Oh Durantium, Where Forth Art Thou?

from GalCiv3 Forums

Anyone played the base game without Crusades/Intrigue recently? Is it just me, or have Durantium and Antimatter swapped positions since the earlier versions of GalCiv3? Way back then, Durantium was everywhere but no one really cared for it while Antimatter was pretty useful, but rarely found. Now, Antimatter is EVERYWHERE, but who really cares until you are closer to endgame. On the other hand, Durantium seems to be so much rarer now, even more so than Elerium and Thullium, and it does not help that seemingly everything wants Durantium--and lots of it! From cities to high level factories and starbase upgrades, everything important to the development of your galactic empire crave the stuff.

 

I like to play with all settings set to abundant, but every time a map is generated, I always find it overflowing with Antimatter but hardly has any Durantium. As a matter of fact, Elerium seems to have taken a hit in abundance as well, while Promethium has gotten a significant boost. I see plenty of asteroids and nebulae on the map, but most of the time, they are without resources. Tell me other people are seeing this too, and that I am not just the super unlucky.  If I am not, there seems to be an imbalance in resource frequency versus what is actually necessary for development.

 

In my experience for development (not war-related techs)...

Antimatter: Extremely High Supply, Very Low Demand - What? Antimnatter Plants?

Promethium: Moderate Supply, Extremely High Demand - Cities, research, many starbase upgrades, reserve

Elerium: Low Supply, Very Low Demand - lol colonial banks

Thullium: Low Supply, High Demand - That terraforming--my gosh. Data archive.

Durantium: Very Low Supply, Extremely High Demand - Cities, factories+refinery, administration, bureau, many starbase upgrades

 

Ship building balances out the supply of Antimatter and Elerium a bit, but not by much. Antimatter is somewhat justified with engines and missiles, but they are just going to sit there uselessly for most of the game until you actually unlock the late-game techs that actually justifies their abundance. Elerium, on the other hand, is slightly rarer than Promethium, but it has the same problem as Antimatter, and the nerf on beam weapons does not help. And of course, nobody likes kinetic weapons, but if you do, then you are screwed because between the low supply of Thullium and cost of terraforming, you are going to wait for a while.

 

Honestly, the only resources that are somewhat balanced are Promethium and Elerium. Promethium is in demand enough in a developing empire to keep your supplies low, but abundant enough to not severely bottleneck your progress. Elerium is really only useful in late game beam weapons, but it is not too abundant either (just under Promethium). You probably have just enough to stack Doom Rays on a few ships before you realize that the nerfed damage is not worth it. You will be swimming in Antimatter, on the other hand, and starving in Durantium and Thullium. None of the AI's are going to have any either even if you want to trade them for it.

 

So...it is not just me, right?

 

/rant

55,707 views 19 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I always have a shortage of Durantuim beyond belief in the latest version. Thanks for bring it up

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

And of course, nobody likes kinetic weapons, but if you do, then you are screwed because between the low supply of Thullium and cost of terraforming, you are going to wait for a while.

Kinetic weapons are king. Simple. if you have not realised this your missing a trick or 20. Aside from that, from what you have said your playing vanila GC3? or pre 3.00 for that matter? Cause 90% of what you said no longer applies.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I love kinetics.  They can be expensive, but are small from the start, and the range issue is easily handled.  

otoh, Durantium has been a bit scarcer for me lately as well.  I generally go for governments which can visit the market, when in dire need (and I have the cash) unless I have other priorities for the next 26 turns.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 2


And of course, nobody likes kinetic weapons, but if you do, then you are screwed because between the low supply of Thullium and cost of terraforming, you are going to wait for a while.



Kinetic weapons are king. Simple. if you have not realised this your missing a trick or 20. Aside from that, from what you have said your playing vanila GC3? or pre 3.00 for that matter? Cause 90% of what you said no longer applies.

 

Bit of a joke on kinetics. They are still pretty great while beams got a lot worse, I feel.

