[TM] What's in a Cube?
I want my 15 rapid-fire quantum torpedo launchers Uber-Defiant now! - Get help from modders. Share your work. Discuss modifications.
posted on March 30th, 2020, 8:44 pm
Tryptic's Mod V3.8 is right around the corner, having fixed the crashes with Norexans and Tavaras among many other small changes, and I'm looking at the future. Version 3.9 is going to feature a refactored Borg economy (again) which will lead into version 4.0 which will redo the ship costs for every race. I've written a bit about it elsewhere, but the picture I'd coming into better focus now.
The lowest tech ships will cost 2x as much Di as they do Tri, adjusted for mining speed. A medium tech ship will cost 1.5x, while the largest battleships of each race will cost the same amount of Di and Tri (before adjustment this means the tri cost will be 2/3 the di cost). The reason that even "Tri heavy" ships have equal cost is because you need extra tri for things like tech research and upgrades: a person building these ships may still want extra tri mining.
The biggest challenge to this new paradigm is our existing map pool, where Di moons are often in greater supply. These maps become slanted more towards spamming early game ships, while a battleship map would require extra Tri. I'm planning to go back and tweak the moon placement on several maps to help with this issue.
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Now, onto the main point of this post, which is the Borg! Since I'm looking at them first, there are a lot of questions I had to answer.
What should make one Borg ship more expensive than another with different modules? Previously, a ship with higher Dystem value had higher Tri cost while Off/Def went into Di cost, but I'm moving away from this. Now ships with a higher tech application are costing more Tri, such as EM scube and adaptors, and Assimilators with the Nanite Factory module. Dilithium costs are mainly about Offense, but I've been increasing the amount that Defense counts more and more.
In the case of small ships like the Scube, they remain heavy on Di. The difference is, in 3.2.7 only the Intercept module was extremely Di heavy but in this new system the other modules will also be heavy on Di. The idea is that you can build these ships to raid while still saving up Tri for your tech advancement.
Mid-tier ships like the Sphere are still Di-heavy but not by much, around 1.2x to 1.3x. This is because even if you spam these ships you will eventually have to build Incubation Chambers, which require extra Tri. Having 3 Di moons and 2 Tri moons will roughly allow you to keep building ships at this tier but you will start to have issues with supply and advancing your tech.
Diamonds require slightly more Tri than Di. They will be great to add into a group of spheres, but you will have difficulty building pure Diamonds without an extra Tri moon (or a recycling center wink wink). However it could be a good idea to run pure diamonds while also building intercept scout cubes to go raid, as their costs will balance each other somewhat.
The cube is something I've talked about before, but it was several years ago now. The major change in Tryptic's Mod is that tactical cubes cost between 2 and 3 times more than regular cubes. This is because of the massive difference in performance between a cube with 7000 hitpoints and one with 3000 hitpoints. Even if their Offense is the same, the regular cube can be focused down in a fleet engagement while the Tac cube is way more likely to get away. In the next version the Di/Tri cost ratio of every cube will be exactly 1:1, although their total cost will vary significantly.
One final thing I have added to this round of Borg balancing is that ships cost a little bit more when they carry multiple modules of the same type. This affects the Sphere the most: we have triple beam spheres, triple regen spheres, and triple prime spheres. Nobody sets out to build a BHRP sphere unless they don't have enough money and desperately need to start it building. So starting in V3.9, these mongrel ships will be a fair bit cheaper than the more focused variants. I'm curious if we will see people building discount spheres in order to get more of them on the field.
The lowest tech ships will cost 2x as much Di as they do Tri, adjusted for mining speed. A medium tech ship will cost 1.5x, while the largest battleships of each race will cost the same amount of Di and Tri (before adjustment this means the tri cost will be 2/3 the di cost). The reason that even "Tri heavy" ships have equal cost is because you need extra tri for things like tech research and upgrades: a person building these ships may still want extra tri mining.
The biggest challenge to this new paradigm is our existing map pool, where Di moons are often in greater supply. These maps become slanted more towards spamming early game ships, while a battleship map would require extra Tri. I'm planning to go back and tweak the moon placement on several maps to help with this issue.
=====
Now, onto the main point of this post, which is the Borg! Since I'm looking at them first, there are a lot of questions I had to answer.
What should make one Borg ship more expensive than another with different modules? Previously, a ship with higher Dystem value had higher Tri cost while Off/Def went into Di cost, but I'm moving away from this. Now ships with a higher tech application are costing more Tri, such as EM scube and adaptors, and Assimilators with the Nanite Factory module. Dilithium costs are mainly about Offense, but I've been increasing the amount that Defense counts more and more.
In the case of small ships like the Scube, they remain heavy on Di. The difference is, in 3.2.7 only the Intercept module was extremely Di heavy but in this new system the other modules will also be heavy on Di. The idea is that you can build these ships to raid while still saving up Tri for your tech advancement.
Mid-tier ships like the Sphere are still Di-heavy but not by much, around 1.2x to 1.3x. This is because even if you spam these ships you will eventually have to build Incubation Chambers, which require extra Tri. Having 3 Di moons and 2 Tri moons will roughly allow you to keep building ships at this tier but you will start to have issues with supply and advancing your tech.
Diamonds require slightly more Tri than Di. They will be great to add into a group of spheres, but you will have difficulty building pure Diamonds without an extra Tri moon (or a recycling center wink wink). However it could be a good idea to run pure diamonds while also building intercept scout cubes to go raid, as their costs will balance each other somewhat.
The cube is something I've talked about before, but it was several years ago now. The major change in Tryptic's Mod is that tactical cubes cost between 2 and 3 times more than regular cubes. This is because of the massive difference in performance between a cube with 7000 hitpoints and one with 3000 hitpoints. Even if their Offense is the same, the regular cube can be focused down in a fleet engagement while the Tac cube is way more likely to get away. In the next version the Di/Tri cost ratio of every cube will be exactly 1:1, although their total cost will vary significantly.
One final thing I have added to this round of Borg balancing is that ships cost a little bit more when they carry multiple modules of the same type. This affects the Sphere the most: we have triple beam spheres, triple regen spheres, and triple prime spheres. Nobody sets out to build a BHRP sphere unless they don't have enough money and desperately need to start it building. So starting in V3.9, these mongrel ships will be a fair bit cheaper than the more focused variants. I'm curious if we will see people building discount spheres in order to get more of them on the field.
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