Planetarion Forums - View Single Post - If I could make three changes to Planetarion, they'd be .....

berten · 1 Jul 2010, 14:52

I've been giving some toughts on how to make the life of new players easier. At the moment they get dropped into an imediate war scenario. The moment they get out of productions we'll wave them like vultures and strike the will to play out of them at tick 80 even tough we know bash limit will mean we only get a small amount of roids. Altough planetarion as game is easy as hell, the metagame has quite a steep learning curve. New players can just not get a hang of the game without exessive help from galaxy/alliance , and we provide no way for them to get this easily.

1. Make attacking newbies less profitable.
I'll start by mentioning the universe we currently play in is rather small so the level we can achieve this suggestion on will be farely limited.
I want to give the new players some relative quiet time after they signup, (and with this scenario i think new players signing up later will be able to roll into the game more easily).

The current x:y:z system we use means that everyone has the same traveltime to every galaxy/cluster. This suggestion starts with throwing this idea in the trashcan and start using dynamic etas.

Concrete idea: When the round starts we create x-amount of clusters and put all planets in those. These galaxies are now full and will receive no additional signups. This core of the universe will hold most / all of the active players. While this universe keeps ticking we should periodically create a new cluster in which new planets land. Travelling to this cluster from inside the core-universe should take longer (and i mean +2-3 ticks so 5-6 ticks forth and back - basicly enough so that the 75 roids you get from them by travelling 6 ticks longer then you'd have needed to get 200 in the core-universe mean jack shit to your planet.)

After a while the first newbie-universe will evolve into part of the core-universe as we keep putting layers of clusters around it. This way we might be able to create a semi-isolated universe for new players, in effect cutting them off from the main universe to integrate them gradually. Obviously alliances can still play their part here by gettinng these new players inolved etc.

(I hope my wall of text here kinda makes sense, i'd be happy to go into a bit more detail to work out any flaws etc).

2. Make attacking more fun then finding defence + getting more planets in the universe + getting rid of inactives
Planetarion the game is boring. You have 3 fleetslots, need to do 1-2 research/constructions / day and maybe find 1-2 attacks and send a defense fleet. Next to that attacking doesn't reward you. You can get more asteroids which means you can build more ships to send in those 3 fleets, not actually a reward I'd say.

It's only when you get attacked that the fun starts. Finding defense, calcing, ....

We can mine asteroids the entire lifespan of our planet, for free .. this seems to be a bit odd and could be changed. I suggest we shift the emphasis for resource-gathering from asteroids to planets. Get the ability to 'conquer' planets and treat them each as an entity in game. Each planet could have their own fleet-setup, construction, ... . This way we create a universe with more planets to attack. Inactive planets will be easy targets and be eaten by the bigger ones, which might seem like a bad plan but It'd get rid of the reason to exile. (Remember that the new players that joined later and hence have a disadvantage are sitting peacefully away from all the instant killing in their far away clusters). We would see an entire new way of playing planetarion with the possibility of conquering and loosing your own strongholds + we could finally see civilisations (read: players) getting totally pwnd, fleeing and finding a new place amongst the newbies in cluster x2303.

I think this change in play would bring more targets to the universe, would mean less luck is involved in creating a strong galaxy (remember you can easily take over inactive planets), Small but very active alliances have less of a disadvantage towards alliances that fight by numbers, every tick would require some micromanaging to get the tactical setup for all your planets right in order.

3. http://pirate.planetarion.com/showth...81#post3175981

yes, i know i should go play CIV IV but i'm at work

1 Jul 2010, 14:52	#50
berten respect, unity, order Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 280	Re: If I could make three changes to Planetarion, they'd be ..... I've been giving some toughts on how to make the life of new players easier. At the moment they get dropped into an imediate war scenario. The moment they get out of productions we'll wave them like vultures and strike the will to play out of them at tick 80 even tough we know bash limit will mean we only get a small amount of roids. Altough planetarion as game is easy as hell, the metagame has quite a steep learning curve. New players can just not get a hang of the game without exessive help from galaxy/alliance , and we provide no way for them to get this easily. 1. Make attacking newbies less profitable. I'll start by mentioning the universe we currently play in is rather small so the level we can achieve this suggestion on will be farely limited. I want to give the new players some relative quiet time after they signup, (and with this scenario i think new players signing up later will be able to roll into the game more easily). The current x:y:z system we use means that everyone has the same traveltime to every galaxy/cluster. This suggestion starts with throwing this idea in the trashcan and start using dynamic etas. Concrete idea: When the round starts we create x-amount of clusters and put all planets in those. These galaxies are now full and will receive no additional signups. This core of the universe will hold most / all of the active players. While this universe keeps ticking we should periodically create a new cluster in which new planets land. Travelling to this cluster from inside the core-universe should take longer (and i mean +2-3 ticks so 5-6 ticks forth and back - basicly enough so that the 75 roids you get from them by travelling 6 ticks longer then you'd have needed to get 200 in the core-universe mean jack shit to your planet.) After a while the first newbie-universe will evolve into part of the core-universe as we keep putting layers of clusters around it. This way we might be able to create a semi-isolated universe for new players, in effect cutting them off from the main universe to integrate them gradually. Obviously alliances can still play their part here by gettinng these new players inolved etc. (I hope my wall of text here kinda makes sense, i'd be happy to go into a bit more detail to work out any flaws etc). 2. Make attacking more fun then finding defence + getting more planets in the universe + getting rid of inactives Planetarion the game is boring. You have 3 fleetslots, need to do 1-2 research/constructions / day and maybe find 1-2 attacks and send a defense fleet. Next to that attacking doesn't reward you. You can get more asteroids which means you can build more ships to send in those 3 fleets, not actually a reward I'd say. It's only when you get attacked that the fun starts. Finding defense, calcing, .... We can mine asteroids the entire lifespan of our planet, for free .. this seems to be a bit odd and could be changed. I suggest we shift the emphasis for resource-gathering from asteroids to planets. Get the ability to 'conquer' planets and treat them each as an entity in game. Each planet could have their own fleet-setup, construction, ... . This way we create a universe with more planets to attack. Inactive planets will be easy targets and be eaten by the bigger ones, which might seem like a bad plan but It'd get rid of the reason to exile. (Remember that the new players that joined later and hence have a disadvantage are sitting peacefully away from all the instant killing in their far away clusters). We would see an entire new way of playing planetarion with the possibility of conquering and loosing your own strongholds + we could finally see civilisations (read: players) getting totally pwnd, fleeing and finding a new place amongst the newbies in cluster x2303. I think this change in play would bring more targets to the universe, would mean less luck is involved in creating a strong galaxy (remember you can easily take over inactive planets), Small but very active alliances have less of a disadvantage towards alliances that fight by numbers, every tick would require some micromanaging to get the tactical setup for all your planets right in order. 3. http://pirate.planetarion.com/showth...81#post3175981 yes, i know i should go play CIV IV but i'm at work __________________ Together We Stand Divided We Fall [Ðragons]