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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 20:20   #1
Jester
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Post What I'd change and how I'd do it

This thread has been brewing for a long time. In it I'm going to try to hammer out what I'd do if I were in charge of Planetarion.

Not every idea is as well thought out and I do not claim that implementing all the changes proposed will lead to a revitalization of Planetarion. I have a good deal of assumptions about what the negative effects of the current system are, and the changes I propose are mainly changes that would challenge those assumptions. This sort of experimentation has been used extensively in Planetarion's recent development, so hopefully minds will remain open. You might say that I have a set of theories of how to improve Planetarion, and that I am willing to test them by playing in any round that implements them.

In addition to being willing to test them myself, I need to convince PAteam that they are worth implementing. From experience assisting in the development of PA, I know that the more coding work required for a feature, the less likely it is to be implemented (either promptly or at all). Therefore, each feature is examined from several angles, those that require more coding and those that require less. In addition, cohesive (and hopefully rational) arguments are provided in an attempt to convince PAteam that this experiment is worth making.

For the purposes of this thread, let 'bad' for Planetarion mean less fun and 'good' mean more fun. Let the assumption hold that a less fun game attracts fewer players and a more fun game attracts more players. Therefore, the metric of fun is playing population. If fun leads to population, and populations leads to fun, these effects are reinforcing.

Without the assumption that fun leads to population, it still holds that population leads to fun, and therefore any change that leads to a higher playing population is 'good'. This leads to the my first assumption.

Theory #1: The alliance member limit is bad.
The alliance member limit favors elite alliances and prevents mid-tier alliances from competing realistically. It removes dimensions from the alliance meta-game that were previously available.

Since the advent of the tag system, alliances have been limited to a certain number of members in various fashions. This system was put in place for many reasons, primarily to level the playing field in some fashion. In some ways it has done this, in other ways it has failed. Particularly, of the last 9 rounds, 2 alliances have won all but 1 round. These two alliances, 1up and Exilition, have both been considered the strongest and most influential during these rounds. The fact that several rounds have been won by alliances that had less members than the maximum member limit supports this.

The alliance member limit has two effects which I identify as the primary bad effects. It is difficult for players to reach the higher alliance tiers. There is little incentive for alliances to take risks on unknown players. These claims are examined and justified as bad later.

The alliance member has one effect which is commonly identifies as a good effect. It is commonly accepted as good that the winning alliance is not chosen on the sole criteria of being able to recruit most players. This claim is examined later as well.

The Market for Lemons
The market for lemons is a Nobel prize winning article about economic situations with asymmetrical information. A lemons market occurs when it is impossible for buyers to know whether they are paying for high quality or low quality (lemons), but incentive exists for sellers to pass off low quality as high.

The market for alliance members is a market for lemons. Each alliance member costs one alliance member slot, but the quality of this member will vary.

From the above linked wikipedia article, these criteria are presented for a lemon market:
  1. Asymmetry of information
    • no buyers can accurately assess the value of a product through examination before sale is made
    • all sellers can more accurately assess the value of a product prior to sale
  2. An incentive exists for the seller to pass off a low quality product as a higher quality one
  3. Sellers have no credible disclosure technology (sellers with a great car have no way to credibly disclose this to buyers)
  4. Deficiency of *effective* public quality assurances (by reputation or regulation)
  5. Deficiency of *effective* guarantees / warranties

In Planetarion, these all hold for alliance members. A partial exception is made in the case of the vouching system. There is an asymmetry of information. The buyer, an alliance recruiter, can not assess the value of a member prior to the sale. The seller, the potential recruit, knows whether or not they are a good alliance member not. The potential recruit has an incentive to pass themselves off as a good member, because they are likely to receive defense from the alliance which will improve their rank. A good alliance member has no way to show that are a good one since alliance defense point systems are not open to public scrutiny. Even if they were, past records are not guarantees of future performance. While vouching systems provide public quality assurances, these are not necessarily effective, since vouchers also have incentives to lie on behalf of or at least vet their friends more strongly than they deserve. There is no way to redeem defense fleets spent on a lemon member, therefore no effective guarantees or warranties.

The alliance score calculation has contributed a slight balancing of this situation by increasing the cost of being kicked from an alliance, in the sense that it is more difficult to convince a new alliance to accept a potential recruit based on current score.

Since the alliance member market is a market for lemons, it is difficult for unknown players (new players) to join alliances that fit their skill and activity level. Since lower ranked alliances are unable to put pressure on higher ranked alliances solely by recruiting beyond the member limit, there is no incentive for higher ranked alliances to compete by recruiting beyond the member limit. That is, member numbers of alliances will stabilize below or around the current member limit. This may seem like tautology, but it is important to realize what this means. If an alliance is to be competitive, it need not concern itself with recruiting past about 80% of the alliance member limit. This means that the buyer can afford to be extremely picky once their stall is filling up. There is no incentive to take risks, and risk-seeking behavior is what catalyzes change.

The commonly accepted good consequence of the alliance member limit is that it prevents any alliance from winning based solely on recruiting. However, this is logically incoherent. If any alliance could win based on recruiting planets without any sort of cooperation, then surely an alliance could win by recruiting as aggressively while encouraging alliance cooperation? And if this is the case, then the only objection is that some people would rather win by cooperating with a small set of people than by cooperating with a large set of people.

Solutions
The solution becomes how to break the market for lemons. One way is to lower the alliance member limit so that the recruiter will have first-hand knowledge of more potential members in ratio to the number of member slots. The community has strongly objected to lowering the alliance member limit below 50 members, but even this number is too high to break the market for lemons. The objection stems from the diverging goals of alliances. Some alliances exist to compete under the rules as defined by the game system. Other alliances exist to provide social environments
in which players can play competitively. The latter group of alliances are generally those which regularly finish outside the top5 without realistic ambitions of finishing 1st.

Excluding these protests, the likely consequences are an increased competitive playing field with elite groups vying for victory. The requirements of these groups would be high levels of activity and mutual dedication. Therefore, unknown players would not be recruited into them. The value of a member slot would be too high compared to the relative risk of granting one to an unknown player.

Therefore, the solution is to remove the alliance member limit. Removing the limit would make the member slot cost of recruiting a member irrelevant, therefore encouraging alliances to take in new members with lower requirement of prior knowledge. It would encourage alliances to continue recruiting regardless of current member count. The most obvious advantage here is that members would be encouraged to market Planetarion to get more players for their alliance.

Problems
Removing the alliance member limit would encourage alliances to recruit heavily, thus creating a larger demand for members. This would hurt some alliances, and might lead to a smaller playing field.

The greatest problem is the 'recruiting to victory' problem. This problem occurs when an alliance defeats another solely by recruiting. This problem is not actually tied to the member limit, so much as it is tied to the criteria for winning. What does having the highest alliance score represent? This is covered later.

Implementation
It is clear that the alliance member limit serves no real purpose and that it would be better to remove it. This can be tested by running a round without one, or with one so high that it is in practice a non-limit. This implementation is changed almost every round and can thus be assumed to be a trivial change. The time-cost for PAteam is thus low, and the players can help show whether it is a viable option by playing the round. They can vote against the change by not playing the round (or by playing a free planet).

Theory #2: Ship stats are too complicated
The number of numbers in the ship stats is quite simply overwhelming. Most people don't look at the stats as a whole, but instead use heuristics to choose their race and use IRC bots and battlecalcs to decide targets and calculate battles. Requiring that players learn to use external tools to play the game isn't ideal, but more than that, the fundamental functionality of the game is hidden behind 55 ships with 10 variables each. 550 numbers are not something people will want to wade through to learn the game.

With the introduction of Eitraides, even the 55 ship names are too much to remember reliably. At a very minimum, a competitive player must be familiar with names, their associated ship classes, targeting and initiative. Most competitive alliances provide IRC bots to assist in this. Without access, it's impossible to play PA competitively without a battle calculator.

