Serious Discussion About r10..........

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by rnd|One
So true. Shorter rounds with a playerbase that kills itself in a few weeks time would get a thumbs up from me.

Week on, week off then. Or run speed rounds every weekend.

BUT AT LEAST DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY.

[Scouse]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri
the main benefit behind them is not attacking together, is not defending together, but not attacking eachother.

Exactly. Like I said, that's a problem.

I don't like this whole idea of crossfire for attacking and defending players; it can't be justified as realistic, and it stops people defending their friends.

The idea being that you get your friends into your alliance. I think it's perfectly realistic. Two planets are fighting it out, a third one turns up and gets dragged into it, they have no reason to pick a side, they just defend themselves.


I see your point about defending friends though, it's a problem with coding alliances into the game, but it's less of a problem than powerblocks forcing everyone to quit.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by Scouse
Also, having alliances coded into the game means people would find it harder to have escrots and defence planets. They could still have them, but having them land would result in losses on their part, since every decent alliance is going to be very strict on who gets in, and that means no escort/defence planets.

It wouldn't get rid of them, it would just make their use slightly more difficult.

For a start, people would put all the escort/def planets in a single alliance. This would remove the crossfire there.

The issue of these planets ships attacking the owner's ships would be removed if the creators either allowed people to be in more than one alliance (as has been suggested previously for legitimate reasons). If they can't, then the people running them could just run Kill Fleet/Roid Fleet as in rounds gone by, or be ONLY defended by the other planets. It just makes it take a little more effort.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by Scouse
but it's less of a problem than powerblocks forcing everyone to quit.

But introducing the things that you introduced WOULDN'T AFFECT THE POWERBLOCKS.

Excluding the 100 members thing, then I don't think any of those suggestions would have changed this round's politics or outcome.

[Scouse]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri
2. The figures I mentioned (1 week rounds, 5 minute ticks) would have the same number of ticks as a regular round (Or even more; 12x tick speed, 1 week, you do the maths). Try to read and understand the whole post before replying.

Oh I understood perfectly. More than 1 tick an hr is crazy talk. I'm betting 95% of players would be against anything more than 1 tick per hr.

people won't care as much that they're being roided, as they have another chance soon enough; it's not like they're going to be sitting there doing nothing for months on end as people are finding now.

That's definately a good reason for shorter rounds, but we only need shorter rounds because of the powerblocking and subsequent stagnation. If rounds we're cut by one month alliance leaders would try and get a win even earlier, leading to even more blocking and even quicker stagnation.

[Scouse]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri
For a start, people would put all the escort/def planets in a single alliance. This would remove the crossfire there.

No it wouldn't. Think about it. Would Eclipse allow escorts and defence planets in as members? No.

Would Eclipse ally an alliance purely because it's members have their escorts and defence planets in it? No. Not if they could only have 1 ally.


They could still be used just as well as they are now, as long as they never landed when escorting, or landed when defending. Merely as scare ships.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by Scouse
Oh I understood perfectly.

Then don't make replies that make it seem like you didn't.

Originally posted by Scouse
That's definately a good reason for shorter rounds, but we only need shorter rounds because of the powerblocking and subsequent stagnation.

I think a better hypothesis is that the size of the universe is much smaller, so any powerblocks that do form dominate more faster through a more complete control of the game, rather than alliances TRYING to stagnate the game faster.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by Scouse
No it wouldn't. Think about it. Would Eclipse allow escorts and defence planets in as members? No.

Is this another example where you'll claim that you understood perfectly, having posted absolute tripe in the first place?

NOT IN THE SAME ALLIANCE AS THE OWNER, IN AN ALLIANCE ON THEIR OWN.

And they could land in def, but only if the planet wasn't being defended by others, too.

And if it is, there's still the good old fashioned retal.

[Scouse]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri
NOT IN THE SAME ALLIANCE AS THE OWNER, IN AN ALLIANCE ON THEIR OWN.

I already adressed that. With the 'Would Eclipse ally them' bit.


