R 22 Construction/Production

[Hude]

I tend to agree with robban.

I'm not against change. I'm however very much against change that is decided by a small group of people against a declining community that is still actually playing the game. The community has no other choice but to adapt to the change which is quite odd considering these changes are probably not aimed to attract any new players.

I don't post much. I'm usually far too busy to post much more than some one liners. Somehow I got annoyed enough to TRY to make a point, however.

[Kargool]

I am also worried about how the improved cov-ops will do in terms of taking out factories.

Can anyone tell me how much stronger cov-ops have been made?

[Mzyxptlk]

Cov ops improved? How?

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

Cov ops improved? How?

The importance of 'success' has changed; most people had 2 factories of the types that they needed the most of - killing 1 wasnt very important.

Now, killing a factory can alter (potentially) all incoming orders, so skew any produced defence to the wrong eta - thus, the factory covert op is alot more important because they can inflict much greater damage than before.

[Judge]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

The importance of 'success' has changed; most people had 2 factories of the types that they needed the most of - killing 1 wasnt very important.

Now, killing a factory can alter (potentially) all incoming orders, so skew any produced defence to the wrong eta - thus, the factory covert op is alot more important because they can inflict much greater damage than before.

There does however remain the option of building more security centres to protect from covert operations.

Yes its a choice, but if your production orders are that critical you need to make that choice and play appropriately

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Kargool

The question is ofc, is that a good thing?

The self cover option was a good one since people didn't solely have to rely on alliance and galaxy in order to defend themselves, but now they have to.. not sure if its a good thing.

Really?

[Smudge]

I've been skimming through this thread, so I've probably missed a few things out, but surely if structures are worth *more* then SK's should actually take out more? Yes there are annoying little shits like me who play PA purely for cov-oping and SK'ing, so surely this group of players, no matter how small, shouldnt be ignored?

Or is the PA Team philosophy of ignoring the community at general still in play?

[Almeida]

Originally Posted by Judge

There does however remain the option of building more security centres to protect from covert operations.

ofc, but i will be too busy to build shitloads of factories to build an appropriate amount of ships in an acceptable amount of ticks :/

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Smudge

I've been skimming through this thread, so I've probably missed a few things out, but surely if structures are worth *more* then SK's should actually take out more? Yes there are annoying little shits like me who play PA purely for cov-oping and SK'ing, so surely this group of players, no matter how small, shouldnt be ignored?

I tend to agree that I would like to see strategic missions, ie. covert operations and structure killers play a larger role. I reckon we're a minority though. So yes, I'd be in favour of stronger sk'ing (and maybe faster constructions to recoupe), but I'm definately not in favour of making it like it is at the moment - where certain races (eitrades) can send structurekillers in a fashion that requires the defending player to suicide part of his fleet in order not to be structurebashed, and on the other hand other races will find it largely harder to SK.

[robban1]

hell make constucions and factories have a fixed price f.ex 5k of eatch and you dont loose that silly amount of resources building new ones aka annoying stuff, only time lost more or less

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

I tend to agree that I would like to see strategic missions, ie. covert operations and structure killers play a larger role. I reckon we're a minority though. So yes, I'd be in favour of stronger sk'ing (and maybe faster constructions to recoupe), but I'm definately not in favour of making it like it is at the moment - where certain races (eitrades) can send structurekillers in a fashion that requires the defending player to suicide part of his fleet in order not to be structurebashed, and on the other hand other races will find it largely harder to SK.

The problem with killing structures is the huge amount of time it takes to rebuild lost ones (let alone the costs), loosing 20% of your constructions in a single tick, eg 20 constructions, would take a minimum 80 ticks to rebuild (assuming Terran and construction time of 4 ticks). That's a long time to get back to where you were. And whilst you're doing that, you cant do anything else such as more amps or more finance centres. Having two waves landing writes off your planet for a really long time.

Perhaps if there were two seperate functions; a "build" and a "repair", where repairing was cheaper and took less time than building, but you could still build new structures as per normal whilst repairing, then i wouldnt mind so much about having a higher damage for SKs. The point would move from screwing over people's fun (not good for a game), to denying the enemy the use of whatever they had for a short while (which i think is the kind of strategic depth you might be looking for).