Tied to this is the fact that choice of race, which is done before any experience is gained with the active stats set, decides a large part of the game for players. The correct choice of race is a large factor in the enjoyment of a round. Given the difficulty of designing stats that provide equally good stats for all choices provided people choose race based on their play style preferences, it is unreasonable to expect an average player to be able to make the optimal choice.

Solutions
Simplifying stats is done by reducing the number of ships. Currently each race has 11 ships. Reducing the number of ships across the races would cut down on the depth of play, while even at a minimal 7 ships, there would still be 35 ships to memorize. This solution is not optimal.

The best solution is to make some ships common across all races. The extreme version of this is to make all ships common across the races, and instead of using race to provide ship variability, either have none or have a tech tree that decides (as was the situation prior to round 5).

Considerations should also be made to what level of changes should be expected between each round within the stats. It might be beneficial to consider limiting changes to incremental improvements or adjustments of current sets instead of reinventing the wheel each round.

What would the point of races be after removing most of the ship differences? There would still be special rules for each race. Some of them could be changed on top of ship changes. For example, consider all races having the same cloaked ships, but the rules for Xandathrii cloaking be slightly different, for example that in addition to not showing on unit scans, the Xandathrii cloaked ships don't show on galstatus or overview. This is just one example, others are possible.

The base ability differences of races also form the character of each race. The construction, research, covert operation and similar bonuses all contribute variation to the races.

Problems
Giving each race the same ships risks oversimplifying the combat options, especially with the current combat engine. The game wouldn't be much fun if every combat was exactly alike. In round 4 the situation was at its worst, not only was every combat alike, but no ships ever died.

Implementation
At worst, common ships could be implemented by having race specific versions of each ship that have different names but similar stats. The simplest form of this would be <Race> <Shipname>, for example 'Xan Interceptor' which is exactly the same as 'Ter Interceptor' except for the name. This is possible to do in the current code without alteration. If it is possible to designate ships available to multiple races, this problem does not exist.

The number of ships common should probably be at least 7, with one ship targeting each class and one common astropod. In this case, one special pod, one special Structure Killer and up to 3 special ships would be provided per race. In this case there would be 7 + 15 = 22 at the low end of the spectrum and 7 + 25 = 32 ships at the high end. While this number is only slightly lower than the 35 at 7 ships per race, it represents a much richer depth. It also represents a simplification in choosing race and coordinating with galmates, since at least some ships are common across race choice.

At the other extreme would be making all the ships entirely similar for all races. This option would reduce the number of unique ships drastically, to approximately 12, given the setup that has been common over the last rounds. It would also be possible to provide more ships under this option.

Theory #3: The scoring system is broken
It's been painfully obvious to a lot of people since round 16 (and some earlier) that the scoring system is broken. The current system of XP combined with value to determine score is based on the old system (value equates score) with a permanent reward for attacking larger planets. This was meant as a way to encourage behavior other than bashing. Whether it reduced the amount of bashing is difficult to know (it would require logs of attacks in rounds previous to and after XP was introduced).

What is certain is that scoring system as a whole has changed the priorities of players and how the best alliance is judged. A player is rewarded for making attacks that the XP formula reward. An alliance is rewarded for having players with high scores. These are two problematic situations.

To illustrate how they are incorrect, consider Appocomaster's stated goal when designing the XP formula:

<AppocoAway> I think that XP should still be a valid way of playing, but at extremes I don't think it should perhaps be quite a "round winning" option

Assume that a valid way of playing means that it should be possible to finish in the top100 by playing for XP. Define playing for XP as not sending any defense, attacking with 3 fleets every night. More proficient XP players will earn more XP than other XP players using this tactic.

The current definition of an alliance is the sum of the score of the planets in the tag. Therefore, the winning alliance is the alliance whose players total the highest score. However, to win as an alliance, one does not need to have the winning planet.

Mathematically, all one needs is an average score that would equal a rank of the maximum alliance members times 2 minus 1. (The proof here is trivial.) Therefore, Appocomaster's stated intention specifically allows alliance tags that consist of alliances made up entirely of XP players. Therefore, XP is a "round winning" option for alliances, but this violates the intention set forth.

In other words, either the ability to play for XP or the alliance tag scoring system is broken. PAteam tried to address this by changing the alliance tag scoring system to only take into account the value of the planets added to the tag. There was some backlash, and they changed it back.

Solutions
It is impossible to say which is broken without designating what behavior to reward. A good case is made for a new scoring system in this thread. In it, Heartless suggests that score should be based on spent resources rather than anything else. An amendment that would allow PAteam to remove the restrictions on galaxy and alliance donations would be that score is based on resources mined from asteroids only. It is important that it is gained only from mining asteroids, since there is already a very strong incentive to initiate few asteroids and rely on refineries to make up for this.

Ships would still have an inherent value, and it would be prudent to publish this along with score as is currently done, but it would not play any part in determining the rank of a planet. Players would be rewarded for both their skill in attacking and their ability to cooperate and defend.

The superiority of this system over the system where alliance score is designated by combined planet value is illustrated by an example. The alliance with most combined value in a round have the most ships. But conflict in Planetarion kills ships. Therefore, an alliance whose goal is high value should avoid conflict. In contrast, the scoring rule rewards an alliance for having gained a ship, regardless of whether it is later spent in combat.

This system also prevents newbies and inactives from losing what rank they have accumulated during a round, which was one of the stated goals for implementing the XP system.

Problems
The most obvious problem is that this system forces players and alliances to think ahead when planning their politics. With value based ranks, the theoretical threat of a drop or opportunity to rise always appears to be an actual possibility. With unlosable score that can't be caught with huge XP caps, players and alliances would need to plan to begin wars in time that they could catch up and dominate their opponents. This might lead to some situations in which players feel that the winner is undeserved. An example might be a top planet that lost a large portion of its fleet during the last week, or an alliance that has spent the round avoiding war losing a swift, decisive war to a more organized alliance, but having enough of a lead to win anyway.

Implementation
Removing XP would involve a fairly large number of deletions from the code. Reworking the scoring system to take score from mined roids would entail adding some code to the function that adds resources. An extra column might be needed to handle 'overflow' resources so that rounding doesn't adversely affect rank.

If desired, removing the limits on galaxy and alliance donations would require some deletions as well. Fortunately, deletions are less work than writing new code. Aside from this, the alliance code would probably not need to be touched.

Theory #4: The exile system is bad
The current galaxy/cluster setup discourages players from passing their knowledge about how to play the game to other players. Since knowledge and information are both keys to holding interest, this is bad. The source of this discouragement is the exile system.

When a galaxy is formed, a player measures his estimated requirements against what the galaxy appears to be able to provide. If the galaxy is judged to be unable to provide the requirements, the player can choose to exile or to take control of the galaxy and attempt to improve it. These options are known as exit and voice.

Exit, Voice and Loyalty
Exit, Voice, And Loyalty (more here) is a model for describing how members of an organization can respond when they perceive that the organization is demonstrating a decrease in quality or benefit to the member. They can either choose to withdraw from the relationship (exit) or they can choose to attempt to repair or improve the relationship through communication (voice). The choice is made through a cost-benefit analysis that is influenced by loyalty.

Voice, by definition, is much more useful for Planetarion. Voice provides either useful communication, the dissemination of knowledge about how Planetarion works, or conflict, which is the cornerstone of the game. Exit does not help the game in itself, except that it opens up possibilities for voice.

In Planetarion terms, exiling or self-exiling is an exit option. Currently, voice is only possible by communicating with other members of the galaxy. When this is not possible, which will only occur when the other galaxy members are entirely unresponsive, exit is the only available option.

Assume that loyalty is defined by the number of players one has befriended in a galaxy, minus the number of players one considers to be enemies. While this linear model will not cover every case, it models the most important relationships between loyalty and galaxy composition. In this case, the size of the buddypack or private portion of a galaxy is a strong influence on loyalty. In addition, friends can agree to both choose the exit option when they feel voice has failed. In this case, loyalty plays a much smaller part in the cost-benefit analysis.

