I have a small ship I made in previous game with 2 sensor modules. It now "sees" everything 11 hexes from itself. I don't recall this from Beta 5, where I made this ship design.
Bug or WAD? I wonder what would happen if I added 2 more... 22 hex range from my ship?
It is much simpler to deal with smaller scouts since you can chase the off, large sensor boats not so much. That being said I'm not against sensor boats in MP, you all play with the same rules.
My only point of doing this would be to prove people like you wrong and to show sensors are not overpowered as much as you think they are. If I can pack 5 to 7 scouts in a fleet and park it, it would have as much sensor range as a fully upgraded star base. There fore proving how stupid this entire argument against stacking sensors really is.
Simply because Star bases are still an important part of the game whether or not you build a sensor ship.
I'm not disputing the effectiveness of starbases as such, but modules such as "Perimeter Scanners" etc. If one can just park a ship with sensors much more cheaply on it, why ever use those modules? I'm assuming there's some kind of rationale as for why they were added into the game.
I dislike your debating style throughout most of this thread; setting up a variety of logical fallacies left and right.
Just an observation.
I'm not disputing the effectiveness of starbases as such, modules such as "Perimeter Scanners" etc. If one can just park a ship with sensors much more cheaply on it, why ever use those modules? I'm assuming there's some kind of rationale as for why they were added into the game.
That is a question I really do not think has a right or wrong answer. I think it comes down to how you want play your game. I cant speak for everyone but I do think those of who are for sensor stacking, at least for me, is to be able to explore larger maps with greater effectiveness and much faster pace than building several small scouts. Given that the AI's rush their colonization at the beginning of any game this gives the player the option to do the same. AI's seems to know where all the best planets are near their home worlds at the beginning of the game without having to send out scouts until several turns later. This doesn't defeat the purpose of building star bases and adding their sensor modules as perimeter defense since exploration takes your ships far out of Star Bases sensor ranges. So I do believe on that point star base sensors are still effective.
I think this should be toned down/the stacking nerfed, I am all for player choice but this seems too strong and unbalances the early fun of exploration.
I dislike your debating style throughout most of this thread; setting up a variety of logical fallacies left and right.Just an observation.
Do you really think that I actually care about what you think and dislike? Perhaps you missed the sarcasm, you think????
I think its time to lock up this thread. Brad has already stated from yesterdays Dev's stream he is not going to nerf stacking sensors since he uses sensor boats himself.
Now with that said I am unsubbing from this thread because it has now become a pointless debate
Problem is that you will get even more people into this thread after the game is released when they realize how OP sensors are and how undervalued station sensors are.
You say there is an OPTION of using sensors on stations when they are much more expensive to build than a small ship that has better range who also is maintenance free. There are only the option of doing something really stupid and only serve to confuse new players into thinking they actually are doing something smart.
What most people are arguing for is actually ADDING options to the game and not take them away. You can have both strong sensor ships and sensors on stations that make any sense from a game balance perspective. Having early sensor ships with 10-15 sensor range are plenty OK, that are what we are talking about, late game you will easily have 40-50 range even with diminishing return on them.
You don't seem to actually want more choice at all!!!
This thread seems much more civil than those on the Steam forum on the same topic: http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/2/620712364039070703/ and, spawned from that thread, http://steamcommunity.com/app/226860/discussions/2/620712999976321931/. [ *EDIT* These links will no longer work. The Beta Feedback posts for GC3 no longer exist on Steam.]
I don't think it offers as much insight as these, though.
I have been among the strongest if not sanest proponent of placing limits on ship components that provide escalating returns on a linear line of investment. I state it that way because I believe that the tactical advantages that can be gained through stacking multiple hyperdrives are as bad or worse than those of sensor boats.
Diminishing returns would be a nice fix. I have watched 2 Dev streams (5/8 and 5/12) that have stated that diminishing returns are the solution they are leaning towards. "On what scale?" is a question for the Devs to answer.
It would make more sense than Gal Civ II's sensor range hardcap of 15. It would be consistent with the diminishing returns on the investment of starting racial ability points spent on sensors in Gal Civ I- an investment sceme where additional moves were even more expensive.
I point these out because they are old lessons. The Gal Civ III community shouldn't have to relearn them to end up with a balanced, dynamic, and enjoyable game.
....still just this one thread.
Why has this not been fixed yet?
In the last stream Paul said they were going to leave this in along with the worm hole exploit.
it's is pretty ridiculous to be honest and breaks the game.What is the point of station sensors,etc.
