Difficulty setting to scale science costs/alter mid-game tedium
Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 5:57 am
Around blue science I lose a good deal of interest in my games. Don't get me wrong, I spent at least 400 hours doing vanilla games, but when you start doing blue science, resource requirements and logistics explode for a lot of research. Some are cheap, which isn't bad (50-100), but others skyrocket (200-500 for blue, up to 1500 when you hit purple). This causes a massive gap in how much is needed to make progress, versus all the time spent making the numbers bigger and twiddling your fingers while enemies keep evolving and nesting closer and closer and nothing else is going on. On top of it, the time for blue science is double that of green (six seconds vs twelve), and purple/yellow take seven seconds. If you have the already sluggish red chip and engine machines to back it up.
I'm suggesting a difficulty setting to scale science costs, and perhaps a flat normalization of all science but red to 6 seconds production. A 20-25% drop in science costs over 200 or even 300 would make the game flow a lot more smoothly. Certain things like nuclear reactors would be accessible more early instead of needing to spend hours waiting for them to come AND dealing with their costs once they're available. A balance adjustment in that respect could be the neighbor bonus is a separate research (so you could use a little bit of nuclear early, but full potential is locked and it's clearer how nuclear reactors work for newbies).
The reward for a rocket and the infinite costs could be adjusted, so you don't run into a random gap of 600-800 cost science then 1000-1500. Or left as-is, cause by that time, you've finished the content and are screwing around.
The difficulty setting could also tweak evolution, since you'd be advancing faster. The time-based component of evolution could go a little faster, and maybe pollution too, since fewer buildings are needed to accomplish the same research. Going from "beginner" difficulty to "normal" (what we have now) would be focusing the game more on scaling management, making space, making the numbers bigger, and feeding that hungry hungry lab. Now where it's all pretty lumped together you run into jarring transitions (bullets being craptastic, jumps in costs and time needed, etc).
I'm suggesting a difficulty setting to scale science costs, and perhaps a flat normalization of all science but red to 6 seconds production. A 20-25% drop in science costs over 200 or even 300 would make the game flow a lot more smoothly. Certain things like nuclear reactors would be accessible more early instead of needing to spend hours waiting for them to come AND dealing with their costs once they're available. A balance adjustment in that respect could be the neighbor bonus is a separate research (so you could use a little bit of nuclear early, but full potential is locked and it's clearer how nuclear reactors work for newbies).
The reward for a rocket and the infinite costs could be adjusted, so you don't run into a random gap of 600-800 cost science then 1000-1500. Or left as-is, cause by that time, you've finished the content and are screwing around.
The difficulty setting could also tweak evolution, since you'd be advancing faster. The time-based component of evolution could go a little faster, and maybe pollution too, since fewer buildings are needed to accomplish the same research. Going from "beginner" difficulty to "normal" (what we have now) would be focusing the game more on scaling management, making space, making the numbers bigger, and feeding that hungry hungry lab. Now where it's all pretty lumped together you run into jarring transitions (bullets being craptastic, jumps in costs and time needed, etc).