Remnants of the Precursors - Initial thoughts

[rgp151]

Some stuff just seems off. I've tried 4 games on hard now and in every one I end up the lowest population and falling quite behind, with one or two races jumping WAY out ahead, with like double or triple the number of planets or more. I'm currently Klackon with the lowest production in the game Also the tech trees don't seem right. Every game I get trees with little variation, like in one I got all the way up to the 5th tier propulsion without getting a single drive, it was all just range tech. Same with not getting Robotic Controls, or never getting certain types of Planetology tech, like I'll get only cleanup techs and no terraforming or vise versa, etc. So there is something different about how the trees are populated that is less balanced. I know in MoO they did a lot to make sure all your tech picks were fairly evenly distributed.

[haphazard1]

Runaway AIs were fairly common on larger maps in MOO. Particularly the rocks. I have had so many games of MOO where I felt like I was doing pretty well, grabbed 8 or 10 worlds, and then made contact with the damn rocks and found they had like 25. I have not played much RotP yet, but with the vastly larger maps the game allows I would expect runaway rocks to be a big, big issue.

On missile bases, I rarely build more than a handful at most worlds. Sometimes you get a world that is the one point of contact with another race, and those would get turned into fortresses with massive numbers of bases. But unless I have a critical tech hole I prefer to put those resources into an offensive fleet instead, with just enough defense to hold my worlds. Of course, sometimes I misjudge things and end up getting conquered.

I really like the way you can set caps for ships and missiles bases in RotP. I tend to get distracted sometimes and forget I had someting building, and would end up with way more of something than I really wanted. Being able to set the flag that dumps excess/overflow spending into research rather than overflowing to your reserves is also nice. Avoid that 50% penalty and get those BCs into something more immediately useful.

[haphazard1]

On tech trees and available research, I have not played enough RotP yet to really know. My current game seems pretty typical of MOO: a couple of annoying holes (no early clean up techs! ), a couple random one-of-this-but-not-that cases, and a couple glad-I-have-that-one cases. Nothing has really stood out as being unusual.

[Dp101]

Some stuff just seems off. I've tried 4 games on hard now and in every one I end up the lowest population and falling quite behind, with one or two races jumping WAY out ahead, with like double or triple the number of planets or more. I'm currently Klackon with the lowest production in the game Also the tech trees don't seem right. Every game I get trees with little variation, like in one I got all the way up to the 5th tier propulsion without getting a single drive, it was all just range tech. Same with not getting Robotic Controls, or never getting certain types of Planetology tech, like I'll get only cleanup techs and no terraforming or vise versa, etc. So there is something different about how the trees are populated that is less balanced. I know in MoO they did a lot to make sure all your tech picks were fairly evenly distributed.

I've not noticed the same tech tree variation (I found just as awful holes in regular MoO games as I have in these), but regarding falling behind, I mean.. even the base AI is significantly better than base MoO AI. I feel like increased difficulty -> being behind isn't that weird an occurrence?

[RefSteel]

More details about a playthrough would help point up what might have gone wrong for a game; on techm if I understand the differences correctly, I'd expect random severe tech holes to be less common in Remnants than in Orion (though only by a small margin) - and I've certainnly seen my share of gaping holes in MoO tech trees. I'm usually able to fill them with tech trades when necessary though. I'll note that if the spying system is similar to MoO's, spying success increases significantly with computer tech level (even if your opponents are going up just as fast as you) so it's often better - even as Darloks - to delay spying until a bit later in the game.

[haphazard1]

RefSteel, I thought that spying success was affected by the relative computer tech levels of the two races? So waiting would help if your computer tech is out-pacing the target race, but could get worse if they are doing better than you are. Or is there an effect from the absolute computer tech level?

[rgp151]

All I know about the spying is that as the Darloks I had the computer lead, a modest lead, but a lead, and I got caught every single time I spied, which was over 10 times. In MoO Darloks almost never get caught and usually end up framing someone else, even when spying from behind. However, I did just play a game as Pislons on Normal difficulty and was able to get and maintain the lead in that and with a big computer lead I was spying and framing others.

