End this MOO3 support

[Wooglin]

I would seriously consider deleting all of the MOO3 forums (fora?). There are very few posts and most ask questions that are more appropriate for a developer's customer support site rather than a fan site, as there seems to be few of those at this late date.

[Vince278]

Disagree

[macraig]

I'm rather curious to know what would motivate someone not directly connected with ownership or management of a site to suggest such a thing in the first place? What possible un-ill-intentioned payback or reward could someone receive from seeing that suggestion carried out?

As a lawyer might say, "it goes to motive, your Honor...."

[vmxa1]

I don't know about deletion of the threads, but the statement about the recent content is a fair observation.

I have been meaning to try this again with the patch, but finding useful information is not easy.

[macraig]

VXMA:

Hey there, fellow MOO II/III'er! I finally bought III about a week ago (Amazon of all places had it for $17, and I thought "what the heck"), and I also installed the v1.25 patch shortly after. Thus, since I didn't play it without the patch, I can't tell you just how much or how little improvement the patch actually affords.

However, I can tell you that I'm just as disappointed as I expected to be. Some aspects are just as bad as I'd been led to expect, a few are less so, and then there are some things that are so "broken" - like not being able to bombard outposts - that are utterly inexplicable and caught me by surprise.

I guess perhaps I've just gotten pickey? I bought GalCiv at the same time, and haven't found it to be much more enjoyable/playable either, but just for different reasons. I think I've played too many board and computer games in the last 25 years, and now with all that experience and insight I've become too jaded! I've seen all the mistakes and missteps many times over, and so now I expect the game designers to have seen them, too, and be developing games that go past them. But, of course, they're not, whether for reasons of economics, greed, or limited experience. I guess if I want it done "right", I'll have to spend a year getting my programming skills current and then try to do it myself, or maybe then join the Free Orion project....

As a MOO II aside, it was amusing to see that my old MOO II race submission, "What's in a name", is still loitering at this site! I needed that nostalgia right now.

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by macraig
VXMA:

Hey there, fellow MOO II/III'er! I finally bought III about a week ago (Amazon of all places had it for $17, and I thought "what the heck"), and I also installed the v1.25 patch shortly after. Thus, since I didn't play it without the patch, I can't tell you just how much or how little improvement the patch actually affords.

However, I can tell you that I'm just as disappointed as I expected to be. Some aspects are just as bad as I'd been led to expect, a few are less so, and then there are some things that are so "broken" - like not being able to bombard outposts - that are utterly inexplicable and caught me by surprise.

I guess perhaps I've just gotten pickey? I bought GalCiv at the same time, and haven't found it to be much more enjoyable/playable either, but just for different reasons. I think I've played too many board and computer games in the last 25 years, and now with all that experience and insight I've become too jaded! I've seen all the mistakes and missteps many times over, and so now I expect the game designers to have seen them, too, and be developing games that go past them. But, of course, they're not, whether for reasons of economics, greed, or limited experience. I guess if I want it done "right", I'll have to spend a year getting my programming skills current and then try to do it myself, or maybe then join the Free Orion project....

As a MOO II aside, it was amusing to see that my old MOO II race submission, "What's in a name", is still loitering at this site! I needed that nostalgia right now.

Make any type of game is than art not than science. I also think they need new breakthought in computer hardware and softwares to go to the next level, I donot mean new graphic card. They need to go to 64 bits operation system with 64 bits hardwares.

[macraig]

Nah... what we need are better game DESIGNERS and PROGRAMMERS: ones not wet behind the ears in their twenties, and who have some serious gaming experience under their belts, especially in whatever specific genre they're developing. Me, my gaming experience goes back twenty-five years, to BOARD games like RISK and Squad Leader and Stellar Conquest.

That latter, BTW, is essentially the direct ancestor of ALL the 4X computer games that have ever been created; they basically all stole the concept and basic mechanics from that game. Surprisingly little has actually been added in all this time, since it was first published in 1974. In many ways that old board game was more playable than most of the 4X computer games, because designers Jackson and Thompson had a solid respect for "playability", in an era when there were no desktop computers to handle complex game mechanics.

I just wish most game designers had that much depth and breadth to them. Alan Emrich in theory DOES, because I remember him from my convention-going days in the early Eighties, but in the instance of MOO III it seems that his experience may have been hamstrung by altruism (on his part), greed, impatience and economics.

