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[Margrave]

Turn Sent

[Kebooo]

I ran the battle four times, and I'm pretty sure the spotting was just about the same again (except I even had a little advantage here since my fighters hadn't been spotted yet from Palazzo's scouting attack). Relics show up on both sides. The results are pretty consistent - my side either loses clearly, or, at best, a similar amount of units are lost. But that's really still a "loss" in the sense of the cost and time put into one side versus the other. The next thing I want to do is test this battle without relics. Perhaps it's on account of one relic being a lot stronger than another.

Here are three of the results (the first one was similar to the second one in the video, big losses on my side)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60053610/efsbattles.mp4

Also, has anyone able to get the map editor to work on Windows 10? This has increased my interest in my attempt at rebalancing basic EFS 1.4 (which will always have a special place in my heart from having played it as a young teen day after day).

[Il Palazzo]

error - let me repost (later)

[Kebooo]

We were able to set up some other conditions to test these stacks against one another. No noble, no relic as one scenario, no noble as another, and no relic as the third. I also (accidentally) ran a couple tests where Palazzo's fighters were spotted by virtue of my freighter landing the relic and taking off again (I had to exclude the freighter from other battles to avoid spotting them). Then I ran one where it was my side having a noble and relic, Palazzo's with none.

No noble, no relic: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60053610/nobonuses.mp4 (Palazzo's side still came out on top here)

No noble: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60053610/nonoble.mp4

No relic: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60053610/norelic.mp4 (this is where my side did its best)

Other conditions: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60053610/otherconditions.mp4

My observations:

The strength relic is most probably more powerful than the accuracy relic, which comes as a surprise to me

Battlemaster and relics are probably too effective in space combat in general (add in the fact a noble rallies your fleet and it becomes indespensible). I do think the power of the three combat relics should be cut in half, battlemaster could only be really adjusted for by increasing all space armor in general. I'd rather see relics as something very useful mid-game, but not the late game super weapon that they've become in virtually every game I've played. You can conceivably have them on turn 1. You just have to go back to this classic to see what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grEzAXG_v8g

Given that Palazzo's fleets did so well in the no noble/no relic scenario, I do think there's rebalancing in order on the ship side

While my stack has more value/time put into it, I still don't like the result of my side having a noble and relic. Palazzo's fleet barely dents it as a result. Battlemaster is a starting trait that can't be adjusted at any point, and relics are finite and way too powerful for something based on finding them with RNG.

[Il Palazzo]

A sort of a quick fix to the looming fighter dominance problem, that we could put into play even during this game, is to make them 0 movement - they'd be only defensive, and need a carrier to attack. They'd still retain some of their mobility, as it'd be still possible to ship them to the destination quickly, but there would be much less of a go-to choice for proper battle fleets.

[Margrave]

That's a good idea, that way any fleet attacking is limited to using fresh fighters 3 times for a normal carrier.

[Kebooo]

I'm not sure I really like the 0 movement thing (reminds me of the annoying Nova emplaced guns that I hate) - imagine building a bunch, your enemy warps in, and you can't even use them if you don't have transports around. I would prefer to re-balance them to be a weaker supplementary unit. That is, you wouldn't make up the crux of any elite force with them because even a frigate would be better to include in that slot. I'm not opposed to "super" fighter/bombers that are expensive, take a while to build, and are good units - but we would still enter the mobility dilemma similar to what happens in Nova. I do think archangels are the superior unit to dreadnoughts in Nova (especially since dreadnoughts take so long to build and are exceedingly expensive), but I also like that they make exotica a very valuable commodity, are a late-game unit, and not to mention dreadnoughts can wipe out planetary defenses while archangels can't.

We could always make a house rule that you cannot use non-carriers to transport bombers/fighters to other planets, but of course that'd be up to a player's honor to abide by and is just another rule to remember. I've played in one EFS game where you were allowed to transport bombers/fighters with non-carriers, but you weren't allowed to attack with them the same turn they were transported (which is pretty easy for others to verify). I would love for the remake to distinguish between space carrier valid cargo, and other valid cargo in freighters and haulers. If carriers were expensive but were the only unit that could transport fighters/bombers, we could still allow for them to have high levels of mobility without them being overpowered or becoming marginalized.

Even though I've lost more to fighters/bombers than anyone else (well, I didn't see the Al Malik battles or losses), I'd prefer to leave the balance as-is in this game, fighters/bombers/relics and all. I'm a bigger advocate against the super power of relics than I am the incredible value of charioteer 1 turn fighter/bombers, though I think they both need reworking. I don't think we'll see ONLY fighters/bombers, after all, you do need cruisers/dreadnoughts to bombard, and carriers enhance fighters. I'm starting to believe there is very little reason, if any, to build frigates and destroyers. It's highly unlikely I would even bother with dreadnoughts. In fact, my suspicion is that they wouldn't even beat a stack of cruisers. Compare their stats:

For 4 turns and 15 gems:4 agility, 70 armor, 4/80 ranged, 5/70 direct, 4/40 close
For 5 turns and 20 gems: 3 agility, 90 armor, 4/90 ranged, 5/80 direct

Trading 1 agility for 20 armor, and 4/40 close (more rounds of combat here) for just a drop in 10 strength in the other two phases. You could also have 5 cruisers to 4 dreadnoughts in the time they take. Why would I even want a dreadnought over a cruiser? Why would I want a frigate over two bombers, or a destroyer over three? I definitely see a value for fighters, bombers, cruisers and carriers in our current balance. Not convinced the other are worth the time and resources.

