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Balance and Learning Curve

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zeusalmighty:
Been trying a serious playthrough post-shields and here's a few observations:

Balance:

*Turrets: These feel very fragile (some of them more so than others). Since these are the first line of defense and may need to hold their own until fleet can arrive, I think a substantial buff to health pool would make them fulfill their role better

*Ark: I would like to get more out of this unit. Feels more of a liability than a "King" as it stands. It makes sense that we shouldn't be bringing it to AI planets unless there's a juicy hack. In that vein, I would like to see some defensive hacking options as well. Sensor hacks that reduce AI range on your planet, for instance. This would give player more utility while also making tough decisions--do I try to get that design downloaded or use hack points to defend crucial chokepoint?

Learning curve:
*Hacking: It needs to be obvious in tooltip how much a particular download costs, etc. It should also be clear to player that certain hacking options are unavailable after you capture a planet--had to reload because I lost access to a nice hack

*Threat: This number gets high fast and it's intimidating. It's not clear how this should affect your decision making since it's not obvious where that fleet is going (e.g. hunter v sentinel)


Will add more as I make more progress, didn't want this to be too long anyway

chemical_art:


--- Quote from: zeusalmighty on March 22, 2018, 02:47:49 pm ---
*Threat: This number gets high fast and it's intimidating. It's not clear how this should affect your decision making since it's not obvious where that fleet is going (e.g. hunter v sentinel)


--- End quote ---

If it were possible I'd like it to be along the lines of "agitation" vs "aggression" or something along those lines to differentiate between the two to make it more clear for the player.

etheric42:

--- Quote from: zeusalmighty on March 22, 2018, 02:47:49 pm ---*Threat: This number gets high fast and it's intimidating. It's not clear how this should affect your decision making since it's not obvious where that fleet is going (e.g. hunter v sentinel)
--- End quote ---

In the upcoming UI update (knock on wood) there is a top-level interface that tells you where incoming waves are headed with a timer and their strength.  The remainder of the threat (unless I am mistaken) are ships that are now free to become aggressive but will not do so unless an opportunity presents itself.  There's another layer to the UI (will likely come closer to 1.0) that will give you the locations and strengths of these "opportunistic" threats so you can preemptively... deal with them.


--- Quote from: zeusalmighty on March 22, 2018, 02:47:49 pm ---*Hacking: It needs to be obvious in tooltip how much a particular download costs, etc. It should also be clear to player that certain hacking options are unavailable after you capture a planet--had to reload because I lost access to a nice hack
--- End quote ---

More than on the tooltip, it should probably be on the button itself.  Chris was working on that interface piece today so I'll pass him a note.

The Ark and Turret comments are a bit out of my baliwick, but from a player perspective I agree with you that I want to see more out of my Ark (especially since there are multiple skins to choose from) and it's so BIG and IMPRESSIVE.  I think that it is in its current state because previous balance iterations made it able to solo/trivialize early planets, while being teaching players to lead with their "game over" piece which is a Bad Idea on later planets.

BadgerBadger:
So I was puttering happily along until 20K threat showed up from a CPA. Now every planet near me has a force stronger than my fleet. Here's a save game if anyone wants to check it out.

zeusalmighty:
Not sure if this a bug or feature of the "Usurpers"--they reclaimed my planet and added a new Data Backup for space tanks

I recaptured the planet and the data backup was still present (to my surprise) and I attempted to hack it. It launched a wave of space tanks but I did not unlock the space tanks after the hack  (this suggests a bug)

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