Quote:
Originally Posted by HellKicker
JBG, what do you think of going even further; to actually create a 3D map and to use various (geometric) mathematical formulaes to calculate a eta bonus/penalty from between (per say) -2 to +2, depending on distance. I guess the greatest challenge will be to teach Cin how to calc a distance between two points within a sphere.
|
Obviously the most straightforward option is just to wrap the universe around so c1 is connected to the last cluster. It'd be a little bit counter-intuitive though.
Quote:
|
Also it would be possible to add other awesome stuff, such as drift. This will allow for tactical conditions, dis/advantages, to change continuously. I suppose a start could be to create single point galaxies inside a sphere that drifts around in a spinning motion. 1 round = 1 or 2 rotations, so that over a good 7 weeks, everyone will have the same position.
|
I guess this would require a massive recode. It'd be interesting enough though yeah.
I think the biggest problem overall is the travel-times involved in cluster warfare. Planetarion has, almost since the beginning, been a rather harsh game. You need your fleet to play and without it you've virtually useless. It's relatively easy to lose and almost in order to compensate for it takes 7 hours before a fleet which launched at you after you went online can land. This is such a deeply embedded principle that the last time cluster geography got an attacking bonus added we had to raise universal travel times to compensate. A change which would shorten travel-times down to 5 ticks would be massive (and deeply unpopular with the hyper-conservative retard brigade in #alliances). It'd just be a very different game. Although the difference wouldn't be massive at first (and I definitely don't think a one tick drop would be even vaguely significant given the nature of the game right now) it would signify a rather large change in game direction, and one which I feel pateam are massively unlikely to take.
The alternative approach, of raising the "normal" travel-times again is, I feel, gay. Longer travel-times are a) boring b) make fleet activity less important and c) are more likely to lead to stagnation for obvious reasons.