The cost of exit is measured in resources and time. The benefit is measured in playability and expected final planet and galaxy rank. The cost essentially boils down to a number of days of actual play the player must sacrifice in return for further days of improved quality of play.

Assume that a player desires to be able to provide a significant contribution to their alliance's final rank. To do so, would need to provide a significant contribution to an alliance's top120 average score rank. Assuming that planet score is partially random (or rather, so chaotic that it is meaningful to call it random), define a significant contribution to be a planet score within one standard deviation of the alliance's average score. For simplicity, define this to be a top150 finish.

Since the advent of the 'planet reset' mechanism, it is possible to virtually guarantee landing in a galaxy which allows significant contribution to be made. The worst galaxy which allows this finish depends upon the number of planets per galaxy. Paradoxically, more planets per galaxy decreases the number of galaxies this would cover in the worst case, but in practice increases it. This is because the requirements to finish in the top150 are a regular amount of defense, which is more likely to be provided by a larger galaxy.

A conservative assumption is that the galaxy would need to be able to maintain a regular top30 score rank to enable a player to contribute significantly to their alliance's final rank. Given the size of galaxies in most recent rounds, this equates to approximately 400 planet slots.

The 'planet reset' option allows a player to perform unlimited self-exiles at the cost of waiting for a day for the planet reset to complete. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that it is during the first 2-3 weeks of the round (depending on round length) always beneficial to choose exit when confronted with a galaxy that would not allow one to make a significant contribution to final alliance rank.

In Planetarion, voice is an inefficient choice because voice alone cannot provide the same guaranteed benefits of exit.

The problem of quality seeking members of galaxies choosing exit is that it leaves players who do not choose exit in an even worse situation. In essence, if no one ever chooses voice, then bad galaxies can never get better. This is witnessed by previously competitive galaxies being completely abandoned once members begin to choose the exit option.

The consequence of exit is exclusion
Since exit is the inevitable result of competitive players in uncompetitive galaxies, competitive galaxies can rely on a continual supply of competitive players to fill their empty slots. They can therefore liberally apply exit to players who do not immediately provide promise for meaningful contributions to the galaxy (by whatever measure of judgment chosen).

In other words, the exile system is just a semi-random private galaxy system that almost completely excludes inexperienced players from competitive galaxies. What's worse, they can not experiment by creating competitive galaxies of their own, because of the limitations of the buddypack system.

The cluster system
Since players continuously choose exit over voice, the cluster system no longer promotes cohesion. Since there is no guarantee that a planet will remain in the cluster, there is no incentive to provide quid pro quo defense. Not only this, but a planet arriving in a new cluster has not built up a trust relationship with the cluster members and can therefore not expect to receive defense. Since they cannot expect to receive defense, there is no incentive to send defense. Thus the cluster system does not promote building cluster alliances. On top of this, any player not in a secure position in their galaxy risks being exiled. If they are exiled, they are unlikely to be returned to their cluster, and thus have little incentive to defend their cluster alliance in the first place. In addition, the entire argument for choosing exit over voice in the galaxy applies to the cluster as well.

However, it is worth noting that it took many rounds from the benefit of cluster alliances was taken away (the removal of the incluster attack ETA bonus) to people stopped trying to form cluster alliances or even less meaningful cluster NAPs. It is worth considering that the lack of cluster alliances this round is due to a similar effect, players are not choosing the most efficient options, but as those become more clear, more players will choose them.

Solutions
The return of attacking ETA to the cluster is a good start. The next step is to encourage voice over exit in the galaxy. This can be done in several ways. PAteam's traditional solution is to make exit cost more resources. A better solution is to increase the loyalty of players to their galaxy and (if possible) to the cluster.

One way to increase loyalty is to increase the options for cooperation within a galaxy. Currently the means of cooperation are very limited. There are two primary forms. Defense cooperation and attack cooperation. Currently, attack cooperation is naturally discouraged, since it invites counter-attacks. Defense cooperation is only feasible if fleets are large enough. But since inexperienced players are unlikely to have or be able to gain large fleets, there is currently little to inspire loyalty by defense.

Allowing ingalaxy attacks and farming is one way to increase cooperation. This would provide a way for players to contribute to the whole galaxy without necessarily having to be active enough to provide defense.

Allowing ingalaxy attacks also increases the options for voice in a bad galaxy. Threatening to attack is another way to argue for an improvement in quality.

The proposed new scoring system would increase incentive to cooperate by allowing players to donate resources without losing score. Currently, donating any significant amount of resources is difficult due to the limitations in place on the galaxy and alliance fund. In addition, there is a strong disincentive to make such donations, since they negatively impact one's own rank directly.

The most powerful increase in loyalty can be achieved by allowing larger buddypacks. Buddypacks of around 10 members would allow people to choose the majority of their galaxy directly, which would breed strong group loyalty. Stronger galaxy loyalty would increase the incentives to cooperate with the cluster. Therefore, the cluster ETA changes would counter-act the lessened intermingling of social groups that larger private buddypacks would create.

Problems
Allowing farming would reduce the perceived merit of the top planets, especially if they attacked for large roid benefits in the later stages of the game. This was a major complaint in the rounds when farms were legal (r1-6). However, several limitations would remain in place to prevent this. Farming from allied planets outside the galaxy would remain impossible. Friends in other alliances might allow this, and it would be up to the leaders of these alliances to determine whether to allow this or punish it.

Ingalaxy attacks pose a greater problem in combination with the exiling system. A planet could exile to a new galaxy in the middle of the night and launch very low ETA attacks on unsuspecting targets. At the very least, a limit on the ability to attack and be attacked by a planet such as within the first 24 ticks that it is in a galaxy would be needed.

The problems associated with the new scoring system are examined above.

Under the current system, larger buddypacks would create larger galaxies. Reworking the current system so that single players are treated as buddypacks of one would help alleviate this somewhat. However, this would prevent new players (who are indistinguishable from experienced players going random) from being able to join the largest galaxies. While an improvement over the current system, this is obviously not enough for the long term. However, more advanced systems would require more coding, and must therefore be relegated future discussion.

Implementation
Removing the regulations on farming would be trivial, the multihunters would only need new instructions. Ingalaxy attacks would require removing a single check in the missions page. The changes required to support larger buddypacks would depend on how generic the code is currently.

What's right
There are a lot of things PAteam are doing right. The Planetarion interface isn't considered particularly beautiful, but it is much better than most other online browser based games. The current process of iterative improving the interface, the look and feel of PA, is healthy and should continue. PAteam have shown a strong will to continually improve Planetarion, and their iterative, experimental approach is generally working. They have also shown a strong willingness to work with the community when reasonable suggestions are made that would improve the game. Examples of this are the 'trusted/paid' tags for the Message from Your Commander, the alliance merging system, the removing of military scans and so on.

Summary
Planetarion needs change, but there is a very limited amount of energy available to implement this change. Focusing development on the main problems, and focusing it on making as much progress as possible with as little work as possible could help revitalize the game. The outlined problems are the ones I think are most fundamental to the Planetarion game engine.

I ask that any discussion in this thread be kept to the above points. If you have any further ideas, please post a new thread and link to it.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 20:43   #2
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

You overlooked the most fundemantal problem with planetarion which has been the same for the last 10 rounds - The number (or lack of ) players in the game. I doubt problems with stats/xp/alliance size/newplayers would be examined so thoroughly if there were another say 5k players in the game. Infact its only because of having so few players that these problems are magnified. I still find it incredible that in this day and age a team with as much combined knowlege of the internet as the PA team cannot get this game marketed anywhere except a footnote on jolt site.

nice post anyway jester when will the dissertation be freely available in my local library
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 21:19   #3
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

query: galaxy solution, would you also remove exile and self exile?

query: alliances, in the short erm if you rmeoved the member limit, would you kepe the current score system?
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 21:24   #4
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
query: galaxy solution, would you also remove exile and self exile?
No, I would not. Exit needs to be an option in some sense or another. Some planets are utterly inactive. Completely dead. The policy on exile and, to an extent, self-exile can be adjusted. If buddypacks are big and galaxies are (virtually) private, then the cost of self-exile might as well be lowered. The cost of exile is similar. Currently the exile costs favor big players and big galaxies (because they are expensive to exile and have the extra resources to continually exile players). This means that exit is currently more viable for strong players, when really it should be the other way around (voice should be more viable for strong players).

