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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 03:08   #1
Andy_r
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Reveal all formulas

I believe this round's experiment with hidden formulas has been a complete failure.

There are major bugs in the structure/factory targetting code (and probably in other places too), but since we don't know for sure what is supposed to be happening, so we can't even report the bugs properly, let alone get and verify a fix.
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 11:21   #2
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Re: Reveal all formulas

i think mit will be recoding all of that bit from scratch, so not much point in seeing the old formulae
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 12:07   #3
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Re: Reveal all formulas

seeing the new formula follows the same logic...
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 12:29   #4
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Re: Reveal all formulas

we shouldn;t need to see the formulas to test them - we shoudl jest test the affects of the formulae. i'm sure mit could ask testers to do specific tests in order to test formulae.
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 14:16   #5
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Correct
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 14:35   #6
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Yes, I'm asking for R11 formulas not R10 ones, I thought that much was obvious!

The problem with hiding the formulas is that in PAX betas we didn't notice the income bug, the 60 finance centres problem, or the fact that factory and structure targetting is totally messed up, and now the problems are widely known, we still can't get a fix because bug reporting is next to impossible without being able to point out EXACTLY what is wrong.

Are there any good resons why forumlas shouldn't be revealed? I certainly can't think of any.
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 15:14   #7
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Exclamation Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy_r
Are there any good resons why forumlas shouldn't be revealed? I certainly can't think of any.
Well, as long as the formulas are hidden they can pretend that there aren't any bugs and/or they don't know how to fix them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KalVirtus
we shouldn;t need to see the formulas to test them - we shoudl jest test the affects of the formulae. i'm sure mit could ask testers to do specific tests in order to test formulae.
Yes, that's worked so well in the past!
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 17:35   #8
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Re: Reveal all formulas

maybe the people running the beta tests in the past were incompetant
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 17:50   #9
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Re: Reveal all formulas

I don't think u need to know exact forumula cos that'd bring back the '1337ism' from ppl calcing perfect fleets and removing that element of guesswork.
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 18:00   #10
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Re: Reveal all formulas

So instead you get the large groups who have the most collective experience using it to create bcalcs, and creating the "1337" fleets?
If people don't know what they are likely to lose when attacking, then one of two things will happen. They either won't attack, or they will send serious overkill. neither is good for the game.
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 18:30   #11
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Re: Reveal all formulas

After the piss up that was the r10 beta, I suggest you publish the formulas.

One more round where exploits cause the gameplay to be up-ended because the 'Creators' hid their flawed formulas to keep the "leet" from doing what they do, and Planetarion will be effectively dead.

Wake up and smell the coffee: the leet players will make a bcalc anyways, and the un-allied players won't have access to it. Way to even up the odds, eh
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 18:41   #12
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Formulae can be generally derived by determined players even if they're not exact, a couple of weeks of trial and error and you're rocking whether or not there's a random element involved, so the argument that the top-flight players would calc all the time's a bit, well, crap. Release the exact formulae, even if you don't specify just how random any random element within them is, it gives no real disadvantage to anyone so that it's perfectly transparent if part of the game isn't calcing like it should.
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 19:47   #13
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Exclamation Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by KalVirtus
maybe the people running the beta tests in the past were incompetant
Yes, but don't change the subject!

As someone who used to test software for a living, I can assure you that it's a helluva lot easier to find bugs if you know how the s/w is supposed to work, as opposed to trying random things and hoping to guess if and what might not be working correctly.
Quote:
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I don't think u need to know exact forumula cos that'd bring back the '1337ism' from ppl calcing perfect fleets and removing that element of guesswork.
Dear God, tell me you're not on PA Team.
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Unread 6 Jan 2004, 19:49   #14
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Re: Reveal all formulas

I'm still in favour of using a battle simulator using ingame combat formulas. If there are any bugs they will show up in this simulator as well. This simulator will also be available to all players. Last round some alliances had a good calculator behind a password.....not exactly encouraging to new players that do not have access to such important tools.

I don't think handing out the specific formulas is needed. As long as you know what to expect thats quite ok. When you play other rts games you dont want the damage formulas, you just know what to expect from experience. An ingame battle simulator can again supply this experience without sacrificing ships.
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Unread 7 Jan 2004, 03:14   #15
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Re: Reveal all formulas

I get really annoyed by games which dont make the rules/formulas clear but expect the players to "somehow" play after them. You never know what is a bug, a coding glitch, a exploit and what is intended. PA was somewhere in between - the actual formulas where well known but i remember how it happened that something we considered a feature, was later fixed as a bug - after 2 rounds.

