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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:03   #201
Paisley
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
If you believe that PA team "as a whole" have a coherent view of the game's future development then I suspect you're beyond hope.
I am not sure what the whole PA team think maybe they could give a statement on annoucements. collectively or on an individual basis.

Pa people as In the people who buy credits to play the game not the PA team who run the game.

I would think a poll would be very interesting to see the results of.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:04   #202
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
If you believe that PA team "as a whole" have a coherent view of the game's future development then I suspect you're beyond hope.
I'll tell your for free that our views are as fragmented as thoose of the community - BUT this is why I returned to PATeam, I don't want to get that much involved in game design or anything like that, but do to the work that comes before that.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:05   #203
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Paisley
I am not sure what the whole PA team think maybe they could give a statement on annoucements. collectively or on an individual basis.

Pa people as In the people who buy credits to play the game not the PA team who run the game.

I would think a poll would be very interesting to see the results of.
Think you're missing the whole point. If PA team actually got around to defining a target market, then the opinion of people who bought credits but weren't in that target segment SHOULD be ignored. That's the whole point of defining a target market - design a product that SOME people like rather one that NOONE likes.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:10   #204
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
Think you're missing the whole point. If PA team actually got around to defining a target market, then the opinion of people who bought credits but weren't in that target segment SHOULD be ignored. That's the whole point of defining a target market - design a product that SOME people like rather one that NOONE likes.
Why not "take stock" of what you already have?
See what your existing "customers" think as a whole.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:12   #205
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Paisley
Why not "take stock" of what you already have?
See what your existing "customers" think as a whole.
Then we're back to the point that the forum users aren't representative of the customers as a whole.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:15   #206
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
Nah, still wouldn't demonstrate much. For any proposed change there are two entirely seperate questions which need to be answered:

1. Is the objective of the change desirable?
2. Does the proposed change deliver on the defined objective?

Until these two questions can be seperated and debated coherently as individual entities any "vote" is entirely meaningless.
There's just over a week left to the beginning of the round. I'm not sure we have time for this level of coherent debate, that's why I presented four options which represent various viewpoints as established so far. We do need to have debate on the options along your above lines, but perhaps the codification and presentation of those options to the alliances afterwards would be a step in the right direction.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:20   #207
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by furball
Then we're back to the point that the forum users aren't representative of the customers as a whole.
So what you saying an ingame poll?
launch your fleet at the "yes" planet, "No" planet, "different Suggestion" planet.


I know what Syn_Sid, JBG, Wakey, Ali, Furball and a good few others think. What I am asking what does everyone one think?
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:27   #208
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Paisley
So what you saying an ingame poll?
launch your fleet at the "yes" planet, "No" planet, "different Suggestion" planet.


I know what Syn_Sid, JBG, Wakey, Ali, Furball and a good few others think. What I am asking what does everyone one think?
You still seem to fail to understand. It ultimately should not be about what everyone thinks. It should be about what the target market thinks. And how that fits into the game design for that market.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:27   #209
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by furball
There's just over a week left to the beginning of the round. I'm not sure we have time for this level of coherent debate, that's why I presented four options which represent various viewpoints as established so far. We do need to have debate on the options along your above lines, but perhaps the codification and presentation of those options to the alliances afterwards would be a step in the right direction.
My point is simply that selecting between four (or any arbitrary number of) options based on a forum poll is no more likely to obtain the "right" answer than just sticking with whatever is currently proposed. We have to give PA team credit for having some wider viewpoint on which the current round's changes are based (wrong though that may be) otherwise we're in effect saying that PA team are no better able to develop the game than a poll of (effectively) random people using this forum is. And wouldn't that be a shocker.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:28   #210
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
Yeah - just trying to knock his Turbo Turtle score off. Takes an hour to beat his current high score though - and if phone gos at work midway through I'm screwed.
i see you're as dilligent as ever then!

by the way, did anyone else click on this thread looking or a new alliance called 'Gobsmacked'? what a disappointment it's just more people slowly but surely realising that the pa team lack any real direction. if nothing else, what really needs to be done is there to be some sort of actual game design put forward/worked out; mind you, i am partially in favour of this change, though the idea of leaving a planets score in with an alliance is just vacuous.

