The new nerfed resource outputs, with the same output at the very start but diminishing returns from techs/buildings (maximum output late game is roughly 33% for same planets, so 3x slower pace) means that game becomes slower as the game progresses (compared to before) and the Experimentors monsters become a PITA because they appear sooner with respect your research progress and you can build the army to cope with them much slower so they can easily overcome you except if you had an easy start, planned your research in advance and don't get the Experimentors outpost too soon.
A probable solution for both issues at the same time is to change default cost factor values in default/scripting/game_rules.focs.txt, as already tested in the first linked thread.
I think a conservative value for tech cost is 1.5, down from 2.0, i.e 25% cheaper. That should be the minimum decrease.
A cost of 1.0 feels like too much, research game becomes quite fast, 2x faster progress, with the corresponding exponential effect. That would be the maximum decrease.
Values in between have the undesired effect of getting ugly decimals in the techs costs, but that is a minor concern that could be solved later (and not for v0.4.10 release, probably no time for that).
There is another related issue about hulls being too cheap compared to ship parts, which in turns makes chaff strategies quite effective, that can be tackled at the same time.
Related threads:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=11629&hilit=chaff
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11597&p=100994&hilit=chaff#p100994
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11679&hilit=chaff#p101984
And finally, the general idea of not encouraging lots of ships to not make turn processing sluggish:
Recent addition of Arc Disruptor weapon helped against unarmored chaff but now we have tones of cheap hulls with one or two armor parts in the multiplayer games, and they are still rather effective, to the point of being silly to not spam some chaff to accompany your armed ships always, regardless of your enemy's fleet compositions, something like 2-4 chaff ships for every armed ship (probably more when you get access to big hulls).Geoff the Medio wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 12:23 pm Increasing costs of ships as more are produced is also intended to discourage players from producing lots of ships. There are or were major problems with effects evaluation slowing down turn processing and making the interface sluggish whenever effects updates ran. Keeping ship numbers low helps with this. Having fewer shups in general also makes the ones that are present more important and notable for players.
Summing up, I suggest (and I've been playtesting):
- 1.2 for techs.
- 0.6 for buildings and parts.
- 0.9 for hulls.
Thoughts?
I'd like to make a PR with those values ASAP for inclusion into v0.4.10.