@CHirumiru ShiRoz Haha, good grammar is a never ending struggle from which there is no escape. I'll go over it when I have some time, but it will be a few days before I can take a look. Without sharing details, my health has been failing for a few months and I've got another doctor's appointment today.

Hi guys, great job on the mod. I just had a discussion with kolyn over in the zenith mod forum about the tech balancing. The enigmatic libraries are a real issue.
Here is our little talk about the tech cost balance:
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1317022177/1694914735996548907/?ctp=7

Kolyn already patched his research building, maybe you can do the same?

I really dont want to type the same messages here again, but they very much apply to all those dark energy powered research buildings that can be spammed every where. You end up with nonsensical amounts of research...its really no joy to RUSH through all the endgame content like that in a matter of a few months each

@Doomwarrior I don't want to increase tech costs too much, because that will also mean the AI is going to take much longer time to research, which means they are even going to have even harder time catching up to the players.

In ACOT, it is usually not the tech costs that bar the progress, it is the upkeep and scientist level that bars progression (You cannot research some techs at all without having required level of scientists)

Increasing tech cost honestly won't reall help much, empires that have 10k+ tech score's still going to breeze through them, while empires that don't are going to never see the light.

The case you're showing example, as I have been reading honestly, is not even about "tech cost" anymore imo, its just about the fact that you kinda...won the game already? :P Were the AI at least capable of still being able to fight you in some manner, or none already can?

The best thing I can do is to increase upkeep for those buildings, but I don't want to incresae tech costs because that'd make empires that are not science focused (or the AIs) to never really get anything.

Alternatively, I can also just increase the tech gating so it becomes harder to actually get techs. (And more people will complain lol)

I feel like it's probably easier to nerf the science buildings, by way of upkeeps, numbers of researchers or costs, than trying to increase tech costs (Which won't help much when your empire's pumping 20k science per each category)

To give you perspective, I am in a game where I am about x30 repetables atm, and they all still get reseearched within 3 months. Which means an empire that can get that much sciencce score, will still breeze through it, empires that can't, will just take forever.

The balance issue that arises from the possibility to endlessly scale the amount of science buildings you can spam. With just a few habitats you can get thousands of research points for near to no money or extra effort. I am currently writing a science cost scaling mod to counter this issue. End game does not feel end gamey to me in any kind of setup like this, and its not just me, others say the same thing and are eagerly waiting for this mod ;-) It would however be better not to run into these kinds of problems.

But even a limit on habitats for example wont do much as you can just swap buildings from planets to habitats and build research on planets then.
So maybe an built in option in the mod asking if you want a scaling basecost modifier the later in the game you are or sth. I´d be happy to lend a hand since im on it anyway (but not nearly as skilled in modding as you guys)

Science Building will have much higher upkeep in the next patch. That should make it harder to spam them. I am not going to increase tech costs without extremely good reasons, because then it promotes science play too much and wide/AI empires will be basically wrecked.

Expect your empire to get drown in DM/DE Shortage if you spam too much labs now.

I also want to point out that even in the base game, the science buildings are already quite powerful (The final tier gives 10 researcher jobs). If your empire is already producing science on 10k+ by default, then the only option left is to cut the science building from ACOT entirely, and that's not a good solution.

In the end, your science focused colonies will still be making tons of science score regardless of whether you use ACOT upgrades or not. Increasing tech costs in this case will not help, in the shown image, I am researching repeatables for the 30th times with the tech cost of 255k, and I can get it done within 4 months. Do you want me to make later-tier techs cost million tech scores?

Honestly, it won't help much. Even if I nerf ACOT buildings to produce less or have more upkeeps or anything else. In the end, nothing stops your empire from just spamming regular science labs (Of which gets up to 10 researchers). The only limiting factor then becomes minerals upkeep.

And mineral upkeep becomes non-concern with ZOFE's minerals-building, which then requires you to balance out mineral buildgins, which then requires you to balance out energy building, which in turns make you question "Why is our buildings crappier than FE's?"

