An innovative approach towards score

[Heartless]

I know that long threads are mentally challenging for - pardon - a lot of you, but I try to outline most details so that all of you have a chance to grasp the full concept and discuss this interesting and important issue.

For purposes of simplifying the discussion I define the term "war" as "hitting enemies bigger and around your size"; which appears suitable since the universe is in a constant state of hostile actions but farming smaller (and therefore most likely new and inexperienced) planets . So, keep in mind: war means hitting planets which are at least around your size, preferably bigger than you.


Why do we need an innovative approach towards score?

The current situation of the game is a bad one. We have two elements for score (xp and value), and the score and xp formula are a compromise of both playing attempts (xp- or value-whoring). The current scoring setup leads to less and less roids available in the universe (xp players dont need many roids and value players are afraid to init too many), "bashing" of easy targets (i.e. double- to quadruple-booking) because hitting enemies around your size is not benefitial and ultimately there is no incentive to do anything but sit back and try to outroid your enemy. This is unsatisfying and cannot be solved by the current mechanisms. A decent xp formula is hard to find and has too many variables for PA Team to mess up with, and the pure value based playing style is simply too demanding and punishing to be appealing to a broader mass of players.

Score must be non-removable and war-rewarding

An important constraint for any new score formula has to be that score is non-removable, or in other words: you cannot lose score. This is because in a war you are bound to lose resources, and displaying this loss in score simply makes war non-benefitial. If we want a scoring system that gives players an incentive to wage war with each other, war must be rewarded. And war can only be rewarding for everyone by making score non-removable. Additionally this gives incentive to go to war early on, as you don't want to allow your enemies to build up huge amounts of something that can't be removed.

Score should be a result of what you did during the round

The second important constraint is that score should reflect your actions. If you sit around all round long doing nothing you simply cannot expect to get a high reward. Likewise, someone who prefers to trade and scan but is overall active shouldn't be punished for not having a fleet; nor should the person who attacks and defends all round long be punished for having and using his fleet.

Rewards for actions must be balanced

To warrant competitive and interesting ways of succeeding, actions must be equally rewarding. For example, someone who does 240 scans a day should get about as much score as someone who has his fleets out for 12 hours. Or someone who manages to keep 2000 roids all round long should have a chance against someone who caps 20000 roids during the round but only keeps 150 on average. These numbers are of course just randomly chosen right now, but ultimately there should be statistics running around some estimations for activity.

How this helps to improve the gameplay experience

Since the score formula's focus is based around your actions, it gives you an incentive to do something for yourself. It rewards being pro-active, instead of just sitting back and doing nothing but roiding since you don't want to allow your enemy to outgrow you.
With a balanced, action-based scoring system, it is possible to widen up the ways on how to play and succeed in this game.

I was about to start discussing how this system could be balanced in more details, but then again that would shift the focus away from the initial topic (a new scoring system) towards minor details in a proposal for a new scoring system. However, feel free to send me a forums pm to discuss more details like what actions should be rewarded in which way.
Personally I am curious what you people think about such a scoring system and maybe even PA Team could reply with something more than the usual marketing phrases but some proper discussion contribution instead.

[Kal]

I agree fully with the principle - and in a sense it is what XP is actually (you get "score" for actions that are deemed worthwhile). The problem is that the current XP implementation is relativly poor and is a long way from providing the full score system you describe.

I have a few issues with some of the specific tings you mention that should generate score, but overall its an excelent idea. I've wanted to do something like this for a few rounds, but fully admit I don't have any good ideas as to how to go about doing it. So once this discussion has taken its course I'd very much like to hear your ideas on how to do it.

[Phil^]

all you described there is the xp system and ruled out a value system for which score is taken away when they lose value.
A pure xp system i am vehemently opposed to

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Phil^

all you described there is the xp system and ruled out a value system for which score is taken away when they lose value.
A pure xp system i am vehemently opposed to

Why should one be able to lose score?
How would it be benefitial for the gameplay experience if one can lose score?
How create a rewarding score scheme for war if one can lose score?

I'm curious to hear your arguments and explanations.