Besides the combat balance, I've been really impressed with this mod's unit selection, house-specific flares, and galaxy layout. I do have to say I don't like the whole spamming of low level + firebird units and high maintenance costs. It honestly just feels like a mechanic for ultra micromanagement. Who really wants to think about regularly building all these firebird producing units, and if they really wanted to min/max, moving them across entire planets to safer and more protected regions. EFS is already heavy on micromanagement, this mechanic is one that even I can rarely be bothered to take full advantage of.

[joulupunikki]

I'm not sure I really like the 0 movement thing (reminds me of the annoying Nova emplaced guns that I hate) - imagine building a bunch, your enemy warps in, and you can't even use them if you don't have transports around. I would prefer to re-balance them to be a weaker supplementary unit.

I don't like 0-movement either (of course I will bend to the will of the many ...) Maybe 1-movement as a compromise ?

We could always make a house rule that you cannot use non-carriers to transport bombers/fighters to other planets, but of course that'd be up to a player's honor to abide by and is just another rule to remember. I've played in one EFS game where you were allowed to transport bombers/fighters with non-carriers, but you weren't allowed to attack with them the same turn they were transported (which is pretty easy for others to verify). I would love for the remake to distinguish between space carrier valid cargo, and other valid cargo in freighters and haulers. If carriers were expensive but were the only unit that could transport fighters/bombers, we could still allow for them to have high levels of mobility without them being overpowered or becoming marginalized.

In EFS1.4 fighters operating from a carrier are supposed to have +3 ag due to being unspotted at the start of the battle. Maybe in the remake this synergy between carriers and fighters could be amplified, more bonus for fighters on carriers. This would however make fighters less useful as planetary defense forces.

Another option might be to make fighters lose part or all of their move points when they are unloaded from freighters in space. The reasoning is that they must be embarked/disembarked using civilian cargo loading equipment and this is a clumsy operation compared to carrier launch/recovery facilities. This would prevent bulk hauler spam attacks while retaining the general fighter mobility.

Besides the combat balance, I've been really impressed with this mod's unit selection, house-specific flares, and galaxy layout. I do have to say I don't like the whole spamming of low level + firebird units and high maintenance costs. It honestly just feels like a mechanic for ultra micromanagement. Who really wants to think about regularly building all these firebird producing units, and if they really wanted to min/max, moving them across entire planets to safer and more protected regions. EFS is already heavy on micromanagement, this mechanic is one that even I can rarely be bothered to take full advantage of.

Well, having to click through hundred build queues at the beginning of each turn is a nuisance for a PBEM game which has new turns maybe once or twice per week. Imagine (maybe you don't need to imagine) doing that for a single player with dozens of turns per day ...   

... however, for the remake I envision high level build orders, such as "enqueue X of unit Y on planet Z/everywhere", which might be considered an essential feature even for standard EFS.   

[Kebooo]

Even if there was the enqueueing of those maintenance generating units, I'd still suggest they are set to 0 movement so that moving them around a planet's surface isn't something a player even needs to consider for min/maxing. Also, before my many losses to Palazzo, I had developed quite a large negative maintenance balance that needed to be dealt with. So I started building tons of those units across my empire. Even if they could be queued, it's painstaking to go through the process of starting those 150 across several planets. I do like units like Casino Liners - I think those add value. I don't oppose the notion of a maintenance economy, just the hordes of low level money producing units.

[Margrave]

I agree with Kebooo, it would be nice to drastically cut down on the number of low income units and create more resource intensive, higher income ones. Removing the ability to move would also give more strategic value to a random farm or wetware factory when the Manor Lord or Cyberscientist is giving you 1,000-2,000 firebirds (or more) a turn. You'd feel the hurt if an enemy captured/disbanded them and they took an enormous amount of food/gems/electronics to create in the first place.

It would also encourage more settlements if a 0 MP unit was taking up valuable stack space. No one would build a serf if that meant taking away a spot for defenses. I could see it being a nightmare if you'd have to send units in ones and twos through a planet capital cluster filled with tax chaff, but removing -100 income units an replacing them -1000s would help alleviate that.

I shudder at the idea of an enemy capturing my Casinos. I'd have to disband a 1/3 of my forces.
Play Quasar Bingo today!
PLAY IT.

[Il Palazzo]

I've been thinking of some major changes recently, and one of those involved income generation and cities.

The basic idea is that you can develop cities by building 'generic development' units with 0 mp and the no-combat tag. These would cost something like 100 food and metal, and give a heftier sum than most of the current units. As with any other immobile no-combat unit, this reduces the defensiveness of cities.

