Should Standard/Custom Race points be normalized?

Currently, the standard races offer bonuses that aren’t possible with customs. While this does give incentive to use Standards, it also leads to an imbalance.

For example, a Partaxian has:

  • +70% magic bonus (customs cap at +50%)
  • every spell available + Octarine Hurricane (OH not available to other races)
  • total bonuses that use up more points than is available to custom

Given the above, there’s little reason to ever play a custom spell-focused race over a Pax. It is literally overpowered compared to other options.

An alternative to this is that Standard races are pre-defined setups that act more as a custom race guide/starting point than as a flat out stronger choice. We still could/should allow for something like +70% magic bonus, but only if it costs the appropriate amount of points.

This would nerf Standard Races pretty hard, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It could result in more diversity in the strategies that we see, and renewed energy in experimenting with Custom Races.

What do you guys think?

1 Like

may be idea to give patron some advandage by example for each dollar they fund 1 point more to make custum race so 5 dollar fund gives you 125 instead of 120 point to build a race

1 Like

I think it is a good idea to change it around, what I noticed is that with the 1 player family style in SN the custom races just don’t cut it. It is impossible to get a balanced race for attacking and income. While this has always been the case and never much of a problem in a family style game I think giving more race points to custom races would make the SN style play much more entertaining and a great way for new players to learn the game before moving to a more specialized role in a family style game.

I think in SN you should be able to use a race that is atleast able to get 30% attacking, income and research while also getting a bit of speed bonus and some usefull ops and droids. From there you still could have people choosing to go either slightly heavier on income or attacking. If you’d like I could use the race creator to suggest an amount of race points suitable for SN stye play.

I think the difficult part would be to keep the standards relevant in both a family and single player setup and the customs not too overpowered in a family and single player setup.

Looking at it like this I would almost suggest seperating the single player and family style game since there are so many optimaztions possible that would make the different playing styles better but the things to make SN better may harm MW playing style and also the other way around.

I hope this rambling helps you in any way, probably not ;).

Ps. pay2win = insta delete.

1 Like

I fundamentally disagree with getting actual game-advantage for supporting the game. I wouldn’t go as far as otteN, but I’m feeling pretty close to this statement too indeed:

On topic of the races though:
I think if you nerve down the standard races, I think you basically render them useless. I like the idea of having a special advantage in the standard races.
With the huge number of custom races being used, I don’t see the need to change this, especially as I find it quite hard to think of a way to actually improve from the current situation. I think it’s actually quite well balanced.

1 Like

most online games you get advandage if you donate geus more people gone donate than more efford for pie so he can spend more time in the game

1 Like

You say normalized; there are 2 points to this.

Typically in a game where there are options like this, the standard classes would technically be stronger but you miss out on the opportunity to customize. Your trade-off is not getting exactly what you want for something that is specialized.

In IC the standard classes are specialized but I would wager they are not balanced. How often do you see an attacker using a standard class? Camaar takes an important hit to science, Wardancers are actually probably the best attacking race technically. Most races give up something to specialize somewhere - but Partaxian don’t (and honestly Wardancers don’t really either).

I think either the standard classes need to be normalized OR balanced!

1 Like

The only reason to adjust standard races is to correct for inbalace.

Considering all standard races are used in mw / family universes, i don’t think there is an imbalace there.

The discrepancy in race points is mainly due to having extremes in the standard races. I don’t mind this.

In solo galaxies like sn on the other hand its pretty much wardancer and quantum all over because you need to make gc. Just bring back quazian for sn.

Pay to win. Giving patreon 1 or 2 ops extra in custom races wouldnt hurt. A family would have those ops anyway. More econ or something would hurt the game.

Having OH available to custums would be nice though. No need to have that pax only.

Allowing more extreme values on custum could make them more powefull.

1 Like

bring back Quezian, their entire race was designed with SN in mind. and you just said no one standard can do it, there is a reason.

adding my own thing to this because I get flagged for like everything that I post apparently if it isn’t some long ass message.

Revalons were downgraded from 80% to 60% income bonus and you still see them play a big role now, so maybe weakening other races wouldn’t be so bad.

1 Like

@I_like_pie

  1. This was pretty well fleshed out in the preliminary post to the DreamWeavers creation. I.e. the math on the total points per race (and the tricky adding of pop bonus to artificially raise Camar to be higher than custom totals for you numbers guys).

  2. +10 custom race points might be the most simple solution towards balancing the standard vs custom. Just a shred of an upgrade might make all the difference.

@MaceWindex
Queezys have been lurking around the back end of the game for a decade before SN was even a gala. :mortar_board::rainbow:

The DW discussion was more in the math/details. I’m more wondering on a high level if there should be a difference at all between what Standards offer vs potential Customs.