I'm making perfect sense. I think you're a bit dim, so I'm off to bed.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by Scouse
I'm making perfect sense. I think you're a bit dim, so I'm off to bed.

Sorry, I had assumed that we weren't stopping people defend outside their alliances, as it's bad for the community, which in turn is bad for the game.

Still leaves the retal option open, me old mucker.

[ComradeRob]

Originally posted by Scouse
Well that's the point. Whether they defend or attack that planet, they'll shoot at anyone who they arn't allied to. So if Alliance A attacks an Alliance B planet, and Alliance C (unallied to either) decides to get involved, attack or defending means they are still shooting, and being shot at, by both Alliance A and Alliance B ships.

Ok, but let's say that part of the point of this system is that you can only be defended by your own alliance and their sole ally (and possibly by your galaxy/cluster too, but this is not relevant to the point). So, a member of alliance A can be defended by alliance A and alliance B, but not by anyone else.

Now consider what happens when he is attacked by someone in alliance C. Alliances A and B have no defence available, due to a major offensive by alliances C and D. However, the person under attack has some friends in alliance E. They can't defend him, but they can attack him, thus both lowering the cap rate for the initial attacker and giving him losses by virtue of crossfire. This situation becomes worse if the extra attackers happen to be multi accounts or suchlike, but it can work even if they are not (several galaxies/alliances used organised piggybacking as a defence mechanism in r4, I've no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen again here). Given the limited pool of defence available with the limitations on who can defend who, such friendly piggybacking could well become common.

[Scouse]

Originally posted by ComradeRob
Now consider what happens when he is attacked by someone in alliance C. Alliances A and B have no defence available, due to a major offensive by alliances C and D. However, the person under attack has some friends in alliance E. They can't defend him, but they can attack him, thus both lowering the cap rate for the initial attacker and giving him losses by virtue of crossfire. This situation becomes worse if the extra attackers happen to be multi accounts or suchlike, but it can work even if they are not (several galaxies/alliances used organised piggybacking as a defence mechanism in r4, I've no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen again here). Given the limited pool of defence available with the limitations on who can defend who, such friendly piggybacking could well become common.

Yeah. That makes attacking someone better than defending them, since both mean crossfire, but the attacking means cap rate is lowered. So piggybacking could be seen as the best way to stop roid growth.

Running your fleet and having non alliance mates attack you would result in cap being lowered and all sets of attackers shooting at each other. You're right.

But people still lose roids, no matter at what rate. And big players losing roids doesn't happen that often, usually it's a 'big thing' when it does.


Another good point about this system being that cluster/parallel alliances would be a lot, lot more useful and they would probably become a more permanent feature of PA. This, amongst other things, would allow new players time to mix with experienced players.

[Colt]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri

Some justification for this statement?

Hmm, its not really that hard to think bout it. I would say that about 50/60% of the ppl who plays this game (plz correct me if im totally wrong) are ppl who are aged between 15-18. Now this means that they have school/college during the week. Havin a 1 week round with 5 minute ticks would mean that PA would lose all these players as they wouldnt have a hope in hell of actually playin to any decent standard.

1hr ticks are a must, imo!! Having shorter ticks would just mean that it would be even harder for "newbies" to do well, as they would have to spend even more time online...something which i doubt they are prepared to do, as most dont even see it bein worth it wit 1 hr ticks...

Just my thoughts..

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by Colt
1hr ticks are a must, imo!! Having shorter ticks would just mean that it would be even harder for "newbies" to do well, as they would have to spend even more time online...something which i doubt they are prepared to do, as most dont even see it bein worth it wit 1 hr ticks...

For a start, you can still be defended by your galaxy and alliance.

1 hour ticks just means that certain planets, disregarding any screwups, will be invincible.

Also, it's almost impossible for a "newbie" (as you put it) to play this game anyway; but shorter ticks will help them to learn faster, as they can try out different tactics and come back in the next round with a better knowledge without having to put in too much dedication.

[Morden]

My suggestion for it would be coupled with the dynamic travel time and a fully random universe. where anyone attacking the same target if they are not allied, fire at each other as well as the defenders.