The biggest issue is that in 2.2, FE buildings are so immensely powerful that they are basically mini-megastructure, and unless the entire systems are adjusted, nothing will change much.

To give some perspective, you can totally survive with only a single world that has FE buildings fully kitted out, then have every other planets build absolutely nothing but science labs (Vanilla ones).

Also keep in mind that there's still Sins of the Fallen Empire mod in the works, and when it is updated, you'd better hope your empire is formidable lol. I don't want to hear people telling me the OE is too hard again after so many asking for ACOT nerfs :P

Originally posted by Chirumiru ShiRoz:

Honestly, it won't help much. Even if I nerf ACOT buildings to produce less or have more upkeeps or anything else. In the end, nothing stops your empire from just spamming regular science labs (Of which gets up to 10 researchers). The only limiting factor then becomes minerals upkeep.

And mineral upkeep becomes non-concern with ZOFE's minerals-building, which then requires you to balance out mineral buildgins, which then requires you to balance out energy building, which in turns make you question "Why is our buildings crappier than FE's?"

The biggest issue is that in 2.2, FE buildings are so immensely powerful that they are basically mini-megastructure, and unless the entire systems are adjusted, nothing will change much.

To give some perspective, you can totally survive with only a single world that has FE buildings fully kitted out, then have every other planets build absolutely nothing but science labs (Vanilla ones).

Also keep in mind that there's still Sins of the Fallen Empire mod in the works, and when it is updated, you'd better hope your empire is formidable lol. I don't want to hear people telling me the OE is too hard again after so many asking for ACOT nerfs :P

bring it on ;-)

Anyway...thats why i say we need a modular base cost scaling mod to adjust to peoples tastes :) Its the only thing that keeps science craze at bay. For now i am basing it on mid and end game years passed, but thats really clunky. Eventually i hope to base it on something more close to home like amounts of science buildings or science in total. In order to stop the big guys from going total roflstomp everyone.

In response to Doomwarrior's feedback, I have already made sure that fe_master_archive is made Empire Unique, meaning setting the base cap to 1 and can be built on Capital only. I agree that the issue is not about tech costs, but how much science is one empire supposed to get. The original FE building is only located on one of the FE Materialist's worlds, called 'The Archive', which is supposed to hold all the knowledge they ever collected into one place, which also justifies why they aren't everywhere and also address the balance issues that can come with it.

CAN the AE build more than one of these facilities? Well yes, of course they can. But that doesn't need representation in the game at the cost of allowing players to breeze through tech like they have never been able to before. From Doom's example he's playing a tall empire - just think what a wide empire would be able to do.

You can also hop on my discord channel to get a better discussion with others as well.

Quick suggestion : add a DM-tier commercial building that gives a ton of clerk jobs ? That might seems like a weird addition, but I play a lot of authoritarian, so not having a stratified society is kind of a problem, as such when I arrive at the DM tier and start building the autonomous buildings I kind of have a problem with actually employing all of my pops, so I have to displace them and depopulate my homeworld. It'd be a nice addition to be able to have a "Commercial Utopia" Or something like that, to be able to employ all of those pops, at the cost of some DM or DE of course.

What I think would be an interesting solution to the science problem is to make buildings that consume science for various interesting purposes. Perhaps a building that eats 200 engineering research for a flat + buildtime on ships, just as an example, or one that eats 200 society to make the planet 5% happier. Little bonuses that help top up an endgame empire at the cost of reasearch, so if you wanna stack these bonuses you're gonna wind up looking like an FE.

Honestly, if you ask me. The biggest problem is that ther'es just too many levels of repeatables. Imo, the maximum level should just be at 20 at most.

Once you run out of options for repeatables, you reach the stagnation era of your empire.

i kinda disagree repeatables are the only thing that keeps something out there where you can improve still while everything else is on max. All ressource storages full, everything built, fleet on max and such. It would be utterly boring if there wasnt anything to do anymore. If anything, more repeatables would be nicer. Like even more ressource storage or building upgrades or some random events that hurt some specific thing for everyone and you have to work on it to overcome it (not a crisis, more like an event)