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?
I started to do so, doing a little Tricks video on it:
Good video that highlight what you can do if you exploit the mechanic which obviously break the competitiveness of the AI on any difficulty level of the game.
Once again, if the AI isn't using it, which as you say it isn't, then it is a conscious choice by the player to do so, and I'm sorry but lack of self restraint isn't something that the devs can patch out nor compelling reason imo to dedicate time to it.
Perhaps you should try to read or understand what you're quoting or replying to: If someone doesn't know or perceive a specific situation as being OP, then it's only logical to assume no such self restraint is going to occur. And this is most likely the case with all new players.
And I would further vouche to say that most players also don't examine the AI first in what the AI is doing or not doing.....
Perhaps you should try to read or understand what you're quoting or replying to: If someone doesn't know or perceive a specific situation as being OP, then it's only logical to assume no such self restraint is going to occur. And this is most likely the case with all new players.And I would further vouche to say that most players also don't examine the AI first in what the AI is doing or not doing.....
I understood perfectly well and my response stands. In addition none of the suggestions I've seen would solve the problem adequately since ship design is generally ass-backwards in the galciv series. Ship design should be based upon power consumption, not space it takes up. Add in that there is no scaling for ships and it compounds the problem because as it stands the same engine, life support system, or sensor suite you place on a fighter can be placed on a large sized ship. That's completely asinine in all respects. GalCiv is a strategy game that takes place in space while still using terrestrial ship building techniques. Either the AI should make use of the current system or some mode of scaling for parts needs to be applied, and even then it's going to be imperfect because it really doesn't make any sense that designs are limited simply on how much "space" is in a hull.
Perhaps you should be a bit less of a douche when responding to people.
And... allowing obvious abusive game mechanics that can easily be changed to make the AI more competitive seem like an odd choice to me. Why allow players to use a feature to make it easy and then let the AI cheat by knowing where all the good planets are on higher difficulties to compensate. This does not make any sense to me what so ever.
If you play the game with no abuse of game mechanics the AI actually are a pretty decent opponent. You can still beat Normal fairly easy but harder difficulties really becomes hard. Abusing stacking to the extremes and slider terror tactics will just make the game easy and tedious. What is the real achievement of this in the first place?
At which type of players are you trying to create the AI, you can never adhere to both player groups at the same time without major effort into how the AI work in different settings. If you allow the AI to really use the game mechanics then players will have to adapt and they will start complaining about the game being an accountants micromanagement nightmare.
I have no problem if sensor are really powerful later in the game, but being able to get 25-30 range from the start are just silly and completely unbalanced and invalidates any early scouting and make finding both planets and goodie huts way too easy.
The big problem with that, again imo, is that a "cargo" hull can be used for anything. It's too easy to just shove crap into it early game. Another thing is, 25-30 range sensors is ridiculous, but only on smaller maps where that is a large amount of space compared to the total map range. If it scaled for map size that would go a long way towards helping, same with ship range, and make later improvements worth while. There is no real reason to research sensors or life support on medium or smaller maps. You don't need it.
I only play on insane maps and do quite fine with maximum two sensors and a survey module as the cap on number of sensors I need, that and I modded stations to have much further sensor range on their sensor modules.
Ship range already scale with map size as far as I can tell.
I see no immediate reason to scale sensors on bigger maps, the whole reason to play on them is to make the game epic and not to make them feel as small as a smaller map just with more space to cover and more planets. I think you might as well play on a smaller map if that is the case. Planets and stars are still the same distance away from each other and we should not make exploring trivial as it currently are on smaller maps and even on bigger ones with current stacking.
It is not hard to get 100+ range in the late game with a cargo hull... a Huge ship can easily get several hundred hex sensor range.
They shouldn't be scaled to larger maps. They should be scaled to smaller ones. Sensors as they sit are fine for anything gigantic and larger.
edit: I was wrong. It does scale some but not very much. A starting Terran survey ship has 32 range on a tiny map and 64 on an insane one.
Every linear additive stacking bonus needs looking at in this game. Honestly, you should look at how daft Drives get with this sort of abuse: fleets have so many moves they're effective teleporting stacked death around the galaxy at will. The end game in GC3 is pretty silly really; the game just falls apart.
One diminishing returns formula to rule them all, One forumla to find them, One formula to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Thats funny, in the only game I've played so far (immense tight clusters, 45 majors and all minors with a mix of normal and gifted AI, my closest minor built a "sensor boat" using my design that it stole! So obviously some are indeed using this "exploit" for their own benefit. At first it pissed me off that this minor race had stole my design but then thought it was pretty cool. I'm on turn 280 and have seen other races use some of my personal ship designs.