[Phil^]

The reasons for being against xp have already been covered in another thread ( and trolled by certain people who circle-jerk over xp )
To address the three points you made :

Not Losing score : Why should one be able to keep it?
It sure makes it harder to knock te top ranking players off their podiums doesnt it? All you can do is hope you can outgrow them
Benefitial experiance : By allowing the possibility that you can lose score it ensures there is a mechanism in place to prevent runaways at the top of the game
Rewarding scheme: I dont know about you but i found it fairly satisfying in a war to watch your enemies crumble around you when you were able to pull off some damn nice combats and fleetcatches - simply swapping roids and growing in score does not seem terribly satisfying to me

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Phil^

To address the three points you made :

Not Losing score : Why should one be able to keep it?
It sure makes it harder to knock te top ranking players off their podiums doesnt it? All you can do is hope you can outgrow them

Like you gain score in other games, it is a motivational factor. Why should I play at all if I cannot achieve anything?
No it does not make it harder to knock the top ranking players off their podiums, but it does reward being pro-active instead of just sitting back and avoiding conflict with the top planets. Additionally, top planets will find it harder to pull away because there is less reward to get for their actions, while non-top planets will have a chance to come closer again by performing certain actions.

Originally Posted by Phil^

Benefitial experiance : By allowing the possibility that you can lose score it ensures there is a mechanism in place to prevent runaways at the top of the game

I agree, there is such a possibility, and that possibility clearly is a comfortable thought for those people which prefer sitting back and trying to avoid hitting the top.
However, there is also the possibility to lose everything (or a lot) of your achievements and thus demotivate you when it comes to the point of continuing to play the game.
If I have to decide between two options, where one option is preventing huge frustration and the other option contains a good chance for huge frustration, I do obviously prefer the one which prevents huge frustration. Take a look at successfull games around, you will notice that they avoid frustration as much as possible - except for the hardcore games that cater a small audience only anyway.
So in the end it is up to what suits pa team's vision best.

Originally Posted by Phil^

Rewarding scheme: I dont know about you but i found it fairly satisfying in a war to watch your enemies crumble around you when you were able to pull off some damn nice combats and fleetcatches - simply swapping roids and growing in score does not seem terribly satisfying to me

What you fail to see is that you should still be rewarded for fleetcatches and nice combats. As I said in the initial post, if you manage to cap 500 rocks of a top planet (or likewise, kill half his fleet) you should be rewarded for doing so. The reward, however, should not be that all of the attacked planet's achievements are gone, but rather that you gain and he won't gain. You should be rewarded, but the attacked planet should not be punished for being attacked.

[Wandows]

I am with Phil on this, although i see more tactical use in XP. Instead of having it as a fixed score, use it in a way that will make your planet stronger by adding bonusses of some kind, a player able to obtain alot of experience would for example get a stronger fleet (or even have XP gained by the fleet 'commander', making his fleet more effective). I however know something like this will be a huge challange to balance with the stats we have atm (to avoid ppl hunting for XP early and once they get strong fleets grow alot of fleet value as a double bonus).

My main problem with XP being unremovable is that it rewards safe play. Value players actually need to log in regularly to make sure their fleet won't be dying (as that basicly ruins their round), while low value XP players run far smaller risks. Sure they can lose their fleet aswell, but it won't have nearly as much impact on their rank as opposed to a high value player being killed.

But to reply to your initial post, I certainly think the balance you proposed will be alot more interesting and fair to what we have now. As atm those building pure roid fleets have a far greater advantage in game play opposed to those who try to balance their fleet for both offense and defence. Removing XP for dumb actions (like crashing) might be way to balance it a bit, but that would be somewhat harsh aswell as you are punished twice (losing value/fleet + losing XP). I certainly do not believe having non-removable score is an option as it simply makes the game to static (like Phil said, its really hard to actually 'kill/hurt' your enemy when playing swap the roid).