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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:32   #211
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Paisley
I know what Syn_Sid, JBG, Wakey, Ali, Furball and a good few others think. What I am asking what does everyone one think?
I doubt very much you know what I think about this change. If you do - then let me know. I took a quick look at it and basically thought "window-dressing but with some exploitable opportunities and I hope others don't think of tactic X". I don't have a view on whether the change is "right" or "wrong" - as I have no properly defined context in which to assess the correctness of the decision. All I can assess is whether the change is beneficial or not to me - and it basically has no overall effect that I can see. It allows me (as a HC) to get rid of crap members much easier (which is great) but reduces the benefits of putting effort into careful selection of their replacements. As (I think) Wakey said - it allows you to take chances on new members. I'd prefer to paraphrase that as "it allows you to make crap recruitment selections for minimal penalty". But that's the difference between Wakey's worldview and mine: I'd rather people got penalised for messing up - he'd rather they got more chances to guess right.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:33   #212
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Heartless
You still seem to fail to understand. It ultimately should not be about what everyone thinks. It should be about what the target market thinks. And how that fits into the game design for that market.
I fail to understand how of you can decide on a marketing strategy without accessing what you already have and then decide what shall we do from here.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:38   #213
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
My point is simply that selecting between four (or any arbitrary number of) options based on a forum poll is no more likely to obtain the "right" answer than just sticking with whatever is currently proposed. We have to give PA team credit for having some wider viewpoint on which the current round's changes are based (wrong though that may be) otherwise we're in effect saying that PA team are no better able to develop the game than a poll of (effectively) random people using this forum is. And wouldn't that be a shocker.
I still wasn't arguing in favour of a forum poll. I was suggesting that we take a poll of those HCs who represent their alliances (those with access to #alliances comes to mind). I believe that PA Team are doing their very best, but perhaps the community at large (more specificially: the forums) can help to pick up on certain changes and refine them.

Some of PA Team's decisions are best done with little/no consultation, such as how to run the game and roughly when it starts and stops. However, changing the game mechanics is something which should be considered by more than a handful of people who no longer play the game. If that takes us to the conclusion that PA Team cannot develop the game entirely by themselves, so be it.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:39   #214
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Paisley
I fail to understand how of you can decide on a marketing strategy without accessing what you already have and then decide what shall we do from here.
You need to decide where you want to go before you decide how to get there.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:44   #215
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
You need to decide where you want to go before you decide how to get there.
Periodically you go to know where you are on the map first.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:51   #216
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by furball
I still wasn't arguing in favour of a forum poll. I was suggesting that we take a poll of those HCs who represent their alliances (those with access to #alliances comes to mind). I believe that PA Team are doing their very best, but perhaps the community at large (more specificially: the forums) can help to pick up on certain changes and refine them.

Some of PA Team's decisions are best done with little/no consultation, such as how to run the game and roughly when it starts and stops. However, changing the game mechanics is something which should be considered by more than a handful of people who no longer play the game. If that takes us to the conclusion that PA Team cannot develop the game entirely by themselves, so be it.
That is a good idea
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:54   #217
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

to move away from the extravagantly cryptic thing you've got going there guys:

Paisley, a poll with the whole playerbase (whereas a selective committee or something might) isn't going to be a complete nor an accurate or a helpful guide in building a game design as i believe you'll find most of the active part of it play on due to a loyalty/habit rather than the game itself. with this in mind, it's wiser to set a goal, and then try and achieve it together. (as opposed to being convoluted by various point of views and struggling to find a majority to chase after.)
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:54   #218
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Paisley
Periodically you go to know where you are on the map first.
That approach, in business, is symptomatic of lack of ambition and leads to under-delivering. I'm a big fan of "goal-based" development - set a target and aim for it. You appear to be more in favour of "how can we make this a bit better" development. This is getting a bit beyond the scope of discussion for this forum - but given a common acceptance that we're currently at A and want to be at B then my focus would be predominantly on B: for the following reasons:

1. Focussing on A naturally tends to lead to you ending up nearer to A than to B - as your understanding is of A rather than B and it's hard to design something you don't understand.
2. Any effort exerted into understanding A is only useful if you fail: if you succeed then it's understanding of B that you need.
3. A is crap - that's why we're aiming for B instead. Putting effort into something crap is of no interest to me. Rather than looking at the problem as "how do we make something out of this crap thing (A)" I'd rather approach the issue as "How do we make this good thing (B)".