This is not as much of a problem with the DLC variants, but I am playing vanilla 3.0 where it can be a huge bottleneck on every player.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


I like to play with all settings set to abundant,

 

but every time a map is generated, I always find it overflowing with Antimatter but hardly has any Durantium.

 

Those two facts are clearly causal. Antimatter scarcity is based on the abundance of black holes. The default settings for black holes is rare, and I had to bump it up to occasional in my games just so all the anti-matter isn't all horded by one or two civilizations. Abundant black-holes means you are going to have more anti-matter than anyone needs in the game.

As for Duranthium, you do have to make it a priority to find it mine it early, but it seems like everyone gets a hold of a least one vein of it in the games I've played. The demand part you have right though.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Tod, reply 5


Those two facts are clearly causal. Antimatter scarcity is based on the abundance of black holes. The default settings for black holes is rare, and I had to bump it up to occasional in my games just so all the anti-matter isn't all horded by one or two civilizations. Abundant black-holes means you are going to have more anti-matter than anyone needs in the game.

As for Duranthium, you do have to make it a priority to find it mine it early, but it seems like everyone gets a hold of a least one vein of it in the games I've played. The demand part you have right though.

I get that the scarcity of these resources are dependent on the abundance of their corresponding feature (i.e. nebulae for elerium, asteroids for durantium, red giants for promethium, etc.), but the problem that I am seeing is that while almost every black hole consistently has 2-3 antimatter, not every chain of asteroids has Durantium. The ones that do usually only has 1, and the same applies for the other resources as well. I have been playing with everything set to abundant since version 1, and this is the most that I have ever seen Antimatter.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

There have been other threads on this....    When you turn everything to abundant you won't get what you expect.


The Game engine can only support X many static objects.   if you set Everything to Abundant the game tends to roll over some of the settings to rare, or even none...

You are likely seeing a lack of durantium specifically because you have everything set to abundant.  Turn the things you don't want as much of to rare or uncommon and see if that improves the things you actually want.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Taslios, reply 7

The Game engine can only support X many static objects.   if you set Everything to Abundant the game tends to roll over some of the settings to rare, or even none...

You are likely seeing a lack of durantium specifically because you have everything set to abundant.  Turn the things you don't want as much of to rare or uncommon and see if that improves the things you actually want.

I considered that possibility, but I find it strange how particularly antimatter has gone up significantly in abundance (as well as relics and anomalies) while Durantium has gone down significantly. I have been doing this since version 1 and the trend is consistent. If the problem was that the game engine can only handle x number of objects and screws up everything else, the objects that gets missed should be more random, but I am consistently seeing antimatter as the most abundant resource object. 

 

I will play around with settings tonight to see if I can bump up the occurrence of Durantium by lowering Antimatter, though.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Elerium is expected to be the most common resource

Antimater the next most common

even on abundant Durantium is expected to be the most rare.       it will always be the most rare.     

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Taslios, reply 9

Elerium is expected to be the most common resource

Antimater the next most common

even on abundant Durantium is expected to be the most rare.       it will always be the most rare.     

 

So I spent some time creating and destroying a bunch of galaxies--because I am evil like that-- with fowtrans enabled. I used Gigantic and and Tight Clusters to make things easier to see, and these are my observations...

 

Changing the frequency of blackholes and nebulae do not affect the frequency of Durantium much. On the other hand, Elerium saw a significant increase while Promethium saw a small increase if you turn down blackholes. If you decrease both blackholes and nebulae, the previous holds true, but there is also a tiny increase in Thullium due to less nebulae.

 

Even on uncommon, there is still a bunch of Elerium going around, so a good balance of Elerium to Antimatter would be making the abundance level of Elerium one step above Antimatter. Never play on abundant blackholes unless you really love Antimatter because it scales up significantly more than other resource sliders.