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Like you gain score in other games, it is a motivational factor. Why should I play at all if I cannot achieve anything?
No it does not make it harder to knock the top ranking players off their podiums, but it does reward being pro-active instead of just sitting back and avoiding conflict with the top planets. Additionally, top planets will find it harder to pull away because there is less reward to get for their actions, while non-top planets will have a chance to come closer again by performing certain actions.

You can still achieve things without having to make the game akin to xp-only.
Take a look at all the round winners ( who played for value ) for instance, im sure they wont be too happy with their achievements being belittled because there was the possibility to lose it all
I cant see how your proposal will make things pro-proactive at all if there isnt any possibility of losing your position in the game by buggering off for a few weeks and coming back to the exact same score you had before you left. Sure everyone else might have grown but you wont have run the risk of losing anything by being away. Its almost having like vacation mode perminately switched on, no risk to run by being away and no reason to be online if you never had a chance of winning in the first place.

Originally Posted by Heartless

I agree, there is such a possibility, and that possibility clearly is a comfortable thought for those people which prefer sitting back and trying to avoid hitting the top.

I dont understand what you are getting at here, are you saying that the current system where you can lose things is comforting, or the proposed system where you cannot lose anything is comforting?

Originally Posted by Heartless

However, there is also the possibility to lose everything (or a lot) of your achievements and thus demotivate you when it comes to the point of continuing to play the game.

Just as it is demotivational to hammer against your opponent only for them to remain essentially invulnerable. Sure you might grow larger then them but whats the point if all that happens is the two sides swap roids all the time.
Its just utterly boring and whats the point of playing a boring game?

Originally Posted by Heartless

If I have to decide between two options, where one option is preventing huge frustration and the other option contains a good chance for huge frustration, I do obviously prefer the one which prevents huge frustration.

Just how frustrating do you think it is to have an untouchable adversary?
It was demonstrated in the fury towards ascendancy when they won that round and were untouchable after all.

Originally Posted by Heartless

Take a look at successfull games around, you will notice that they avoid frustration as much as possible - except for the hardcore games that cater a small audience only anyway.

pa's audience is shrinking and it looks like will continue to do so anyway. Its a game which has passed its peak and is rapidly approaching obscurity anyway.

Originally Posted by Heartless

So in the end it is up to what suits pa team's vision best.

In the end it doesnt matter, they have already made up their mind and are firmly on the leash of the pro-xp camp. All i can do is argue against it but i know that my efforts are in vain anyway.

Originally Posted by Heartless

What you fail to see is that you should still be rewarded for fleetcatches and nice combats. As I said in the initial post, if you manage to cap 500 rocks of a top planet (or likewise, kill half his fleet) you should be rewarded for doing so. The reward, however, should not be that all of the attacked planet's achievements are gone, but rather that you gain and he won't gain. You should be rewarded, but the attacked planet should not be punished for being attacked.

And why not? If theres nothing to risk then theres no thrill of pulling something off when things go your way.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Wandows

But to reply to your initial post, I certainly think the balance you proposed will be alot more interesting and fair to what we have now. As atm those building pure roid fleets have a far greater advantage in game play opposed to those who try to balance their fleet for both offense and defence. Removing XP for dumb actions (like crashing) might be way to balance it a bit, but that would be somewhat harsh aswell as you are punished twice (losing value/fleet + losing XP). I certainly do not believe having non-removable score is an option as it simply makes the game to static (like Phil said, its really hard to actually 'kill/hurt' your enemy when playing swap the roid).

Don't you think that a scoring system where you can lose score again is a huge lot more punishing (and thus frustrating) than a scoring system which simply does hand out a lot less score for "stupid" actions? Why is it so important to take away score from someone? Because ultimately, taking away score from someone is nothing else than growing faster than that someone. You can easily limit your opponents growth by limiting the range of actions he can take, there is no need to limit those actions and remove the reward for actions he did before.

edit: I moved the clearification into a seperate and more neutral reply, until maybe a mod manages to clean up the discussion and point once again out that this is not about xp, but about a totally new scoring system.