Another generic city-improvement unit would be 'fortifications', with 0 armour and v.high agility, and better than average combat stats (probably similar cost).
0 armour would be there so that there would not be any 'retreating' fortifications. Agility would simulate their hard to breach nature. Artillery units (and maybe ranged space) would have v.high acc so that they could be used with some success against fortifications, and have a clearly defined niche in this task.

Palaces would have a separate tier of development - some sort of gardens or whatnot that'd cost gems and give much more money. Again, the tradeoff here is whether you build those to get gold, or leave them undeveloped to improve defensiveness.

There's some more changes I thought of, but they're tangent to the current conversation, so I'll put them in the spoiler below:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A more significant change I wanted to pair with this was de-engineering:
either a complete removal of city-building units, so that every city is precious and worth fighting for, and every city bombed to oblivion is an irrevocable loss (you know, Fading Suns and all that);
or, very restricted engineer building options - e.g. only in palaces, and taking 10 turns or so, which would simultaneously block the palace queue from building palace-unique levies or development. Some sort of role-playing, or ministry-related rules for mandating city construction could be also implemented (think bribing the regent to permit a city construction).

This would require practically redrawing the galaxy map, but might be worth it, I think. No more engineer spam, or counting hexes to optimise mine placement. Either you have a wetware factory, or you have to conquer one, etc.


Even more radical ideas to basically make the game more Dune-like:
- make all ships no-jump, or remove most space ships altogether; the only jump-capable ship/only ship is the no-combat Guild League transport (two-three types maybe). It's hireable from the get go, but costs a fortune to maintain. And I mean a fortune - to the point where it's impractical to have one on a permanent roster. To mount an invasion you need to hire a few of those, load your land troops, deliver them, and disband the transports. If combat ships were to remain in the game, they'd be cargo-transportable. Not sure how to deal with Symbiots here.
- further personalise houses by giving them 'unique' technologies at the start, e.g. enabling hiring of house-specific units (Ukari, 'Sardaukar', etc.) This could (I believe) be achieved by creating a bunch of techs with absurd research cost (in principle still researchable, but supposed to represent decades of house's history with some faction or other), and using the three starting perks 'Ancient Documentation' to distribute them to houses.
- Arrakis-like planet could be made, by turning one of the harvestable resources into absurdly profitable Spice-like commodity, present only on that planet. Houses would have some presence on the planet, and would reap benefits from its sale. One of the ministries could be turned into a large mining network, and whomever would control this ministry would be able to sell the 'spice' and be the boss.

[Margrave]

I would definitely be on board with fortifications and development "units" for cities. It'd be nice to keep some income generators if only for fluff and propaganda.

I'd see a compromise on limited engineers, because you would still want some for road building during invasions at the very least and there is always someone who wants to move his palace or make a fortress island. Maybe 5 turns and make some buildings completely unable to rebuild tech-wise like the shield generator/palace and/or the high tech resource factories?

It would be nice to see the Imperial Eye used to track illegal construction though and have a legal 'role' as opposed to just spying on rivals for a chance to attack.

As for topic two:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is extremely radical. I like it. It would certainly turn the game back into almost pure ground warfare. I would be massively on board with a mod that turns the game Duneish.

-You could have the Fleet have the only or at least the most space warships to counter Symbiot incursions. Keeping these ships alive would almost be as important as fighting off invaders as they would be nearly irreplaceable.
-The Garrison would function similar to Stigmata or re-purposed to purely operating on the borders. Seeing anyone take the Guard away from the border would be seen as crossing the Rubicon. Perhaps they could merge with the Eye to a degree as the sentinels to the inroads of the Empire.
-Having a siridar-fief Ministry would be one hell of a boon that would constantly change hands and be a mighty lucrative pork barrel spending incentive to convince a House to vote for your Regency. It'd be a toss up between a player wanting untouchable space power, money planet or espionage/powerful army.

My only concern with the hideously expensive space transports is stack restrictions, I don't think it would be feasible to launch a 15 unit invasion force without constant reinforcements, needing more than just one way transports. But there could be a way to balance that.

[Kebooo]

I don't mind city building in general, I thought this mod struck a pretty good balance by restricting them to a few cities. Perhaps maintaining a longer build time (3-4 years) would be nice to try out. After all, it's an empire building game, and because of how diplomacy works between humans, we're not all in constant warfare and don't want to be twiddling our thumbs either. A lot of the appeal of the game to me is the empire building aspect.

I think there's a delicate balance to strike between irreplaceable ships, and one or two encounters deciding the fate of a game. For example, consider EFS 1.4 and how difficult it is to replace ships early on. So people rarely risk them. The game we have now, fleets can drop like flies and be replaced almost as fast. Of course this then makes capitalizing on victories more difficult, if the ships are easy to replace. I don't prefer attrition wars, but also I don't prefer the all-or-nothing RNG battles that can decide the fate of a planet or two just because of a few combat rolls. I'd like to see ships difficult to maintain (through firebird cost), but not so hard to replace if you did lose them. I'm also wary of making regencies super powers. I never liked how the Imperial Fleet was practically the best fleet in the galaxy for 40 years in Nova.

[Il Palazzo]

How are we doing here anyhow? Is the actual game still alive or what?

[Gollor]

It stacked on my. I will do it... But not now. Maybe not even this week. Sorry.