If you dont release the formulas, large corps will have a big advantage. If you add a battle simulator to the game which uses the combat routines, ppl will quickly find the formulas. Would you find it a interesting "guesswork" or highly annoying having to find out how figures can move during a chessgame for example?

Im currently playing another mmorpg where none of the formulas are given out. The behaviour of the combat changes each few weeks because of fixed bugs. It seems like 20 to 30% of all combat calculations or values where either plain bugged or not thought through. Not really fun ...
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Unread 7 Jan 2004, 08:24   #16
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Re: Reveal all formulas

I dont think releasing formulas is the holy grail to preventing bugs. Bugs are a result of poor coding, not the fact that no1 knows what is supposed to happen. Sometimes they occur on the weirdest moments for the weirdest reasons. Releasing formulas might remove 1 or 2 bugs, but it will also make it easy to copy the game. And belief me there will be plenty of bugs left when the game isnt properly tested. The best way to find bugs is to play the game unfortunately. That goes for any game.
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Unread 7 Jan 2004, 10:45   #17
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Re: Reveal all formulas

The answer is simple....

Write the formula to have a random element in. For example, change the base chance of a shot hitting from 50% to say 35+(random number from 1 to 30).

You can still work on averages, and on a larger scale the randomness evens out, but it still adds that uncertain element in.

It also allows you to publish the formulae, which is a VITAL part of the quality assurance of the game.

Look at the microsoft example: how many security bugs are their in Windows (closed source) compared to Linux (open source)?
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Unread 7 Jan 2004, 11:44   #18
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Re: Reveal all formulas

i reckon it might be a good idea to have a bcalc built into the game using the game mechanics, but with say a random facotr added to the actual combat. that way u have a good guess of what will happen, but there is also a bit of randomness to spice our lives up. the bcalc could also include things such as strcutures etc. if it was really clever it could auto calc against a target if u had yourslef done all the scans for it... otherwise it would probably need parsers.
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Unread 7 Jan 2004, 18:36   #19
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Exclamation Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by Isambard
The answer is simple....

Write the formula to have a random element in. For example, change the base chance of a shot hitting from 50% to say 35+(random number from 1 to 30).

You can still work on averages, and on a larger scale the randomness evens out, but it still adds that uncertain element in.
The old published formulas also had a random variable. The problem is: for large battles (the only ones anyone cares much about) the law of averages ensures that the variability will be minimal.


IMHO, a better solution is to keep/enhance the fleet missions introduced in PAX. Publish the combat formulas but allow players to modify (somewhat) the coefficients by using fleet missions (for both attacking AND defending) which are hidden.

Public formulas + hidden fleet missions = variability
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Unread 7 Jan 2004, 20:29   #20
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Re: Reveal all formulas

thats not a bad plan, then we can have accurate bcalcs, we just won;t know what to set things to - but then we need to make sure ships/ships def isn;lt allways the way to get attackers recall.
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Unread 7 Jan 2004, 21:14   #21
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Exclamation Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by KalVirtus
thats not a bad plan, then we can have accurate bcalcs, we just won;t know what to set things to - but then we need to make sure ships/ships def isn;lt allways the way to get attackers recall.
Yes. I think more fleet missions would be the key to making it work. Having 'ships' as a fleet mission is too broad; I'd break it down into several categories that have trade-offs. For example,

o Divert power to guns (kill more but lose more)
o Divert power to shields (kill less but lose less)
etc


One final thought: include the fleet mission settings in the combat report so that results can be verified (i.e., so that bugs can be found).
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Unread 8 Jan 2004, 10:03   #22
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Arrow Re: Reveal all formulas

Wanna play "guess the formula"? Formerly known as PA...
Actually, it's been like this all the time, but before, it was because of too lazy manual writers (or none at all).

On a side note: I'm still SO angry with the producers of Pilotwings for the N64. Great game, no doubt. There are 6 different pilots to choose from, each with their own "aircraft". Apparenlty they have different characteristics and properties. The manual says: "Heeeeeeeey, can you find the difference? It'll be fun working out which pilot you like best". Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

IMO (and yeah, that's JUST i.m.o.), you can't be good in a game you don't know the rules of. Those formulas are even MORE then rules. It's how the game works.

