Does the new patch actually nerf robotic? and buff expansive?

Thoughts on ease of getting lv 2 upgrade for the different races.

from Stardock Forums

In my opinion yes. Along with scientific, and scav.  Expansive got 'nerfed' too... but relatively buffed compared to everything else.

 

Here is my thinking.

 

So here are the important changes.

Steel mills cost more power. Hurts robotic and scientific most, expansive a tad, as they don't need as much steel. scav unaffected. Power barons ecstatic.

Robotic gets bonuses on its secondary’s from its primaries... which makes robotics’ claim efficiency strictly worse than scientific. I mean. it was as bad as scientific before, but understand: robotic can now have two (one block) iron mines and three steel mills producing 4.5 steel per second! but... scientific could just have 5 steel mills.  It is also very hard to use, harder than scientific. I guess it is still a buff?

Robotics’ life support cost was doubled, making their debt generation from life support higher than the other races. (Ignoring variable fuel and power costs)

math (based on starting prices:

 0.1*80 = 8 debt per second. (16 at lv 2)

Everyone else:

0.1*10+0.2+20+0.05+20 = 7 debt per second.  (14 at lv 2)

 

(a side note on fuel vs power: power production is more claim efficient, however, power is much more expensive to build... and tends to rise very fast in the early game.. for that inital early game sprint, this makes fuel better than power, though mid-late game power is much better.)

 

Whatever. These above are minor. Here is the BIG change, and the nerf that is Huge to the game, and really kinda makes expansive the only race to play in multiplayer right now.  On manager difficulty and above, players no longer start with life support!

 

What does this mean? Well. Before.  At the start, everyone had 20 resources in the things they need.

If tally it up, 20 water at 10, 20 food at 20... And so on and so forth. You find that the races started with this much "extra cash" in resources:

Expansive: 4600 +2000 cash = 6600

Scientific: 4600 +2000 cash = 6600

Robotic: 4000 +2000 cash = 6000

Scavenger: 3800 +2000 cash = 5800  (poor scavs. sad face)

TO upgrade to lv 2, they required, at the starting prices:

Expansive: 

4000 (40 steel, 80 AL, 20 glass)

Robotic

4800 (80 steel, 80 AL)

Scav

4800 (120 carbon, 80 AL, 20 glass)

Scientific

5600 (80 steel, 80 AL, 20 glass)

 

Now, everyone starts with:

Expansive

3200 +2000 = 5200

scientific

3200 + 2000 = 5200

Robotic

2400 + 2000 = 4400

Scav

2400 + 2000 = 4400

As you can see, compared to their upgrade cost, where before everyone has "enough" to upgrade (if they didnt use resources on, i don’t know, buildings), now:

Initial funds - upgrade cost:

Expansive: 1200 (perfectly twice as much as you need for three metal mines. how nice.)

Scientific: -400  (bummer, but they are ultra claim efficient.)

Scav: -400  (more bummer, but carbon is claim efficient at least?)

Robotic: -400  (even more bummer, adjacency bonus on 3 claims? don't make me laugh.)

 

That is huge. that is monstrous. 

We can even look at it another way:

Previous starting resource monies vs now starting resource monies:

Expansive 3200/4600 = 69.57%

Scientific  3200/4600 = 69.57%

Robotic    2400/4000 = 60.00%

Scavenger 2400/4800 = 50.00%

If we normalize these... to "relative nerf" we find that robotic and scav's starting resource money has been nerfed by:

robotic

60/69.57  = 86% as good as expansive as before.  (and they were already worse)

scavenger

50/69.57 = 72% as good as expansive as before. (they were close to being on par before, but this hurts hard.)

 

This is exasperated by the whole "found later get claims at rank 3 or rank 2" thing: robotic, scav, and scientific will be stuck on 3 claims no matter what.  And that upgrading later usually means higher prices for that upgrade, and thus you fall even further behind.

 

In other words, as it stand right now, Expansive Is out the gate MUCH faster than everyone else right now, AND only gets further ahead even faster.

