TopKilla - Subterfuge Balance Suggestions 12/21/16

Strategy, feedback, or anything SUBTERFUGE-related

  • Here's my Balance Suggestions:

    • 4 Specialists critically need changes.
    • 3 Specialists could use changes.
    • 2 Game Rules need to be modified.

    Required Specialists Changes: Specialists that break core game mechanics

    • Princess+Intelligence Officer:
      Must be changed so that multiple princess and intelligence officers do not stack. Note: 1 Princess+Intelligence Officer will still stack.

      Optional changes: Intelligence Officer may be able to be promoted into another specialist for another small boost in vision boosting percentage.

      Reason: Fog of War is a critical game mechanic. Being able to see the entire map due to the stacking of a few specialist breaks that core gameplay mechanic. Hiring specialists to see more of the map should be encouraged. But at the same time, 1 outpost should never be able to have vision over the entire map.

    • Tycoon:
      A negative ability is added. Lowering the supply cap by 50 would balance Tycoon stacking. (Along with the changes to the King. See below)

      Reason: Multiple Tycoon's + Multiple Admirals are way better than 5 Kings. I believe you all have finally noticed this. - The Tycoon breaks the core mechanics behind driller production. When you're out producing 3 people because on the same number of factories because you have a few Tycoons (who have no downside to stacking them) there's a major problem. Adding a -50 supply cap per tycoon would force you to choose between having an outstanding production/supply line, or being able to sit back and produce drillers. It also would bring the MOE more into play with, along with the changes to the King. (See below)

    • Admiral:
      Multiple Admirals should no longer stack speed increases on standard subs. OR The Navigator is changed so that it can be promotable 3 times. Each adding a bit more speed each time.

      For option is simple. Standard subs have a 1.5x Speed no matter the number of Admirals you have.

      Second option would work something like this:
      - The first Navigator promotion would produce the current Admiral.
      - A promotion on the Admiral would boost all specialist subs to 1.25x speed.
      - A third and final promotion would give standard subs 1.75x speed and specialist subs 1.5x speed.

      Note: These speeds are not final.

      Reason: 1 Admiral isn't a problem. 2 Admirals things start to get a little sketchy. 3 Admirals and the game mechanics start to break down. Anything more than that is just a mess. - The game was designed so you could go 12 hours between check ins. Mainly, so you're sleeping schedule isn't too disrupted. Anything more than 2 Admirals causes the travel time between outposts to become to fast. And the only counter really becomes matching the number of Admirals that your enemy has.

    • King:
      Kings have no effect on shields. Each king lowers supply cap by 25.

      Reason: The major problem with the King is that he doesn't make any sense. He gives each sub a 33% boost in power. So why is his only "negative effect" on the shields? Because really, he has no real "negative effect" on shields. Because heres how he works:

      You take your Queen, put her on a base with 20 Shields. Then you take your King(s), and put them on that base too. Now you hire a Tinker, and put them on that base. You know have an almost unlimited energy supply. Rinse and Repeat.

      Which works something like this:

      Extra Power = (40 + 20(Kings)) x 3(Tinkers)

      1 King + 1 Tinker = 180 Extra Cap. (That alone is arguably better than promoting the Tinker to an MOE, since you avoid the production loss)
      2 Kings + 1 Tinker = 240 Extra Cap.
      3 Kings + 1 Tinker = 300 Extra Cap
      5 Kings + 1 Tinker = 420 Extra Cap
      -
      2 Kings + 2 Tinker = 480 Extra Cap
      3 Kings + 2 Tinker = 600 Extra Cap
      -
      2 Kings + 3 Tinker = 720 Extra Cap


      I stand by my statement that the King isn't OP. Because he's not. Even though he is broken. - Fixing his negative affect to make to a -25 in supply opposed to this strange stuff with the shield will fix quite a few problems with subterfuge's balance. But it's doesn't solve everything.

      But it's important to note that because of the change to the shields, which nerf's the Tinker, the King doesn't need as big of a production cap decrease as the Tycoon.



    Minor Tweaks: These extra tweaks are not gamebreakinig, therefore are not critical to being changed. But I feel these small tweaks would help with the overall balance.