[Wandows]

I already said it would he somewhat harsh to punish a planet twice (losing value and removing XP on top of it). I just agree with Phil that the main problem i see in XP is that it allows a steady grow in score regardless of how hard you are being hit, i know something like this is ideally desired not to make ppl quit over losing score constantly, but it also makes wars alot more static as everyone will gain score. Hence it basicly comes down to who is best at playing swap the roids (most active/efficient in XP attacking and forcing recalls in defence), instead of really being encouraged to destroy your enemy.

[edit]Pushed the post button to early[/edit]

I however agree that if we should keep XP, i rather have it implemented the way you suggested with roids, fleet value, combat, scans, covert ops all being equally influencing in the score you get. As that way you most likely get a better picture of who actually is trying the hardest or is using the best tactic, which is a million times better than the XP-whore approach we have atm.

[Heartless]

The intendation of the scoring system is not to be invulnerable, it is about shifting the focus away from removing someones achievements towards removing someones options to achieve even more. The new scoring system has **** all to do with value and xp. The only common thing between xp and the new scoring system is that you cannot remove score gained. It is not intended to reward constant roid swapping, it is intended to reward your actions. Constantly bashing newbies won't magically make you a superior top planet, just like constantly crashing your fleet will get you nowhere. SMART and THOUGHTFUL playing will get you somewhere though.

[lokken]

I don't see how what Heartless' proposes first of all, favours XP. Infact it's putting 'value' on a parity with XP by saying it can't be lost once its gained and like XP if you lose your fleet then it will be harder to make new gains. On top of that, if value is preserved, there is always an incentive to gain value by attacking and to preserve value by defending. XP is simply reflecting your bravery in your attacks in this scenario.

The idea (presumably) is that the planet that exploits xp and value in the right way and in the right balance will end up being the winner.

Obviously it is more complicated than just this in terms of rewarding actions - I'm too moronic to suggest variables for this - all i will is that the various mathmeticians/stats gurus need to look into it, because it sounds interesting.

[furball]

Ok, a couple of things.

First, it's not possible to give much score for scans - certainly we can't put them on the same level as everything else. As [ViruS]Adam (midge5 on here) reminds me every now and then, his r10.5 winning galaxy all had big stockpiles and so were able to do thousands of scans - scanning the universe several times to accumulate lots of XP. It put such a load on the PA servers that Spinner had to intervene to stop them doing it - if I remember right he took away XP for scans mid-round. So unfortunately you can't reward scans, even if we'd like to do it. Too abusable.


Moving on, I like Heartless' thinking. I suggest that score becomes 'peak score' - the highest score you have reached at any point in the round. There would then be a separate field for 'current score', which we can work out the details of at some point. There's several benefits to doing it like this:

1. No-one would ever lose score - Heartless is correct that one huge accident for a value player can destroy their round completely.
2. Players are still penalised for losing 'value' - it'll take them a long time to reach their peak score again, if at all
3. Fleetcatches, therefore, still can be very useful in preventing planets from increasing their peak score for a certain amount of time. There would then be an opportunity for everyone else to overtake the fleetcatched planet.
4. Players will still be rewarded for many weeks of hard work and one slip-up near the end of the round. I think it's generally agreed that they deserve it.
5. The whole value/XP relationship could be completely re-jigged, since value players would be able to retain a peak score.

Thoughts?

[Troll]

I assume this will not be a popular post. But by and large I have to agree with Phil on the subject that anyone who reads this thread from an objective stand point will see that by and large he is being attacked by asc. Infact for some reason I can see someone pasting the link to this thread in there private room with the intension of bringing more wieght to bare on Phil.

Further more this Thread has been hijacked and nothing positive is going to come out of it.

Heartless I agree with some of what you said but clearly not all. If this thread settles down i will comment further but I see little point right now for anythign I say that would tame XP will clearly be attacked in force.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Troll

Further more this Thread has been hijacked and nothing positive is going to come out of it.

Heartless I agree with some of what you said but clearly not all. If this thread settles down i will comment further but I see little point right now for anythign I say that would tame XP will clearly be attacked in force.

I do very much agree with you that this thread has been hijacked, and that does actually annoy me greatly as it ruins the important discussion. Hopefully a mod will find the time to clean up the mess.

