Please, I'm begging the team: make absolutely certain there is a balance pass on army attachments before the game goes live. We got to see a lot of army attachments on the fourth weekly Blorg stream, but unless there is some balancing mechanism not in the tooltips then there are a lot of attachments that are flat-out better than others—they both give bonuses to the same things, and in two cases you have an option that gives a higher bonus for cheaper (so it's not even a case of a bigger bonus bringing lower efficiency) while in the third case both options give the same bonus but one does it for less than half the price of the other (the Cyborg Infiltration Unit, which sounds like a great high-impact low-efficiency option if only it was twice as effective as it is now).
Here is the list of the options we have, along with some work looking at their implied cost effectiveness. (Please note that these were all available at once; if some attachments are meant to be pure upgrades for old ones, the old ones need to be made not selectable anymore after the superior option has been researched.)
Landing time: -1.43% landing time per mineral
Superior option: Orbital Drop Pods (35 minerals, -50% landing time)
Inferior option: Assault Landers (50 minerals, -25% landing time)
Army damage: +1.6% army damage per mineral
Superior option: Chemical Stimulants (25 minerals, +40% army damage)
Inferior option: Hunter-Killer Drone Swarms (30 minerals, +20% army damage)
Morale damage: +0.33% morale damage per mineral
Superior option: Special Forces Group (15 minerals, +5% morale damage)
Inferior option: Cyborg Infiltration Unit (40 minerals, +5% morale damage)
Army health: +0.6% army health per mineral (but this is certainly overvalued)
Only option shown: Mobile Shield Generators (25 minerals, +15% army health)
Army morale: +0.5% army morale per energy
Only option shown: Military Police Corps (10 energy, +5% army morale)
Army damage and army health together: Different efficiencies depending on how health is valued. (High value %/Equal value %)
120%/55% efficient: Hover Tank Battle Group (40 minerals, +25% army health, +10% army damage)
95%/49% efficient: Self-Replicating Mine Fields (45 minerals, +20% army health, +15% army damage)
Upkeep: Complicated
Neo-Concrete Fortifications (50 minerals, +10% army health, -10% army upkeep)
Power Armor (35 minerals, +15% army damage, +15% army health, +10% army upkeep)
10% army upkeep is worth 0.015 energy/month on a defense army or 0.033 energy/month on an assault army.
It costs 90 minerals to increase a power plant's production by 1/month, so 1 energy/month can be placed at ~90 minerals of value, in which case +/- 10% army upkeep is worth 1.35 minerals on a defense army and 2.97 on an assault army. This means that Neo-Concrete Fortifications are 36% mineral efficient on defense armies and 39% on assault armies; and Power Armor is 94% mineral efficient on defense armies and 90% on assault armies.
(This is taking the values listed as the superior option as 100% efficiency, though in reality spending 25 minerals for +40% army damage is far more efficient than spending 25 minerals for +15% army health; with realistic efficiency values neo-concrete is 15% efficient on defense armies and 18% on assault armies while power armor is 50% efficient on defense armies and 45% efficient on assault armies.)
While I'm here I'd like to mention what I've observed about army damage and morale damage, since it also has a huge impact on what you're going to want to use. Defense armies have 100 health and 100 morale, and apparently do a base of 2.25 damage per day to both health and morale. Assault armies are far tougher, with base health, morale, and health damage 15% higher than a defense army, and morale damage 32% higher than a defense army. That means that, unmodified, two assault armies are about a match for three defense armies since I'm assuming they'll deplete their morale super-quickly, and are much harder to kill or rout themselves.
This also means that for defense armies at least, army health is almost useless; if they spent 25 minerals on mobile shield generators they'd cost almost twice as much as unmodified defense armies but wouldn't stay on the field even a day longer because it's their morale that is what the assault army is attacking most efficiently, and therefore will reach zero first. I hope there's more to combat than I'm aware of, but the army stat tooltip makes it seem simple, like there are two separate health bars that get dealt two separate damage types.
(Of course the assault army might have brought chemical stimulants, making the mobile shield generator useful since the assault army would then be dealing 22% more health damage than morale damage, but there's also the special forces group to make sure it's futile to build health: the chemical stimulants army is 116.7% as effective at killing unmodified armies as the special forces group army for just 113.3% the cost, but if the defender tried to maximize their planet's hit points with a +15% boost from the shield generators or power armor they'd just succeed in making themselves pretty much just as easy to defeat for the chemical stimulants army as they still are for the special forces group army [i.e. a 140% advantage versus a 139% advantage].)
Basically, for defense armies, right now it's chemical stimulants always since adding to their health is a mug's game and they just need to make assault armies disappear as quickly as possible; for assault armies they can build whatever, but chemical stimulants are always okay, though on the attack they have such an innate advantage that nothing is really necessary. Depending on how Strong/Weak and Militarist/Pacifist interact with morale damage, this may or may not impact what particular empires with those traits wish to build (though I'd hope they impact morale damage as well as army damage, or else pacifist empires and weak species will still be tenacious attackers that efficiently sweep defenders off of the field with overwhelming firepower and ferocity, though they don't kill the units). [EDIT: It appears that Strong, at least, affects both. I believe Tebadorans are Strong, and their armies have equal damage and morale damage.]
