Yitzi's Unit cost formula discussion

[BlueTemplar]

Why if you set it to 1,9,17,25 did you decide to cap weapon cost at 4? This makes, among other things, Colony Pods and Crawlers cost 2 rows, which, as you can imagine, adds some balance problems...

[Yitzi]

Why if you set it to 1,9,17,25 did you decide to cap weapon cost at 4? This makes, among other things, Colony Pods and Crawlers cost 2 rows, which, as you can imagine, adds some balance problems...

I see I was unclear, and have adjusted the wiki to clarify: The weapon cost itself is not capped at 4, only the minimum of armor/3 is capped at 4.  So a colony pod or crawler will be unaffected by the cap, but a unit with 20 defense (e.g. from modding) and 1 attack will still have an effective weapon cost of 4, not 7.  This allows armor and weapon values to be set fairly high without making defensive units too ridiculously expensive.

[Nexii]

I've tried a bunch of games at 20 minerals per pod and 20 per former, and I feel it actually makes for a better game.  Takes some RNG out of losing a pod or former early.  Though admittedly it speeds everyone up, it also makes nutrients/energy more important relative to minerals.  Such that farm+solar is more tempting pre-tree farm.

Now crawlers at 20 are problematic.  I had to play with -1 resource penalty on crawling.  Which I think is good also because then you're mostly just trying to crawl specialized squares.  With the right eco damage tweaking you can keep mass mineral crawling at IA in check.

[Yitzi]

I've tried a bunch of games at 20 minerals per pod and 20 per former, and I feel it actually makes for a better game.  Takes some RNG out of losing a pod or former early.  Though admittedly it speeds everyone up, it also makes nutrients/energy more important relative to minerals.  Such that farm+solar is more tempting pre-tree farm.

Another idea might be to leave pods at 30, but cut early-game facility costs by 25%.

[Nexii]

Yea pods at 30 is fine also.  The only early facility I mod down right now is HT's maintenance to 2.  Once you get base sizes up to 7 or so the early facilites get a lot stronger.  Especially with commerce and/or +2 ECON.

Something else I was working on relating to unit costs.  The default native life costs are very high and make Gaia/Cult green strategies not that viable.  I was trying the following to make Native life more viable early game.

Mind Worm - 2 rows
Spore Launcher - 3 rows
Isle - 3 rows (3 cap)
Sealurk - 4 rows
Locusts - 5 rows

With these values I found the units would be cost efficient when available.  Only issue is then they become a bit too efficient late game.  On the other hand it's debatable since 1-1-1* Trance/Empath infantry do well all game against native life.  I suppose Empath cost: 1 and Trance cost -1 is a decent fix.  It just seems odd to be making fission reactor units late game, though I guess similar things are seen with clean 0-1-1 formers.  As well it can be debated that MWs still aren't that overpowering since they only ever get Move:1 (though no hurry penalty is huge).  It's very hard to outmanoeuvre enemies with them in the later game when there's less fungus.  Thoughts?  Is this a big deal or should native life perhaps cost more when higher reactors are available to a faction?

[Yitzi]

Yea pods at 30 is fine also.  The only early facility I mod down right now is HT's maintenance to 2.  Once you get base sizes up to 7 or so the early facilites get a lot stronger.  Especially with commerce and/or +2 ECON.

Something else I was working on relating to unit costs.  The default native life costs are very high and make Gaia/Cult green strategies not that viable.

Green strategies in the early game are focused more around capture; in the late game the costs become more reasonable.

It's very hard to outmanoeuvre enemies with them in the later game when there's less fungus.

One way to deal with that might be to boost fungus production slightly (maybe just add a boost at Empathy), and then in the late midgame you can fill your territory with fungus (it might not be the most productive at that point, but it's fairly cheap in terms of former time and can't be destroyed by military units), and then you get a huge mobility advantage in your territory (or anywhere else you place fungus.)

[Nexii]

Yea defensively fungus helps a lot for a Green strategy.  Offensively, by mid game all enemies will have cleaned up most fungus.  You won't get to place any fungus offensively until Fungal Missiles which is very late.  By then it's mostly air/drop combat.

I still say native life is over-costed by default.  If you're talking later game, it's definitely over-costed.  PSI units can move much faster and cost half as much.  With cost mode 1 for example, you can get a hovertank or gravship ?/1/*4 for 50.  Gravship moves 8 (and more if you keep in the reactor based additions) vs Locusts at only speed 6.  ?/1/*4 infantry only cost 30.  Whereas MWs cost 50 by default and Locusts 100!  Also non-native units can get modifiers whereas native life cannot.  Native life does have the advantage of being able to run low MORALE.  But it does require Native life facilities which run expensive too.  Overall it's just not that mobile aside from in Fungus.  Since PLANET only works offensively that lack of mobility really hurts it (you're likely to get hit first - hence why the mentioned non-native units can run 1 defense and be okay)

Granted the costs below were a bit too good for native life.  Trying MWs at 3 rows, Isles at 4 rows, and Locusts at 6 rows now.  Note I have been playing with Green modded to -3 IND so it's a huge cut to what you can produce for non-native military.

One could also say PSI is under-costed, and that might be true too.  I guess it all just comes down to how much you like to see PSI units in the game.

[Yitzi]

Yea defensively fungus helps a lot for a Green strategy.  Offensively, by mid game all enemies will have cleaned up most fungus.  You won't get to place any fungus offensively until Fungal Missiles which is very late.

Or unless you are able to bring and protect formers...

I still say native life is over-costed by default.  If you're talking later game, it's definitely over-costed.  PSI units can move much faster and cost half as much.  With cost mode 1 for example, you can get a hovertank or gravship ?/1/*4 for 50.  Gravship moves 8 (and more if you keep in the reactor based additions) vs Locusts at only speed 6.  ?/1/*4 infantry only cost 30.  Whereas MWs cost 50 by default and Locusts 100!  Also non-native units can get modifiers whereas native life cannot.  Native life does have the advantage of being able to run low MORALE.  But it does require Native life facilities which run expensive too.  Overall it's just not that mobile aside from in Fungus.  Since PLANET only works offensively that lack of mobility really hurts it (you're likely to get hit first - hence why the mentioned non-native units can run 1 defense and be okay)

I'm not so sure.  Brood pits do help significantly, as does the fact that if you're going native you naturally have a high PLANET and therefore (with proper ecodamage modding) can get away with producing more minerals than your opponent.

Note I have been playing with Green modded to -3 IND so it's a huge cut to what you can produce for non-native military.

That would definitely affect things.

[Nexii]

Yea if you play with cheaper move:2 formers, it's possible to lay down fungus ahead.  Still very difficult overall due to Fungus plant speed and the game being favored to offence.  I thought it might be fun if Spore Launcher could have a chance of putting down fungus on bombard, although this would likely be too powerful without a cost increase.

[Yitzi]

Yea if you play with cheaper move:2 formers, it's possible to lay down fungus ahead.  Still very difficult overall due to Fungus plant speed and the game being favored to offence.

Fungus plant speed is 6.  With 6 formers, that means you can keep up.  (Speeder formers aren't that expensive, especially later in the game; they're the same cost as impact speeders.)  Of course, that assumes no relevant projects; with the Xenoempathy Dome (definitely good to have for something like this), fungus can be planted faster than forests.  And fungus (with its defensive bonus) also helps cut down on the offence-favored-ness of the game (though it still could use some modding to reduce).

I thought it might be fun if Spore Launcher could have a chance of putting down fungus on bombard, although this would likely be too powerful without a cost increase.

Yeah...it also wouldn't make much in-game sense.