Haaaa haaaaaaa, surprise, if your attack doesn't work how you wanted it to. Randomness rules or what?

BTW, I don't think that all of the best players actually got the real feeling of what the best fleet combo was. They just outnumbered and / or had big friends, that's what was most important all the time (unfortunately IMO).


Besides all these gameplay issues and my personal point of view, all your other points remain valid.
Bugs, glitches, unbalanced and unweighted stuff. It's so true. I'm actually tired of writing it all over again.

And it was stated before, how "easy" it should be to provide an ingame bcalc using the actual game engine. Has it ever worked? Discussed before. I'm just saying...


I can really feel the "spirit" of PA again :-/


P.S.: It always reminds me of those "encryption security"-people who think that keeping the algorithm a secret will make their algo cool and their data safe.
Or those M$ people whining about exploits etc. "Ouhhhhh, PLEAAAASE, don't publish this security whole, don't tell everyone, you make it even worse".

P.P.S.: At least the creators before pretended all the time, they wanted to publish the actual formulas, but they "just never got to it". Or they were believing they did and were puzzled in astonishment when "abnormalities" were discovered.
Let's play "the funnies combat report wins". You could actually put bets on it
[/cynism]









Do we actually need shipstats anymore? Without formulas? Won't the shipstats spoil the fun of guesing which ships are best? I clearly recommend ship-descriptions such as "expensive, but not too bad overall".
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Unread 8 Jan 2004, 17:24   #23
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Red face Re: Reveal all formulas

People who "use" the Planetarion formulae are really pathetic and need to get a life.
It's a game with ships that kill certain types of other ships. Just accept that and play! Sod all this formula stuff that's just really sad and geeky.
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Unread 8 Jan 2004, 17:25   #24
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Re: Reveal all formulas

The game was much better in the early rounds when nobody cared about how much power and stuff each ship and turret had.
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Unread 8 Jan 2004, 17:31   #25
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Exclamation Re: Reveal all formulas

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Originally Posted by Mighty Max
The game was much better in the early rounds when nobody cared about how much power and stuff each ship and turret had.
I started playing early R1 and players have always cared about that stuff. Sorry you missed it.
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Unread 8 Jan 2004, 18:23   #26
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Re: Reveal all formulas

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Originally Posted by Mighty Max
People who "use" the Planetarion formulae are really pathetic and need to get a life.
That's not why we're advocating their disclosure.
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Unread 9 Jan 2004, 14:50   #27
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Re: Reveal all formulas

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Originally Posted by Tactitus
IMHO, a better solution is to keep/enhance the fleet missions introduced in PAX. Publish the combat formulas but allow players to modify (somewhat) the coefficients by using fleet missions (for both attacking AND defending) which are hidden.

Public formulas + hidden fleet missions = variability
this seems to be the most obvious solution

but from experience most ppl would send def as ship/ship so it was always easy enough to calc using 1 of the bcalcs because regardless of how the attacker set their prioritys defenders could see how many they killed even if attackers were not set to ship/roid they knew that by killing approx 25% of attackers fleet that they did not lose roids and i think that was enough for most DC's to be happy
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Unread 9 Jan 2004, 15:19   #28
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Exclamation Re: Reveal all formulas

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Originally Posted by gzambo
this seems to be the most obvious solution

but from experience most ppl would send def as ship/ship so it was always easy enough to calc using 1 of the bcalcs because regardless of how the attacker set their prioritys defenders could see how many they killed even if attackers were not set to ship/roid they knew that by killing approx 25% of attackers fleet that they did not lose roids and i think that was enough for most DC's to be happy
And that's why I said the fleet missions would also need to be enhanced.
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Unread 9 Jan 2004, 18:19   #29
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Re: Reveal all formulas

agreed ,
if u could not set the same for both ur prioritys that may give a more even balance to the combat

also adding a small random element to the combat code within the fleet priopritys would also be of benefit with public formula
even a small % say +or - 5% cud make it better
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Unread 10 Jan 2004, 13:43   #30
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Re: Reveal all formulas

I have to say I actually perfer the game with hidden formulas. Yes it leaves a problem with exploits if those running the beta arent on their toes but I really do like the fact that it adds a little bit of skill development to the game. You see it leads to a situation where you learn about your ships as you go using past battle experiance and this is something I think the game would be worse off for if we went back to a system where we knew all the formulas and every single battle was calced out before hand

Now enhancing Fleet Missions might be able to acheive the best of both worlds but i'm not convinced its enough to make the results variable enough to make it about who can use a bcalc enough. As such I'd like to see it taken even further than reliant on Fleet Missions if formulas are realeased.

