How to make xp more like value

[Rc mayhem]

Firstly, sorry for another xp related thread, however something needs to be done with it. My proposal, first posted in the alliance rep channel, is to make it more value like with the ability to lose it, without making suiciding viable and without making value irrelevant.

I propose....

When attacked or attacking about 50% (all figures are up for discussion as I am making them up right now) of xp per tick cant be touched as that is held by the planet in paperwork and by those officers who sit behind tables shouting orders. The other 50% is held by your pilots and crews, therefore if stolen or killed you lose a percentage of your xp based on the percentage of your fleet size, therefore if you lose all 1000 of your ships you lose 25% of your xp.

This would require score from xp to be increased a little on this round so it is a viable option again. And this would then make xan more powerful due to their cheap and numerous ships, which would then make another race to take on the power of ziks. With this loss it would make suiciding for xp, the reason a lot of ppl dislike playing for xp instead of value. This could also hit ppl who save up res for a rainy day as they would have fewer ships and therefore lose a higher percentage if an attack does get through.

So what do you guys think? Btw, can I ask you to discuss the idea rather than just saying you hate xp and would prefer only value.

Thanks
Cm

[Makhil]

I'm not sure to see the point of having 2 values. The idea is on the contrary to offer 2 different ways to play the game.
A simple solution would be to have 2 rankings:
- 1 for value
- 1 for XP
The winner would be the player with the best average ranking from both (or you could just have 2 winners).

Losing XP is a good idea but it should happen with a negative XP system. You lose XP when you bash lowbies.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Loosing XP when you loose your fleet might sound like a good idea, but methinks all that will happen is that when people's planets get trashed - fleetcaught, roided to hell - all this proposal will do is add to the misery by significantly reducing a planet's XP as well.

a negative XP system for bashing lowbies is a better way of making XP assailable, methinks.

[Travler]

xp was not an issue this round. Why should it be removed in any way?

Personnally I thought there was not enough xp gain this round.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Travler

xp was not an issue this round. Why should it be removed in any way?

Personnally I thought there was not enough xp gain this round.

Exactly (oh dear, I'm agreeing with Travler)



The entire point of XP is that you can't lose it. Value's the attribute that you lose.

[Veedeejem!]

There wasn't enough xp this round, there wasn't enough xp r17 either.
To be honest, planetarion is less entertaining because of that, sure r16 was boring as hell because of all the xp-whoring going on but r16 was designed to xp whore. We didn't have that problem in all the xp rounds prior to r16. So I don't understand why xp was nerfed so badly after r16.

Bring back the old XP formulae though put "shipvalue lost" in it somewhere, that will stop people crashing for xp day after day after day...
So if you lose 0 ships = you get 100% xp
lose all ships = you get 0% xp

This works better than making way to complicated forumulae's. It revolved totally around value so there's little or no incentive anyway for going after a lowbie

[GrandAdm Thrawn]

well with those new upper 1337 ships to come that target each and everything the xp-question will no longer be an issue, id guess

[xontas]

value and xp where created to make the game a bit random.
basicly to stop PA from becoming the calculating game it is today
there is no (good or bad) luck in this game and every move can be calculated into detail.

imo PA should have a new xp formula that is secret and has a random factor
so that the same battle can give you more or less results.
the same should be done with all battle formula's
that would make it harder to judge the risk reward based souly on calcs
it would make PA play more on the judgement of the player

its like the dice in the game risk, you dont know if you will win untill you are actualy fighting

[Kal]

Originally Posted by xontas

value and xp where created to make the game a bit random.
basicly to stop PA from becoming the calculating game it is today
there is no (good or bad) luck in this game and every move can be calculated into detail.

imo PA should have a new xp formula that is secret and has a random factor
so that the same battle can give you more or less results.
the same should be done with all battle formula's
that would make it harder to judge the risk reward based souly on calcs
it would make PA play more on the judgement of the player

its like the dice in the game risk, you dont know if you will win untill you are actualy fighting

scary as this sounds I actually agree with xontas, and I think risk is a good analogy. Its great in risk when a small army miraculously defeats a large army - BUT only as long as its a rare occurance. If things like that happen all the time then all aspect of strategy and tactics are lost and battle becomes meaningless. Also in PA becuase a single "army" has greater worth we have problems - that said if the game scoring was radically changed then we could get round that.

For example if a "value" was based around planetary achievements e.g. having strucutes etc (that could be destroyed), and XP was based on success in combat then ships would purly be a tool for protecting Value and gaining XP - surely thoose are the two things that matter? For example why does having a big army mean you have more score? Surely having good tactics, picking the right fight, having a good planet etc are whats important and the ships are just a tool to help you achieve that?

