Planetarion Development - You decide for one evening!

[isildurx]

Clearly Soveh is the development god

[Kal]

Originally Posted by veX

i would love to see pictures of dramatic space battles below battle reports.

Also there should be loads of graphics so each time you fight yo get a new one.
Like if the attackers get owned theres one pic, and if the defenders get owned theres a planet getting its arse wooped etc.

I realise this aint really to do with coding but i really wanna see more gfx in th gam,e

and im rediculously drunk.

we actually had someone working on a dynamic graphical battle display. I believe the code was finished and just needed the graphcis and combat engine integration done. Unfortunatly he is now away on business. When he returns we can look into it for round 16.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Those ideas wouldnt be anything similar to the essay i wrote on this matter back in R8 or so that addressed all of those points, plus a few others and also discussed various ways that keep it inherrently balanced?

heh

can we have the eassy

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Kal

can we have the eassy

It should still be on the forums - unless i wrote it before the last purge .

Trying to remmeber what it was called. if i remmeber i'll link it. heh

[Ultimate Newbie]

http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=177624

how about that for a memory!

I think i developed each of the other sections into more detail on my old computer (i took it further), but i dont know if i still have them. Recovering them might take more time...

[Rydier]

I played 1/2-3/4ths of round 13 before real life took over, and recently had a relapse with the speed game.
What I would like to see, were different tick timings.
To take some examples:
The 1 minute ticks of the speed round made defenses very unlikely. It did, however, work very nicely for the first 72 minutes or so, before any real action other than setting up your planet was taking place. Contrast this to the three first days of a round, where you stay up an hour (or sleep for 1 hour 58 minutes at a time) just to initiate roids, and I must say I'd wish for something like the speedgame-ticks to be present during this time. Couple it with the queuing suggestion someone had above, and it won't even penalize those not beeing able to be online during this period of time.

Next, as a BC in R13, I often found myself sitting up at night (I live in Norway, so that's usually when everyone attacks) waiting for attacks, disabling me from doing like, real life stuff the following afternoon.
With 2 hour ticks at night, it might be possible to get some sleep when there's nothing going on, plus encouraging more day-time attacks if ticks are made shorter then to compensate. (Due to the same reason defence wasn't really a good option in the speedgame, except some ingal, kudos to 1:8, those guys were seriously annoyingly sending much intra-gal def)

[The Real Arfy]

Originally Posted by Rydier

I played 1/2-3/4ths of round 13 before real life took over, and recently had a relapse with the speed game.
What I would like to see, were different tick timings.
To take some examples:
The 1 minute ticks of the speed round made defenses very unlikely. It did, however, work very nicely for the first 72 minutes or so, before any real action other than setting up your planet was taking place. Contrast this to the three first days of a round, where you stay up an hour (or sleep for 1 hour 58 minutes at a time) just to initiate roids, and I must say I'd wish for something like the speedgame-ticks to be present during this time. Couple it with the queuing suggestion someone had above, and it won't even penalize those not beeing able to be online during this period of time.

Next, as a MO in R13, I often found myself sitting up at night (I live in Norway, so that's usually when everyone attacks) waiting for attacks, disabling me from doing like, real life stuff the following afternoon.
With 2 hour ticks at night, it might be possible to get some sleep when there's nothing going on, plus encouraging more day-time attacks if ticks are made shorter then to compensate. (Due to the same reason defence wasn't really a good option in the speedgame)

If we had 1 minute (or whatever) ticks for the first 72 ticks, people might miss the entirety of protection period. It sucks starting late, and I'd hate to have missed ALL of these important ticks because I was say, stuck in traffic, or something.

Secondly, if you alter the tick lengths based on timezones, you are limiting the number of players to Europe (well not really, but it doesn't exaclty help the situation). Imagine being an american/australian/asian and having to sit there all day to get 4 ticks done. Some people like to recall/resend and take planet scans etc...

[Rydier]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

If we had 1 minute (or whatever) ticks for the first 72 ticks, people might miss the entirety of protection period. It sucks starting late, and I'd hate to have missed ALL of these important ticks because I was say, stuck in traffic, or something.

Which is why a few queuing options would be nice. Might take some "skill" away not having to actually be there to initiate roids and start up techs/buildings at the correct tick, but as long as there is a freeze period before each round where people can set up their strat (that's usually longer that any "stuck in traffic" condition would cause) it wouldn't be a problem. The skill of beeing online to respond dynamically to events exterior to your planet after the starting period would still be valuable, even with such queues though.

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

Secondly, if you alter the tick lengths based on timezones, you are limiting the number of players to Europe (well not really, but it doesn't exaclty help the situation). Imagine being an american/australian/asian and having to sit there all day to get 4 ticks done. Some people like to recall/resend and take planet scans etc...

Sorry, didn't think about that, still dizzy after the speedgame :S My major grief was that, unless you do have those aussie/american players to do stuff while it's night in Europe, you're basically depending on lots of people sacrificing sleep/etc. to run a good alliance.
Other suggestions than "Then get those american players" to releave this problem would be appreciated, as I'm sure more people (like me) would still play if it didn't dominate your life to such an extent if you want to do good.

IMHO, the main problem here is that once you have incomings, you basically have 1 hour to get defence (not regarding some ship classes beeing slower than others etc.) before you're screwed.
Other online games I've played have solved this problem in different ways.
In Utopia, there is no delay between attacking and the result, moving the time delay to a wait time before your army gets back. This reduces defence complexity, and moving the "required login time" to when you are able to attack. (every 8 hours or so)
In Hyperiums, there is actual distance between planets, hence reducing your "time till screwed when needing def" to whatever distance there is to your closest allies. (not counting Hypergates, which cuts travel time by alot). A nice feature there is that your alliance automatically receives notice when you have incomings, which you in Planetarion have to rely on your gal mates to do. (Which in itself is a fine mechanic, if you ask me)

These games obviously have very different design, but touching only on their ways of dealing with what happens if you're getting attacked and is not online, I feel the comparition is still fair to make.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Rydier

A nice feature there is that your alliance automatically receives notice when you have incomings, which you in Planetarion have to rely on your gal mates to do. (Which in itself is a fine mechanic, if you ask me)

These games obviously have very different design, but touching only on their ways of dealing with what happens if you're getting attacked and is not online, I feel the comparition is still fair to make.

The PA Team and alliance HCs have recently brought up that subject, and a few ideas have been knocked around. Don't be surprised if something happens in Round 16 etc

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

The PA Team and alliance HCs have recently brought up that subject, and a few ideas have been knocked around. Don't be surprised if something happens in Round 16 etc

Is this the New Way of appeasing all those barbarians at the gate these days? - "oh, dont worry everyone, all will be fixed for R16!!"

Sound familiar? .

[Kloopy]

Yes it bloody sounds familiar. I'm just as synical as the rest of you when it comes to PATeam promises.

But the thing is, I lose my "beer money" if I don't get these things done for R16. And wheter you believe it when I say it or not doesn't matter, but PATeam is the most motivated at the moment than I've ever seen it.

I won't big up our plans for R16 any more than that because I know it'd be a waste of typing. If I were in your shoes I wouldn't believe it. But I'd like to point to the threads and comments recently about things going well and direct you to our "We're sorry nothing new will be in R15" changelog.

For once don't we have at least something very little to back up our claims of "next round is the one"? Bear with us just one more round... please. We're going to surprise you this time.

[Clogg]

Wow, I'm getting all interested in r16 now.

[berten]

Originally Posted by Scrajm

i would like to see more warfare tacs, PA is built up on war, yet its so static. i know ppl have said this b4 me but its worth mentioning again. Let us build our own ships, decide which class, type of wep (anti CO, anti BS etc), let us choose between different types of armour and/or thickness etc etc. How do make this work in real game would b like each type of armour costs this amount and that type of wep costs this amount, and then put up a list of stats on all armours, weps etc.
and different races (ofc) has pros/cons on everything. ofc it will be extremly hard to balance, but if it would b thought through i think it would add much joy to the game, and both first-tryers and exped ppl would enjoy it, since it would require u to b more active in ur playing =)

I think this cld imply a lot of change in the ticker, maybe even an entire new battleengine, as technically you can have an unlimited amount of ships.

You should be able to give a new ship you create a name so you can provide more of this same ships, so basicly you could have a zillion different stats for 1 shipname (unless u require unique shipnames, but then you'd get ships like 'fuji-ship' or summit (something stupid).

You' d also need 'ship-scans' to determen the stats of a 'newly created' ship.

We'd also 'need' an ingame battlecalculator that can work with the dynamic stats, a public bcalc as we know them now would need new stats added constantly.


Berten

[rop1964]

me, what i would like to see , is a galaxy wide messahe link, how many time i got attack but could not call my gal mate to help cause i always had to search the gal page to see who was on, then , verify his coord a few time to make sure he was the right guy to call on. a galaxy wide mail link would be a great asset for defense!

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by rop1964

me, what i would like to see , is a galaxy wide messahe link, how many time i got attack but could not call my gal mate to help cause i always had to search the gal page to see who was on, then , verify his coord a few time to make sure he was the right guy to call on. a galaxy wide mail link would be a great asset for defense!

Ministers of Communication, and Galaxy Commanders already have this function. The decision to not give all galaxy members this ability is to reduce the amount of interal spam it would generate (think of all the messages, 'accidental' or otherwise, that you would receive all the time, perhaps discracting you from legit mail).

The Galaxy Forum is the place to go to organise in-gal defence in that fashion. Or try your galaxy's IRC channel (most GCs will sort one out at the start of the round// after shuffle ).

[rop1964]

yes, but not everyone are on irc or mirc, and even then, they may not be logged on.. the only way to contact a member of your gal is through mail.. and the best way to do that is by having a gal mail!

[cypher]

kloopy first of all might i say this is a very nice initiative (or was ) but to be perfectly honest i wish some of the people in pa team or jolt would spend a day or night in advertisement. it's not hard mailing all previous pa players (atleast the emails that ever signed up) and try and get some players back... who knows if it'll work. getting players back to the game is still the most important factor in pa as the game itself is ok.