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Unread 8 Oct 2010, 01:05   #24
lokken
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Re: Planetarion - Put an Axe through it

I'm in agreement with Cooling, the game needs to be cut down quite considerably and at the very least, the existing features simplified. As it stands a planet is a complete ballache to set up and that's not newbie friendly at all, never mind understanding how the game works from a point of zero.

I think there's a strong argument to go back to four races at least, simply because it's easier to make stats more balanced and combat simpler. The tech tree is currently way too fast, in that it doesn't force people to make choices about how they run their planet.

At the moment we have a complex system where you can do everything at once relative to the overall length of the game. This is just letting everyone have their cake and eat it and have all the advantages, which in turn makes them worthless. Instead you should slow things down, make things simpler to understand but a lot more difficult to achieve and let people decide what holes they want open for exploitation.

The greatest illustration is in fleet choices and time travel. In the past, a slowed down tech tree would have the effect that by going for say, fast travel time would mean you were making a massive sacrifice in terms of having a balanced fleet. This meant you had to be confident in your ability to either fly under the radar or consistently pick up roids to make up for your losses. On the flip side, going for a balanced fleet by going for BS, meant you had to be extremely choosy about your targets to actually get anywhere and accept that against lower class ships, you were going to be less of an asset to your alliance for FI class defence. Simplifying the game invites situations like this.

Simplifying the game like this would have a greater effect than population and government on making people determine their strategy. We can actually create depth in the game by taking unnecessary things away and giving players real dilemmas. Useful features are concepts such as covert ops that work entirely outside of combat. Covops is such an example, but in my mind it has much in common with scanning. I'd support new features if they weren't combat related, but it seems that the 'pure' element of planetarion needs taking a hatchet to it.

Longer rounds would also make it more interesting as players would be more encouraged to play for the long term rather than play it safe when attacking or defending. The fact we have rounds that are only just over 1,000 ticks is very very bad. They should be 2,000 ticks and 1,500 at the very least. While this helps newbies a lot, it also makes sense at the highest level, because then it requires stamina and a greater sense of discipline and focus to win.

To make planetarion good, it must be about the long term and a game that is simple to understand and play but one that makes people think about strategy given the options available.
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Last edited by lokken; 8 Oct 2010 at 01:21.
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