The first stage of any software development is to define your end goal. I see no reason to approach game design any differently. You'll note that even in the classical software development lifecycle the first stage is Needs Analysis - i.e. what is needed. NOT what do people currently have.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 17:56   #219
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Maybe you could do it so if a planet isn't in an alliance, the score is saved up until he joins one, and his base score is the one he had when he left his last alliance (with productions etc taken into account) or from the start if he didn't have any alliance.

This would make tactics like tagging late possible again, which imo would be a good thing. And it would give smaller alliances a better chance to have influence on ranks.

Sorry if this has been said already, I didn't feel like reading all the replies, since most just discuss the rule as is, and not any solutions to it except for going back to the previous state.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 18:07   #220
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
...otherwise we're in effect saying that PA team are no better able to develop the game than a poll of (effectively) random people using this forum is. And wouldn't that be a shocker.
a) Pa forums do not contain 'effectively' random people. Most people on forums are either avid observers of the game, or serious players.
b) I admire the work done by PA staff, but I very much doubt they bring anything to the decision making process that a toincoss wouldn't (In terms of making the right decision).

You are right about PA needing to define it's market, and appeal (through game design) to that market accordingly. But it will take a lot more than that to get tens of thousands of players back to the game. Why? Because it's low tech. It's no longer the pinnacle of internet gameplay, and hasn't been for a long time. But that's no reason to say that the gameplay can't still appeal (snake, anyone?).

And yes, I agree with you in your A to B analysis.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 18:15   #221
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

1 - no except to a small minority that said something in this case
2 - no, it makes things worse opens up other problems and if a "fix" was to be sought it would definitely be better sought elsewhere.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 18:16   #222
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Furyous
a) Pa forums do not contain 'effectively' random people. Most people on forums are either avid observers of the game, or serious players.
no, not really. infact, not even remotely so. a good number of POSTERS maybe so, but what about the people who just lurk casually and don't post? and even of those who do post, a good % do not play the game in a serious manner.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 18:24   #223
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Furyous
Well they are quite simply wrong. All rankings have no value until the last tick of the game anyway. I don't see any logic behind forcing alliances to show their full strength in tag all round: After all, the tag is simply a formal version of a flag for all members wave, saying: 'look at us, look how well we've played the round'. When alliances used to be judged based on their presence in the t100 galaxies and planets, nobody complained that those galaxies didn't advertise that they contained certain alliances early enough.
I see planetarion at a stage where the fact they are wrong is irrelevant because there might be too many who object so I'm saying that PA team could well be in a position that they are forced to cater for them.

Quote:
All alliances have intel departments whose job it is to work out the whereabouts of their rivals' members. Should they do their job properly, they can see exactly how strong rival alliances are (and act accordingly). The fact that same perspective is not necessarily given to all on the alliance screen ingame should be of no consequence.
I agree on this. The moaning is mainly out of ineptitude but the general hostility to this tactic makes me quite sad

Quote:
Originally Posted by JBG
Some people play for non-pure-ranking reasons.
That doesn't prevent them having a view or opinion on how someone wins or loses and whether it motivates them to play again or not.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
f you want to define what PA is MEANT to be, then the very first stage (as I've said since about round 3) is defining what your target market is. Are you aiming at people with 24/7 net/irc access OR at people who are willing to commit a substantial amount of time per day to playing OR at people who want to log in once or twice per day?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
As soon as bashlimits and XP were introduced it was apparent to me that PA team had ZERO interest in running wargame - as the fundamental concept behind both of those additions is entirely against winning by playing PA as a wargame.
The problem I see that the more it is a 'wargame' and tilted towards value is the more that the game demands activity and we have a lot of players who from what I can see, can't be bothered to be that active and a lot of people out there who wouldn't want to be that active for the period of a round. The only way value has ever been fun on its own when you are small is back in the day when the universe was quite large. An upshot of abolishing both XP/bashlimit and encouraging a 'wargame' is that while it encourages you to be efficient and take out your enemy ASAP which is very much the point of war, in a small universe it means the round will end much faster. Let me make clear: i'm not against a wargame, i'm just stating what I believe the probable outcomes will be considering how many players we have.

