Thoraxians got sort-of broken by latest patch (Observer mode observations)

[eRe4s3r]

Lo, I dunno how much the devs did this kind of macro observation, but I figured I was bored and wanted to see why the Thoraxians never got anywhere in my games after the patch, this is not saying they are WEAK, they are far from it, it's just that the patch introduced a rule that kills Thoraxians in ALL my observed games first. The rule is "population growth set to 0 when under attack"

Observation game 1 - Thoraxians dead in year 3
Observation game 2 - Thoraxians dead in year 7
Observation game 3 - Thoraxians dead in year 4

..... ?

This is a problem. The most dangerous (according to Lore?) race in the game, does not get of the planet unless Hydral is helping them, and I do mean helping them as in "preventing them from being insta-pwned by the first or second race that's space faring)

This is related to various problems (the race is very weirdly nerfed as only race in the entire game)

The first attack now cripples Thoraxians, because of their raiding usually there are very few armadas camping on their own homeworld at the beginning, so first attack deadlocks growth (set to 0) and thoraxians die.

Solutions (Possible solutions, need further macro observations to see whether they do what I think they would do)

Every 5m pop, Thoraxians get a princess = (+1m pop growth) (+10% of whatever the current pop growth is) . Princess is a potential queen, but aside that, only responsible for her own section of the hive on a planet. This stacks.... so default growth-rate at the beginning of the game is +5.05m , not +1m exponential growth danger here, which is fitting for this race.

Thoraxians get exempt from bombard population growth block rule for first 10 years of game time.

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Q: Why is not yet on Mantis?
A: I want to see whether it's just me noticing this and specifically if others have better ideas to fix the race. Or if it is just a thing affecting my games by chance.

[Shrugging Khan]

Thoraxians died first on my last game too, and they were the starting race.

[wwwhhattt]

The Thoraxians got wiped out early on in my first two tries and are fairly weak in my current game, and I haven't played with the new patch yet.

I didn't pay any attention to why they were killed though (beyond the Acutians becoming a huge ball of death).

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah Acutians were the dominant force in all those observer mode games on fast-forward..... but they didn't always win. Alliances that popped up created interesting dynamics, but Thoraxians were not part of that ;p

I am not sure what specifically caused the Thoraxian weakness before, but I assume the low pop growth is the problem. With lower pop growth it also makes a huge impact when early attacks set growth rate to 0. But even without that, Thoraxians have the lowest pop growth of any race (as far as I could see, maybe Boarines have this problem too) I didn't pay attention here which race died second ;P

[Mick]

I didn't realize that Thoraxians had the lowest population growth. That woudln't have been intuitive to me since they are the insectoid race (I'd think it'd be the opposite).

I really think this game needs some kinda "race details" screen that shows the various bonuses/penalties that each race has in different areas. It's information you can find outside the game if you really dig for it (like in patch notes), but in-game it's still very much a black box. These differences can be very large too, like the difference between Thoraxians and Peltians in ground combat strength is HUUUUUUGE (there is really not enough U's available for how big it is), but you wouldn't necessarily know unless you read it somewhere like on this forum or the wiki.

[nas1m]

I didn't realize that Thoraxians had the lowest population growth. That woudln't have been intuitive to me since they are the insectoid race (I'd think it'd be the opposite).

I really think this game needs some kinda "race details" screen that shows the various bonuses/penalties that each race has in different areas. It's information you can find outside the game if you really dig for it (like in patch notes), but in-game it's still very much a black box. These differences can be very large too, like the difference between Thoraxians and Peltians in ground combat strength is HUUUUUUGE (there is really not enough U's available for how big it is), but you wouldn't necessarily know unless you read it somewhere like on this forum or the wiki.

Seconded. I would definitely like to see something like this as well!
Care to Mantis it ?

[eRe4s3r]

I didn't realize that Thoraxians had the lowest population growth. That woudln't have been intuitive to me since they are the insectoid race (I'd think it'd be the opposite).

Note that I mean "observed population growth" I have no idea what the numbers are in code ;p The effect of all numbers is that Thoraxians barely (if at all) grow.

So I guess I should put this in Mantis, but I haven't seen any ideas how to fix this beyond my own.

[MooN]

The first attack now cripples Thoraxians, because of their raiding usually there are very few armadas camping on their own homeworld at the beginning, so first attack deadlocks growth (set to 0) and thoraxians die.

Solutions (Possible solutions, need further macro observations to see whether they do what I think they would do)

Every 5m pop, Thoraxians get a princess = (+1m pop growth) (+10% of whatever the current pop growth is) . Princess is a potential queen, but aside that, only responsible for her own section of the hive on a planet. This stacks.... so default growth-rate at the beginning of the game is +5.05m , not +1m exponential growth danger here, which is fitting for this race.