[Stormhound]

Of course, given the pay (poor) and the hours (long) there are a limited number of designers and programmers (especially the latter) willing to stay with it. People have this funny habit of eventually wanting a life outside the office, so turnover in the industry is a way of life.

[Admiral PJ]

MOO3 may not be as popular as Civ3, or as great, but I quite like playing it. Maybe the new 1.25 has helped, I only got Moo3 in the xmas shopping Sales last week,but so far it has been good . I'm a fan of science fiction so I like this type of game. I like the variety of species to play, and sub species.. the graphics actually look quite good - i'm a supporter of voxel like graphics, though it would have been nice to have multiple gfx for each shipclass type.. maybe we can edit this?
The senate with its Federal style laws is interesting, I started off in it with a Race that had a random chance of Senate membership. Science is quite good, although I've not yet found the AI willing to trade techs.. i probably need a higher Diplomatic Friendship level with the humans or someone else.
Its nice that there are some tech tree sections, but not enough really(I mean where one tech requres 2 others like in Civ, for an interesting tech strategy chart) . The spying section seems pretty good, with some plot elements like assasinations, and spy imprisonment.
I've yet to try many battles, the ground combat sounds like a good idea. The space combat isn't as good as Moo2 , but its nice to have more spacecraft development options.
I love the MOO3 style of spacecraft creation, although i can't find out how to upgrade my existing ships.

I think this type of game needs a support and fan forum like Apolyton, the problem is all the negative propoganda against MOO3 , maybe from some of us beardy weirdy Civ 3 players - well I sometimes forget to shave while playing it.

The forum was most useful to give feedback to the developers , although i'm not sure how much input actually went into the game - not enough people proposed ideas either. The forum has been around a long time, and it needs more people using it. Its nice that its independant from the Official forums, so people don't have to worry about upsetting the publishers - although unfortunately this forum isn't very independant in some respects, maybe i'm being paranoid.

STORMhound, I disagree with your ideas about gamedesign, you stated you thought there was too much time spent on the game Combat engine development, but this is one of the most vital areas of the game. I don't know if you meant you didn't like combat in games or what, but maybe its managers like you that are the problem with current game development, not us programmers. I think the designer of this game didn't have enough understanding of programming and gameplay, they were thinking a bit too much of simulation and overcomplex modelling.

Games design definitely needs long hours of development, but the salaries can be very good, although a lot does goes to publishers or company managers.
The major problem with current game software design is that it is all money based, only the games which are thought to be sure fire winners are made, and which will make the most money. There is not enough creativity or risk.. thats why mostly sequels are being made in all entertainment fields.

I'm a programmer , as well as games designer/artist. I feel i'd prefer to make an original and excitingly creative game.. and wouldn't mind an average pay and 5 year development time if the game was good, and the development team was skilled and motivated.

[CharlesBHoff]

First I think we are close to the maxium useage you can get out of 32 bits hardware, OS and software.

[Stormhound]

PJ,

First off...I wasn't a manager, I was an assistant designer. I've never been a manager, don't WANT to be a manager, and most of my career I've been a programmer. So if "managers like me" are the problem, you're going to have a tough time finding a solution.

I don't think I'll even address your comment about the designers.

I said that there was too much time spent on the game's combat engine because there WAS too much time spent on it...to wit, it got completely redesigned multiple times. You're a programmer...how many projects stand a chance of coming out on time and within budget if you have to go back to square one more than once? I'm hardly the only QS person to say what I'm saying...just the only one to say so publicly.

But hey, nice to hear from you.

[macraig]

IMO the combat engine didn't even need to have so much attention lavished upon it, because combat resolution is a tactics issue and thus not one that warrants intense focus in an alleged strategy game. (I thought you might have been alluding to that, so I thought I'd say it outright.)

I personally couldn't care *that* much how the combat is resolved. Visual combat feedback is nice and all, but as you hinted doing it right and automating the entire battle is almost an entire game unto itself.

My intent was to buy a strategy game; if I'd wanted tactics, I'd have dug up one of the computer renditions of the old Star Fleet Battles game, or something.

[Destroyer]

Bollocks to many of you!

I liked the combat engine in Moo3.