For me I'd like to try private galaxies, proper clusters, get rid of alliance eta's, make defence eta -1 across the board and let them go hammer and tongs at each other for no longer than a month and make the galaxy prize the big one to win.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 18:31   #224
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paisley
I fail to understand how of you can decide on a marketing strategy without accessing what you already have and then decide what shall we do from here.
Basically you cannot start a marketing strategy when you do not even have a product to sell.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 18:51   #225
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by lokken
The problem I see that the more it is a 'wargame' and tilted towards value is the more that the game demands activity and we have a lot of players who from what I can see, can't be bothered to be that active and a lot of people out there who wouldn't want to be that active for the period of a round. The only way value has ever been fun on its own when you are small is back in the day when the universe was quite large. An upshot of abolishing both XP/bashlimit and encouraging a 'wargame' is that while it encourages you to be efficient and take out your enemy ASAP which is very much the point of war, in a small universe it means the round will end much faster.
I mentioned variable lengths of round on PD recently in kal's thread. Basically you switch back and forth between different stat sets, you can make one value only, one four races, one two races, one xp-dominated. The more popular ones obviously get more airtime. They can be as short as four weeks or as long as eight or nine. Personally I'd like to see the games limits to free players expanded more. I'm unsure if something like no restrictions bar the inability to send or receive defence out of gal is a realistic barrier point but something along those sorts of lines. All you really need is a lot of people to sign up once, become vaguely integrated in the circle and then frequently receive notices that new rounds are starting. For the record these are more long-term goals. In the immediate future I'd like to see it become a four-race value-dominated minimal-regulation game. I think this will keep, and gain, the playerbase likely to keep PA alive long enough for the long-term strategy to come into effect.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 19:03   #226
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
That approach, in business, is symptomatic of lack of ambition and leads to under-delivering. I'm a big fan of "goal-based" development - set a target and aim for it. You appear to be more in favour of "how can we make this a bit better" development. This is getting a bit beyond the scope of discussion for this forum - but given a common acceptance that we're currently at A and want to be at B then my focus would be predominantly on B: for the following reasons:

1. Focussing on A naturally tends to lead to you ending up nearer to A than to B - as your understanding is of A rather than B and it's hard to design something you don't understand.
2. Any effort exerted into understanding A is only useful if you fail: if you succeed then it's understanding of B that you need.
3. A is crap - that's why we're aiming for B instead. Putting effort into something crap is of no interest to me. Rather than looking at the problem as "how do we make something out of this crap thing (A)" I'd rather approach the issue as "How do we make this good thing (B)".

The first stage of any software development is to define your end goal. I see no reason to approach game design any differently. You'll note that even in the classical software development lifecycle the first stage is Needs Analysis - i.e. what is needed. NOT what do people currently have.
This might be straying from the topic.
If you want to know my "school of thought" I would generally say it would be from "the art of war" Sun Tzu. Which there are some business leaders have adapted for themselves.

Where the first chapter is on calculation.

The 5 things you assess is
One, Way

Being is Will the PA community have the same thinking as the PA leaders.
I.e willing to imbrace change from A to B

two, Heaven
Being the climate for the change from A to B

three, Ground
Being the route you would take to get from A to B

four, General
Being the leader(s) ability to make the change

five, Law

being the organization of the change, command struture, logistics (I.e how many/if we lose/gain players due to the change), And will/how these changes generate different turnover/costs.


"one who knows them is victorious, one who does not know them is not victorious.
Therefore, compare them by means of calculation, and determine their statuses"

As I did say some people have made their thoughts clear on the matter, but we dont have the full story of what everyone else thinks on the matter. A vote/poll would be a means and there could possibily be other means of assessing this.

You are saying that A is crap... Does everyone else think this?
Is getting to B accievable... Can we/can all people get to it?
The main reason why some people fail to get to B is because they failed to take this into account.

You want to get to london for example. We will go to london by train.
but where are we starting from. You dont know if you can make plans for the journey if you dont know where you are starting from. also is there a rail link to london from where you are. Is there a better means of getting there. I.e by plane or by car.
But you must know where you are at.



