Today, May 19 at 16:00 CEST we will update PTS.
Intro
We are very thankful for all the players who went on the Public Test Server (PTS) to experience our newest update “Lifeforms”. The team has now gone through the first wave of PTS feedback that was provided by a lot of players who jumped right into the new Lifeform update.
Overall, the update created some very interesting discussion about possible strategies with the newly introduced amount of possible build options which is one of the main intentions of the update. However, players also addressed that some of the benefits that are currently obtainable on the PTS were too powerful compared to their cost and that cost reductions were potentially too strong, and we agree. With our first balancing patch for the PTS Lifeform update we want to address the problems that players have highlighted and found so far.
The team would like to thank all of the players who took their time to test our Lifeform update and provided valuable feedback. This greatly helps us to improve the Lifeform update until it is ready for the live release as we continue our quest to make this polished, balanced, and fun by the time it launches.
In the following sections we will generally talk about some of the update goals and how the PTS setup will be changed compared to the initial version. Please note this is an ongoing process. As long as the update is tested on the PTS all values are subject to potential changes based on performance, testing, and community feedback.
General changes
Below a list of changes that were done to buildings or technologies across the board.
Buildings:
- Increased build time base value to factor in server speed.
Technologies:
- Increased scaling of research time for all Lifeform technologies to factor in the “technology & research reduction options” that are available with the Lifeform update
- This change will make it more interesting to consider technologies that reduce research time since all technologies now will scale stronger into endgame and take longer to build.
Population & Food buildings
Population and food together with the introduced conversion buildings for each Lifeform are the pre-condition that players need to build up to access the new Lifeform tech tree. Players need to find a balance between an increasing amount of population vs. the amount of food that is consumed. This balance differs greatly between the different Lifeforms. Where for example Humans have support buildings that increase food production which help with the amount of population, or reduce food consumption the Rock´tal Lifeform has none of those options which makes them significantly more costly to reach the highest population counts that are needed to unlock the species tech tree fully.
Changes:
- The cost for population and food related buildings has slightly been decreased. The main goal here was that players have less costs before they can access the full species tech tree, while the last tech tree tiers will still need a significant investment
- The total energy costs for population and food related buildings to reach the needed amount of population for a fully unlocked tech tree have slightly been decreased. Energy will still be something that needs to be considered when building up Lifeforms.
- The total amount of food on planets has been reduced dramatically. The consumption vs. production is still the same, but the overall number of food on a planet is now much smaller
- This change should tackle the problematic where players looted too much food on attacks. While food has the lowest priority when looting resources, the amount of food on planets would still create issues where you would lose out on potential other resources. The change should overall vastly improve the situation.
- The build time scaling for all population and food buildings has been increased to better factor in nanite and robotics reductions better
Resource production (metal, crystal, deuterium) related buildings and tech
The initial feedback of players was that the bonus to production which you could obtain from Lifeforms would be too strong for the costs involved.
Changes:
- The bonus values from production related buildings and tech have been reduced
- The cost scaling and energy scaling has been increased so that higher bonus values have a significant higher increase in costs related to it
- The time scaling has been increased to factor in nanite and robotics and the newly added options to reduce Lifeform tech build time.
Overall, we believe that the initial levels for production boost will still give players a really good source to invest into if they want to enhance their production further while higher levels need a significant higher investment of resources and time to increase the benefits further.
Ship base stats & defense base stats related techs
The ship & defense related tech benefits will impact Structural integrity, Shield Power, Weapon Power, Cargo Capacity and Base Speed.
Changes:
- The overall power that you could gain from those Lifeform techs was too strong compared to weapon, shield, and armor research investments and therefore has been reduced and the cost scaling has been increased.
- This should lead to a situation where you have a fast and cheap benefit from the related tech where further benefits need a much higher investment
- The reduction of the tech benefits also factors in that the overall bonus from all techs that increase ship speed should not lead to a situation where ship speed is vastly increased compared to now.
- The research time scaling for those techs has been increased as well
Ship speed increasing Lifeform techs
Overall, the intention of those techs were that players have an option to increase their flight speed further beyond the available research options. But we agree that a vastly increased flight speed is not something that should be possible. Therefore, the bonus values for ship speed have been revisited and changed.
