Lifeforms - Balance notes

Hello commanders!

Today with the Version 9.0.0-beta20 some balance was applied to Bermuda.

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: ogame.comastuff.com/LF_MASTER_Public.xlsx

Thanks again for all the feedback. Please keep it coming!


Your OGame Team

Hello commanders!

Today, at 14:00 CEST we will apply a balance patch to PTS (Bermuda).
There's no maintenance needed as the patch will be adjusting only some Lifeforms values.

Please check bellow a more detailed information about the balance changes.
The LF_Master file has been updated as well accordingly: ogame.comastuff.com/LF_MASTER_Public_June15.xlsx

Intro

Before we go deeper into the different aspect of the current balance changes, we would like to thank all players for the massive amount of feedback & input we have received in the last weeks from the PTS. Everyone who put time and effort into testing on the PTS helped us to vastly improve the update further and we are very grateful for all the dedication that players are showing. With the current changes we would like to address some of the feedback and narrow down the Lifeform to its final values which would be applied to the live release once we are ready. Please note that there are potential further changes if topics come up from the community that need to be addressed.

Production benefit related buildings and Lifeform technologies

For production related benefits there were a couple of changes. First, we equalized the cost scaling to 1.5 for all buildings and technologies. The main reason is that players will still receive powerful benefits with lower investments but the benefits don´t scale as well into late game creating a more balanced cost / investment ratio even with higher investments. For production related Lifeform buildings, we increase the benefit per level and for production related techs the overall benefit per level has been slightly reduced. This change should bring building and tech benefits more in line with each other. Additional changes we implemented are that production related buildings now have an energy cost added to them.

To compensate the increased energy needs we removed & replaced an “all resource production” tech from Rock´tal and replaced it with an “increased energy production” tech. This should help players to compensate for the increased energy needs of the production buildings across all Lifeforms and goes in line with the reduction for production benefits we were aiming for.

Detailed change:

• Rock´tal slot 7 “all production tech” removed
• Rock´tal slot 1 “metal production tech” moved to slot 7
• Rock´tal slot 1 “increased energy production tech” added

Ship combat technologies & defense

All technologies which would further improve ship combat strength have had 2 changes. The base value of the tech has been increased from 0.2 to 0.3 and the cost scaling has been increased to 1.5. Like the changes for resources, we want players to have a more significant improvement in the earlier stages while scaling the technology should be harder. Additionally, the base cost for all combat ship techs have been equalized. Similar changes were also done to the defense related technology. Since defense only has one technology that improves all defenses, we settled for the approach that defense technology will scale less strong then combat technology but will not have directly double the base value. Overall, this should lead to a situation where equal investments for both kinds of technology should result in relatively the same power where players who go for ship combat strength will have to decide if they specialize more in the direction of destroying defense or fleet vs. fleet combat.

Ship speed minor change

We decided to exclude Deathstar from the ship speed technology. The intention behind this change was that we didn´t want to have moon destruction being speed up further and additionally allow players to invest into this tech without having to change habits regarding fleet saving. The description text for this technology will be updated at a later point to include this information.

Slot 17 & Slot 18 technology changes

With the current balance change the 17^th and 18^th technology for the Rock´tal, Mecha and Kaelesh have been switched. Class benefit technology is now a slot 18 technology and all combat research related technologies (weapon, shield and armor tech) are now slot 17.

Conversion buildings time reduction

We also looked at the build time scaling for several buildings. While players can always invest into Nanite or Robotics to reduce the overall build time we felt that the increase for the “conversion buildings” (example Human: Academy of Sciences & Neuro-Calibration Centre) were too high and have been reduced.

Further notes

The above changes only mention the most important changes. All detailed changes for all values can be found in the excel file above. Additionally, there are 2 open topics for us where we will keep working on. All buildings on our PTS/QA system that give a bonus to the species tech tree currently don’t apply their bonus correctly. This is something we are working on and potentially in the future will do more changes to the bonus or scaling of those buildings. Another topic is fuel reduction. We know how important it is to not get to 100% fuel reduction with all technologies and server settings stacked on top. However currently fuel reduction is not working as intended on our PTS/QA system which makes it difficult to find the right balance. After this issue has been resolved there are potentially further changes to fuel reduction.

Final words

We are very honored by the community involvement on the Public Test Server and the overall input that was provided to make this update the best possible. With the balancing update on our Public Test Server we will also send out another wave of Dark Matter for players to further build up and test all features of the upcoming Lifeform 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.

Kind regards,

Your OGame Team

Hello commanders!

Another bit of info that is relevant:

- with this balance the ingame text will be adapted to the the changes as soon as it's online but some images won't be matching with the changes. This is a temporary situation and requires a new version that will come soon. After the new version is live (on PTS servers) the issue with mismatch images will be fixed.

