Update 2/8/2015

Hail Wanderers!

This week mostly focused on refining the balance changes to the game and various other design decisions. The balance update was what I was most focused on though, and it will be the subject of tonight's post.

Right now the economy details for each tower look like this:

Tower Name	Cost to build	Cost to produce	Chromium Produced
Command Center	Null	Null	4Cr
Uranium Tower	3Cr	Null	Null
Chromium Tower	3Cr	Null	1Cr
Shell Tower	5Cr 2Ur	4Ur	Null
Nuke Silo	7Cr 3Ur	3Cr 2Ur	Null

Uranium Produced	Overcharge Produced	Cost to overcharge
3Ur	Null	Null
1Ur	1Ur	2Ur
Null	1Cr	2Ur
Null	Null	Null
Null	Null	Null

Cost to upgrade	Upgraded Cr	Upgraded Ur
Null	Null	Null
2Cr 3Ur	Null	1Ur
3Cr 3 Ur	1Cr	Null
5Cr 3Ur	Null	Null
5Cr 4 Ur	Null	Null

The cost for all the towers is a little on the high side considering how much each tower produces and, more of an area of concern for me, there are many actions (specifically upgrading towers) that require combinations of resources. The former makes the game slower and the latter makes it more complex to manage, neither of which we want for the game. My earlier balance idea went like this:

Tower Name	Cost to build	Cost to produce	Chromium Produced
Command Center	Null	Null	3Cr
Uranium Tower	2Cr	Null	Null
Chromium Tower	2Cr	Null	1Cr
Shell Tower	6Cr	2Cr	Null
Nuke Silo	4Cr 2Ur	2Ur	Null

Uranium Produced	Overcharge Produced	Cost to overcharge
2Ur	Null	Null
1Ur	1Ur	2Ur
Null	1Cr	2Ur
Null	Null	Null
Null	Null	Null

Cost to upgrade	Upgraded Cr	Upgraded Ur
Null	Null	Null
1Cr 1Ur	Null	1Ur
1Cr 1Ur	1Cr	Null
3Cr 1Ur	Null	Null
3Cr 1Ur	Null	Null

I shifted the values to be lower across the board, which helped with both problems, but there was still the lingering issue of complexity. I want the players to be able to easily assess what type of resource tower they need, especially when the towers get the active abilities, and focus more on placement and other strategic considerations over number crunching resource values. Especially with the fast pace and the time limit on each turn, time spent managing the economy is irritatingly spent time that would be better used in trying to blow the other player's planet up. With this in mind, I moved to my most recent set of balance changes:

Tower Name	Cost to build	Cost to produce	Chromium Produced
Command Center	Null	Null	3Cr
Uranium Tower	2Cr	Null	Null
Chromium Tower	2Cr	Null	1Cr
Shell Tower	6Cr	2Cr	Null
Nuke Silo	6Cr	3Ur	Null

Uranium Produced	Overcharge Produced	Cost to overcharge
2Ur	Null	Null
1Ur	1Ur	2Ur
Null	1Cr	2Ur
Null	Null	Null
Null	Null	Null

Cost to upgrade	Upgraded Cr	Upgraded Ur
Null	Null	Null
2Cr	Null	1Ur
2Cr	1Cr	Null
4Cr	Null	Null
4Cr	Null	Null

Here all the resource costs are reduced, as with the other revision, but they are also streamlined to only require one type of resource for each action. Building and upgrading costs chromium, and deploying and overcharging costs uranium. This makes it very simple for the player to know what they want to do as part of their overall strategy. We tested this version of the balance changes during a team meeting this week and it was very well received. It made the game much faster and simpler to get into the thick of things, and it also allowed the players to focus more on their overall strategy rather than worrying about what combination of resources they needed. There are still some concerns that need to be addressed, upgrading shields may end up costing uranium for one and the active abilities need to be assigned costs in some cases, but on the whole this balance version felt much better and, provided nobody breaks it in testing this week, should see only slight changes from here on out.

Until next time,

Guardian Soul