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Stellaris >  Workshop > Audie's Workshop > [On Hold Indefinitely] !Ultimate Traits Beta Test (Updated March 20) > Discussions
[On Hold Indefinitely] !Ultimate Traits Beta Test (Updated March 20)
Description Discussions1 Comments44 Change Notes
AlienFromBeyond 13 Mar, 2018 @ 3:04pm
Thoughts on trait balance
I'm posting a discussion here because it wouldn't fit in the comments section due to size:
  1. The separators between categories (the empty 99 cost traits like between the various science output traits) should be made exclusive with the traits they're separators for. Right now if you take say Physics + trait you end up with 4 empty 99 cost separator traits in a row. This looks kind of ugly and means more scrolling for a mod that already requires a lot of scrolling.
  2. Not a fan of the Banes having lesser penalties than their Boon counterparts, but maybe I'm just too used to how vanilla does this.
  3. Tradition Cost trait reduces the tradition penalty from colonies by 10% for 4 points, but the Unity trait does that as well for the some cost and gives +25% unity output on top of that! Of course it locks out the other resource traits, and there is the option of combining the two, but I think the the trait whose only function is affecting the tradition penalty should at least be 15% so it stands out on its own for that function.
  4. Fortification trait will I believe makes planets immune to bombardment if they get planetary shield generators. A player can easily abuse this to never lose territory to AI wars, or get extremely frustrated if the AI lucks into the combo as you'd need to deploy an insanely huge army (since you can't bombard armies or fortresses down) or wait decades more to unlock a colossus (assuming they even have Apocalypse DLC!).
  5. Weapon Tracking trait seems undervalued to me at 2 points, +10 to hit early game vs other corvettes can be a huge effective DPS increase, and can help larger ships like Cruisers and Battleships be much more effective effective against those smaller ships in the later game.
  6. There is an even more serious cost effective trait issue than the Tradition Cost one. The Damage trait gives +10% weapon damage for 4 points, but the Balanced trait has +10% weapon damage and +5% fire rate for 3 points.
  7. As a reminder, building upkeep reduction does work on Resource Replicators, which is the only way to improve their energy to minerals ratio as increased mineral output does not affect them. Genemodding traits like Building Cost or Energy may become far more effective than getting actual mineral traits because of this interaction in the late game. I leave that up to you whether or not that is acceptable.
  8. Herbivorous vs Food. Same cost, Food has 5% less growth speed but 15% more food! Because of how growth is calculated plus all the other sources of growth speed available the food bonus is far stronger for growing quickly.
  9. The Balanced trait in the Research section seems much better than the focused options. only +15% speed instead of 35%, but it applies to all 3 categories and gives a huge 3 additional research alternatives. That doubles what you have at the start of the game! Why would I bother getting any more alternatives from other sources like techs or civics at that point?
  10. Rivals are now more limited in who qualifies for rivalry now, namely that it requires adjacency to an empire. Belligerent might want to focus on giving more Rivalry Influence Gain and less Maximum Rivalries. Maybe a claim influence cost reduction as well? 90% reduction on that is already possible though, so that might be excessive.
  11. It's super cool that you have traits that reduce the tradition cost penalty from systems as opposed to colonies, I wasn't sure if this was possible with 2.0 so I was happy to see it.
  12. Starbase Cost trait seems to reduce outpost influence cost creation, but not mineral costs (I believe that stat affects the mineral cost of upgrading starbases though). Just an odd interaction you should know about.
  13. Cosmic Hunters ultimate trait seems vastly overcosted. Space monsters are annoying but can be killed easily enough by regular fleets, I don't think it's worthy of the 18 cost compared to Colonials or Hyperintelligent.
  14. I don't understand Immortal Leaders. It maxes out the leader level cap for you, but with -200% xp gain won't the leaders just never gain (or even potentially lose) xp and thus levels?
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
Audie  [developer] 14 Mar, 2018 @ 6:06pm 
1. This is an excellent idea. I'll implement this in the next update.

2. My reasoning for this is is that a negative trait that has an equal value to a positive trait has more of an impact, even though it's the same amount. You're going to feel that -10% mineral penalty more than a +10% mineral bonus, in my opinion. It makes it easier to justify making the decision to pick a negative trait.

3. Balancing the tradition modifiers and costs is on my to-do list. Most of the traits are going to be tweaked in some way, and those are definitely ones that are going to get tweaked.

4. I'll have to check that one out. I wasn't happy with that one, but it was the only similar modifier I could find since they changed the way planetary fortification worked in 2.0.

5. I wasn't aware it made that large of a difference. Will do some testing on that.

6. See: #3. Most of those are going to get nerfed hard.

7. Will look into that.

8. Numero tres. Those bonuses are too high and are going to get nerfed.

--- As a side note, I'm probably going to be adding slight negative modifiers to some of the Empire Focus Traits. I think only one of them has any negative values right now. For example, Food will be nerfed to maybe have something like +15% Food, +5% growth speed, and +5% consumer goods cost (more food abundance meaning more food waste, or something like that...). I was also trying to keep Empire Focus traits at exactly 4 per category, but I'm probably going to throw out that idea so I can prune / merge some of the traits, and possible add a few more to some categories.

9. True! I'll be nerfing that one.

10. Good suggestions. I also noticed that change to rivalry the other day when I was playing. Worth mentioning that I've been working on this mod off and on for about a year now, and some of these values haven't been adjusted to take into account the changes made in 2.0.

11. Yep, I was glad to see there was a modifier for that. Though I also wish they had a modifier to adjust the tradition cost per tradition selected.

12. Looks like that was just a type I made in the localization file. I meant for it to say "Starbase Influence Cost"

13. I changed that trait a few times because I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it so it isn't really where I want it at the moment. I'll be making a change so that it affects all of the spaceborn creatures and Leviathans, not just organic ones. I may also have it work against the Prethoryn and Unbidden.

14. I'll have to check that out. The intention was to make them level more slowly. I was probably thinking that the modifier worked additively rather than multiplicatively for some reason. I might just get rid of the penalty. I'm not sure yet.
#1
Audie  [developer] 14 Mar, 2018 @ 6:06pm 
Also, thanks for all of that feedback. It will help out quite a bit!
#2
AlienFromBeyond 14 Mar, 2018 @ 6:43pm 
Sure thing. I don't know whether I will use this in the long term (combined with the civics and tradition mods I use it might be excessive in the total bonuses available) but it's too damn interesting not to give feedback.
#3
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
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