Game Balance: purchasing alien ships too cheap

I don't think it should even be an option, especially not at the start. This game does have a lot of balance issues unfortunately 

Good point about limiting (or even eliminating) the option to purchase alien spacecraft.  Perhaps a solution would be to make the price of alien spacecraft > than it costs to buy at home.  Or introduce some other difficulty or disadvantage when obtaining alien craft.

  As for the balance issues, I'm guessing that the designers are making sure that the big pieces work and then they will refine the small bits.    

 

Damn, if they take away all my exploits, I am going to have to find new ways to beat the AI on godlike,

CaliforniaBill nailed it - I'd rather Stardock fixed the "OMFG It Happen in Turn 10 Now How Could I have avoided that?!?" Bug that affects every player no matter what way they're playing rather than the "I choose to go down this path, now get that danged tree outta my way!!" bug first.

Get rid of the big fat pimple that covers half your cheek, then later pop that white miniscule thing above your left eyebrow. If that metaphor doesn't make you reach for the barf bag...

But obviously it's best they do both and I'm quite prepared to wait for both. Truth be told, I'm not playing GalCiv3 too often myself so haven't noticed too many bugs but good for everyone who is...

 

 

Ah, sorry!

Replied to something CaliforniaBill had replied to in another thread. Somehow ended up here and was obviously the wrong thing.

 

Ahem... This is part of the diplomacy/trading part of the AI that has been pointed out before as a veddy veddy easy exploit that surely must be on the list of things to fix. It ruins diplomacy/trading which for me is a favoured way of getting and authoritah and powah!

I mean, I'll invade and kill if I have to, but I'd rather negotiate and get other races to kill each other at my bidding and then maybe exploit a bit of stupidity in the trading screen to get the very good tech for the good but actually if you think about it not good enough bc....

 

 

Ya all of the diplomacy AI is super duper stupid at the moment, and the devs know about it.  The only diplomacy options that are actually kind of working right now is trading techs.  Otherwise you can really just basically roll all over the computer opponents pretty easy in many different ways right now, if you want to abuse the crap out of stuff that is broken

 

 I like being able to buy enemy colonizers when they are approaching high quality planets in an area I have claimed as my own. I could see making it a bit more expensive though.  

PogueMahone, that is an ingenious exploit.  From a personal point of view, how would you like to be one of the colonists who is notified right at the time of planetfall, "We just got notified from headquarters, we've been sold to a race of hairless apes."    I don't think that would go down well.  Viva la revolucion!  

   Ah, FrancoFX, you will have to figure out how to be ever more clever.  

But Aerez summed it up nicely

   The current system of buying and selling ships appears to be just a placeholder.  With continued feedback and suggestions from us customers, the developers will make it better.  Else we will play Civ V or Railroad Tycoon or Barbie's Nails instead.  

(hmmm...perhaps a counterbalance would be the ol' double cross.  The Drengin ambassador asks, "Could you do us a favor and purchase 20 of our ships for pennies on the dollar?  They're older and we find that their maintenance is a bit high.  We'll even throw in some troop transports.    It will be a win win situation.  We liquidate our inventory and reduce our maintenance costs and you gain a new fleet. C'mon.  It will be good for all."

    Then, once they are well within your borders, the ships mysteriously disobey your commands (if you are paying attention to their movements, that is...sometimes you have so many ships, they are hard to keep track of) and congregate around your richest planets.  In one fell swoop, they capture your industrial centers.  

The Drengin ambassador then comes back and corrects herself,  "Oops, I meant to say, it would be a Win-Win situation for us,  not you.  Lose lose!"  

HA! the old Trojan horse gambit.

"A victory condition will be achieved!"

I like CaliforniaBill's take on this.

It does give the Devs three roads to travel when dealing with this bug (maybe two if you can merge B and D:

A: Undo the fact that the AI grossly undervalues the ships it's going to sell you. Probably the easiest way around this problem but let me present....

B: Keep that the Ai will grossly undervalue the ship/s it's going to sell you but give a good reason why. In other words, the AI knows 56bc for Battlecruiser IV is pretty naff but it also knows that there's a virus on that ship that renders it unusable - thing won't fly where you want it to, is just as likely to target your ships as your enemies, quite brazenly doesn't use it's defenses properly therefore necessitating being babysat out of a hostile situation etc.

C: What CaliforniaBill suggested with the "Oh, look, we're in Terran ZOC now - SURPRISE BEEYATCHH!!!"

To deal with a ship bought from whatever other AI race (bought on the cheap! If you're paying top bc for that battleship the AI race is selling you, their maintenance bald monkey thingees can do this!), you must do a maintenance sweep/hostile sweep on that ship (which can only be done once it's in your ZOC of course) and that sweep at best renders the ship unusable for x number turns - making it vulnerable to the Drengin who you're at war with - and at worst means you have to waste one of your fighter's moves for the next turn (when you'd previously planned that that fighter was going to destroy Drengin Starbase 4) in destroying the ex-AI race ship because it's EVIL!! Also, once you know the ship's "infected", the ship does CaliforniaBill's suggestion: "We're still Alterians and we still want your planets" and manuevres towards that 20 Planet you've got because you can't control it and because you can't control it you can't feed it the Drengin as cannon fodder. And what if the Drengin know that the ex-Alterian ship is a dud and can control it??

And, heck, randomize the quality of the maintenance/hostile sweep so what's bad in that thar ship remains hidden and therefore undetectable until a certain event occurs like your relationship with the ship's ex-owners going down too far...

I don't ask for much. My suggestions are way easy to implement. Should be no strain on the developer's brain in doing it By Beta 5, guys! Chop, chop!