Looking for opinions on 8.20

[Zebeast46]

As the thread says I am just looking for opinions on 8.20, personnaly, I think it is a great step forward but right now there are an awfull lot of balance issues and bugs associated with this patch and I have not gotten around to mantising all of it. This thread also comes with a question, have any of you had a moment where youare forced into an international incident you never really wanted to become part of, I have not had too much time to fiddle with it and find out all the details so I figured I might as well just ask here. And finally, Chris, if you are reading this, I am wondering when you will add in the option to choose your racial leader. Just curious about the timeline   .

[x4000]

Lots and lots of stuff coming in 0.821 in a few minutes, which should actually resolve the lion's share of the balance problems believe it or not.  I'm super surprised myself.  Not that there won't be tons of problems still on that front, but it's a huge number of strides forward.

In terms of international incidents getting you in ways that you don't want, that's supposed to happen to some degree, but not to the degree that it is currently possible.  There are some key safety valves that are missing on that at the moment, I've discovered.  Didn't have time to add those in yet today.

Regarding choosing your racial leader, I'm going to be waiting 2-3 weeks on that.  The reason being that I want to really do it right and get the full screen in there for choosing your custom difficulty level stuff, as well as doing BestBuy.com-style comparisons of your leaders and their attributes.  Anything less is just going to feel fiddling, in my opinion.  It's an important issue, but in the short term it takes a back seat for me.

[ptarth]

Another thought is that Racial Leaders should be balanced and introduced when the other major bonuses are also introduced and balanced, if not later. Currently with wonder, resource, & market item balance up in the air, there is lots to do before adding racial leadership bonuses on top of all of that.

[ptarth]

Thoughts about 0.821.

• Damage and health rescaling looks really good.
• Missiles are now in the do not open box.
• Thoraxian bonuses mean they outgun us by x5-15.
• They are packing 300 damage versus our 48.
• Repairs on Saucers is terrifying.
• Glad its the Andors and not me.

[crazyroosterman]

personally I still don't understand why the boarines decided to make a building next to my city when were like a thousand miles(especially the boarines who id expect to want to keep away from me) also I thought racial (for you) were just flavour I didn't now there meant to affect gameplay that's pretty neat.

[TheVampire100]

I'm confused. A lot. Can someone try to explain the most basic stuff? My city was suddenly surrounded by flying saucers, I felt thrown into XCOM.
It is nice finally to see soem engaging between the races but the way it's done is so confusing and irritating. How can you defend against flyong saucers? There is a new building so I thought it was this, but it didn't do anything. Anti Air would be my next guess but they still bomb my buildings in a single attack.
Ugh, I abandonded directly my save after I couldn't bear it anymore. Even if I'm not the primary target of the saucers, I still have to live in fear if even one targets my city.
And if you attack a single one you start an entirely new incident instead of adding to the ones that are already there.
"Oh no, look what he's doing!"

[jerith]

I'm confused. A lot. Can someone try to explain the most basic stuff? My city was suddenly surrounded by flying saucers, I felt thrown into XCOM.
It is nice finally to see soem engaging between the races but the way it's done is so confusing and irritating. How can you defend against flyong saucers? There is a new building so I thought it was this, but it didn't do anything. Anti Air would be my next guess but they still bomb my buildings in a single attack.
Ugh, I abandonded directly my save after I couldn't bear it anymore. Even if I'm not the primary target of the saucers, I still have to live in fear if even one targets my city.
And if you attack a single one you start an entirely new incident instead of adding to the ones that are already there.
"Oh no, look what he's doing!"

• Hostile saucers have a glowing red border -- any others should leave you alone. (Don't attack non-hostiles, or they'll become hostile.)
• The saucers have different attack types which you defend against differently: Ground Troop Carriers drop soldiers on you, Air Force saucers attack like helipads, etc.
• I'm not entirely sure how best to kill them yet, but I've had reasonable success blowing them out of the sky with helipads. I have an elite team of scientists developing a Hover-Teacup, but they keep running out of milk and sugar.

[crazyroosterman]

I'm confused. A lot. Can someone try to explain the most basic stuff? My city was suddenly surrounded by flying saucers, I felt thrown into XCOM.
It is nice finally to see soem engaging between the races but the way it's done is so confusing and irritating. How can you defend against flyong saucers? There is a new building so I thought it was this, but it didn't do anything. Anti Air would be my next guess but they still bomb my buildings in a single attack.
Ugh, I abandonded directly my save after I couldn't bear it anymore. Even if I'm not the primary target of the saucers, I still have to live in fear if even one targets my city.
And if you attack a single one you start an entirely new incident instead of adding to the ones that are already there.
"Oh no, look what he's doing!"

