but there are also time constraints at the moment.  If some people are just absolutely unhappy with the new options when they are out, then perhaps a third minor faction with more the design you suggest might be added.  But the problem isn't that the majority didn't like it, it's that I can't think of a single person, ever, saying that they used the golems in practice during real games.  I know I didn't.  That might sound like exaggeration, but it's literally true. 

Everyone knows I'm not one to just kowtow to the majority, but when things are unanimous or nearly so, I figure it's worth a look.  The main problem with the energy/AIP approach is that it's such a detour.  To get that much energy spare requires taking a bunch of extra worlds, and by the time you've done that your AIP is even higher.  And that's time the AI was retrenching, too.  By the time you actually are able to use the golem, you could probably have just killed the AI, was the feeling.  It felt like a long detour just taking you back to where you already were, in essence.

Granted, that was also with the reinforcement/wave boosts in there, but the power of the golems was previously such that that was more for the effect of the massive battles than actually as a true nerf (it was a nerf, but not as much of one as it was in recent versions).  It's complicated.

The other nice thing about having these as minor factions is that they can afford to be a bit too awesome without it having wrecked the entire core game.  Builds a bit of a firewall there, which I very much like.  I don't have to have quite the same stress about having wrecked the core game experience with the addition of a new feature that is always-on if players have X expansion, in other words.

[SRombauts]

As a new player, I have no great experience of what may be or may not be Golems, I only captured one yesterday...

I understand that permanent AIP cost may have been to costly to handle for most player, as it could have been for me. I prefer that a Golem enrage the AI or something like that, kind of temporary AIP cost only during the time you actually use Golem.

In the other hand, I am not really happy of having some "Golems for newbies", and I am not sure I will be able to handle a hard game before long

[Wingflier]

Did you ever try putting the energy cost for taking a golem at 200,000 or less? Now obviously, that may be a little low, and you certainly don't want to be giving them away for free; but between that and the ai progress increase, I feel as though that would be a strong enough disincentive to prevent players from taking them willy nilly. From the way you explained it, the only energy constraints you had tried were between 400,000-600,000, and even I agree that's a little excessive.

[x4000]

Hmm.  I may need to go ahead and do three tiers of golems/spirecraft, given the comments here.  We'll have an easy, medium, and hard set of them to hopefully appease folks.  For the medium, the drawbacks would be things like energy costs, etc.

[CoyoteTheClever]

So how is the AI going to be beefed up? Lets say I'm playing a game with both AI's at 7.0 difficulty. Will enabling the harder Golems or Spirecraft faction just boost this up to 8 or 9? Or will it change the difficulty in a different way?

I'd argue that if you are going to go with this route, you should make unique challenges presented by the AI when these options are available, or maybe even add in a third AI created by the two AI's upon discovering golems or spirecraft and wanting to have a means to deal with them.