Making the game challenging (working solution inside)

[True_poser]

Ok, I found a way, how to experience a challenging gameplay.
Through some inventive masochism, of course, but, well, so it goes.

Let's look at this picture:

Yeah, I've got a challenging game and I lost it. Green isn't my color.

How?

You just need to edit a race.
I prefer starting as humans, I call them in this "challenging" template "The Worst Guys", but it works for any race.

Government - totalitarion
Growth rate - low
Planet size - small
Set all aptitudes to poor.
Uncheck all special abilities.
Remove all technologies, except grey ones.

Have you done it? Ok.

• * Easy mode - add "transient" trait.
  * Normal mode - start the game as it is.
  * Hard mode - add "repulsive" trait.

Ironman style - do not ever open the techs tree.

Easy mode makes for quick scout exploration.
Exploration will be your primary source for techs.

Hard mode makes for early wars with races like Varaians, Kamzaks and, suddendly, Barbecks, who get offended if you don't talk with them.
And repulsive means you can't really talk with races who aren't already friendly with you.

How does it work - your population quickly gets down to ~700m and your initial profits bite the dust. You may very well go in the red, by the way.
Your colonial population grows really slow, so it can't contribute much to your budget.
You'll have to make decisions, decisions, and then some decisions, on what to spend money (food, industry, trade), will it be worth it and so on.

Regardless of the "difficulty" you choose, you'll have to think fast about two problems:
1) how to make your budget profitable
2) how to develop comms tech in time to prevent a likely war

Have fun.

[Zaimat]

That was excellent to read! Setting the aptitudes poor will definitely hurt a lot.

This subject brings us to adding a game difficulty level before starting a new game.

The difficulty setting will adjust the other races starting tech levels and increasing the number of colonies they start with. This plays within the Horizon theme where the AI will not cheat but they just start at a more advanced stage having been a space faring race longer.

For example setting the difficulty level from normal to hard could give all races +1 to tech level and +1 or more extra colonies. In scenario mode, this would add to their base which isn't equal (the Varaians would always have the highest tech level). In classic mode every AI race would start equally at a higher level/colony count.

We may add some other bonuses later (increase the AI aggressiveness in planning, diplomacy being harder, faster exploration/colonization and vice-versa). If you have any suggestions on how difficulty affects other races let us know.

We want to have 5 difficulty levels eg: (Simple, Easy, Average, Hard, Impossible). Got a better idea on naming the difficulty levels?

[EisenHammer]

One of the reasons the game is easy is because the AI is not using shields and fighters in their ship designs.

[True_poser]

Zaimat
> Setting the aptitudes poor will definitely hurt a lot.
Yep, it hurts a lot.

But there are two problems here:
1) whole economics system - trade, food and industry starts to work "properly" (you have to make choices, use what's available, profile colonies and so on) with 700-800 million population, not initial billions.
2) there's no room left for scientific development, as ~90% of your race are working as farmers and you don't really have money and room on planets for science.

It makes for a good gauntlet, but I can't help but think the economics (and the planet management as a whole) is far from working properly.


> This plays within the Horizon theme
Within the Horizon theme, I think, you can very well go with a randomly selected set of positive and negative subscenarios.

On a hard level, for instance, it may be more likely, that Kortahz probe was hijacked by Varians some time ago and now serves as a honeypot for would-be helpers.
You may have outcasts of some race going through your system, placing you between a rock and a hard place: either you'll anger the main race or you'll have to fight the outcasts.
You may even have the Earth destroyed, why not?

Sure, it would be hard to balance, but does a single-player game with a non-cheating AI need MMO-level balancing?

> they just start at a more advanced stage having been a space faring race longer.
It s a really good idea of having difficulty based on the advancement of other races.
It has that good space opera vibe. A newbie race coming to already occupied galaxy.

Maybe, there is sense in not setting +1 tech, +2 colony, but letting the computer races to play against each other for 50, 100, 150 turns without the player?
Of course, if it's possible to make it in a lightweight mode, so that player won't wait five minutes for a game to start.

> diplomacy being harder
It may be easier just to do races more entrenched in their views as the game progresses.

On easy level you'll meet everyone quite early on and it's easy (except Varians and Kor'tahz, maybe) to persuade them to live long and prosper.
Even if someone is in the far corner, well, you'll have the tech to sway them.

On hard level you enter the galaxy already torn by bitter conflicts, you can find a common ground with two or three races, but getting them all into alliance would be very difficult.

> Got a better idea on naming the difficulty levels?
Nope.
- Reach for Tomorrow
- Early Bird
- Space is a Harsh Mistress
- Late Bloomer
- Childhood's End

> If you have any suggestions on how difficulty affects other races let us know.
Humans are the easiest, as they are guaranteed to have a free electronics level-up.

Overall, races' starting hands differ only in non-critical as for now technologies - weapons, engines, power and armor.
But I'll research it more.


EisenHammer
It actually doesn't matter how smart is AI in battle as long as you can zerg-rush it with maxed-out motherships.

[EisenHammer]

It actually doesn't matter how smart is AI in battle as long as you can zerg-rush it with maxed-out motherships.

True...But I never tried to zerg-rush it. Wouldn't hurt if they used shields and fighters. As of right now my shielded ships are indestructible against the AI ship designs.

[True_poser]

You don't need to.
Having a fleet of 10 motherships (with forward guns heavy mount and all others light) let's you just order "bombard this colony" and in 3-4 turns it'll be gone with none of your ships destroyed.

Using shields really helps against annoying "oh, that scout just destroyed all my mothership's guns except the rear left one", but I won't say ships are indestructible.

Though, yes, they really can take a lot more.
I believe that's because shields recharge rate is comparable with usual DPS of 2-4 level guns.
Rebalancing guns may help.

And when AI will become smarter, I'll just spend a few more turns and buy 30 motherships.
With current economics it's too easy to do.

[EisenHammer]

Yes you right... Please disregard my last post.
I went back and loaded an old save game and started a war with the Har’kan and my indestructible shielded ships just got destroyed. lol
But I still didn’t see the AI use shields or fighters.
I am thinking about starting a fresh new game. Is a new update going to be coming out real soon?

[EisenHammer]

Almost forgot my fighters ran out of supply after firing 2or3 shots and leaving 4 or 5 shots unused in a combat turn. I don’t remember this happening before.

[True_poser]

It's also interesting to note that in the battle with crystal guardian launched fighters don't even get a turn, so they don't shoot neither in manual mode, nor in auto.