• Hostile saucers have a glowing red border -- any others should leave you alone. (Don't attack non-hostiles, or they'll become hostile.)
• The saucers have different attack types which you defend against differently: Ground Troop Carriers drop soldiers on you, Air Force saucers attack like helipads, etc.
• I'm not entirely sure how best to kill them yet, but I've had reasonable success blowing them out of the sky with helipads. I have an elite team of scientists developing a Hover-Teacup, but they keep running out of milk and sugar.

I really need to get out of the habit of shooting saucers as soon as I see them I might just end up living longer. ps I think it stems from back when the ai would shoot you in the face as soon as it saw you if it could

[tombik]

I tried to continue with a save in which where I was having a fight with Thoraxians, but Thoraxians find me cute and was not attacking back.

First Thoraxians just started to crush me with artillery, with one shot one kill moments, my whole military buildings are collapsed.

Then, Burlusts and Boarines started their assasination on me. I dont know what is this, but it hurt.

Then, Burlusts attacked everyone.

I have 7 population in my capital. They are infants. All are 1 year old. They get decimated each turn, but new ones are born. I guess producing with replication or smt. Or they get their sex-ed way too early. Still, I dont die.

[ptarth]

re: Tombik you should read the beta Intro post and watch the intro videos. Citizens are cloned coming out as adults with complete and functional knowledge of everything.

re: 0.821
I take back all the bad things I said about missiles. Even at 120k each, they are the only weapons that work against saucers. everything else lacks the range and damage to do something useful. I'd need 6-10 barracks or helipads to destroy 1 saucer in a single turn. If I can't kill them in 1 turn, they repair back to full health. Missiles do 900 damage for my Peltians and have beautiful 15 range. That's an effective area of 721 hexes versus your 217 hex area Barracks or 331 hex area Helipad (Note. Yes. I did do a comparison between the base Barracks and Helipads versus the near maximum Missile Launcher. Don't tell anyone.) Also, I'm looking at 48 damage from a baseline Helipad, versus 900 damage for a baseline missile (Yes, baseline. They get bigger).

[tombik]

re: Tombik you should read the beta Intro post and watch the intro videos. Citizens are cloned coming out as adults with complete and functional knowledge of everything.

Really? The creatures in the intro videos seemed quite childish back then.

But good to know it is not "birth rate" by traditional means.

[Captain Jack]

re: Tombik you should read the beta Intro post and watch the intro videos. Citizens are cloned coming out as adults with complete and functional knowledge of everything.

re: 0.821
I take back all the bad things I said about missiles. Even at 120k each, they are the only weapons that work against saucers. everything else lacks the range and damage to do something useful. I'd need 6-10 barracks or helipads to destroy 1 saucer in a single turn. If I can't kill them in 1 turn, they repair back to full health. Missiles do 900 damage for my Peltians and have beautiful 15 range. That's an effective area of 721 hexes versus your 217 hex area Barracks or 331 hex area Helipad (Note. Yes. I did do a comparison between the base Barracks and Helipads versus the near maximum Missile Launcher. Don't tell anyone.) Also, I'm looking at 48 damage from a baseline Helipad, versus 900 damage for a baseline missile (Yes, baseline. They get bigger).

I've had the same experience, saucers are all but invincible and missiles cut through them like tissue paper.

Easy solution: saucers don't heal. Think that'd do it?

[crazyroosterman]

re: Tombik you should read the beta Intro post and watch the intro videos. Citizens are cloned coming out as adults with complete and functional knowledge of everything.

re: 0.821
I take back all the bad things I said about missiles. Even at 120k each, they are the only weapons that work against saucers. everything else lacks the range and damage to do something useful. I'd need 6-10 barracks or helipads to destroy 1 saucer in a single turn. If I can't kill them in 1 turn, they repair back to full health. Missiles do 900 damage for my Peltians and have beautiful 15 range. That's an effective area of 721 hexes versus your 217 hex area Barracks or 331 hex area Helipad (Note. Yes. I did do a comparison between the base Barracks and Helipads versus the near maximum Missile Launcher. Don't tell anyone.) Also, I'm looking at 48 damage from a baseline Helipad, versus 900 damage for a baseline missile (Yes, baseline. They get bigger).

I've had the same experience, saucers are all but invincible and missiles cut through them like tissue paper.

Easy solution: saucers don't heal. Think that'd do it?

agreed after they are raiders they shouldn't be acting like tanks when their doing an operation thematically it makes séance with them being so far away from their home territory unless they take engineers with them their hardly going to be able to repair them self's.