    • Engineer:
      Repair Stack capped 100% repair

      Reason: If the other changes are implemented, Engineer's may get a huge rise in popularity and stacking. And anything over 100% repair makes 0 sense.

    • Infiltrator:
      Add 1.5 speed OR change the shield drain from 20, to fully drain shields at bases attacked.

      Reason: Both options for this change would make the infiltrator slightly more useful. But a global effect like the general has doesn't make sense. (I personally like the idea to fully drain shields instead of just 20)

    • Thief:
      You get 2 when hired.

      Reason: The thief is a pretty useless specialist. Both the Assassin and the Saboteurs are better specialists, and you get two of each when hired.



    Modified Game Rules: For lack of a better title.

    • Changes to Specialist Hiring Rules:
      When a player has less than 5 bases, his Specialists take twice as long to hire OR are no longer eligible for for hire at all.

      Reason: Specialist Stacking is one of the biggest problems as far as game balance is concerned. And while the Specialists are pretty well balanced with a 1:1 ratio, there's a major problem that occurs when players start to gain more specialists than everyone else. And this generally comes as a result of a player feeding another player their specialists in exchange for their protection inside the middle of their territory.

      I think 5 bases is a pretty good indicator on if you should have an increase in your specialist hire time, or eligibility to hire specialists at all. It's both a significant number of bases, and not many at all. If you have less than 5 bases, you're likely on your way to losing.

      This change would make the protector of the practically eliminated player choose between giving up 5, instead of 1 base in order to gain the players specialists and just eliminating them to keep their production/supply. And it gives all the other players more of a chance of keeping the practically eliminated player without the ability to produce specialists.

    • Changes to Funding:
      Instead of giving players +2 production and +50 supply cap, funding should give +1 production per cycle OR + 50 supply cap. AND which ever option is chosen, should be taken away from the funding player.

      Reason: 1x Funding is a pretty impressive boost. Anything over 3x Funding is insane. And the fact that all of this funding is "free" doesn't make sense. The funding player, should actually fund it by taking a hit to their production or supply.
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  • I agree with all of this.
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    bleatingsheep39
     
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  • Good suggestions - I think that with the amount of people that like the stacking and those that don't, you're better off having a 'flag' that can allow spec stacking on/off, otherwise risk alienating a bunch of the existing player base.
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  • Funding should also be allowed in dom
    Simply put, my job here is to keep the forums afloat through any means necessary
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  • nojo34 wrote:Funding should also be allowed in dom

    ?

    Edit: Oh, it's not allowed because there's not enough minerals.
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  • Tycoon, sure. Admiral, fine. King, alright. Those aren't bad, but someone will always complain. Your suggestions seem fine there.

    Princess/IO stack block? No. After the first ones, it makes them completely obsolete to hire any more. The only other spec I can think that is like that right now is... none. All specs can be useful in multiples. In some cases a lot less than others, but still. You can't just put a block on the IO like that. Fog of war really isn't that important when you can't even reach the place you can see, and I'm almost never sitting here thinking "man, I wish I'd hired the princess over the smuggler so I can see what blue has on the other side of the map". So, I don't like this change.

    Engineer block at 100%, same thing as above. Making something obsolete after a certain point is not a smart move.

    Infil and thief are good enough, but some specialists will always just be a bit less useful than others.


    And then this is where I don't like things.

