1.03: Sim City In Space.

Reposted so I can actually edit the damn thing, did I mention these forums are great?

Hidden changes to patch enrage me.

The balance for competitive play is dying, fast.

Market Exploit: Click it fast enough and you can have almost as many resources as you want, for cheap. The previous way it worked, was as soon as you clicked it, it went up now, now, as soon as you click it, it starts to go up. It's not instant. Meaning the faster you click, the more you get for cheap.

Market sell price: 1/3rd roughly excepting booms I'd imagine? but 1/3rd normally, meaning that Vasari as a rule, who before had to sell resources in order to be able to afford things most of the early/mid game can no longer afford to do so, which ties into my next point.

No slider for resources: First of let me just say... WHAT? Who on earth thought this was a good idea. Okay, 2 per asteroids, 3 per every other planetoid, 1 per neutral grav well. Compared to what almost every other game was (many, 4 for each planetoid regardless) I'll be adding more as I see each change that wasn't posted in change log. As well as explaining why this patch completely ruined any semblance of balance.

One Resource To Rule Them All: Credits, with the way the market system work, are now much more powerful. What race has the easiest time getting this amazing resource? The TEC.

With the way the game works now, the only way to have enough resources for anything mid game is now to buy crystal/metal using credits, TEC have several massive advantages here. From the developement mandate tech to the 2 civics required for trade ports. They simply cannot be matched.

So far in this patch I agree, the cheap selling of resources and cheap 'bulk buy' massively benefits the player who can amass the most credits at a given time, unsurprisingly this is the TEC who do little BUT mass credits.

I can understand a game where a strong trading economy makes you a powerful empire, but what the hell is going on when having a surplus of a resource is almost worthless in comparison to credits? Vasari rushes relied heavily on the selling of usually excess metal but occasionally crystal to get their fleet to a sizeable amount, without this boon the TEC can simply sit back and amass trade ports to their hearts content, when their scouts encounter an enemy fleet it's bulk buy 2K of each resource for very little and start pumping kodies out of four factories, by the time the enemy fleet arrives your fleet outnumbers them.

If that fails, no big deal, it's not like they can actually take your planet with over 3000HP unless they amass a fleet of caps, god knows no-one can afford serious siege frigates anymore, and even if you could, so what? Couple of hangers defenses will wipe pretty much any siege fleet and without the fleet capacity in warships theres little danger of being over-run the usual way.

OMG CHANGE RUN FOR YOUR LIFE AHHHHHHHHHHH ITS EATING MY LEG! :SNIFF!: 

OMG I DON'T CARE ABOUT BALANCE AND I LIKE TO SIM CITY AND JUST MASS TRADE PORTS, THIS PATCH IS GREAT.

Basically?

The patch hasn't been out for a full day and your already moaning is my point.

Oh come on this is hardly an "exploit". Firstly you need the credits to start off with in order to buy that much stuff cheap, and if you sit there saving up credits while your opponent is amassing an army with his then you're screwed if he attacks.

While you might be right that TEC has a slight advantage because of this, I hardly think it's game breaking. Give the patch at least a couple of weeks before bagging it, you can't have played more than a couple of actual games with it given it's only been out a day.

I don't mind change with say, balance in mind, or to improve the game, I have massive issues with bullshit n00b-pleasing changes to make the people who don't understand competitive play happy in their twelve hour compstomps.

This patch buffs sim-city building and nerfed siege frigates, why did it nerf siege? Because the AI builds fleets of siege and kills n00bs.

The world was built on knee-jerk reactions.

That's why, in general, the world sucks.

And if you say, "Sim City" one more time, I'm going to puke.

I think someone should've stuck with RTS games.

this is an RTS game

Edit: before anyone bitches anymore at how soon these posts were made - these are predictions based upon play so far. We're not saying "This is how it is" this is just what it appears to be.

Yes.... Hmm and go to work all day an then when you come home try to play one little map... And i will see if you will seat there... I play my last game 5 days.

Actual game time 4:20 min.. And i dont think much where to find this unbalance or what is this for you... You have now destroy a fun of lot people whit this.. Keep this things for you...Thanks... It is time to go in bed.. I work tommorow....

Your those two guys that were spamming the ICO online chat earlier today, complaining about noobs and not having enough resources per-planet and what not. I believe there were posts earlier complaining about how the first person to buy crystals won? Since after the first person, everyone else was having to pay a considerably higher amount? Well now, if everyone buys crystal at the same time, everyone pays the same price.

Seems like what people were asking for to me.

Due to the 'magic bottomless black market', cash was already the most useful resource, and these changes haven't really changed this. Oh well, we can all edit the base market price to 2k or something and use the player-based market, which is more limited and more interesting. I mean, super-cheap resources (yeah, 300-600 for resources is super-cheap) was always a crazy idea.

