About Thalan hives, the Tech "Helpful hives" specialization :

• Improvement Adjacency Level 1.0

How it works? I thought it changes Hives +1 adj. bonus to every type of building to +2. But it wasn't the case. So it's bugged or gives bonys to something else?

Quoting KarlBar99,

reply 16

Why don't we all sit down and help the devs a little by talking about our perceived flaws with the tech trees?

 

I'm pretty new and still getting a handle on things but i'll have a go at the Altarian's.




The first issue as noted is their unique building. It appears it's designed to let them build mixed research and manufacturing setups. But it just doesn't compete because at the end of the day it has to compete against solar power plants, (and upgrade's), and similar buildings for research. These can provide double the adjacency benefits, extra adjacency from not having mixed stuff encircling and around 5 times the percentage bonuses.




Their other major unique item is the approval buildings which i've adjacency benefits to influence. These have several issues: A) The adjacency bonuses are less than having another influence building, you only really need approval buildings when you have really high world populations, but high world pops don;t really help culture booming much if at all. C) even if you do need high approval from buildings the benefits are still equivalent to less than 1 proper culture building.

Altarian Approval buildings are only decent with the current LEP/Approval system.  They dont give % modifiers, they give flat modifiers, which is the best thing to combat LEP.  The Drathian temple gives +9 flat approval, and +2 Adjacency.  Its colony unique, but you may not need more than 1 anyways.  If so, accompany it with as many communion shrines as you want, each giving +7.  However, if they do end up changing the LEP/Approval math so the +% modifiers are attributed before the LEP Malus, then Altarian Approval buildings get weaker.  Terrans have megaresort, which gives +25% approval.  that plus 1 stadium will rock (or wont even need it if you already have virtual world and the entertainment capital somewhere else in your empire).

I just looked at Drengin, and the slave pit gives +6 and the Hunting grounds gives +12?  WTF?!?!?  +12 Approval?!?!?

Altarians arent really an influence race  Yes, they get some bonus influence as part of a racial trait, but not much in regards to influence specific techs, except some of their racial buildings supply approval adj bonus as well.  Nevertheless, screw influence buildings, just build factories and use culture fest.  Its about twice as efficient for the final output.  Yes, culture buildings generate influence for free, but still, as of 1.1 with the new pop/production ratios, you can use projects with manufacturing, and be about as efficient as a pure dedicated world, but, with the flexibility to change in a single turn.

There is an entire ideology line in benevolent which gives great approval bonuses, but thats ideology, not tech. For Altarian supposedly being the race of harmony and research, they kinda blow.....badly.

I guess my point was that from an outsiders perspective, it looks like the devs mostly forgot about 4 races, or got so caught up in coming up with cool tech names they forgot to provide diversity in other ways.

And perhaps Frogboy just doesn't like the Altarians!

The Thalan tech tree sucked the power out of the altarian tech tree, that's what happened!

In truth, aside from various bugs I think they just conceptually differentiated the tech trees but did not modify them based on competitive balance.  That wasn't the priority during beta and since it's a sandbox game, the imbalance is permissible.  But yea, it's basically another difficulty slider with Thalan tech being easy mode, iconian/yor being medium, everyone else being hard, and altarian being suicidal.

Goatmeal: I can do basic math, my workings are correct. I can lead you through my spreadsheet and give it to you if you want. But all it does in simple terms is quantify the base production multiplier and raw production without Hive/Factory, then separately work out the final outputs one with Hive, once with Factory with Adjacency accounted for.

Sure i'll lead you through each part though first with a screenshot below.

A2 = to the bonus raw production provided by the hive. It is used by E column only.

B2 = to the percentage bonus to production of the world with Hive rendered as a decimal. The value that's in there now is equal to a 1,000 percent bonus.

C2 = to the extra percentage increase provided by adding another factory, again as a decimal. The value given assumes a max tech factory, (base 100%), minus the difference in adjacency between a mother hive and at the Factory, (Both factories and Hives gain 5% manufacturing per adjacency level, Mother Hive provides an extra level to all affected sources. Max of 6 so a max of 30% lost adjacency bonus which means the true change in percentage is plus 70% or 0.7 in decimal.

D column is total pop dedicated to production.

E column is: = (raw + pop) x Percentage Bonus of world, or for E2 is: D2+$A$2)*$B$2 

F column is: = Pop x (Percentage Bonus of World + Extra Percentage Bonus), or for F2 is: D2)*($B$2+$C$2)

G and H Columns are hopefully obvious.

I will not before posting the screenshot one earlier number was off, it's 52 not 58 pop as break even point, i screwed up by setting C2 as = to 0.75 not 0.7 first time.

Screenshot:

[url=http://postimg.org/image/3uhjoosul/][/url]

Link to spreadsheet download:

http://www.filedropper.com/galacciviiihivesvsfactories

Just been in and checked, Adjacency benefits are additive, not multiplicative, pulled out my calculator and cross checked the figures. I didn;t do it with hives specifically but since they use the same bonus system it should work regardless of adjacency source.

Also decided to sit down and mod the Altairian tech tree, see if i can't morph it into something useful. Will let you know when i'm done tinkering.

I'll post this screenshot of a game that took me 5 minutes to set up and test.

This is a race with no abilities other than patriotic (so that starting morale is exactly 50%) and intuitive so that hives are available immediately.