This would be my followup. If the devs want sensor ships in fair enough. But now we need to rebalance starbase sensors to play more of a role.
I still vote for 15 hexes a sensor module, which is actually still less than what you can do with a sensor ship but a 5x increase seems like a good start.
I am for diminishing returns one way or another. That way sensor technology doesn't lose it's meaning (with 15 max you would have 15 right at the start).
In addition it should make everyone happy (except those who scream "freedom!" for the sake of it). It supports early game exploration, doesn't make scouts obsolete, and it supports late game or huge galaxies when big sensor ranges are necessary. In addition it still gives you the choice to build a cargo ship full with sensors as "sensor ship" - it just won't be as effective.
It's sad to see that the developers took the easy way and kept the game unbalanced.
However, the game is supposed to have a 7 year lifecycle. And I am pretty sure, that they will get balanced sooner or later. Maybe with a patch in some months. Maybe with an expansion in four years. The more players become experienced with the game, the more players will realize the balance flaw. People who are not aware of it, will not complain about it. But the more experienced players become, and the more people feel pushed to play this way, the more stress will be on the developers to fix it.
So if you want to do anything about it, it might be best to watch youtube videos / twitch streams about the game and help the guys playing by making them aware of this superior tactic if they don't already use it.
I'm disappointed, sure, but I'm not really all that surprised because every other linear stacking component of this game would need attention if they admitted that sensors needed fixing. (Try stacking drive bonuses, that _really_ gets silly; or stack the bonuses on missile reload for machinegun launchers.) Presently the MP game is less a balanced 4X experience and more a near endless chain of gamey exploits; doesn't make for a good PvP experience, or even that good of a co-op experience because the AI doesn't know how to keep on stacking any one thing.
Which is why MP should have never been added. That is really the only thing that is affected.
What rubbish. MP does not detract from the single player experience at all.
And if you would pay more attention, the ridiculous stacking is an issue in single player as the AI doesn't know how to keep on stacking any one thing - so will never be able to make use of the gamey possiblities that the player uses.
don't use them. If players ruin their own experience in single player that is their problem. All MP does it water down the single player game.
Like building a dozen star bases around a planet and slider roulette
At least it was pretty easy for me to mod the range of star-base sensors so they are useful... as for sensors I can easily just NOT stack them in single player.
I do think a diminishing return on most silly stacking would have been a much smarter and balanced game feature for most components. Weapon effects should not stack either... they should just be its own component in combat so we could have more varied weapon types in the game with many different characteristics.
This would give us all many more options and variety to build our ships.
I place many restriction on my game play so that I don't need to go above Normal or perhaps Gifted difficulty, my current game is on Normal and I'm actually not that much stronger than most other AI due to no min/max slider terror tactics or stacking of either sensors or engines. This make for a much more enjoyable play experience... in my opinion.
It does not mean that the game shouldn't be balanced or reigned in on most min/max possibilities, these are completely unnecessary and only serve to make the game micromanagement heavy and break the AI competitiveness, even on the hardest difficulties.
I thought it was funny it was brought up in the stream with Brad 5/13 and they said you would be stupid not to, and then Brad never made one.
They don't show it for the same reason they don't show min/max colony management either... so that the broader audience don't find out these cheesy tactics too soon and break the AI competitiveness.
I think Brad is defending the notion of stacking sensors -- and perhaps the notion of stacking in general, but perhaps not the simple additive stacking that the game uses right now -- rather than the Turn 1 Eye of Sauron, for example. I also very much dought you'll see mechinegun missile launchers on a dev stream, a ship that can draw giant spirals on a large map in one turn, or a colony that has more manufacturing power than God on The First Day. And why will we not see such things? Simple, because such things only highlight flaws in the game's mid-late design.
Sooner or later someone will write a strategy guide incorporating this stuff, people will upload shipdesigns or notions of these to the wiki etc pp, so I highly doubt that the cheese can be hidden from most of the players (at least, those that use the www to do a bit of research).
Imagine someone plays strictly sandbox, trusts the ingame tooltips etc and, at some time, found his personal difficulty setting. At that, the game might appear challenging for him (which is good), but this person might consider reading up on tactis/strategies in order to not loose a game or being able to jump to the next level. That might be a real bummer then if said person comes to realize what OP stuff could be done, in which the AI has absolutely no way to properly react to (which you will naturally only find out AFTER you've already put to use these stuff).
Ultimately the best would be to properly balance all the issues, but realistically, the game got just released and the utmost importance right now is to offer stability on all regions for the all customers.
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