Very Bad Influence is too bad

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wobbly
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Very Bad Influence is too bad

#1 Post by wobbly »

Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 2:13 pm Very bad influence is really bad for Replicon and any other empire. And really annoying for a species that is expected to expand a lot, if they can't pay for the needed influence.
Let's make them average influence together with bad shields?
I'd love to see them have faster growth and the very bad influence act as the natural break. 1 idea is to unlock growth policy from start or give them phinnert's fast colonization or both.

Edit: Note they do like feudalism, which is in their fluff as well. This should maybe be the go to for their influence issues

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Re: New species trait: Shields

#2 Post by Ophiuchus »

wobbly wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 7:41 am
Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 15, 2022 2:13 pm Very bad influence is really bad for Replicon and any other empire. And really annoying for a species that is expected to expand a lot, if they can't pay for the needed influence.
Let's make them average influence together with bad shields?
I'd love to see them have faster growth and the very bad influence act as the natural break. 1 idea is to unlock growth policy from start or give them phinnert's fast colonization or both.

Edit: Note they do like feudalism, which is in their fluff as well. This should maybe be the go to for their influence issues
I do not see anything in the fluff saying they "expand a lot"; they do like Colonization policy though.
Fluff sais they are feudalism oriented and keen on attacking other planets. Feudalism policy does not work well with invasion.

One road to feudalism via divine authority is via xenoarchaeology. Xenoarchaelogy also is needed for Mind of the Void, which fits nicely and is also liked by Replicon.
For xenoarchaeology translinguistics are necessary which provides both fitting Native Appropriation and Nearly-Universal Translator.

So making a replicon empire standard path about neutral planets would be nice. So I guess I am in favor of keeping them bad influence.
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Re: New species trait: Shields

#3 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:31 am So I guess I am in favor of keeping them bad influence.
Keeping them Very Bad? or making them Bad instead of Very Bad?

I prefer Bad over Very Bad. And leave Very Bad only for some native species.

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Re: New species trait: Shields

#4 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:58 am
Ophiuchus wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:31 am So I guess I am in favor of keeping them bad influence.
Keeping them Very Bad? or making them Bad instead of Very Bad?

I prefer Bad over Very Bad. And leave Very Bad only for some native species.
Very bad I guess. But I dont know how bad very bad is. Replicon have a lot of stability, so maybe that can be converted into influence somehow (if one has a replicon-pure empire)?

We could also make racial purity increase influence +1 for imperial species (or trade e.g. stability above 20 for influence). Note i think maybe racial purity should not nerf exobots (is that a bug?).

They like two luxury specials, so black markets would help - if they find a way to bring stability down.
OTOH if they can push many planets to 20 stability, capital markets is an option. Replicon could also like those. Maybe Divine Authority is a good combination.

The hunt also fits quite well, one would need colonize with hunting targets.

From principle I think it is good to include a very bad species (if it is not broken) - in order to encourage different playing styles.

If balanced right, if one has a lack of influence it should be possible to go a neutral-planets way, or a no-policy way (,or ???).

That said - if Bad encourages different playing style, and Very Bad is very bad, I am totally open for Bad.
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Re: New species trait: Shields

#5 Post by Oberlus »

Some simplified calculations to answer that "how bad is (very) bad" (and how good is good).

S: average colony pop size
F: average colony IP flat bonus
U: total IP colony upkeep is (#colonies - 1)*sqrt(#colonies)-3 (from the palace)
O: IP output from a colony set to influence is SpeciesTrait*sqrt(S)+F
Number of colonies required on influence focus to pay for the upkeeototal colony upkeep is round_up(U/O).

So, number of colonies set to influence (the more, the worse):

Early game? S=9, F=0
#Colonies Very Bad Bad Average Good Great
5 1 1 1 1 1
10 6 4 3 2 2
15 13 9 7 5 4
20 21 14 11 7 6
During the initial stage (<10 colonies), the influence species trait is not a limitation or a boost, thanks to the palace flat bonus.
At 10 planets, very bad already need >50% of the empire set to influence. At that mark, very bad should have better flat IP bonuses or get out of game.
Assuming Replicon had greater average population than other empires (16 instead of 9), it would still need 5 out of 10 planets, or 16 out of 20 planets set to influence.
When you require more than a third of your empire focused on infuence, more colonies won't help much (sweetspot varies depending mostly on unfocused bonuses). When you hit 50% more colonies will hurt.
So Replicon Very Bad is not "fast colonization" no matter what other traits you add to them: when you can build colonies cheaper and faster than your enemies, but you have half their producing planets, you won't produde colonies faster. Plus you will produce warships slower.


Mid game? S=16, F=1
#Colonies Very Bad Bad Average Good Great
10 3 3 2 2 1
20 11 8 7 5 4
30 21 16 13 9 7
40 32 24 20 14 11
50 46 34 28 20 16
60 60 45 36 26 20
With a flat bonus of 1 IP per colony, things get better for (very) bad, but not by much.
At the 30 colonies mark, average species can have 17 planets set to PP and RP. If we take that as the base value:
Great has +35% PP&RP, Good +24%, Bad -18%, Very Bad -47%

Late game? S=25, F=2
#Colonies Very Bad Bad Average Good Great
20 7 6 5 4 3
40 22 17 14 11 8
60 40 32 26 19 15
80 63 49 40 30 24
100 88 69 57 42 33
120 116 91 75 55 44
Calculating the same percentages than above, we get
At the 40 mark, Great is +23% PP&RP, Very Bad is -30%.
At 80 planets, Great is +40% and Very Bad is -50%


Bad influence is worse than bad research/production/population. Very bad influence is... very bad.
It is not noticeable at the beginning of the game, but for galaxies with more than 100 systems, Very Bad influence is a huge drawback.
As always, one can overcome that by having other species in the empire to do the influence job.


