Make a big change

[Makhil]

maybe create a thread for "Spinner's New PA" suggestions ?

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

I would like to reiterate to people at this point that asking for changes that involve a lot of coding is only slightly more realistic than getting down on your knees and asking Zeus to hurl lightning bolts at the game in order to make it better. It may not be pateam's fault but either way it's just not something worth talking about right now.

This exactly. The whole subject of "making big changes" is not quite realistic. You're going to struggle hard to find an actual team to put the blame on, because whatever is the game team right now - or been for years - is a bunch of not very motivated volunteers the key ones of whom mostly stick around just to keep things rolling.

[Appocomaster]

A few comments. Sorry for not posting more regularly, I've really not been around. This is getting quite long; hopefully not too many people will tl;dr.

A few comments on some previous points in this thread:

1) I've done little / nothing in recent times; Cin has done most of the changes. He's spent a lot of time making the game more standalone and easy to use (battle calc integration), as well as doing a fair amount of stuff behind the scenes.

2) I would like to think that we'd have some more adventerous bots in place for Round 36. Precise scope to be confirmed. Not promising a bot alliance willing to worry some of the bigger alliances (a lot of discussion would be needed before doing that).

3) Stats tbd, but I'd prefer 2 pod classes to 3 (which rules one of JBG's set of stats out). I'd like to see an overhaul of the races and government settings though.

4) Random events were coded but when beta tested the sheer volumne of complaints over losing a couple of roids near the beginning of the round meant we commented it out.

The idea was to randomly add/ remove resources, roids, RP, CU and PU.

I also wonder how hard it would be to add in a random event system? Like a 1:1000 chance your fleet was able to 'Use a gravity well to increase their travel speed, thus landing 1 tick early.'
Or a 1:25 chance that morale on your mining crew was up and your mining output is increased by X(1-5)% for Y(1-6) ticks.
Even chances of losing 1-10% of your fleet from mechanical failure to radiation poisoning...

would be slightly more difficult ("for 6 ticks" is a huge amount more difficult, as you have to track all the changes rather than just give a 1 off bonus. Just from a coding point of view).

Changing ETAs would mess up so much, we'd be reluctant to do it just because of the complants. Imagine you launch a fleet catch and one of your main guys gets nudged forward an ETA? Or your defence fleet moves? I guess on the launch tick you could get a 1 tick bonus and that might be slightly more feasable, but it does render it impossible to defend against fi/co fleets.

Originally Posted by Kafir

- remove exiling
- remove prelaunch
- possibility to choose which ships/class to target with your ships/fleet (ec use only T1 & T2 in stats and T3 for user definition)
- remove covert opps
- possibility to turn stolen ships into resources
- race based gals/alliances

Originally Posted by MrLobster

- Convert XP for resource.

I think prelaunch has to stay.

Covops should be replaced with single spys which you have to train, and also place the waves under spy control. I do think that there should be a travel timer associated with any spy action.

I ... whilst every instinct I have wants to keep prelaunch, it would be a surprisingly major change imo. Maybe +2-3 for defence, no more. Would it be a change in the right direction? I can't comment on that.

Not going to have custom stats.

Covert ops are staying, I know they're unpopular, if you don't want to be hit, pay to stay safe. Or irritate less people.

race based galaxes / alliances are an awful idea. The joy of races is that together, their strong points can be used. Exile would pretty much cease to exist; you'd have 5 mini universes. Alliances as one alliance = xan/zik alliances.

On merging scanning/covert ops, there's a different thread here which covers that in more detail. It seems to be more like my idea (linked in the thread) than mz's idea though. It's a big idea though and would be a huge huge change, so I can't see it happening in the next round or so. Maybe if I take half of February off work we'd get half way to it.

I will try and clear the backlog of stuff and work with Cin to make sure we have everything ready for Round 35.

[MrLobster]

I think that random events that the player has no choice on isnt a good one.

I would rather the random event occur due to risk taking...

"Scanners have detected an unstable wormhole near our planet. Our scientists have informed us that the exit channel can be expanded to allow for one launch only to any position in the universe. Using the wormhole will provide one hour faster travel. Unfortunately they cannot guarantee safe passage for all ships that enter the rift."

So in other words

1) Once you use the rift, it will disappear (You can choose when to use it, but perhaps it has a time limit its in your planets orbit).
2) You gain extra time on travel.
3) you may lose ships on the journey.

"Our miners have discovered a high concentration of ore in a number of asteroids. Harvesting this material will result in 3 times the resource output for 12 hours. They have also said that increased pressure on crews may lead to a malfunction of equipment and the asteroids."

This will pick a set number of roids that will either

1) Give you 3x the resource they would have done for 12 hours or

2) Blow up! or it thats too harsh the affected roids produce no resource for the 12 hours.

So its all in the players hands, they have to way up the pros and cons of the choice.

[MrLobster]

Also I was thinking about "Single Targeting", perhaps a further simple reduction in the T2/T3 effectiveness would be better

T1 = 100%
T2 = 25%
T3 = 10%

So in theory you could have a lot of T3 set to "All", but you would need a lot of them to make a difference.

And perhaps bring back the subverse ships (to replace emp?) but have them subvert the ship at the init they are supposed to fire and at a reduced rate (25%?).

[isildurx]

Just go with JBG's single-targetting set of stats then appoco, only two podclasses there