TLF Version 1.610 Released (Burlust Resurgence)

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.com/tlf-version-1-610-released-burlust-resurgence/

Version 1.610 has some substantial refinements to the Armada Management screen for Betrayal Mode, and it also includes a completely-revamped style of battle with the Burlust warlords.

Balance-wise, this also really tunes things up for Betrayal Mode in general.  Your armadas now take time to upgrade themselves, which prevents you from doing "just in time" armada repairs or beefing.  Additionally, you no longer get the full set of resources from each planet you capture, instead only gaining 10% of what it used to be -- so that prevents you from getting such a snowball effect going there.  This also applies to AIs, of course.

Also on the balance front, a lot of the expansion-related ships have had their values tuned.

 

Let us know how things are looking, if you have suggestions or bug reports, etc!

More to come soon. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.

[Misery]

Ah, the Burlust bit is in now!  I hope I didn't screw anything up with it, haha. 

I didn't change how much health/shields it has though.  So that number could be a bit high, I"m not really sure (or it might be fine).  If anyone thinks it's taking too long, just say so.  Though of course it's not meant to be a very short battle.   The damage values for it overall are likely still a bit off.


On the note of the Burlusts, one thing I'd thought of recently is the mechanics of how the whole thing works. There's alot of things with them that end up feeling unnecessary or just outright useless, in terms of the various options on their political screen.  Rather than repeat myself too much though, I'll just link to the mantis ticket I set up for this just now: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=16014

[x4000]

Makes sense!  I think it's something that I'll have to mull over a longer period of time after 2.0, though.  We're ending the period where I can really go hardcore-TLF without introducing instability into 2.0, and frankly without impacting the schedule for Stars Beyond Reach even more than it already has been.  Not that we're going to stop TLF development or something, but we've been in a really busy cycle with it for a while, and that's going to be winding down as happens periodically with AI War.

[Misery]

Sounds good to me.

When does this release exactly?  You mighta mentioned it before, but heck if I can remember.  But it's all looking like alot of stuff is finished or nearly finished now (at least as far as I can tell), though I still havent messed enough with Betrayal mode myself yet.

[Teal_Blue]

Makes sense!  I think it's something that I'll have to mull over a longer period of time after 2.0, though.  We're ending the period where I can really go hardcore-TLF without introducing instability into 2.0, and frankly without impacting the schedule for Stars Beyond Reach even more than it already has been.  Not that we're going to stop TLF development or something, but we've been in a really busy cycle with it for a while, and that's going to be winding down as happens periodically with AI War.

Stars Beyond Reach ?   Hmmm... interesting title, i like it alot, even more than SE. Anyway, round 2 for TLF looks promising, and am hoping for a sneak peak sometime at SBR. 

[nas1m]

Another good one!
I am looking forward to no longer being obliterated on sight by Obscura Discs early game.
Time to start testing Invasion mode for real .

We're ending the period where I can really go hardcore-TLF without introducing instability into 2.0, and frankly without impacting the schedule for Stars Beyond Reach even more than it already has been.  Not that we're going to stop TLF development or something, but we've been in a really busy cycle with it for a while, and that's going to be winding down as happens periodically with AI War.

But you will remember to add the still missing start and/or end cutscenes for Betrayal and Invasion mode, right ?
It's a bit bare-bones without them .

[nas1m]

On the note of the Burlusts, one thing I'd thought of recently is the mechanics of how the whole thing works. There's alot of things with them that end up feeling unnecessary or just outright useless, in terms of the various options on their political screen.  Rather than repeat myself too much though, I'll just link to the mantis ticket I set up for this just now: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=16014

For convenience (and hopefully Chris' feedback) I will repeat my comment from Mantis here:

The "can always use a bribe item instead of the other mechanics" issue could be resolved by a given warlord (or any other person in the game for that matter) only being bribable (is this a word?) using a specific bribe item (like in "Book of X") exactly *once*. I always thought that being able to bribe the same person using the exact same item indefinitely is extremely weird - kind off breaks immersion for me = /.

This would reduce the amount of usable bribe items significantly if bribing excessively and thus "encourage" the player to look for alternatives once a suitable bribe item can no longer simply be bought conveniently at the black market. If need be the black market's assortment of goods could be reduced to a subset of the available bribe items types at all times.

This would also encourage Pirate Convoy Raids - which is good in my book!

Finally not being able to bribe a given Warlord any more is a nice additional motivation to get rid of him and thus for doing a bit of duelling, right ?