Quote:
query: alliances, in the short erm if you rmeoved the member limit, would you kepe the current score system?
Yes, it provides no real disadvantages while giving some advantages as described. I don't see any pressing reasons to change it, anyway.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 21:31   #5
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jester

Yes, it provides no real disadvantages while giving some advantages as described. I don't see any pressing reasons to change it, anyway.

currently alliances can recruit X people of any score, then after that another Y below a certain criteria. Would you wish to remove both the X and Y limits?
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 21:33   #6
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

query: in gal attacks - wouldn't people just end up killing the people they didn;t like/farming new players and then exiling them?
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 21:37   #7
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
currently alliances can recruit X people of any score, then after that another Y below a certain criteria. Would you wish to remove both the X and Y limits?
Obviously, yes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
query: in gal attacks - wouldn't people just end up killing the people they didn;t like/farming new players and then exiling them?
Yes, stupid people will do this. Stupid people will, however, always be stupid. Since the stupid people demographic is pretty big, there isn't much point in creating a game where it's impossible to be stupid.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 21:44   #8
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

alliance limits - if they go, would it follow that alliance merging has to go (ignore the other issues with alliance merging for now...)
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 21:50   #9
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

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Originally Posted by Kal
alliance limits - if they go, would it follow that alliance merging has to go (ignore the other issues with alliance merging for now...)
I don't think there's anything wrong with alliance merging at all. With a last deadline for merges (as is currently in place), I don't think there's a need for any other limitations. The only real abuse is this: take N members, divide them into N tags, as the merge deadline approaches, merge the N tags progressively to form one major tag. This would take log2(N) * number of ticks to perform a merge. So currently log2(N) days. For an alliance with 100 members, this is 7 days. However, given that the result is under the same constraints as any existing alliance, I don't believe there is any problem. Surprise is an advantage, but there are other advantages to having all members in a tag at once.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 22:02   #10
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

This is way to long for me to comment on.

However unlimited alliance members is a step backward. PA Team needs to step up and make alliances 30 members large. This would dramaticly change the game, and make it more competitive.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 22:24   #11
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

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Originally Posted by Troll
This is way to long for me to comment on.

However unlimited alliance members is a step backward. PA Team needs to step up and make alliances 30 members large. This would dramaticly change the game, and make it more competitive.
I agree that this is an option, but I don't think it's got the long term value of removing the limit. Specifically, I don't think a drastically lower alliance limit provides the necessary incentives to bring new players into the alliance. It's great for people who have groups of 30 or so friends they'd like to play together with, but horrible for people who don't have established elite groups to join.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 22:42   #12
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jester
I agree that this is an option, but I don't think it's got the long term value of removing the limit. Specifically, I don't think a drastically lower alliance limit provides the necessary incentives to bring new players into the alliance. It's great for people who have groups of 30 or so friends they'd like to play together with, but horrible for people who don't have established elite groups to join.
Problem is at the moment with problematic stats/races/xp/etc if you removed alliance limits you could easily have a group of 100 ppl xpwhoring then go and tag to win the round by miles. If those problems are fixed though then you can safely remove limits, elitist alliances will always stick to lower figures while rest can recruit alot of people if they want.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 23:05   #13
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shoshuro
Problem is at the moment with problematic stats/races/xp/etc if you removed alliance limits you could easily have a group of 100 ppl xpwhoring then go and tag to win the round by miles. If those problems are fixed though then you can safely remove limits, elitist alliances will always stick to lower figures while rest can recruit alot of people if they want.
I posted my suggested changes as a whole. The alliance member limit change takes into account the scoring system change. All the changes are designed to harmonize and complete each other.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 23:41   #14
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

I disagree with your belief that this would exclude newer players. In fact I think this would increase newer players abilities to join alliances. Certainly the top players will all form together into small 30 man groups, no new news there, however smaller groups of friends and such will feel more inclined to go and play with people they know or meet. It would bring more people into the game at the top end, politics, running attacks and defenses . These are the truly entertaining portions of the game, and would lead to a great deal more player interaction which builds a stronger overall community. Players would have a much larger interest in their alliance and feel they are more apart of something than just a cog in the machine. I am sure there would be groups all pissy about having their clique shattered into smaller less dominate ones but hey, we need change and not something that has been done before.

Change is hard, and it is always resisted. Rarely to people see what is good long term ahead of the safety blankets they all cuddle up in.

Also well I do applaud the effort you put into this post. I don’t believe you are really offering much up here other than harking to past ideas. You had a chance to put your mark on this game and it was a disaster. You were confident back then that your stats were good for the game and they clearly were not, why should we look at these suggestions and think that they will bare anymore fruit.

On the stats. They are not overly complicated at all, in fact PA combat has been dumbed down to the point where you just look at a race and launch. I do agree there are a lot of ship names and a few overlapping ships would and could be fine. However, how hard would it be for Pa team to integrate a bclac into the game? Not hard I would imagine.

I hope you don’t take that too personally but the direction I adamantly feel this game needs to go down is not shared with yours.

But I think you have way more ears inclined to listen than I do.
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 23:48   #15
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

i'm not sure why you think the people who get cut as the extra fat from the meat (which is the 30 elites) will suddenly rise up with the ability and the motivation to make alliances themselves.........
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Unread 8 Mar 2007, 23:58   #16
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Because it is alot easier to make a 30 man alliance. I've done it, with no bot no tools other than those I had in game. Would we compete for the #1 alliance? NO not with the current 60 man limit but with a 30 man limit we could have a chance. So could many other groups. Trust me it takes very very little overall effort to run a small alliance. Your scanner tags and gets to scan out of a pool of alliance resources, his scans of the attacks u run in raid are automaticly posted on the raid including any JGs and up todate units/ planet scans.

What is hard is running an alliance with 60 odd people and having to do all the leg work involved to be elite. Web sites, irc bots, internal affairs and spying conflicts. If I could do it, anyone can do it.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 00:33   #17
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

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Originally Posted by Troll
Because it is alot easier to make a 30 man alliance. I've done it, with no bot no tools other than those I had in game. Would we compete for the #1 alliance? NO not with the current 60 man limit but with a 30 man limit we could have a chance. So could many other groups. Trust me it takes very very little overall effort to run a small alliance. Your scanner tags and gets to scan out of a pool of alliance resources, his scans of the attacks u run in raid are automaticly posted on the raid including any JGs and up todate units/ planet scans.

What is hard is running an alliance with 60 odd people and having to do all the leg work involved to be elite. Web sites, irc bots, internal affairs and spying conflicts. If I could do it, anyone can do it.
yes, except i would class you as one of those people with the ability and motivation to run an alliance already, you would be in the aforementioned "elite groups" but i severely doubt there are any that exist in what would be 'leftovers' of the elite groups (and there'll only be what: 1/ dest, 2/ ct, 3/ gosu, 4/ vgn, 5/ omen, 6/ nd(?) of "round-winning" alliances but what will those who will be left out due to not being good enough to fit in for the compact 30 limits do? perhaps 1 or 2 will start new alliances, but i expect if this was to be the case, they'd again be a cream of the crop sort of person. or at least someone who likes power, and that's still only 60 more places from what - a minium of 6x30=180 people kicked out. and this is without getting into alliances such as f-crew and so on
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 00:40   #18
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
query: in gal attacks - wouldn't people just end up killing the people they didn;t like/farming new players and then exiling them?
What about only making it possible to exile planets who hasn't gained a given percentage of their score in the last week (or another time line)? That way you'll be able to exile inactives while you're unable to exile small planets who gain score and is active.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 01:38   #19
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

I think Jester makes an interesting and thought provocative post.