 

So. I am going to say it. Expansive is OP in the current patch. And robotic is at least just as bad as before.

 

Here is some empirical proof:

Of the games played by streamers on the date of 3/19/2015. I watched 25 games. Of the player who won each of those games their colony type was:

19 games won by expansive.

5 something not expansive. (three scav, two scientific)

1 game with no expansive players. (scientific won)

0 games with only expansive players.

0 games ended inconclusively.

 

Of those games, expansive has a 79% win rate.

 

I hope you didnt glaze over on that math. hopefully I math-ed it all up correctly. Very curious on your thoughts on the matter.

 

83,295 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Thought maybe I should Tl:DR this:

 

previous patch:

everyone basicly started at lv 2 with 6 claims +1 if expansive, +1 if founding in second half

 

This patch:

everyone starts at lv 1, with 3 claims, except expansive, who start at lv 2 with 7 claims. 

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Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Unfortunately, I feared this was going to be the case when I read the patch notes. Thanks for taking the time to write it out. The numbers look right.

The claim difference between level 1 and level 2 is too high. I never really minded being short a claim on VP at the start since you still hit level 2 with ease. Hated CEO for the same reason since you get 1 claim (2 with the founding late bonus) and only needed to make a little money to get going.

I haven't played the new patch yet, but I fear the claims curve is going to be awful, and the hurdle to get past level 1 is going to suck even more, except with expansive.

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

By the way, I don't think it should be possible to instantly upgrade to colony size 2 ever, even with a good founding location. I say this because the jump to level 2 doubles your claims. How can that ever be a wrong decision? The removal of the life support is a step in that direction.

 

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I (Cubit32) agree with what Pbhead has said.

I would like to add my own thoughts / analysis.

Expansive is the best faction judging by my stats, I've won 73.8% of the games when I pick expansive (vs 62.6% overall). Scientific is my worst, even though some people think they are OP I cannot figure out a way to gain a dominating lead with them in almost any game partly just because it takes so long to upgrade and because glass production has a few minutes delay if it is far away. [building travel + construction + oxygen shipping + glass building up + glass shipping + forgetting to autosuply because it cant be turned on before it is built] means it takes a day or two before scientific gets anything back.

In my opinion robotic can stand to have the adjacency bonuses be a 2 way street between primary and secondary industries. Scientific has a better trait because they can have 3/s steel for 3 claims whereas robotic needs 4 claims to do the same. In practice the adjacency bonus adds up to maybe 10-25% more production for the same number of claims (compared to scavenger/expansive) and less vs scientific. With the increase to electronics use, they now accumulate debt at a higher rate as other companies and to me that makes it feel like they are just a company without any major bonuses like scavenger, scientific or expansive.

Robotic has an advantage in chemicals production, but it is a double edged buff because using it requires consolidation of water, reactors, chemicals and glass in a single spot and that begs for sabotage. Even with the new buff I haven't seen any competitive players (me, pbhead, zultar, zap, forevergm, etc) play robotic and when they do, still have no success. I don't like to pick robotic because robotic is extremely vulnerable to black market sabotage especially with their adjacency trait. The small HQ also makes it hard to mitigate sabotage by spreading out production, because there isn't a lot of space to keep separate areas separate. unlike with the scientific or expansive HQs. As robotic you have to ignore your adjacency trait or take a large risk by making a big honeycomb that is easy to sabotage and hard to goonsquad, especially against a scavenger or 2+ players who are targeting you.

I'd like to suggest this robotic buff:
-Every time a tile unfreezes, comes out of mutiny, or is repaired it becomes defended for 1 minute (like the borg).

I would also like to say again that i think the market should be made more stable for games with a large number of players. As it stands the price of power/food explodes before anything else and it just makes 8p games nuts. The prices just move too fast in 8p games, a human being can't be expected to keep track of it all. 8 players pulling on the same market as in a 2p or 4p game is insane. It completely changes the game dynamic between 2p, 4p and 8p games. Players go into insane debt from insane prices just because the starting resources are poor some times and so HQ consumption leads to life support and power causing massive debts for almost everyone. (Except for the expansive player like in a certain dev game that was played today.)

