1.03 Balance, Design, Concept, and Discussion

I'm not going to sit here bashing 1.03.

It's unconstructive, and despite my personal beliefs, that's not the purpose of this thread.

This thread is simply to understand the basis for the changes.

I think we can all agree that some of the changes were clearly mistakes and unintended.

The accidental change on ally speak, for instance, is incredibly annoying, but clearly a mistake.  The devs will fix that asap.  This is not an issue.

The devs have NOT yet admitted that the Black Market fix is a mistake.  Let's go over in detail why it is:

It is now essentially a 1 resource economy.  To quickly see why, note how easy it is to produce credits (independent of allegiance), compared to other resources.  Further, consider that the ability to buy endless quantities at the base price essentially puts credits at 3-1 vs minerals, and everything else equal, you should have at least 5 or 6-1 credit to mineral income.  This is even more exacerbated by the decrease in extractors for the asteroids and neutrals.  By doing so, credits becomes even more dominant as the source of income.

Consequently, from a role playing/single player perspective, stardock has "dumbed down" the game to a point that it's no longer an rts or a 4x hybrid.  It's simply some mass credits mission.  This is a silly design feature, that must be changed.  The idea of a slow rise to counter mass crystal buy spam at the start is fine for the first 30 seconds - 1minute.  Then simply revert back to the old black market.   Or however the devs want to fix this major issue, that's fine by me.

In my personal opinion, I think the devs are a bit out of touch with game balance.  This may sound elitist, but I have a very good grasp of game balance.  Consider, for instance, seige frigates.  The nerf was simply due to the computer spamming too much, making the game unenjoyable.  An easy fix would be to lower the computer's reliance on such annoying tactics, and make it fight normally.  Instead, the dubious decision was made to nerf a useless unit.

In fact, siege frigates are utter crap.  To see why, note that you can rebuild your colony for the cost of a SINGLE siege frigate.  If you lose even a single siege frigate, you're breaking even on an asteroid.  If you lose 2, you're breaking even on a larger planet.  Infrastructure is 90% of the planet's value, not the planet itself.

Consequently, the nerf on siege frigates was both unnecessary and ridiculous.  If anything, they should be buffed (a lot).  Reduce their frequency in single player to compensate.  As has been already stated, it's now more efficient to make capital ships to bomb planets than it is to use siege frigates.  That's clearly a ridiculous situation.

The changes to long range frigates were for the most part alright.  I believe they WERE overpowered, and deserved a nerf.  However, the nerf to illuminators was short-sighted and somewhat ignorant.

There has been too many posts by clueless players claiming illuminators are good.  I have definitively showed multiple times that illuminators are a terrible unit.  And yet, they got nerfed harder than any other unit (with their crystal cost hike).  How is this balancing?  Please don't listen to people when their arguments are:

OMG 30 ILLUMINATORS QQ I QUIT.

I'm not saying to listen to those that scream the loudest.  On the contrary, listen to those that don't scream at all.  I believe that all my points are valid and based on sound reasoning.  If you feel a reason is wrong, please correct me.

Further, none of the points I made are specific to multiplayer or single player.  They are universal.  While I would prefer certain issues fixed, this is not the time nor place to do so.

There are large balance issues AND enjoyment issues that need to be fixed.


I will discuss the issue more in detail if/once the devs get back to me, but I would like for them to hear out the more reasonable and educated members of the community, instead of relying on raw data.

I'm again NOT saying we should only listen to the "elite" or whatever.  If there is a good sound argument for making a change to the benefit of the single player or casual crowd, but all means we should do so.

But if there's a BETTER idea that works for everyone, why not?