The Max eta for the Dynamic Travel would be 15 ticks and a minimum of 7 to your closest neighbour(this is with the max eta reduction)

You'd be able to defend anyone you wanted to but it would depend on where they were as to how fast you could travel unless you were in the same alliance.

with the Hard Coded Alliances Gaining these things:

Bonuses:(to make them enticing to use)

• eta 10 flat rate defence anywhere in the universe, can be improved to eta 6 with speed improvements
• Allows planets to attack the same target without engaging each others fleets.
• alliance Hypernode which allows the alliance to set a galaxy as a target and hit it from anywhere in the universe at a flat rate(such as eta 11 at the start but can be improved to eta 7 or so with the -4 eta tech) Only 1 Galaxy per hour, this would balance out smaller alliances with the large alliances, as the smaller ones will be much faster and allow them to take on a big alliance on equal terms.

Extras:

• The HC can set wether the alliance is visible on the planet tags, if they do they get extra allowances for treaties(read further down to understand what i mean)
• Each HC can see the member size of all other alliances as well as there political affiliations however they cannot see any info on where the people are located unless the HC of that alliance has set there members to "Not Hidden"

Politics

• Alliances cannot have treaties between them unless they are set to "Visible/Not Hidden"

Treaties: {This is only possible if both alliances are visible}

• State Of War - This is only possible if both alliances are visible and it enables a faster eta on attack as well as a higher combat effectiveness for fleets.
• Non Aggression Pact - Fleets from these alliances will not engage in combat when in the same sector.
• Mutual Assistance Pact - the 2 alliances can attack the same targets but cannot defend, also if an alliance declares war on one of them, the other automatically declares war on the the enemy of there partner.
• Alliance - the 2 alliances can attack/defend each other and any alliance which declares war on war is imediatly at war with both.
• Cease Fire - this treaty if for once a war has been resolved wether the losing alliance payed reperations to initiate it or wether the senate imposed the treaty in order to protect the game, it has a default time of 336ticks(14 days) but can be extended if one side pays the other to agree to it, or if they do it out of kindness.

The Senate:

• 2 Reps of each alliance.
• Advisory Board of 5 people inclueding spinner who moderate the Senate.
• control the definitions of how many alliances etc can work together at a time without getting sanctioned.

This would make it fairly balanced as well as make it possible to survive without blocking or allying to someone else, but also give smaller alliances the chance to work together for mutual protection without being so dangerous that they can crush all oposition.

This is however only a rough copy of it.

[Gerbie]

I luv the hypernode idea.

Don't intervene in the alliance's treaties. And I hate senates.

[QazokRouge5]

Originally posted by Scouse
I wouldn't ever trust any HC of another alliance and beleive anything they said.


If we all expect alliance HC's to stick to their word and not block then we may as well not bother playing round 10.


Coding it is the only way.

Perhaps it's time we had new alliance leaders...

In an ideal alliance, the members would make the choices... but I'm just rambling on I s'pose...

[Gerbie]

There are a few HC's of other alliances I trust. But not many.

[JonnyBGood]

It's just got to be all about numbers. In a universe where there are different levels and more total targets than one alliance or block can physically send fleets to the game dynamics will change again. A powerblock that doesn't control the universe ends up as a large, probably rather unwieldy, alliance and actually hinders the alliances it contains. There was never anything even vaguely approaching a fair fight this round until the end. NARWEET versus VOM. WEET versus NAR. The relative numbers were too big to cope with for the alliances on the receiving end each time and roids were scarce.

Something that I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of is the number of mid-range players. This round there were nowhere near enough of them and they all got nailed, roided and destroyed as the number of top fleets needed all their roids and more besides. Consider it as a triangle, in the early rounds there was a wide middle and a huge base as opposed to now where it has become exceedingly top-heavy. It doesn't matter how much you appeal to your best players to stay. If there are 700 of them in a 5k playerbase the universe will stagnate no matter what.

