As always, these are my opinions.
Outline:
I. Scope of changes
II. Current state
III. Perceived problems currently
IV. Suggested solutions
I. As previously mentioned, the changes will be focused on guards for specials. In addition, i do not intend to address monster nests at this time (i don't feel like i've seen enough of these in my games to competently address balance at this time). It also does not apply to system specials, or to specials which are not generated at game start (Head on a Spike, the Monster Stealth specials).
II. Currently, the focs for special guards is a bit of a hodgepodge (note that guards are only generated if monsters are not off in game settings and ai aggression is not set to the lowest setting):
- There is monster_guard.macros, which defines a single macro CHANCE_OF_GUARD_1, which when applied has a 42% chance of creating either a Sentry or Maintenance Ship at the special's planet, or a 28% chance of turning the special's planet's species to Anicent Guardians (if
populated andnot high tech natives). The remaining 30% chance produces no effect. This applies to the following specials: the 9 Growth Specials, Computronium Moon (+.2 research/pop on all planets in empire with res focus). {I call this Tier 1 guards}. - Some monster guards are implemented directly into the focs files:
- Fortress: Fortress is something of a special case, since the special itself grants a number of inherent defensive bonuses, making the planet difficult to capture. The planet receives Shields +100, Defense +30, Troops +30, Detection +30, increased shield and defense regeneration, as well as 3-damage mines and a 5% chance each turn to create a sentry owned by the planet's owner, if no sentry is in orbit. In addition, on universe generation, the planet is always guarded by one Sentinel.
- Gaia (automatically terraforms and once Good, gives further bonus max population and happiness) is always guarded by one Sentinel.
- Ancient Ruins (+1 research/pop on res focus, random bonus on colonisation with xenoarchaeology) has a 90% chance of being guarded by one Sentinel.
- Panopticon (Planetary Detection Range +75, Empire Detection Strength +10) is always guarded by one Sentinel, with a 50% chance of a second Sentinel. {I call all four of these variations of Sentinel Defense Tier 2 guards}.
- Honeycomb (+0.5 industry/pop on all supply-connected planets with ind focus) is always guarded by one Warden. {I call this Tier 3 guards}.
- The remaining specials are unguarded {I call this Tier 0 guards}:
- Philosopher Planet: Infrastructure is reduced by 20. As long as planet is unowned, gives +5 to (target) research at all other inhabited planets in the system (regardless of focus)
- Eccentric Orbit: Supply -2, Research +3
- Abandoned Colony: Infrastructure +10
- Scrying Sphere: vision of all other planets in the galaxy with Scrying Spheres
- Kraken in the Ice: with Domesticated Mega Fauna and Xenoarchaeology, can release a White Kraken
- Tidally Locked Rotation: +0.2 industry per pop if ind focus, max pop decreased by 1 per planet size
- Temporal Anomaly: +5 research per pop if res focus, max pop decreased by 5 per planet size
- Resonant Moon: Buildings and orbiting ships have +10 stealth, some interaction with techs (bioterror facility, artificial moon)
- World Tree: Supply +1, Detection Range +10, Population +1, Happniness +5, all empire planets Happiness +1
- Organizationally, leaves a lot to be desired. Doesn't make sense that some of the guards are defined in a separate macro file and some are put directly into the focs files.
- Some of the unguarded specials are very imbalancing early game. Philosopher Planet and Eccentric Orbit can give massive research boosts (as much as doubling an empire's research with one colony). Kraken in the Ice can yield a ship far superior to anything that can otherwise be fielded relatively early.
- Special Guards can impede expansion, especially maintenance ships on the quite common growth specials. There are ways to work around this currently, but none that fully alleviates an aggravating obstacle that can impede the flow of the game.
- The randomness of the guards feels arbitrary. In the planets that use CHANCE_OF_GUARD_1, there is a chance of no guard, a chance of a sentry, and a chance of a maintenance ship. This is too large a range. For Panopticon, the difference between 1 Sentinel and 2 is too large.
- There is not always a correlation between power of special and the guards. In addition to the early game outliers mentioned above, this includes Panopticon (guards are too strong), arguably Fortress (too strong), Computronium Moon (arguably too weak), and arguably others.
- Move all the guards into monster_guard.macros, with varying levels of strength of guards. (I.e. add a CHANCE_OF_GUARD_2 with stronger guards than CHANCE_OF_GUARD_1, and so on).
- Add guards to the three specials mentioned: Philosopher Planet, Eccentric Orbit, and Kraken in the Ice. The other unguarded specials:
- Abandoned Colony: Infrastructure currently has very little game impact (i actually don't know if it has any), so this doesn't need a guard.
- Scrying Sphere: A double edged sword with relatively little impact in the vast majority of cases.
- Tidally Locked Rotation: A decently nice special, but not gamebreaking. A single additional colony is far better than finding this special, so in terms of balance not a gamebreaker.
- World Tree: Again, nice to have, but doesn't make-or-break.
- Resonant Moon: Minor Impact in the scheme of things. 10 stealth is usually not noticable, and it only applies to buildings and planets.
- Temporal Anomaly: A pretty large bonus but takes some tech just to colonize.
- This one is more difficult. Some ideas:
- Try to avoid producing specials at chokepoints, or find another pathing-related solution. The idea here is to avoid producing guards in a way that would obstruct empire expansion by not allowing specials in places that would get in the way. Seems complicated.
- Make more specials unguarded. As far as balance goes, this is just trading one problem for another.
- Reduce the spawn rate of specials. There is already a setting for this, so it's not clear how much tweaking this would help. Reducing the spawn rates of growth specials might help, since they seem, in my experience, to be the most egregious offenders.
- Weaken the defenders of growth specials. Growth specials are powerful, but just how powerful are they? I think eliminating maintenance ships at growth specials could be a decent compromise. A sentry is an obstacle, but one that can be overcome in a timeframe that can keep the empire competitive and will be somewhat (too little? too much?) offset by the special itself, at least when the special is of use (i.e. not an organic special for an entirely robotic empire, or any growth special for a phototroph or self-sustaining).
- Reduce the randomness of guards. Right now the biggest variances (as mentioned above) are [nothing <--> maintenance ship] and [sentinel <--> sentinel + sentinel]. I think a more reasonable range would be [ship <--> ship + lesser ship]. I wouldn't object to complete determinism here, but i can see how variety is also nice. The new tiers would look like (for example):
- Tier 0. No guards (same as now).
- Tier 1. Sentry
- Tier 2. Maintenance Ship + chance of Sentry (current tier 1 would be split into Tier 1 & Tier 2).
- Tier 3. Sentinel + chance of Maintenance ship (current Tier 2).
- Tier 4. Warden + chance of Sentinel (current Tier 3).
- Adjust the power of some specials and where they fit in the hierarchy of guard strength:
- Panopticon: Increase Detection Strength bonus from 10 to 20 (a bonus of 10 to stealth rarely changes anything. Most bonuses to stealth/detection are in multiples of 20). Reduce strength of guards from Tier 3 (current tier 2, i.e. Sentinel strength) to Tier 2 (~maintenance ship strength).
- Growth Specials --> Tier 1. (Instead of Maintenance Ship/Sentry/Nothing, these would all be guarded by a Sentry).
- Computronium Moon --> Tier 2/3. This is a pretty strong special that can increase the research of your whole empire.
- Philosopher Planet, Eccentric Orbit --> Tier 1
- Kraken in the Ice --> Tier 2/3
- Fortress --> Tier 2
- It is also worth considering adding additional tiers, or adjusting the stats of the current guard ships. I'd recommend waiting for the next iteration to do this (if needed).