    Funding: really? No. The whole point of funding is that it's a "higher" player helping out a "lower" player. The lower player can't win until they start to mine, and after they start to mine they can't receive that funding anymore. If you force a repercussion on the funder, nobody will ever find again. Period. Because why help out someone when a) they'll get bigger and bigger and try to take you over and b) it hurts you? Screw them, you're ahead and will want to keep your position. As to choosing one over the other, once again I don't really like it. Funding is supposed to give that nice boost to the player. If they're a good enough diplomat to have 3-4 other players want to fund them, then good on them. They deserve to run over whoever they want. It just really solidifies the importance of diplomacy and alliances. You force players to choose between keeping their own production or giving it away, and diplomacy will drop. It'll just be eternal truces all around, with no real reason to get players to like you.
    Specialist Hiring: :cry: Please please devs do not do this. What you're proposing is that once someone is down to a few outposts, they might as well resign. Now this is my personal opinion, but I'm going to fight till the bitter end. I don't expect anything less of myself. Yeah, I hate seeing players gift away all of their specs because they don't really care. If we could do something about them, that'd be fine. But now you want to disable the players who actually want to keep trying? I'm a fairly good turtle, you can ask almost anyone. But when I go to turtle mode, I don't just surrender all my specs. Maybe I've done that once or twice in all my games. I normally wait a bit, then try to get out and attack again. If I die, then so be it. I'd rather have an elimination on my record than surrender everything I own. Cause who knows, maybe I will fight back. But to disrupt the hiring of specialists is not called for here. Maybe on players who are winning or over a certain outpost count, but definitely not under.

    Quite honeslty, the only idea here that I really liked was
    nojo34 wrote:Funding should also be allowed in dom

    I've wanted this for a long time now. I would say if a player has 20% of the total outposts needed to win more than another, they could fund. So, 10 in a 10 player game, 8 in an 8 player game, etc. (Just happens to coincide with the number of players)

    Anyway, that's my thoughts. Sorry TK, but I don't really like those ideas. Maybe it's because I stick to the casual side and want to have fun, whereas you care about winning. I dunno. But I can't stand behind your ideas.

    And sorry everyone, I just needed to rant a bit here.

    tl;dr: I don't really like TK's ideas, but nojo is dead on


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  • Yeah math I totally agree with you too. Cutting specs is just the worst one there, like wow that's bad. I saw it proposed before but it seemed kind of like a joke. I mean bigger army diplomacy is a real thing, and if you can win that negotiation more power to ya (literally). I almost get tired of all these ideas and yeah they'll always be controversial but I'm just tired of em maybe it's just me.
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    aclonicy
     
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  • nojo34 wrote:Funding should also be allowed in dom

    Would that work as in you fund somebody with less outposts?

    And math, I agree with you totally, and you made me change my mind about what TK is saying.

    Spec stack block is madness to me, with the IO/Princess+Engineer. It ruins the fun of the game, and although spec stacking is without question OP, we all start in the same boat in this game. Anyone can stack a billion kings or a billion IOs if they want to, it's not like it's unfair as anyone can do it, even if they get bad hires (Fine, it might take longer, but in the long run it would equalise and besides - you win some, you lose some) And specialist stacking makes the game fun.

    As for the thing about not hiring with less than five outposts, I get what Math says. Turtling is a part of the game, and turtles can expand and win if they gather enough forces, or just be a pain for their enemies. Players with low amounts of outposts shouldn't be penalised. And it ruins blob's turtle Smashing ;(

    Overall, I agree with some of what TK said, but not all.

    Thanks for reading this rant,
    Sheep

    P.S. I will extend this post when I find some more time.
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  • aclonicy wrote: almost get tired of all these ideas and yeah they'll always be controversial but I'm just tired of em maybe it's just me

    I feel the exact same way right now. I actually don't really read these threads anymore, just happened to look in on this one
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  • mathwhiz9 wrote:Princess/IO stack block? No. After the first ones, it makes them completely obsolete to hire any more. The only other spec I can think that is like that right now is... none. All specs can be useful in multiples. In some cases a lot less than others, but still. You can't just put a block on the IO like that. Fog of war really isn't that important when you can't even reach the place you can see, and I'm almost never sitting here thinking "man, I wish I'd hired the princess over the smuggler so I can see what blue has on the other side of the map". So, I don't like this change.

    Engineer block at 100%, same thing as above. Making something obsolete after a certain point is not a smart move.

    Infil and thief are good enough, but some specialists will always just be a bit less useful than others


    I think you're looking at things a way to straight forward.

    Sure, after the first ones, no ones going to hire them.
    Sure, a princess or intelligence officer likely won't be hired over one of the best specs in the game.
    Sure, there's a lot of specs that are "more useful".

    However, the fact that you stated; "Fog of war really isn't that important when you can't even reach the place you can see" shows that you're really don't understand how important of a game mechanics Fog of War is.