However, I disagree on your XP comment. There will be no more value and no more xp with the proposed scoring system. There will just be score. Plain vanilla score. You gain it by doing stuff, but you cannot lose it.
This goes to phil, you and everyone else (including the Ascendancy ppl) who wants to have a discussion about XP: Make your own thread about it. This is discussing a completely different system.

Originally Posted by furball

First, it's not possible to give much score for scans - certainly we can't put them on the same level as everything else. As [ViruS]Adam (midge5 on here) reminds me every now and then, his r10.5 winning galaxy all had big stockpiles and so were able to do thousands of scans - scanning the universe several times to accumulate lots of XP. It put such a load on the PA servers that Spinner had to intervene to stop them doing it - if I remember right he took away XP for scans mid-round. So unfortunately you can't reward scans, even if we'd like to do it. Too abusable.


Moving on, I like Heartless' thinking. I suggest that score becomes 'peak score' - the highest score you have reached at any point in the round. There would then be a separate field for 'current score', which we can work out the details of at some point. There's several benefits to doing it like this:

1. No-one would ever lose score - Heartless is correct that one huge accident for a value player can destroy their round completely.
2. Players are still penalised for losing 'value' - it'll take them a long time to reach their peak score again, if at all
3. Fleetcatches, therefore, still can be very useful in preventing planets from increasing their peak score for a certain amount of time. There would then be an opportunity for everyone else to overtake the fleetcatched planet.
4. Players will still be rewarded for many weeks of hard work and one slip-up near the end of the round. I think it's generally agreed that they deserve it.
5. The whole value/XP relationship could be completely re-jigged, since value players would be able to retain a peak score.



Thoughts?

I think there is no need to have a 'peak' score, you are being fairly crippled anyway, so you won't be able to gain much score (unless you managed to take preparations, for example stockpile resources for rebuilding your fleet). But I shall do some more pondering, peak score sounds like a good idea after all.

About "score for scans": Every rewarding action must contribute to your score. For scans you could, for example, include the "quality" of scans, i.e. people with more amps could gain more score as they dedicated more of their resources towards scanning. I disagree that everything that includes gaining an advantage is nowadays mislabeled as abuse.
Guess we all agree that in the first few rounds of PAX the scoring system was flawed, but that should not determine what a new scoring system should reward or not; we should just take it into consideration when we create a balance.

[Wandows]

I think i misunderstood slightly then, I was under the impression the new scoring system would still be used on top of value play instead of being the only thing deciding rank (i didn't really bother correcting myself with all the crap posted above).

Overall it seems like a great suggestion. I do see a possible problem though with you mentioning the no need for being punished for not having a fleet and just trading / doing scans. Although i agree there should be more alternative roads to victory/a good rank (opposed to the pure combat game we have now), it might also result in less roids being available in the universe, which eventually could lead to a more stagnating game for those who like to play the war/combat style. Hence rewards in XP should be fixed in a way that will prevent stagnation due to lack of (decent) targets, which could be obtained by adding more alternative attack missions for score (i.e. next to just attacking for roids, add destroying constructions on scanners, attacking the resource stacks from traders or any other way of hurting planets).

[Troll]

Well I personally think the scanning system needs an overhaul. Planets should all have the basic scans to start and only need to research FA news JGS and Adv Units. New players to the game should be able to attack regardless of being in an alliance and having those option already available it's just an amps race then.

Sorry if that was off topic but I feel thats the correct way to go and then scanning does not require a score gain.

[JonnyBGood]

Thread cleaned up and dear god let's not have that again. And I mean that towards everyone involved.


Apologies to the PS forum mods for stepping in, feel free to change whatever you want.

