Quote:
Originally Posted by Monroe
They aren't actually fortress galaxies. I just gave you the intro to the plan, not the plan details itself. The idea is to have about half the gal as a fortress gal, the rest as players in other allies. So it becomes a fenced galaxy with a single ally as it's base.
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You mean like a galaxy with a buddy pack and 2 late sign ups? Sorry, I still don't see how it's particularly revolutionary, nor particularly strong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Monroe
24 active players beats 8 active players any day... just look at the galaxy rankings right now. The top ten contains mostly public galaxies
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While I agree with this, it has very little to do with the strategy you outlined.
Before round start I expected that most skilled players would play in private galaxies, and most newbies in random galaxies. In a setup like that, having public galaxies that are bigger (but not by more than a factor of 2) is a requirement to make sure they don't get utterly overrun.
Unfortunately, it turned out that there were many newbies who started private galaxies in the hopelessly mistaken belief that fortressing is a strategy that can be pulled off by just anyone. These galaxies found themselves overwhelmed and consequently disbanded. Additionally, at around the same time, random galaxies got a late sign up (for reasons unknown to me) as well as the usual influx of players between tick 1 and 500. As this change in universe composition occured, the balance shifted in favour of random galaxies.
As ellonweb correctly pointed out, it's not because random galaxies are particularly strong, but because they're disproportionally large in comparison with private galaxies. I would still argue that it is actually way harder to roid a highly ranked private galaxy like 8:3 than a highly ranked random galaxy like 8:9. There is, after all, a reason why we spent so much effort setting up the hit on 8:3 while we'd roid 8:9 on a sunday afternoon.
On a sidenote, I feel that the politics of this round played a significant part in allowing these galaxies to survive as well as they did. Vision, as much credit as they deserve for their play this round, can hardly be called a dominating military machine, which is why they haven't killed off these galaxies. In a round in which one alliance achieved domination earlier, random galaxies would not have performed nearly as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Monroe
, at least several of them are fortressed (I don't have intel on all of them). The ones that are fortressed followed the outline in the plan details not included in my first post on in this thread, including the top gal.
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To the best of my knowledge, CT is the alliance with the most planets in there, and they only have 4. That wouldn't even be a full buddypack, let alone qualify as a fortress.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Monroe
Because as AndroX notes you can only defend your ally mates and gal mates, having a strong mix of ally mates and random active players in your galaxy is the best strategy, when the following conditions are met:
1. There are few public galaxies relative to the number of private
2. The stats make the best defense ships only available in galaxy (for example BS that target CO)
3. Exiling out of private galaxies is possible
4. Defense is limited to allies and galaxies
Ironically if the PA team made no changes to the system for next round, and we went with public/privates again, if there are a lot of publics relative to the number of private galaxies then private galaxies are way stronger. So basically the system as it stands is a paradox and will always be unbalanced one way or the other. The galaxy seeding system should be fair to all, is not currently, and therefore should be abandoned, this is the bottom line in my thinking.
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I think you're overrating how "fair" the previous system was. There will always be some people who are lucky and some who are not. Whichever shuffle mechanism you use, as long as it contains random elements, that will always be the same.
Ultimately, whether you fortress or fence, how well you perform during the round almost entirely comes down to just being good at defending. The people who successfully fortress could just as easily do well in a fence galaxy, and vice versa. The difference here is not the strategies, it's the fact that some people are just better at the game and more dedicated to it.
As for the fate of the random/private setup, I would be in favour of trying it one more round. I think a lot of people learned a harsh lesson about private galaxies this round and I agree that we'll see more random and fewer private galaxies next round. That would also solve the problem of the strategy you described, according to you, so even if it is a strong strategy (which I still don't believe it is), it would not be feasible next round, anyway. The problem solves itself.