I can definitely see espionage making up for being unable to trade. The bigger you are the better your espionage, which is nice.
1 Like
Dying to get in a Proteus test game!
Hey Pepsis, Will start a new game soon. Just need to gather some feedback on the current game and do another tuning pass.
I have some feedback here:
Bugs:
- I canāt loop between the ends of a wormhole (the web crashes and I need to refresh)
- the rule tell me itās 13h the ETA between two stars with warpgates (although I can remember that worked before saying it was 12h)
Opinions:
- warpgates are too expensive. $1000 for a 50 res star
- espionage is cool, it opens new strategies, like the stars swapping you can see now in the map (it makes each science point produce double: for you and your ally)
- tech restriction is too strict. It should be at least a range of stars number allowed instead of the āat mostā limit. For example: you can buy from who is +/-20% of stars than you. Coordinate number of stars with allies is impractical.
- I donāt know if itās me, but carriers seems slower. It may be the cause of so slow action going on.
- wormholes should have low res stars at the ends to facilitate collaboration between allies at both sides
- the Intel charts for I/e/s is almost worthless. It should show ships/tick, $/tick, res/tick. It can be attained by just multiplying the current value by the tech level (for ex: if the plate has 30 Eco, lvl 2 bank, show 60).
- include spionage in the players profile?
3 Likes
Iām still hating the major carrier cost increase. It makes gameplay more clunky. 
2 Likes
Agreed completely (I suggested the same thing earlier.) Aside from the game mechanics issue, it also ābreaks immersionā a bit for me - speaking as a roleplayer.
I feel the same, although the ruler seems to be reporting the same speed as other games. 
I disagree with this, espionage should be secret. Although Iād like to see research/tick on the research page.
I agree with this too. I can see how more expensive carriers help you appreciate the lowly carrier more but I feel this gives even more of an advantage to the more powerful (richer) positions.
I knew I stole the idea from somewhere, didnāt remember from where/who. Even I think used the same percentage as your idea.
And about the slower carriers, maybe the thing is not they are slower but we have less of them making the ships flow 
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No problem.
That could well be it actually. You are much more aware of each individual carrier because it has so much to do, so little timeā¦
I think the perception of slower carriers is due to the warpgate change- warpgates are less common now that you need a lot of Range tech to truly feel they are effective, and warpgates are more expensive. While warpgates begin to save time on jumps at tech Range 4-5, they do not increase speed as much as the old 3x gates until you hit tech Range 12 or so jumps. Nobody is anywhere near Range 12 yet in Test Game 3.
In addition to that, like was mentioned already since carriers are also more expensive you feel like you always need more.
Maybe Iām just too used to the old 3x speed warpgates, but I feel like they need some tweaking somehow. Either a lower base rate (like 10h between gates), or becoming significantly cheaper. Or have cost of gate scale with Range tech?
I also really like the idea of trading within a certain percentage of total stars (like 10%). It has felt like an unnecessary amount of effort to create back-and-forth trade opportunities.
Iām a huge fan of the new Espionage idea, and Iām also a huge fan of the wormholes connecting people in ways that didnāt happen before. I think those two things will be adding a LOT of really neat interactions to the game.
Overall I donāt want to go back to old NP2 after tasting these awesome changes 
3 Likes
Fwiw it was my opinion that gates needed to be much more expensive than previously precisely since gates are not effective until range 10 or so. That makes gates a mid to late game tech, when cash is plentiful, and the price needed to be scaled accordingly. Since resource costs are fixed per star now, it needed to be a high price to maintain scarcity value. I remain of that opinion.
I feel the same way about carrier cost. By late game they wonāt feel so expensive, but they still are at mid game.
Plus I see the tight trading constraints as a feature not a bug. Neighbors of equal size can manage the star swaps without too much difficulty, plus it forces trust building. Allies of unequal size will have some interesting decisions to make.
The slow pace means that there are no runaway leaders yet. And no trading alliances are clearly outperforming. This game at the moment seems agonizingly well balanced.
Plus wormholes! Btw, there canāt be a bigger wormhole proponent on the board than yours truly. And I donāt have one in game?&$(#%!! The gods of Neptune are indeed perverse!
Communion of Minds currently have 38 carriers. The AI must be spending all itās cash on carriers - presumably the AI scripts havenāt been changed for Proteus yet?
Not sure how I feel about the Espionage system yet. I think itās probably good, but I donāt know if itās just this weird game or whether it levels everything out too much. It feels good to target a specific tech, see that it will take 24 hours, then get a few random bumps and have it ready in just 20 or 18?
The expensive carriers does feel kind of painful, but I do suspect it will be an area of the game where a good player can do a better job that a poor player.
I do really like that some stars you simply cannot afford to build warp gates on. I would really have liked to build one a few days ago but all I had were 5 and 10 resource stars so it was going to cost be 5k - 10k to buy one. Iām happy with the decisions to ditch terraforming.
Next up I think I will fix up the AI so it knows about Proteus, Then I think Iāll start work on an open source map editor that everybody can contribute to.
I think I posted this thought earlier, but Iām going to self-bump it since the carrier discussion has continued. Instead of increased carrier cost, which is prohibitive at the start, but can be overcome late game by the big players, I think if the additional cost came from upkeep of the fleets themselves, then the āpenaltyā will scale with the players as they grow.
The cost will be small at the start when players are small, and will still be as impactful for the big boys and girls at endgame. It encourages players to use their ships, else theyāre paying for upkeep on mothballed ships. If carrier or ship xp was added as well, then youād have a monetary incentive to use your ships because youāre paying for them every tick or cycle, but at the same time, thereās a deterrent for just wasting them to save cash as youāll be giving your enemy xp.
Interested in hearing any feedbackā¦
2 Likes
Iāve been wary of the upkeep idea becuase is just a little bit more complicated. It would have to be paid every tick now that there is no production, and we would have to feedback how much you are paying. We might need a way to destroy your own carriers to reduce that upkeep.
Would 1 credit per carrier per hour be about right? I have 20 Carrier so $480 a day upkeep doesnāt sound crazy.
Iād lobby that the upkeep was on the ships, not the carriers. I can limit the number of carriers I use if I absolutely have to if Iām trying to save on cost. If Iām in the lead, all I need to do is take over the smaller players more slowly if I have less carriers. I canāt take anyone over with a smaller fleet, though, and that will ensure that the big players are feeling the pinch.
Err, taxing ships is something very different I think.
If you tax carriers you encourage players to leave ships sitting around on stars.
If you tax ships you encourage players to use them on each other as fast as possible. Which is intresting I think.
I think espionage is a little overpowered. Perhaps only a percentage of scanned science per tick
That was part of what I was thinking, but also that the tax will become more overwhelming as your production increases at such a huge rate near endgame. I can no longer just be a behemoth who rolls over the galaxy based on the sheer weight of my infrastructure. Iāll need to balance my industry vs. my economy a bit better and manage the size of my fleet to make sure I can pay for it. It feels like it more accurately simulates the drain on an economy that a huge battle fleet would have.
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Interesting idea. If you think about it all great empires tend to collapse under their own administrative weight eventually.
@JayKyburz - Bug: research notification is not sent sometimes
One or two ticks ago (donāt know exactly when) I researched Range thanks to Espionage, but there are not any notifications about that.
I searched in the notification history and can see a notification for when reached lvl 8, but not for when reached lvl 9, and Iām lvl 9 now.
Edited:
There is a chance I reached two techs in the same tick (one by researching and other by espionage). Maybe itās related with the bug, idk.