While it took several patches to work properly, and has room for improvement, it reflect the rest of the game:

Namely, the skeleton for a fantastic game now exists, and just needs to be fleshed out. Unfortuantely, this is not going to happen. Civ 3 has the benefit of having 2 makeovers on the same basic system. Moo3 started form scratch.

The combat, while I liked the moo2 version, is far superior. The game is based on a much larger empire, with more ships. How many people did not get fed up with moo2s half hour turn based combat sections in the later game. Pre patch, you could anhilate your enemy fleet of a hundred ships before they got a shot off.

Moo3 represents the future of strategic space combat, and is the best model available. Sure some people dont care; go play Galciv. moo3 tried to take a step forward, something Civ has not done for 10 years. They succedeeded in many areas. Unfortuantely there are too few of us left to appreciate this, or even understand it due to the ineptitude of the instuction manual.

It is unlikely we wil see another ambitious space 4x game for many many years. There are many people to blame, from the developers, Atari, and the fans, who didnt put the time in to learn to enjoy the game.

I must admit, at first I found it difficult, but after recently sitting and learning how to play Stars!, I also learnt the virtue of patience.

With 4x genre in the toilet and the RPG genre buried under the notion that"3d is cool", I can sit back and "enjoy" a further decade of 1st person shooters and rts, and the occasional crappy MMPORPG.

Or I can get myself a life...

... erm, maybe not.

[Vince278]

[macraig]

MOO III certainly has a better more robust planetary defense model than GalCiv, I'll tell ya what. GalCiv completely buys into the "traditional" paradigm that dumbs-down planetary defenses to make it easy to conquer a planet with one or a few ships. If you ask me, it's always been a sorry excuse for not implementing some really functional controls for fleet and ship design, grouping, movement, refit/repair/resupply, etc. MOO III could certainly still use some work in that area as well, but it's probably a better framework even as it is, as Destroyer said.

I may not entirely like the MOO III task force system, but I understand why it was important, especially to aid in creating a better AI combat model. Giving each ship a dedicated purpose, as opposed to each being multi-role, probably makes it much easier to create a system for automated combat resolution. It's a better approach than that implemented by most 4X games I've seen. The combat resolution was usually stylized and simplified just to make it feasible at all. I will admit that the MOO III CRS has a more realistic flavor to it, in spite of what I said earlier.

I am completely flummoxed, though, why MOO III fails to include any sorting or grouping options in Ship Design in particular. It has limited capability like that in Planets (and Shipyard|Fleets), but as already been pointed out that capability was better implemented in MOO II. It should have been very easy to include and certainly not something left on the cutting-room floor.

Destroyer is largely right: MOO III is a good framework in spite of it needing a lengthy tune-up. I hadn't recognized the feeling before, but that's part of what frustrates me, knowing it has/had promise but won't get any better now. (There's no economic incentive: updates don't get press or reviews and rarely woo back disappointed customers; a whole "new" game release with a new round of expensive advertising etc. would be required to overcome the lack of inertia problem).

[Vince278]

All are valid points. I'm still playing the game right now (heavy modded).

[bakalov]

The main problems of the MOO3 game, imo, are:
- unfriendly user interface
- no tools for macromanagement besides the development plans, ant these are not real tools, just an unclear way to tweak the AI.
For the tactical combat what I miss is an overview of the whole battle. What kind of general or admiral you can be when you cannot see the whole battleground?

And here are some concrete issues:
- Much of the items do not have context help.
- There are items that are not longer used but still can be seen in the user interface (like these concerning robotic FLUs).
- There is no good enough tool to keep the planets with a single type of pop. Sometimes I want to eliminate or send elsewhere a certain part/type of the population. When setting migration I'd want to be able to tell what kind of population I want there. I want to forbid migration of certain races to certain planets.
The need of doing this is not my freak, it is "natural" or "logical".