Best regards,

Your OGame Team

Dear commanders,

We’re closing in on the end of the PTS phase for the OGame Lifeforms update. Today’s balancing patch will be the last fine-tuning before the update is applied to a live server. The team would like to use this opportunity to thank all the players who gave us such amazing support in improving this update further with their input and ideas. We have seen a lot of interesting discussions throughout the forums and on our official OGame Discord, which led to quite a few changes. In this community letter, we would like to not only communicate the current changes that have been done, but also give a short overview of all the changes made thanks to the amazing feedback we received, as well as share some insights into our plans for the future. But before we get to that, let’s briefly discuss the current changes.

Rock´tal building - Advanced Recycling Plant (building 12)

Before we go into the specifics, let’s first shed some light into how the building actually works. When a player has this building on their planet, if they are attacked by someone and a debris field is created, this building will take a % of the debris field and move the resources back to the planet. The resources which are collected by the building are removed from the debris field. This effect only occurs if the battle happens around the planet, not around the moon. Furthermore, if there are Reapers in the attacking fleet, they will take resources out of the debris field before the building does. The general design idea behind the building is that defensively oriented players have more options to make attacks against them less interesting or lucrative. While the building shines most in combination with a highly defensive setup, we agree that the building cuts into the victory margins of fleeters who catch people off guard. To find a compromise solution, we implemented the following changes and will further monitor how this building works out on the live service:

Changes:

• Building bonus limit reduced from 40% to 30%
• Building cost scaling increased from 1.3 to 1.5
• Building energy scaling increased from 1.07 to 1.1
• Building bonus per level reduced from 0.8 to 0.6

Kaelesh building - Supra Refractor (building 12)

This building increases the chance that a moon is created, as well as the size of that moon. As players correctly noted, in the beginning this building had the option to increase the moon size to 10,000 km, a benefit which would influence the moon destruction chance in an unintended way. As a means of reducing the overall power of this building, we decided to apply the increase to moon size only to the minimum moon size, but ultimately this led to the building being not very interesting. After further discussions, we decided to alter the building once more, reverting the previous change, whilst simultaneously ensuring not to create moons that were unintended. To this end, we have introduced a new global limit to moon sizes, currently set to 9,400 km. By comparison, the standard maximum moon size without modifiers is 8,944 km.

Changes:

• Building base costs doubled
• Building cost scaling increased from 1.3 to 1.4
• Building energy cost scaling increased from 1.03 to 1.05
• Building bonus per level reduced from 1 to 0.5
• Building bonus limit reduced from 50% to 30%

Additional changes:

• Lifeform techs which reduce the fuel consumption of ships (Efficiency Module & Heat Recovery) have had their bonus per level reduced from 0.05 to 0.03 and cost scaling increased from 1.4 to 1.5

These are the final changes for now for the PTS version of the OGame Lifeforms update. Please note that balancing and development is an ongoing process. Even after the release of the update, we will monitor its impact and what feedback players provide and potentially alter and adapt the content. We therefore encourage all players to keep up with the discussions and feedback. It is a great help to us, and a further step towards improving OGame.

That leads us on to the next thing we wanted to highlight. Thanks to the great feedback that we received from players, we made a huge number of changes. Beside the balancing tweaks already mentioned, mostly inspired by player feedback, we also received numerous feature requests that have been added or potentially will be added in the future. We would like to share some of the stand-out changes here.

Features that already made it into the current PTS version:

• The majority of balancing changes were made based on community input and feedback
• We added an overview of all lifeform-related bonuses which come from buildings and tech. Players can now see at a glance what bonuses are applied to the planet they are currently on
• We updated the information tooltips for lifeforms and food production with additional information as requested by players
• Several text descriptions were altered and updated

Upcoming additions to the Lifeforms update (post release) based on community input:

• Changes to how lifeform experience is earned. We will implement daily limits with a catch-up mechanic if you miss days, as well as flatten the experience scaling, allowing more levels by reducing the bonus gained per level. Additionally, there will be a total limit for the bonus gained from leveling up lifeforms
• Updates to the 0.5 fuel consumption server setting to work properly with the Lifeforms fuel reductions
• Changes to combat expeditions debris field. The debris field server setting will be updated, and the limit will apply as intended
• Update to phalanx report to display the ship speed of the slowest ship with all lifeform tech modifiers included
• The Lifeforms tutorial will be updated

This is just a short glimpse into what is planned as the next steps. We hope you enjoyed the PTS phase as much as we did, and we’re looking forward to the upcoming Lifeforms live release.

Bermuda and everyone on the OGame Team would once again like to express their sincere gratitude to the amazing community who make anything possible.

We are not alone!

Kind regards,

The OGame Team

Lifeforms Master file with more detailed information has been adjusted accordingly: ogame.comastuff.com/LFMaster.xlsx