Balancing Tips (after 200 h)
Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2022 9:36 am
After 200 h into the game, I believe I can talk a little about some serious balancing issues and exploits.
1) It is probably no secret that the game is way-way-way too long for what it offers. The gameplay itself is not bad, but because you do approx. 10,000 mission assignments over 15 years, it is a problem since the missions are generic, boring, and repetitive. I mention the mission assignment nightmare because it is probably the reason why the game feels so long to so many players. How come EU4, HOI4 and Stellaris never feel that "long"? Because you do spam the player with repetitive horror so often. After all, 2023-2040 is not that long. But that mission assignment Sisyphos horror... I'm sure that other game devs are right now working on their own take on this game concept, where they will probably fix this issue in particular.
2) Once you lose 2-3 councilors around 2030, your game is over. XCOM is built in the 90s around the idea that your soldiers are expendable. It hurs to lose an experienced soldier in XCOM but that game balances this issue much better at its core. In Terra Invicta, your councilors are so precious that you better not lose a single one, or else you will be killed over and over again > 2030 by more experienced enemy councilors. And you will be unable to perform important national missions successfully.
3) Therefore, once you realize that 2) is a perfect strategy to destroy the AI, all you have to do is kill all the AI councilors. Your enemies will never recover from that because not only are their councilors defenseless, but eventually, they also are unable to do important missions thanks to all the buffs in mid to late game. The game breaks eventually around 2030. Therefore: Maybe remove assassination entirely? It is too a too powerful exploit.
4) Making the Alien Threat Level more visible, its influences and influencers, would greatly improve the game experience of not only the beginners. One would assume that such an important game indicator is central to the UI, with frequent updates, tons of tooltips, and tooltip warnings to certain actions, yet Terra Invicta does the opposite -- and most players (except for the experienced ones) are frustrated for a good reason.
5) Once you discover that all you need are 2 ships with marines to break the game, your mid-game becomes a joke. All you have to do is to take all hubs from the Protectorate and the Servants. The aliens will retaliate but because of the silly alien AI, they may destroy a few ships or hubs of yours, but since you are mid-game, it doesn't matter. You rebuild. And the alien ally space economy is broken and will never recover from that. The same applies to the space control asset mission, which can have a similar effect. Tip: Maybe remove the hub conquest and the space asset control mission entirely? Until you balance and playtest it properly.
6) The space economy suffers from a horrible snowball effect. By 2030, I have 8k research. By 2038, it is 20k research. By 2040, it is 30k! Meanwhile, the other human factions sit at 1-2K research by 2030 and maybe 2-3K until 3038. So, you may pretend that your end game will be close but with such research levels, there is no reason to keep going. You know that you cannot lose. The aliens have no chance. And, since the alien AI does not work like in other grand strategy games, where it would a high-tech nation consider its biggest threat that it has to take out early on no matter what, the snowball effect is unstoppable.
7) The alien AI retaliation moments should be scary but once you learn how to create weak hubs as target practice for the aliens, the alien threat level doesn't matter mid-game. Tip: Make the alien AI retaliate properly. They have a huge fleet mid-game by comparison. Instead of single-ship attacks on the weakest hub, let them attack your best hubs with a bigger fleet -- so that the exploit mentioned earlier does not work anymore and the player feels the wrath of the aliens (let them target your best production hubs and build up a fleet strong enough to handle that which should be not a problem mid-game anyway).
It is a great game though. Please don't get me wrong. But the balancing issues are staggering.
1) It is probably no secret that the game is way-way-way too long for what it offers. The gameplay itself is not bad, but because you do approx. 10,000 mission assignments over 15 years, it is a problem since the missions are generic, boring, and repetitive. I mention the mission assignment nightmare because it is probably the reason why the game feels so long to so many players. How come EU4, HOI4 and Stellaris never feel that "long"? Because you do spam the player with repetitive horror so often. After all, 2023-2040 is not that long. But that mission assignment Sisyphos horror... I'm sure that other game devs are right now working on their own take on this game concept, where they will probably fix this issue in particular.
2) Once you lose 2-3 councilors around 2030, your game is over. XCOM is built in the 90s around the idea that your soldiers are expendable. It hurs to lose an experienced soldier in XCOM but that game balances this issue much better at its core. In Terra Invicta, your councilors are so precious that you better not lose a single one, or else you will be killed over and over again > 2030 by more experienced enemy councilors. And you will be unable to perform important national missions successfully.
3) Therefore, once you realize that 2) is a perfect strategy to destroy the AI, all you have to do is kill all the AI councilors. Your enemies will never recover from that because not only are their councilors defenseless, but eventually, they also are unable to do important missions thanks to all the buffs in mid to late game. The game breaks eventually around 2030. Therefore: Maybe remove assassination entirely? It is too a too powerful exploit.
4) Making the Alien Threat Level more visible, its influences and influencers, would greatly improve the game experience of not only the beginners. One would assume that such an important game indicator is central to the UI, with frequent updates, tons of tooltips, and tooltip warnings to certain actions, yet Terra Invicta does the opposite -- and most players (except for the experienced ones) are frustrated for a good reason.
5) Once you discover that all you need are 2 ships with marines to break the game, your mid-game becomes a joke. All you have to do is to take all hubs from the Protectorate and the Servants. The aliens will retaliate but because of the silly alien AI, they may destroy a few ships or hubs of yours, but since you are mid-game, it doesn't matter. You rebuild. And the alien ally space economy is broken and will never recover from that. The same applies to the space control asset mission, which can have a similar effect. Tip: Maybe remove the hub conquest and the space asset control mission entirely? Until you balance and playtest it properly.
6) The space economy suffers from a horrible snowball effect. By 2030, I have 8k research. By 2038, it is 20k research. By 2040, it is 30k! Meanwhile, the other human factions sit at 1-2K research by 2030 and maybe 2-3K until 3038. So, you may pretend that your end game will be close but with such research levels, there is no reason to keep going. You know that you cannot lose. The aliens have no chance. And, since the alien AI does not work like in other grand strategy games, where it would a high-tech nation consider its biggest threat that it has to take out early on no matter what, the snowball effect is unstoppable.
7) The alien AI retaliation moments should be scary but once you learn how to create weak hubs as target practice for the aliens, the alien threat level doesn't matter mid-game. Tip: Make the alien AI retaliate properly. They have a huge fleet mid-game by comparison. Instead of single-ship attacks on the weakest hub, let them attack your best hubs with a bigger fleet -- so that the exploit mentioned earlier does not work anymore and the player feels the wrath of the aliens (let them target your best production hubs and build up a fleet strong enough to handle that which should be not a problem mid-game anyway).
It is a great game though. Please don't get me wrong. But the balancing issues are staggering.