Community Balance Patch: Diplomacy/Pacts

I'll start with a couple of observations and suggestions.

Advent seem to get royally screwed when it comes to their Envoys and Pact Bonuses.

One of my goals would be to give Advent a little more boost financially when forming pacts with other factions.

[suggestion] Herald Envoy: Cultural Assistance - Add a tithing buff that kicks back a small amount of resources for providing cultural assistance.

[suggestion] Herald Envoy: Sacrifice - The Envoy is loaded with a single Deliverance Cannon Shell which destroys the envoy when launched, providing a small increase in relationship.

[suggestion] Psi Culture Pact - Add a second buff that increases the max allegiance by 10%.

[suggestion] Psi Research Pact - Increase the research cost from 10% to 15%.

[suggestion] Psi Beam Pact - Possibly change this pact to a ENERGY pact including more weapon types (suggested in other threads too).

[suggestion] Psi Strikecraft Pact - This pact is mainly good for Vasari which have the least amount of strikecraft per squad. This results in a 50% improvement for Vasari, a 33% improvement for TECH and a 22% improvement for Advent. Changing the Defense Tree for advent to add the additional strikecraft to carrier ships would help balance this out more.

[question] Psi Shield Pact - Why 15%? Vasari Hull and Regen pacts add 25%. Does the mitigation add enough for the lower values on capacity and regen?

[question] Tech Missile Pact - An oddly self serving pact between TECH and Vasari that gives a 15% damage (MISSILE), 15% ignore shields (PHASEMISSILE). I'm not sure what they shared exactly, plus Advent is left with nothing. Combined with the phase missile topic this seems to have some issues. What can be done to fix it and include Advent?

[suggestion] Tech Supply Pact - The other two races final pacts only increase the relative strength of the fleet by 15% - 20% and are targeted at shield and cooldown while this adds 800 additional supply. I think the final value of this research should come out closer to 250 - 400 additional supply. Another possibility is to add an additional CapitalShip slot in additional to the lowered fleet supply.

Cultural Assistance should maybe increase max Allegiance and current allegiance in the grav well by lets say 20%. Scale duration vs cooldown to balance.

I wouldn't have any issues considering this, unfortunately the only ways to increase max allegiance is with research modifiers or a starbase upgrade. There are not any buff's that can temporarily increase max allegiance. This is why I suggested an allegiance modifier in the culture pact itself.

In general, I agree with your observations...but I think more than just the supply pact needs to be nerfed...I think the Vasari envoy bonus Mutual Threat is ridiculously overpowered...I've played 2v2 games against a team with a Vasari ally and that envoy bonus alone made it extremely difficult...

Let's look at some numbers here for envoy bonuses....

Arbitrate tariff gives +50% trade for 60s out of 180...or about 16.7% constant trade bonus...pretty powerful...and probably fine...

Cultural Assistance gives +50% culture for the same time period...so on average 16.7%...problem with this is, since it ain't constant it really doesn't do a whole lot of good... even if 50% is enough to start overthrowing a world, the 2 minute break between cooldown and duration pretty much guarantees you'll never make any headway...culture is too slow, this ability doesn't do squat....I'd recommend reducing the cooldown to 60s and reducing the bonus to 25% (or somewhere around there)...if the ability is constant, the culture bonus will actually be meaningful...problem with culture bonuses is that it's all or nothing...if you have enough culture to hold your own, any more is worthless unless it helps overthrow another planet...

Grant Amnesty makes the planet immune to bombardment for 25s...cooldown is 180s, so I'd say this ability is fine...sure, it can be really powerful and help resist even a novalith, but the short duration and long cooldown means it requires good timing and can still be easily overcome...I think this ability is fine...

Mutual Threat...this ability is ridiculously overpowered...brings ship construction and structure construction times to 1/3 of their original values AND it triples resource income!?!?  You got to be kidding me...even if its only 60s out of 180s, that is still overpowered...this ability needs to be on par with arbitrate tariff...a 50% increase in resources is not quite as good as the trade bonus from arbitrate tariff, but this ability also allows you to build ships ridiculously fast...I say change the resource boost form 200% to 50%...I could even see 75%, maybe even 100%, but not 200%...

Nanomedicine outreach restores 250 planet health over 10s and has a cooldown of 180s...that isn't very good...I wouldn't bother to argue making this ability more powerful since Vasari have mutual threat and Grant amnesty, but under the assumption mutual threat becomes a reasonable bonus I think the cooldown on this ability needs some help...250 health over 180s?  I say make the cooldown at least 60s so this ability can be useful...