-For the lack of tools for macromanagement I mean some simple things that can allow easy and efficient handling of the planetary production like global settings (for the entire empire) and local settings (for each planet), and a checkbox on each planet wheather to use the global settings or not.
These settings could be something like:
- Min and Max AU spent per industry point - or - minimum efficiency allowed (1:2 for example) - I do want to limit the AI from "wasting" the 1M AU bank I have collected with great effort only in a few turns by setting the production at 20% and causing a terrible inefficiency this way (this is an example for one very STUPID thing that the AI does). The efficiency exists as a term and there MUST be a way for it to be managed. I do not say "remove the AI", just give it some limits.
-The same applies for science.
-I want that I can globally or locally lock the ratio between the AUs spent for production and science.
-The queues should be longer and there should be adjustable predefined queues so the player can switch them.
-I liked the feature in galciv that allowed global changes of production: "All planets building S1 should now change to S2" - very useful when introducing new ship designs. Even an option to cancel current unfinished production of S1-s can be added. S2 even can be "nothing" and this can be used to stop a kind of production.
-Allow bombardment/attack on outposts.
-The detection and cloaking are a vital part of the battle, and there is no good enough explaination how do they work. I can never know how much ECM and ECCM is enough and on which ships they should be, and how this wil affect the detection of the whole task force.
-Make a minimap and/or allow zoom change for the tactical combat.

These are a few very simple things (or at least the greater part of them) that could have made the game much more playable and enjoyable. Most of them require very little effort to be implemented. I wonder how the designers did not guess about them themselves :PP

[Stormhound]

The designers did guess about some of them. One or two of them are even in the game...but I leave it to you to figure out which, after that last comment.

[ChristopherC]

It is for me disappointing and puzzling about a computer game when some one such as me, admittedly with no programming knowledge, but a deep love of strategic computer games and, I feel, an intuitive feel for what constitutes a good one, can see in a game such as MOO3 bugs and deficiencies which are so glaringly obvious that the programmers and developers should have noticed them even if they had been wearing sunglasses in front of their computer screens!

However, improve the fonts, add a powerful scenario editor and, if possible, soup-up the combat engine and this could be a classic game, which is why I have stuck with it for so far. But the urge to try out Haegemonia: Legions of Iron or Frontier Wars, now gathering dust on my shelves, is growing ever stronger. And while I am not won over to Galactic Civilisations yet, maybe the scenario editor in the offing may seduce me.

I just dont understand why these games shouldnt be getting better and better. Every year there is more powerful software, let alone computery, so developers and programmers shouldnt have to re-invent the wheel or fail to make sure the wheel they do invent is perfectly round! It seems to me that now one ought to be able to write increasingly sophisticated strategic games almost to order and with a minimum of costs and time. They seem to be able to do it with shoot-em 'up games! Incidentally, I imagine that fifty years from now our home computers will be so sophisticated that we will just able to say to them that we feel like a new strategy game or shoot-em up game, name a few preferences and ideas for it and they will cook them as quickly as the microwave cooks up a meal. But admittedly I may be getting into Matrix territory here.

The absolute industry standard for space games is Alpha Centauri. The graphics may not have been very pretty but when it had added a few mods, with its logical and involving gameplay and a powerful scenario editor it seems to me to be a lone eminence in space strategy. Maybe one day, they will make a 3D version of it - which, if they did, might finally put paid to any social life I ever thought of having but that is opportunity cost for you!

Live long and prosper.

[ChristopherC]

PS. I just thought to add.

There is absolutely no point in investing in a game where the publishers wont stick with MODs, new scenarios and Add-ons for a year or two, at least. It isnt as if there isnt a commercial logic in that. I just dont see why INFOGRAMES couldnt have made such a commitment. They could make more money out of an add-on, couldnt they? More power to Stardock for making that commitment with 'Galactic Civilisations'. That is the way forward and I do hope they reap the profit from it as we reap the benefit! (No, I dont work for Stardock, even though I praise them. I am just a disappointed MOO3 fan but one still playing the game!)

[macraig]

Originally posted by ChristopherC The absolute industry standard for space games is Alpha Centauri. The graphics may not have been very pretty but when it had added a few mods, with its logical and involving gameplay and a powerful scenario editor it seems to me to be a lone eminence in space strategy. Maybe one day, they will make a 3D version of it - which, if they did, might finally put paid to any social life I ever thought of having but that is opportunity cost for you!

Oh, you are SO misguided in this conclusion that I don't know where to begin! Wait... yes I do: it's a knock-off, a copy-cat. News Flash: Sid Meier is not known for breaking new ground; he steals other's ideas and repackages them. Not that everyone else doesn't also do it, but they do so quietly; Meier has deliberately worked to associate his name with originality in spite of his thievery, so much so that now his name alone on a box is supposed to be a selling point. AFAIK he's never paid homage to the people whose ideas he "borrowed" and from which he's profited.

