Make pro/res tech increases 0.1 or 0.2 (huge nerf)

[UrshMost]

I've been trying out some different values and

building cost .5
tech cost 1.4
part cost .5

seems to work pretty well. Its not exactly like it was but doesn't seem to drag later on any more. The tech cost at 1.4 is more powerful than what it was but it works for now until things settle down again.

What species do you use? Do you focus more planets on production or on research? How big and dense (total systems and systems per empire) are your galaxies?
Making research 1.4 (-30%) and the production costs 0.5 (-50%) means that building things is cheaper than getting techs. I haven't made numbers, but I'm wary of changing current balance between production and research. Since the nerf means that the HW production keeps having a larger weight on total stats for longer, I'm worried turning the scales towards production might encourage going military and postpone getting research/production boosts.

Edit: I've been testing 0.5 and 1.0 and it gets relatively fast.

For my balance testing I was playing human with medium everything, manic AI, 300 systems, 12 AI, (I normally play similar settings, but with more randomization). I generally focus planets on production unless they get a research boost for something. I try and balance research goals across most topics; growth, research, production, with weapons and hulls thrown in as appropriate. Historically I would have RP values somewhere between %25 - %50 of production values depending on the game.

I wasn't trying to say that these are the perfect settings, but for me it restored the game pace/balance to around what I was used to. I tried a few games with research at 1.0 initially and it seemed like research was progressing way faster than I was used to, but it could have been a fluke. With research at 1.4 it seems faster initially but seems to balance out later in the game.

[Oberlus]

Pop-based bonuses seems a bit too small since last rebalance. The nerf was too strong, and now blitzkriegs are much more effective. This makes production and offensive troop species quite powerful in crowded galaxies.
Rushing research techs like Quantum Computing or Enclave of the Void became much less interesting and too often counter-productive (I've seen this past 11th and 12th game already; swaq can comment on it, he gave me some insights on the issue with research).
Upping flat-based bonuses from techs and reducing the research cost of some of them could solve it.

Adaptive Automation is a bit OP. For a mixed focus empire it can imply +50% production mid-game. Upping flat-based bonuses could also solve this too.

Nascent AI might be a bit UP. The bonus seems OK but the RP cost seems a bit too big.
Artificial Minds (upgrade to the upgrade to NAI) is certainly UP. It was a bad idea to make it +1 and bound to research focus. Upping the bonus from +1 to +2 (as suggested time ago by Morlic) could solve it.

[drkosy]

The current boni are ridiculously overpowered and unbalanced. The reason for that is actually quite simple: Originally there had been 4 basic resource types: food, minerals, industry and research. The tech tree was roughly balanced to account for that. However, when we discarded minerals and food, we didn't rebalance the tech tree accordingly, but just switched techs that gave boni to food or minerals to give boni to pop or industry. The end result is the mess we have now.

Maybe a solution could be to make infrastructure more important and switch some of the techs to improve that instead of production or science. Fusion Power could improve infrastructure (increased energy production) and some science techs could be switched as well (gives better communication). That only would mean to give infrastructure a real mean in the game.

At the moment, my only idea would be to connect it to production and science output, because factories need energy and science need communication an energy.
To give an example: 20 infrastructure could give 40 production (on industry focused planets) or 40 research (on science focused planets). AI factorys could improve production on all planets (regardless of focus) by 5 but reduce infrastructure by 5 due to high consumption of energy. That means a colony with science focus would produce 30 research and 5 production.
You have always to consider if it's worth to use that tech. That would give more tactical decisions for research path.

So far my 2ct for this discussion

[Oberlus]

Infrastructure is banned from performing too similar to population (that is, both boosting industry and research). It was like that long ago but it was changed for good.

[Ophiuchus]

AI factorys could improve production on all planets (regardless of focus) by 5 but reduce infrastructure by 5 due to high consumption of energy. That means a colony with science focus would produce 30 research and 5 production.
You have always to consider if it's worth to use that tech.

If I get your idea correctly that would break another design decision: Researching Tech always has to improve your situation (as you cant get rid of it).

[Oberlus]

Upping flatpop-based bonuses from techs

The values I'm considering for testing:

RESEARCH

Tech or Building	RP prev.	Turns prev.	RP	Turns	Focus	Bld.	Rstrc.	Bonus 0.4.9	Bonus 0.4.10	Bonus new	0.4.9 / new
Base research per pop								0.2	0.2	0.2	1
Algorithmic Elegance	0	0	24	3	Yes	No	No	0.1	0.05	0.05	2
Quantum Networking	334	17	400	6	Yes	No	No	0.5	0.1	0.2	2.5
Distrib. Thought Comp.	656	11	150	5	No	No	No	0.1	0.1	0.1	1
Distrib. Thought Comp. (psi)	206	11	150	5	No	No	No	0.1	0.1	0.1	1
Stellar Tomography (black hole)	1134	23	250	6	Yes	No	No	1	0.2	0.5	2
(neutron)	1134	23	250	6	Yes	No	No	0.75	0.15	0.3	2.5
(blue/white)	1134	23	250	6	Yes	No	No	0.5	0.1	0.2	2.5
(yellow/orange/red)	1134	23	250	6	Yes	No	No	0.2	0.05	0.1	2
Collective Thought Net.	1034	23	800	7	Yes	One	Yes	0.5	0.1	0.2	2.5
Enclave of the Void	1856	28	300	5	Yes	One	No	0.75	0.15	0.3	2.5
Energy Metabolism	2488	27	400	15	Yes	No	No	0.5	0.2	0.3	1.67
Total*								3	0.975	1.5	2

(*) Stellar Tomo. bonus is considered as mean of (blue/white) and (yellow/orange/red) values.

