Remnants of the Precursors - Initial thoughts

[Ray F]

What's the deal with Scouting? In MoO I find blocking with Scout to be essential to success. If you can't do that in this game, how does that affect the opening? Are there other changes that make blocking with Scouts less necessary? What exactly are the differences between RotP and MoO in terms of the mechanics? MoO obviously relies heavily on giving resources and bonuses to the AI on impossible. Does RotP do this as well?

Yes, because the AI in the game is improved, the gameplay "meta" for ROTP is different than MOO1. Whether this is good or bad depends on your perspective. But one of the core tenets of the game is that "if the player can do it, then the AI should be able to do it as well."  

This necessitated changes in things like scouting, diplomacy, research, trade... just lots of little things intended to level the playing field between the AI and the player.

Some exploits HAD to be fixed as a result because, if the AI used them as well, then players would essentially be forced into unfun micromanagement just to keep up.

[rgp151]

It seems that the AI doesn't attack planets as much as it could.

I'm still not sure why factory count goes to 0 after an invasion.

I haven't been successful with the Klackons yet, which I find interesting. Of course the sample size is about 3 or 4 tries. I think this is at least in part due to the fact that early propulsion seems to be more important in this game since you can't use Scout blockades.

I haven't quite figured out production. I seem to see cases where the production numbers don't appear to make sense, like with small non-rich planets having higher production than larger planets with more factories, etc. Also, it doesn't seem like the production benefits of Rich and Ultra Rich show up in the production numbers?

I haven't tried Alkari, but I suspect they may have moved up in terms of ranking.

I'd say the Psilons seem to be stronger than ever. Meklars seem to have moved up. Klackons seem to have moved down. Sakkra have moved up. Humans are probably really good, but I haven't played them. Darloks, in spite of the changes to spying (which I like BTW), seem a little weaker. I've been able to win with them though. The Silicoids are maybe a little better. But they still have their Sili drawbacks which hurt. As per the original, you can jump out to a great lead and you think you're killing it, then the mid-game bog down happens and they start to falter.

I guess the big things are that there's more planets, and more distance you typically need to cover, and more incentive to rush to expand your range since you can't protect planets with scouts.

It was always true, but now more than ever, Planetology and Propulsion are extremely important in the early game. Missing Nuclear engines really hurts, which is a key reason why Psilons are so strong. Controlled Dead is typically really good too, as its not uncommon for Dead to unlock several Rich worlds. with more planets, the impact of terraforming is multiplied. But also with Psilons even just having all three starting Planetology options is really strong, in case you find a good Barren world.

For some reason, it seems like in MoO all of that was eclipsed by Klackon production, but it doesn't seem that way in this game, so as a result, the power curve swings back to Psilon for the extra techs.

Repulsons seem to be less effective because the AI is smart enough to use Heavy Beams and Missiles.

There does seem to be more need to respond to the AI's designs, as they change them up. The same solutions don't always work. For example I recently went against Meklars that were using some devastating missile ships,  that were loaded up with tons of missiles, but they also had really high missile defense. You could kite them a little, but with multiple ships shooting lots of high tech missiles, it was not always possible. And since the planetary missile bases don't run out of fuel, just dodging with the planet keeps shooting at you is a challenge. But it generally comes down to numbers, having all 6 ships so they can't target them all.

Anyway, yeah, its a good remake.

[Ray F]

I wouldn't draw too many conclusions about racial balance until you start playing against the stronger Xilmi AIs. All of them are much better than the Base AI because Xilmi has been iterating and improving upon them since the original release. The most up-to-date AI will be in the Fusion mod.

It's my understanding that the Klackons are still the stronger race in the long-term.

[rgp151]

I've been playing with Modnar. I just tried Alkari and failed miserably. Well, not really maybe, but it was also kind of a bad setup. I had the Mrrshan right on top of me, literally 2 planets away. Their home world was within 8 parsecs of mine. Then I had the Silicoids within 10 parsecs. But the Alkari did seem like they were researching awfully slowly and I fell quite far behind the Silis to the point that I wasn't able to attack them, nor to spy on them, so that's never a good sign. But, only one data point...