[Shyne]

The point of XP is to allow smaller planets to compete with bigger ones.

I'd like to see appocos exponential formula used to reward bigger planets for retaining their value, rather than the removal of XP.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by xontas

imo PA should have a new xp formula that is secret and has a random factor
so that the same battle can give you more or less results.
the same should be done with all battle formula's
that would make it harder to judge the risk reward based souly on calcs
it would make PA play more on the judgement of the player

Perhaps you were not paying attention during R10 then. The whole game was remodelled into PAX around secret ship stats, secret combat engine, secret this and undisclosed that. War engineering settings made things unpredictable as well.

What happened?

Well, before protection ended, battle calculators had emerged. True, they werent very accurate. But the more and more battles that were pasted into them, the more an understanding of the combat engines was determined. The more the shipstats were generally understood and accurately modelled. The result: secret ship stats didnt stay secret for long. Secret combat engines were, although not totally accurate, by mid round they were precise enough to get a very good understanding of the outcome of the battle. The result? Heaps of effort for bugger all return, and if anything, calcing battles became even more important than before. Who had access to these calculators? The top alliances. Fortunately for us, those alliances chose to make the battlecalcs totally public as community tools, so everyone in the game could use them.

Banning that information wont help either, as all it would do would be to push the calcuations underground. Not having them in the game would mean that admins cant trace them. The only way would to stop battle reports from being displayed, but even then fluctations in score/roids/ships would still mean that an understanding could be reverse engineered, but it would merely take longer. What is the point, other than giving some techies a run for their money for a while? In my opinion, there is no point. Its just a complete waste of time for the developers, and a pain in the arse for absolutely everyone else.

Thus, its a bad idea.

Originally Posted by Kal

Its great in risk when a small army miraculously defeats a large army - BUT only as long as its a rare occurance. If things like that happen all the time then all aspect of strategy and tactics are lost and battle becomes meaningless.

Obviously, you dont have an understanding of the way combat works in Planetarion. The entire point of having a limited targeting spectrum for ships is precisely to permit players to exploit gaps in their enemy's fleet. The whole point of the XP system is to reward players who can do this the most often to the largest possible players whilst still capturing asteroids - which is the point of combat in Planetarion.

Planetarion has never had any (or very much) in the way of tactics. Tactics are things like micromanagement of small unit actions, something you'll find in games like Age of Empires or Red Alert - focus firing, using counter units and the like. If anything, Planetarion is totally strategic insofar as you build and design a fleet, and optimise that fleet before you launch it at your enemy, then attack and hope. Scans and the like help you with the formation of the fleet and the decision of whether to land or recall, but there is no tactical level control such as taking control of your battleships and targeting the enemy fleet closer to their roids, rather than targeting the enemy ships at the centre of their lines. There is no tactical control such as coming up behind, or above, or below etc the enemy fleet. There is no use of spacial terrain like gas clouds or asteroid belts. The whole concept of tactics in Planetarion is a misnomer at best, and plain wrong at worst.

As such, i disagree with your points of view.

Originally Posted by Kal

For example if a "value" was based around planetary achievements e.g. having strucutes etc (that could be destroyed), and XP was based on success in combat then ships would purly be a tool for protecting Value and gaining XP - surely thoose are the two things that matter?

That would be correct, however as long as Ships contribute a vast proportion of the total amount of Value (or even anything to value), then using ships to protect value depends entirely on expected gains and losses. The gains being saved roids, the losses being fleetscore lost to protect those roids. As roids are more or less worthless in terms of value (especially compared to XP), then it makes rational sense to loose very little or no fleet in protecting your roids. Similarly, its far more valuable to loose fleetscore in gaining roids as that also comes with an XP multiplier which adds to planetary score. So, untill such as time as Ships dont count at all to score (whether through value or whatever), then Ships cannot be seen as a tool for protecting value or gaining XP, as they are themselves part of the calculation.

For example why does having a big army mean you have more score? Surely having good tactics, picking the right fight, having a good planet etc are whats important and the ships are just a tool to help you achieve that?

The justification for giving more score to people with more fleet is simple; its power projection. Someone with more fleet can do more damage to more enemies at a single time than someone with fewer amounts of fleet. It can be used in more ways, more times without replenishment (assuming standard rate of loss), and so on etc etc. Additionally, in the 'real world' much larger fleets will obviously take much more support infrastructure and personnel to crew, maintain, feed, supply and arm them. Whilst that support infrastructure doesnt really exist in PA, it still explains why a planet with more fleet warrants more score.

