SitReps - Balance and Bug Fixes
Published on Thursday, May 9, 2024 By
Everything I write here is intended to be a suggestion/idea – please don’t read this as if it’s a list of demands. My aim is to provide feedback in a constructive tone, which can be difficult via text.
I’m not sure if you’ll want any sit-reps like this after release, so I’ll try to encompass everything as of this update.
The new mechanics, systems and the especially the pronounced asymmetry of the major factions has greatly improved the game. I do miss the militia & random events systems from Sins1 though. I also miss the artifacts and the expanded diplomacy from Sins1 too.
Sins 2 should explore the “exploitation” aspect of 4X a bit more. Allowing planet bonuses to be improved differently from the various playable faction research topics, allowing planet bonuses to permanently apply buffs to units built at their locations and/or allowing planet bonuses to unlock hidden units (*looks at the derelicts). The research artifact could be used to reveal a hidden research tree. Exploitation of other players could be explored as well in the form of pacts (sins1 style) and/or in the form of hidden research topics being revealed based on the active pacts/alliances. Such interactions could allow for mixing/matching of turrets, shields or abilities. All this said, I do think it would be best for this to be a game-setting toggle – I doubt competitive games want to see the randomness of games increase.
On the art side of things, I do wish that some minor factions and especially militia units could have reused models from the previous game like the Kodiak Cruiser, the removed capital ships and some of the old skins. Idea is to double as both an easter egg of Sins1 units and as a way of showing the advancements of the playable factions that no longer use the old/archaic designs.
1) Gameplay
1.1) Minor Factions
- To help with getting the roaming fleets (Pirates & Aluxians), is it possible to have them research fleet supply as the game progresses? When exploring the smaller maps, these factions can be much closer to players at game start. I don’t want their total fleet supply to get lowered into nothingness, but I also don’t want to see players get knocked out early because they can’t engage these large starting fleets.
- My goal is for them to ramp up as the game progresses alongside players rather than starting with end-game fleets right at game initialization – using the fleet supply research of the playable factions seems like a good way to do this. This would give them a chance to scale a little bit with larger maps without overrunning the smaller maps.
- Novalith spam is knocking out some of the minor factions (homeworld kills)
- Thoughts on tweaking the Pirates homeworld bonus to give planet HP regeneration & a bombing damage reduction?
- Thoughts on giving Aluxians a Starbase with planetary shields? Or, preferably, letting them research/build those themselves?
- Viturak Transport Cabal - Setting a mapwide limit to the phase gates has a very jarring/random feel
- it doesn’t really make any sense considering the nature of the minor faction (their abilities feature scouting & map awareness, so I’d expect them to want to propagate as far as possible)
- I really only play on 10 player maps and with the limit I’d just never waste influence on unlocking/using the final ability (I’m not interested in adding the micro of deleting & rebuilding the phase gates just to maybe have the option of moving from one side of my empire to another)
- As alternative ideas for this faction specifically, instead of using a mapwide cap,
- Impose a phase jump speed nerf on ships not owned by the minor faction (it’s scouts should be able to jump around unhindered)
- Impose an economic penalty for using the minor factions gate (a toll of metal/crystal per ship; ships cannot jump until toll is paid – and yes, trade ships/garrisons should be impacted by these tolls as well)
- Aluxian Resurgence
- I still argue that the Aluxian Resurgence should be building trade ports at worlds they capture. (they are trying to rebuild the trade order)
- I am not against finite limits overall. For example, having a set number of “charges” per game for minor faction military fleets could be interesting – their forces are far more limited than player forces after all. (Pirate/mercenary type factions should not have limited fleet charges)
- Overall, it’d be nice to have repercussions to using minor faction abilities too. Having some of them be benevolent vassal states is fine, but I’d like to see some of them behave as more of a trade-off than only ever being giant non-unit abilities. In terms of what this could be, having some abilities eat into income for a duration, giving minor factions extra fleet supply/defensive structures, or by improving the research level of them
- Minor Faction player wishlist:
- Scrapyard type minor faction (ideally with fx of destroyed ships & debris in orbit)
- Sells off ship components (auctions) to the highest bidder exotic market – purchasing instead of selling
- abilities related to generating credits/metal/crystal/exotics from destroying enemy ships in particular gravity wells? Idea is that it could be used by an attacking player or by a defending player to reduce resources lost from ship destruction
- Mercenary type minor faction (ideally multi-faction, like Vasari/TEC, TEC/Advent, Advent/Vasari, TEC/Pirate, Vasari/Pirate, Advent/Pirate..)
- Sells their allegiance (auctions). Will attack players hostile to auction winner (no grav jump limitation, but will never colonize planets) and will send attack waves until the next auction is won
- Unlike the other minor factions, this type would not offer abilities (just to mix things up)
- Scrapyard type minor faction (ideally with fx of destroyed ships & debris in orbit)
- Minor Faction gameplay interactions wishlist: (these don’t need to be standalone minor factions themselves)
- Research oriented minor faction (something similar to the derelict guardians?)
