Planetarion - a proposal for the PA team

[Paisley]

After reading the dispair of players on AD http://pirate.planetarion.com/showth...30#post3248330

if I was in charge of the Running of planetarion I would access the following

Declining playerbase
1. lack of research and development of planetarion
2. How poor ship stats contribute to this and no radical changes since r18 imo
3. how unsociable it is to be a commited player (ive even heard of players that have had to attend marriage councelling because ringiing phones at 3am etc)

Pollution of the quality of the playerbase
1. lack of consequences for causing multihunter offenses like farming etc which encourages farms etc to be signed up and polutes the playerbase.

Level the playing field
1. top tier alliances and galaxies using VNC (ive heard rummours of that MH have a way to detect this but im confident I could use vnc without raising suspiction if I was put to the test) programs etc to gain a tactical advantage where other wouldn't have this advantage

Here is what I propose on how to mend planetarion.

1. A research and developement team like you would have a support team and start taking the game forward. - Ive made this known a few years ago and I hate to say I told you so for not heading this suggestion.
2. a 1% mining bonus per round played to a maxium of 5% over 5 rounds like you have start up bonuses for research and construction HOWEVER IF multihunters close you and your appeal fails this is reset to 0 (weather its the multi's MAIN planet or not) as the only way to attack a multi is his/her main planet. (think of this as a Good behaviour bonus)
3. Give alliance HC/DC/BC remote fleet access ingame so they can launch and configure fleets WITH the members permission (set up ingame etc) this is imo the best way to deal with the 1am-6am launch culture and make the game more 24/7 (yes it makes the game into the hands of commanders but as the declining playerbase is this will eventually not be a problem in the long run ... hello we are losing players)
4. alliance Golden Roids with mining bonuses for the alliances as well as the player who holds the roid(s) and have a formula 1 point system in rewarding mining bonuses as this would create a capture the flag enviroment. (this will make politics more dyamic) Also have a mining bonus IF your alliance holds their own alliance. exact numbers are open to discussion etc. (resarch and development team could work this stuff out)
5. make ship stats where attack fleets get first cut and not defensive stats. I would also bring back 0 loss stealing but have a max cap of 10% of value per battle report (again this is something a R&D team can test and perfect) so that ziks for example dont have to depend on 1 ace kill ship per Roiding fleet like it has like the last 30+ rounds and resort to r14-r18 playing style. Make the ship stats Fun again

I would also propose that the PA team make a stat proposal engine where the Community can draft a set of ship stats and get folk who havent had a shot at the stats... lets be honest the regular stat makers havent really been thinking outside of the box for the last 30+ rounds. (again a research and development team would help with this)

Discuss and contribute your own Ideas aswell please.

[ArcChas]

I was trying to keep an open mind here and also to restrict myself to positive feedback - but the more I thought about it and the more I found that I didn't agree with.

I broadly agree with the first half of your post (after all, what's not to agree with) and even with your first two proposals but after that I start to struggle.

The suggestion that we abdicate our responsibility to make ourselves available to launch our fleets has a few drawbacks and is not "the best way" to deal with the unsociable hours problem. It reduces still further the community aspect of the game (which really only comes from arranging defence and consequently being online to communicate with alliance and galaxy mates) and it also requires alliances to have dedicated (and skilled) DCs so the "top" alliances would still have the advantage (although I agree that they wouldn't need to cheat). Removing (or in some way altering) PL for attacking fleets would be a simpler method of addressing this problem. It may also be a good idea to implement some form of "sleep mode".

The "Golden Roids" idea is really not much more than a gimmick, unless they give significant rewards, in which case they would benefit those strong enough to capture and hold them - causing even more inequality between the top and "bottom" alliances.

Making attacking ships "get first cut" will (of course) make attacking easier and, equally obviously, make defending harder. As I've said many times, arranging defence is the part of this game that encourages interaction between players. Any idiot can put a fleet together, pick a target that has no chance of defending against it (adding team-ups as necessary to ensure overwhelming strength), (pre) launch and go to bed. Therefore I believe that making defence even harder is a "bad thing".

Zero-loss stealing has been discussed (and discredited) in a recent thread.

As for stats, I agree that "bad" stats discourage players. My solution to this would be to stop p*ssing around with them every round. Find a set which was generally regarded as "good" (or at least not "bad") and which preferably embodies the race characteristics which form the "back story" to the game and start with that. Make minor "balancing" tweaks each round to address any issues found but don't change the nature (and/or name) of each ship every damned round. If we can get to the stage where players can get a sense of continuity they may be able to exercise the "suspension of disbelief" which is essential to the enjoyment of any game (especially those with a science fiction theme).