    But here's the thing. If you're getting fed specialists from another a player, a few spec hires in order to see the entire, or most, of the map isn't a huge deal. And that's what this aims to solve. Along with the sentry stacking abuse.


    As for the Engineer, you got to be kidding me. Over 100% repair on your drillers lost makes no sense first of all. Secondly, in order to get over 100% repair, you need at a minimum, 3 engineers. If the changes to the tycoon, admiral, and king are to happen, and the engineer isn't capped at 100% repair, it's likely to become the next abused stacked specialist.



    mathwhiz9 wrote:Infil and thief are good enough, but some specialists will always just be a bit less useful than others.


    The infiltrator really doesn't need a change. But if a slight boost would make it more useful. Partially in the late game. - I think having the 1x Speed and having it completely drain shields would to wonders to it's lack of use. And, if all these other changes are also made, would counter people stacking security chiefs.

    The thief is practically useless. 2 of them make sense, and it helps with the synergy with playing with Generals.



    mathwhiz9 wrote:Funding: really? No. The whole point of funding is that it's a "higher" player helping out a "lower" player. The lower player can't win until they start to mine, and after they start to mine they can't receive that funding anymore. If you force a repercussion on the funder, nobody will ever find again. Period. Because why help out someone when a) they'll get bigger and bigger and try to take you over and b) it hurts you? Screw them, you're ahead and will want to keep your position. As to choosing one over the other, once again I don't really like it. Funding is supposed to give that nice boost to the player. If they're a good enough diplomat to have 3-4 other players want to fund them, then good on them. They deserve to run over whoever they want. It just really solidifies the importance of diplomacy and alliances. You force players to choose between keeping their own production or giving it away, and diplomacy will drop. It'll just be eternal truces all around, with no real reason to get players to like you.


    If a "higher" player really wanted to help a "lower" player out, then they should be willing to give them a small piece of their own supply/production. It's really that simple. Being able to "fund" players and to magically produce bonus drillers and supply is illogical.

    But this change has another very important aspect to it that you missed. Making this change slightly helps fight multi-boxers/good allies/friends/ who go into games and team up, along with those getting stacked with specialists, Because the massive boost from funding no longer is 100% positive. Since the funder takes a hit, and the fundee gets either a slight production boost, or a slight supply cap boost.



    mathwhiz9 wrote:Specialist Hiring: :cry: Please please devs do not do this. What you're proposing is that once someone is down to a few outposts, they might as well resign. Now this is my personal opinion, but I'm going to fight till the bitter end. I don't expect anything less of myself. Yeah, I hate seeing players gift away all of their specs because they don't really care. If we could do something about them, that'd be fine. But now you want to disable the players who actually want to keep trying? I'm a fairly good turtle, you can ask almost anyone. But when I go to turtle mode, I don't just surrender all my specs. Maybe I've done that once or twice in all my games. I normally wait a bit, then try to get out and attack again. If I die, then so be it. I'd rather have an elimination on my record than surrender everything I own. Cause who knows, maybe I will fight back. But to disrupt the hiring of specialists is not called for here. Maybe on players who are winning or over a certain outpost count, but definitely not under.


    More so than changing the modifying the specialist, this is the biggest change the game needs to make it more balanced.

    I wrote out a pretty detailed explanation of why. And you're response is that "don't do it because people will resign."

    The thing is though, this is a game of war. If you're getting killed and losing bases, and go down to 1 base, you shouldn't get specialists. It's really that simple.

    Specialists in this game should sort of be considered something similar to "research" in other war-like games like Civilization. On a basic level, The bigger your nation, the quicker you can research more advanced things, the stronger you become. - Only, what I'm proposing a simple system where if you're under 5 outpost, aka about to be eliminated, then you have at least twice as long interval between hires, or you don't get hires at all.

    I mean, I really don't know what you're trying to say. Turtling isn't a strategy. And thats cool that your code isn't to giveaway your specialists to your superior in order to try rank higher. But it unfortunately doesn't matter, because it's a highly effective strategy. And it happens very often.
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