However I do not agree with his suggestion for removing the alliance limit. I will try to give a brief reasoning here.

I have played with both high ranked alliances and mid to lower ranked alliances, and while I agree with the argument that recruiting when you got a current limit is a concern for a recruiter (It sure was for me in r13 in NoS) there are several things you need to consider.

The smaller alliances will first of all get large problems with keeping their players, and eventually, they will die. The concept: grass is always greener in another alliance is a concept Planetarion is suffering from. Everyone thinks that other alliances is better, and eventually with no alliance limits you will end up with 4-5 huge alliances, and alot of smaller groups with no possible chance to compete.

Your argument that some alliances has won with lower numbers than the alliancelimit voids itself when you remove the alliancelimits because the difference is so big. When not having a limit at all you can keep on recruiting and not have any problems outscoring someone more active by doing that. I dont think the general population of PA wants that.

I do agree with lowering the alliance limits slightly to 30-40 to make it a harder enviroment. But we also gotta think of the new players.

My suggestion is hardcoding alliances:

The PA team monitors the alliances slightly more than before and then put a "offical" alliance stamp on the ones the PA team knows is alliances fully capable of deliviering a "product" to their members. it could be two lables an alliance could get. the Active alliance label, and the training/new player label. With this new players will know what alliance to choose, and also heighten the demand of quality coming from an alliance, so we dont get dayflies like we've had so many times. Likewise if an alliance falls apart or folds you will ofc lose the offical alliance stamp.

The argument: no, this is unfair to new alliances.

I disagree, this only requires the new alliance to show that their intentions behind creating an alliance is to make it sustainable and self sufficent. Yes, you will not be offically given a "thumbs up" from the PA team straight away, but you can see the first round as a "trial" round before getting the quality stamp.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 02:54   #20
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Troll
I disagree with your belief that this would exclude newer players. In fact I think this would increase newer players abilities to join alliances. Certainly the top players will all form together into small 30 man groups, no new news there, however smaller groups of friends and such will feel more inclined to go and play with people they know or meet. It would bring more people into the game at the top end, politics, running attacks and defenses . These are the truly entertaining portions of the game, and would lead to a great deal more player interaction which builds a stronger overall community. Players would have a much larger interest in their alliance and feel they are more apart of something than just a cog in the machine. I am sure there would be groups all pissy about having their clique shattered into smaller less dominate ones but hey, we need change and not something that has been done before.

Change is hard, and it is always resisted. Rarely to people see what is good long term ahead of the safety blankets they all cuddle up in.

Also well I do applaud the effort you put into this post. I don’t believe you are really offering much up here other than harking to past ideas. You had a chance to put your mark on this game and it was a disaster. You were confident back then that your stats were good for the game and they clearly were not, why should we look at these suggestions and think that they will bare anymore fruit.

On the stats. They are not overly complicated at all, in fact PA combat has been dumbed down to the point where you just look at a race and launch. I do agree there are a lot of ship names and a few overlapping ships would and could be fine. However, how hard would it be for Pa team to integrate a bclac into the game? Not hard I would imagine.

I hope you don’t take that too personally but the direction I adamantly feel this game needs to go down is not shared with yours.

But I think you have way more ears inclined to listen than I do.
i actually pretty much see that as a short term benefit, it may work for 1 round or 2, but no more, the elite will stay elite, and the ones loosing will most likely disband being new allies, not meeting there goals, you must remember not every player is like you and I, and we dont actualy live in a perfect pa world, where your ideas will come true, infact i very much doubt you will have have more than 3-4 alliances conteneding for #1 spot again, pretty much the same as every other round.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 09:53   #21
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Troll
Because it is alot easier to make a 30 man alliance. I've done it, with no bot no tools other than those I had in game.
Yeah, you've done it in a round or two where XP has been the descisive factor of the round. The facts stand, you'll be working hard to make an alliance size of 60 that has sufficient staff to run things during a round where defence actually counts for more than horse manure (excluding the few planets that can harness lots of it). Yeah, it might be easier to create a 30-man group of active friends that all go for a gazillion distorters or eitrades battleships/xandathrii fighters, and 3-fleet the piss of themselves, with the occasional defence fleet.

The thing is, even currently, Paisley, Appocomaster, & Co. have made cooperation as unrewarding and useless as it gets. For the vast majority. These are the kinds of rounds when you really just need a tag of people with score to win, instead of an alliance.

I'm personally all-in for the removal of alliance limits stated by Jester. Who knows, maybe F-Crew blows into a 120 member giant, and the other alliances have to block against them to take them down. That'd make wakey go furious on forums, and that alone would definately be worth it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kargool
The PA team monitors the alliances slightly more than before and then put a "offical" alliance stamp on the ones the PA team knows is alliances fully capable of deliviering a "product" to their members.
What's this shit about?
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 12:32   #22
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

What I don't understand, Troll, is that in this thread you voice your concern for alliances that don't defend, because they can't manage to make communities without doing so. And in this thread, you voice an opinion that would almotst certainly force a number of alliances to cut their membersize drastically. I think it should be obvious that this would lead to alliances disbanding, and a lot of communities to disappear.

Another thing is that the rounds where it has been easy to set up smaller alliances have also been rounds where attacking has been a lot more important than defending. This round, and round 16, attacking has been so much more important than defending, it's almost ridicolous to compare them to other rounds.

Personally, I don't disagree that much. In my opinion we should either enforce small alliances, or not enforce limits at all.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 12:36   #23
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kargool
...
This is unfair to new or smaller alliances, just like it was in rounds 1-10? I understand that the playerbase was vastly larger back then, but I honestly don't think it would hurt the smaller alliances as much as you think. These alliances live largely because they manage to have a good community round after round after round. Alliances like F-Crew and ROCK have been around since the beginning of time, and a lot of the people running these alliances are people that either was trained there, or have been there since the very start. I don't think the reason why these people didn't go to top tier alliances is that they weren't able to - I think it was loyalty, friendship and community that kept them back. Would that disappear if the memberlimit did?
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 12:40   #24
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Very nice suggestions i think, although pretty much limited to tweaks rather than large concept changes which i think we need more (but by request not going in to that ).

The only thing i do not believe that will solve a problem is making the shipstats even easier. Having less ships the same way we have now will still result in the same game. Currently initiative is everything, damage and armour are pretty much insignicant in terms of combat outcome, the side firing first generally wins unless defence is obtained. It basicly means you look for the bad initiative ship of your target race and just attack it This lead to everyone getting used to picking up free roids (or recall due to def which cannot be targetted), apart from XP players who don't mind sacrificing large amounts of value for the XP they will get from the roids (admittedly that would change using Heartless' suggested scoring changes).

I know alot of ppl probably won't agree with me, but the whole combat system just isn't realistic (i know, poor argument as its a fantasy sci-fi game, but read on). If we would take in common sense, any ship would fire in combat, regardless of them being good at taking out the target ship or not (we wouldn't let ourselves be slaughtered without giving a fight now would we). This was done in the past using weaponspeed, agility, damage and armour to determine how effective a ship would be against a target ship. It allowed ships to target any ship in the game without (theoratically) becoming to powerfull overall and thus leading to the game being more open to the use of smart / different fleet setups opposed to what we see now (whether ppl chose to do so is not really the issue, fact is the options for it were available in the combat engine).
With a combat system like that i believe combat will be alot less static (every race using the same fleet and target the same race), given initiative is worked out and ships are able to target more than just one class. The whole concept of not losing ships in combat or not being able to target ships is just a bad one i think. In 3D games any ship can target any ship, they just might be piss poor at taking them out and that is something we should be looking for aswell imo, drop the whole free roids concept!