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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 19:07   #227
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartless
Basically you cannot start a marketing strategy when you do not even have a product to sell.
How do you know if there is a demand for the product?
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 19:07   #228
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paisley
You want to get to london for example. We will go to london by train.
but where are we starting from. You dont know if you can make plans for the journey if you dont know where you are starting from. also is there a rail link to london from where you are. Is there a better means of getting there. I.e by plane or by car.
But you must know where you are at.
You're in birmingham, ie a complete shithole.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 19:12   #229
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paisley
How do you know if there is a demand for the product?
To know if there is demand for your product you need a market analysis which is a task that (at least in our company) falls into the marketing department but has nothing to with the actual marketing strategy. Market analysis is taking a look at the market and trying to guesstimate what the market wants or needs and how much profit you might generate with your product. A marketing strategy is about selling your product to the market once the product reached a good enough quality.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 19:20   #230
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartless
To know if there is demand for your product you need a market analysis which is a task that (at least in our company) falls into the marketing department but has nothing to with the actual marketing strategy. Market analysis is taking a look at the market and trying to guesstimate what the market wants or needs and how much profit you might generate with your product. A marketing strategy is about selling your product to the market once the product reached a good enough quality.
How would you "guestimate" what the market wants?
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 19:28   #231
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by JonnyBGood
You're in birmingham, ie a complete shithole.
Well train isnt an option if you are from Ireland
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 19:50   #232
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Paisley
How would you "guestimate" what the market wants?
By taking a look at sales figures of other browser-based sci-fi strategy games, taking a look at what people like in those games, how well your game designers vision fits with these things etc etc etc
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 20:23   #233
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Heartless
By taking a look at sales figures of other browser-based sci-fi strategy games, taking a look at what people like in those games, how well your game designers vision fits with these things etc etc etc
From what I can gather is that you conduct market research by measurements (I.e polls, questionaires) to find out what your target market wants. Use projections from the infomation you have gathered to determine if the demand is there and then come up with the required product and then market it.

So why not have a poll to see what the PA community wants from PA rather than second guessing what is crap and what is not?
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 20:32   #234
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paisley
This might be straying from the topic.
If you want to know my "school of thought" I would generally say it would be from "the art of war" Sun Tzu. Which there are some business leaders have adapted for themselves.

Where the first chapter is on calculation.

The 5 things you assess is
One, Way

Being is Will the PA community have the same thinking as the PA leaders.
I.e willing to imbrace change from A to B

two, Heaven
Being the climate for the change from A to B

three, Ground
Being the route you would take to get from A to B

four, General
Being the leader(s) ability to make the change

five, Law

being the organization of the change, command struture, logistics (I.e how many/if we lose/gain players due to the change), And will/how these changes generate different turnover/costs.


"one who knows them is victorious, one who does not know them is not victorious.
Therefore, compare them by means of calculation, and determine their statuses"

As I did say some people have made their thoughts clear on the matter, but we dont have the full story of what everyone else thinks on the matter. A vote/poll would be a means and there could possibily be other means of assessing this.

You are saying that A is crap... Does everyone else think this?
Is getting to B accievable... Can we/can all people get to it?
The main reason why some people fail to get to B is because they failed to take this into account.

You want to get to london for example. We will go to london by train.
but where are we starting from. You dont know if you can make plans for the journey if you dont know where you are starting from. also is there a rail link to london from where you are. Is there a better means of getting there. I.e by plane or by car.
But you must know where you are at.



Ignoring all the waffle at the start, you're still missing the point totally. A and B aren't game designs - they're market positions. In case you'd missed it somehow, PA is (theoretically) a commercial product - it's goal should be (very broadly speaking) to maximise revenue. That's achieved by targetted a market then competing for a share of that market - none of which is possible without first defining the market. Once the market has been defined THEN is the stage to find out (in detail) what the market wants. Prior to that the objectives would be to assess, for each market, how large the market is, what prive the market will pay for a product, how saturated the market is etc etc.

Because PA has NEVER done this it's currently stuck with a customer base which is comprised of people from various different markets - with different agendas, different wish-lists and entirely different concepts of what PA is (or should be) in their minds.

The bulk of your post focuses on getting from a clearly defined A to a clearly defined B. The problem PA has is not only does it know what B is - it doesn't even really appreciate what A is.

Be wary applying Sun-Tzu to business. Sun-Tzu deals predominantly with war - which is a competitive and (more importantly) largely zero-sum activity. Some of his principles ARE directly applicable to business - but you need to choose carefully the area to which you apply them. One of the most relevant areas IS competition for a market - where knowing your enemy is a vital aspect. Your enemy being other companies targetting the same market as yourself. But you totally fail to mention competitors - which is hardly surprising given your reluctance to accept defining a market as a key first stage. And without defining a market it's impossible to define your enemies (the competition).
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 20:35   #235
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paisley
So why not have a poll to see what the PA community wants from PA rather than second guessing what is crap and what is not?
Because - and this is what you TOTALLY fail to see - the PA "community" is NOT NECESSARILY THE TARGET MARKET.

