How to Fix DA from Being Broken OP

[Madzai]

Weren't people just upset that Machine Empires were under powered in 2.2? I don't generally play DAs myself but I have a feeling nerfing one of the MEs after they just got buffed in the beta patch may go over... poorly.

Yeah, it was exactly like this already. Then they nerfed the GC with maintenance drone amenities production, it basically nerfed everything - yeah, you got some very nice growth speed, but it's much harder to apply if each 5th Drone goes into maintenance.

IMO, instead of nerfing Empire that are "strong" due to their "simplicity"(and absence of some mechanics) it's better to give something unique to other. Like Slavers are already quite strong(and so are Materialists), so we just need to add something special to other types and improve some Ascension paths. But, ofc, it's much easier just to nerf everything so everything is samey and boring.

 

[Incompetent]

Anyway I don't think DA in particular need a fix so much as the whole population growth system. I don't like the "planets are baby factories" system right now and I wish your population growth wasn't so proportional to the number of planets you own. Whatever solution fixes that would apply to DA balance too.

To get out of the current situation where population growth is proportional to number of planets and organic + robots always beats pure organic or pure robot growth, you'd probably have to do something like this:

1. Organic natural population growth is on some sort of curve where large populations can make more pops per year than small populations. (At the moment there's effectively a penalty for planets with <10 population, but we all know how easy that penalty is to circumvent in the mid-game.) Immigration is a separate factor that adds on top and isn't dependent on the existing population (but it obviously takes growth away from some other planet). This way, your population growth in the early to mid-game on comes mostly from your populous 'core' planets (spreading out through migration and resettlement), rather than just your raw number of colonized planets.

2. Machine population growth is basically proportional to the number of roboticists/replicators working on the planet. (Cloning vats could also be changed to give a job that adds flat organic pop growth, rather than just passively boosting natural growth.) In one of the pre-release versions, machine empires were allowed to invest heavily in robot factories, but the devs panicked when Kaiser Johan actually did this in the dev clash; in response, they locked the assembly plants to one per planet (plus gradual upgrades from improved administration buildings). I think this was a bad move: machine empires should be able to build lots of pop factories, it's just that any extra factories (i.e. not counting the jobs provided by the admin building) should be very expensive to run, so there's a real trade-off in short-term versus long-term power. Remove the per-planet limit, and then your ability to build robots isn't just proportional to how many planets you have, it's a question of how many resources overall you can invest in population growth.

3. Vanilla Machine Intelligence and Determined Exterminator should have access to some better robot growth options, to make up for their complete inability to grow organic pops. This extra bonus should *not* be available to Driven Assimilators or Rogue Servitors. (If RS are underpowered, I think the solution has to be to make their existing machine pops better through some kind of effect of biotrophies, rather than letting them ignore biotrophy population and focus on spamming machine pops.)

4. Synthetically ascended empires can have an optional 'synthetic supremacy' policy that increases robot growth and/or productivity at the cost of mandatory 'assimilation' living standards for any organic species they acquire. Alternatively, let them make 'synth worlds' that are uninhabitable for organics, but can house much larger synth populations than normal. Either way, true synth-ascended empires need something to be able to compete with the growth potential of regular organic empires (bearing in mind that these empires can get droids on top of their natural growth).

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

what if:

a. DAs don't get the extra robot growth jobs
b. DA cyborgs grow normally, but at reduced rates (similar to how the new colony penalty works, multiplying the base growth)

the idea would be that they would have modestly slower total growth compared to regular machine empires or org empires with stacked growth bonuses; without TW and assimilation they would slowly fall behind other empires, but with aggressive expansion they can surpass them.

it would also, thematically, really put the "driven" into driven assimilators

See, thats a better solution.

 

[Zenopath]

I agree that DA are broken in 2.2.5,

My suggestion was that DA should have to sacrifice 0.25 robot production per organic unit grown. Logic would be that they need to produce robot parts for their cyborgs so their replicators need to spend some time producing parts for cyborgs.

this would have 2 effects

1) under normal circumstances where both cyborgs and robots are being produced, the 3 cyborg growth would also cause a -0.75 robot growth.
2) when new organics are being transformed into cyborgs, the rate at which they are transformed would be capped by the amount of replicators you currently have on planet. So with 4 replicators, you would see organic pops declining at 16 and growing as cyborgs at 16 growth (19.2 with rapid replicators), but would not be producing any robots since that would consume the full 4 robot growth output of the replicators. Your best strategy for converting large amounts of organics might be to spread them across your empire, but you would stop producing robots until they are all converted on any world unconverted organics are present...