[Kal]

On the subject of scans, I don;t think its the qualit of scan that should reward as such, but more the usefullness of the scan. Scans for the sake of scans should not generate scans - scans that have a usefulnness in some kind of military action should. The issues does come down to implementation though. For example, if people were to repeatedly scan the same planet the usefullness of the scan should drop as little new information is gained. Similarly if players scan many many different planets, then not all of the information can possibly be used so the usefullness of the activity should drop.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Kal

On the subject of scans, I don;t think its the qualit of scan that should reward as such, but more the usefullness of the scan. Scans for the sake of scans should not generate scans - scans that have a usefulnness in some kind of military action should. The issues does come down to implementation though. For example, if people were to repeatedly scan the same planet the usefullness of the scan should drop as little new information is gained. Similarly if players scan many many different planets, then not all of the information can possibly be used so the usefullness of the activity should drop.

I think I see what you're suggesting - a diminishing rate of return (over a set period of time) for the score created by scans? Sounds fair to me, perhaps we need to take a look at what the top scanners are doing and attempt to cap the score gained from scans a bit below that. I wouldn't want to see a situation where a non-scanner can reap the same rewards as a 'true' scanner by simply starting his day by doing 200 scans out of his stockpile - so perhaps Heartless' suggestion of using #amps as a modifier when determining score generated by scans would be a good idea.

Originally Posted by Heartless

I disagree that everything that includes gaining an advantage is nowadays mislabeled as abuse.

I agree, as you'd easily be able to see from my previous posts on the matter. However, the Round 10.5 situation that I pointed to certainly was abuse, legal or not. Thankfully it was corrected by changing the scoring system for scans as opposed to just banning it as cheating

Originally Posted by Heartless

I think there is no need to have a 'peak' score, you are being fairly crippled anyway, so you won't be able to gain much score (unless you managed to take preparations, for example stockpile resources for rebuilding your fleet). But I shall do some more pondering, peak score sounds like a good idea after all.

The point, as I think you realised, is that being crippled (fleet-wise) won't destroy your ranking - you just lose the ability to maintain that ranking. Let's see what others think.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by furball

The point, as I think you realised, is that being crippled (fleet-wise) won't destroy your ranking - you just lose the ability to maintain that ranking. Let's see what others think.

Personally I think that losing the ability to maintain your ranking, or to be weakened so much that it will be hard to keep it, is sufficient - you will lose your ranking automatically to others which can grow more score than you.

[jerome]

it makes sense, your achievement isn't taken away but eventually you will get overtaken because of your carelessness. i like it.

[Gio2k]

I think the biggest problem is figuring out how to calculate SCORE, and how it would differ from XP:

-XP is a way to reward players for hitting bigger planets.
-XP can't be lost
-XP is awarded not only for attacking, but also for defence, for covert ops, for scans, etc.

In fact, so far the only thing i see that would differ between the current score system and the one proposed by Heartless is that the contribution of your value to score can't be lost. You can lose your whole fleet and hence all your value, but the contribution of the fleet you once had to your score would never be lost.

The rest is just a matter of figuring how much 'XP' or 'score' to award for other actions, like landing on bigger planets, scanning, cov-opping, etc.

The idea is interesting, and actually benefits value players imo.

[Heartless]

What my proposal is lacking is indeed the details about where score should come from. Rob delivered an interesting thought about score not counting in fleetvalue but instead resources earned (or spent); which comes very close to some kind of "xp for mining roids" concept (for those which need an xp reference to grasp the concept ).

Balance can be achieved via a set of formulae defined around planet's specializations; take the scanner issue for instance: number of Wave Amplifiers could be used to determine whether someone is a scanner planet or not.
Number of Finance Centers are an indicator that you are a "value" player.
And so on.

[Influence]

i think the only way to make defending(value-play) and attacking(XP-play) equally important is to raise the xp you can get by defending.

for instance like this:

formulae:
max cap = (maximum capturing ability of attacking pods (for 50 r20 iron clads this would be 110) / target size) * 100 at a maximum if 25%
max gainable XP = max cap * 10 * bravery factor (where bravery factor would remain the same as it is now)
attacker XP = actual cap / max cap * max gainable XP
defender XP = (max cap - actual cap) / max cap * max gainable XP

for example:
you have 1000 roids and get attacked by someone with a bravery factor of 2, the xp the attacker would get at max cap would be 250*10*2 = 5000 (given the fact the attacker could actually cap 250 roids). so the total XP gainable is 5000. you prevent the attacker from capping 50 roids so you as the defender would get 50*10*2 = 1000 XP and the attacker would get 4000 XP (as it is now)

[XelNaga]

Influence, you're so far from getting the point that it's almost scary.