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting indczn1, reply 3

I don't think it should be possible to instantly upgrade to colony size 2 ever, even with a good founding location. I say this because the jump to level 2 doubles your claims. How can that ever be a wrong decision?

Seconded, whole-heartedly. Cash Is Life. Claims Are Victory.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

As a scientific main, who was claiming for a while that scientific is better, I suspect that expansive is without a doubt better now because of the ability to upgrade so fast. Scientific was good because you can hit the crucial researches so fast, and power was a very valuable commodity early game. Being behind didnt matter, because scientific went for midgame profit taking from extremely efficient claim usage, not rushing to level 5. Dual solar + superconductor was a huge cash cow and scientific could easily get it done first. Now with the changes, power isn't as valuable and it takes alot longer to upgrade to level 2. Expansive was probably better before, but now with the changes is most certainly better.

As for robotic, I don't play robotic like anyone else that I've seen play. I go for alum/dry ice condensers and forgo steel before level 3 completely. It's map dependent, but I felt like it was competitive with a good expansive before the patch. Again, I haven't played after the patch, but the so I cant determine the effect (it really depends on the building adjacency interaction and I doubt it will work). The power change to steel won't affect this, but the double upkeep is going to suck, and the lack of starting goods will too since robotic was able to upgrade off an alum spawn instantly. Outside of that, the traditional robotic gameplay will get wrecked by the changes since every one of them hurts alot more than the adjacency bonus will help. Steel is completely hit or miss on profitability and is a vary narrow range of production. Linear is bad. If its profitable, its great, if its not it sucks. Then theres electronics production which is so slow. Maybe you can catch an adjacency bonus off aluminum??? I don't know, I'll have to play.

I'd like to see life support as a requirement to upgrade. Buildings need air, more humans need food/water. Robots need more electronics to propagate. Makes upgrading require more cash, decreases the upgrading advantage for expansive since steel as a whole will make up a lesser portion of the upgrading. increases the value of life support. Might need to add another claim or 2 to the early game, but I think that might be a good thing.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting indczn1, reply 3

By the way, I don't think it should be possible to instantly upgrade to colony size 2 ever, even with a good founding location. I say this because the jump to level 2 doubles your claims. How can that ever be a wrong decision? The removal of the life support is a step in that direction.

 

The only way to do that would be to remove the bonus for founding on resources. or turn it back into a trickle over time. 

But that said, you are probably right, OR, we just have to admit that 6 claims (7 for expansive) is the minimum number of claims that is remotely reasonable, and everyone needs to start there at lv 1, and push lv 2 to lv 3's cost. (It is impossible to build a colony which provides its life support for only three claims as any race.)

 

 

Soren had a thought about how to solve the problem, and I think we will see in next patch that Expansive will have lost their 1/2 steel perk on upgrading (but still have it on buildings)

My response to this was:

I have been thinking about your thought on how to nerf expansive. And while I obviously have not played "that version" yet, this is what my gut tells me: 1. It will mostly restore balance to the force, (everyone will start out at about $-400 to upgrade) but. 2: expansive will probably end up seeming like a worse scientific.

in order to remain competitive, their only starting move would be: found on LOTS of iron, plop down 2 steel mills, and a AL mine. turn their starting iron into steel, wait a bit, upgrade, put down iron mines, put down an AL mine, and a third steel mill.

Which seems again, strictly worse than scientific, which has exactly the same opening move of 2 steel mills and an AL mine. And then when they upgrade they have 3 claims for a third steel mill, and 2 claims for whatever.

But again that is just my gut.

Perhaps they can still use the cheap geos and cheap offworlds to their advantage, but I would rather have scientific's defended geos and offworlds, than a nerfed expansive's cheap ones.

 

All that said... it would be way better than what we have now.  Not sure if i would perfer the old (last patch's) balance, or Soren's new one. hard to tell with out giving it a try.