Basically i'd like to see fleet compisition made more of an issue to the outcome via some unrealeased variables that changed the effeciency of each ship depending on the other ships around it. If I use the Football Management game Championship manager for a second it might help you understand what I'm asking for. Obviously championship manager isnt the same as PA but it does hold some simerlarities, your a football manager who has to put together a team (much like PA's fleet) to take part in matches (much like battles in PA). The teams are made up of players (Ships in PA) who each have their own set of stats (just like PA). How these players do in the match is partially dependant on these stats, a poor player wont perform in a match just like a poor ship wont perform in a PA battle. However a match is more complex than this, the players performance also depends on the teams tactis and formation (Fleet Missions in PA) and the players around them. If the player isnt suited to the tactic or the players around him his performance will be poor and this is what PA's battles should be like. If certain ships are present it should have a pro effect on some of the ships thus increasing their power while having an adverse effect on other ships thus wakening them. The exact effect should obviously be dependant on the proportion of the fleet is that kind of ship (ie if Ship A doesnt work well with Ship B the effect isnt going to be really noticable if only 1 ship of Ship B is sent in an attack of 2k ships but if theres 1k of ship B in the fleet the effect will be much bigger). This means you will now have two peices of data that will effect your battle and which add a bit of variety to battles and takes away the ability to be able to calc the almost exact results as well of adding a learning curve where you will discover what works best with each other as the round progresses.

BUT this isnt all, just like Championship manager the other side has the same issues effecting their performance and hence also your own. if their tactics and fleet makeup isny good they will underperform and make your attack easier, but if it is good it will be harder


This then allows anyone to get a quick overview using a battle calc but it will never be totally clear cut thus keeping us away froma game which is played via the battlecalcs

Some of this ideas probally flawed as i'm just thinking on my feet while playing Championship Manager and reading these forums so feel free to point out any flaws
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Unread 10 Jan 2004, 16:56   #31
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Re: Reveal all formulas

I'm still confused by this concept that guessing how things work is a 'skill'.

I don\t spend all this time with PA to enjoy playing against a random number generator, I do it to enjoy playing against other people.

I'd rather beat someone because my alliance outplayed thiers, because I was able to either round up more ships or use a small force more effectively, because I'm better at the game. It takes all the fun away if I win because of luck or because they guessed the value of some hidden number less accurately than I did.
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Unread 10 Jan 2004, 17:15   #32
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy_r
I'm still confused by this concept that guessing how things work is a 'skill'.

I don\t spend all this time with PA to enjoy playing against a random number generator, I do it to enjoy playing against other people.

I'd rather beat someone because my alliance outplayed thiers, because I was able to either round up more ships or use a small force more effectively, because I'm better at the game. It takes all the fun away if I win because of luck or because they guessed the value of some hidden number less accurately than I did.
Having some kind of randomising factor like the one I suggested ISNT a matter of guessing. It would be a matter of learning what ships work with others and what ships work with certain Mission types and what ships work against the defending forces. Gaining this knowledge from gameplay means your learning how to play the game and thus are gaining skill.

The way the game works when all stats and formulas are known requires no skill whatsoever as its a case of filling the details into a battlecalc and then hoping that the planet doesnt get any defence and if they do adjusting the battlecalc figures to decide if to pull or land. This isnt fun and isnt skillful.

As for saying you'd rather win because your alliance outplayed everyone else, dont you mean youd rather win because your alliance had the greater numbers and the better allies becuase its been along time since this game has had anything to do with alliances showing individual skill to win the round and its probally why on other threads theres a debate about the fact alliance today arent as good as they used to be cos its no longer about alliances showing skill and commitment
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Unread 10 Jan 2004, 21:11   #33
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Exclamation Re: Reveal all formulas

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Originally Posted by wakey
Having some kind of randomising factor like the one I suggested ISNT a matter of guessing. It would be a matter of learning what ships work with others and what ships work with certain Mission types and what ships work against the defending forces. Gaining this knowledge from gameplay means your learning how to play the game and thus are gaining skill.
Except there is no way to first "learn" this knowledge except through trial and error; i.e., guessing. You try various combinations of ships until you find the one(s) that work best. This is the same kind of "skill" the monkey in the cage learns when he discovers that pushing the blue button gets him food while the red button gets him an electric shock. There's no reason to it that he can theorize about or discover a priori, he just has to discover it by pushing buttons.