EDIT - Frankly, if the price goes DOWN as slow as it goes UP, it's better than the 102 system where it spiked in 10s and dropped back to 300 in 3m.

No the major difference in the market is that previously anyone heavy on resources could use their excess to sell and buy the resource they need, now you don't make enough money for it to be worth it so credits are more valuable and TEC is the best at making credits.

Norrec - In my experience the majority of people ask for the wrong thing or don't consider the ramifications, when they get what they want they tend to complain more.

... Or they could have fixed that by locking the prices for the first 30 seconds, which doesn't hurt ANY build order. And keeps it balanced.

They fixed the crystal rush but the cure is worse than the disease. the 1.03 market effectively discounts resources by 1000s of credits for heavy early buyers. Hello TEC and goodbye game balance!

This is NOT an RTS, and the sooner people realize that, the happier they'll be.

(It's not a pure 4x game, like Master of Orion, either.)

I like the way you suddenly became a "we", there, too. It adds weight to your argument. Like you're the Queen of England, or something, you know?

Wow. We was me and Haeso. I guess you didn't get that huh?

Call me ignorant, but why does all of this have to mean "goodbye game balance"?

I'm sure IC's pre-patch stat-tracking would have shown that 2-3 times as many people were playing the Vasari/Advent as TEC before the patch.

Might one reason for that have been because by the time a decent TEC-player (TEC who are supposed to be the econo-junkies) might be starting to make some decent trade-income just as his Vasari opponent reaches RA?

There are more reasons for the changes I'm sure (and by my own admission I haven't actually "played" the game a whole lot, due to being busy helping others ) but I can't see how slowing-down a game that was never meant to be the next Star Craft is a bad thing?


I'm just being honest in my opinion, now let the flames begin....hehe


the Monk

It's a merger of both, and this patch completely ruins one aspect of the game, balance.

Regardless if you play huge, or small. Long or short games. This change destroyed balance.

In anything but huge games vasari are now underwhelmingly performing.

If all you want to play is huge games, fine, but don't ruin what the majority of people playing multiplayer care about.

Can anyone name a single REAL problem with hurting build orders?

TEC can get trades up way before RA. It's tech 2 vs tech 8. TEC used to have to buy crystal up to 600s then 800s, now its 300s and much greater quantities. Hmm I wonder what does 2x TEC resource income do to the game balance?

... uh, a build order is the heart of competitive play in an RTS, if you don't like it go play an FPS? Adaptability and micro are good and all, but a solid build order will beat a bad one that has no thought invested in it, that's just the way it should work...

By the way this fucks more than build orders

That's not a real reason, because last time I checked, the point of an RTS is skill in adapting and countering. Outthinking. Build orders are directly contradictory to this. Because "competitive" players would be completely unable to handle change doesn't mean it's a valid reason.

If build-orders were so god-damn necessary, why not just have the game start with the build order already done?

Or rather, why not just have a bot play for you, since the entire point of a build order is a static, unchanging, thoughtless sequence of events, every game?

Pray tell, oh master of strategy, why not just have a chess board start with the king already 'castled'? Does every competitive chess player open the game the exact same way? No, they don't. There's literally a hundred defined opening moves for a game of chess that all change how the game is played.

Build orders are an atrocity and have no place in a game that claims to be about strategy, and the unthinking retard who uses them has no business thinking themselves a master of it.

The new Black Market system has me very confused, personally.

I bought, literally, 2,000 Crystal, all at once on the market, and overall raised it's price from 300 to 450, which the game said was a boom. Literally within two minutes the price change had reverted to what it was prior to my blitz on the market. I also tried jacking up the price on Metal in the market, since I was Crystal poor but Metal rich, but this also seemed to go nowhere. I caused a crash but it wasn't all that severe, and the price didn't get above 500 credits for 100 Metal (I can't be sure if this is the result of changes or not, sometimes the Black Market can be very profitable, but other times go nowhere, depending on the behavior of other players).

It really does look like credits are king now, with the black market being so inflexible. As the game went on I never saw the price of Crystal get above 500 despite my constant pillaging of the market (having no Ice Worlds).

I'm not at all a competitive player, but this seems to make the two resources much less important, and developing planets and trade ports much more, since you can exchange credits for resources continually with little penalty. TEC, especially later in game with it's extra Logistics Slots for Trade Ports and Pervasive Economy can probably be even more monstrous.

Uranium, I couldn't agree more with your post. The reason I don't play starcraft is that memorizing the ONLY way you can build units means it isn't a game, just clicking buttons.