This could even be feasible in the short term, no? Well depending on how hard it is to track which bribe items are still eligible for a specific leader...
But I think this change would complement the Duell changes nicely in terms of freshing the Burlusts up a bit and even providing soemthing for the game in general.

Thoughts ?

[Misery]

Another good one!
I am looking forward to no longer being obliterated on sight by Obscura Discs early game.
Time to start testing Invasion mode for real .

Yeah, lemme know if anything else goes berserk at you or somehow seems out of place or is doing really extreme damage.  I'm fairly sure nothing else should be doing that...   The 2 boss ships though havent had as much testing as the others, so there may be issues with those.   Or if anything seems too weak.  This goes for all of the new "normal" ships as well.  And definitely for the Warlords, which have had the least tweaks right now.  I apologize in advance (sort of) if it takes a billion years to kill one.  I suspect that 8 million shield points might be a tad much.  I'm not sure.  Ideally the battle should last as long as a more normal battle against lots of ships would. 


As for the bit with the bribe items, the one issue I have with it is that typically, if I'm using bribes for something, it's not always really a "strategic" move, but more of a "make it not take forever" sort of thing when there doesnt seem to be any other options.  The game I finished last night, the Boarines were the last holdouts to get into the Federation, and I had two options:  Either get them into it via influence to force a vote, or get them to have 300 mutual relations with one of the others that could convince them.  Either option normally would take bloody forever, so I just stuffed them full of books or something to make it not take nearly as long.  Though, those items are very expensive, which to me is some of the trade-off here.

Other than that, I personally dont use the bribes particularly often;  the main ones to use them on seem to mostly be the Burlust, but there's only so many things you can ask those guys to do, so there's only so much need for that.  That being said though, it does get quite a bunch of leverage with a given warlord, so some sort of limit on those guys might be an idea indeed.... though, right now, the Burlust mechanics in an overall sense are pretty unbalanced, so there might be only so much that can be done without actually making changes to how they work to sort that out.

Other players though may have more input on how exploity bribe items are right now.  I'm definitely not an expert on the strategic side of the game here.

[nas1m]

As for the bit with the bribe items, the one issue I have with it is that typically, if I'm using bribes for something, it's not always really a "strategic" move, but more of a "make it not take forever" sort of thing when there doesnt seem to be any other options.  The game I finished last night, the Boarines were the last holdouts to get into the Federation, and I had two options:  Either get them into it via influence to force a vote, or get them to have 300 mutual relations with one of the others that could convince them.  Either option normally would take bloody forever, so I just stuffed them full of books or something to make it not take nearly as long.  Though, those items are very expensive, which to me is some of the trade-off here.

Fair enough. Although I would expect that given the (fairly big) number of different bribe items in the game that are illegible for a given race (with varying degrees of effectiveness, but nonetheless) the scenario you described should still be possible - assuming that you didn't bribe the heck out of the current regent to some other end earlier .

[x4000]

Cheers!

The release date for this is November 14th, so it's exactly 2 weeks from today.

And yes, the start and end text stuff, and some of the other places where the tutorials and whatnot are not properly handled, are still on my list, don't worry.

Regarding the Burlusts, that's an interesting discussion on Mantis.  I think it needs more fleshing out, though.  The biggest problem I have with your suggestion, nas1m, is interface clarity.  Making it so that specific warlords are immune to further bribing by only specific bribe items is super easy to code, but it's something that would be a nightmare to code clearly.

Having specific warlords max out at a certain amount of bribing might be good, though.  And possibly having them become resistant to the blackmail over time, too.  And possibly making it so that there's a greater reward with the primary warlord if you duel a secondary warlord and win... but only for a few times, and then there's no more gains there.

So basically you could hit a point where a given warlord absolutely is unable to be influenced by you anymore, so there's a strong incentive to take him out just so there's someone to deal with at all.

Thoughts on that?  Any suggestions on thresholds for those limitations (total amounts of leverage that can be gained via each method before they cap out on a warlord)?  I don't tend to negotiate with the Burlusts at all directly, personally, so I have limited play experience with that.  I tend to either kill them or get other races to convince them to do things.

[nas1m]

Thoughts on that?  Any suggestions on thresholds for those limitations (total amounts of leverage that can be gained via each method before they cap out on a warlord)?  I don't tend to negotiate with the Burlusts at all directly, personally, so I have limited play experience with that.  I tend to either kill them or get other races to convince them to do things.