[edit]More complex is actually a good thing if you ask me! Just allow for a clear 'mediocre' path to chose for those who can't understand the benefit of specialization. I do agree that having less ships overall will probably be a good thing.[/edit]
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 13:32   #25
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

I would like to see a combat where you first attack your prim target with 100% of the ability, is that target not there it shoots randomly at 50% of his ability to the rest

Further I agree with Jester. Specially the alliance limit drop is a very good one. Always think you should do what you wanna do in such games with out to many restrictions
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 14:28   #26
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wandows
Very nice suggestions i think, although pretty much limited to tweaks rather than large concept changes which i think we need more (but by request not going in to that ).

The only thing i do not believe that will solve a problem is making the shipstats even easier. Having less ships the same way we have now will still result in the same game. Currently initiative is everything, damage and armour are pretty much insignicant in terms of combat outcome, the side firing first generally wins unless defence is obtained. It basicly means you look for the bad initiative ship of your target race and just attack it This lead to everyone getting used to picking up free roids (or recall due to def which cannot be targetted), apart from XP players who don't mind sacrificing large amounts of value for the XP they will get from the roids (admittedly that would change using Heartless' suggested scoring changes).

I know alot of ppl probably won't agree with me, but the whole combat system just isn't realistic (i know, poor argument as its a fantasy sci-fi game, but read on). If we would take in common sense, any ship would fire in combat, regardless of them being good at taking out the target ship or not (we wouldn't let ourselves be slaughtered without giving a fight now would we). This was done in the past using weaponspeed, agility, damage and armour to determine how effective a ship would be against a target ship. It allowed ships to target any ship in the game without (theoratically) becoming to powerfull overall and thus leading to the game being more open to the use of smart / different fleet setups opposed to what we see now (whether ppl chose to do so is not really the issue, fact is the options for it were available in the combat engine).
With a combat system like that i believe combat will be alot less static (every race using the same fleet and target the same race), given initiative is worked out and ships are able to target more than just one class. The whole concept of not losing ships in combat or not being able to target ships is just a bad one i think. In 3D games any ship can target any ship, they just might be piss poor at taking them out and that is something we should be looking for aswell imo, drop the whole free roids concept!

[edit]More complex is actually a good thing if you ask me! Just allow for a clear 'mediocre' path to chose for those who can't understand the benefit of specialization. I do agree that having less ships overall will probably be a good thing.[/edit]
Thanks for replying.

The main thing I'd like to stress is that I think it would be better to have 20 ships that everyone has access to than 11 ships per race. I don't think having more ships leads to more depth if only a few people have access to each set. With 20 ships for everyone, we could see more different combinations of ships than we currently see, which is what I mean by greater depth.

I didn't post my ideas for the combat engine because I think that involves more coding than is realistic. I've explained what I think should be done to Kal and others, but I'm not sure it's the direction they're interested in.

Could you make a thread and post your ideas for the combat engine?
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 15:11   #27
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

OK, so I took some time to think some things through. Here is what I came up with.


Exile system:

I think enough people already elaborated on why the current system sucks. I'd like to suggest something completely new. It wouldn't even require that much of a change/recode. At PA team, people try to control everything, with rules, restrictions, limits. I'm strongly in the favor of self-regulating systems. They are usually designed based on statistics (or happen to exist out of coincidence), and dynamically adjust to the situation. This could work for exiling, too:

1. Exiling is free.
2. You are exiled to the smallest galaxy where the average score is in 15% range of your score.
3. You can only exile if you have 120% or more of the galaxy average score.
4. You can only be exiled by the galaxy if you have 80% or less of the galaxy score.

Of course, I'm not sure about the exact percentages, they might be better off as variables, involving maybe the universe size, the average universe score, average galaxy size, etc. But the principle is there. Looking at current scores, it would lead to some small core galaxies, a bunch of medium galaxies with the average PA players, and a whole bunch of newbie galaxies.

You won't pay for your exile, since you will only be able to exile if you deserve it. And you will land where you deserve. There will be absolutely no luck deserved (except for friendships etc.). It would also allow to still start out as buddy packs, and keep lower score friends in the galaxy, if you wish to. But this will lower the average score of new planets. And if you all keep up with each other, no one can seperate you.

In terms of loyalty, if the galaxy, as a whole, is hit repeatedly, and there are lots of losses, only the players who manage to keep most of their score can exile, or only the players who didn't manage to do well can be exiled, which is a better option than planets exiling randomly. Additionally, if the new scoring system would be applied, this couldn't happen at all, and people would have to help each other out in rebuilding.

Also, this system offers the possibility for new players to demonstrate their worth. No one will be able to make the difference between old (known) players and new players, since they can only exile following a fair set of rules. No one can be discriminated, and new players that improve will have a constant learning curve during some rounds, where they exile often and always get to learn new stuff from the better/more active players.


The ship stats

Definately, I don't like the way this is currently handled. A new set of stats every round, so it doesn't get boring, fine. But mostly, those new sets suck. And you have to learn a new set of X numbers every round. Why so complicated? Again, I'm in favor of self-regulating systems. Let the players define how they want to play.

Let's say, for example, every race has 6 ships, one ship from each class. For each ship, there is 8 researches: one per target class, one for pod, one for structure killer. You can combine those ships just the way you want. There can be players who target just one single class, there can be players who just exist to kill scanners (only structure killers), you could even have only pods. But most of the players will go for a combination of the possibilities.

This will lead to a lot of variations, and a lot of new depth to combat. Every normal player will probably have 1 pod class, and 5 attack classes. This will lead to every player having one hole in their defense, and will make defending necessary. Even more so, if the new scoring system is implemented.


The scans:

This will also lead to new scans being necessary. I'd use the opportunity to rework the scan research. Instead of being linear, why can't scanners decide which scans they want first? Why should one research useless scans? Just make all scans available for research immediately, and decide research time based on usefulness.

This will make the life much easier for scanners, who can concentrate on the scans they need badly first, and leave the other researches for later, making it possible for a scanner to play a normal round. It will also allow solo players to do much better, since they don't need to research all scans to get to the scans they really need. So no more blind landing and blind launching if you're solo player and can't afford the time to research scans.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 15:39   #28
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Alliance Member Limit:
I think your argumentation here is a bit inconsequent. I don't think it is a huge problem for alliances that they don't know exactly how well their recruit gonna perform. Every alliance is monitoring member activity - and if they recruited a lemon it'll be gone soon.
You are saying that any alliance below Top5 are existing only as social environments - this isn't true really. Neither alliance can exist long by only providing a nice chat and some jokes. There needs to be a certain level of fairly high-ranked players which need a realistic prospect of ending Top100. Else they are reduced to mere farming objects for big alliances.
Therefor I think that removing member limits isn't a good idea. It will reduce the number of competitive alliances and will increase the pressure on active players to join one of those alliances as that would be their only chance to gain some decent rank.

Ship Stats are too complicated
I don't think they are. Even if there are 10 numbers to describe any ship there are 3 you need to know. Class - Target class and initiative. Most other games have way more complicated sets of stats.

Scoring system is broken
I don't really see the problem with the xp system being a valuable alternative. After all you get it for attacking planets bigger than yours. Value favors ppl going for easier roids. Problems with xp only occur as soon as the system is combined with a bad stats set - like in R16 or this round.
I don't see why it should be restricted to roids only either. Donations are really a non-issue as this is one thing (for a change) that is well implemented now. About excluding refinieres and finance centers - this would be a severe penalty to races that have a hard time keeping their roids (Ter and Cat this round).

Exile system is bad
You suggest a combination of bigger buddypacks, bigger galaxies, allow farming (by removing bash limits?) and allowing ingal attacks.
This suggestion is so deeply flawed I don't even know where to start.
How is it encouraging, helps you learning the game when as soon as u are lucky enough to join a fairly big gal you end up being farmed by the big planets in that galaxy.
The loyalty in a buddypack gonna be restricted to the buddypack only - the bigger the bps - the less need there is for cooperation with other planets in gal (especially if you could just take their roids without fear of defence).
Small gals encourage cooperation much more. In almost any gal I have been in there was a lot of help and knowledge provided to small players - if they been willing to join irc and play fairly active. Again I don't see the problem you are describing being an actual problem.
Dunno how much 'abuse' of the planet reset feature there is - but I don't think it's more than a handful of players that would reset their planet more than 3 times in order to get into a decent galaxy.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 17:26   #29
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tietäjä
Yeah, you've done it in a round or two where XP has been the descisive factor of the round. The facts stand, you'll be working hard to make an alliance size of 60 that has sufficient staff to run things during a round where defence actually counts for more than horse manure (excluding the few planets that can harness lots of it). Yeah, it might be easier to create a 30-man group of active friends that all go for a gazillion distorters or eitrades battleships/xandathrii fighters, and 3-fleet the piss of themselves, with the occasional defence fleet.