One monkey might guess the correct button the first time and do well; another monkey may have to work through all the buttons before he finds the correct one. Is the first monkey more skillful? Or just luckier? And what about the monkeys who just idle in the alliance channels waiting for someone else to tell them which buttons work?
Quote:
The way the game works when all stats and formulas are known requires no skill whatsoever as its a case of filling the details into a battlecalc and then hoping that the planet doesnt get any defence and if they do adjusting the battlecalc figures to decide if to pull or land. This isnt fun and isnt skillful.
Hiding the formulas in R10 didn't stop people from writing battlecalcs, it just moved the battlecalcs from being public to being alliance-private. Who, ultimately, does that help and who does it hurt?
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Unread 10 Jan 2004, 21:41   #34
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Re: Reveal all formulas

On suggestion that has been put is that we make some sort of mixture between releasing the details, and still making it impossible to get a perfect calc of any particular battle.

Step 1 ) Release the ShipStats and the formula, making it very clear how they work.

Step 2 ) Increase the amount that the priority settings for a fleet affect the way that fleet behaves. ie. so that P1 = 50% of the fleet, P2 = 30%, leaving 20% to do a combination of everything.
Also make it so that you can set priorities on your base fleet.
This would mean that although you could calculate the battle under a variety of different scenarios you'd never get a precise calc unless you knew the settings for every fleet in the battle.

Step 3 ) Have a certain random factor. Up to 5% either way on each battle.

Possible to also provide a battle calc built into the PA pages somewhere, meaning that everyone has access to it, although obviously alliances may chose to create their own regardless.
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Unread 10 Jan 2004, 21:46   #35
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Re: Reveal all formulas

You realize we had this debate back in round 2? It's easy to ensure that you can't maximise globally, even with perfect information. Take chess for example. No pieces or rules is hidden in that game, but you still can't play a perfect game.
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Unread 10 Jan 2004, 22:09   #36
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Re: Reveal all formulas

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Originally Posted by Tactitus
Except there is no way to first "learn" this knowledge except through trial and error; i.e., guessing. You try various combinations of ships until you find the one(s) that work best. This is the same kind of "skill" the monkey in the cage learns when he discovers that pushing the blue button gets him food while the red button gets him an electric shock. There's no reason to it that he can theorize about or discover a priori, he just has to discover it by pushing buttons.

One monkey might guess the correct button the first time and do well; another monkey may have to work through all the buttons before he finds the correct one. Is the first monkey more skillful? Or just luckier? And what about the monkeys who just idle in the alliance channels waiting for someone else to tell them which buttons work?
Hiding the formulas in R10 didn't stop people from writing battlecalcs, it just moved the battlecalcs from being public to being alliance-private. Who, ultimately, does that help and who does it hurt?
Yes learning the skill does have routes in trial and error but thats a major part in learning any skill. You dont for example pick up a book on C++ then read it and then have the skill to write a game to rival the likes of Half Life 2 ect. Instead you read the material, try it out, make mistakes and learn from them. The trail and error aspect is one of the most important parts of learning any skill and its from this you get real understanding. As for the " And what about the monkeys who just idle in the alliance channels waiting for someone else to tell them which buttons work?" I dont see whats so wrong with this, imho the transfer of ideas is something this community now lacks due to the lack of newbies for people to pass info on and everyone playing having a grasp of the games concepts. Something which would promote discussion on tactics, fleet combinations people think work and dont work seems to me to be something this community could do with.

Not to mention its not as if my ideas as simple as guessing a simple variable, theres hundreds of differnt fleet combos and thus everyones going to be coming up with differnt fleet combinations taht work for certain mission types ect so I doubt anyone wold ever come up with a hard and fast rule that ensured max perfomace of your ships, again much like with championship manager where getting a tactic and set combination of players that works perfectly is nigh on impossible but that leads to alot of theories and discussions about players and tactics on the forums which is good for the community.