[Dp101]

More details about a playthrough would help point up what might have gone wrong for a game; on techm if I understand the differences correctly, I'd expect random severe tech holes to be less common in Remnants than in Orion (though only by a small margin) - and I've certainnly seen my share of gaping holes in MoO tech trees. I'm usually able to fill them with tech trades when necessary though. I'll note that if the spying system is similar to MoO's, spying success increases significantly with computer tech level (even if your opponents are going up just as fast as you) so it's often better - even as Darloks - to delay spying until a bit later in the game.

What I can find seems to show the spying formula's tech influence as a simple subtraction between tech levels on each side, shouldn't this mean that chances don't actually go up if you're not ahead? It doesn't look like the formula is different in rotp (at least the Nazlok spying boost is unchanged, so I assume the rest of the formula didn't change either) so not really sure what's going on.

[RefSteel]

What I can find seems to show the spying formula's tech influence as a simple subtraction between tech levels on each side, shouldn't this mean that chances don't actually go up if you're not ahead? It doesn't look like the formula is different in rotp (at least the Nazlok spying boost is unchanged, so I assume the rest of the formula didn't change either) so not really sure what's going on.

Yes, that should be right. My understanding is that there are a number of different rolls involved in espionage attempts though, and not all of them work the same way. Getting lots of spies caught, even with a spy advantage, is usually just a function of having lots of spies, but (at least in original MoO) getting lots of spies caught without getting successful hits in between might be because your chances of actually getting a tech even on a "successful spy roll" depends on an entirely different roll. Unfortunately, I don't remember the actual formula and can't find it right away, but it could be something like "roll 1dx + your computer tech - y for the highest-level tech you can get on this hit," so a "hit" often turns into a miss when your target has only high-level techs to steal or your computer level is low if y is large in comparison with x. If I find the reference I remember (or one that shows I'm all wet) I'll post the actual formula....

[Dp101]

What I can find seems to show the spying formula's tech influence as a simple subtraction between tech levels on each side, shouldn't this mean that chances don't actually go up if you're not ahead? It doesn't look like the formula is different in rotp (at least the Nazlok spying boost is unchanged, so I assume the rest of the formula didn't change either) so not really sure what's going on.

Yes, that should be right. My understanding is that there are a number of different rolls involved in espionage attempts though, and not all of them work the same way. Getting lots of spies caught, even with a spy advantage, is usually just a function of having lots of spies, but (at least in original MoO) getting lots of spies caught without getting successful hits in between might be because your chances of actually getting a tech even on a "successful spy roll" depends on an entirely different roll. Unfortunately, I don't remember the actual formula and can't find it right away, but it could be something like "roll 1dx + your computer tech - y for the highest-level tech you can get on this hit," so a "hit" often turns into a miss when your target has only high-level techs to steal or your computer level is low if y is large in comparison with x. If I find the reference I remember (or one that shows I'm all wet) I'll post the actual formula....

Ah, that looks to be correct given what's said here halfway down the page:

"If any spies score a "yes" under success during the year (that game turn) they get to make a second roll on the following chart:

Roll
0 to 84: Got something, but it wasn't useful or the self destruct sequence was successfully aborted. Tracks covered successfully.
85 to 99: Succeeded. Either tech was stolen successfully or the self destruct of the facilities completed, rendering them useless. Tracks covered successfully.
100+: Successful mission and successful framing effort. Enemy relations worsened between chosen empires.
This roll is governed by a roll of 1 to 100 plus your computer tech level. Basically, this means that any success at all is much more likely to result in a successful mission more and more often as the game goes along. If you make it to level 99 computer technology, every single time you get south of 0 on the first roll you will get a successful frame on the second roll. If you get any roll south of 50 on the first roll and you have at least level 84 in computers, you can't possibly fail to have a successful mission on the second roll."