So I have just finished a few rounds of FFA with the AI on Nightmare difficulty and now that I'm used to the game mechanics and all the new features I'm not encountering resistance anymore. I basically get four to five planets, do some research while making some units, then just take over the galaxy. I do this by creating a medium size fleet and then taking a few extra planets. I then use all the surface slots to increase the garrison and max out heavy factories and hangars. I don't even bother with starbases anymore as they take took long to build and there is no enemy resistance
At this point in late game it's basically a runaway power situation. I have a million of each resource, hundreds of garrison troops, and a huge fleet. I know the AI is really dumb right now, so that is part of the reason. However, I so want point out some possible improvements: Research completion and ongoing cost, garrison ongoing cost, and resource availability.
I think the research needs to be much more expensive, and it would be great it there was tons more of it. I think that as you finish more research there should be ongoing costs to it so you don't just blindly continue researching all the way to the end. Similar to fleet upkeep in sins 1.
Same thing for garrison units. They are too easy to max out and keep you safe from everything. Make it expensive to just spam garrisons at every planet you take over and place heavy factories on them.
There are too many resources late game. The game is basically on autopilot at this point and there is no need to do anything but conquer planets. This ties in with the last points. When you have 40 planets it should be more difficult to manage all then drawing your attention back to keeping your planets "maintained".
Games looking really good.
Thanks for the feedback! Right now neither balance or AI is a primary focus, so you should expect both to remain... iffy until we're closer to release.
Got it.
I think that something else that should change in the future, although I'm not entirely sure, is just having less colonizable planets on the map. I'm missing the plasma fields etc. That would help in combination with the balancing that needs to be done still.
I encountered the same thing with Garrison power. There is no downside to it and the power you get from a single planetary upgrade slot is immense, especially when spamming heavy factories. There is no counter to Garrisons except for Garrisons of your own, and no planetary upgrade slot is even close in value to the garrisons potential output.
I hate to say this because I just hate nerfs and I like to spend a lot of time in games like this modding OP scenarios for myself to playthrough, but if Garrisons are going to be in the game they need a massive check in power in terms of incurring massive economic debuffs when they are spammed in full force. A good place to start is probably every garrison slot comes with -1 credit income, and -.25 metal and crystal income.
At least in that way if you are spamming garrisons the way I do(every planetary slot that supports them), then you are taking a big loss on your economy, which could slow down your research initiatives and maybe give the AI or other players a chance to come at you with a fully upgraded fleet, which will still take a big hit trying to chew its way through 800 fleet supply garrisons of carriers, heavy cruisers and missile cruisers(because thats what you get if you only spam the heavy factories).
I would like to see Garrisons remain an important part of the game the way they are now, and want the AI to exploit their potential as much as possible, so its more fun taking a 2000 supply fleet of capital ships into their controlled worlds. However it would not be an understatement to say Garrisons win the game for you at this point. I would love know what people have been experiencing playing human vs human games where someone has been turtling as hard as they can with garrisons.
They will absolutely be nerfed. The best way to do it is still being debated but its possible to give them an economic penalty. How else are you paying for all that chaff? lol
All we need is some kind of fleet tax, like sins1. To help ppl in disadvantage get back into the game with clever play and enemy mistakes.
I think the infrastructure costs are fairly well done so far; now just include military infrastructure in that as well. It doesn't have to be too hefty.
Well, it's not even 10% in my games
The nerf to the garrisons production speed and supply has definitely scaled back the overall power of just turtling up with garrisons, especially in the mid-game. Still having pretty sizeable garrison stacks in the late game is satisfying and not necessarily as overpowered anymore. I wish I could play against an AI that does the same thing so it would be easier to gauge just how punishing running into a full garrison on a desert planet being fed by a full garrison on a loyalist Terran/Ocean world can be.
A limit to 1 per planet would be sensible too. For like every upgrade, apart civil / military science labs, but especially this one.
I wouldn't mind seeing garrisons scale differently. 1 per planet, but the amount of garrison supply is determined by planet level. I like that they can grow to be big so I would hate to see Ocean and Terran worlds see their potential nerfed.
After playing out a game as Tec Rebels with the lower garrison potential, I can say that garrisons feel reasonable where they are right now. Once I got Insurgency up and running the Unfair AI was taking enough attrition for me to catch up all my research, field my Titan and kit out my capitals for maximum potential. It was a 2vs2vs1 game, with the lone AI being Unfair and the other three just being Hard. The Hard AI were not able to field a Titan but the Unfair AI did. I ran the game out to ~7 hours and one error did pop up that I skipped and the engine didnt crash, so I'm not sure what that was. I could have ended the game much sooner, as once you are able to engage the main enemy fleet and shred it to pieces, it takes a bit for the AI to produce more ships and create a new main fleet.
I noticed that planetary bombing effects are not working on asteroids, and some of the other planets, although I did see them on a Terran world at once point in this particular game. So I assume there is a bug preventing it from showing up.
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