Any indication of when the balance patch is going to be rolling out?
Yarlen ... Please put spanish language :'(
This is what is happening basically, by changing the damage to phase missile, or not? IMHO it will still look as before, but it will act as phase missile, bypass shields and be influenced by phase missile techs...
BTW, yay for the dark fleet summoning ability adjustments - now with shorter cooldown for the abilities, perhaps stripping truly every planet will become viable strategy.
WHAT?! Where would anyone get that idea?!
My point is that I'd really rather them not just be a reskinned PM. I'd love to see something unique with the Vasari. As much as I love PM's, the implications of having "Phase Cannons" would be spectacular.
I do like that areia drone hosts shouldn't create useless mine squads anymore. I like the AR resurrection/reanimation buffs as well. Maybe we can see some buffs to culture or culture bonuses in the future.
"Updated Protection of the Unity CultureShieldRegenAmount to a max of 150% at level 3. Note you will only get the full benefit if your ships are within a fully saturated region of your culture."
Maybe more like this?
It's a good start, I like it. It's enough to warrant playing the game again at least now that using Visari won't feel like cheating, VR starbases aside. I look forward to seeing what is planned to bring TL and VL up to par with their rebel factions.
Oh, and THANK YOU for using my Advent AI mine suggestion (ie just remove it). Advent AI might have a slightly better chance late game now that it doesn't waste carriers as mine layers.
It works in theory, but utterly fails in practice. I'm definitely going to try and make it a mod possibility too.
Great changes, look forward to checking them out.
What enormous bonuses? AL bonuses are tiny.
+50% conversion rate and culture spread should be huge... if culture worked well in the first place.
Idea for the Advent Loyalists - add a level 8 upgrade to DE that instantly reduces a planet's loyalty by 20%.
This would provide them with a powerful late game toy to enhance their cultural strength.
It isn't a culture spread buff, its culture spread rate buff which is far less impressive. If it were culture spread itself that got a boost, than there wouldn't be a problem in that area.
I didn't know that they had a 50% conversion rate buff, that sounds decent. But Fury of the Unity is probably the worst tech at tier 7 or above by a wide margin. The population growth rate boost given by Assimilated Populace should probably be higher as well.
The normal DE should just do something like that by default.
I do not believe a current entity modifier exists for that....
Exactly what these modifiers do and how culture works in general could be better explained and streamlined...
Its the devs, we bug them to make those new modifiers.
I seem to recall hearing that these modifiers do not make culture stronger, just make it spread faster....is this actually the case? IIRC, Pbhead or Volt did timed tests (though it could have been someone else, not sure) and some other things and found that it didn't make culture stronger...
Then there was the whole dividing your culture strength by number of phase lanes....
Honestly no one really knows for sure how the culture techs work- we just know they don't make anywhere near as large a difference as the numbers would have use believe.
Well do know the Entity Modifier for the Advent Rebel Expulsion buff is named differently then the boost given by all the culture techs- the former buffs "CultureSpread" whereas all the culture techs improve "CultureSpreadRateAdjustment".
But then that could have as much to do with one of those being a BuffEntityModifer and the other being a tech modifier. it very well could be that when the variables were named they weren't named in a perfectly consistant manner but actually do the same thing(only one as a buff, one as a tech upgrade).
Part of the problem is that there is no transparency unveiling the inner workings of Culture- no one outside of Stardock, as far as I've heard, seems to know exactly how it works under the hood. Which makes giving detailed feedback beyond "it's not viable" is prohibitively difficult.
I never posted results from my testing, though I once found when messing around on Point Blank with myself and the opponent both having access to all research, near infinite resources, no build restrictions, and instant build times (yay for dev.exe). I found IIRC that it took the enemy 20 to counteract the 15 I had. Of course, I also had Global Unity, so that makes it 16 v 20 which reduces to 4 v 5. Either way, the AL had a significant advantage in the way of culture.
Yeah, in our internal playtesting, culture tends to make a bigger difference than what you guys are reporting. I'm certainly not against looking at it further, but it's tricky to balance because we have to take into account the AI's ability to deal with it and also the culture speed option.
May be true, but using culture for offense is generally useless. A player will have had his economy damaged before he can damage the opponent. But Advent is never good at economy.
In current design culture is more defensive. In the old games it's OK, but in Rebellions, AL is intended to assault with culture, while the same time, they can hardly use their own advantages. That's why people are disappointed.
On the other hand, I think it's OK for AR, because the design of AR culture is more defense-oriented.
So where is the patch?
I came home from work and i want to plaaaay... What time is it in Vancouver? 9:30 AM?
Yarlen, is there any idea when the patch is going to arrive today?
I assume you are referring to the AI not always building culture centers when it should (and therefore losing planets to even small amounts of culture)...I can understand for that reason alone why you might not be tempted to buff culture...
That being said, even small changes like increasing the rate that allegiance can change could go to great lengths to make it more useful, both economically and as a tactical option...
Horray! The patch has downloaded!
v1.03 is live.
Selueucia - exactly.
I've noticed in my own playtesting that simply increasing the output of the AL culture centers makes a big difference in how effective their culture is. A couple buffs and/or additions to already existing AL culture techs and I think the difference would be pretty noticeable.
Fantastic. Can we have the change log please?
Edit: Oops asked too quickly. It's already there!
It appears to have been updated now
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