Quell Unrest...adds 5% planet allegiance every 180s...now, since culture is slow, that is somewhat understandable...but if the Vasari envoy can allow a planet to completely resist a novalith, I think this ability should then be capable of resisting a deliverance engine or at least mitigating its effects...an increase of duration from 10s to 30s would be a start...that's a 15% increase...

Sacrifice...relationship increase needs to be more than .6...it takes a long while to get envoys in the right place sometimes, so if you're going to have to replace one, it better be worth your while...not sure what number to put here but definitely more than .6....

Settlers is fine...its not great, but it's okay...TEC make up for it elsewhere...

Worthy cause can give the player 60 credits every 30s...that is 2 per second...I think that is pretty good...no need to improve this...

I have opinions on the pacts, but I'd like to keep the focus narrow so we can get specific changes and then move on...

By the way, good call Zombie for getting this thread started...

Ya, I was kinda focusing on Advent since they have the least productive Envoy and Pacts.

Can't really disagree, what bugs me about the envoy ability is it is redundant with the Pacts offered by Tech.

Maybe the thought should be what value would make this worthwhile enough to force an enemy to respond. (Culture just doesn't have as much impact in the game as it should).

I'm still for giving some economic boost to Advent to make up for how little culture actually impacts the game.

I find it interesting that both TECH and Vasari have Envoy's and Pacts that generate income and Advent is left without any such pacts. I'm also not really sure how Mutual Threat applies to resource extraction rates either. It would have seemed the structure and ship construction buffs were already good enough. That said, it's worth looking at decreasing the resource boost.

Easy enough to try.

I still think some additional buff is needed for destroying the Envoy. Simply increasing the relationship doesn't seem good enough to me.

Agreed.

Understand.

I'm all for that.

Problem is, I don't think it can be implemented...

As Zombie has said, allegiance is not an entity modifier but a research modifier...

I don't think there is a new buff we can give this ability that isn't already done by other envoys and that fits the culture theme...

Not certain which way to go on this, but I do think a reduced cooldown to make this bonus more constant will definitely help...

Also, perhaps instead of nerfing the supply pact we should buff the other two? I don't know these things play out in multiplayer, but I rarely ever even bother with the highest level pacts anyways.

Eh, 800 Fleet supply is going to be really hard to balance against...

It's not uncommon in a game that goes into the late stages for one or multiple players to go up to the sixth fleet supply upgrade (which is 1360 fleet supply)...at that level, you lose 56% of resources to maintenance, which means you make 44% of what you would otherwise...

With a supply pact, you could have the same fleet supply but only need the third fleet supply upgrade (which is 550, so 1350 total with supply pact)...at that level, the maintenance is 28%, which means you'll get 72% of the resources you would otherwise...

72% is 61% higher than 44%...basically, the supply pact is like giving someone a 61% boost to resources and credit income...at even lower levels of supply, this pact becomes even more powerful...

I don't think it is worth even trying to buff something else to compare to this...supply pact needs to be nerfed...I'm not certain on the value yet, but I wouldn't go with anything over 400..

^The thing is though, the weapon and shield pacts, while I agree are weaker, don't require any addition resources to go into effect. To get the most out of the supply pact, you still need to build 800 supply worth of ships. Thus I think theoretically the supply pact should be a bit better than the others. 400 seems a little to low in my opinion. Though again, does anyone bother get these high level pacts in multiplayer, even on multistars?

Also I thought of a way to help the culture related things, but it requires a bit more than just research/ability tinkering. I noticed while messing with the gameplay.constants file (for the counters thread) that you can change the maximum culture gain/lose rates. I always thought the main weakness of culture was that you couldn't loss it at more than 0.07 culture per second. What if we increased that to 0,1? Again, this is a major change to a game mechanic and shouldn't be taken lightly, but I think most people agree culture need some help.

Culture does need help, I agree...it's not a bad idea, that is almost a 50% increase in the rate of change...

My only concern with that change is that Vasari are going to get the least buffing/most nerfing in any balance patch...Advent (at least early game) are only going to get stronger, and Advent already have arguable the most powerful SBs and defenses...I'd be wary of boosting the Advent's late game potential, and since they are the only faction that can project culture, any boost to culture is going to help the Advent and not do much else for the other races...

The issue is being able to run over enemy culture in the first place...rate of change is important, but if you aren't reversing the enemies' culture then rate of change is irrelevant...I'm not sure where to go with this yet, but I do agree culture could use a boost...

IF it were possible... (if...)... supply pact should be an % increase above what it is... say... +40%... that would give +800 fleet supply at 2000 supply... but considerably less at the lower fleet supplys.

The biggest thing that makes it over powered... is when its researched early... there was this one game, where a guy, it was on large fleet settings... NEVER BROUGHT A FLEET UPGRADE... instead, since he was in the pocket, he tecked up to supply pact... and WHAM 925 supply... 0% upkeep.