And I know you can produce battle calcs without access to the formulas and thats exactly why I havent come out and said on this thread that they should remain totally hidden because while these battlecalcs may not be perfect they are better than everyone else has. I really dont have a problem with getting people using a battlecalc to get a rough idea as long as its rough enough via some means to actually make the player think what to do and make up their own mind instead of having the battlecalc make all the decisions for them. if we want a game where every attack and defense decsion is decided by a script we may as well have all the accounts being bot driven
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Unread 11 Jan 2004, 18:23   #37
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Re: Reveal all formulas

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Originally Posted by wakey
...The way the game works when all stats and formulas are known requires no skill whatsoever as its a case of filling the details into a battlecalc and then hoping that the planet doesnt get any defence and if they do adjusting the battlecalc figures to decide if to pull or land. This isnt fun and isnt skillful....
So chess is no fun/requires no skill because you know exactly what all the pieces do?

A2's comment about priorities is a very good one, using fleet priorities allows both me and you to have what we want (especially if you see the enemy priorities in battle reports!), you get your unpredicability because you don't know the other persons settings and I get my skill/bug traceability by needing to employ the right tactics.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
...As for saying you'd rather win because your alliance outplayed everyone else...
I was actually referring to an individual battle, not a round. While I agree with what you say about alliances, please can we keep them out of a thread on combat formulas?
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Unread 11 Jan 2004, 20:04   #38
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Ches is fun and does take skill but its also not a game where you map out your battle plans and know pretty much what the results will be before hand. Instead its a diverse game where every single match differs due to the hundreds of differnt tactics both you and your oppenent can adopt. Its a game where you have to think about what your doing an adapt as you go along.

Simply by shifted the focus of priorities slightly like A2 has suggested just doesnt seem to me to be enough to really bring some variation and skill to the game so its a battle of wits between the attacker and defender. This is especially the case for the attacker as his battlecalcing is going to be pretty simple because i'm sure 9/10 most defenders send with their priorities set for ships rather than to protect roids and structures (if only cos the ship and structure settinsg when defending actually come across a little confusing about what your asking your ships to do)

Its needs something else to allow it to be more of a battle of skill and wits and hence utlimatly more rewarding which is why I asked for fleet combinations to also be more a factor than it currently is (after all in a real battle some units work well with others and hence perform much better while others dont work well together and actually hinder performance)
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Unread 12 Jan 2004, 17:26   #39
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Re: Reveal all formulas

skill, in my opinion, lies within making people balance risks. good players will play risks better than bad players. in order to bring this to skill rather than luck, people need to know how the game works.

do you send ships so they'll do extra damage, but take more losses? it'd mean you have to send less of them so you can cover someone later, or perhaps attack someone else, or do you send them so that they take less damage but attack less? needs more ships, might not be able to defend someone later when they need it.

obvously there are other demonstrations of individual skill, picking targets, to some extent diplomacy. while i was allowed to play i found greatest enjoyment within the cluster/parallel politics, where there were no rules :P

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Unread 12 Jan 2004, 23:12   #40
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Re: Reveal all formulas

It's not 100% formula related, but unless I was requested not to do so by the current PATeam, I'm tempted to throw up my r10 stats if anyone is interested.
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Unread 12 Jan 2004, 23:27   #41
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by mist
skill, in my opinion, lies within making people balance risks. good players will play risks better than bad players. in order to bring this to skill rather than luck, people need to know how the game works.

do you send ships so they'll do extra damage, but take more losses? it'd mean you have to send less of them so you can cover someone later, or perhaps attack someone else, or do you send them so that they take less damage but attack less? needs more ships, might not be able to defend someone later when they need it.

obvously there are other demonstrations of individual skill, picking targets, to some extent diplomacy. while i was allowed to play i found greatest enjoyment within the cluster/parallel politics, where there were no rules :P

-mist
Where are the risks when you know all the formulas and have the battle mapped out before you even land. You know what the losses will be, you know what the gains will be and if losses are too high you pull and come back later hoping the planet your trying to bash this time doesnt get defence. You have no real decisions to make except for perhaps "do i go out to totally wipe them out or leave them a few ships". Hence the big players dont make mistakes, dont end up losing big chuncks of fleet due to taking a risk while doing max damage to the small planets.
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Unread 13 Jan 2004, 01:23   #42
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Re: Reveal all formulas

the risks lie in not knowing what options the person you're attacking/defending against will choose, the skill lies in "guessing" what they will use, and countering it as effectivly (cheaply?) as posssible.
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Unread 17 Jan 2004, 12:26   #43
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Re: Reveal all formulas

I would rather have r10 formuleas to see if there was any flaws...

I like and hate both ways, the mystery is great, but it also makes it very hard for the people who dont play that much to choose anything to help.