 

[Typee]

Your best strategy for converting large amounts of organics might be to spread them across your empire

Yeah I don't really like that idea until we get a rework of the resettlement window.

 

[strangebloke]

There is absolutely no problem with the various 'playthrough' civics being over/under-powered. They're different from ascension perks and technology in that respect. You can't switch them partway through a build and they're not accesible for everyone, so it isn't like you'll ever be in a situation where you're like "Boy, I want to play a synth empire, but I always end up as a DA." You don't pick them unintentionally, or in response to pressures in a playthrough, you pick them because you want something different.

in a single player game, if you're a DA, you're very strong. That's fine. Adjust difficulty to compensate.

In a single player game, if you're a different race, the DA is very strong. That's fine. Having the borg as a semi-official mid-game crisis is totally flavorful and cool.

In a multiplayer game, you're very strong. That's fine. Other players will team up on you to hedge you in, or its a co-op game and it doesn't matter.

Things like Life-Seeded and DA and DE and Barbaric Despoilers and all those exist because sometimes the vanilla experience gets a bit stale and you want to do something a bit different. The only sense in which they can be 'broken' is with something like Criminal Heritage, which straight up doesn't work as intended and doesn't let you do what it says on the tin.

TL;DR: Driven Assimilators let you be the borg. That's fine.

 

[Typee]

There is absolutely no problem with the various 'playthrough' civics being over/under-powered. They're different from ascension perks and technology in that respect. You can't switch them partway through a build and they're not accesible for everyone, so it isn't like you'll ever be in a situation where you're like "Boy, I want to play a synth empire, but I always end up as a DA." You don't pick them unintentionally, or in response to pressures in a playthrough, you pick them because you want something different.

in a single player game, if you're a DA, you're very strong. That's fine. Adjust difficulty to compensate.

In a single player game, if you're a different race, the DA is very strong. That's fine. Having the borg as a semi-official mid-game crisis is totally flavorful and cool.

In a multiplayer game, you're very strong. That's fine. Other players will team up on you to hedge you in, or its a co-op game and it doesn't matter.

Things like Life-Seeded and DA and DE and Barbaric Despoilers and all those exist because sometimes the vanilla experience gets a bit stale and you want to do something a bit different. The only sense in which they can be 'broken' is with something like Criminal Heritage, which straight up doesn't work as intended and doesn't let you do what it says on the tin.

TL;DR: Driven Assimilators let you be the borg. That's fine.

Adjusting DA pop growth for balance will not ruin the uniqueness of the experience.

 

[Zenopath]

There is absolutely no problem with the various 'playthrough' civics being over/under-powered. They're different from ascension perks and technology in that respect. You can't switch them partway through a build and they're not accesible for everyone, so it isn't like you'll ever be in a situation where you're like "Boy, I want to play a synth empire, but I always end up as a DA." You don't pick them unintentionally, or in response to pressures in a playthrough, you pick them because you want something different.

in a single player game, if you're a DA, you're very strong. That's fine. Adjust difficulty to compensate.

In a single player game, if you're a different race, the DA is very strong. That's fine. Having the borg as a semi-official mid-game crisis is totally flavorful and cool.

In a multiplayer game, you're very strong. That's fine. Other players will team up on you to hedge you in, or its a co-op game and it doesn't matter.

Things like Life-Seeded and DA and DE and Barbaric Despoilers and all those exist because sometimes the vanilla experience gets a bit stale and you want to do something a bit different. The only sense in which they can be 'broken' is with something like Criminal Heritage, which straight up doesn't work as intended and doesn't let you do what it says on the tin.

TL;DR: Driven Assimilators let you be the borg. That's fine.

I sort of agree that being a little OP is fine in a mostly single player game. But I think DA should get some small downside. That is why i like my solution, as it is basically a small decrease in pop growth paired with a more interesting and expensive new pop aquisition process. It is a nerf that address the most OP aspects of DA without losing the uniqueness of the game type.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Adjusting DA pop growth for balance will not ruin the uniqueness of the experience.

I agree, but thats not what OP suggested.

 

[strangebloke]

Adjusting DA pop growth for balance will not ruin the uniqueness of the experience.

Not my point. I'm saying that balance doesn't matter for playthrough civics, since those aren't competing with anything else.

Sure, a balance tweak might be appropriate, if only for purposes of making them more interesting, but I'd much prefer that the dev team look at things like habitats and galactic wonders before fixing this particular area.

I sort of agree that being a little OP is fine in a mostly single player game. But I think DA should get some small downside. That is why i like my solution, as it is basically a small decrease in pop growth paired with a more interesting and expensive new pop aquisition process. It is a nerf that address the most OP aspects of DA without losing the uniqueness of the game type.