Unfortunatly... i dont think this is possible... else the devs definately would have done it exactly that way... +40%

I've had similar experiences with this....when I play 2v2s with my friends, we now have a house rule of no supply pacts...we used to use them, but unless you could wipe out the other team early on, it was impossible to win once they had supply pacts...

The issue with pacts and envoys is that they will also be impossible to balance...a missile pact is worthless to an Advent player but ridiculously overpowered when given to a Vasari player...the anima pact the Advent have is worthless for the Advent compared to the 66% bonus Vasari bombers will get from it...

If you ask me, pacts in general should be fairly weak...they give you an important edge (and you still get the envoy bonuses) but never will be a game changer...unfortunately, supply pact and certain combinations of others are...

well... they increase bomber squad numbers by 66% (and buffs scramble bombers by that much)... however... if the initial bomber wave is defeated, the strike craft still respawn, and cost the same ammount of antimatter as uasual.  Advent, however, since they have much faster rebuild times, and lower AM costs... thier carreirs have a much easier time coping with the extra strike craft that need replacing.

ever let a carrier with 0 antimatter try to regen 2 bomber squads? it takes a LONG while uasually... this pact doesnt help... and it kinda helps balance things out a bit.

in other words... its only a 66% bonus as long as the bombers can stay alive.... with the buffed flackburst and magnatize and vengence... (in your mod) i dont think that is so much of an issue, expecially if you know your going to be going up against vasari carrier spam with advent pacts. (i mean, come on, paying attention to your enemy and knowing how to react... is the whole point of rts.) (and, iirc, in another thread you slightly increased the fighter vs bomber modifier?)

I have not done that...it was a suggestion I considered to weaken bombers but it is not incorporated anywhere that I know of...

To my knowledge, the only released version of anything is the mod that changes capital ship abilities and GoaFan's change to damage multipliers with respect to armor type...

I am not certain of this...game files determine the antimatter cost of a squadron, and computations then determine the cost of an individual strikecraft...if the number of SC per squadron is increased, I don't believe the antimatter cost per squadron increases...in fact, the AM cost per SC would decrease...

If it this is untrue and the AM cost per individual SC is constant, then additional SC per squadron would never be a disadvantage, only an advantage...you would start with more SC and rebuild them at the same rate...

In any case, we need to make recommendations for changes...

I have made some propositions on the envoy bonuses...they haven't been tested yet and I doubt they're perfect but they're at least something...I'm sure many others have several ideas for both envoy bonuses and pacts...conceptual discussions are important but ultimately we will need specific changes to implement and test...

Doesn't the economic impact of culture add some (maybe small) value to this ability?  Even if you don't cross the threshhold and actually 'pop' an enemy world with your culture bomb, you're still decreasing their income.  It could also be used to temporarily stave off an enemy culture push, right?

I'm not saying it doesn't need a buff, but it seems like the economic component could be somewhat meaningful if it were buffed that way.. (If Zombie could figure out a debuff for max allegience then you could sting them that way too).

As for your other suggestions..  I don't have much for opinions on this topic, but I'm partial to the idea of longer cooldown abilities.. if only because I don't want to be paying much attention to my envoys.  So instead of reducing the cooldown on a lot of these, what about increasing their potency/duration to the same scale you've suggested?

I think a nanomedicine that lasts 3x as long (i.e., 750 planet health over 30s) would be just as good if not better than the 10s version with a 60s cooldown..

I actually thinks should be made more powerful depending on how often they are actually used. They were made as good as they are so that even in multiplayer pacts can be good enough to be worth the investment in the civic labs. If we make them worse they will just fall into obscurity.

That is a good point...but I don't think a single pact or even 2 pacts should be game-changing...in my experience, both the mutual threat envoy bonus and supply pact are individually game winners...if your enemy has even one of those and you don't, it's over for you unless you are vastly better at this game or vastly more powerful when they obtain these bonuses...

If we are to balance the pact/envoy system, then we have two choices...either we make everything on par with things like mutual threat and supply pact or we tone everything down to the level of a simple trade or research pact....the more variance you add to the situation, the harder it becomes to balance things...increased power adds more variance...pacts and envoys inherently have even more variance...they are highly dependent on the combination of factions making pacts with eachother, how many planets are on the map (since number of planets to put envoys determines max amount of relationship points you can earn), the ability to get envoys from one ally to another, the list goes on...

