Zenith power generators too strong?

[allmybase]

After reading that action report where the guy had 2 zenith power gens within 2 hops of his homeplanet, I wonder if ZPGs are way too strong. He was noting accurately that each ZPG is worth about +100 metal/crystal because of the power efficiency.

It seems to me the best tactic is to keep rerolling maps until you get some that are reasonably close.

I don't think any other capturable is quite that desirable, what do you guys think?

I remember reading about how the game designer tried to encourage you to take more planets and one of the ways he encouraged that was reactor efficiency, but ZPGs very conveniently bypass that design limit so it's actually probably the best gameplay to keep a very small number of planets just taking ZPG planets and ARS planets.

[Mánagarmr]

Rerolling the map to get Zeniths will be REALLY annoying, since you can't see them on the galaxy map where you pick homeworld. You actually have to scout them out in game, which can take hours. They might be overpowered, but rerolling to get them...no.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, if you start with full visibility, or that sort of thing, it's pretty quick to see if there are ZPGs... but honestly if the player wants to play that way (without actually cheating), who am I to make them not do so?

[Doddler]

Zenith power is powerful but... I think it has it's place.  For one, with things like Golems, Zenith reserves, and the like, it is nearly impossible to sustain such things without zenith power.  Additionally, Zenith Power is weak.  It's death confers an additional penalty of AI progress, and it is frequently positioned in a way that is difficult to defend.  Against an AI using ships that bypass forcefields, it can sometimes be impossible to secure a zenith power.  While starting near a zenith power is quite lucky, the existance of zenith power generators functions similar to that of an advanced factory, it's limited in its existance and encourage players to take extreme risks and possibly overextend their reach in order to take and control them.

Although the note that zenith power is aproximately +100 metal/crystal in terms of saved resources raises a pretty good point.  Building a zenith power at 1.6m resources would take you almost 4.5 hours to recoup the costs.  I should put more thought into it building one of those before hand I guess. 

[WinterBorn]

They seem just right to me

[Kjara]

Taking the math a bit further, a zenith power plant is worth about 2 good planets:

A good planet(at least 6 resource spots) gives 16x2+12*6=104 resources.

A good planet (that has at least 3 unique neighbors--you want this for knowledge raiding purposes anyhow), allows you to build 4 mkII power planets at full efficency, giving 160k power.  This is worth a bit more than say a fab, but I don't know if its that over powered. 

Thus, taking two additional planets would be approx equivalent to the gains from the powerplant(well the planets would be slightly better since you would get knowledge as well, but slightly worse since you would get aip and would need to spend some knowledge towards defending them since they would eat into your turret caps).

Also, remember that the 100 of each resource is potential savings, when you first take it unless you can instantly use all of the power its providing, you will have some of that energy going to waste and won't be getting quite as much of a boost.  In my game, until near the end I wasn't able to use much of the 2nd plant at all, so that one was in reality not really saving me much of anything.


In response to building them, yeah they are pretty much never worth building(at least early), as they give the ai way too much time to reinforce and slow you down way too much, you would be much better off putting those minerals/crystals into taking at least 2 planets(and for that amount of metal/crystal, you should be able to take more than 2 planets).  Late game if  you wanted to say field a golem or needed a zenith reserve for a final push, I could see an arguement for them, esp if you have the extra resources sitting around.

[keith.lamothe]

Hmm, I think that perhaps the mapgen rule for "minimum hops from human homeworld" for a ZPG needs to be looked at (for increasing, if it's even there at all right now).  The units themselves seem fine, as they have significant tradeoffs, and I really don't want to nerf them and read 20 threads on how useless they are

[Ozymandiaz]

Most of my games (well, all except one), I have either had to build a ZPG myself or get one far away. But my most recent game had a few of them rather close.

I now have captured 3 ZPGs, and built 1. I run my whole empire on them

But it is not without a cost, instead of going for the best planets, I formed my core planets around the ZPGs, so I got a few non optimal planets that I had to take. And I only came out slightly a head then avarage. No need to build Mk II and III reactors (yet at any rate), but on avarage the planets I got was more meh.

Imo, they are not overpowerd at all. If you want to re-roll all your maps until you get them close, well, thats your chooise, and not a game balance thing . I for one re rol maps untiel I see a structure I like, tehn I take it from there. Going into the unknown is more fun I think, sometimes I get lucky, and somtimes the unknwon gives me opportunities with good rewards if I dare take them

Also remember the penalities on them. Loosing one sucks. So having many of them means you need to defend them as well, more so in CPAs. Defending my empire in CPS is not that much fun since Irun the risk of incuring more AIP, and face a sudden energy crises. (when I think about it, I should build all the MK II reactors and just offline them now before I loose teh ZPGs....)

All in all, they can provide nice benfits if done right, but they are not the be all end all.

[RCIX]

I got one two hops from my home planet; However it happened to be next to the planet i kept open for warpins. Thus, i had two planets with warpins, so i have dual MkII generators and maybe a MkI to protect it, plus a zillion turrets. Overall, i think it's fair (my turret caps are heavily depleted for the number of planets i have).

[SgtScum]

Hmm, I think that perhaps the mapgen rule for "minimum hops from human homeworld" for a ZPG needs to be looked at (for increasing, if it's even there at all right now).  The units themselves seem fine, as they have significant tradeoffs, and I really don't want to nerf them and read 20 threads on how useless they are

Nooooo! Don't tweak the mapgen rules to make them all spawn far away. It's a rare treat to get a capturable ZPG just a few hops from the homeworld and makes for an easier starting game vs the harder ai types.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the feedback, it is helpful when considering the use of the code-axe

Hmm, this would take a bit additional coding, but I could make it so that a maximum if 1 would spawn within 2 (3?) hops of a human homeworld, and a maximum of 2 (including the other) would spawn within 4 hops of a human homeworld, and further out than that it's fair game.

I'm not emotionally attached to the idea, feel free to shoot it down

[Mánagarmr]

Not a bad idea actually. As someone stated, a single ZPG near your homeworld is a really nice boon, but two rapidly steps over the bounds into "ridiculously easy". So your idea is not at all bad, if it's doable.

[SgtScum]

Yeah that would be a good compromise if you could have a chance for at least one to spawn nearby and the other to always spawn some distance away regardless of where the first spawned.