Proteus Test Game

for those who could, why did you pick the strengths and weakness that you have?

I agree that the simplified formulas for tech and infrastructure are preferred.

I am noticing that things are happening faster and it seems as if the game is going to speed up exponentially at this point.

That might make for a little chaos late in the game, but there is probably a ay to mak the first couple of days speed up and the later rounds slow down, by changing the tech research levels and making infrastructure a little cheaper but climbing in cost quickly.

Iā€™m realizing that foregoing a strength was a bad move. I canā€™t research anything at a discount, which make me a pretty bad ally. I suppose if I was a loner then I donā€™t want anything to cost more, but the loner strategy is hard to play out in this game. You must trade and without a tech advantage I will get phased out quickly.

Interesting thing about the specialization is that it immediately makes certain players better allies, regardless of position. I could see this playing out a number of ways, but could really hurt a geographic region if everyone specialized in one tech and trade scanned was turned on.

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I almost always pick the galactic leprechaun. I didnā€™t notice the characteristics until the game started.

Next time, Iā€™ll pick what Jay picks

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NP1 Character art. Thatā€™s right.:smile_cat: Hi-res or no hi-res.:persevere:

And I didnā€™t choose proper research strengths because I didnā€™t see an interface on how to go about doing that. It just popped up the avatar selection as normal for me, no bells, whistles or whatnot saying ā€œLOOK! TRAITS!ā€ And stuff.

If I could, Iā€™d have chosen expensive Scanning, Cheap Weapons. The Rukhs of the Communion are master Psyker Soldiers, after all. Many have turned against their allies in return for their mercenary services.

One other suggestion: it would be great to see at a quick glance what Iā€™m producing. I know I can get ships per tick, but total science and Econ per tick would be good to know too.

Looks like you guys yourselves organised into Alliances.

Is there more than one, or is it everybody against me :slight_smile:

Is there an alliance I can join?

Hey Also, would love some help thinking of ways to make Scanning more important in the game.

This game config, when you can see the stars but not what are there has some psychological effect because you want to really REALLY know what is going on in that apparently empty stars (mainly near ones).

So, the scanning seems to me already more important here than in NP triton. Although donā€™t research on that bc other techs are more important even.

Maybe faster travel to stars into scan reaching could be a good idea to give that tech more importance: scanning tells how far your radars can detect objects/enemy signals, so inside radars range, ships can go faster because obstacles and so are registered in the interstellar maps and the human intervention is not needed to drive them.

Speed tech is never returning, I hope, and thatā€™s basically two in one with that suggestion.

It would help if you answered your mail :wink:

You canā€™t see shit, I donā€™t know how you can make it anymore important.

Except for all the other techs you need

Jay - In all fairness, I did ask to trade with you a couple days ago but my messages went unanswered :slight_smile:

In case people missed this, with premium you can get any combination of buffs and debuts by going to the custom page. Otherwise youā€™re stuck with the defaults.

I really like the new economy. Everything seems pretty fairly priced now that weā€™re getting into mid game. Carriers are still really expensive, and were even more so at the start of the game. Other than that Iā€™m not having problems with infrastructure upgrades.

One thing I donā€™t like is how there is now way to launch an early surprise attack and decimate a player early game. In Triton the defender bonus was 100%, but to was negated by gaining a level of weapons. Here the defender bonus is also 100% but to break even you need to be up 3 weapons levels. That puts a HUGE damper on offensive playing of any kind. Even with 2000 more ships than anyone else I donā€™t feel super comfortable attacking anyone yet, whereas in a Triton game Iā€™m often attacking before either my opponent or I have 300 ships. Maybe this was intentional, but it changes the game some.

As for the new production, I really like it also. I can check in as often as I like to optimize, but there is no pressure on me if Iā€™m not able to check in for several hours. Obviously for players used to TB games itā€™ll be a big shock, but Iā€™m not finding any problems myself. (Iā€™ve never played TB once though haha)

The way tech multiplies is very cool. Makes every level of tech useful, although as weā€™re now realizing the further you go, the more effective a level it. Hereā€™s an example. Early game I have 7 industry and level 3 manufacturing. Bumping from level 3 to 4 changes my ship production from 21 to 28 an hour. Later in the game, I have 65 industry and level 13 manufacturing. Bumping from level 13 to 14 changes my ship production from 845 to 910 an hour. Thatā€™s a really big jump compared to old mechanics in Triton. Exp and banking scale out of proportion in the same way.

Maybe we could have some sort of exponential function for determining research prices to prevent this.
Hereā€™s an example function, though it could definitely be tweaked. X is the tech value you want, and y is the number of points to get there.

y=11*x^2+184

Some example points on that graph:

Tech Level | Research Points
4 | 360
5 | 459
6 | 580
7 | 723
8 | 888
9 | 1075
10 | 1284
12 | 1768
15 | 2659
18 | 3748

This might work as a fix to out of control research but Iā€™m not sure.

I second Hipā€™s request for cash per hour and research per hour. Last I remember thereā€™s even room in the interface under total ships.

It isnā€™t a matter of scanning not being important, its just other techs are SO much more useful that scanning will often be ignored in lieu os over techs. Not sure how to make it more important at the moment, but Iā€™ll think about it.

Yeah, I think everybody will select inferior scanning or range and superior something else actually important.

Regarding Scanning it sounds like not knowing who owns stars is disorienting? What if Scanning tech gave you two spheres of information: the existing range to see ships and stars, and another bigger radius to see JUST star info.

Regarding the choice of Superior and Inferior techs what if you had two tiers of techs, ā€œminorā€ and ā€œmajorā€ (or whatever). To take a ā€œmajorā€ tech as your empire strength you need to make a different ā€œmajorā€ tech a weakness, or two ā€œminorā€ techs as weaknesses.

Orā€¦ an idea that I like even more, but would take more code workā€¦ is to create a wider range of potential superior and inferior qualities in addition to research tech, such as:

  • A flat 20% travel time increase/decrease between stars.
  • Naturally cheaper/more expensive infrastructure (a few levels of terraforming in NP2 terms)
  • Cheaper/Expensive trading
  • Cheaper/Expensive Carriers
  • Cheaper/Expensive Warpgates

Iā€™m totally nerding out about the possibilities of Proteus. I cannot wait to try it out!

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I think scanning needs to improve your growth somehow.
Range does kind of vaguely at least.

Perhaps you can steal tech from other based on how much scanning you have on them?

Perhaps you can hinder the development of every other players stars you can see? So there is value in having every enemy star in scan range. And perhaps the damage is scaled based on scanning level.

Maybe have Scanning influence combat somehow. The more ā€œvisibleā€ the combat is to you, the more weapons bonus you get?

Maybe have Scanning be an intelligence AND counter-intelligence role, and to see into enemy space your scanning needs to be higher than theirs?

I wish I could find an old post of mine about Carrier specialization and experienceā€¦ Basically what if higher research tech levels let you purchase specialized carriers related to that research. Scanning tech could unlock Stealth carriers that make that carrier show up as if the opponent had less scanning tech (i.e. it would be visible at 10 light years even though your scanning can see out to 15 light years).

What Jay said, I mentioned this earlier as a kind of interference tech. Combining that with Scanning would be good. You could always change the tech name to just ā€œIntelligenceā€, and mention that with scanning data, you can use that info to screw with enemy star infrastructure in various waysā€¦

Iā€™d be up for it if you start a second game!