The planet has exactly 10 pop, is the capital of the empire, and has no bonuses of any type.

A capital building is worth 5 raw production.  A civilization capital is worth 5 raw production.  The 10 pop is worth 10.5 raw production.  A hive is worth 4 raw production.

If you'll notice, the "Base Manufacturing" is not equal to 5+5+10.5+4=24.5

It is, in fact, equal to 24.5 * 1.05 = 25.725 where the 1.05 is the 5% "total manufacturing" bonus from having the hive with 1 adjacency bonus.

You'll also note that the only other percentage listed is 30% from the "basic factory".  This is a 25% basic factory with 1 adjacency bonus.  The hive's 5% is clearly not listed here or added to the factory bonus.

The hive adjacency bonus counts as a multiplier to raw production before you apply the general manufacturing bonus.  It is very much multiplicative, and that is where it's power lies.

If it was the way you claim the manufacturing of the planet would be (5+5+4+10.5)*1.35=33.075 which it most clearly is not.

At level 1 with 1 basic factory this difference doesn't amount to much but when you have multiple adjacency bonuses on the hive and multiple factories, the difference becomes very large.

Initial setup with no buildings.  Production is equal to the expected 20.5

http://s27.postimg.org/56imdthc3/2015_06_28_00001.jpg

Setup with just 1 hive and 1 factory.

http://s2.postimg.org/d6xu5joe1/2015_06_28_00002.jpg

Example with 4 factories.  The production is now substantially more than just 24.5 * 2.7 = 66.15

http://s23.postimg.org/gmvs48q23/2015_06_28_00003.jpg

I think it's deliberate on both tbh - Death Furnaces is an ideological wonder, and so should be hugely beneficial since you only get to build one in the whole empire, while hives are colony-uniques and so need to be pretty good too.

The problem is simply that the Hive base-building (and it's upgrade) are insanely overpowered for their price. Hives are twice as powerful as a durantium refinery, but cost 1/5th of the manufacturing to build, 1/4 the maintenance to own, and need no resources to set up.

It's basically 4 free population who need no food or approval - for 30 manu.  For comparison, the Yor need to spend 121 manu to build a two units of POP who then buildings to support them. That suggests a more sensible cost for the hive is around 300 manu - ten times it's present cost. Even if it's output was nerfed into the ground, there's simply no way a hive should cost 30 manu.

I havent played Thalan yet, but does indeed sound interesting as its race specific techs seem to be quite useful compared to other races.  Nevertheless, after looking at the improvementdefs.xml file (I hate that tooltip doesnt have this info), the hive's +5% to colony raw production per level seems to be a bit INSANE.  

However, if you want to compare a hive with a proper traditional manufacturing building, you need to use a power plant (namely fusion or quantum), which will give much larger adjacent bonuses than a factory, +3 or +5 to each adj factory.  As well, a quantum plant ANYWHERE is a no brainer, as its central bonus(100%) is even higher than an industrial sector (75%).  

(all assumptions begin with hive/plant being surrounded by 6 +1 adj bonus factories) Even with a powerplant, yeah, hive seems to top even a quantum plant because of that +30% raw production (level 6 hive).  That instantly trumps the huge adj bonus you get even from an age of ascension quantum power plant.  Put a quantum power plant next to a hive and replace a factory, and damn, level 10 (+50% raw production).

Yeah, Death Furnace is insane, not as much as Gia Vortex, but both are player unique, not colony unique.  Hive vs Power Plant should be the appropriate comparison.

Guess we'll have to wait for the Hive Nerf.  That adj bonus needs to be tamed quite a bit.

Yeah and both beat the tar out of any other player uniques by well, a hell of a lot, and the equivalent buildings for the other ideologies do not have such an effect. 

You missed the Gaia Vortex out; it also gives a productionpoint adjacency bonus (in addition to yet another +4 production points Empire-wide). And I was already well aware of how the maths works, without you needing to recycle the conversation you literally just had where Goatmeal had to repeatedly explain the difference between PP and manufacturing.

The big point here is that the DF is a single planet only. It is a player-unique wonder. You only get 1, and it costs 202 manu to make. It SHOULD convert the planet it's build on into a powerhouse. Many other player-unique wonders provide faction-wide bonuses (the Benevolent alternative, for instance gives +100% influence to every planet). Making one planet super-powerful is the kind of thing I expect player-uniques to do. I actually would say that yes, the huge increase to the productivity of one planet is fairly equally balanced to the Bene's faction-wide mega-influence wonder, since building the bene wonder can comfortably lead to the player taking over a couple of dozen worlds in five turns without doing anything else.

But the Thalan hive is not a wonder. It's just a colony-unique building, like a powerplant. Rather than making ONE colony very, very productive, you can make ALL your colonies very, very productive. The mother-hive gives 8 PP in addition to it's adjacency; and you can build one per planet.  It's essentially the same price and tech level as a solar powerplant. That I do feel is very unbalanced.

Quoting Enzenx,

reply 47

Let's step into the realm of pure absurdity for a second here. I was curious to see just what kind of pretty numbers I could get and fired up a new test game to see.

Reduced 32%

Original 1737 x 1147

I think that works! Military production is a smidge over 40k at 100%. 

 

 

Which is also totally useless because you can only produce 1 ship per turn.  

Specialization past a certain point is actually pointless.