This is a post I can agree with more. Don't "Balance" them. Maybe give them a downside to make them more interesting.

 

[Typee]

Not my point.

Then why mention the uniqueness of civics? They can be balanced without affecting their unique playstyle. Besides, DA's uniqueness isn't supposed to be "giant growth".

The multiplayer argument doesn't make sense, other players won't "gang up" on the DA, they will play DA too.

 

[Zenopath]

Then why mention the uniqueness of civics? They can be balanced without affecting their unique playstyle. Besides, DA's uniqueness isn't supposed to be "giant growth".

The multiplayer argument doesn't make sense, other players won't "gang up" on the DA, they will play DA too.

I agree with 2nd sentence, but would say, DA´s uniqueness is actually ¨giant growth¨

With rapid assimulators and mass produced all ME can make 5.52 robots per month on homeworld, and 2.76 on colonys. That´s strong enough. But DA add 3 organic growth to both which means their colonies get combined 5.76 growth which is higher than homeworlds for most empires well into midgame, and almost 3x as much homeworld growth as an organic empire get on their homeworlds (8.56 homeworld growth on day 1 is simply ridiculously strong).

The biggest drawback most ME gets is they can´t use captured organics for much, DE get some unity for killing them, but even that isn´t very useful.

So, the 2 real advantages DA provide is insane growth rate due to double organic and robot growth, and ability to assimulate captured organics, which normal ME can´t do. Those core advantages define what DA bring to the table. But they are currently too strong. Something needs to be done to reduce those 2 advantages, to more balanced levels without necessarily removing them completely as some have suggested.

 

[Secret Master]

and ability to assimulate captured organics.

This is a fairly large advantage. It's painful at first, as you have to assimilate the POPs (this makes them angry and useless), but once they are assimilated, it's smooth sailing and they have the cyborg trait.

It's also pretty good with primitives (when conquering primitives works).

And it stacks with the Total War CB, so you aren't burning influence on claims when you go to war. Even more so than other empires, when you win your first war, you are probably more powerful than any regular empire on the map.

 

[strangebloke]

Then why mention the uniqueness of civics? They can be balanced without affecting their unique playstyle. Besides, DA's uniqueness isn't supposed to be "giant growth".

The multiplayer argument doesn't make sense, other players won't "gang up" on the DA, they will play DA too.

Unique civics don't need to be perfectly balanced. They are meant to be different. Sure, they can be balanced without losing their appeal, but that's not a serious consideration compared to stuff that's available to everyone like ascension perks or traits or techs.

Or they'll agree to not play DA against each other.

Heck, mechanist gives you just as good of growth for bio pops, and I don't see anyone complaining about that.

 

[SpectralShade]

I think DA should be be the result of a failed synthetic ascension, where all biological pops become mindless slaves to their new AI overlord, which controls them through the neural implants they voluntary put in their brain. So in other words there isn't any fully robotic pops in a DA empire.

so basicly one of the endings of Deus Ex 2 gone bad

 

[Typee]

Heck, mechanist gives you just as good of growth for bio pops

Mechanists get a very underwhelming robot growth, and their bio growth is still halved on new colonies, unlike DA.

 

[Derp]

Heck, mechanist gives you just as good of growth for bio pops, and I don't see anyone complaining about that.

mechanists also don't get TW CB or assimilation

 

[Zenopath]

Mechanists get a very underwhelming robot growth, and their bio growth is still halved on new colonies, unlike DA.

That could be another adjustment to bring DA into balance, it might even have been an oversight not to code ¨if colony admin not upgraded to planet admin, organic population growth should be divided by 2¨ like normal organic empires.

 

[OnyxAbussos]

THE BORG in the ST mod have this set up:

1. All Cyborg.
2. SLOW pop growth. Unity Buildings produce like 0.1 Unity.
3. Big Unity & Research bonus the first tone they assimitate a pop of a particular species. And a small bonus for each pop after that.
4. Traditions unlock a "megastructure" a construction ship can do to enemy planets. Destroys colony, converts percentage of net mineral & Energy cost of buildings to raw resource. Auto-assimilates percentage of pops and settles them on available worlds and unimatrices (megastructure uberplanets planets in space).

I say do something like that. It's so brilliant in the ST mod.

 

[John_Titor]

I couldn't believe how insane DA growth was until I had one in my recent game. We're at 2375 and the DA just passed 2000 pops. I think I am in 4th place with about 500 (slow breeders fml) and 2nd place is only at around 700.

Super spoopy, thank god they aren't near me.... yet