Changes:
- Together with the ship base stat decrease the bonus values for ship speed techs have been reduced as well
- If players invest into ship base stat techs and ship speed techs they will still receive a worthwhile speed increase for their investment but need to specialize now more into this direction
Ship fuel reduction techs & Recall fuel refund tech
The main intention with introducing ship fuel reductions and a technology that would give back invested fuel if a fleet is recalled was to make flying around with fleets less of an investment and less of a risk. However, the fuel reduction has been seen as somewhat critical since it also enables exploration missions again to be more lucrative. With the changes we would like to address those concern but keep monitoring further feedback how much fuel reductions impact exploration missions and their gain from this tech.
Changes:
- Fuel reduction bonus cost and time scaling increased (limit is now set to -30%)
- Recall fuel refund bonus cost and time scaling increased (limit is set to 90% refund)
- You will receive a refund for the remaining deuterium that you have not consumed while flying (example: If you fly 50% of the distance and then recall, you will receive a refund of the not used deuterium for half the way)
General cost reduction & time reductions
The Lifeform update introduces a couple of new options to reduce cost & time for production buildings or for specific research like Espionage tech, Weapon, Armor, Shield or Energy research. However, the cost reduction has been reviewed somewhat critical which we understand. Especially high reductions scale too strong into late game. However, we believe that the time reduction for research is still something that should be available since research doesn´t have a similar reduction options like buildings with nanite.
Changes:
- Cost reduction related buildings and techs have been decreased dramatically in its effect (cost reduction limit is now 50%, however reaching the 50% limit is extremely cost & time intense) and cost and time scaling has been increased
- Time reductions have been reduced in its effect but with proper stacking of different technologies and buildings from the Lifeform update and further investment we believe players can reach the limit of 99% reduction
- Please note that 99% time reduction sounds initially a lot but in exponential scaling systems this can very fast be out scaled again and additionally needs quite some investment to reach
Class bonus techs
Some Lifeforms have as technology an increase to the class benefits. Since this can be quite powerful due to the overall benefits classes can give we believe that the initial values were too high for the investment that players had to take to boost the class benefits further.
Changes:
- The bonus from techs that increase class benefits have been reduced
- The cost and time scaling has been increased
Exploration related tech bonus
The Lifeform update introduces a couple of technologies for players who like the exploration playstyle. As example a technology that reduce the chance for Black Holes (fleet loss on expeditions) or increases the number of ships you find on expeditions. The initial feedback from players was rather critical about the reductions to the fleet loss chance since it potentially would lead again to a situation where exploration missions would be more efficient and lucrative again.
Changes:
- Fleet loss technology bonus values reduced, and cost and time scaling increased
- Players will still be able to reduce the fleet loss chance, but it will overall cost you more
- Techs that boost “amount of ships found” and “resources found” on expedition have been slightly reduced in effectiveness and cost and time scaling has been increased
Moon size building
The Kaelesh have a special building that increases moon chance and moon size.
Changes:
- The bonus to moon size now only works on min. moon size. This makes moons in average bigger without increasing their size in total to not influence moon destruction chance
Population growth
Players reported that the growth of population was way too fast. After a short check we noticed that there are 2 current issues where one has been addressed and one will be addressed later.
Changes:
- Reduced the growth base value for Lifeform growth to consider server speed settings
Open issue:
- The growth rate currently factors in server speed multiple times and therefore is too fast. The intended setting is that population growth from 0 to 100% takes around 20 hours on a 4x server.
Final words
Thanks to all of the testers, the feedback we received from the official forum and Discord, we have been able to further improve the balance of the upcoming Lifeforms update. We hope that the changes reflect the feedback and wishes that players have communicated to us so far, as the developers work to fix issues and balance various mechanics introduced with these features. We will keep monitoring how players interact with the Lifeform update and the feedback that is provided, while everyone discovers new ways how to further improve his empire, and further improve it on the way as long as the PTS phase is ongoing.
Please find on the following link some useful values and formulas for a better understanding of Lifeforms: board.de.ogame.gameforge.com/wcf/index.php?attachment/3948/
Thanks again for all the feedback. Please keep it coming!
Your OGame Team
Alles anzeigen
(kA was er für Nani- Und Robo-Stufen hat)
Mal abwarten, ob ein re-balancing vom re-balancing kommt 
Bug oder Feature?
Ob dieses Re-Balancing so glücklich war? 
Bei den Kosten und Bauzeiten erreicht man ja nie alle Tear3 Forschungen
Im Verhältnis zu den Kosten sind die Benefits aus den Forschungen/Gebäuden, die man damit freischalten kann, ja schon fast lächerlich... hm.. 
ich entnehme deiner antwort, dass dem nicht so sein soll und dass es irgendwie anders verrechnet wird...
