Hard caps for ship/building buildtime/buildcost

[ATX]

Kinda strange request maybe... but can we got a hardcoded lower cap for buildtime/buildcost for ships and buildings?

Im with friends often playn in hardmoded game, and some of nice mods provides lots of cost reduction possibilities - easy stackin into 100% cost reduction, free ships. Can we get hardcap, like 25% min buildtime and build cost?

 

[powerofvoid]

Please don't do hardcoded.

As a configurable value in defines, maybe.

 

[Derp]

fix your mods

 

[ATX]

fix your mods

What exactly? Most of mods adds minor reductions (like 10-20%). Not a problem, if you run them alone, but stacking like snowball.

In past, we have unlimited evasion. It was fixed. Now its good time to fix others flaws.

 

[Zergor]

It's always a problem with a game that use additive values.

Reductions are more and more powerful over time while Increases feel less and less important.
Personally I would have prefered if the game went for multiplicatives values. The final numbers are less "nice" but at least a 20% increade or decrease really mean that all the time.
I imagine it's a bit too late for that and the game has too many things hardcoded for additive values.

 

[ATX]

I really like updated mechanic like build speed - when you have static base build time, and increased speed just add more progress per day. It would be nice to see same systems for build cost (like "build efficiency", where 25% BE makes 1 spended real alloy converts into 1.25 "effective" alloy).

 

[metalosse]

It's always a problem with a game that use additive values.

Reductions are more and more powerful over time while Increases feel less and less important.
Personally I would have prefered if the game went for multiplicatives values. The final numbers are less "nice" but at least a 20% increade or decrease really mean that all the time.
I imagine it's a bit too late for that and the game has too many things hardcoded for additive values.

Games with multiplicative bonuses have the opposite issue. Exponentially increasing bonuses are very hard to balance. You either make very small bonuses, but it makes those bonuses very bad when chosen alone. Or you reduce the number of bonuses, but it is a rather restricting approach.

As Stellaris has way more augmentations than reductions, additive bonuses are the most sensible solution.

 

[Blurb]

It's always a problem with a game that use additive values.

Reductions are more and more powerful over time while Increases feel less and less important.
Personally I would have prefered if the game went for multiplicatives values. The final numbers are less "nice" but at least a 20% increade or decrease really mean that all the time.
I imagine it's a bit too late for that and the game has too many things hardcoded for additive values.

A 20% increase is always a 20% increase, regardless of whether it is additive or multiplicative.
The difference is what this increase is relative to, in the case of additive it's +20% relative to base and for multiplicative it's +20% relative to current.
For example, agrarian adds +15% to food output, meaning agrarian will always increase food output of farmers (with base output 6) by 0.9 food.

Games with multiplicative bonuses have the opposite issue. Exponentially increasing bonuses are very hard to balance. You either make very small bonuses, but it makes those bonuses very bad when chosen alone. Or you reduce the number of bonuses, but it is a rather restricting approach.

As Stellaris has way more augmentations than reductions, additive bonuses are the most sensible solution.

There's the option of using both. Multiplicative decreases and additive increases: Output=Base*(1+add.+...)*mult.*...
You're now free to never again worry about ridiculous edge cases, and can instead spend days worrying about the host of new balancing problems this setup introduces.
At least it'll be straightforward to communicate to players whether a modifier is additive or multiplicative.

 

[Zergor]

Using both would create a lot of confusion.

A full multiplicative system can be used but as metalosse said, it require careful balance.
The bloated numbers of a multiplicative system would make the civs in the late game feel more powerful though. Things that were expensive would feel cheap and sothere would be a need for exponential costs too for the late game things (like megastructures).
The advantage would be that tall civs would be a lot more viable due to their ability to stack bonus (through techs and perks) instead of having more stuff.
The big disavantage is that a civ' that is "behind" would be even more behind in such a system.

 

[ATX]

Point is additive value means less when you increase something, but means more when you decrease. Take 100, reduce it per 50% 2 times. Multipicative way make it 25% (amiright?...), addictive - 0. So to prevent situation, where we can literally break the game, can we got lower cap?