The thing is, even currently, Paisley, Appocomaster, & Co. have made cooperation as unrewarding and useless as it gets. For the vast majority. These are the kinds of rounds when you really just need a tag of people with score to win, instead of an alliance.

I'm personally all-in for the removal of alliance limits stated by Jester. Who knows, maybe F-Crew blows into a 120 member giant, and the other alliances have to block against them to take them down. That'd make wakey go furious on forums, and that alone would definately be worth it.



What's this shit about?

Oh you assume that this has only occured in the XP round? I assume then you know nothing about my time in PA and what i have done. Not that I've been a big player it's easy to miss that 30 man group now isn't it.

I will state more after I've had my daily meetings and paid my bills as it will no doubt be a longer post than I thought to sum it all up.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 17:29   #30
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

I've given these changes some considerable thought over the last day or so, and I have to say that I'm in favour of almost all of them. The use of economic and sociological theory is an excellent idea, since it helps us to be more objective about the proposals and escape emotional attachments to any particular concepts.


The removal of the alliance member limit seems like a good approach to me. There's several ways to run alliance recruitment, and although some current alliances will regulate their members very strictly (as they would under the present limits), a couple of alliances should make a killing by recruiting a LOT of people and seeing what stuck. It'd take a couple of rounds to complete itself, but it'd definitely force some of the present complacent HCs to be much more pro-active.


The changes to ship-stats seem well-thought-through and along lines that I've been quietly in favour of for quite a while, mainly because of the re-introduction of a proper tech-tree where choices impose restrictions on your planet (e.g. military scans excluding hyperspace). The potential to do this with ships, via the element of races, is logical and comprehensively covered by Jester, a superb stats-maker. I don't think there's much more for me to add here.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 17:53   #31
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jester
The main thing I'd like to stress is that I think it would be better to have 20 ships that everyone has access to than 11 ships per race. I don't think having more ships leads to more depth if only a few people have access to each set. With 20 ships for everyone, we could see more different combinations of ships than we currently see, which is what I mean by greater depth.
i agree here, it will certainly be easier to grasp for the new players and most likely easier to balance out aswell. But as i said before, just reducing the number of ships isn't the solution, it helps, but doesn't solve the stats/combat issues. Like furball mentioned, combined with a exclusion or other 'advanced' techtree this can become very interesting. I put some ideas forward to PaTeam for a more advanced techtree (both research and construction), just waiting on how it will turn out from their end.

Quote:
Could you make a thread and post your ideas for the combat engine?
When i have some proper time to write it yes.
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Unread 9 Mar 2007, 23:04   #32
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

One word: Simplify.

The game has lost its way. go bk to 2 races. bring it onnn

Jester: nice post and some great theorys
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Unread 10 Mar 2007, 03:19   #33
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by XelNaga
OK, so I took some time to think some things through. Here is what I came up with.


Exile system:

I think enough people already elaborated on why the current system sucks. I'd like to suggest something completely new. It wouldn't even require that much of a change/recode. At PA team, people try to control everything, with rules, restrictions, limits. I'm strongly in the favor of self-regulating systems. They are usually designed based on statistics (or happen to exist out of coincidence), and dynamically adjust to the situation. This could work for exiling, too:

1. Exiling is free.
2. You are exiled to the smallest galaxy where the average score is in 15% range of your score.
3. You can only exile if you have 120% or more of the galaxy average score.
4. You can only be exiled by the galaxy if you have 80% or less of the galaxy score.

Of course, I'm not sure about the exact percentages, they might be better off as variables, involving maybe the universe size, the average universe score, average galaxy size, etc. But the principle is there. Looking at current scores, it would lead to some small core galaxies, a bunch of medium galaxies with the average PA players, and a whole bunch of newbie galaxies.

You won't pay for your exile, since you will only be able to exile if you deserve it. And you will land where you deserve. There will be absolutely no luck deserved (except for friendships etc.). It would also allow to still start out as buddy packs, and keep lower score friends in the galaxy, if you wish to. But this will lower the average score of new planets. And if you all keep up with each other, no one can seperate you.

In terms of loyalty, if the galaxy, as a whole, is hit repeatedly, and there are lots of losses, only the players who manage to keep most of their score can exile, or only the players who didn't manage to do well can be exiled, which is a better option than planets exiling randomly. Additionally, if the new scoring system would be applied, this couldn't happen at all, and people would have to help each other out in rebuilding.

Also, this system offers the possibility for new players to demonstrate their worth. No one will be able to make the difference between old (known) players and new players, since they can only exile following a fair set of rules. No one can be discriminated, and new players that improve will have a constant learning curve during some rounds, where they exile often and always get to learn new stuff from the better/more active players.

One Small problem with this is the fact that if u get a new player in a existing gal & he/she is struggling to get a grips with the game for what ever reason, the gal then exiles him/her to galaxy where there is 10-15 other people in same boat. ie a galaxy filled with newbies with no one to teach them how to play.


On a different Note with the regards to Alliances with in the game. Having started playing this game in R1 til R10 before taking a break. The main problem is that while alliances promote the community aspect of the game they do damage the game as well, Yes u have alliance limits now but you also have a smaller playing field so percentage wise your no better off.

Now i realise that theres no way of getting rid of alliances its just not going to happen, which is a shame, cause if u are a new player you are outside the alliance loop hence have no chance of winning or if you are an active player such as myself that chooses not to be apart of the alliances anymore, and prefers to help his gal out more - (This is where alliances should be made galaxy based not universe based) you stand no chance of getting very far, yes im doing ok & if i was in an alliance i would probably be further up the rankings. But as an independant it becomes very difficult to find suitable targets or worse you spend 3 days building up only to get 4-6 waves on your planet due to some alliance deciding your gal is going to being raped tonight.

And yes before i get abuse I have been involved with the larger Alliances back then as well as nice smaller ones, Such as my first alliance r2 IPC, other alliances included K9, NoS, Fury, etc etc As such i've held various positions within these alliances being just a grunt to HC.

And the most fun i had was r4 when i created a 25 man galaxy of mates i had gotten to know over the previous rounds without any major alliances within gal & we still kicked ass, considering the size of the major alliances & the playing field.

Anyway i will shut up rabbling now

Cupelix


Basically if you managed to get rid of alliances full stop, so that it was down to you & your gal mates to take on the universe then the game would be so much more interesting & not to mention the challenge involved to get you & your gal the #1 spots, yes you could get cluster naps to help out with extra defence, but it would mean gals would have to communicate with each other, work together as a team.
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Unread 10 Mar 2007, 03:36   #34
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

On the question of races & ship stats, Having not played much since r10 i have no experince as to what has transpired during this period but having played this round & examined the stats, they are somewhat off to say the least. ETD are far to strong, Terrans to weak, Xan & Ziks have been some weakened as well (My favourite races). Major Problem for Xan is theres no point building anything other than FI-CO the rest of the ships are rubbish complete waste of time xan where supposed to have the element of surprise ie shoot first but that seems to have gone, Ziks were a race to fear but now they are quite weak. Back to the Xan it has no chance to defend against BS or CR attacks which makes Xan's the farms of the universe unless of course you have an alliance which can supply u with defence.
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Unread 10 Mar 2007, 04:48   #35
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Allow in gal attacks, but dont give an eta 5 travel time... raise it to the normal one. Otherwise whenever someone in your gal got incs, you could flood the attack with value and completly screw the attackers cap (keeping the roids in gal that can then be farmed back)

I think a good way to alter the exile system is to allow galaxies to offer spots for sale, and potential exiles can then pay an increasing amount based on the quality of the galaxy.