I definately love the suggestion of "resources spent = score". It's so simple, yet solves so many problems. The most important factor would be that keeping roids would come over capping roids, bringing back the importance of defense, and removing the situation where either the attacker recalls or the defender runs way. On the other hand, it would also encourage attacking, as you would need roids to hold on to them, obviously. All in all a nice concept, where everyone has to find his balance between roid count he can keep and effort he can put in.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Is it just me, or wouldnt a score system whereby "resources spent = score" result in exponential growth rates, whereby the "top" ranked planets will be able to accelerate away as they tend to 1) have more roids and 2) have more ships to defend those roids, and 3) are able to replace lost ships at a greater rate than those below.

Thus, with such a scoring system, wouldnt you have a situation whereby any planet (or group of top planets in the same gal/alliance etc) that gains even a small headstart or break from roid loss will be able to race away with the game? A scoring system that, should any stagnation even for a short time, result in planets that race away and are uncatchable?

In short: you're making a scoring system that is reliant upon the playerbase to actively target any planet who gains any headstart immediately to the point where everyone else catches up again.

I find that a major point of concern, as it kinda implies that pa players have a backbone.

Otherwise, its actually a very intelligent idea.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Is it just me, or wouldnt a score system whereby "resources spent = score" result in exponential growth rates, whereby the "top" ranked planets will be able to accelerate away as they tend to 1) have more roids and 2) have more ships to defend those roids, and 3) are able to replace lost ships at a greater rate than those below.

Thus, with such a scoring system, wouldnt you have a situation whereby any planet (or group of top planets in the same gal/alliance etc) that gains even a small headstart or break from roid loss will be able to race away with the game? A scoring system that, should any stagnation even for a short time, result in planets that race away and are uncatchable?

In short: you're making a scoring system that is reliant upon the playerbase to actively target any planet who gains any headstart immediately to the point where everyone else catches up again.

I find that a major point of concern, as it kinda implies that pa players have a backbone.

Otherwise, its actually a very intelligent idea.

The best way to test this formula is to look at planets that have held the most roids over the round, since these will approximate those that have generated the most resources. Summing the size of planets over (almost) all the ticks, these are those have held the most roids over time this round:

 x  | y  | z  | score_rank | new_score
----+----+----+------------+-----------
  2 |  5 |  2 |          5 |   1363485
 11 |  7 |  4 |          4 |   1260551
 11 |  1 | 10 |        201 |   1190767
 15 |  3 | 12 |         18 |   1111625
 11 |  7 |  1 |         57 |   1088812
  5 |  6 |  8 |         40 |   1075775
  5 |  6 |  9 |         22 |   1050351
  2 |  5 |  1 |         20 |    911063
  9 |  2 |  3 |         21 |    878705
 11 |  1 |  7 |        229 |    859270
 15 |  6 |  8 |         17 |    848377
  2 |  3 |  5 |         34 |    837514
  2 |  3 |  2 |         87 |    828026
 10 |  1 |  5 |         77 |    820196
  5 |  5 |  1 |         90 |    807536
 10 |  7 |  4 |        136 |    802456
  2 |  5 |  6 |        193 |    787984
  2 |  5 | 10 |         30 |    784116
  5 |  5 |  7 |         39 |    781756
 15 |  6 |  2 |         12 |    765570
  3 | 10 |  6 |        244 |    758139
  2 |  5 | 11 |         68 |    713780
  5 |  5 |  3 |        141 |    687189
  6 |  9 |  7 |         76 |    686273
 15 |  1 |  6 |         93 |    685694

The difference is quite noticable. The top planet has pretty much exactly twice as much as the 25th. However, this doesn't take into account that this round was an XP oriented round. It is amusing to see that planets currently lower than 200th by score rank would be top10 with these ranks. Take special notice of 11:1:10, who is not punished for his landing on Caj (but then neither is Caj punished for being fleetcaught.)