EDIT: To clarify - and this is about as simple as I can make it. You're confusing "customers" with "market". Just because someone buys your product DOES NOT mean that they're the market that the product was designed for. The problem is, that until PA define who their market is they don't have a clue whose opinions they need to listen to and whose they should just ignore.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 20:46   #236
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Let me try to clear up this with an example.

Assume, for the purposes of this post only, that the target market for PA was casual gamers who want to log in once or twice per day (yes, I know that's not a proper market but this is just an example).

Then obviously some aspects of the game design wouldn't appeal to this market - such as the need to be able to get online regularly at short notice if you want to do well. But many of the most vociferous posters on this board WANT a game which rewards regular activity - and it follows that listening to these people would lead the game development in a direction which would drive away the market the game was aimed at.

I'm NOT suggesting that's the market that PA is (or should be) aimed at - but hopefully those having problems understanding the difference between "customers" (the people currently buying your product) and market (the people you WANT to buy your product) can see from this example how listening to your customers can easily reduce your appeal to your target market.

THAT's why defining a market MUST be done first. Without knowing your market you can't possibly satisfy it. When PA first came out the market wasn't differentiated, it was a free product and competition was few and far between. The situation is different now - and design-by-chance and hoping to stumble over a winning formula somehow just ain't going to work.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 21:16   #237
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

I can't really see people actually paying for a text-based game they only log into once or twice a day, so I think the market should be about the active and competative people who are willing to put the extra effort in to do well. The core of this game already is the market i described, since these competative people keep playing the game over and over again and keep paying for the account every round.

Sure the community plays a big part, but this isn't the paralimpics. You don't get a medal for not drooling on the carpet. This game is about winning, because let's be fair, most of the online people play games online to do well in, as they can't (or don't want to) compete at the highest level in real life, like sports. If a game is about the best, it'll attract people that desire to be the best. So if this game becomes 'elite' again, is see more and more people joining.

This will also attract the 'lesser' players who don't want to be elite, but want to be apart of a good game. This in effect are the current top10-20 alliances (although most of those alliances are really active as well) who try to do make a difference, but not compete at the highest level. If we enlarge the top, the rest will follow.

/rant
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 21:29   #238
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by paolo
I can't really see people actually paying for a text-based game they only log into once or twice a day, so I think the market should be about the active and competative people who are willing to put the extra effort in to do well. The core of this game already is the market i described, since these competative people keep playing the game over and over again and keep paying for the account every round.
If we assume the top 10 alliances are the superactive - that represents less than half of the paid accounts - so how can we possibly say that people who are less active and log in less often arn't willing to pay?

The statistics of paid accounts do not support the premise that the game should be designed for active people.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 21:30   #239
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paisley
From what I can gather is that you conduct market research by measurements (I.e polls, questionaires) to find out what your target market wants. Use projections from the infomation you have gathered to determine if the demand is there and then come up with the required product and then market it.

So why not have a poll to see what the PA community wants from PA rather than second guessing what is crap and what is not?
Because a poll can never reflect what the community wants. A questionnaire would be the better option where PA Team create a feedback form and people can fill it in. Not just available to forum users, though, more via e-mail to all registered e-mail addresses or something. A forum poll, especially on the pa forums, will never get you to know what the majority of the current playerbase think, rather what the majority of the active forum users think.

Also, what Sid said - the playerbase is not necessarily the target market.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 21:49   #240
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
If we assume the top 10 alliances are the superactive - that represents less than half of the paid accounts - so how can we possibly say that people who are less active and log in less often arn't willing to pay?

The statistics of paid accounts do not support the premise that the game should be designed for active people.
Are these statistics public? I'd like to look at them sometimes to view the current market.

I didn't mean only the superactive are paying, I don't think a lot of people that log in once or twice a day are actually paying. I don't spend that much money online, so I could be wrong.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 21:51   #241
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
Ignoring all the waffle at the start, you're still missing the point totally. A and B aren't game designs - they're market positions. In case you'd missed it somehow, PA is (theoretically) a commercial product - it's goal should be (very broadly speaking) to maximise revenue. That's achieved by targetted a market then competing for a share of that market - none of which is possible without first defining the market. Once the market has been defined THEN is the stage to find out (in detail) what the market wants. Prior to that the objectives would be to assess, for each market, how large the market is, what prive the market will pay for a product, how saturated the market is etc etc.

