How are your 1.006 observer games going? The Acutians are *crushing* mine

[GC13]

The Acutians were always a potent race in the past, but in 1.006 they seem to have received an extreme upgrade. They just won five games in a row. I didn't catch when the first one ended, but the other four all ended with complete Acutian victory in any year from 3015-3017.

[lifehole]

Getting the same thing. They are winning within 25 years every single time non-stop. Form a fear empire within 7 years every time. Insane.

Alright, they seem to win EVERY game except ones we're they're pinned down by a race from the start. I just tested about 10 games. They won all of them in 20 years or less except the one where they were pinned down by a spacefaring evucks immediately as soon as they became spacefaring.

If the devs want these games to last 30-50 years they've gatta balance out the races/make them less warlike. In all of the games including the one where they didn't win it was over within 20 years. Same applies to basically all games of this I've played.

[ptarth]

The devs are coming from a perspective where they are trying to force a successful game to last ~50 years (via Federation Points in 1.005 and now larger Influence costs in 1.006) first, before trying to fix the underlying mechanics. As I've repeatedly argued in other threads, I think they would have better success in fixing the bugs and underlying mechanics first and then tweaking the parameters that lead to game length afterwards.

Then again I'm just another voice on the internet telling people what to do.

[Conductorbosh]

They've won every observer game I've run as well. The longest they've taken to conquer the galaxy was 13 years, shortest was only 7.

[lifehole]

The devs are coming from a perspective where they are trying to force a successful game to last ~50 years (via Federation Points in 1.005 and now larger Influence costs in 1.006) first, before trying to fix the underlying mechanics. As I've repeatedly argued in other threads, I think they would have better success in fixing the bugs and underlying mechanics first and then tweaking the parameters that lead to game length afterwards.

Then again I'm just another voice on the internet telling people what to do.

Pretty much. There is so much wonkiness in the sim that it looks like a completed game on top but the mechanics/balance behind it still feel like an alpha/beta.

[Histidine]

Maybe we should relook at the race differentiation changes in 0.906 (one of which was a tripling of Acutian base build speed[/url].

[th_pion]

good to hear I'm not the only one...However I had some obs matches where the acutians did not win. A lot of silly thing happen and the AI plays really stupid in every match though. Let's just list a few things:

-Bombing still takes ages and sometimes does nothing.
-Offensive ground troops seem to trade super effeciently against defending ground troops (this might be intended, because they have air support?)
-A lot of times races just don't build any ships (this may have good reasons, but if they wanna avoid getting crushed by other races, they might wanna change their strategy)
-Small or medium sized fleets are bombing a planet (VERY slowly) for ages, while they could just sent in a few ground troops to takeover the planet.

[x4000]

The devs are coming from a perspective where they are trying to force a successful game to last ~50 years (via Federation Points in 1.005 and now larger Influence costs in 1.006) first, before trying to fix the underlying mechanics. As I've repeatedly argued in other threads, I think they would have better success in fixing the bugs and underlying mechanics first and then tweaking the parameters that lead to game length afterwards.

We're doing a number of things at once.  The simulation side has gotten a number of upgrades in the last two versions, and a number of fixes.  Hence the Acutians suddenly acting more powerful, etc.  The things on the player side have also been something we've been working on at the same time, because the simulation stuff matters quite little if the player can't interact with it properly, or is able to affect it too easily.

[NickAragua]

-Bombing still takes ages and sometimes does nothing.
-Offensive ground troops seem to trade super effeciently against defending ground troops (this might be intended, because they have air support?)
-A lot of times races just don't build any ships (this may have good reasons, but if they wanna avoid getting crushed by other races, they might wanna change their strategy)
-Small or medium sized fleets are bombing a planet (VERY slowly) for ages, while they could just sent in a few ground troops to takeover the planet.

As of 1.006, this is not what I've observed at all.

That being said, yes, the Acutians are super powerful now.

[x4000]

Lots of stuff coming for 1.007: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=The_Last_Federation_Post-1.0_Release_Notes#Solar_Map_Balance

I've been running loads and loads of observer mode playthroughs since seeing this thread (maybe 15ish so far), and a lot of the tuning and so forth needed amounts to changing some numbers.  A lot of the things that seem wonky are things that are out of balance now that other mechanics have been cleaned up or adjusted (rates of bombing, whatnot), and thus the old numbers caused unforeseen consequences.  It's the sort of thing you get with a game this complex, where you never quite know what the knock-on effects are going to be when you have lots of subsystems interacting with others.

At any rate, as a result of the changes I've made so far in 1.007 (and am still working on), I'm seeing a lot more variance in which races win, and it takes them far longer to do so, with more interesting wars happening along the way, and more planets being traded back and forth, etc.  There are also some games where two races got killed off, and then all the other races liked each other pretty well, and so it pretty much just would speed along with everyone being pleasant to everyone else!  I love it when that sort of thing happens, but it's always been very rare.

[lifehole]

Again I am amazed with your response to the community and I completely retract my previous statement on how it seemed like a beta. I wasn't approaching it from the right view, where I had thought that all the variables were off it was probably just a couple, causing imbalances, as you said. Thanks for the superfast response and update time (yeah I know it's just this week but it really is appreciated.)

[GC13]

Those changes look great. I'm so glad to see the Thoraxians getting some love. I have a thread up on our subreddit about the poor critters who are supposed to be the terrors of the solar system.

I run observer games every time a patch comes out. Since patches come out rather late at night (long days in the code mines, eh?), I'm not really ready to get to a real game yet, but I just can't stay away. When the Acutians short-circuited my enjoyment by ending it so quickly, well, the rest is in the patch notes, isn't it?

[x4000]

Again I am amazed with your response to the community and I completely retract my previous statement on how it seemed like a beta. I wasn't approaching it from the right view, where I had thought that all the variables were off it was probably just a couple, causing imbalances, as you said. Thanks for the superfast response and update time (yeah I know it's just this week but it really is appreciated.)

No problem at all, and no offense taken.

Those changes look great. I'm so glad to see the Thoraxians getting some love. I have a thread up on our subreddit about the poor critters who are supposed to be the terrors of the solar system.

I run observer games every time a patch comes out. Since patches come out rather late at night (long days in the code mines, eh?), I'm not really ready to get to a real game yet, but I just can't stay away. When the Acutians short-circuited my enjoyment by ending it so quickly, well, the rest is in the patch notes, isn't it?

Makes good sense to me!  And I intend to do two releases today; one very shortly from now, ideally.

[Azurian]

Two releases today,  Whoah.  Your going to run out of errors.

[x4000]

Two releases today,  Whoah.  Your going to run out of errors.

That's the idea.