Also because now everything can steal [roids], you have to build everything to try to stop everything.
This hinders the noobs and partial users, it helps the alliances even more so.

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Last edited by MrLobster; 22 Aug 2005 at 14:08.
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Unread 17 Jan 2004, 19:32   #44
Mighty Max
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tactitus
I started playing early R1 and players have always cared about that stuff. Sorry you missed it.

Err I had the best times with I was playing in the early rounds. Back then, I never calculated a single battle, I never spent hours picking a target depending on what ships I had and I certainly didn't weigh out the differences between my ships and defending ships. I would also like to add that those days got me the best roid cap and the most enjoyment!

As Wakey said. The game is so boring when you can work out the outcome of every battle down to the finest detail. There's no fun in that at all, unless your a mathematician or statician and you get off by calculating out figures and stuff like that! For those of us who just want a good fun game without all this technical crap its boring having all the stats and calculators.
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Unread 17 Jan 2004, 19:46   #45
MrL_JaKiri
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
Ches is fun and does take skill but its also not a game where you map out your battle plans and know pretty much what the results will be before hand. Instead its a diverse game where every single match differs due to the hundreds of differnt tactics both you and your oppenent can adopt. Its a game where you have to think about what your doing an adapt as you go along.
As opposed to planetarion, where every round is the same.

Hold on, don't chess players use standard openings/plays in situations?

Hold on, aren't you utterly wrong?
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Unread 17 Jan 2004, 19:48   #46
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by wakey
Where are the risks when you know all the formulas and have the battle mapped out before you even land. You know what the losses will be, you know what the gains will be and if losses are too high you pull and come back later hoping the planet your trying to bash this time doesnt get defence. You have no real decisions to make except for perhaps "do i go out to totally wipe them out or leave them a few ships". Hence the big players dont make mistakes, dont end up losing big chuncks of fleet due to taking a risk while doing max damage to the small planets.
And the only difference if you have hidden stats is that the large alliances can do this more effectively than the small alliances.

Anyone who thought during the round that the stats remained hidden was naive, now I can only assume you're being deliberately stupid or obtuse.
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Unread 19 Jan 2004, 14:59   #47
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Another difference is that bugs can go undetected for much longer when people don't know exactly what is supposed to be happening.

Structure/Factory targetting was completely broken throughout round 10, a fact that I suspected since about tick 500, but I was only able to confirm given a practically limtless supply of ships and a lot of identical targets in havoc.

The end of round 10 *should* have been very interesting, with players at the 6,000 roids mark facing a big penalty in structures if people suicide-attacked them, making their alliances stop bothering the rest of us and fight to keep their big guys safe, which should have alleivated the usual end-of roud roid drought and boredom.

As it turned out, you couldn't selectively target factories AT ALL, and the special 'structure targetting' ships did a worse job of structure killing than normal ships, and going all out for finance centres rather then spare factories wasn't a high-risk strategy at all. Add this to the rumoured is-there isn't-there limit of 60 finance centres, and the bugs in resource allocation, and many of the important new features of PAX ended up being irrtating distractions rather than the great improvements they should have been.
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Unread 20 Jan 2004, 20:05   #48
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri
As opposed to planetarion, where every round is the same.

Hold on, don't chess players use standard openings/plays in situations?

Hold on, aren't you utterly wrong?
Err, I never use standard plays or whatever they are called when I play Chess. I play moves which will beat my oponent. For every oponent they are different.
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Unread 22 Jan 2004, 14:09   #49
Churchil5
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Re: Reveal all formulas

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy_r

A2's comment about priorities is a very good one, using fleet priorities allows both me and you to have what we want (especially if you see the enemy priorities in battle reports!), you get your unpredicability because you don't know the other persons settings and I get my skill/bug traceability by needing to employ the right tactics.
Denote keyword: report

I think (as i have suggested in an a*se about way in my thread ' a couple of pointers) that more of the information given by the 'news' should by upgraded into catagorized 'reports'. it will make reading the stuff more interesting, which will inspire people to be more creative in that they do.

p.s. am against the public release of the formulas. i think they should be given to a select group (like beta testers) that use these formulas the entire round, and use them to report any bugs.
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Unread 22 Jan 2004, 14:37   #50
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Re: Reveal all formulas

While the 'select group' is indeed a nice idea, the group would have to consist of people that the whole of PA could trust not to leak them to their respective alliances. Good luck finding anyone at all who fits that description, let alone enough to put together a reasonably sized beta test team.
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