View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0009377 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Aug 26, 2012 8:35 pm | Sep 4, 2012 11:38 am | |
| Reporter | MaxAstro | Assigned To | |||
| Status | considering | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.070 | ||||
| Summary | 0009377: Make Champion Unlocks Based on # of Nebulas | ||||
| Description | If I understand how the current system works, each time you clear a nebula you get either a higher tier ship of a champion hull you already have unlocked, or the first tier of a new hull type. However, this leads to HUGE discrepancies in champion power levels over the course of the game. Consider a map with 5 wormholes. It is possible for a player to unlock 1) Human Destroyer, 2) Human Cruiser, 3) Human Battleship, 4) Human Dreadnaught, 5) Who cares? However, it is also possible for a player to unlock: 1) Zenith Frigate, 2) Neinzul Frigate, 3) Spire Frigate, 4) Neinzul Destroyer, 5) Human Destroyer. Guess which of these two games is more fun? So my suggestions is instead of making the hull unlocks totally linear, make the hull sizes based on # of nebulas. So, for example, the first nebula always awards a frigate, the second wormhole always awards a destroyer (not necessarily of a race you have the frigate for), etc. This would also make the pacing more predictable - you'd know when and for how much work you'd get the larger hull sizes. And speaking from experience, it really sucks to complete your third nebula and unlock your third consecutive frigate. :( | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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I agree. Ive had 2 games in a row where I had 3 frigates before I had my first cruiser. While having to finish 3 nebula before getting a cruiser doesn't seem so bad, consider that I like to use Maze A type maps, since they work with my setup best. (Spire Cities make beautiful blockades against the AI) And there are many games where the 3rd nebula is 20 or more jumps away from my homeworlds. |
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What if it worked as follows: The first nebula will always give you a new frigate hull. This will unlock the ability to spend level points on the other frigate hulls, at one point each. Completing the second nebula will give you a random cruiser hull, and allow you to spend level points to unlock any cruiser hull of which you have the frigate hull for 2 level points. Third wormhole provides a random destroyer hull, with the option of purchasing other destroyer hulls at 3 points a piece, etc. This way there's some variability in what you get, but you know what power level you're going to have after completing each nebula, and you can always spend points to get exactly the hull you want if your strategy really, critically depends on it (it may be rather expensive though...). Additionally, I think one nebula should always start on the home planet to give any "hero only" players something to start with, especially on higher difficulties, otherwise they sit around twiddling their thumbs for a while until any other normal players are ready to start leaving their home planets. |
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Agree and agree. There needs to be a way to get hulls other than just completing nebulas, otherwise your fun is at the mercy of the RNG (for example, my girlfriend hates the Neinzul hulls; she'll use another frigate before the neinzul destroyer half the time and it seems like the RNG loves giving her those hulls). And we seem to have a lot more fun in games where there is a wormhole on the home system or adjacent to it, simply because she has something to do from the start of the game other than get tiny amounts of XP attacking random planets. |
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I like Sunshine's plan but it needs a bit of adjustment to make it perfect. The cost needs fitting for the power of the hulls after all. I would say about 1.75xHullSize always rounding down. That would make the frigates 1 each, the destroyers 3 each, the cruisers 5 each, the battleships 7, and the dreadnaughts 8 each. It might seem strange that the jump is smaller for the dreadnaughts but by that point its probably close to endgame, and you're getting levels much slower than early on when points are fairly plentiful. To do the math it would cost 2 to buy up all the frigates, 9 for the destroyers, 15 for the cruisers, 21 for the battleships, and 24 for the dreadnaughts, making it 71 in total to buy all the hulls. (Assuming you buy them as soon as you can) I would also suggest that rather than always getting one of the next size up, you merely add the buy system ontop of the current one. As such, the first nebula would give you a new frigate, and allow you to buy any frigate class. The next would give you another new hull, but you would only get a destroyer if you already had the frigate type, but even if you didn't get a destroyer, you would still get the ability to buy destroyers for the types you already had the frigates for. The system continues until after the 5th nebula you could have the ability to get/buy dreadnaughts, but only for those that you already had all the previous sizes for. This design prevents both having 4 frigates and only one destroyer, (unless you chose not to buy any frigates and get unlucky) as well as say, getting a Shadow Spire Battleship and not having any other Shadow Spire hulls at all. Anyone else have ideas how to improve the system? |
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An alternative is to give the option to make rewards independent of the nebulae (though rewards will still be able to be gained from nebulae, and will probably be the most efficient way of doing so), as in this post http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11325.msg117913.html#msg117913 . Right now, normal players can add in tons of extra goodies for them to play with, but hero-only players are stuck with the nebulae. It's not very fun to just be stuck with nebulae, so the idea is to branch out with the hero ships, give them more opportunities to unlock based on the difficulty of the game. That way the nebula system doesn't have to be as strict, because for a just-nebula game there's less going on and it'll keep normal and hero players at sort of the same line for customizability, but for other games with high customizability it'll give hero players a way to keep up. |
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i *think* this issue was resolved with a recent patch Changed how champion hull unlocks are handled in nebula scenario rewards: As before, you can't get destroyer hulls until the second scenario is over, and can't get cruiser hulls until the fifth scenario is over. But now when you get a new size, you get the new size in all the races you've already got access to. On scenarios where you are not given a new size, and you do not already have the race-tech-base-form corresponding to the faction you just helped, you get that form in all sizes you've already got access to (though it only announces the largest one). If you've already got that racial-tech-base-form it just gives you an extra module line instead. Since there really isn't a point in using the smaller forms after you've got a larger one, only the largest ones will be shown (in an old save if you have, say, human frigate, human destroyer, and zenith frigate, it will show the H-DD and the Z-FF). |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 26, 2012 8:35 pm | MaxAstro | New Issue | |
| Aug 26, 2012 8:36 pm | MaxAstro | Description Updated | |
| Aug 27, 2012 2:52 am | Zane Wolfe | Note Added: 0027998 | |
| Aug 27, 2012 8:16 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0028002 | |
| Aug 27, 2012 11:43 am | MaxAstro | Note Added: 0028008 | |
| Aug 27, 2012 9:28 pm | Zane Wolfe | Note Added: 0028022 | |
| Aug 27, 2012 9:31 pm | Zane Wolfe | Note Edited: 0028022 | |
| Aug 29, 2012 10:38 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0028051 | |
| Aug 30, 2012 12:34 am | Lancefighter | Note Added: 0028062 | |
| Sep 4, 2012 11:38 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Sep 4, 2012 11:38 am | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