Because PA has NEVER done this it's currently stuck with a customer base which is comprised of people from various different markets - with different agendas, different wish-lists and entirely different concepts of what PA is (or should be) in their minds.

The bulk of your post focuses on getting from a clearly defined A to a clearly defined B. The problem PA has is not only does it know what B is - it doesn't even really appreciate what A is.

Be wary applying Sun-Tzu to business. Sun-Tzu deals predominantly with war - which is a competitive and (more importantly) largely zero-sum activity. Some of his principles ARE directly applicable to business - but you need to choose carefully the area to which you apply them. One of the most relevant areas IS competition for a market - where knowing your enemy is a vital aspect. Your enemy being other companies targetting the same market as yourself. But you totally fail to mention competitors - which is hardly surprising given your reluctance to accept defining a market as a key first stage. And without defining a market it's impossible to define your enemies (the competition).
A and B are your examples not mines.

The PA community is currently buying the credits to play PA and paying the bills for PA to run. (after 17 rounds it is still here) It is in a position to assess itself as it currently running.
What you are saying is lets go into a target market without knowing what market(s) that PA curently has. Ie making a journey without knowing how far you have to travel as you dont know where you are starting from without knowing your "inventory" not having enough petrol in your tank to make the full journey then realising at the time of your journey which could leave you stranded between point A and B aka between a rock and a hardplace. All because you didnt take stock of what you already have. A possible outcome is alienation some of the players that it loses changing its target market for example might be going "specialist" who knows. But what if you dont get the new/extra business to cover the lost business. Ie Don't have enough petrol in the tank to make the journey. If you Have enough petrol in the tank to make the journey then do so, if you do not have enough petrol dont make the journey, rather driving 1/2 way there and realising "oh shit i cant make it to point B" Like all things if ends dont meet then it is closure.
It is a possible outcome.

It is no longer Calculated risk it becomes more of a game of chance.

Sun tzu can be applied to a group of people working in a team, working towards an end... No enemy required.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 21:52   #242
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
The statistics of paid accounts do not support the premise that the game should be designed for active people.
Read sid's posts for the love of god :crymeariver:
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 21:59   #243
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by JonnyBGood
Read sid's posts for the love of god :crymeariver:
I do, I wasn't commeting on them was I
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 22:12   #244
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
If we assume the top 10 alliances are the superactive - that represents less than half of the paid accounts - so how can we possibly say that people who are less active and log in less often arn't willing to pay?

The statistics of paid accounts do not support the premise that the game should be designed for active people.
Ok, my last post for the day - and it's likely to be a long one. First off, I don't agree (totally at least) with your opening assumption - that the superactive are in the top 10 alliances. There are plenty of semi-active players in the top 10 alliances and also a fair few very active ones in lower down alliances (or in no alliance at all). That said I DO agree with your conclusion, specifically that:

1. PA's current customer base is by no means all (or even mainly) mega-active players.
2. The mega-active player base is NOT the one PA should be targetting. This is for two reasons:
a) As a market segment it's too small.
b) A decent part of the current mega-active player-base are ONLY mega-active because they HAVE to be to do well - not because that's what they want to be.

And this, I firmly believe, is the single key area of Planetarion which needs to be addressed. Rather than worrying about how the game is scored (which is what this thread started out as) the focus should be on making the game playable and enjoyable for it's main market.

I do, however, agree with paolo - that the fundamental "real-time" nature of PA is such that you CAN'T aim it at people who login once or twice per day.

Ignoring all other issues, I see there being three market segments:

1) The casual players. People who want to login once or twice per day - sometimes never for a few days. PA can't be aimed at this market - aside from the nature of the game these aren't people who are generally willing to pay to play.
2) The active players. People who want to put some effort into playing the game on a daily basis, don't mind going out of their way on occasion to fit around the game schedule, but DON'T want their life to revolve around PA. I frimly believe this is who the game SHOULD target.
3) The mega-active. People who will let their lives run around PA during a round. There aren't enough of these to make it the target market - and, as I alluded to earlier, many of the people in this category would be happy (or even happier) playing a game targetted at category 2.

Now we look at the current mechanics - and what do we see? The mechanics are aimed fairly and squarely at category 3 - with various tweaks added in as a nod in the general direction of categories 1 and 2. Even these tweaks don't really help category 2 players - they just ensure that not only will they lose to category 3 players but they won't do much better than category 1 players.

