Well, as many people here, I invested a lot of time into PA. And I invested a lot of time into thinking about how to improve the game and fix the problems PA currently encounters, too. The people that remember me know that I always supported PA in every possible way. When they were looking for a PHP coder to recode PA in PHP, I offered my help to Appoco, but I unfortunately lacked references, as my server and my own PC both had a HD crash in the same week(!) and all of my previous work had disappeared. I then started working on my own PA clone, but that isn't the point of this thread, nor would I dare to advertise here. The point is, during development, I decided to take a different road to PA's on a number of occasions, to avoid some of the biggest problems I think PA has.
Before I proceed, let me state it again: the problems _I_ think PA has. And the solutions are what _I_ think solves those. I contributed some of the ideas below in other suggestion threads already, but I kinda held back. Now, I decided to just post everything, since I wouldn't really mind PA using those ideas. Also, before you read this, you might want to check out
Jester's thread, a lot has been covered there already. Ok, so let's get this started.
Exile system:
The exile system is inherently broken. That's a fact. Why?
1. It's based on a random factor, and thus
luck. You should rather get what you deserve consistently.
2. It costs. You shouldn't pay to get what you deserve.
3. Exiling is arbitrary. New players mostly don't stand a chance to stay, everyone can be exiled at any time, even if they don't deserve it.
4. Galaxies are all kept the same size. Why? Wouldn't another way work better?
And the solution is so easy, yet so powerful.
1. When you exile, or get exiled, you land in a random galaxy whose average planet score is 90-110% of yours. The margin will of course increase if no galaxies are found.
2. You can exile for free, or be exiled for free.
3. In order to exile/get exiled, your score needs to be less than 80% or more than 120% of the galaxy's average planet score (your planet excluded).
4. If we apply the above rules, galaxy size will start to vary. We will have the small hardcore alliances, medium average player galaxies, and huge noob&inactive galaxies.
Even though mainly the 4th point seems very irritating at first, the advantages of this system should soon be clear.
1. More competition. Medium to small sized galaxies can all rival for the #1 spot, if balanced correctly.
2. New player friendly. If they perform well enough, they simply can't be exiled from where they deserve to be. Additionally, they have a lurning curve: whenever they improve, they get to meet players of their level who can teach them new stuff. It's a pseudo-automated noob integration.
3. Buddy pack friendly. If your friend doesn't play good enough, but you are galaxy leader, you can decide not to exile him.
4. Inactivity removed. Inactive and noob planets are pseudo-automatically removed, but can come back at any time.
5. Fairness. Finally, the system will give you what you deserve, for free.
Combat & ship stats:
Currently, now matter how you turn and twist around stats, the combats almost always look the same: when the attack pays off, the attacker lands, the defense runs. When it doesn't, the defender stays, the attacker recalls. This won't lead to any action happening. Now, other changes I will suggest further down will encourage more action, too, but I thought about a new stats system that might help, too.
Dumb down the stats. There are far too many ships. Cut them to 6 per race (1 per class). Use 1 research per class. And 1 research to decide the weapon of the class, targetting either one of the classes, or roids, or structures. This will lead to a number of 20.160 possible (useful, meaning targetting 6 different things) fleet compositions PER RACE, although you only have to remember stats for 6 ships. Limiting the number of ships to 6, when there are 8 possible targets means you have to leave at least one opening in your fleet, if you want to be able to roid others. The race specific abilites could still stay the same. Alliance players, relying on defense, could go for 2 pod classes to grow faster, initially.
Scans & scanners:
I always pitty scanners, since they practically have to give up their round to scan. And there is such an easy way to fix this. Make all scans available from the start. This will also greatly encourage solo playing, for those who really want to. You can simply research the scans you need badly at the start, and then go on with a normal round, and research the not-so-important ones later. I don't really see a down-side to this either. Some may say it removes the 'skillful' initial target picking. I say it removes another unfair luck element from the game.
Score system:
I won't claim this idea to be mine, since it comes from a number of ideas I read on those forums. First, turn score into 'resources mined'. Yes, as easy as that. You don't lose score when defending/attacking, but it will become important to hold on to roids, and to get roids, both encouraging more fights, by encouraging both attack and defense at the same time.
The problem left is bashing. It's still not solved. Someone here suggested turning XP into a multiplication factor. I'd call it 'honour'. If you constantly hit players 2 times your size, your score gets multiplied by 2, if you constantly hit players half your size, your score gets multiplied by 0.5. You could lose score in an attack, without losing any fleet, and even gaining a lot of roids. You could gain a lot of score, even if you lose half your fleet, if you hit someone twice your size. Most people would probably be around ~1, so it could really pay off to risk it once.
Stagnation:
Towards the end of the round, the more roids you have, the faster you grow. The gap between big and small becomes bigger and bigger. This needs to be adressed somehow, we need to slow down this process to keep more excitement in the game.
Someone suggested random roid discovery. NOT really random, NO luck anywhere please, kthx. I already suggested the following formula in the thread about it. The more roids people lost, the faster they will find new roids. The bigger they are compared to the average universe size, the slower they will find new roids.
Formula that works great imho:
chance = lost/current * average/current
change = chance to find a roid
lost = total roids lost during round
current = current number of roids
average = current universe average size
The chance to find a roid is carried over from previous turns. Once it reaches 1, a roid is awarded, and 1 is removed from chance. This will remove any random factor. To decide the resource, simply take the resource least present in universe.
With that formula a player who has 180 roids and already lost 250, with a universe average of 300, will gain 1 roid every 4 ticks. This ain't too much, but it will help to flatten the gaussian distribution of roids. It will alleviate players heavily hit by faster recovery, it will help the small to keep up a little at least, overall it creates more competition and more fun again.
The NEXUS:
This is the main idea for my game, so I was really reluctant to giving it away, but I'm just too nice a guy
. I already shared it with Kal, so I guess it doesn't matter anymore, and this way, at least people know it was my original idea
.
The idea behind the NEXUS is to center the game more around alliances, make players play more for their alliance again. At the same time, it should help a lot to remove boredom towards the end of the round and adds a lot to politics and alliance wars.
I'd first remove the cap on alliance taxes and simply allow 0-100%, to allow more strategic freedom. Then I'd remove the alliance caps, as Jester suggested. I think everything that gives alliances more freedom will add to the fun, and to the excitement this idea would add.
For a HUGE amount of resources, any alliance HC that has the rights to, can start construction of the NEXUS. It will take X ticks, and accumulate Y armor per tick. Once it reaches X*Y armor, the alliance has effectively won the round, no matter the score. The alliances after them will be sorted by score, of course. And, of course, NEXUS progress of all alliances would be publicly viewable.
Upon start of construction, the NEXUS will receive his own coords, in an empty cluster and galaxy. Everyone can attack it, and the alliance can defend it with alliance eta. Every damage not inflicted to ships will damage the NEXUS' armor, and thus make it take longer for completition. It's even possible to destroy it, if the war effort is big enough. The combat engine would have to be fixed for this to work, though.
I think I don't need to point out how much this would add to alliance wars, politics, blocks, strategy and end-round excitement. PA (now) still has the player and alliance base to support this.
Finally, I hope this thread will not be deleted by wakey, like last time, when he thought there were too many good ideas for just one single thread in my post
. He could have closed it, maybe? But it was a purely objective decision, I mean, he was just doing his duty. Kinda weird Jester's post now wasn't deleted....never mind, had to say this
.
Cheers.