[Smudge]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

The problem with killing structures is the huge amount of time it takes to rebuild lost ones (let alone the costs), loosing 20% of your constructions in a single tick, eg 20 constructions, would take a minimum 80 ticks to rebuild (assuming Terran and construction time of 4 ticks). That's a long time to get back to where you were. And whilst you're doing that, you cant do anything else such as more amps or more finance centres. Having two waves landing writes off your planet for a really long time.

If an attack fleet lands at your planet and wipes your fleet out, you get a set back and two undefended waves attacking whilst your AFK means your screwed too.

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Perhaps if there were two seperate functions; a "build" and a "repair"

Would sort out the SK arguement and let them be used to their full effect

[Fiery]

During beta testing several people pointed out that SK's were too strong and as a result the development/stats people changed the SK combat from 20% to only 5% of your constructions being lost in combat per tick.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by Fiery

During beta testing several people pointed out that SK's were too strong and as a result the development/stats people changed the SK combat from 20% to only 5% of your constructions being lost in combat per tick.

I suggested in another thread that PA needs to think about strategy. One of my suggestions was about factories.

1. Factories have a fixed amount they can build per tick. Thus you add some logic to the theory of why players need factories. I don't know how many, but lets choose an arbitrary number for the sake of discussion. 5 (or 50 if people prefer) ships per tick, per factory.

2. Keep the SKs how they were.

3. Add to the tech tree. If a player gets hit with SK's, they have an additional item appear in tech tree. That option (or even options) allows fortified factories. The fortified versions might be one or several levels of added armour (I presume its armour when we talk of the damage calculation?). Anyway, what the player gets is a world that SKs first time round have a devastating effect, but the player is given a tech option to tough up his infrastructure (but only after being hit).

The price to the player for these tougher constructions is another debate. Two construction slots instead of one? Double the price? Treble the price, its an open topic..

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[Smudge]

Originally Posted by Fiery

During beta testing several people pointed out that SK's were too strong and as a result the development/stats people changed the SK combat from 20% to only 5% of your constructions being lost in combat per tick.

People have always said that [ie during the main round], so whats been the difference between listening to them in the Beta and in the main round?

edit : never thought I'd say this but AdmV0rl0n's idea of fortified factories or something of the like which improves there armour could be a resoultion to this and would allow SK's to do what they say on the tin.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by Smudge

People have always said that [ie during the main round], so whats been the difference between listening to them in the Beta and in the main round?

edit : never thought I'd say this but AdmV0rl0n's idea of fortified factories or something of the like which improves there armour could be a resoultion to this and would allow SK's to do what they say on the tin.

You don't have to stop there. SKs could be upgradable too, but *explensive*.

An Arms race in game between players, excellent !

[Smudge]

And you were going so well!

[Judge]

Originally Posted by AdmV0rl0n

I suggested in another thread that PA needs to think about strategy. One of my suggestions was about factories.

1. Factories have a fixed amount they can build per tick. Thus you add some logic to the theory of why players need factories. I don't know how many, but lets choose an arbitrary number for the sake of discussion. 5 (or 50 if people prefer) ships per tick, per factory.

2. Keep the SKs how they were.

3. Add to the tech tree. If a player gets hit with SK's, they have an additional item appear in tech tree. That option (or even options) allows fortified factories. The fortified versions might be one or several levels of added armour (I presume its armour when we talk of the damage calculation?). Anyway, what the player gets is a world that SKs first time round have a devastating effect, but the player is given a tech option to tough up his infrastructure (but only after being hit).

The price to the player for these tougher constructions is another debate. Two construction slots instead of one? Double the price? Treble the price, its an open topic..

Ad

Friendly sk's ?

Get hit by your mate with sk's to do minimum damage (2 or 3 constructions) then you have the nice option of having the harder-to-destroy-factories kinda negates sk damage overall.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by Judge

Friendly sk's ?

Get hit by your mate with sk's to do minimum damage (2 or 3 constructions) then you have the nice option of having the harder-to-destroy-factories kinda negates sk damage overall.

Erm, I suggested elsewhere that there actually be like 3 slots (like fleets if you like), for construction, and three for tech tree, with the limit on how they are used being available res, population.