Alpha Centauri is a thinly-disguised remake of Mark Baldwin's Empire, plain and simple. So are all the Civ games, too, really; Alpha Centauri merely adds the sci-fi element in an attempt to further obfuscate the obvious. Take away the graphics of these games and they play no better - in some cases [b]worse[b] - than even Baldwin's original ASCII-text version of Empire.

Of course you might not have known that if you haven't been gaming as long as I have, so your affliction might merely be ignorance rather than stupidity. I've been around long enough to have seen these gaming progressions, though, so I can speak with some authority on the matter.

Take my word for it, trust me, honest: if you see Sid Meier's name affixed to a game, RUN, don't walk, quickly the other way. There's better out there.

AFA why games aren't "getting better and better", I think I know why, and I've been sharing the theory for the last couple years with anyone that would listen (and even a few that wouldn't). Short story: it's a matter of economics; there's no long-term profit to be had in producing the "perfect" 4X game. There are altruistic designers and programmers that would do it (I think Emrich is one such), but the people holding the purse strings aren't gamers and aren't in it for the altruism, I'll tell you what.

[Destroyer]

I dont see what point you are making.

Civ drew lots of ideas from many different places. I thought it was a board game first????

Anyway, unorigionality does not make it crap. SMAC was everything that civ3 should have been.

And I am afraid that SMAC is probably the best space 4x game. Its ai and diplomacy are the best I have seen.

You critisise, but you didnt say what you thought was the best.

Moo3 is a different type of 4x game. If it had the kind of development and polish, plus support that smac had, we would all probably be in gaming heaven right about now

[ChristopherC]

Well, Macraig I defer to your experience. But I have tried out quite a few games in this genre over the years and IMHO none has quite the playability SMAC has. It is one of the few games to which I could consider going back to play, if I got so disillusioned with what is out there at the moment. SMAC had a scenario bug at the outset which needed fixing but thereafter it was remarkably bug-free. The scenario editor was relatively simple to use and a joy to set up, covering the widest range of options for how difficult or how weird you wanted the gameplay. I was particularly impressed with that, in contrast, say, to 'Reach for the Stars' which, particularly with the lack of documentation, seemed to require a degree in astronautics!

What I am really hoping is that Stardock do well in their commitment to enhancing Galactic Civilisations over a given period so that they continue to turn a profit and we punters find our pleasure in the game enhanced. (I must admit I find that the budget rules are diabolical!) That could prove a pathfinder for other publishing companies.

There are also lone programmers who have programmed and managed to get published the likes of 'Starships Unlimited', 'Space Empires' and there are some still trying to get 'Stars! Supernova' off the ground. Maybe that is another way forward?

As for Destroyer's remark, 'Moo3 is a different type of 4x game. If it had the kind of development and polish, plus support that smac had, we would all probably be in gaming heaven right about now.' Right on, Destroyer! My sentiments exactly!

Live long and prosper.

[Alex]

Originally posted by ChristopherC
SMAC had a scenario bug at the outset which needed fixing but thereafter it was remarkably bug-free.

I agree with you about SMAC being a wonderfully playable strat game, but it has lots of bugs that were never fixed... these bugs may not be game-breakers in the end, but they're annoying nonetheless.

[Vince278]

Empire may have been the great grand daddy of all games of the type but that doesn't mean its spiritual descendants are copies. I also may be alone in saying that I was not impressed with SMAC but I cannot elaborate because its been so long since I've played it. I can agree with the perception that Sid just seems to slap his name on someone else's efforts to sell it but I'm sure he has done alot to get to where he is in the first place. I'm also a fan of Space Empires. I'm still playing MOO3 but I believe SE IV to be a far superior game.

[macraig]

Originally posted by Vince278
I'm also a fan of Space Empires. I'm still playing MOO3 but I believe SE IV to be a far superior game.

You know, I'd rather forgotten about SE IV, in all my obsession with GalCiv and MOO III and how to "fix" them. I'd played the demo several times and was getting pretty attached to it, but then I got distracted before I actually bought the game. I need to go back and try that demo again with MOO III and GalCiv fresh in my mind. Maybe Starships Unlimited, too. Maybe that will cure me of this growing urge to start modding MOO III in earnest.

[bakalov]

Stormhound, no matter what did you say, the interface is unfriendly and inconvenient.
I know that you can delete the production of a design, but you CANNOT change it to another design, and if you want to do so you have to click on HUNDREDS planets and queues. Deletion only is not enough.