You don't make it more difficult for them to stagnate the universe, you make the universe too difficult to stagnate. There's a subtle but vital difference implicit.

[Saitam]

Unless you hardcode which allaince you are in into the game at start, you could have a sole alliance consisting of alliance A, B and C. (Each have 100 "accounts" that can be used to send defence/attack together with).

So it doesn't become very hard to manage defence, just make sure you have enough "tags" for your alliance to jump between. Same goes for attacking, as you could have multiple different "alliance tags" attacking a galaxy, each taking one planet.

[G.K Zhukov]

Sorry Morden, but your game looks horribly boring.

[Knight Theamion]

Supernodes are the way to go.

[Tempestuous]

Originally posted by rnd|One
I take it you're not speaking merely on behalf of Eclipse to not receive the short stick R10?

It must be one hell of a bitter mind to convince itself that this is a political move by eclipse, why on earth would we have Morden speak for us?

[Jorinn]

Originally posted by Scouse
If alliances were limited to 100 people, and each alliance could only ally 1 other alliance, with allies being allowed to defend each other (and noone else) and attack together (without worry of cross attacking) then it would be a lot harder for alliances to ally to the point of helping each other. So having more than 1 ally becomes pointless.

They wouldn't even need to limit, just have incremental disadvantages as member numbers increased, e.g. reduced resource production or increased ETA.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally posted by JonnyBGood
WEET versus NAR.

NAR fell over quicker than expected, it's not WEET's fault.

Originally posted by JonnyBGood
You don't make it more difficult for them to stagnate the universe, you make the universe too difficult to stagnate. There's a subtle but vital difference implicit.

And I'm not confident about round 10.

'Everything will be different'.

No it won't.

The game will still have the same concepts, the same game dynamics.

Taking for instance, the 'ship upkeep costs' idea.

That will only INCREASE stagnation.

With an exponential resource dynamic, those on the winning side always have a better score/income ratio. This means that they will have to pay a lower % of their income towards ship upkeep, meaning that they will extend their lead even faster than they are under the current system.

And a game of this sort HAS to have an exponential resource dynamic.

This is not talking about individual games, but about game concepts. There's no way around this.

[Gerbie]

NaR held out longer then I expected.

Well I'm not confident, but I hope for the best. I expect them to have thought about ways to solve our problems. They claim all will be fixed in round 10. We shall see.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri

I never blamed WEET. It's just an outcome that was always going to happen. Will round ten be different depends solely on the size of the playerbase. It doesn't matter if the top players zoom off into the sunset as long as it's not possible for their limited numbers to actually dominate the universe. The one thing that Spinner got right was to limit everyone to three fleets only. If your top players can't physically attack everyone the game will never stagnate. Think of it in terms of resources. If there is an abundance of available resources far less people will horde their supply. In PA if there are enough targets they will not be hit repeatedly and to such an extent as to make people not bother with the game. Round ten will all come down to numbers.

[Silk_311x]

Originally posted by Morden
Game mechanics

The supernode idea is great. It would give a nice advantage of hard coded alliances, wich is also a very good idea. What I dont like about your post is the senate, and the method of allying. The tag idea, would discourage people blocking, because there coordinates would be available to all, however, forcing's peoples hands like this would not stop people from blocking.

the way I see it, instead of trying to hide, they would just ally and fight a war with tags. Its of my opinion people's cowardice/hate towards other alliances is that great, they would fight a war like that. I think there is little you can do to stop people's desire to team up and win. People in general are cowards and could never fight an even grounded war. They do not have the required attributes to do this, so they will do what ever they can to get around this system.

So in short, I like your ideas, however I see people exploiting them where ever they can (maybe even going as far as creating a huge super alliance, for example, NAR merging in game to reap the benefits of the system.)