Why are we having an argument about a single player game? Stardock has a history of putting in valid mechanics that can be thought of as cheats but are actually not.
Sensor ships will stay in the game. I use them as they help open up the map on Insane.
Personally I think this is such a silly issue to argue over. There are literally dozens of tips that would make new players to go..oh wow!
And they say this can`t be done.!
I believe I pointed this(AI using sensor ship) out in this thread before this thread. It was a few pages ago but it has been brought up.
This basically comes down to play style, for the most part the people who don't like it claim sight range is overpowered and I can see where it might be annoying on a small map in multiplayer but I don't see how its overpowered or unbalanced when all players can do the same thing. I've seen justifications like you can avoid combat against the AI, but that can be done with only a few sensors and better engines, it doesn't even require extra engines. Ship design is about trade offs but if you don't like it mod it out. I already modded out a few of the things I don't like, you can too.
Please be civil and stop trying to get this removed when you can fix the issue yourself. You want to be lazy at the expense of making me do more work to play the game like I want to.
The main problem is where the focus of the AI learning how to play the game should be developed?
If you are eventually forced to min/max your colonies and build 25 hex range sensor boats on turn one to keep up with the AI on even Normal the game will turn into micromanagement hell, especially on large maps. I would like to see players cry when the AI send their 30 hex movement transport in to invade their undefended colonies deep inside their territory etc...
The current AI are quite easy at Normal even when I play with huge restrictions on my game play, which require very little min/max and a minimum of micromanagement. I really have no time to micromanage a game if I ever want to get anywhere since I like insane maps and many AI opponents.
how do you build a super sensor ship on turn 1??
Jorgen, I noticed that you have modded your game to give you the better sensors on you star bases. I wondered if you also nerfed the sensor ships as well, and if not, why didn't you do so?
In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say.
You by it... there is a nice video a few posts above that explain this in detail.
I have not done that yet but I will eventually mod both engines and sensor stacking and only allow one engine from each tier to be mounted which effectively is the same as a diminishing return on them.
For my own games there is not much of a problem, I can just NOT build super sensor ships and then the AI won't either.
My gripe is what do we expect the AI to learn and how will that effect players in the long term. It is not a problem now, but it might be once the AI start employing silly game mechanic exploits which result in players forced into tedious micromanagement. Sensor obviously help reducing micromanagement but at the cost of trivialize scouting and reconnaissance in general.
You would have to rush build it, but you can pack a support hull full of sensors and build it on turn one if you are willing to pay the BC. If you just let it build it will take 7-9 turns.
Instead of having to make a decision about whether to include this 'feature' or not, couldn't the devs just add a checkbox in the game setup? That way everyone is playing by the same 'rules' in both SP and MP.
You could apply that very excellent logic to any number of things (features) in the game, and I would be pleased to see any toggle options they want to include.
Stackable engines and sensors, closed option techs, the list could go on and on. I think they have chosen to let the mod community provide the options when the pros and cons are so differently seen by the people playing the game.
I watched a stream recently where Brad Wardel upgraded his pragmatic constructors to colony ships exactly as demonstrated in the OP video. Personally I sure don't see that as a game changer when resources are so critical in the game. I use the constructors for just what they are intended. On a really big map. Getting the first 4-5 planets you colonize in 7-8 moves is not so important and neither is the 24 hex sensor view you can get. It is certainly not worth 3000 BC for me to build it on turn one.
The things in the video might be pertinent on smaller maps but they are kind of meaningless on the big maps in this game.
I also thought this until my game with 1.0. Insane map, tight clusters, 45 major races and all minors. In my cluster I had four other major races trying to grab everything they could as fast as they could... It's been a very different and interesting game compared to when I was just using the stock races on an excessive map with tight clusters.
I am going to assume that the AI are not building super sensors, so did you feel more or less inclined to use them yourself?
I would have been rethinking my opinion on rush buying the big sensor boat. Screw those AI bastards, I'm not so good that I don't take any advantage available as long as it's within the rules of the game and if they get too hard to beat I'll mod them down to size and play by my own rules.
Jorgan made a point about the AI learning to use them, but I will believe that when I see it. If they do I am ready to deal with it.
Diminishing returns could be a solution. GalCiv goes balls to the wall with stacking bonuses - most games have limits on such bonuses. It's no surprise the game breaks down late game or on larger maps. At smaller scales is where GalCiv shines, the mechanics just do not scale in the current state. The game still needs a serious balance pass.
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