To frame it as a question: should Standard races as a whole be something that can be replicable via Custom point distributions? If so, why? If not, why not?

@I_like_pie
Oh my!
That is a sezzy little dancer of a question.
Gimmeh a bit.

@I_like_pie

Short answer = No.
The game is so balanced as is with simply the standard races. If you allow the top end of the standard races stat caps to be reachable You really only change one thing.

Camar / Wardancer would be a dead.
You would have -Inc attacker races with:

From base current custom RP / 300

200% Speed (-100 RP)
80% Attack (-110 RP)
Droids (-20RP)
230 RP total Spent out of 300.

You would have those silly attacker stats, Droids, and STILL have 70 RP remaining.

Hmmm, I often thought about it but honestly, i think the choice of having standard race is limited, but I do not think there need to be changed in those races. I think we need to diversified the races more, like adding more standard races, plus adding more new ops and spells. We havent had anything new for a race for a while, like octarine hurricane or warcry. We need to be more creative on race that specialized in something.

Again, we have to think about some of our players who prefered IC to be more original as much as possible and before Pie bought the game, the game was not being improved and more players were leaving.

Maybe we should have a galaxy that is original, then new galaxies opened up with more new stuffs coming in.

We have already have designed races for:

  1. RC attacker (RC only, keep using morale until below 0)
  2. Resourcer Attacker (can attack but produce resources)
  3. Pop Banker (High Pop growth and makes a lot more cash than normal CF Banker)
  4. CF Banker (Using Cash Factory rather than popping)
  5. Magician (Partaxian, or 50% magic custom race)

That’s pretty much basic, every round it’s the same all over again and again. We need new race? No?

What about some ideas for new race like:


New Race: Nuker

Add more ops such as

  • Destroy CFs
  • Destroy MFs
  • Destroy RSs
  • etc…

So you can destroy specific building rather than random, but add penalty to the race to keep balanced and only add % chance of hit and miss AND destroy randomly between 1% to 5%, however, those ops cannot be made into custom because its different

This is one example that I can think of…


Another idea??? Maybe add new race trait like RESOURCE which u can add more points to custom, to make things interesting?

Like if heavy Resource Producer can pick 50% resource bonus, but attacker lacked resource bonus??? Keep strategy more interesting???

For standard races, they need to be a little more overpowered but i feel that the choices we have is way too few as we sometimes makes custom races that may benefit us or not…Maybe we can throw away custom and add “most commonly used” custom race to become standard race while spicing it up with few ops and spells?

You can think of many ideas for new race, like my version of having Nuker race, which I think it would be cool to play.

Race traits (not included in custom race):

  • Morale Booster (transfer from your morale to another player’s morale)
  • Nuking (specific building bombing, i mentioned above)
  • Shield (create shield that have “HP” and that can last 8 hours of protection from attacks, allowing players to sleep (probably not favorable but I’ve seen many games used protection, but only once every 3 days or something)
  • Nanotechnology (mini robots that slow down enemy’s fleet in half, but low chance to succeed? or result in massive morale loss?)
  • Sabotage Teleport Gate

Another idea:

  • Teleport Gate (may solve small family’s issues in warring other familes thats so far away after making naps with big families and cannot reach, can send teleport gate to nearby so can send fleets, however, it has HP depend on networth size that enemy can take it down, which require OP. However, you can add restrictions to it if you feel that it can be abused or make game unbalanced or something.

Now I can’t think of anything else. It would be fun brainstorming more ideas for the race changes. :smiley:

@Vegnarok
There is a shitload of good stuff in that post Veg! :smile: ^^
Lots of raw material.

I am not going to get involved with all of this (and before someone gets their no-no touch-touch hurt).

I can broadly paint a few things for ya!

  1. Custom races should not go away. If you can’t be competitive with them, don’t play them. I have been in (as either a leader or the lead attacker in 7 winning MW rounds). I am nearly always custom. This during all three of the major game eras. They totally have a place in the game.

  2. There is at least one (owner approved) new standard race ready to go.

  3. There are a lot of possibilities here. Also a lot of really good ideas in this thread.

@I_like_pie

I mean at some point I can just stop suggesting this stuff.
But daaaamn - the obvious just gives my peen0r stiffeh.

  1. Jack customs +10 RPs.
    This should have been done when CF’s went from 10 to 6 a frillion (i counted) years ago.

ors

  1. Release DW’s

ors

  1. Revamp the whole system.

Make up your mind ya sweet 'n slippery desert.

If you go with option #3 - I will put a HC round’s worth my time into it fo yas.

:love_letter: