Round XV Galaxy System

[Judder]

Originally Posted by wakey

The closer you get to the private galaxies the more you damage those whom need the most help as they lack the resources. If we keep attacking the very people we need to hook to get we may as well just pack up and go home as PA has no future

Private gals were fun, once. Now, with a reduced memberbase, the game can't support them. Pre-round blocking or no, private gals of 10 or even 5 would put a stop to fluid politics before they even began. Although even with smaller pack sizes there is still a chance of members landing randomly in gals anyway, creating the bigger core automatically, whether or not each alliance would appreciate this. So, in a way it's as broad as it's long. However, whichever way you play it, based on the suggestions so far it seems as though 'doing well' in the game is still based on luck: if we have small packs then it's down to the shuffler, if we have large private galaxies then it's down to whether your alliance has the resoucres to cover/wants to instigate huge amounts of incoming and rule the rankings from the offset, of whether you're in it for the fun with a few friends. Those smaller groups stand no chance against private gals of 10.

If you want to make the game more appealing to play, then have a look at the abilities of the freebie account more closely; it seems that they're being tightened up security wise, so why not allow them to actually interact with the game more? Encourage people to be active and perhaps people won't get bored so easily/go inactive and leave galaxies with a continual stream of problems.

Also, on the passport idea - pairing packs up based on activity and style. In theory this is a good idea, but the eventuality is the same as private gals of 10 - galaxies full of players from big alliances ruling the rankings, and galaxies with pairs of less active packs/packs of people with a different playing style, don't stand a chance. And however you play the game, it's not fun to be bashed 24/7 and knowing that the tables aren't going to turn because it was all decided for you before the round even began :/

[BlackDog]

Just make PA free (in terms of $$), galaxies of 10, completely random where you end up. No exiling. 'nuff said. Old school.

[cypher]

funny as most people saying something want private gals of 10........... let's take a wild guess at what's not gonna happen tho.. heh i really do wonder when pa team starts to listen

[SoulStripper]

i would have to say that priv gals is appatizing but at the same time an overall bad idea cuz of what most ppl have said, they will cause ppl do drop due to not being able to raise the ranks etc. but what i think should be done about gal setups is a possible choice of a certain amt of FREE exiles, say 2 per round so that u can be able to kick those who are either inactive enough to not do any good or for any other reason. i feel that the rest of the gal shouldnt need to suffer due to one persons choice of not being active enough. this situation helps alot and i wish i could have had a few free exiles in the past and i bet we all do.

i got sum more ideas but my fingers are hurtin from all the typin so ill add em as time goes by

[SoulStripper]

ohh and i have come baq with a new and interesting idea! how about PA team allows priv gals but u need to buy a SEPERATE credit for it, say a 15$ (USD) per player or sumthing like that. just an idea, that way it would allow sum ppl to get it.

or even to build on that, why not do the credit system and then even have a certain amt of slots open for priv gals, like a first come first serve thing?

just sum random ideas

[bwtmc]

Thats extortianate and it's also everything that is bad about private galaxies.

Elitest.

[furball]

Originally Posted by cypher

funny as most people saying something want private gals of 10........... let's take a wild guess at what's not gonna happen tho.. heh i really do wonder when pa team starts to listen

1. No they haven't, most people in this thread want the buddy pack system with 4 to a pack (or similar)
2. Most of the community are idiots who don't think of the consequences of their actions.

[Holyboy]

Originally Posted by furball

1. No they haven't, most people in this thread want the buddy pack system with 4 to a pack (or similar)
2. Most of the community are idiots who don't think of the consequences of their actions.

the consequences of buddy packs and no priv gals means no new players moving over from "clones" and PA slowly but inevitably losing players round after round.

I for one won't play again with a buddy system, i'm just fed up of my round being decided for me by the shuffler

[darts]

i say do totally random gals again i had way more fun back then and its more fun with more alliances in 1 gal cooperating or fighting eachother.
i like the idea of special features for scanplanets cos like most people know its inportand 2 have em in an alliance

[noah02]

I say everyone goes random and see what happens hehe oh and no exiling or nowt :P that would different.

[Razgriz]

This has been my first round back for something like 5 years. I remember being in a private gal with all my friends which was enjoyable but to be perfectly honest it wold have been enjoyable without them too. I don;t see too much difference between going in a gal with your mates or without them. The only real difference is the travel time to go and defend each other.
So if you have your mates email/co-ords what dose it really matter?
I have to say that reading replies tho tis thread i agree with Wakey more so than anyone else. I have no buddy pack so if i return i'll have more fun getting to know new people and the challange of making a new gal work, its part of the game we play babee

[aNgRyDuCk]

not nearly enough galaxies this round. Players base continues to get smaller, 20 planet galaxies ain't gettin it done. If you go with 1 5 man bp per galaxy or totally random and cap the galaxy's at 10 planets it would help

[bwtmc]

10's too small in that many galaxies won't acquire enough reasonably active players, and you can't expect let's say, two active players to endure a round with eight people who login once a week- And that's a very real possibility.

However, I definitely feel there's a case for reducing the number to something more like fifteen. Having more galaxies would make things far more enjoyable.

I quite liked the uncertainty of not knowing or having interacted with so many galaxies in the early rounds. We don't need that, but twenty clusters would at least bring back that feel a bit more.

[bintara]

buddypack has -eta 1 for def :P

I feel that a private galaxy situation would be much better. I know this is a bit random but think of it like this, every game and sport i can think of you get to pick and choose your team-mates, examples being clan games on online shooters, football clubs, even international sporting teams have a pick of the best people they can (granted alot of it in sport comes down to money, but i trust you understand what im getting at). So surely in Planetarion it would also make sense to allow you to choose a team of your choice to play for. Or work hard to be selected for a team of other good players. I think the best system would be to make galaxies have a maximum of 10 people. either make them entirely private or 5 man buddy packs and 5 randoms. The buddy pack, as someone said earlier, is fixed and you cant exile, that being the sacrifice you would make for playing in a buddy pack. or you could go random, with the freedom to exile (perhaps limited with the rules stated previously). therefore making more galaxies and more competition, ok the galaxies are smaller, with ten people maximum, but it makes for alot more competition and would make things more interesting.

[bwtmc]

People would try less hard to push out semi-inactive exiles then, as the chances of a good replacement would be heavily reduced.

[Holyboy]

how about playing with 5 man private or 10 man random gals, there will be small priv gals and reasonably small random gals but it will boost the amount of gals / clusters in the game, made cluster defence more important again and so maybe bring back cluster alliances as an actual useful thing, and you could play with 4 of your mates whilst still keeping random gals competitive as they have twice the players.

just throwing out thoughts here but i can't see any big problems with it

[Ferretus]

Would lead to uber gals that the alliances will obliterate systematically each night, so no difference there then

5 man private or 10 man random is a nice step back to the old days. I like that... the one problem with it though is that competitive GC's will boot anyone who lands in their galaxy and whose score doesn't make them a happy bunny. Which in turn will lead to reduced player uptake etc due to poor marale lalala

Can we go back to the rules of rounds 2 or 3. It was far more fun back then and on the newer servers everything would be really quick.

Also the score system is stupid. Value is what holds more relevance. In this round ppl just attacked bigger planets to up their score. It used to be that you judged the power of a gal by it's total fleet and roid value, not by its score and that made a whole lot more sense!!

Oh and one more thing- in the old days when you had to tag yourself if you were in an alliance and in irc you put your alliance in parenthsis was much better.

Then you knew who you were attacking a bit more and who was in your gal, etc.

Secret alliances suck!

BTW: name is Colossus

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Can we go back to the rules of rounds 2 or 3. It was far more fun back then and on the newer servers everything would be really quick.

Also the score system is stupid. Value is what holds more relevance. In this round ppl just attacked bigger planets to up their score. It used to be that you judged the power of a gal by it's total fleet and roid value, not by its score and that made a whole lot more sense!!

1) Saying "lets go back to the old days" is pointless. The old days are gone, even if you had the code, could get the player base the game simply wouldnt work any more. As the community evolved old style PA stood still and by the time it was scrapped it had long outlived its usefullness
2) Value holds very little relevance imho. What exactly does value tell you about a player, that they have a big alliance thats kept them safe, that they have played the round safe bashing easy targets so as not to lose ships ect ect. A score system like we have encourages players to show some balls and some skill and rewards them for doing so. It also prevents the demoralising factor that old style pa inflicted on the lower end of the universe. If you got bashed hard back then you could see all your roids and ships dissappear but then as you were reeling from that the game would come upto you, kick you while your down and say "I dont care how well you have played this round, you have been bashed to peices and are officially shit so say bye bye to thousands of ranking spots". The score system remembers your acehivements and one idiot bashing you into the ground doesnt totally destroy your round and make it almost impossible to find your feet again.

[Holyboy]

value xp score blah blah system is fine by me, seems to work well and encourages people no to bash the smaller targets, with regards to the 5 man priv 10 man random system, i meant seperate gals of 5 privates OR 10 random, so the ultra competitive people are more likely to be in private gals, therefore meaning that the random gals are LESS likely to boot new players which surely is better for them?

[Duncan]

i don't see why at least a couple of randoms put in with a private galaxy is such a bad thing -- why are you turning it into a black and white issue. "It HAS to be 5 man private or 10 random or i'll quit"?

i would have never got addicted (or payed) for this game if i hadn't landed with good players who basically showed me how to play, use irc etc. just my personal experience from last round.

[Holyboy]

Originally Posted by Whitetrash

i don't see why at least a couple of randoms put in with a private galaxy is such a bad thing -- why are you turning it into a black and white issue. "It HAS to be 5 man private or 10 random or i'll quit"?

i would have never got addicted (or payed) for this game if i hadn't landed with good players who basically showed me how to play, use irc etc. just my personal experience from last round.

because it sucks when the only reason a gal wins the round is because it got lucky with randoms, i'd rather it be reliant on the skill of the members

Originally Posted by Holyboy

because it sucks when the only reason a gal wins the round is because it got lucky with randoms, i'd rather it be reliant on the skill of the members

I agree. Thats what i was trying to get at with my earlier post. Instead of having it based on the luck of who your buddy pack lands with (myself being one of the lesser fortunate this round). It should be based on who you have in your bpack/private gal. As its fair as you are being given a chance to select who you wish to play with, that you should know are going to be active etc. Adding randoms then onto these gals makes it return to being based on luck... one gal with 5 fully active experienced players gets 5 active experienced randoms, vs 5 fully active experienced players getting 5 noobs, the latter then causes the 5 actives to either repeatedly exile the other players, causing PA to loose players that way, or the 5 actives being blasted to smitherines and them quitting the round.

I think the idea of private gals is great, but they should be at a disadvantages, kind of as 'payment' for the right of having a private gal. So either make them have less maximum members in there gal. (5) and have larger random gals (10) or make it as said above where a private gal cannot exile any of there originally picked players, or exile themselves, as its there own fault for choosing the wrong bpack. might encourage more good players to go random then as they would have freedom to move around a bit looking for a good gal. although it appears thats what is ment to be being stopped.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Holyboy

because it sucks when the only reason a gal wins the round is because it got lucky with randoms, i'd rather it be reliant on the skill of the members

Yes. Lucky.

Quite.

[Ferretus]

Originally Posted by SoulStripper

ohh and i have come baq with a new and interesting idea! how about PA team allows priv gals but u need to buy a SEPERATE credit for it, say a 15$ (USD) per player or sumthing like that.

I begrudge paying the $5 now for a game that is basically a numerical text game with absolutely no gameplay whatsoever nevermind $15+my normal planetary fee.

[Ferretus]

I think we have identified a key morale demoraliser there concerning the 'randoms' in a gal. Hard work needs to be rewarded and those at the top should be the hardest working and not just defended by a good ally or been lucky with its randoms.

More skill needs to return to the game with players not relying on alliance intel, scanners and defence. Perhaps thats another factor... the game is no longer challenging.

Anyway I digress. I feel if you buddypack and create a private galaxy then that is where you stay, nobody can exile from the pack etc... I think I mentioned this earlier though so I will shut up now.

[Dogs]

Buddy Packs of 3, all u got to do is change the size of the gals and the numbers will work, also as for exiling, maybe you can only exile with your buddy pack, i have been in a situation where i have joined a gal throu being random, and basicly all that was active was 3 people from a buddy pack + me and the gal got slautered, so basicly 1 guy sets him self to exile, and a vote comes on between the 3 of you, and ALL 3 have to vote yes to be able to exile all of you together to another gal, so u never split up with your buddy pack, it sounds hard and confusing but if you can make it work then go for it.

To stop this from giving something like #1 gal the advantage of getting a high scoring buddy pack, limit the BUDDY PACK exiles to not be able to get into gals in the top 20, now im not sure if my idea will work, because the more i think about it the more it seems impossible, but its an idea, and thats what you people want, so try to embrace it (does'nt have to be packs of 3, this idea works better with packs of 2).

I didnt read much of any of this but i wanna say something.

As Far as galaxys & exiles go i think u need to hard code into allince feature a setting were the allince can chose how many max members per gal. This way when one of our members exile if there is 3 of us in 1 gal and limit is 3 he cant land in our gal. Its killer when a allince gets 5/6 members in 1 gal because of exileing & you dont wanna say EXILE now or GET the hell out because those members may exile into a worse gal lose faith & leave the ally. Last rd i exiled into a gal with 4 other members thx god 1 went inactive other got exiled before me or it wouldda been a hell time on def. THis rd i noticed a gal in my allince with 6 yes 6 members WAY to much. SO PLZ put some hardcode into the game.

P.s. sorry my grammer blows :P

[Ferretus]

I completely disagree.

Alliances should be kept seperate from any game mechanics. The alliance is an addition to the game created by players... an optional extra.

Alliances need to learn to cover themselves properly and if anytihng I would strongly encourage a move towards alliance galaxies before enforcing a limit of max 3 per alliance in a gal. Whatever happened to galaxy recruitment for a nooblet alliance? We've all seen that happen. By putting in place your suggestion you are once again making the alliances stronger and taking away from the game itself.

[Shyne]

Originally Posted by cypher

funny as most people saying something want private gals of 10........... let's take a wild guess at what's not gonna happen tho.. heh i really do wonder when pa team starts to listen

It's not all about you though - pateam are trying to get more players not keep you happy and run a game of 1000 people happy to play private galaxies.

Oh and Unregistered - your grammar blows.

Originally Posted by Lockhead

Completely random would be nice, too.

With parallels as ETA-1

Agree with both of these. No more packs. All random!

[MAsta_MArk]

i played PA last round and this round and this is what i have found out.
The big get bigger and the small get smaller.
Last round i started up 250 ticks into the game and i stood no chance of gettin a decent position. This was because the top 100 had already been decided, same with the alliances, seen even more in this round, 1up did well at the start and had lots of members which has led them to being bigger, this was because they had more members not neccisarly because they were skilled (not saying they arnt) so the top 5 alliances were decided`at the beginning of the round. Which has led me to think "why bother" the only way i can acctually be in top hundred is if i mould my life around PA, which i believe is not what the game is about.

Bring back 3 hour combat - that would make the game more interesting and more challenging, yet rewarding.

[noah02]

Originally Posted by bintara

buddypack has -eta 1 for def :P

Ingal defence eta 6
Buddypack defence eta 5
Buddypack upto 6?
Either gals of 1bp of 6 2 bp of 3 and 3 bp of 2.
More ppl in your bp more chance of better defence would be a bad thing I dont know but would spice things up a little with in gal defence eta 6.

[Holyboy]

not bad idea Noah, perhaps in groups of 2 or 3 there could be -1 eta but for groups of 6 you get no eta bonus?

might make it interesting

[Andi]

5 Private and 5 Random per Gal
well, 20 or more planets per Gal is way too much in my eye´s

[Gate]

Originally Posted by MAsta_MArk

seen even more in this round, 1up did well at the start and had lots of members which has led them to being bigger, this was because they had more members not neccisarly because they were skilled (not saying they arnt) so the top 5 alliances were decided`at the beginning of the round.

I'd disagree...

LCH, Tides of Fire, xVx and F-Crew all have more members than ND, surely they should all be ahead? Maybe you're saying it's because the alliances had more members from the beginning and so was able to get in a better position. I'd disagree again: ND spent most of the round with quite a bit under 60 members... and when we accepted the WP and SiN members, in both cases, they tended to have lower avg score or roids (as they included a disproportionate number of scanners and went through 72 ticks of being roided). I think skill and political environment play a far, far more important role than numbers.

See 1up round 12, eXilition round 13, who both won with under 70 members...

Anyway, back on topic...
My suggestion for gals
Surely setting a particular number for private gals enforces blocking? One suggestion I've though of is having a set number of 'places' in a gal. Take, for example 15. Each private member takes up 2 spaces, each random member takes up 1 place. So you can have:
Private: Random:
2 11
3 9
4 7
5 5
6 3
7 1

Ofcourse, teh ratios need to be messed about with, and exiles need to be sorted out, but it made sense in my head :/

[Jonah]

I would agree completely private galaxies would just make the game impossible to break for new players! I mean 10 alliance members (whatever the alliance) against 10 people who have been put together because they don't know anyone or even how to play! Why don't you make it so that there must be a certain number of paid accounts in a galaxy and paid players cannot exile from the galaxy unless there is that number of paid accounts still in there? Make the number say 5 cos not all the players will buddy pack up and and these extra people can be added to the buddy packs of 3 and buddy packs of 2 can be added to packs of 3 to make a galaxy. This will at least give everyone a chance to build a good galaxy and will not necessarily lead to blocking.

[bwtmc]

I think the point most people are getting at, is this:

We need to retain enough random spots for new players to have the opportunity to learn from the old ;
While allowing the old players to be given more flexibility, and enough BP spaces that they can enjoy a round where it's actually worth working on your galaxy.

Both the last two rounds I've spent the entire time in/running t10 galaxies. I can honestly say it's not worth putting yourself out for galaxies, even the very best ones any more. And we're talking about time and effort here not defending. I genuinely enjoyed working together in the old private galaxies even in R2 as a random because I got the opportunity to gel with a small community.

What we've got now makes any such talk shortlived. You find the people you began to depend on in-galaxy end up having to leave the game/quit and that's really demoralising when you've put effort into making things work with the said players. (Not aimed at anyone at all, i'm sure everyone who tries to make galaxies work appreciates what I'm saying).

[bwtmc]

People say about the blocking issues and terrible consequences that'll result:

I know I'll be picking friends over alliances personally. People who had friends in 13:5 last round will know how much fun they had, because they could truly try to play together and help each other.

I had quite a good time in my galaxy on the whole, but despite the fact we were good friends we couldn't enjoy the round. We faced daily inc from either side of the blocks as a galaxy and were as far as I'm aware the top, most hostile (to the eXilition block) galaxy. We were also pretty damn hostile to 1up. Thus finishing where we did was quite an achievement.

Who suffered in that block war, in my galaxy?

