My first in depth review (finally^^)

So after another year or so (xD) I finally got around to play a game of Complex Enhanced. It ran quite well on my VM, I had a slight mouse bug that made camera control difficult. Not sure if that's from the mod or some strange VM thing :/ The lack of power was very nice though there were still a few things that came to mind and I just wanted to properly post them here:


So the main thing I'd sugest is split the game into two modes. One that is more like a deathmatch (I used the Enhanced Custom settings to give me lots of money :p) but that essentially only has a crew cap, resources and that's it. No silly things with "complex" things. Add our new ships and some mechanics of course but keep it simple.

1. And then there is the actual complex enhanced with the more complex (:p) crew system, radiation, etc.

2. Further more if we already have the framework to create two game modes we could add a third to be a little more Civilization-s-like.


But that's just a general idea. Not sure how many loopholes in the code there are to make this happen. I'm just downloading the code and will have a look at it.
So now following are a few bulletins that I think would be important in all modes or whatever we decide to do about that.

1. Get rid of the ranks! They're dumb.
Or at the very least change the very fundamental idea about them. The idea that an Ensign would have less ships available than an Admiral sort of makes sense though an Ensign might only be in charge of a single gun :p What I don't like about it is that it forces you to play aggressive. You need to kill ships in order to gain ranks in order to build more ships in order to kill more etc. Yes there should be ranks that limit what you can do etc. but they should be some research, not a kill counter. Because it severely limits the strategies you can use.

2. Throw out all the research and build the tree from scratch.
The research tree should be much more streamlined and put into categories that make more sense. I don't know how much has already been discussed about that but I don't like e.g. that Vagr have to research a Chassis, then build a production facility and THEN I get options to research ships. Either the production facility should be available without research (Like Hiigarans) or something I would like more because it sets apart the two species is Have the Ship Chassis (Or Ship Theory) research and then immediately unlock specific ship researches. Makes more sense. If a military develops a frigate hull they won't wait until Engineers actually build a production facility before they go "well....now the fruit what?" :p

3. The crew system.
I remember having a huge discussion about this a few years back with Bill and some other guys I can't remember about what to do about the Complex crew system and there are generall two paths that can be taken here: Simple with just a capacity to build stuff. Or have different categories of crew. And while this is probably gonna be a longer discussion I feel that the whole idea of aquiering crew should be different. I haven't played the Hiigarans yet (Vaygr ALL THE WAY ) but if I remember correctly they had a crew station that was a HUGE weak point. And the Vaygr only have research. I think that the population cap should be extendable by Stations (plural, much smaller and cheaper) for both races. And also by every production capable ship a player has. If somebody has 20 carriers they won't need additional crew stations. However the crew would still be limited by the rank (redone ranks as in my first bulletin that is) no to make mass carrier too OP.


So yea :p Discuss away. Please refer to the numbers 0-3 in your answer to not make everything confusing :p
0 - Game modes
1 - Ranks
2 - Research
3 - Crew

0 - Game modes: Un-hooking the mechanics from the game modes should be simple, however I don't know how the UI would behave if that was done.

The standardized game mode we're using for balancing is Deathmatch, you have a nilla-ish starting fleet.

Further game modes are to be designed, of course.


1 -Ranks: The game has gotten a lot more dynamic since we have started, and in the 8.7 release we no longer have most of the requirements present on ships - other than the higher tier vessels.
Yes, gaining honor points largely depends on being aggressive, which is rather discouraging when you feel like going for a macro-game... it's simply not progressing fast enough to tech up.
On the Hiigaran side of things, tearing out the research score system, while keeping the nilla-style research module restricted design seems to improve the dynamics of the race. As for Vaygr, the current system I applied is a tier based hard capping of ships by rank.

I am not sure how to go about this, seeing as it doesn't feel very broken - Vaygr after all are an aggressive race, they need to pressure Hiigaran to avoid facing too many high-tech ships they can't deal with so well. There could be better ways of not pre-determining the strategies to be used, however as I said, in 8.7 a tremendous number of build orders have been enabled, which need investigating. (the regular mod restricts you to fighters only while you're ensign).

2 -Research: The chassis research is there to restrict corvette/frigate rushes by Vaygr that couldn't be held off by Hiigarans if that small delay wasn't there. Afterall, Hiigaran needs at least the research station out to be able to respond to rushes efficiently. It might make more sense if the facility and class-chassis technology wouldn't have pre-requirements, though.

3 - Crew: The crew station is a weak point, yes. It is not that hard to protect it, however(buffed armor). In Rebirth, the plan is to base Vaygr crew recruitment rates off the number of production-capable capitals. The idea of making it like that for Hiigarans also is a bit interesting, although may be dangerous for balance.

I personally wouldn't be against a re-haul of the crew, rank and some of the research mechanic though. I also don't think that the current state is very broken, however.

Ah sorry if you got the impression that I was complaining about broken mechanics That isn't the case. I pretty much murdered the easy AI in the game I played which made me feel like a real GOSU XD

But I was saying that the systems I mentioned could greatly improve from an overhaul, to really step back a bit and look at what should stay the same and what shouldn't.

1. AH well I'll have to patch, I was playing 8.6. And yes Vaygr should have more opportunities to be aggressive but I think there can be a pretty good balance between an aggressive race and macro opportunities. In Sins of a solar EMpire e.g. you buy ranks that then limit your income (Percentual upkeep of the fleet). Additionally you unlock new technologies with research which require an increasing amount of research stations.

2. Well their wouldn't be frigate rushes with a swapped order either. But it would make more sense in the flow of the research. Less clicks and less confusing to do the same thing. If it gets broken (which I don't think it would) we could just increase the time to develop the Frigate Chassis.

3. I'll play my next game as Hiigaran then. But in "Vanilla Complex 8" or something I always lost games because I lost either my power or my research station ;_; The increasing rate for Vaygr seems like a cool idea, though I think we could split the system to be more or less complex depending on what mode the player is using :p

SpaceKookie wrote:I had a slight mouse bug that made camera control difficult. Not sure if that's from the mod or some strange VM thing

That is a VM thing I believe — at least it is on my set-up. After a while I stopped worrying about it and  I just got used to it ;-)

ALC wrote:
That is a VM thing I believe — at least it is on my set-up. After a while I stopped worrying about it and  I just got used to it ;-)

Ah damn, too bad Well I might install it on my Mac (without VM) but I needed the Windows VM to run the developer tools :p

Btw @Crew system: http://complex.mastertopforum.com/gameplay-the-new-crewsystem-thread-vt2454.html

This was something I proposed years ago. As far as I understand it never god implemented

SpaceKookie wrote:This was something I proposed years ago. As far as I understand it never god implemented

Unless it was secretly implemented, and HE never told any of us :/

ALC wrote:

SpaceKookie wrote:This was something I proposed years ago. As far as I understand it never god implemented

Unless it was secretly implemented, and HE never told any of us :/

Hahaha....mayyybe? But idk, should we make a topic about the crew system and see what we can come up with? Especially in interaction with the ranks that I criticized above.

Start a topic in Brainstorming, and put in links to the complex forum topics, and see if a discussion gets going. If it is going to get implemented, it'll be here in complex enhanced.

ALC wrote:Start a topic in Brainstorming, and put in links to the complex forum topics, and see if a discussion gets going. If it is going to get implemented, it'll be here in complex enhanced.

Done. Check other thread. I also wanted to (seeing the discussion about the recon cruiser) rework the idea Bill had and post it. Most people probably never read it on here. And indeed if anything is ever gonna get done it's here :p