Vasari volcanic techs too expensive for what they do

from Sins Forums

Hi!

For the first time I tried the Vasari. The game itself was a blast - I had a really hard time to overcome the big fleets of smal fregates the Ascend AI was spamming. Finaly they are contained in one "branch" of the solar system having only 1 planet and 2 asteroids, and I'm just checking various vasari techs.

I've researched the whole volcanic tech "branch", but after I've checked their effects, I found them practically insignificant. For the expense if about 5000 credits, 800 metal and 1100 crystal I got 21 more pop on each volcanic planet, which pays roughly 0.5 credits more tax. Since I have two volcanic planets and if I use 4.7 for average price of the crystals, I'd get my investment back in about 10,000 seconds, or 2 hours 47 minutes of game time.

Having 15% more pop on a terran planet with 260 base pop is quite a deal. Having 30% more pop on a volcanic planet with 70 base pop is a minor improvement. Paying for that minor improvement 5000/800/1100 is IMO an act of mental insanity in anything but _really_ big games.

What I'd propose for that tech is
1) move them to level 1 (colonize), 2 (first 15%) and 3 (second 15%) and
2) maybe double their efficiency (up to 60% max). With base 70 pop this will still be only a small improvement, compared to the size of all other planet types.

Comments welcome!

BR,  Iztok

technical
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I absolutely agree with you, the Vasari volcanic research does not pay off unless you have dozens of volcanic planets.

But IMO a better solution would be to adjust the pop cap for the different planet types depending on the race. So if Vasari actually prefer volcanic planets, why not changing the population cap for Volcanic worlds from 70 to 160 (which would significantly increase the effects of volcanic research) and maybe reduce the pop cap for desert worlds. The same could be done for TEC (preferring terran worlds) and the Advent (preferring desert worlds). That would additionally introduce the concept of "strategic expansion" where you probably have to select the planets you wish to colonize depending on the type instead of simply taking everything you can.