The Neutrals got hit by both sets of attackers. And did they last the round? No. Why? Because the foundations the galaxy was built on conflicted with the block system.

[SkyHead]

Random gals of 5 players or 7 players, the more gals the more fun, also there will be alot of galaxies which have no way of reporting defcalls, due to inactivity, nevertheless newbies will always have a way to find targets, and will be more active on attacking front, which is really what they need to learn.

The bigger players will grow fast enough to leave those galaxies alone, and they'd need a closer cooperation with their galaxy m8s, even though they are noobs they can help alot, and it'd maybe change the bigger players attitude towards new players, instead of going at them for being a n00b (which clearly is something that won't encourage them to say, who likes a bunch of pr*cks anyway?), they would maybe help them get started, and hoping for more activity,

I see problems ;] Some people will get to annoyed not having their defcalls reported cause of inactivity from the other gal m8s, so maybe packs of 3 private, and fill up wiht 4-5 randoms?

Everyone hates losing roids, but you gain some, lose some, and gain more, thats what this game has become all about, and it'd be easier for noobs to steal roids of eachother aswell, if they keep losing them, but know there is an easy way to get them back, this will encourage them for more active attack play, and thus having to learn from the more experienced players.

Having small gal raids everyday, for your noobs, to attack these OTHER lower scored gals to gain roids, would not only give the noobs a greater understanding, but also a good meaning of the game.

[derry]

with other words, everyone keeps eixling till they got a decent galaxy :/

[edit] i think gals shouldn't be bigger then 10 max tho, preferably even a bit smaller[/edit]

[bintara]

auto delete inactives players that not login in 5 days (pstt : dont count the vacation mode)

15 players per gal (15 is my luckiest number)

4 players per BP
2 BPs and 7 random

exile ? bring back the old one :P

[flikman]

What masta_mark said is fundamentally, true, that the big get bigger and the small get smaller (relatively speaking of course smart people).

This is a long standing PA issue, and while XP attempts to deal with this, it might need more influence.

[The Real Arfy]

The big get bigger because they are better players and put in more effort to the game (for the most part). There needs to be some element of reward for those who play the game better than the rest.

[SkyHead]

Originally Posted by Holyboy

value xp score blah blah system is fine by me, seems to work well and encourages people no to bash the smaller targets, with regards to the 5 man priv 10 man random system, i meant seperate gals of 5 privates OR 10 random, so the ultra competitive people are more likely to be in private gals, therefore meaning that the random gals are LESS likely to boot new players which surely is better for them?

gooooold!!!!
make it happen

[Icewar]

In remember of Round 12 i want say: Go back to 10 planets for every Galaxy.... only 1 buddypack with 3/4 in every Galaxy....

I agree with the solution of smaller private gals... ( something like 7 per private gal and 12 per random gal ). Both could have random guys joining in up to 10 and 15 for exemple...
I think this system of buddy packs won't bring more people in: people choose guys they already know in their alliance for exemple. If we had private gals, people would try to fill their gal: that could bring more people in... (inviting a friend that never played before and could leave you at any moment is easier when you are already 5/6 actives rather than 1/2)
Another point is that PA IS really fun when you can play with all your friends. Having 2 buddy packs, even with alliance's -ETA 1, isn't as much fun: you don't have to face the gal attacks together, share the diplomatic problems together etc...
I also agree on the fact that a buddy pack of 3 can't make a gal survive. You can't cover yourselves when you get incs something like every tick... Having to decide between leaving your friends which were the reason why you signed up, or staying with them knowing that you won't be able to grow at all killed a bit this game... I know quite a few guys who decided to stop playing PA because of this...
Allowing people to join private gals after the beginning of the round could also be a good solution for those who don't already have friends to share all this with...
There would be really big gals, but this will be just like the alliances (that now need vouchers or things like this): they would deserve it because they were well organised, because they had skills that others didn't have... At least it wouldn't lay on luck...