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Stellaris >  Workshop > Tanksy's Workshop > #!TanksyTweak - Outposts And Expansion - 1.9 Legacy Version > Discussions
#!TanksyTweak - Outposts And Expansion - 1.9 Legacy Version
Description Discussions3 Comments5 Change Notes
 This topic has been pinned, so it's probably important
Tanksy  [developer] 26 Jan, 2018 @ 11:06am
Balance Discussion
Detailed overview
  • Drastically reduces the Influence cost to maintain a Frontier Outpost by 85%
    • From 1.0 Influence per month, to 0.15 per month.
    For players who like to play "Wide", the cost of maintaining an Outpost is easily negligible. In my experience, however, a player who plays Wide tends to have far less Outposts in operation compared to Colonies, which not only have a similar cost algorithm based on distance but are much more worth-while in the long term. For players who play "Tall", they would be more inclined to use Outposts to expand borders and claim resources as opposed to colonies, to not push their research or unity costs up. Compared to a Colony, the Outpost functions very similar, costs very similar, but doesn't give anywhere near the same potential or development.

    By lowering the monthly cost of maintaining outposts -- but not entirely eliminating it like other mods tend to do -- we can have Tall players able to use more Outposts, without being able to go overboard and stake claims across the entire map. This change also helps the Wide players that do use Outposts, in situations where habitable planets are low in count or not available where a useful strategic resource may be located whilst maintaining the player's ability to gather Influence quickly for the moving of pops and settling of new colonies.

  • Increased monthly Energy cost to maintain a Frontier Outpost by 33%
    • From 3.0 Energy per month, to 3.99 per month.
    To try to balance out the lower Influence maintenance cost, the Energy maintenance cost for an Outpost is raised. This should encourage players to think a little more strategically about where they place their first few Outposts -- to net more valuable resources or larger energy/mineral deposit systems -- whilst not directly upping the build cost and making them less accessible in the early game.

  • "Cede Frontier Outpost" as a war goal.
    • This idea was seen in the "Improved Border System" mod, and I've recreated that ability with this mod.
    • Ceding an Outpost has a base War-Score cost of 15.
    Players may want to fight for control over specific systems that are held under an Outpost where a Colony's border might not reach. In the vanilla game, their only option was to destroy the Outpost then build their own, which takes time and resources that may not be available. Being able to simply take ownership of the Outpost makes sense, and gives players more things to consider when going to war, and provides more savings on Influence.

  • Cost Scaling for expansion has been increased whilst the base Influence cost is reduced by 50%
    • From 100 Influence to 50, but scales harder with range.
    • "Free" Expansion Range reduced from 30, to 25.
    • Influence cost for expansion beyond the "Free" range is increased to 4 per 1 range -- up from 2 per 1.
    • "Far" Expansion cost penalty is increased to 50k from 100. This number shouldn't be reachable, as the new scaling cost increase should already make a "Far" expansion a costly project.
    My thinking with these changes is that, within an empire's borders, it should be fairly easy to spread the populace as they are still well within the empire's sphere of influence. However, outside of the borders, it should get progressively harder for an Empire to keep control over its populace. To exemplify this, the player will need to spend a sharply increasing amount of Influence to properly settle a Colony or establish an Outpost, whilst making it cheaper to do so when it's within their own borders.

  • Border's are tweaked, every-so-slightly reduced with Colonies having a slower growth over their progress.
    • From a base range of 20, to 10.
    • Colonies, when started, produce 0% of the completed border radius, down from 20%.
    • Border Growth gained from Pops is increased from 20% to 25%.
    Justifying the changes to Border growth is difficult, so bare with me.

    In the Vanilla game, Outposts and Colonies start off almost identical in terms of Border projection. (And why not, as Stellaris is designed that way with them both sharing the same base Border range value.) I think this further enforces the idea that Colonies are the way to go. To combat this, Colonies now have a much smaller Border radius initially, but the growth will bring them above and beyond an Outpost. This also means that a Colony can't be used to snag up a few systems worth of resources until much later when the Colony is actually developed.

    On the other hand, Outposts project a static Border. They have a lower Base border, meaning they can't be used to blob over several systems at once -- But they still produce more Border initially than a Colony, making them more useful for quick resource grabbing within an individual system and strategic placement.

  • Added components with the ability to design Outposts in the ship designer, with NSC Support.
    • Outposts can be upgraded with new "Exclusion Beacon" or "Power Distributor" components.
    • Military Stations can sacrifice Sensor range for a small boost to Border range.
    I've brought over the ability to custom design Frontier Outposts from NSC, as well as the techs for Tier 2, 3 and 4 Outposts. Along with this, the NSC Border Extrusion components have been altered, with the border radius being slightly reduced to be more in-line with my balancing choices. Furthermore, Military stations can sacrifice their Sensor component for border extrusion. This allows you to gently nudge out your existing border range on systems that don't have an Outpost, and also allows you to expand your borders internally without sacrificing Influence on outposts that are purely there to nab those systems that you surround, but not own. To balance this, the energy cost of the border component on a military station is rivalling that of an Outpost.

    On top of border extrusion components, I have added a component that can reduce the Maintenance costs of running a Frontier Outpost. This component is unlocked alongside the Tier 3 Outposts, and sacrifice additional border radius for 75% less Energy maintenance. Tier 4 also brings over the Aura components from Military stations to try and keep a Frontier Outpost from becoming obsolete in the late-game. NSC's components aren't supported (Only the different Tiers of Outpost) here, but I may make a patch for that in the future (Although I personally want to move off from NSC.).
Last edited by Tanksy; 27 Jan, 2018 @ 11:18am