In addition to this, why don't you simply allow one of these slots be used (or all of them), so that constructions can be 'unbuilt'. This would take the same time as building a construct takes, and, well perhaps you'd have a price on this, or maybe a refund? Thats another debate, but you get the idea.

[AV.]

Speaking from somebody who is reading this discussion at face-value, with very little knowledge of how everything works these days (especially the formulas being thrown around here and whatnot), I find it a tad on the confusing side.

PA used to be fun, the earliest rounds, whilst flawed were good times and most people seem to spend their time on here complaining about the features introduced since that time.

I'm just thinking, if it has become so confusing that a returning player like myself from the early days can't sign up and play again without the risk of being pillaged back to the registration screen within 2 days because they have no idea of the nuances involved with ship-production, SKs, factory numbers and the rest, what hope is there for the subsequent rounds?

A back-to-basics approach would be nice.

Or maybe I'm just too lazy to read the manual. Either way, I have a feeling this round won't be easy on the casual players, ergo: no fun.

[DJet]

The PU for an order depend on the amount of resources it is as follows:
Production Units = (total_resources_spent^1/2)*LN(total_resources_spent^2) where LN is the "natural log".

I was confused by this LN thing so i did some quick wiki-ing and;

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_logarithm
In simple terms, the natural logarithm of a number x is the power to which e would have to be raised to equal x - for example the natural log of e itself is 1 because e1 = e, while the natural logarithm of 1 would be 0, since e0 = 1 (see the x-intercept of the graph).

And thats in simple terms

Seems you need to be doing maths at cambridge to be able to understand this game now. *sigh*

[Gio2k]

This game went down the evil path the minute it started using exponential and logarithmic functions in their formulas. Hell, while you are at it, why don't you throw in some random factors with gaussian probability distribution.

[jupp]

Originally Posted by Gio2k

This game went down the evil path the minute it started using exponential and logarithmic functions in their formulas. Hell, while you are at it, why don't you throw in some random factors with gaussian probability distribution.

i really could not care less about something in PA than that. If PA Team needs it to design them to their wishes - go ahead. But i agree that there should be some sort of qualitative explanation for the younger or not so math skilled people ( or those who just cba to calc it ) of the formulas.

But maybe you are right and we should remove all complicated english words from the game too! English is not my mother language and sometimes i need to look up a word in a dictionary :crymeariver:

cant we remove everything with nice pictograms? oh yea and add some flowers and bunnies - they are so cuuuuuute

[Mzyxptlk]

That's a rather shit attitude jupp. Gio makes a good point, either use easier to understand formulae, or add calcs ingame, which display the results of your changes. For example, last round's population page had something that displayed your production, construction and research time and your max stealth and alert, which was very useful to me (though it only showed that information after you'd set your pop, which was too late, really). This round the production page displays how long your order will take to process, which is a huge help to everyone (and this time it does display the number of ticks before you give the ok).

The comparision between the formulae in PA and the ones in an RPG does not hold, as you don't need to know the exact formulae to play an RPG, while they're pretty much indispensable in PA (think prodding for incs).

[jupp]

Maybe i was a bit grumpy in my post i give you that and it reflected on what i tried to say :P
i will try again and use some different attempt!

In my so far rather short life of almost a quater century it happened that i played a lot of computer games. My experience was that you dont need a calculator for most of them as you get a feeling for the game and how things work out ... you could probably add some sort of battlecalc to a lot of real time strategy games showing you the odds if you send 3 battle tanks against 10 riflemen but that would somehow spoil the fun of it because it is the gamers experience and skill (!?) that makes the final decision about it.

Of course those are a lot more "active" games than PA and you can work with a lot more little things while in PA you risk almost your whole fleet and asteroids every day. I understand that people like the idea to calculate almost everything when they put their fleet at this risk.

If you read my post again i even said that the formula should be known to the players but shouldnt be necessary and that a qualitative analysis of it should be in the manual or something similar for people who dont play on the highest level and dont care if it's 10,50 or 100k score to gain - but they know "this is probably a good target to attack". All that matters if you first get into the game ...

But back to what you said: Ingame calcs are very fine - i agree. But making the formula easier so everyone can easily use them and therefor accept on the developer side that you get an unbalance into the game or just results that dont fit your ideas of the game is not acceptable imo! I am sure they make their formula for a reason and not because they like the pretty math symbols ;-)