Mentioned more times than I can count. They are debating whether or not to scale it vs linear so each one you add is less than the full amount. However at this point no word on a definite change.

here we go again^^

Diminishing returns is generally the best solution.  A severe version would be that the 1st module gives you 100% of the value, but every module after that is only 1/2 the power of the previous module.

A scanner with range 10?  Even if you stacked an infinite number of modules, you'd never exceed range 20 under a diminishing return scheme of 50% of the previous.

Except it's not an EXTREME.  It's a Turn 1 no-brainer.

Also, OP: wait until you get later into the game and start stacking moves.  The game pretty much falls apart at that point.

Sorry guys if this has been crazy debated already! I have not seen, so I apologize.

I personally do not see this as an exploit at all, and it felt balanced in CG2. Maxing a cargo with decent sensors gave a realistic sensor area, and still required the I build a few of the things to get a good coverage of the border area only. In CG3, the math seems way off. So it just seems like getting back to CG2-calculations is the best things here? 

I could be mistaken.

Not everybody wants to play on Insane maps with planets few-and-far-between.  Why should the game be balanced around what the game itself defines as insanity?

Here we go again yes, but rightfully so. The game will continue to be broken until the silly stacking is fixed.

I do not understand how people are against fixing such a gamey / cheesy / exploitive / blatantly overpowered mechanic which removes ALL of the whole exploration thing - you know, that whole first X in the genre's name.

I'm ambivalent.  It costs a lot of money -- that is, if you couldn't upgrade one of your Pragmatic Constructors into it for cheap.

I think the upgrade calculations need revision tbh.

Its not broken. In a single player game you can take advantage of it or not. Its not like two human players cannot use it as well. True if you play on small maps you suddenly can see the whole galaxy. The ai in the last 3 games is now using my sensor ship designs which I found amusing.

My response to the above is why put limitations on players in a single player game? Its entirely optional. The game does not come with sensor ships till the player discovers that he can make them. Following your logic you should not stack life support, weapons or engines. All of which are designed to be stacked.

+2 coppers

Spot on.

As in any single player game you've got to have house rules and control yourself and not go for the min max effort all the time (role play a bit). As it doesn't matter how good the AI is a human will always find some way to exploit the game to there advantage to defeat the AI. If that's whats ruing your enjoyment of a great game just don't do it.

There appear to be two types of people playing GC3 (or, rather, commenting on the forums)

Type X: plays GC3 as a 4X - finds the game too easy, sees removing the "exploration" phase of the game as an exploit that makes the game dumb.

Type Y: plays GC3 as Spore - finds the game too hard, sees building huge sensor ships that reveal the whole map as fun

If you're more Type X, you tend to crave limitations on the player because that is the point of a game: overcoming the challenges and restrictions the game presents. If you're more Type Y, you tend to resent all limitations that prevent you from doing what you want.

These are distinctly oppositional views and there's no way to satisfy both parties with the same vanilla game. I guess is just depends on how Stardock thinks about it and what direction they want the game to move. If they want to make it more 4X, then they have to nerf/cap sensor boats and movement stacking in the vein of what DarkNeuron did with his mod. If they want to make it more like Spore, then they don't really need to do anything and they can say "Look, you Type X people, just download DarkNeuron's mod and be happy".

I'm a Type X and I'll admit that I do not understand the mentality of the Type Y's (as typified by the comment I quoted above). The way I see it, GC3 is chock full of arbitrary restrictions and limitations, and that's what makes it a game worth playing. Chess would not be interesting if all the pieces could move in any desired way. Sure, you can set up a chess board and play with whatever "house rules" you want (lay your castles on their side and pretend that they're cannons, I wont judge you), but the actual game of Chess has rules. And those rules, those arbitrary restrictions on the player, are what makes it a classic game that has been played for thousands of years.

That's the model that I think that GC3 should aspire to. The game should present the player a strategic challenge, not just by making the AI competent, but also by restricting what the user can do to force them to make strategic choices.

I'm against fixing it because I only play on Gigantic maps and above, and in that position, it doesn't remove the exploration, that's how any exploration gets done at all. I don't even play on the highest map setting! In one of my past games, I needed 3 of the buggers just to see everything in my borders, and that's with late-game tech. Given that the AI often acts on information it doesn't have (colonizing planets it can't see, claiming resources it has no knowledge of), this does not offer an unfair advantage. My advice to people who play small maps is just don't use them on small maps, because they aren't needed. Those of us who play on the larger maps, though, DO need them.

I play on Gigantic maps as well, I still believe that it would be better for game balance if diminishing returns came into play.  I don't think sensor ranges need to be scaled based on map sizes either, because ship speeds are also not scaled based on map sizes.  Those two features (what can I see and how fast can I get there) go hand-in-hand.

Example of diminishing returns assuming a 1/4 (or 25%) penalty multiplier for additional modules.

1st sensor gives +10.0 range

2nd sensor gives +7.5 range (17.5 range)

3rd sensor gives +5.625 (23.125 range)

4th sensor gives +4.21875 (27.34375 range)

5th sensor gives +3.1640625 (30.5078125 range)

6th sensor gives +2.373046875 (32.880859375 range)

7th sensor gives +1.77978515625

8th sensor gives +1.3348388671875

So stacking 4 sensors is about the useful limit with a 25% diminishing returns factor.  The absolute upper limit would be 4x the base sensor range.

EVE Online ship balancing relies heavily on diminishing returns.  It's a useful tool.  

As long as you put the diminishing returns value into the XML files, modders could change it to be anywhere from 0% to 100%.  A D/R value of 0% means linear improvements as you stack modules.  A D/R value of 100 means that a second module is completely useless.

You can retcon it as "too many sensor modules on the ship will interfere with each other".

Note: To avoid exploits where players stack different types of sensor modules, the game should sort all sensor modules by strength before calculating the diminishing returns for each individual module.