Hardcoded, or maybe defined. I mean, isnt everybody agree, that free ship is kinda totally wrong situation?...

 

[powerofvoid]

Point is additive value means less when you increase something, but means more when you decrease. Take 100, reduce it per 50% 2 times. Multipicative way make it 25% (amiright?...), addictive - 0. So to prevent situation, where we can literally break the game, can we got lower cap?

Hardcoded, or maybe defined. I mean, isnt everybody agree, that free ship is kinda totally wrong situation?...

What mod combinations are you using, anyway? I don't think the base game let's you get more than maybe 35% reduction in build cost. (10% from governor, 10% from ruler, 10% from supremacy, 5% from tech. Is there a civic that affects it?)

EDIT: devouring swarm, -25%, but their rulers don't get ruler traits. So fanatic purifier (-15%) with a ruler who has military pioneer (-10%) and battleship focus (-20%), the supremacy tradition (-10%), a fleet officer governor (-10%), and that tech (-5%) makes 70%, which I suppose does get within striking distance of 0% with mods like exigency (which has a Starbase building that can reduce costs by up to 35%).

I would be okay with a change where most of the vanilla modifiers were moved over to a new "build efficiency" stat, scaled on the assumption that you normally had a 25% cost reduction, so -5% becomes +7.5%, -10% becomes +15%, -15% becomes +25%, and -20% becomes +35%, so the net effect of the modifier stack from before is +112.5% ships for the normal alloy cost of 1.

Just remember to leave cost reduction in as a variable so that mods that do intend free stuff can still do that without fucking with ship and module definitions, or whatever compatibility-breaking bullshit they already have to do to make the job AI comprehend their modded traits.

 

[ATX]

What mod combinations are you using, anyway?

1. Expanded Stellaris Traditions + Plentiful Traditions (traditions: anguish 20% + voidborn 5% + order 5%).
2. Guilli planet modifier (starbase building: precursor shipyard 10%).
3. Ruler level system (ruler edicts: ship hastening construction 10% + war economy 10%)
4. Exigency (starbase building: proving grounds, 5% per anchorage up to 30%).

Thats give 90% reduction, add governor with -10% and you get free ships.

And problem, all those mods add lots of stuff besides cost reduction, so "turn them off" isnt easy task... =(

 

[Platoondas]

I'd suggest dropping Guilli's planet modifiers its got some cool features and ideas but it is really unbalanced.

 

[RoverStorm]

Personally I would have prefered if the game went for multiplicatives values. The final numbers are less "nice" but at least a 20% increade or decrease really mean that all the time.

I have to disagree with this. I much prefer nicer numbers in my games than three decimal digits. It's also vastly easier to balance.

It's also just more straight forward. If you make 100 minerals per month and consume 100 minerals per month, your balance says +0 minerals. No modifier will do exactly what it "says" so to speak: two additive +10% modifiers will end up with +20 minerals, while two multiplicative +10% will give +21.1. Neither is actually true because an extra 10% on +0 is nothing. You'd have to hover over the mineral bank to show the full breakdown, and all ease of use instantly goes out the window. At least with additive, you can check your base income before any modifiers and then know exactly what two +10% gives you. "Oh, I get a base of +100 minerals, two +10% will give me +10 minerals each." For multiplicative modifiers, you have to look at the final output after other modifiers, and THEN you have to handle the NEGATIVE modifiers. Paradox already has issues with getting new players into their games. Multiplicative modifiers will NEVER help with that issue.

But on topic, this is a modding issue. It's not Paradox's responsibility to fix modding issues (although it's really nice when they do help us out). And usually fixing issues like this can sometimes break other mod's intentionally trying to accomplish something like this. You could probably find a mod that puts in hard-caps anyways.

 

[Derp]

What exactly? Most of mods adds minor reductions (like 10-20%). Not a problem, if you run them alone, but stacking like snowball.

