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Unread 19 Mar 2007, 04:46   #1
XelNaga
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Post Problems & solutions

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.
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Last edited by XelNaga; 19 Mar 2007 at 04:56.
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Unread 20 Mar 2007, 22:21   #2
Shyne
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Re: Problems & solutions

Quote:
Originally Posted by XelNaga
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.
Maybe they were worried about your development processes. Lack of backups and no usage of version control is a sin punishable by death.
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Unread 21 Mar 2007, 01:21   #3
XelNaga
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Re: Problems & solutions

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shyne
Maybe they were worried about your development processes. Lack of backups and no usage of version control is a sin punishable by death.
Stay on topic.
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(XelNaga) Everybody please vote for Planetarion at http://www.mpogd.com !!!! We are second, we have to get first place back!
(SethMace) omg 2nd!!!
(SethMace) we must block with 3rd to take them down!!!11

(Marneus) also the damn thing aint always right 4 + 79 = i type 81 and it kicked me back to the login again grrr
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Unread 22 Mar 2007, 17:12   #4
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Re: Problems & solutions

Two points Really

1. Scans - Now if we go down your idea, doesn't this negate the small advantage that the Xan has at the beginning of a round, hence making the xan race pointless.

2. Nexus - Now i can see the advantage for alliances but there is a lot of players new & old that dont want to be in a alliance, but prefer the challenge of going solo. (which there should be a ranking for those in an alliance & those that are not) This nexus offers the solo player nothing new.

3. Thought of another point - The first part of resource score is a good one, but the honour bit is just another version of xp, which will get all the current xp whores doing what they are now, which i'm sorry is really crap and involves no skill what so ever. Maybe you could instead reward those that don't lose roids based on a factor of how many ticks since losing roids, Or another bonus based on how much fleet you dont lose when attacking a larger player, so that if you can successfully hit a bigger target without losing fleet or being frozen, then you could have a bonus based on your percentage of fleet which is untouched.

now i'm just using this as an example though it is a bad one.

0-50% unharmed = zero bonus
51 - 69% = 0.5% of Targets Value or Score
70 - 84% = 1.0% of target Value or Score
85 - 99& = 1.5% of target Value or Score
100% = 2.0% of target Value or Score

The above figures may need adjusting as i've just picked them out of the air just to get my example across

Player A (500k Value) hits Player B (1500k Value) x3 ratio

Player A manages to catch Player B away from home and as such gained max roids with no loses so as a bonus he gets:

2% of 1500k * 3 = 90k extra bonus

Now these figures would probably need adjusting and it may need to be based on honour or xp or score, but the basis is there just needs fine tuning.

The above idea will promote attacks, will reduce bashing as theres no gain from doing it, and may give players a little more to think about when they are attacking or defending. As you could also come up with a set of figures that would promote defending.

Cupelix
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Last edited by LordBlackheart2000; 22 Mar 2007 at 17:19.
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Unread 23 Mar 2007, 00:58   #5
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Re: Problems & solutions

In brief I like your score system, think the nexus idea is interesting but not for PA, and hate every other idea due to flaws.

Exile - This does not work. You would end up with the best gals getting better and the worse worse. New players would be stuck in gals with no experience whereas with the current system there may be 1 or 2 good players in the gal keeping it going.

Combat - It may be too complex as it is but your system is far too simple.

Scans - Just no. Makes the end of the round repetition begin from the first attack.

Random Roids - Just seems pointless to me to get 1 or 2 new roids.

Nexus - Not sure on this one. Completely changes the point of the game from most score. Seems a good idea for a new game but not something I would like to see in PA.
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Unread 23 Mar 2007, 02:25   #6
XelNaga
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Re: Problems & solutions

Quote:
Originally Posted by LordBlackheart2000
Two points Really

1. Scans - Now if we go down your idea, doesn't this negate the small advantage that the Xan has at the beginning of a round, hence making the xan race pointless.
Depending on the available scans, they might not completely negate the advantage, but you have a point for sure. Still, I wonder which way would be better.

Quote:
2. Nexus - Now i can see the advantage for alliances but there is a lot of players new & old that dont want to be in a alliance, but prefer the challenge of going solo. (which there should be a ranking for those in an alliance & those that are not) This nexus offers the solo player nothing new.
That's true, too, but in how far does it make it worse for them, if I might ask?

