Posted by: Kristover
« on: March 01, 2021, 07:47:49 PM »Interestingly, I find the best way to address a problem like this is to modify the research speed down to 10-15%.I thought that the research speed is global - meaning equal for you and NPRs... am I wrong here?
True but my experience has been that when the NPR gets generated and gets its initial tech allocation, it usually has you overmatched in at least one weapons category and if it is one that you’re vulnerable too, than it’s a problem. Plus, I generally find that the NPRs I encounter tend to be 2-3K faster than my ships though that might be a ship design bias on my part. That being said, with slow research speed from the start, you’re DEFINITELY going to be outmatched my spoilers you may encounter for a long while.
Also one who also uses super slow research speed and I like the longer time spent in each stage as stated above. Starts always felt a lot harder and I recently read a post about how the Research Speed % doesn't effect the starting RP of NPR's, so they get a boost as mentioned which matches the how it feels more difficult at start.
One aspect I really like about slow research speeds and hanging out for several decades in the low technology era is that I feel like it makes Aurora more of a game of strategic choices. I'll use a recent game as an example. I had about 20 systems in my Federation and ran into an NPR who was initially peaceful - not terribly friendly but they didn't blow up my survey ships and I didn't blow up theirs. I had a very small naval presence in the area but was ready to surge from Earth if needed. I then ran into another race on the opposite side of the empire and this was was absolutely hostile from the first. I ended up getting involved in a five year war with them with lots of back and forth. I ended up committing like 80% of my naval and ground forces to that fight. In the middle of it when things started to go my way, that formerly quiet race in the course of like a couple of months went from sharp messages to shooting survey ships passing through to outright invading one of my key border systems. I pulled that small squadron I had back to the key world in the system which did have heavy STO and watched them plink off all my CMCs and civilian ships who didn't get out of town.
Now in a standard research speed game, I could have redeployed forces from one side of the empire in about a month or two. However, in this low-tech game, it took me almost an ENTIRE YEAR to do so! I had to think about a lot of things like could I maintain the same momentum in the real shooting war if half the forces were gone for two years? Was there new technology and builds coming online in the meantime? Was the force I redeployed even appropriate? It sure was for the shooting war but the NPR ship configuration was completely different. Bottom line, the tactical fights I had to fight were functionally no different than the high tech era except ranges for beams are greater - but all the strategy choices were completely different and much harder.