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Paisley

1. A research and developement team like you would have a support team and start taking the game forward. - Ive made this known a few years ago and I hate to say I told you so for not heading this suggestion.

Unless that team actually went and implemented these changes in the game, this would be fairly pointless. PA Team is unwilling to invest the time and resources needed to bring this about. This comes back to my posts in that other thread. High-risk, high reward vs. low-risk, low reward. Since they are unwilling to do so, they would have to attract volunteers from the community and give them access to the code. Since PA Team don't own the code (they merely have an exclusive license to it), they would have to approach Jagex for permission to do that, and Jagex is a multi-million dollar company that would require NDAs and other legal papers. That reality makes the rest of this thread (like every thread on PS) interesting only in the philosophical sense, not in a practical one.

Originally Posted by Paisley

2. a 1% mining bonus per round played to a maxium of 5% over 5 rounds like you have start up bonuses for research and construction HOWEVER IF multihunters close you and your appeal fails this is reset to 0 (weather its the multi's MAIN planet or not) as the only way to attack a multi is his/her main planet. (think of this as a Good behaviour bonus)

I didn't really like this, until you got to the good behaviour bonus. Sounds interesting, worth trying. Should also be expanded to the current research/construction bonus. You can achieve the desired result by killing the account, rather than the planet.

Originally Posted by Paisley

3. Give alliance HC/DC/BC remote fleet access ingame so they can launch and configure fleets WITH the members permission (set up ingame etc) this is imo the best way to deal with the 1am-6am launch culture and make the game more 24/7 (yes it makes the game into the hands of commanders but as the declining playerbase is this will eventually not be a problem in the long run ... hello we are losing players)

This one went the other way. At first I felt this was OK, but as ArcChas alluded to, PA is a social game. It is not kept alive by the game itself, but by the sense of community and comraderie that has grown up around it. Your proposal weakens those social bonds. That can be OK, but the upsides better be really ****ing huge. In your proposal, I don't think they are big enough, and we could get those same upsides through some other mechanism, such as overhauling prelaunch or (less likely) some kind of sleep-mode.

Originally Posted by Paisley

4. alliance Golden Roids with mining bonuses for the alliances as well as the player who holds the roid(s) and have a formula 1 point system in rewarding mining bonuses as this would create a capture the flag enviroment. (this will make politics more dyamic) Also have a mining bonus IF your alliance holds their own alliance. exact numbers are open to discussion etc. (resarch and development team could work this stuff out)

I agree that emphasizing alliance-to-alliance warfare over planet-to-planet warfare is a good idea, but I think your suggestion is too small. I don't think the word 'gimmick' is quite right, but it does seem like a side-show compared to what actually wins rounds: value and politics. Go big or go home: make alliances themselves entities in the game (rather than merely groupings of planets) by allowing them to own things. Allow other alliances and planets to attack these outposts to harm or steal the things. Allow alliance members to lend or give their things to their alliance outpost, to boost or defend it. Call the place where alliances gather their things 'outposts', and you have the idea that JBG came up with back in the day.

Originally Posted by Paisley

5. make ship stats where attack fleets get first cut and not defensive stats. I would also bring back 0 loss stealing but have a max cap of 10% of value per battle report (again this is something a R&D team can test and perfect) so that ziks for example dont have to depend on 1 ace kill ship per Roiding fleet like it has like the last 30+ rounds and resort to r14-r18 playing style. Make the ship stats Fun again

I think stats that somewhat favour offense are indeed best. Favouring defense (at all) promotes NAP-fest in the first 800 ticks and overblocking in the last 400, neither of which are desirable. Overly favouring offense tends to promote banzai attacking and XP whoring, both of which are boring if you have to do it every round.

After the Christmas round, I no longer believe value gaining on steal is viable, as long as the MH team continues to fail to crack down hard on cheating (as you yourself also allude to). Thankfully they keep a watchful eye on planet names, though, got their ****ing priorities in order.

Honestly, though, the ship stats themselves are just fine. Sure, they're rather static, with limited variability, and so they alone can't keep the game interesting for another 30+ rounds. But that's not what the ship stats are for anyway! The way to keep the game interesting is by developing it, not by inputting a new set of random numbers in a 9x50 spreadsheet every round. The only reason we even think about the ship stats as the mechanism to keep the game interesting is that the actual mechanism for doing that has rusted in place. That problem is not solved by doing crazy shit with the ship stats, but by resuming development. In an ideal world, we could use the same set for 10+ consecutive rounds, with only a handful of minor changes after each round.

[BloodyButcher]

The cheating has to be dealt with on the alliance HC levels, not trying to hard code something.
If alliances keep accepting in known criminals, they are the ones who are encouraging the cheating to continue.