For example, the cost to exile into a particular galaxy could cost 1 resource per galaxy value or similar, you can then save up to try get into the top gals. This would mean that only big planets could afford to go into the big gals, so possibly there could be another cost? maybe loss of constructions? Each galaxy could set a cost to join, with crap gals obviously free to join, and bigger gals more expensive. The amount spent could then be donated evenly to each planet in the gal they are exiling from.
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Unread 10 Mar 2007, 13:22   #36
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by LordBlackheart2000
One Small problem with this is the fact that if u get a new player in a existing gal & he/she is struggling to get a grips with the game for what ever reason, the gal then exiles him/her to galaxy where there is 10-15 other people in same boat. ie a galaxy filled with newbies with no one to teach them how to play.
The idea was to have new players during the round start in the lowest galaxies anyways. Anyone willing to achieve something will have more than enough information available to them to do better than the inactive noobs, i.e. manual, new players guide, etc.
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Unread 14 Mar 2007, 00:12   #37
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

I agree with the score system. It makes no sense.

VALUE: Roids + Ships * a constant
SCORE: Value + XP * a constant

Thats all you need.
Current formulae are far too complicated. This way ou could get an idea of how much of someones score is ships and how much is hot air etc.
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Unread 14 Mar 2007, 00:17   #38
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

I'm impressed with what jester has said simply because they are well thought out, well researched, have logic and common sense running through all of them and contain no changes to the game that I think would be a disaster.

I'm in full support of it. The key is obviously thrashing out precise details, I'll offer my full input at a stage where I'm not tired and don't have manflu
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Unread 14 Mar 2007, 11:32   #39
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Munchkin
I agree with the score system. It makes no sense.

VALUE: Roids + Ships * a constant
SCORE: Value + XP * a constant

Thats all you need.
Current formulae are far too complicated. This way ou could get an idea of how much of someones score is ships and how much is hot air etc.
Err. The current formula is almost exactly that. It's:

value = roids + ships + resources + constructions

Your constant is 1, so unimportant. You can find out how much score is contributed by ships by doing a few scans.

Score = value + XP * 60

Your constant is 60.
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Unread 15 Mar 2007, 04:19   #40
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

It's late here and I am too tired to analyse the posts and replies fully (or even half as much as it half deserves).

1) Excellent post

2) The alliance subject is the most important. What has always killed/restricted PA is the dominance of successful alliances and the elitism of proper protection for noobs. The 'Lemons' analogy was utterly fascinating and highly relevant.

3) Ship Stats - For my own 2pennorth further dumbing down of PA is undesirable. People that play games *want* flavour in their choices and selections. The complications may seem bewildering but best strategies for race selections always make themselves known quite widely early on in every round - and a variety of strategies allows individualism. Genericism will put people off. (Personally I want to see the return of more complication as it allows a bit more... character? i.e. different build times and so on).

4) Scoring System - does seem a little complicated, however i think the direction PA is heading IS correct - perhaps simply removing value (after all scanning is important), or perhaps something as simple as renaming value as 'power' would help remove confusion. I don't want to see a return to score being based simply on power and like the fact that the current score system discourages bashing. It seems pretty straightforward in essence - you want high score - take higher risks. This is a good thing, and perhaps should be expressed as such.

5) Exiling
Obviously relevant but seems a minor technical note considering the more 'game direction' points of the post.

6) Cluster Issues
I agree - clusters were pointless details without ETA reduction. Anything that enhances different kinds of cohesion amongst otherwise unconnected players can only help to break/influence major alliance domination (r.e. my first point excessive elite domination).

7) Once again, excellent post. Only wish I was more sober and patient to make my reply.
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Unread 15 Mar 2007, 22:00   #41
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

In the spirit of running my mouth, here's a possible way stats could look if everyone had access to the same set of ships:

http://goat.no-ip.com/teststats.html

This would be what I would term an 'alpha' set of stats. I haven't made any attempts at balancing, and as can be seen most of the ships are just copied off old rounds, with some taken from the current round. Nothing has been balanced, but I defy anyone to say that this is simpler or provides less depth than the current round, despite having under half the number of ships (24 as opposed to 55).

There would still be a point to having races, with each having its unique set of 'engineering' style bonuses.

Edit: To reiterate: This is not even an attempt at providing anything remotely balanced. This is just to show what I mean by increasing depth while reducing 'stupid' complexity.
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Unread 16 Mar 2007, 12:47   #42
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

I like the idea of every1 being able to build the same ships. It lets you essentially make your own race based on the strengths/weaknesses you see. Perhaps it could all be limited by research, eg you have to research cath based fi, and then xan fi to get emp and kill ships.
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Unread 16 Mar 2007, 13:04   #43
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Just as an aside, wouldnt you be able to improve the depth of those stats by having pods in all classes (not just destroyers and frigates), and thus retain the current environment of being able to exploit weaknesses in others fleets, and/or being vulnerable (by choice) to certain types of attack?

I am cautiously optimistic as to the direction of this discussion.
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Unread 16 Mar 2007, 15:14   #44
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie
Just as an aside, wouldnt you be able to improve the depth of those stats by having pods in all classes (not just destroyers and frigates), and thus retain the current environment of being able to exploit weaknesses in others fleets, and/or being vulnerable (by choice) to certain types of attack?

I am cautiously optimistic as to the direction of this discussion.
I'm a bit dubious to having pods of all classes, due to the hell it would be to DC. But that's the only real justification I see. I only put the FR and DE pods there as examples. Another example that I think would be entirely justifiable would be 1 pod per ETA. 1 pod per class might very well work too, but I'm not certain enough to claim that it would.
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Unread 16 Mar 2007, 16:53   #45
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

1 pod per ETA sounds like a good idea to me. It might be strange to DC for the first round or so, but DCs have had it comparatively easy compared to the days of 3-tick attacking and multiple ship targetting pre-PaX. I don't think it's that difficult a change - information is power, and if fleet analysis scans are around then it shouldn't have to be too much of a problem.


EDIT: how about building it into the tech tree? You can choose between a FI or a CO pod, a FR or a DE pod and a CR or a BS pod. Stats would be very tricky to construct, but I like the concept itself.
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Unread 16 Mar 2007, 19:35   #46
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

[quote=furball]1 pod per ETA sounds like a good idea to me. It might be strange to DC for the first round or so, but DCs have had it comparatively easy compared to the days of 3-tick attacking and multiple ship targetting pre-PaX. I don't think it's that difficult a change - information is power, and if fleet analysis scans are around then it shouldn't have to be too much of a problem.[/quote}I don't think one per ETA would be too hard.

Quote:
EDIT: how about building it into the tech tree? You can choose between a FI or a CO pod, a FR or a DE pod and a CR or a BS pod. Stats would be very tricky to construct, but I like the concept itself.
Good luck DCing against jammer players. How do you organize defense against someone you can't get a tech scan on?
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Unread 18 Mar 2007, 15:33   #47
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

If we wanted to do everything suggested in the OP, but we were unable to do it all in one go, what would be the best order to make the changes in?
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Unread 18 Mar 2007, 15:50   #48
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

well sadly kal is only intrested to do it r22 so its pointless to discuss it now

most of the changes in the first post means its easier to do a total new code and launch a new game and call it "pan"

and we all know how effective that is gonna be
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Unread 18 Mar 2007, 15:59   #49
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

no robban, did you even read it? he suggested minimal code alteration suggestions
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Unread 18 Mar 2007, 16:01   #50
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Re: What I'd change and how I'd do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
If we wanted to do everything suggested in the OP, but we were unable to do it all in one go, what would be the best order to make the changes in?
If you wanted to, id rather a delayed round if im being honest, with all said effects in change, than only 1 at a time, because i think they are all interlinked and just wouldnt work solo, but i may have missed the point.
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