[rgp151]

Ok, I've been playing Klackons and yeah, they are still very strong, I just wasn't doing it right at first, lol. I've played a couple pretty poor maps with them and still mopped up using Modnar/Harder/Small (70). My first few playthroughs I was being sloppy and not managing my pop/factory ratios optimally in the early game. Once I got more detailed and did that, then yeah, that made all the difference. At first I was over producing factories, but once I stopped just letting the factories build and instead keeping them at the proper ratio I got a lot more early research done and produced more colony ships faster. But it also made me realize what I've been missing. the MAX indicator!

In RotP you only get the Reserve indicator for when you will hit max planetary capacity, but you don't get an indicator showing when you will hit max population capacity like you do in MoO. That's why I wasn't keeping the ratios right. Am I missing something?

[Ray F]

I'm not exactly sure I'm following. However, if you are worried about accidentally overspending into the reserve, there is an option in the game to have all excess spending go into empire research instead of reserve. It's on the Tech screen and it's intended to reduce the need to micro spending to avoid reserve.

What I would typically do is turn that on and then set my empire-wide reserve tax to only affect fully-developed planets (another new option). Then I could control the accumulation of reserve via the tax rate without having to micro and without affecting my developing systems

[rgp151]

In MoO when you're building factories and you will produce more factories than can be worked by the population, the factory count says MAX. MAX doesn't mean the maximum number of factories the planet can hold, it means the maximum number of factories the population can work, so if you build more they will go unused. RotP doesn't have this indicator. From what I can see, Reserve only means that you will be hitting the planetary maximum. So on your home world in the beginning, it only says Reserve when you are going to hit 200 factories.

But in MoO if you have 57 pop and will have +3 Grown, and you have 118 factories with the ability to build 10 more that turn, it will say MAX. You can keep building, and it will build the additional 10, giving you 128 factories, but if you dial it back you can end up at just 120 factories, to match your 60 population. Then at that point you can just keep factory production in line with your population so you always have exactly 2 factories per pop, or close to it.

Without having this MAX indicator, I was constantly over producing factories in the early game, not that you should really rely on the MAX indicator, because you have to plan for sending transports as well, so you may want less than MAX even, but it was at least a good reminder.

To quote the manual:

Resources allocated to industry will be used to build new factories. You can build more factories than the colonies can operate, but you will be warned with the message MAX in the construction box to the right of the ratio bar. Be careful not to build too many factories without the technology necessary to clean up the waste generated by the factories. When the game begins, colonists can operate two factories each. With advanced technology though, the level of control can be raised up to seven factories per colonist. If you have built as many factories as your planet’s maximum population can support, any excess spent on Industry will go to the Planetary Reserve (see The Planets Screen) and be displayed as RESERV.

[rgp151]

I'm confused about the production numbers. The example below shows my Ultra Rich world having among the lowest production, even lower than an Ultra Poor planet. There are three planets all with the population of 90, and all have the same production, though one is Ultra Rich, Rich and Normal. So what does "Production" show here? 

   

[rgp151]

Also, I notice that you can fully protect a planet from bombing with a single Repulsor Beam ship. Seems a little excessive.

[haphazard1]

The rich/poor (and ultra variants) traits only affect spending in some categories. They are not blanket boosts/penalties to production. Eco and research spending are not affected, so same size worlds (with similar numbers of factories) spending on research will have the same production. Getting the factories built on those worlds will take wildly different amounts of time, though.

Repulsor beams have always been very powerful, IF the enemy does not have 2-space weapons. Unescorted bombers tend to be easy targets for repulsor ships to block, but the AI usually sends some escorts. Or at least it did in MOO, although sometimes they also lacked 2-space weapons and were ineffective.