In past, we have unlimited evasion. It was fixed. Now its good time to fix others flaws.

uncapped evasion was a problem that was possible to see in the base game

this problem is caused by throwing a bunch of mods together

a better use of your time would be to make a compatibility/balance patch for your groups particular arrangement of mods

 

[ATX]

You could probably find a mod that puts in hard-caps anyways.

Even if this mod cant exists, cuz now game doesnt have "cap" feature? How its is possible?

a better use of your time would be to make a compatibility/balance patch for your groups particular arrangement of mods

Perhaps it is more convenient to have one file with caps (as suggested above), than to keep compatibility patch for lots of constantly changin mods? Especially if point is not to change their functionality, but just keep them from wreak game.
I can refraze starting post in something like "please give us a tool not to let mods break the game".

 

[Zergor]

I have to disagree with this. I much prefer nicer numbers in my games than three decimal digits. It's also vastly easier to balance.

It's also just more straight forward. If you make 100 minerals per month and consume 100 minerals per month, your balance says +0 minerals. No modifier will do exactly what it "says" so to speak: two additive +10% modifiers will end up with +20 minerals, while two multiplicative +10% will give +21.1. Neither is actually true because an extra 10% on +0 is nothing. You'd have to hover over the mineral bank to show the full breakdown, and all ease of use instantly goes out the window. At least with additive, you can check your base income before any modifiers and then know exactly what two +10% gives you. "Oh, I get a base of +100 minerals, two +10% will give me +10 minerals each." For multiplicative modifiers, you have to look at the final output after other modifiers, and THEN you have to handle the NEGATIVE modifiers. Paradox already has issues with getting new players into their games. Multiplicative modifiers will NEVER help with that issue.

But on topic, this is a modding issue. It's not Paradox's responsibility to fix modding issues (although it's really nice when they do help us out). And usually fixing issues like this can sometimes break other mod's intentionally trying to accomplish something like this. You could probably find a mod that puts in hard-caps anyways.

Again, I always thought multiplicative felt mre straightforward if done corectly.

If you produce let's say 1200 of ressourse X and consume 1000 (Both should be displayed easily and not jsut the total like you say) you can quickly understand that a +10% production will net you 120 more of ressourse X.
If it's additive that's where you have to look for how this 1200 is broken down.
In that case it could be a base 500 with a 140% bonus already. It will in that case net you +50 minerals.

The thing that I really don't like with additive is that it makes specificities of certain empires stand out less.
An empire that has a +20% bonus in X should IMO feel like it's 20% better for X than an other. With additive values, the more we go in the late game the less the empire is unique because this +20% is hidden behind a +100% bonus from other sources making it way less important.

I found it particularly striking with growth. I had a specie that was slow breeder. A -10% growth is nothing to joke at and it feels like a real disadvantage worth it's two points... in the early game at least. In the mid game with a lot of food, the food edict, the food policie, a gene clinic, a few techs, growth is buffed by something like 150% (don't have the game right now to check so I may be exagerating) and in that case, the disadvantage feels non existant. And IMO it should matter.

 

[Greenslade]

Using both would create a lot of confusion.

A full multiplicative system can be used but as metalosse said, it require careful balance.
The bloated numbers of a multiplicative system would make the civs in the late game feel more powerful though. Things that were expensive would feel cheap and sothere would be a need for exponential costs too for the late game things (like megastructures).
The advantage would be that tall civs would be a lot more viable due to their ability to stack bonus (through techs and perks) instead of having more stuff.
The big disavantage is that a civ' that is "behind" would be even more behind in such a system.

Civs that are behind *should* really be behind.

This would be fixable with a better federation mechanic that gave you access to better tech for more than just federation fleets.

In essence the trade for joining an "unbalanced" federation would be "give these guys access too our cool technology in exchange for access to their productive capacity/pops."

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Your problem only exists in mods- so its not actually paradox's problem.

 

[Apophenia]

Your problem only exists in mods- so its not actually paradox's problem.

While they don't particularly need to change their own values, Paradox does support modding and has features in the game that make it easier to mod. Asking them to add some kind of limit to how much things can be discounted isn't too much of a stretch even if that limit is set to 0% in the core game.

Although this thread should probably do in the modding or suggestions section.