Its one thing to balance three factions...but with pacts, you are balancing 6 different combinations of factions...if its a 3v3, 4v4, or 5v5, the roles of eco players and front liners complicates the combinations even more...if one team has access and is using all its pacts while the other team isn't, there should be a rather significant advantage...but right now, even if both teams are fully using their pacts and envoys, there is no guarantee of balance...a TEC/Vasari alliance is grossly more powerful than an Advent/Advent alliance...

I think it will be easier to balance the pacts and envoy bonuses if they provide solid bonuses, but nothing that is extreme...

I'm not certain which way to go with the cooldowns either...but envoy bonuses are different than other abilities, primarily that you usually just leave them on autocast and therefore don't have to micro them...

Nevertheless, I am rather in favor of longer cooldowns and more power...but that may be rather difficult to balance...what I would like to see with most of the envoy bonuses is something more constant instead of boom and bust type of advantages...

Ok.. that's a good point too.  In some ways I think a more constant bonus makes more sense since you're generally just going to leave your envoy there in the grav well.  In fact, always-on passive bonuses might be nice too..

And you're right about the autocast, I almost never micromanage my envoy abilities.  However, I mentioned nanomedicine because I like the idea of sending an envoy to go heal an allied world that has been under attack.. And in that micro-managed situation, I'd rather that I could send my envoy to this border world, drop off some healing supplies, and then (most likely) leave again for an interior planet.  I guess I don't know how Diplomacy is played online.. Do you normally leave envoys on every allied world?  I only build a few envoys in my games because I hate to spare the fleet supply.

Vasari has the fastest building squads per/dps. So doesn't a vasari carrier with low anti-matter actually outperform an advent carrier with similar low anti-matter if they have to replace their squads?

And while it's true that a single Advent Carrier has a higher anti-matter restore rate, for similar cost/dps, 3 Vas Carriers have the same anti-matter and restore rate as 2 Advent Carriers. So slight edge in total dps initially to Advent but Vas is far better at regenerating it's squads from what I see.

Is there any value in reducing the fleet supply of Envoys? I personally think 12 is to high for MP and in fact I played several 5v5 recently where no one even built an Envoy. Lowering the fleet supply might cause someone to actually use them.

Same question. Is there any value in reducing the fleet supply of Envoys? If you wanted a longer duration on a planet you could place multiple Envoys. This would require a bit more strategic though than simply buff the Envoy's to have longer durations and/or shorter cooldowns.

I hope to be able to work on some of the proposed changes today and hopefully make them available tomorrow.

Under the assumption that envoy bonuses and pacts are balanced, I do think it is reasonable to reduce the fleet supply cost...they already take a long time to build and get to wherever they need to be, so there are already limitations...however, I would only lower the fleet supply after pacts and envoy bonuses are balanced (in which case I think the most powerful ones will have to be toned down)...the more powerful these bonuses are, the more fleet supply these things should cost...

To be honest, I'm not sure I like the idea of multiple envoys at a planet...some of the envoy bonuses are already powerful enough, some like Mutual Threat are too powerful....I don't believe any of them stack, but if they do stack or are changed to stack (which I think is a bad idea) then fleet supply would be your only limiting factor...if we lower the fleet supply, I don't think it would be wise to simultaneously allow envoy bonuses to stack...

You can already place multiple Envoys at a planet now and achieve a nearly constant buff with only fleet supply being the limiting factor. For example, two Voruntaks give a nearly constant MutualThreat buff for instance.

And no they don't stack and I don't think any of them should. This was more in regards to decreasing the cooldowns/increasing the durations as part of the balancing. I'm thinking the current durations and cooldowns might still be the way to go after the envoy bonuses are balanced out a little more.

Also, I played a couple of 5v5's yerstday and NO ONE built an Envoy. A lower fleet supply would allow a player to employ a few more Envoys or even get them out the door for Pete's sake.

I'm not certain, but I think the biggest reason why people won't build envoys is that all the pacts/envoy bonuses requires lots of civ labs...since most players likely aren't going to get more than 3-5, I guess there's not really much incentive to build them...

Nevertheless, fleet supply certainly will encourage their proliferation....I just am not sure if it's the best way to do that, though I don't really see any other alternatives...

Ok, I have what makes a nice buff for Culture Assistance on the Advent Envoy and it seemed to work fairly well in my testing. The Advent Envoy generates a very small amount of culture (0.5 for right now and only for allies) that simply helps to raise the max allegiance of the affected planet in addition to the CultureSpreadRateForOwner buff if the ally builds culture centers. It's too low of a culture output to really affect an adjacent enemy world but just enough to raise the max allegance by 10%.

With an increase in max allegance for the Culture Pact this thing actually provides some Economic benefits that aren't provided by the other Races and fits with the Culture theme.

Also, I have a similar theme for Sacrifice that emits a much larger culture burst on death (only in allied worlds though).