Quote:
3. Thought of another point - The first part of resource score is a good one, but the honour bit is just another version of xp, which will get all the current xp whores doing what they are now, which i'm sorry is really crap and involves no skill what so ever. Maybe you could instead reward those that don't lose roids based on a factor of how many ticks since losing roids, Or another bonus based on how much fleet you dont lose when attacking a larger player, so that if you can successfully hit a bigger target without losing fleet or being frozen, then you could have a bonus based on your percentage of fleet which is untouched.

now i'm just using this as an example though it is a bad one.

0-50% unharmed = zero bonus
51 - 69% = 0.5% of Targets Value or Score
70 - 84% = 1.0% of target Value or Score
85 - 99& = 1.5% of target Value or Score
100% = 2.0% of target Value or Score

The above figures may need adjusting as i've just picked them out of the air just to get my example across

Player A (500k Value) hits Player B (1500k Value) x3 ratio

Player A manages to catch Player B away from home and as such gained max roids with no loses so as a bonus he gets:

2% of 1500k * 3 = 90k extra bonus

Now these figures would probably need adjusting and it may need to be based on honour or xp or score, but the basis is there just needs fine tuning.

The above idea will promote attacks, will reduce bashing as theres no gain from doing it, and may give players a little more to think about when they are attacking or defending. As you could also come up with a set of figures that would promote defending.

Cupelix
I know the honour factor in score wasn't completely worked out, but there has to be a factor to reduce bashing and reward attacking up the food chain. That's why I included it. I've got to think about your idea first to comment further on that point :P.
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(XelNaga) Everybody please vote for Planetarion at http://www.mpogd.com !!!! We are second, we have to get first place back!
(SethMace) omg 2nd!!!
(SethMace) we must block with 3rd to take them down!!!11

(Marneus) also the damn thing aint always right 4 + 79 = i type 81 and it kicked me back to the login again grrr
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Unread 23 Mar 2007, 02:35   #7
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Re: Problems & solutions

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rc mayhem
In brief I like your score system, think the nexus idea is interesting but not for PA, and hate every other idea due to flaws.

Exile - This does not work. You would end up with the best gals getting better and the worse worse. New players would be stuck in gals with no experience whereas with the current system there may be 1 or 2 good players in the gal keeping it going.
If you check the rankings, you certainly are wrong. The statistical distribution of planet scores would certainly allow this idea to work. And every player who is interested in the game to a minimum will manage to get to a galaxy where he can learn new things. Also, players of the same 'level' are likely to push each other, imo there would be a certain rivalry, at least that was the case when I started PA. It motivated me more than having some really big player in my galaxy.[/quote]

Quote:
Combat - It may be too complex as it is but your system is far too simple.
Well, I think you forgot that you still have 6 different ships per race, with their own set of stats? Anyways, there needs to be change, and we need to test new approaches. I liked that other thread about the 'perfect' combat engine, and it has a lot of good points, too. But keeping it the current way certainly is the worst choice. Imo anyways.[/quote]

Quote:
Scans - Just no. Makes the end of the round repetition begin from the first attack.
Indeed, alliances cooperating would render that new approach too powerful. I still think PA team should be looking for a way to adress it, so discussing it might be a good start.

Quote:
Random Roids - Just seems pointless to me to get 1 or 2 new roids.
1. They are not random.
2. The suggestion has been extensively discussed in another thread, and I think it was generally accepted as positive.

Quote:
Nexus - Not sure on this one. Completely changes the point of the game from most score. Seems a good idea for a new game but not something I would like to see in PA.
You won't achieve a nexus if your alliance is not capable of handling a full scale war. I think score would still be the major factor, but it would open up a new dimension for politics, alliance cooperation and alternate ways to win as a team.


But to both of you, that was some constructive criticism and you raised some interesting points, so I'm not denying anything you said, just posting my opinion.
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(XelNaga) Everybody please vote for Planetarion at http://www.mpogd.com !!!! We are second, we have to get first place back!
(SethMace) omg 2nd!!!
(SethMace) we must block with 3rd to take them down!!!11

(Marneus) also the damn thing aint always right 4 + 79 = i type 81 and it kicked me back to the login again grrr
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Unread 23 Mar 2007, 22:01   #8
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Re: Problems & solutions

well im looking forward to your comments or anyone else's comments on the new xp/honour points system thingy

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