New version .906 (RAM Usage, Race Uniquness, Split Difficulty)

[keith.lamothe]

Things have improved hugely and the first battle is now a completely new beast from what it was all those versions ago.  I was worried initially that it might be too much but really the concepts are quite simple to grasp.

Glad to hear it

I can only apologise that I have not had much input into the process (not nearly as much as I'd have liked anyway) - a lot of work came in and overtime was the order of the day. I hope what suggestions I did offer were helpful and that the game is a great success - I'll be recommending it to others certainly. It's like nothing else out there at the moment I think.

No need to apologize.  We were under no illusions that all the testers would be able to put in a lot of time (playing or giving feedback).  Even just a few contributions from each one makes it well worth our while.

We're also really grateful to the testers that do put in a ton of time (some just playing it and letting us know if anything seems wrong, some logging truckloads of bugs in mantis, some giving lots in-depth feedback on the game, etc), but we certainly don't expect everyone to have that kind of availability

[Chthon]

The new difficulty names might confuse newer players, how can you have lower normal and upper normal without a normal.

Maybe each difficulty should have an individual name.

Just a thought.

I agree. Lower and upper normal just sounds weird. How about just going with boring old easy/normal/hard/very hard?

I vote for a Medium difficulty and an "Extra Medium" difficulty

[Histidine]

The baseline skill of races in ground combat now have more of a spread. Previously the spread was important, but since the addition of the tech tree (a looong time ago) it was something where the differences would get kind of washed away by the late game.

• Acutians: 2 to 3.
• Andors: 1 to 0.3
• Boarines: 1.2 to 2
• Burlusts: 3 to 9
• Evuck: stays at 1
• Peltian: 0.3 to 0.01
• Thoraxian: 10 to 50
• Skylaxian: stays at 1.

So it takes 900 of those furry little critters to overrun a single Burlust soldier? (I don't even want to think about what the Thoraxians will do to them...)

I know your policy is "make big changes so they can be felt," but maybe a 30x reduction is just a little too much... 
But I haven't played with it yet; it'll probably turn out fine.

[keith.lamothe]

So it takes 900 of those furry little critters to overrun a single Burlust soldier? (I don't even want to think about what the Thoraxians will do to them...)

Bear in mind that the Peltian's ground-attack multiplier is only relevant when they're defending their own planet.

When invading another planet, as their "Peltian Suicide Pods" (or whatever it says) notification-sidebar thing implies, their procedure is:
- load 1 million soldiers in 1 million personnel transports (drop pods, really)
- decide the personnel transport is a more effective weapon than the soldier
- aim transport at enemy population, thrusters to full

And thus Peltians actually trade troops 1-for-1 vs even Thoraxians when "invading" a Thoraxian planet, regardless of ground-effectiveness tech.  On top of their massive orbital bombardment multiplier, this makes Peltians actually the most fearsome invasion force out there in terms of the damage they can do (not so much kill-to-loss ratio, but hey).

But if the Thoraxians ever invade a Peltian planet... lightsabers through melted butter.

[madcow]

Peltian tactics at their finest (in poor quality vid, sorry!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowPka21BNc

I can just imagine the soldiers asking their general: uhh sir, why do we need to go into the transport BEFORE you launch it as a weapon at the enemy, can't you do that without us?

[chemical_art]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or if the Actuians are broken, but if I attack their armadas at a rate of 4 per solar month, they still manage to make their numbers increase!

[keith.lamothe]

I can just imagine the soldiers asking their general: uhh sir, why do we need to go into the transport BEFORE you launch it as a weapon at the enemy, can't you do that without us?

Guidance Software.