To me, what it sounds like is that you just want XP to be totally equal to score. That's an interesting proposition on its own, so why dont you just say what you mean from the get go, ans save me from writing a godawful long post?

[Kal]

I still think that randomness should have a greater impact - sure you can still have bcalc's that give out a middle option but I'd actually liek substantial variations from that result to be possible.

Additionally what I'd like is for the ability for someone to sign up to the game who knows nothing to launch a fleet and to cap roids while incurring heavy fleet losses without knowing anything about fleet composition or anything assuming for example that he isn't entirly silly with picking his target e.g. he picks a random planet of equal value or smaller and launched, but with no knowledge fo their fleet. Then as the said player learns he picks up knowledge and skills and can then actually structure his fleet and manage to cap more roids and loose no ships this time.

The idea being that a new player doesn't need to understand combat to get some fun out of it in the first instance, but that the more he/she plays the more depth he/she discovers and the better he/she can do at combat and the more fun he/she can have.

And yes I would like XP to be much more important as long as it is given for the correct things etc.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Kal

I still think that randomness should have a greater impact - sure you can still have bcalc's that give out a middle option but I'd actually liek substantial variations from that result to be possible.

Why? I dont mind a tiny little bit of randomless like the inaccurate scans for predicting battles. But that can be reduced by scanning multiple times and getting an average - that takes time and some knowledge of the game to do so its fine imo. But 'substantial variations' means that, naturally, there will be large deviations in the actual results compared to the expected results.

From what i remember/understand, uncertainty is met with caution; in PA that manifists itself in two ways; more frequent recalling (and thus less battles, less XP, less roid caps, less fun etc etc), and more Bashing (targeting more vulnerable/smaller planets than otherwise, sending more fleet for more overkill, etc). Both of these factors counter the potential for a bad result due to randomness on your behalf, and a good bit of randomness from your enemy's perspective. The result is less battles and more bashing. I dont really think that is a positive change for Planetarion, going forward.

I'm just going to ignore the whole issue of people being disheartened and annoyed when they loose heaps of roids and/or fleet more than they expected due to those 'substantial variations' - loosing their fleet people will remember for a long time, gaining because of the random factor people wont remember as much. These concerns are obvious.

Additionally what I'd like is for the ability for someone to sign up to the game who knows nothing to launch a fleet and to cap roids while incurring heavy fleet losses without knowing anything about fleet composition or anything assuming for example that he isn't entirly silly with picking his target e.g. he picks a random planet of equal value or smaller and launched, but with no knowledge fo their fleet. Then as the said player learns he picks up knowledge and skills and can then actually structure his fleet and manage to cap more roids and loose no ships this time.

This is beside the point of battle randomness or XP or Value - its the learning curve of new players who gradually come to understand how combat works, what targets what, designing more efficient fleets and so on. I might just add that its not necessary for new players to find this out the hard way, some helpful (and brief) pointers could be made available beforehand...

And yes I would like XP to be much more important as long as it is given for the correct things etc.

As has already been noted, the more important XP becomes in determining score, the less important Value becomes. The more beneficial it is to suicide for XP and/or otherwise XP "wh0re". Thus, there are "problems" with making XP - based on the current determinates - more important in determining score. How do you intend to resolve these problems?

[Kal]

What makes you think that randomness has to mean fleet loss, or score loss, it could simply relate to "mission sucess". And even with randomness you can still apply skill / tactics.

For example lets use the model of a dice.

Say I need to score a 2 or more to win - then clearly its worth me trying as chances are I will get it. If I needed a 5 or more however its quite likely I'll decide not to go for it unless i'm feeling lucky.

Lets take for example how combat works in a game such as Civ 4, you can look at the stats of the units, then the bonusses that will be applied and know whether you should in theory win/loose the battle. That is where the skill comes in - knowing if its a battle you could realisitcly win or not. That said there is still a random element, you may still loose that battle you should have in theory won. simialrly you may win a battle that you should have lost. This adds an element of unpredicability and interest to the game, sure some times its upsetting and you get annoyed, but that just makes you more determined to kill the guy who beat you.

Now clearly any changes along these lines would need to be carefulyl designed over a period of time and as such wouldn;t be mkaing it into the next few rounds of PA, but I think that future aims are needed.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Kal

Additionally what I'd like is for the ability for someone to sign up to the game who knows nothing to launch a fleet and to cap roids while incurring heavy fleet losses without knowing anything about fleet composition or anything assuming for example that he isn't entirly silly with picking his target e.g. he picks a random planet of equal value or smaller and launched, but with no knowledge fo their fleet. Then as the said player learns he picks up knowledge and skills and can then actually structure his fleet and manage to cap more roids and loose no ships this time.

