It looks like it might last longer than my marriage! (Fewer epic battles though. 
)
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Plus, if possible, wormholes should be not able to be occupied. Transit between should take 1 tick, so that travel between stars on the edges donât take any longer than any other stars
Espionage is way overpowered, and reinforces the momentum of large players. Should be focused on stealing superior tech.
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Iâd agree with both of these.
Disagree with this point. At beginning of game, I was in a scarce star environment, and if not by scanning, would be get behind of almost everyone else. I had half of the infrastructure than various there.
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I think the idea (this is how I would do it anyway) is you can scan to get superior tech but if no-one you are scanning has better tech your spying does nothing. So it lets you draw level (it wouldnât have affected your start) but then youâre on your own.
After all, if you already have the best tech, what are you learning from spying on your inferior neighbours?
You are infiltrating their labs to get access to CPU time for your research programs.
Itâs trouble enough just getting Macs and PCs to talk to each other, imagine trying to hack into alien computer networks! Haha.
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Actually, you are creating CPU time out of thin air. It works counter to every other change Jay has made to raise the prices of resources and force you to carefully invest. I agree that early game it helps smaller players, but by mid game it is favoring big players.
Also big players canât receive techs from others, does that not compensate it?
And, I canât imagine a way big players have not more benefit than others. It doesnât seem âExponentialâ or making a crazily increasing gap between big and small players at the end. For what we saw in the messages, almost everyone are doing similar amounts of scanning. Of course the bigger one will do more scanning, but not a huge difference.
Edit: an of course if I were one of the smaller, I would think different xD
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Again though, if a neighbour has higher tech (otherwise the trade restriction is irrelevant as thereâs nothing to give the bigger player) than the big player then âsuperior onlyâ espionage would still work on that tech.
Espionage should stop working if none of the players you can scan have tech higher than you. That way those behind can catch up a little bit and those ahead have to pump more science/experimentation into their research to get/keep ahead. This doesnât necessarily directly relate to size of empire but it probably generally does.
My Two cents
I think occupying the wormholes is fine personally but i think that they shouldnt be stars, or at the vary least have all the stars be the same size. I see that some where big enough to produce their own defenses while others had to be manually fed
as for espionage being overpowered it is and it isnt, if you know how to break it. While Minion was on top for stars he still didnt come close to me for spies because he was on an edge so his scanning didnt pick as much as I would being in the middle, and Z broke it even more making a line through the galaxy lol.
knowing how espionage works, if it does in the next game if it is the same i am going to take more advantage of the wormholes so i can get more surface area touching other players even if its random stars scattered all over the place.!
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That line is named âThe Zoquethi Wayâ. It is visible in the night sky from Earth.
And about what you said, it means that middle located players have at least one thing on his favour, and itâs lots of neighbours spending infrastructure.
And I donât think the advantage to big players is so much. I peak 17K research points from scanning just when started attacking Minion. From then, it increased very, very slowly. In part because when you attack, you are destroying his science infrastructure, that decreases espionage, and (may) build your own infrastructure there, giving espionage research points to the enemy.
At first, my research points from espionage were always between 6x and 7x research points from science. Once attacks started, it was decreasing slowly to 2x. Remember how colourful was my area at the beginning, there were 4 players who whom exchanged stars to gain espionage. It was also a risk, if espionage didnât be so good, that risk may not worth.
Also, when you had grow enough, itâs more difficult to be allowed to friendly draw lines inside other empires 
Edit:
Because all of that, at a certain point I started preferring Experimentation over Scanning.
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Actually, thinking about it the way you explain it probably does tend to be less of an advantage than it might seem although superior-tech only espionage just feels more logical to me.
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What is the (approximate) full release date of Proteus? I am setting up a big game for my friends and coworkers to play over winter and I think they would love Proteus (if it is out in time).
You prove my point: you had a 7x magnification in your research cacacity, just by spying. If that is not the definition of overpowered, I donât know what is.
It is so overpowered that it almost eliminates the need to trade. Trading has been a key part of diplomacy for NP forever. It certainly made the trade constraints unimportant for the large players, while making it difficult for small players to organize in opposition. Which I believe is the opposite of what Jay intended.
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Here are my overall thoughts on the big changes for Game 3:
I think that the economy tweaks in Game 3 were awesome, and are in a pretty good place right now.
I liked that Science was destroyed along with Economy. Iâd even say we should try a game where all E/I/S is destroyed when a star is taken. Make the cash payout for taking stars much bigger to compensate. I like that idea better than my shipyards being instantly converted into alien-friendly designs.
Espionage seemed to get a little out of hand toward the end, it seemed to do more for me than my actual research focus. Research existed to âtop offâ the tech my spies had already almost completed. Did not like.
Iâm really digging the Superior/Inferior traits on techs, helps make empires a bit unique. Iâd say make even more types of varied traits (hard to balance thoughâŚ)
LOVE LOVE LOVE wormholes. Keep them. Either as stars, or 24 hours jumps, or as instant jump points, I donât care, they make the galaxy so much more interesting when you can potentially interact with anyone. I also very much like the random positioning of wormhole exits⌠but of course I didnât start with four in my core systemsâŚ
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When I had 7x research points from espionage compared to science, I was the 2nd player with less stars in the galaxy!
Donât take me the wrong way, Z. You had a difficult start, and you cleverly exploited both your wormholes and the espionage bonus. Which proves your point about the equalizing effect it has on early game. I am talking about the rest of the game.
I think I understand your point, but what I said is also it importance decreased from 7x until 2x as expanded (now itâs around 1.5x). I donât know if for other players it was a similar experience, just describing mine. (Q: How much research are others doing now, or before being invaded, by espionage only?)
While I saw this game as very balanced (and enjoyable!!), you think it was not enough balanced. I must to admit it would be because my inexperience here: you are way more experienced than me in NP, so you may know better than me what this game could be.
My opinion, just taking into account the little time I played NP, is that always the bigger will tend to be much stronger than smaller because the resources are limited and when bigger gets one thing, it does not only increase his power but decrease the power of the weaker, so it increases the gap (example: you take a star from me with 10 industry, then Iâll have -10 industry and you +10, the gap increased in 20). It happening over time results always in favoured big players.
Sorry for the verbosity, hope my grammar doesnât be an obstacle to convey my idea 
. I enjoy this discussion, I think it can help me to get a better understanding of the game, thanks for that.
Edit:
And now a carrier of our friend @SteveLawUK is in his way to make you see senses about what is balanced xD