- Abilities can offer units/components that increase research speed
- Auctions would be related to timed research boosts, based off of the market monopolies
- Manufacturing oriented minor factions
- Can be varied around ship classes, structures, components & exotics
- Abilities would like boost
- Having more lore-connected ones would be great. Pranast is a great example, but what about the other major members of/from the trade order?
- Odds of a unqiue minor faction based off of the Exodus that has no planet & slowly travels around eating 1 planet at a time?
- Odds of minor factions comprising off mini alliances? Basically, is it possible to build minor factions that model/depict various playstyles?
- Is it possible to build the minor factions as easter eggs of faction designs that were considered at one point but later abandoned for whatever development reasons?
- It’d be nice to have multiple minor faction markets as options instead of the 1/each we get currently on the largest maps. Last I checked (modded game, about 2 updates ago), only 1 metal market will “work” per game even if more than 1 minor faction with one spawned in.
1.2) Abilities/Components
- It’d be nice to see an expansion of abilities to the rank-n-file units. Note that I’m looking for the nature of these abilities to be “soft” rather than “hard”. For example, the Dunov’s ability to straight up disable enemy abilities for a duration is something I’d consider “hard”. Meanwhile the Sins1 ability “interference” which increased ability costs/cooldowns is something I’d consider “soft”
- I’d like to see abilities added that synergize with one another within a faction
- For example, a variation of the magnetic singularity that forces a specific class/type of enemy unit to cluster together as a set-up for AoE abilities such as Flak Burst or Missile Barrages
- I’d like to see some abilities in-game have their mirrors present too, within a faction or mirrored between the subfactions
- The Antorak Marauder has the gravity distortion field giving allied ships a boost to movement. It’d be nice to see rank & file ships, such as the carriers, emit a variation of that gravity distortion field that slows enemy strikecraft & missiles
- Temporarily suppress a phase lane (inverse of the Vasari ability to create one)
- Inverse to Warpath, where enemy units experience a stacking decrease in offensive capability (a nod to war weariness, basically) – most likely advent?
1.3) Components
- Almost all of the components are strictly-positive, as in they don’t have trade-offs. Volatile Accelerants is the only exception that comes to mind. I’m in the minority but I find the “only positives” approach to be odd/jarring
- I see components as faction-generic abilities at this point because they can’t stack. This severely limits the customization in my opinion. I get that balance needs to be maintained, a lot of the balancing issues came from the fact the components gave without ever taking. This is just a difference in design philosophy though – I’m an engineer so managing tradeoffs for me is often fun/natural/expected
- Will the Allied Metal Market & Allied Crystal Market components return? Is it possible to see them return as planet bonuses
1.4) UI
- It would be nice to see planet bombing damage on the unit tooltips, even if it only appears while holding “alt”
- When hiding the UI (CNTL+SHFT+Z), can you modify it so that the star icon isn’t hidden along with everything else? Was attempting to take a screenshot with it peeking from behind a planet and discovered that wasn’t going to work.
1.5) Influence
- Thoughts on having some influence dependant on whether or not the player has a homeworld? The research upgrades go 2>5>9, limiting the 2 & 5 influence points to upgrading the homeworld bonus I think would be a bit more thematic. The final 4 earned from research would be the “floating influence” type
- From a lore perspective, I’d expect a factions influence to drop a bit if they lose their homeworld. Thoughts on having the first 3-5 influence points being tied to the homeworld again with the remainder floating from the empire or from components?
- As for the Vasari Exodus, abandoning their homeworld to go fully mobile would imply that they’re done playing politics and have restarted their planet-eating ways. I’d see them as being the least interactive when it comes to minor factions. As alternative, allowing the [mobile empire labs] to earn 1 influence each (unlocked at “enhanced mobile influence”) could alleviate that while still playing into the exodus image of being mobile.
1.6) Vasari
- Crystal can be painfully difficult to get if you don’t happen to get an ice planet and don’t find the two market minor factions early on. Is there a chance that asteroid crystal mining can see some small increases?
- Thoughts on Vasari research labs being given Distort Gravity?
- The goal is to give a parallel to the TEC with the PSIDAR. Distort gravity has a neat sfx effect in game, only reason for the suggestion
- Exodus
- Would you consider the following changes to the mobile labs, after researching [Enhanced Mobile Research]? If that would cause issues too soon, then about adding them in at [Advanced Mobile Research]?
- Mobile Empire Lab – gives +1 influence points or gives +100 antimatter
- Mobile Warfare Lab – gives +5 Armor strength or gives +50 Hull points
- Would you consider the following changes to the mobile labs, after researching [Enhanced Mobile Research]? If that would cause issues too soon, then about adding them in at [Advanced Mobile Research]?