Feudalism policy is something else. Bonus to industry focused from in-system, same-species, unwoned planets. It's quite niche (how often do you have in a system 2+ planets habitable for the same species?) plus annoying (colonize+independize). This' been discussed somewhere else, but I don't know if Feudalism will ever change or stick to current form.

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Re: Very Bad Stability is too bad

#6 Post by wobbly »

Tailor them to tall + indies? Good pop + likes metropoles?

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Re: Very Bad Stability is too bad

#7 Post by LienRag »

Note that it's possible to play without Influence at all...
I tried it on a full Empire, not from start, though.

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Re: Very Bad Influence is too bad

#8 Post by Oberlus »

wobbly wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 8:44 am Tailor them to tall + indies? Good pop + likes metropoles?
Sounds good for some other species. I like Replicon as an expansive galactic non-xenophobic cancer.

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Re: Very Bad Stability is too bad

#9 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:49 am
wobbly wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 8:44 am Tailor them to tall + indies? Good pop + likes metropoles?
Sounds good for some other species. I like Replicon as an expansive galactic non-xenophobic cancer.
the fluff does not fit that so well currently. they are robotic and feudal and warlike and industrious.
They started as an exact reversal of Cray, I simply reversed the stats and hit 'save as', I'm thinking fluff text around the idea that they may once have been some sort of precursor Exobot, similar to the Happybirthday, but they're smarter.

But ultimately I wanted a straightforward Radiated world species, and we didn't have a playable industry focused robotic race which given the emphasis on production and robotics in the tech tree felt off.
Someone moved trith to radiated (first narrow, then standard), and also the extinct Kilandow are radiated standard. So the niche got smaller, but there is still not a lot of competition. (Before that this was the Replicon superpower)

the current traits and likes fits original intention, the fluff and also your imagination (besides the very bad stability).

good attack troops would fit the fluff better (it sounds like constant conquest, so rather worse at defending than at attacking)

They wont have a problem if they have another species taking care of influence; so Id say upgrade racial purity to give it some agency in a single-species empire.
Give an influence boost for influence focussed planets ("Yeaah we are so great. The best. Everybody (who counts) sais so").

I like wobblys suggestion more (make the well suited species for going tall and indies) than making it a superspreader species. But both roles would fit well for playable species. I do not care about replicon so much, do you want to adopt them (like I am kind of responsible for Sly and peaceful hidden expansion)? .
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Re: Very Bad Influence is too bad

#10 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:24 am
Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:49 am I like Replicon as an expansive galactic non-xenophobic cancer.
the fluff does not fit that so well currently. they are robotic and feudal and warlike and industrious.
Why you say so?
Feudal kingdoms always want to become empires. I mean, feudal is compatible with expansive.
Replicon, the name, makes clear they replicate, and if you replicate a lot, you need more room, so you better expand.
Robotic has nothing against being expansive or non-xenophobic.
Maybe my mention to cancer is confusing? I just intended to stress the expansive.
Industrialism is so good for expansion.

And that's why I wouldn't like Replicons to be tall and not expansive.

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Re: Very Bad Stability is too bad

#11 Post by wobbly »

As far as their current policy likes are concerned, apart from feudalism (which is in the fluff), I picked them based on 2 things.
  • The name Replicon suggests spamming. If you knew nothing other then the name its what you'd assume they were.
  • I wanted at least 1 race to have a simple/newbie friendly path and figured Replicon were a reasonable choice for that
Around half of the species policy list was done by me. Basically I did every species that was missing policies at the time and I did them in bulk and figured individual species that needed attention later could be reworked by anyone who was interested. I just made sure they all had a set. While I did try and match them to the fluff where possible, some of the choices are also based around which policies looked less "busy" and similar decisions. I guess I'm saying most of the races current policy set are a little arbitrary.

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Re: Very Bad Stability is too bad

#12 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 1:08 pm
the fluff does not fit that so well currently. they are robotic and feudal and warlike and industrious.
Why you say so?
Because fluff does not say they are fast at replication. Or that they like to build colonies. It sais they like to invade

I don't mind adapting the fluff

But if a species is about building colonies it sounds it should rather go wide. So I would expect bad pop, good influence, like colonisation. Radiated environment seems fitting.
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Re: Very Bad Influence is too bad

#13 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 2:08 pm Because fluff does not say they are fast at replication. Or that they like to build colonies. It sais they like to invade
Their name is part of their fluff, right? And in this case, Replicon has a strong flavour of... replication.

I don't mind changing their name back to what they had, Radon, and making them bad at expansion.

And I wouldn't mind having to add something about liking to colonize new planets in their description. However, is there any species in the code base with a description about liking to colonize other planets?

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Re: Very Bad Stability is too bad

#14 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 3:26 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 2:08 pm Because fluff does not say they are fast at replication. Or that they like to build colonies. It sais they like to invade
Their name is part of their fluff, right? And in this case, Replicon has a strong flavour of... replication.
I read it like replicator, like able to replicate anything (like in star trek).

Humans also have strong flavour of replication btw
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Re: Very Bad Stability is too bad

#15 Post by wobbly »

I guess my vote is try them at bad and leave very bad for natives.

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