Galaxy Disband
 

Add in an option to politics or preferences to turn off galaxy disband, then mail the universe than you've added it.

At tick 250-300, manually disband the small galaxys which havent ticked it.

The current situation with 'no disbands' is that you've created inactive galaxys, which are just huge 'farm' galaxys for the actives. Everytime i JGP one of the planets having 250+ roids, they got 7+ fleets attacking them.
You need to act on this quickly, as it'll drive away new players with the amount of incs they're getting. Its also undermining the whole Buddy Pack system which was introduced to try and stop inactive 'farm galaxys'.

Its also the problem, that any new signup is highly likely to land in one of these farm galaxys, and any inactive exiled from a top galaxy will end up there. Its a problem which needs to be acted on this round.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Agreed. Another hilarious problem created by Pateam's complete lack of understanding of the game. Why the **** do you think you introduced the galaxy disband option in the first place? It's like building a hospital and then tearing it down when it develops problems.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Every night this goes on, the more likely the inactives/new players are going to quit. Planetarion really cant afford to wait till next round to address the problem, even waiting till tick 250 might be too long in my opinion.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

I think we need to re-add disband and think hard about how to stop galaxies then becoming too big.

Clearly cutting and slashing features isn't the answer.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

I hate galaxy disband, it is not a solution to stand up for smallers!

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

You cant really blame the PA Team for this, as no-one warned them or forsaw this happening? unless you can direct me to a post of someone arguing against 'no disband'?

but i will agree that features should just be taken out as people are complaining about something else. As you have to remember why the feature was implemented in the first place.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

The way I see it, the feature was implemented to give the PA-Team less work since they had to manually disband galaxies before. The way I see it, the manual disband of PA team works in most cases.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

but then we get huge galaxys :p

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

The decision to remove galaxy disband was a good one, but something should be done to help galaxies which run into problems because everyone keeps exiling from them.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Not really.

No Disbands = new players/inactives get wtfpwned every night, if they init 200+ roids.

Disbands = Attacking is much harder for Actives/new players due to much larger galaxys.

On the scale of things, no disbands is causing alot more damage to Planetarion than Disbands.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Remember, new players don't really know what losing roids means mentally. new players might just think: so, i lost some roids, i can easily get them back too.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

or they go 'im being bashed by 5+ fleets everynight, i lose whatever i build and lose my roids'. Its easy to tell when you've been bashed.. you've got nothing left.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

I've given up on warning pateam about these things. The alternative is far more entertaining.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Which for a newbie, is the best way to mitigate the effect of alliances.

I've been thinking lately that the game is too focussed on alliances. I think the focus should be on bigger galaxies and forcing people to work with each other and keep meeting new people. in turn bigger alliances force alliances to work together more (how would they attack successfully otherwise!) and more politics isn't too bad a thing in my view.

Last round was a very good round but it could have been better if people had used their political opportunities more they would have had more chance of taking on bigger galaxies. Which in turn helps the smaller ones.

This may of course be something contingent on the number of people playing but I don't see anything wrong with galaxies of 18-20.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Yeah. That's why I said something should be done to help galaxies which run into problems because everyone keeps exiling from them. I'm glad you agree.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

In my opinion - lower ranking galaxies need help - not a button to allow them to disappear.

I know it might sound like a funny comparison, but take a look at Mario Kart. The players at the front of the race tend to get very weak items which don't allow them to go any faster, these are usually the best players who don't need any more help. Players at the back get all of the best items which helps them, usually these target everyone infront of them allowing them to gain positions.

How can disbanding the lowest x% of galaxies help in the long run? There will always be a low x% - it'll just change slowly throughout the round as more galaxies disband. Infact given that galaxies slowly get larger as the round progresses makes it even worse, that x% will contain more and more players when they decide to disband.

Now take a look at Planetarion. Lower ranking galaxies receive no help at all. There needs to be some sort of incentive for players to stay around and try to rebuild their galaxy. Cheaper initiation cost, cheaper constructions, faster research - I'm sure people here could come up with a decent set of suggestions on just how to do it.

Surely there must be some decent ways of helping poorly performing galaxies?

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Galaxy support keeps people playing a round, but I think alliances keep people playing between rounds. It's a difficult balancing act. I was planning on a few simple things to make galaxies slightly more co-operative next round, but I think that alliances still need support.

Obviously alliances need to be quite big, and apparently having a few larger alliances isn't popular


We certainly do the same for smaller planets (xp, salvage). It's something that's definitely worth considering as part of a solution.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

The solution isn't an artificial aid. Find a way of encouraging them to become more active and work together.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Imho, galaxies should be removed and players should be placed in a sphere-shaped universe. Add in more options for players to interact with each other (more than just attacking / defending / cov opping) and the problem should slowly solve itself.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Or keep galaxies and have them isolated, you need to explore to discover more galaxies.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

surely some of the solution is to reduce the amount of exiles so more mediocre players can stay in a good supportive gal, probably by giving gals a limited number as I think has been suggested recently by wishmaster: which will in turn push them as much as they can to getting an alliance who will support them in the long term.
I tangentially tried to think of some solutions in this post:
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...2&postcount=12

Heartless also makes a good point; assuming you would have travel times affected by distance increasing all the way around the sphere gradually, rather than simply removing the whole concept of lower travel times for anything but alliances, which would imo be a disaster for new players.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

No, galaxies are an artificial limit on people you can interact with in this game. What builds up a lot of interest in MMOs is that people can interact with each other - first within the game before it slowly adds up to outside of the game contacts. Galaxies do not help there.

Additionally, if you are required to explore new galaxies it means that a lot of bashing will go on inside a galaxy, forcing people out of the game even easier.

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

good point, hadn't thought of that

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Another way to solve it would be if the active universe grew a backbone and started attacking someone their own size. No?

Re: Galaxy Disband
 

Yeah, but from a game design point of view that's an utterly stupid approach to solving problems.