Not much that I can contribute on this account, sorry. I tend to handle the Burlusts in the same way - mainly due to the fact that the duels necessary to acquire the leverage required to make them behave (aside from spending precious credits)  used to take ages . I am really looking forward to trying out the new ones! I guess I will wait for 1.611, though...

Regarding the Burlusts, that's an interesting discussion on Mantis.  I think it needs more fleshing out, though.  The biggest problem I have with your suggestion, nas1m, is interface clarity.  Making it so that specific warlords are immune to further bribing by only specific bribe items is super easy to code, but it's something that would be a nightmare to code clearly.

To actually code clearly in terms of, well, coding? Or to present it to the player in a clear way? My first thought on how to represent this in the interface was to add a list of either the bribe items (or treasured possessions ) a given leader already possesses or a list of items he or she is most anxious to get his or her hands on to the screen that opens when selecting a bribe item for bribing (it's fairly empty anyway - at least in my memory).
This simple(?) addition would allow the player to determine which bribe items still could be "applied" to a given leader with presumably minimal UI work - presuming the respective information is already available from under the hood... 

Having specific warlords max out at a certain amount of bribing might be good, though.  And possibly having them become resistant to the blackmail over time, too.  And possibly making it so that there's a greater reward with the primary warlord if you duel a secondary warlord and win... but only for a few times, and then there's no more gains there.

So basically you could hit a point where a given warlord absolutely is unable to be influenced by you anymore, so there's a strong incentive to take him out just so there's someone to deal with at all.

This would be a working substitute for my proposal, yes. But please allow me to like my idea a bit more ...

[x4000]

I mis-wrote, sorry.  "A nightmare to SHOW clearly, not code."

[Misery]

The main problem I have is that they should also be more WORTH bribing... as in, you can get them to do a few more things.  Currently, my usual interaction with them is to get them to go to war with anyone that's being a bit too strong at the time; keeping that race busy so they dont go bonkers (and giving the Burlust someone to go nuts at as well).  But they just dont DO much else.   Which is too bad, as there's all sorts of war/battle-related concepts that could probably be applied to them.  Nobody else really has many options as war goes other than starting one, or stopping.

For example, perhaps there could be an option to have them intercede in a battle that's taking place somewhere.  So if I had, say, the Andors being attacked by the Thoraxians, then as long as the Burlusts dont have extreme hate for the Andors (and as long as the Burlust armadas are both prepared enough), I could get them to quickly jump in to defend against the Thoraxians (or assist the Thoraxians) regardless of relationship status, and without it being a full "war" (so the contract ends when the battle does);  it makes sense to me in that what the Burlust gain is a chance to fight things more, since shooting and stabbing things seems to be their entire existence, haha.   Getting them to aid you in other battles that you jump into where you might know that you're going to want allies might be another idea for a contract with them.  I can see alot of uses for both.

[nas1m]

The main problem I have is that they should also be more WORTH bribing... as in, you can get them to do a few more things.  Currently, my usual interaction with them is to get them to go to war with anyone that's being a bit too strong at the time; keeping that race busy so they dont go bonkers (and giving the Burlust someone to go nuts at as well).  But they just dont DO much else.   Which is too bad, as there's all sorts of war/battle-related concepts that could probably be applied to them.  Nobody else really has many options as war goes other than starting one, or stopping.

For example, perhaps there could be an option to have them intercede in a battle that's taking place somewhere.  So if I had, say, the Andors being attacked by the Thoraxians, then as long as the Burlusts dont have extreme hate for the Andors (and as long as the Burlust armadas are both prepared enough), I could get them to quickly jump in to defend against the Thoraxians (or assist the Thoraxians) regardless of relationship status, and without it being a full "war" (so the contract ends when the battle does);  it makes sense to me in that what the Burlust gain is a chance to fight things more, since shooting and stabbing things seems to be their entire existence, haha.   Getting them to aid you in other battles that you jump into where you might know that you're going to want allies might be another idea for a contract with them.  I can see alot of uses for both.

+1 on all accounts. I would love to see an action to send one race to the aid of another!

[x4000]

Yep, that's definitely something I want to explore sometime in the 2.0 era, too.  It's going to have to wait at least a few months, I'd say, though, what with all the Stars Beyond Reach stuff.  I really need to get some proper focus there, now that TLF is coming into a good spot to stick for a while.