Thoraxians get exempt from bombard population growth block rule for first 10 years of game time.

------------------------------------------------

Q: Why is not yet on Mantis?
A: I want to see whether it's just me noticing this and specifically if others have better ideas to fix the race. Or if it is just a thing affecting my games by chance.

ehm that is actually a good idea, since i realized the same after trying to only help the thoraxians and none other race... but they get wiped out every time no matter what i did (even ion cannons bomb shelters as first researches as well as the food research didn't help)

another thing i found was

the option to kill the queen if u fight against them is .... a bit to easy to pull off... everytime i tried i killed her and it went bad for thoraxian (just as a side note^^)

[eRe4s3r]

Interestingly the idea of princesses would allow the Thoraxians to recover from a lost queen to boot ;p With a new mood, and potentially serious growth bonus for 1 cycle....

Overall, I think we need more such systems to prevent "too easy" complete destruction of races. But I am going to post this on Mantis now.. if I remember how that worked.

[Billick]

I think that the thing is that the Thoraxians are supposed to be a "warlike" race, but they don't really seem care about technology.  Tech is the key to winning wars though, so they end up getting their metathoraces handed to them in all the wars they start.  The Burlast have the same problem to a lesser extent.  In the current observer mode I'm running it's around the year 3150.  Every race but the Skylaxians and Evucks have long been wiped out, the reason being that those two races got a big tech advantage over everybody else.  They are now locked in a stalemate, with almost even tech, and entrenched positions on the planets they own.

[eRe4s3r]

Well unsurprisingly technology domination matters in mid to late-game, but not so much early on. I think 90% of what you see in year 3150 is stuff that was decided in the first 10 years of the game. Ie by starting pop, growth rate, trade-routes, early attacks, events and so on. And just stacked and ramped up over time.

I think if we talk about races that have no balance issues it'd be Skylaxians, Acutians and Evucks. (Or they are OP, depending on your viewpoint.)

Maybe Thoraxians need to be changed to a Enders Game style Hive race, not warlike, but simply "alien" give them passivity yet massive expansion potential, and only respond to attacks, never raid unless at war.

It seems to me, that Thoraxians literally kill themselves with those raids. And it's a typical thing for warlike races to never get anywhere in games like this. The true power is long-term strategy, which is why Acutians usually end up being the dominating race (but this apparently depends on when they become spacefaring) I've seen Evucks win, and Skylaxians too.

Anyhow, I am really a bit at a loss how to fix Thoraxians. More growth and princesses would not make them MUCH stronger. Technology would come via growth and expansion to stations and buildings, but the problem is their hostile nature makes them often (for me, always) the first to die. And so they can never develop.

[Billick]

I think it's a combination of things.  You're definitely right that the warlike races are overaggressive.  I also think they get themselves in a tech hole early, and it just gets worse as the game goes on.  The Acutians were actually pretty strong in my simmed game, but they got tag teamed out of the game.

[keith.lamothe]

Ah, yea, the birth-rate-zero-under-attack thing is just too harsh then, will change it back to "birth rate cannot exceed natural death rate while under attack".  If we don't at least cap it there then there are sometimes situations where the planet is breeding people faster than massive orbital bombardment can kill them.  Cute, but wrong.

Thoraxians, as individuals, are much larger and much more dangerous than the other races.  So their population density and growth and such are much lower.

In the hundred+ observer games I watched during the various phases of alpha the Thoraxians often took over the whole system.  For a while they were probably the most likely to do so.  The Burlusts and Peltians were the other two likely overlords.  But probably various balance changes towards the end of alpha effectively nerfed the Thoraxians.

[Wingflier]

I've had similar experiences with the Thoraxians, even before the patch. In my last game I probably spent over 10 years doing dispatches for them just to build their infrastructure and armada, and in the end they were still one of the weakest races in the game. This was even before the patch.

[Raide]

I blame the ability for non-spacefaring races to discover tech. Particularly Skylaxian, even when they become spacefaring in mid-game they come out as already way too strong. Meanwhile Burlusts and Thoraxian don't really grow in tech, infrastructure or armada even if they become spacefaring very early on.

I think one solution is to provide exclusive techs for Burlusts and Thoraxian focusing on benefit early game that feels right for their race: the brutality and warlike nature of Burlusts or the insectoid, parasitic nature of the Thoraxian. Instead of laser pistol and vibroblades, they could use heavy shotgun or corrosive acid spit. They also don't need Universities to develop such things.