Such things ruin the whole game imo. I like the game but the user interface and the game control are awful. I am frustrated when it takes me half an hour just to start building new type of a ship. Of course having an AI to do the most of the things is good, but this should be OPTIONAL. And there should be tools for manual MACROMANAGEMENT and the AI should be as much tweakable as it can be. I can give another example for a good macromanagement tool that was not mentioned in my previous post:
A simple table with the current ship designs (or may be ship types according to their roles - beam, missile, carrier, recon, colony, outpost, ground forces - battle, and ground forces - support, with sliders or percentages to the right, so the player can select how much of each type should be built. There can be comboboxes for the preference of the race for colony ships, and the desired native gravity of the ground forces. The AI can set military queues quite well according to such simple information, and I am sure that I would like the result. The planets may have a checkbox that would enable the system ship building and still use the same ratios.

I know that there were lots of problems during the project, major changes in the design team but this is not an excuse. I do not want to be so offensive, but I am angry (and sorry at the same time) that one of my favourite series finished in such way.

[ChristopherC]

I would have loved to have played Space Empires but, being in the UK, I learnt that the only way it would have been available was on the Net. Now, gentlemen, you can pull out my fingernails or rack me but I will never, ever diverge credit details on the Net even if the secure site is Fort Knox! It seems to me there are just too many evil wizards with baddd programs out there which can hoover such details no matter how protected you think you are.

The saddest but most instructive example for our discussion, I think, is a game called Stars! Supernova. This has been developed by a bunch of guys who really care about space strategy who had originally published Stars!, a great concept, though with shareware graphics, and who sought to upgrade it. They have apparently been struggling for several years now to publish without success! I hope their fairy godmother turns up for them soon!

I still maintain that a publishing company can make money out of remaining committed to a game by publishing add-ons etc., for which if we loved the game we would be happy to fork out, which it is why it is soooo important that it works out for Stardock!

Live and prosper.

[macraig]

Originally posted by ChristopherC
Now, gentlemen, you can pull out my fingernails or rack me but I will never, ever diverge credit details on the Net even if the secure site is Fort Knox!

Oh, stop! The 'Net is no less (or more) secure than tangible equivalents in the real world, and there's no excuse to use that as a reason to avoid it as a transaction medium. You're demonstrating how superstition arises from fear and lack of specific knowledge.

I know about the Stars! Supernova struggle, and it's not entirely unique. In spite of that, self-publishing, open source, and donation-ware are the only way that designers and developers are going to recapture the integrity of the process. No good can come from a process where the decision-makers have a completely different agenda than the "implementers", and it's time the implementers rebelled en masse. I don't much like GalCiv myself because of the basic design approach, but I do appreciate their relative success at avoiding selling the soul of their project to venture capitalists (publishers) who care nothing for the integrity of the project beyond their "dividends".

"We wantsss our cut, we wantsss it to be big, yes Preciousss, and we doesn't care what has to be done to get it!"

[macraig]

Originally posted by bakalov
Such things ruin the whole game imo. I like the game but the user interface and the game control are awful.

bakalov:

While I agree with your complaint (I've echoed it previously), it's also true that MOO III is just one recipient of that complaint: there are many others. In fact it's rare to find a 4X game that really does find the right balance between micro- and macro-management, and provides a useful interface to accomplish both as needed. As for me, I'm still looking; even MOO II wasn't the bee's knees, though I played it for seven years for wont of anything better.

I also recognize (when I'm not busy whining) that designers have their own private Hell in which they live: if they design a game to suit my tastes, they'll anger someone else whose tastes differ from mine. Designers are challenged with trying to be all things to all gamers in a genre, and AFAIK no one has yet succeeded; if they do, it will be a big expensive project, but I can be patient....

A simple table with the current ship designs (or may be ship types according to their roles - beam, missile, carrier, recon, colony, outpost, ground forces - battle, and ground forces - support, with sliders or percentages to the right, so the player can select how much of each type should be built.

Ironically, there IS such a table already, in TaskForceRules.txt, and it's purpose is exactly what you describe. Unfortunately, the details of that table were not exposed through the UI (user interface), so the balances are fixed unless you're willing and able to modify the table beforehand (and which of course doesn't help if you want to change the proportions mid-game).