[Morden]

Originally posted by Silk_311x
The supernode idea is great. It would give a nice advantage of hard coded alliances, wich is also a very good idea. What I dont like about your post is the senate, and the method of allying. The tag idea, would discourage people blocking, because there coordinates would be available to all, however, forcing's peoples hands like this would not stop people from blocking.

the way I see it, instead of trying to hide, they would just ally and fight a war with tags. Its of my opinion people's cowardice/hate towards other alliances is that great, they would fight a war like that. I think there is little you can do to stop people's desire to team up and win. People in general are cowards and could never fight an even grounded war. They do not have the required attributes to do this, so they will do what ever they can to get around this system.

So in short, I like your ideas, however I see people exploiting them where ever they can (maybe even going as far as creating a huge super alliance, for example, NAR merging in game to reap the benefits of the system.)

The reason there would need to be a senate to set the limits of how far alliance HC's can take the piss is to stop them blocking.

as for making a super huge alliance, i find it very unrealistic as an example.

galaxy size is 20, and an alliance has 400 members, it would take 20 hours straight for them to all launch via the hyper node thus they would have to attack slowly as well thus giving the smaller alliances an easy target as they can strike fast and grow a lot quicker.

as for alliances not minding showing the exact positions of there planets by allying with someone else, say the max alliances you could ally to were set to 2, so you could make a triad but your cords would be public knowledge which would mean that you and your allies would be presicion targetted by nearly every other alliance in the game which would be suicide.

the aim of it is to make it unecasary to need to ally for the start of the round, and to make politics a bit more fluid and not quite so set in stone.

and as it has been said by several different people, if the alliance HC want to behave like kiddies and fk things up, then treat them like kiddies and limit what they can do without facing repercusions.

BTW limiting the max size of alliances is foolish and unnecasary simple because the hypernode can be used once an hour, now that would balance a small alliance to a large alliance on its own,
and the political system would make it very difficult for a large alliance to split off into 2 wings as they would in effect be cut off from each other unless they allied in game thus giving themselves away.

Also there would need to be a 72 hour delay b4 leaving and joining a new alliance, to stop people taking the piss like they would try, as well as making it easier for alliances to deal with traitors and fence sitters, because it gives you 3 days where you can hit them at eta 7, and that he can only get in gal/c defence which is very bad for him/her.


some might say its boring, but it'd keep the game a lot more fluid and make wars and the political arena more fresh and dynamic.

[Morden]

Originally posted by Tempestuous
It must be one hell of a bitter mind to convince itself that this is a political move by eclipse, why on earth would we have Morden speak for us?

Indeed, I speak for myself on these forums, I have neither the desire not incentive to speak for anyone else due to how lame and most people on these forums are.

[G.K Zhukov]

Morden.. bascily your idea is that to ally/nap an alliance must give away its coords.

If so is, no alliance will bascily do that. Otherwise their enemies can write down their coords. That will also favour alliances to grow big, and go solo.

This resulting in a big alliance with 300 members to sign up as 3 alliances, and launch on different targets.

[Morden]

Originally posted by G.K Zhukov

This resulting in a big alliance with 300 members to sign up as 3 alliances, and launch on different targets.

i see nothing wrong with 3, 100 member alliances, except that no doubt 1 will grow larger and probably break away while others will die due to lack of defence from the other 2 wings.

the whole advantage of having a large memberbase is because of the defence compacity,

so they get a choice between lower defence, or a lower attack capability.

I see nothing wrong with this aside from making it less desireble for people to need to ally with others from the start, resulting in more fluidic politics later on, with people changing there affiliations if and when they need to.

The Problem is that people dont want the game to change, or to have to adapt to succede in a more balanced arena.

[aza1]

Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri
For a start, you can still be defended by your galaxy and alliance.

1 hour ticks just means that certain planets, disregarding any screwups, will be invincible.

Also, it's almost impossible for a "newbie" (as you put it) to play this game anyway; but shorter ticks will help them to learn faster, as they can try out different tactics and come back in the next round with a better knowledge without having to put in too much dedication.

======================

I could only see those ppl that are unemployed benefiting from anything shorter than 1 hour ticks......

[Gerbie]

There are plenty of free clones with shorter ticks. People don't pay for that. PA has speedrounds though. But the amount of players is even lower than at the real thing.