INDUSTRY

Tech or Building	RP prev.	Turns prev.	RP	Turns	Focus	Bld.	Rstrc.	Bonus 0.4.9	Bonus 0.4.10	Bonus new	0.4.9 / new
Base research per pop								0.2	0.2	0.2	1
Robotic Production	0	0	24	3	Yes	No	No	0.1	0.05	0.05	2
Fusion Generation	24	3	48	3	Yes	No	No	0.2	0.05	0.1	2
Solar Orbital Gen. (blue/white)	260	10	200	8	Yes	One	No	0.4	0.15	0.2	2
(yellow/orange)	260	10	200	8	Yes	One	No	0.2	0.1	0.1	2
(red)	260	10	200	8	Yes	One	No	0.1	0.05	0.05	2
Industrial Center I	24	3	60	4	Yes	One	No	0.2	0.05	0.1	2
II	84	7	300	5	Yes	One	No	0.4	0.1	0.15	2.67
III	384	12	1000	7	Yes	One	No	0.6	0.15	0.25	2.4
Collective Thought Net.	1034	23	800	7	Yes	One	Yes	0.5	0.1	0.2	2.5
Energy Metabolism	2488	27	400	15	Yes	No	No	0.2	0.1	0.2	1
Hyperspatial Dam	334	17	400	5	Yes	One	Yes	1	0.2	0.4	2.5
Black Hole Gen. (available)	1744	18	300	4	Yes	One	No	1	0.2	0.4	2.5
(create)	2444	37	300	4	Yes	One	No	1	0.2	0.4	2.5
Total**								3.2	1	1.6	2

(**) This considers bonus from SOG (blue/white), IC III and BHG/Hyperspatial Dam (only one applies).

That is, roughly increasing total end-game bonus by 50% with respect to current values in master and v0.4.10.1.
It should make techs like Quantum Networking and Industrial Center interesting earlier (currently they give too little return to worry about them until having many colonies and several growth techs). After enough testing I shall adjust RP values.

[drkosy]

Infrastructure is banned

Maybe it should be renamed in stringtable but actually I can't think of something that fits well

Researching Tech always has to improve your situation

It was just an idea, somehow it would has to be worked out. Maybe introducing some possibility to "deactivate" the usage of AI factories or introduce a building that has to be constructed to get that effect. But this is a discussion we do not have to engage into, due to infrastructure has been dropped already...

[Oberlus]

Infrastructure is banned

Maybe it should be renamed in stringtable but actually I can't think of something that fits well

The complete quote is "Infrastructure is banned from performing too similar to population". I meant that Infrastructure should not do the same as population, design principle which devs won't change easily (not there is any need). Infrastructure itself isn't banned. It's underused currently, but it has some uses.

[LienRag]

It really depends on what you're trying to achieve...
If your goal is to make early wars easier, or to make the Homeworld more important up to midgame, or to make Population more important, then yes your initial nerf was the way to go (and I have absolutely no idea whether these are legitimate design goals).
If it can makes less things become a no-brainer, it's certainly a good thing. NAI and AA have indeed become a little less of a no-brainer than they were before, but more because globally Research and Production techs are less relevant, not because there are more diversified viable research paths (at least that I was able to find).
I'm not sure about the mathematical reasoning of your first message, I basically saw the nerf as slowing everything. And how does slowing the game reduce snowballing ? It can slow snowballing, but to the same level that it will slow everything (or nearly everything, as the Homeworld is less affected - and especially the Homeworld's military production becomes much more important comparatively). Not counting that some snowballing is a good thing, especially in early game.
We only have one Tech/Building that give a flat bonus, the Automatic History Aanlyzer. And as such it is quite a no-brainer for Production-oriented species.
If there's a way to design more without making them no-brainers, maybe that can help ?
I quite like the complex conditions for the Interspecies Design Academy, maybe we can find similar ideas for these flat-bonus producing buildings ? Even more interesting if location is conditionned by enemy buildings too, so that a player could try to research them early in order to block his neigbours from building enough of them...


Your system of trial and error has some merit, but without discussing first the goals it should pursue I don't see how it can really bring the game towards a better equilibrium.

Artificial Minds (upgrade to the upgrade to NAI) is certainly UP. It was a bad idea to make it +1 and bound to research focus. Upping the bonus from +1 to +2 (as suggested time ago by Morlic) could solve it.

Why is the Artificial Minds flat bonus bound to Research focus ? The main interest of NAI was that it wasn't - so Production-oriented Species could start to have some Research going on once they crossed that threshold.

[drkosy]

Infrastructure itself isn't banned. It's underused currently, but it has some uses.

Thanks to make that clear to me It was just because I work on the german stringfile but now, I leave it as it is...

Why is the Artificial Minds flat bonus bound to Research focus ?

I guess it's to strong for excellent producers. You have the production to settle a lot planets in the beginning and than NAI boost you science to a high level. Actually, I run a test. Played the same map with scylior and replicon. At turn 120 the meters (PP, RP, Pop) of both species were nearly the same. That's why I think NAI is well balanced, but expecally fusion power and industry center brings the same effect and are very close together in the tech tree. Maybe some techs should just be switched (that was my idea of giving infrastructure more of a usage). Like Ascendancy ships could become energy as new meter witch could give fusion power an complete different meaning.