Here's the same from round 19, a more value oriented round:

 x  | y  | z  | score_rank | new_score
----+----+----+------------+-----------
  2 |  6 |  9 |          2 |   2855039
  9 | 10 |  8 |          3 |   2781905
  6 |  2 |  8 |          1 |   2559997
  7 |  9 | 16 |          4 |   2355603
  5 |  5 |  1 |          5 |   2037415
  2 |  6 |  5 |         15 |   1843545
  9 |  4 |  5 |         26 |   1828506
  6 |  2 |  5 |         30 |   1819255
  6 |  2 |  6 |          9 |   1815302
  8 |  1 |  9 |         10 |   1804671
  4 |  9 |  3 |         20 |   1747185
  2 |  6 |  2 |         36 |   1713069
  1 |  6 |  5 |         24 |   1597701
  8 |  4 |  6 |         33 |   1466062
  2 |  6 |  3 |         38 |   1406152
  2 |  2 | 15 |         12 |   1378613
  5 |  5 |  2 |         14 |   1304828
  3 |  5 |  9 |         28 |   1284557
 10 |  8 |  7 |         31 |   1279903
  6 | 10 |  1 |         71 |   1260182
  4 |  9 | 13 |         19 |   1248237
 10 |  8 |  1 |         47 |   1233848
  9 | 10 |  9 |          7 |   1231222
  6 | 10 | 10 |         42 |   1221888
  3 |  6 |  5 |         32 |   1196261

Here there are some other interesting points. For example, pdmaster is rewarded for his early lead, as opposed to Greenhills's strong finish. Another interesting move is jerome's planet (9:10:9), which finished strongly on the back of some late steals is not rewarded for them. Perhaps this would be a way to balance 'old school' stealing?

I think the primary incentive will be earlier warfare. You are right that once players are allowed to run away with the early lead, those trying to catch up have less and less chance to do so. Notice that pdmaster's lead on Desse (#1 vs #2) is 170k roid-ticks. At the end of the round, pdmaster had 3.8k roids, Desse had 4.5k. It would have 243 ticks (10 days) for Desse to pass pdmaster. Even if pdmaster had been roided down completely, it would have taken at least 2 days. This is not the same kind of fast swing that can happen with value or XP (as we have witnessed much of the last week of this round.)

The way PA is played would definitely be changed by adopting this style of play. Taking and holding roids (from opponents) would become the #1 priority for players and alliances.

[LordNieminen]

Exactly how are you guys planning to encourage alliance warfare with these suggestions for new score system...

Current situation looks to me atleast that it's more about 1 night stands with other alliances like in speedrounds aka hindering opponents growth while trying to stay away from getting hit yourself aka no intresting all out wars where you can stroke yer ego when you win it. I don't consider winning taking just opponents roids.. there has to be way to neutralize opponents from competition in top50-100. Otherwise due to round lenght or whatever reason you end up with shared top100 lists... almost evenly with alliances aka personally would just say no1 won it, if they don't control what alliances/planets are in top50 for example.

The safer people make the game, the more boring it is.. and serves the less organised alliances as it's more about just launching at anything every night. I got friends who made it to top70 just by logging 2-3 times per day and wasting 30mins to pick target per day. Not to mention they where just covered few times during round from incomings.. aka they got hit and still made out that well in the end. Does activity still payoff, or what is it about these days what makes the difference between everyone who launches daily... just the pre-picking targets or cheating as I have been out of the game quite long since 1st exilition round when we came back to play a bit for real.

What's the point when alliance score differences are tight.. that the hardcap/extra planets what can be changed to replace worse ranked planets to give alliance the edge.. In war game you have to be able to destroy opponents moral and support structure not play like amateurs pokernight with friends.. we can do that in RL if we want that to get along with everyone.

Anyways.. whatever score system you guys end up in summarising just remember it's a wargame, we aren't here to please everyone.. there has to be a way to reward organised players and who spend time playing the game to give them opportunity to shine by substantial score difference where quality > quantity.