Then by doing this you must destroy all parts of the game that require skill. Skill is not possible without knowledge and understanding of the game and its mechanics. Go back to all ships capturing roids, all ships targetting all other ships and give bonuses to those attacking in combat (i.e. where ships have the same initiatives, the attacking ships fire first - this was the case in old-PA combat).

Then accept that you'll get more people leaving the game for the same reasons as 1up have. I quote:

Originally Posted by mazzelaar

Playing so many consecutive rounds has taken it's toll on our enthusiasm for the game and, in no short part, so has the gameplay itself. We are currently at a stage of planetarion where the political playing field is one dimensional and planet success is decided solely by who has the biggest fleet rather than any kind of imagination.

i.e. when skill is made irrelevant, the gameplay is useless and PA isn't a game worth playing.

Originally Posted by Kal

What makes you think that randomness has to mean fleet loss, or score loss, it could simply relate to "mission sucess". And even with randomness you can still apply skill / tactics.

'Mission success' inherently implies that you were successful in the battle. In Planetarion there are only a few variables that are affected by the outcome of a battle:

1. Your planet's value (i.e. fleet gain/loss)
2. Your planet's size (i.e. roid gain/loss)
3. Opposing planet's value (i.e. fleet gain/loss - fleetcatches?)

If randomness is to apply to battles then it will affect the outcome of these battles. If only the variables listed above are affected by these battles (and their outcomes), the randomness cannot not mean value/score/roid-loss.

Originally Posted by Kal

Lets take for example how combat works in a game such as Civ 4, you can look at the stats of the units, then the bonusses that will be applied and know whether you should in theory win/loose the battle. That is where the skill comes in - knowing if its a battle you could realisitcly win or not. That said there is still a random element, you may still loose that battle you should have in theory won. simialrly you may win a battle that you should have lost. This adds an element of unpredicability and interest to the game, sure some times its upsetting and you get annoyed, but that just makes you more determined to kill the guy who beat you.

I do understand where you're coming from. However, we do already have this in the game - scanning defenders and trying to work out what they sent to defend against you. Often the worst-case scenario is one where the roid reward isn't worth the value-loss in fleet killed. However, the reward can be one where it is worth landing and hoping that the worst-case scenario simply isn't the case.

Originally Posted by Kal

Now clearly any changes along these lines would need to be carefulyl designed over a period of time and as such wouldn;t be mkaing it into the next few rounds of PA, but I think that future aims are needed.

If this isn't even listed for PAN, I suggest that you stop concentrating on this, fix the XP-Value relationship, get some fully tested ship-stats ready for the new round and come back to this at a later date. Prioritisation is needed.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by furball

Then by doing this you must destroy all parts of the game that require skill. Skill is not possible without knowledge and understanding of the game and its mechanics. Go back to all ships capturing roids, all ships targetting all other ships and give bonuses to those attacking in combat (i.e. where ships have the same initiatives, the attacking ships fire first - this was the case in old-PA combat).

I clearly wasn't that clear, becuase you have read the opposite of what I intended.

Basicalyl my vision is this:
New player signups up and they can immeidiatly do "ok" by just messing around, they can cap some roids, have some battles etc withotu getting so crushed that they stop playing.

That does not mean that the game requires no skill, the more they play the game the more they should see its complexities and the more they should realise that to actually do even better, cap more roids, grow bigger etc.

Basically I want layers of game play - the mroe you play the game the more you see hidden depths and realise that you could do even better etc, the more you develop skills etc. Sure if someone was good enough and read the manual fully they should be able to jump into the high skill areas but it shouldn't be essential.

Changing the game is not the only way to do this of course - for example the current manual is pretty poor, it should also contain layeirng and levels so that the casual player only needs to read say the first paragraph on combat to do ok at combat for example.

And I had read mazzelaar's thread and had spoken to him briefly about it and I don;t see how what I'm saying is that different from what he says.

[xontas]

the suggestion i am making is to add a random element to the formula's
not to make the formula totaly random.
(that would be the bingosites)

atm if you go into battle you can calculate all your losses in advance.
if you want a skillfull game woudnt it be nice if you needed to judge your changes and not calculate them!!

if america goes to war in irak they know they are gonna win.....but
they dont know how fast or with how many loses
so they can judge whats gonna happen, but it could turn nasty
it could also be like vietnam, you think your gonna win (you outnumber the defender 4 to1) but they fight so strong that you still lose!

thats what needs to happen here
it needs to be about warfare skills not ligistical and calculation skills!

but thats just what i think

[Kal]

I quite like the analogies used by xontas.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Kal

I clearly wasn't that clear, becuase you have read the opposite of what I intended.