 

Promethium is tied to Planet frequency (not habitable) apparently, while Thullium is tied to Star frequency, which means you can play without Antimatter and Durantium, but the aforementioned two are guaranteed. lol

 

But the most important discover, I dare say, is that Durantium requires the presence of asteroids, but Asteroids frequency does not affect the frequency of Durantium. It is actually determined by the frequency of planets (not habitable). I saw no difference in the amount of Durantium between Rare and Abundant. The amount was closely around 30 for both rare and abundant asteroids when playing with planet frequency set to rare, and around 45-50 on a map with abundant planets. This is unaffected even if you set everything else to abundant. I am pretty sure galaxy size matters too, but that is another story.

 

So yeah, it is not due to the game engine rolling over things because there are too many objects. Durantium actually has FIXED number depending on your planet frequency while you have asteroids.

 

In conclusion, it is really not just me! There is a lot less Durantium now....unless my game is broken.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Durantium is controlled by the MinableAsteroidChance (MapSetupDefs.xml), which is very similar for all choices, rare - abundant (few percent per level) which probably makes very little to no impact in game due to the amount of asteroids now, again this does not vary much due to the same issue, such small increments set in MapSetupDefs.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 11

Durantium is controlled by the MinableAsteroidChance (MapSetupDefs.xml), which is very similar for all choices, rare - abundant (few percent per level) which probably makes very little to no impact in game due to the amount of asteroids now, again this does not vary much due to the same issue, such small increments set in MapSetupDefs.

 

I was too lazy to read through the xml files to figure out the exact numbers. lol

 

I am just more frustrated as to why the devs decided to put such a severe cap on Durantium--or rather, why the resources are set at the levels that they are.

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Nilfiry, reply 12
I am just more frustrated as to why the devs decided to put such a severe cap on Durantium--or rather, why the resources are set at the levels that they are.

I played most versions of GalCiv3 from 1.0 through 2.3. There wasn't a single time when I didn't feel the game required extensive modding, both to fix large numbers of bugs (and that's just the 30% or so that could be fixed by modding), and to address large numbers of moderate-to-critical balance issues across many different areas. I ended up with more edited XML files than non-edited ones by the time I finally gave up - it was nuts.

Take from that what you will, but after enough patches over enough months and years with the same basic result never changing, you start to solidify your opinions about "the devs." I'm just browsing right now to check in on the new expansion; it looks like 3.0 may be somewhat better off than I'm used to bug- and balance-wise, but I'm not holding my breath, sigh.

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'll cast my vote for the game needing at least somewhat more Durantium and also ways to capture more than one with a single mining base.

Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting neilkaz, reply 14

I'll cast my vote for the game needing at least somewhat more Durantium and also ways to capture more than one with a single mining base.

But you can already capture more than one. They just need to be within the area of effect of your mining starbase, which is 5 hex by default. All resources, including relics and crystals, not already captured by another starbase will belong to the starbase they are in range of. You can research exploration extension tech to increase this to a max of 9 hex. There is also a mercenary that can double this range if you have it on your list. Starbase position is very important.

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Add in vigilant (trait) and inventive (pragmatic ideology skill) for another 2 range each (I think).

 

Back on topic, not saying there is not a balance issue on your settings but for me I have never been lacking in durantium (or any resource) with everything set to uncommon. However, I always want a crap ton more promethion than I can mine and have equal amount of thulium that is sitting in a stockpile unwanted/unused. Also I wish the techs were a bit more balanced. The first scavenging tech gives a whole +1 to mining while the top mining tech only a measly +0.1 to mining which also requires an upgrade (that takes 60 turns before returning a profit)

Reply #17 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I only occasionally run into a universe where the lack of Durantium is more than annoying.  Usually there is not as much as I'd like, but that is what trading is for (buy their starbase if you can afford it) or the Market, if you have a gov't which can access it.

Reply #18 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Resource calculation should include expanded options in game set up for mandated minimums per starting Civ count with multipliers for Habitable planets.

Reply #19 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

When the game was young, there was lots more D and it wasn't uncommon to be able to build starbases to capture two or even three of them. But not any more. But regardless and, of course, we all try to capture multiple things with our starbases, I'd like to see more D than we've currently been reduced to.