To properly redress this some serious redesign of a few basic areas of PA need to happen - ideally as part of a properly structured redevelopment of the whole game. I've given some thought to this - albeit largely in the context of my own game design (which will probably never see the light of day). My preferred solution wouldn't work for PA without a bunch of other changes as well - but what I think would work would be to have "attack windows": based around the activity of the main geographic market for PA (Europe).

What this would mean is that whilst ticks would run as at present, attacks could only be launched during specific hours. So if, for example, the evening "attack window" was 18:00-22:00 (NOTE: this is an example not a proposal) then if you have no incs at 22:01 you could go to bed knowing you'd have none that night. You could, of course, need to send in-galaxy defence after that. This would also act as a natural brake on the number of waves which could be sent at targets per night - and would also penalise people who went for the easiest targets.

There could (and should) be multiple attack windows per day - and they could change dynamically throughout the round - perhaps building up to a final weekend where non-stop attacking was allowed. This would reduce the need for 24/7 activity while maintaining the real-time basis on which PA has always operated.

This solution arises directly from the very definition of the target market - that it wants to put substantial (but largely predictable) time into the game without PA becoming their life. And they want to be able to compete for high ranks while doing that - without knowing all along that they'll lose to others for no reason other than the unreasonable amount of time some people will put into it.

On the face of it, "attack windows" may seem to reduce the flexibility of players - I'd argue that they move the emphasis to planning and target selection rather than pure brute-force/activity. The "launch/recall/relaunch till the target gos to bed" tactic may work - but it's not pretty, it's not skillful and frankly it's not a lot of fun.

This is just ONE simple example of how the game COULD evolve towards a specific market. It's for PA team to decide which market they want - and then to deliver a product which that market will enjoy and pay for.

On which note I'm back off to the pub - which sells a product targetted at a market which I'm a part of.
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 22:28   #245
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

I agree with everything Sid says (including disagreeing with my assumption which was merely there to demonstrate that the mega actives are a small portion)
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 23:01   #246
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

I think the proposal of Sid could work actually. Launching in intervals, planning the attacks between those intervals etc. Category 1 players can survive logging in once or twice a day and category 2 players can excell by joining an alliance and sending/recieving defence. This would make the game very accessable for younger people who are concerned with maximum online hours due to bedtime.

The only problem i see (and it's easy to be a critic i know) that fleetcatching wouldn't be possible and to a lesser extent, retals. You'd have to wait till the next window etc. It would rid us of the irritating recall/resend crowd though
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Unread 29 Jun 2006, 23:38   #247
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

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Unread 30 Jun 2006, 00:12   #248
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Quote:
Originally Posted by Synthetic_Sid
What this would mean is that whilst ticks would run as at present, attacks could only be launched during specific hours. So if, for example, the evening "attack window" was 18:00-22:00 (NOTE: this is an example not a proposal) then if you have no incs at 22:01 you could go to bed knowing you'd have none that night. You could, of course, need to send in-galaxy defence after that. This would also act as a natural brake on the number of waves which could be sent at targets per night - and would also penalise people who went for the easiest targets.
This should probably be done more dynamically, as restricting the 'attack window' to e.g. european evening/night would obviously harm customers of other timezones, who are also part of category 2, as defined by you.

One way would be that players are able to set their protection/sleep time, i.e. 6/8 hours per day, maybe along with the predefined 'attack windows'.
Most european players would surely choose gmt/cet night for their sleep time; nonetheless this would assure players of other timezones at least some targets to attack, given that these players are a relatively small fraction of the playerbase, the 'demand/supply' ratio of targets would be rather fair.

A second/additional possibility would be to link the time your planet can be attacked with your activity (i.e. login time +2 hours, which would minimize logins [what we don't want], or better link to changes you make at your planet [spending, research, attacks/defences]). Along with 'attacking windows', this could (when played smart) benefit more active players (while bearing a risk for them), without harming your category 2 player, always making sure supply and demand of targets is regulated/balanced.
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Unread 30 Jun 2006, 00:16   #249
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

18.00-22.00? - Sid just wants to get to the pub every night before it closes - 'not a proposal' my arse!
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Unread 30 Jun 2006, 00:18   #250
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Re: Gobsmacked - New Alliance Scoring System

Oh, and as for your idea. I think it would take months to deliberate and refine, and then nobody would play it unless Jolt invested heavily in advertising to attract enough of the target market to make it worthwhile.
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