XP suggestion

[Marka]

Problem
One thing I recognized this round is that PA is currently favoring extreme styles of gameplay. Looking at Top10 there are either players with very low value and very high XP or very high value and very low XP.
The first are continouusly crashing fleet for XP - the latter are continouusly roiding planets that are a large scale smaller.
First don't have to bother about value - Latter don't have to bother about XP.

Idea
I think it would be benificial for the game if someone that is doing good on both XP and value would win the round. My suggestion to achieve this would be a revamped XP system. The idea is to remove any direct link to score and value as this has proven to be inefficent in many ways.

First part would be putting planets into different classes like it would happen in a RPG. I was thinking about statically assign Top1000 planets into 20 classes based on score - everything below is put into class 0. So rank 1-49 would be class 20, 50-99 class 19....
The XP calculation would consist of 2 factors.
The class difference and the amount of captured roids.

Let's say the class you are in is 12. If you are attacking landing on a planet with class 12 you get a base XP of 500 - landing in class 13 750, 14 1000, 15 1250, landing in a class more than 3 above yours also gives 1250 XP.
Landing in class 11 gives you 250, 10 0, 9 -500 XP. Landing in anything below also -500.

The XP for captured roids also depends on class difference. If the target is in your class you get 10 XP per captured roid - if the target is above your class you get 15 - if the target is up to 3 classes below yours you get 5 - if the target is smaller than that you get -10 per captured roid.
The negative XP would be a replacement for the current bash protection.

Example XP calculations
Rank 15 (class 20) landing on rank 30 (class 20) capturing 300 roids. Player gains 500 + 300*10 = 3500 XP.
Rank 370 (class 13) landing on rank 20 (class 20) capturing 150 roids. Player gains 1250 + 150*15 = 3500 XP.
Rank 120 (class 18) landing on rank 400 (class 12) capturing 100 roids. Player gains -500+(-10*100) = -1500 XP.
Rank 220 (class 16) landing on rank 280 (class 15) capturing 90 roids. Player gains 250 + 90*5 = 700 XP.

Practical changes to current systems
The XP you can gain by roiding is capped at a lower level (from 30 to 15) and being partially replaced by a fixed number.
The minimum XP that can be gained with roids has been lowered from "theoretically" appx -4 to -5 and partially replaced by a fixed deduction of XP.
Even if #1 planet was twice the score and value of #2 planet - he could gain a larger amount of XP by attacking planets around his rank.
Even if a planet ranked around 400 would land on Top100 the XP gains would be restricted.


Effects on gameplay
For small (<500) players:
Hardly would be attacked by planets more than 150 ranks above. As they would lose a lot of XP in the process. They gain XP mainly through attacking bigger planets with bad fleets. If they attack constantly the XP gain should help them gain ranks rather quickly - with the consequences that they can be attacked by bigger planets - especially if their fleet composition is bad.

For medium (200-500) players:
Would be pretty similar to the current experience. Being attacked by smaller and bigger - attacking smaller and bigger in return. XP gain and rank pretty much depending on activity.

For big (>200) players:
Here we are fighting for a Top100 or better finish. If you are here and want to grow you need XP - if you wasted too much of your ships you won't be able to grow as quickly as others that kept their fleet together - they can send 2 attacks per day and gain more roids this way. If you wanna stay on Top you need a constant inflow of more XP - thus you need to keep attacking other big planets - else others that are more daring with their target choice can overtake you.

Conclusion
The preffered outcome would be planets competing for #1 being in Top10 value and Top50 XP. The #1 XP player should have a hard time gaining an advantage of more than 20.000 exp (1.200.000 score) on the #1 value player (if this player is constantly attacking in his class). So he can't really crash that much ships if he wanna end Top100.
Constantly attacking planets much smaller should result in a finish outta Top100 in any way.
This should also lead to an increased infight - more of #120 vs #130 than the #30 vs #250 we have now.
Small players/new players are acting in a somehow protected environment. There are now some steps more in the foodchain - tigers (top100) won't eat bunnies (<250) but gnus again
A danger I see is that this could lead to an even further reduction of roids in the universe - thus it would be preferrably combined with some sort of random roid discovery like ComradeBob suggested.

The implementation of the class system shouldn't be "too" difficult, even though it ain't trivial. However the xp calculation would be simpler and more transparent. If you attack a certain class you can guess the xp that would get you - calc won't be necessarily needed.

Thanks for the patience with this long thread

[SpookyVince]

Very nicely thought thread...

I have been thinking of another way to revamp how XP works too...

I've not taken a lot of time to think of it in all its details, but here is roughly how it could go:
XP gained on roids would be the same calculation as now, but multiplied by the ratio: value of remaining fleet / value of attacking fleet
that is, by value of remaining fleet, i think of what's left of your fleet after the attack.

Example:
if I would get 1000 XP with a fleet of 250K, and my remaining fleet is 125K (that is if I lose half of it), I'd get only 500XP.
I reckon there is still a small problem with attacking Cat planets, as even using unfrozen value / total value would necessarily limit XP you can get on most Cat targets...

It could, for the purpose of eliminating the Cat problem, take into accound the value of the defending fleets together with the attacking fleet.

Example:
Let's define:
A as the value of initial attacking fleet
A' as the value of the remaining fleet, minus the frozen ships value, plus the stolen roids value.
D as the value of initial defending fleet
D' as the value of the remaining fleet, minus the frozen ships value
All of those would consider stolen ships as lost or gained for remaining fleets.

(A'/A)-(D'/D) would be a kind of "success factor", by being -1 at worse, for a total crash ending in no loss in defenders, and +X, depending on roid stolen for an attacking landing with no kills/frozen ships, killing all defence.

Then,
XP = max (0, current XP * ((A'/A)-(D'/D)) ) <------- to avoid negative XP
or
XP = current XP * ((A'/A)-(D'/D)) <------ if negative XP is to be accepted

Any further thoughts?

[TheMedic]

good post, i think this should get some more looking into....i like the idea of the classes. good idea

[Marka]

Your idea is an interesting approach.
I think your formula is supposed to be
XP = current XP * max(0 , 1 + (A'/A)-(D'/D)))
else it would result in 0 XP if whole attack and defence survives. To avoid negative XP max(1 , ...)

Seems to be a fairly effective solution to avoid the crashing for XP problem. But I still see some problems with it.
With your suggestion an attacker gains most XP when he kills/freezes most of the defending fleet while maintaining most of the attack fleet.
This is a huge advantage for Cathaar and low ini races in general.
I suppose calculations with Zikonian would be even more difficult. How and where to count stolen ships?
My biggest concern would be the strategic tendency that might cause. Killing defending fleet while keeping attack ships safe - basically only happens on small planets. In order to get maximum XP you have to attack smaller planets and avoid risks.

The idea to give a bonus to people that manage to keep their fleets safe on attack is a nice idea. However I think it'll be hard to find a fair solution for this with the different strategies of the races.

[SpookyVince]

Yeah I suppose it's right that ziks are harder to calc, and true, I didn't think extensively of the cat problem...

That was basically just an idea thrown out in the wild, and all are welcome to think of it and improve it. If, when, I'll have some time between PA & work to think of it I'll try my best to do something nice with it.

Also, your idea of classes is really interesting, and maybe both our ideas could serve a better purpose and be in another solution yet.

Time will tell