Here is the list of the options we have, along with some work looking at their implied cost effectiveness. (Please note that these were all available at once; if some attachments are meant to be pure upgrades for old ones, the old ones need to be made not selectable anymore after the superior option has been researched.)
Landing time: -1.43% landing time per mineral
Superior option: Orbital Drop Pods (35 minerals, -50% landing time)
Inferior option: Assault Landers (50 minerals, -25% landing time)
Army damage: +1.6% army damage per mineral
Superior option: Chemical Stimulants (25 minerals, +40% army damage)
Inferior option: Hunter-Killer Drone Swarms (30 minerals, +20% army damage)
Morale damage: +0.33% morale damage per mineral
Superior option: Special Forces Group (15 minerals, +5% morale damage)
Inferior option: Cyborg Infiltration Unit (40 minerals, +5% morale damage)
Army health: +0.6% army health per mineral (but this is certainly overvalued)
Only option shown: Mobile Shield Generators (25 minerals, +15% army health)
Army morale: +0.5% army morale per energy
Only option shown: Military Police Corps (10 energy, +5% army morale)
Army damage and army health together: Different efficiencies depending on how health is valued. (High value %/Equal value %)
120%/55% efficient: Hover Tank Battle Group (40 minerals, +25% army health, +10% army damage)
95%/49% efficient: Self-Replicating Mine Fields (45 minerals, +20% army health, +15% army damage)
Upkeep: Complicated
Neo-Concrete Fortifications (50 minerals, +10% army health, -10% army upkeep)
Power Armor (35 minerals, +15% army damage, +15% army health, +10% army upkeep)
10% army upkeep is worth 0.015 energy/month on a defense army or 0.033 energy/month on an assault army.
It costs 90 minerals to increase a power plant's production by 1/month, so 1 energy/month can be placed at ~90 minerals of value, in which case +/- 10% army upkeep is worth 1.35 minerals on a defense army and 2.97 on an assault army. This means that Neo-Concrete Fortifications are 36% mineral efficient on defense armies and 39% on assault armies; and Power Armor is 94% mineral efficient on defense armies and 90% on assault armies.
(This is taking the values listed as the superior option as 100% efficiency, though in reality spending 25 minerals for +40% army damage is far more efficient than spending 25 minerals for +15% army health; with realistic efficiency values neo-concrete is 15% efficient on defense armies and 18% on assault armies while power armor is 50% efficient on defense armies and 45% efficient on assault armies.)
While I'm here I'd like to mention what I've observed about army damage and morale damage, since it also has a huge impact on what you're going to want to use. Defense armies have 100 health and 100 morale, and apparently do a base of 2.25 damage per day to both health and morale. Assault armies are far tougher, with base health, morale, and health damage 15% higher than a defense army, and morale damage 32% higher than a defense army. That means that, unmodified, two assault armies are about a match for three defense armies since I'm assuming they'll deplete their morale super-quickly, and are much harder to kill or rout themselves.
This also means that for defense armies at least, army health is almost useless; if they spent 25 minerals on mobile shield generators they'd cost almost twice as much as unmodified defense armies but wouldn't stay on the field even a day longer because it's their morale that is what the assault army is attacking most efficiently, and therefore will reach zero first. I hope there's more to combat than I'm aware of, but the army stat tooltip makes it seem simple, like there are two separate health bars that get dealt two separate damage types.
(Of course the assault army might have brought chemical stimulants, making the mobile shield generator useful since the assault army would then be dealing 22% more health damage than morale damage, but there's also the special forces group to make sure it's futile to build health: the chemical stimulants army is 116.7% as effective at killing unmodified armies as the special forces group army for just 113.3% the cost, but if the defender tried to maximize their planet's hit points with a +15% boost from the shield generators or power armor they'd just succeed in making themselves pretty much just as easy to defeat for the chemical stimulants army as they still are for the special forces group army [i.e. a 140% advantage versus a 139% advantage].)
Basically, for defense armies, right now it's chemical stimulants always since adding to their health is a mug's game and they just need to make assault armies disappear as quickly as possible; for assault armies they can build whatever, but chemical stimulants are always okay, though on the attack they have such an innate advantage that nothing is really necessary. Depending on how Strong/Weak and Militarist/Pacifist interact with morale damage, this may or may not impact what particular empires with those traits wish to build (though I'd hope they impact morale damage as well as army damage, or else pacifist empires and weak species will still be tenacious attackers that efficiently sweep defenders off of the field with overwhelming firepower and ferocity, though they don't kill the units). [EDIT: It appears that Strong, at least, affects both. I believe Tebadorans are Strong, and their armies have equal damage and morale damage.]
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