Not really, I just told you the best (and probably only) way to do it.

Originally Posted by Kal

Basicalyl my vision is this:
New player signups up and they can immeidiatly do "ok" by just messing around, they can cap some roids, have some battles etc withotu getting so crushed that they stop playing.

That does not mean that the game requires no skill, the more they play the game the more they should see its complexities and the more they should realise that to actually do even better, cap more roids, grow bigger etc.

Basically I want layers of game play - the mroe you play the game the more you see hidden depths and realise that you could do even better etc, the more you develop skills etc. Sure if someone was good enough and read the manual fully they should be able to jump into the high skill areas but it shouldn't be essential.

Changing the game is not the only way to do this of course - for example the current manual is pretty poor, it should also contain layeirng and levels so that the casual player only needs to read say the first paragraph on combat to do ok at combat for example.

But combat can't be explained in one paragraph. There are numerous compexities in it needed to succeed at any level, it's suprisingly difficult not to screw up when any defence is present. Sending the right classes of ships, sending enough ships, sending pods, and so on.

Originally Posted by Kal

And I had read mazzelaar's thread and had spoken to him briefly about it and I don;t see how what I'm saying is that different from what he says.

That's unfortunate. My argument is that XP needs to be functional in order to restore partially-decent gameplay. I used a quote from mazz regarding 1up's departure to back up my belief that the gameplay is currently crap.

[Timeline]

ok i am not one of the most skillful of players around, nor am i a coder...so my following suggestion could just be a pile of crap, so apologies beforehand if it is...

as i see it there are 2 issues now being discussed that need to be resolved. The first and main priority for the short term is the xp : value ratio...once this is addressed and at a level that the majority of the community is happy with then the longer term goals can be looked at in greater detail. The second issue is one of these. The only way i can see to implement a randomness into battle outcome without introducing an element of gambling odds into the game is to introduce fleet tactics into the mission planning screen. When launching your feet you could assign a battle tactic to your fleet (eg defensive, aggressive or balanced) this tactic is unreadable by anyone other than yourself and as such the outcome of the battle is dependant on who picks the better tactics for their fleet. Add into the mix that different race fleets would work better with different tactics, and you bring the added layers of skill that kal was mentioning..

[Kal]

Originally Posted by furball

Not really, I just told you the best (and probably only) way to do it.


But combat can't be explained in one paragraph. There are numerous compexities in it needed to succeed at any level, it's suprisingly difficult not to screw up when any defence is present. Sending the right classes of ships, sending enough ships, sending pods, and so on.


That's unfortunate. My argument is that XP needs to be functional in order to restore partially-decent gameplay. I used a quote from mazz regarding 1up's departure to back up my belief that the gameplay is currently crap.

Its perhaps true that the current system can;t be explained in a single paragraph, but thats becuase the current system isn't very good as I'm sure you agree. I'd also argue that just becuase in the past its not been possible to have features that are simple on the surface and yet complex underneath does not mean its impossible.

[bwtmc]

Originally Posted by Kal

scary as this sounds I actually agree with xontas, and I think risk is a good analogy. Its great in risk when a small army miraculously defeats a large army - BUT only as long as its a rare occurance. If things like that happen all the time then all aspect of strategy and tactics are lost and battle becomes meaningless. Also in PA becuase a single "army" has greater worth we have problems - that said if the game scoring was radically changed then we could get round that.

For example if a "value" was based around planetary achievements e.g. having strucutes etc (that could be destroyed), and XP was based on success in combat then ships would purly be a tool for protecting Value and gaining XP - surely thoose are the two things that matter? For example why does having a big army mean you have more score? Surely having good tactics, picking the right fight, having a good planet etc are whats important and the ships are just a tool to help you achieve that?

Sounds fun! Actually, at the moment most of the decision making effort and judgement takes place at the 'target picking' stage. Most of what comes afterwards can be calculated in advance so accurately that being online to land isn't (something I do) fun any more.

- I can see this being implemented in a really half assed way

[jerome]

good god

[Gary]

Originally Posted by xontas

atm if you go into battle you can calculate all your losses in advance.if you want a skillfull game woudnt it be nice if you needed to judge your changes and not calculate them!!

All that will happen is that battlecalcs will be modified to show a value gained/lost 'range' to factor in the radomness. If the worst case scenario is acceptable, then the same old principles still apply. If your happy to take a small loss overall to gain roids (on worst case scenario), you land.

Clarification: Range as in the worst that can happen with the biggest "random" effect pasted into the calc thus far, and on the other end, assuming little to no effect of randomness.