Alliance Points System

[t3k]

I must say, I agree with mz wholeheartedly. XP is a terrible excuse for being lazy (coming from one of the worst offenders) and while it levels out the playing field, it contradicts the basic premise on which PA was created.

I strongly feel that while you should encourage competition, you should take a long hard look at what competition you'd like to encourage. There should be competition for all ranks, not just the top (1) position. In football, you don't get 20 teams going into the English Premier League and expect them all to compete for #1, so to try and create an environment in which you force Manchester United to have to compete with Wigan is laughably misguided. If the only goal is to try and allow everyone a shot at finishing first, then you're destroying any significance the remaining 19 positions may have.

If nothing but finishing first matters, you kill the scale of competition and make competing 1-dimensional and boring.

[LordNieminen]

Originally Posted by Kenny

I must say, I agree with mz wholeheartedly. XP is a terrible excuse for being lazy (coming from one of the worst offenders) and while it levels out the playing field, it contradicts the basic premise on which PA was created.

I strongly feel that while you should encourage competition, you should take a long hard look at what competition you'd like to encourage. There should be competition for all ranks, not just the top (1) position. In football, you don't get 20 teams going into the English Premier League and expect them all to compete for #1, so to try and create an environment in which you force Manchester United to have to compete with Wigan is laughably misguided. If the only goal is to try and allow everyone a shot at finishing first, then you're destroying any significance the remaining 19 positions may have.

If nothing but finishing first matters, you kill the scale of competition and make competing 1-dimensional and boring.

Agreed.. Surprisingly good post. There's a reason why kenny is considered better than me in english.

Anyways Pa has been since pax easy mode to anyone, if you land few good lands yer in top10.. but at that point you don't get more xp, it just get's crowded up there due to everyone xp:ing, no-one is actually better than anyone else.. it makes no sense. I remember the days when I respected top100 rank.. now it's more like maybe top10 rank if they fought for the ranks what they rarely do.

[Kjeldoran]

Originally Posted by Kenny

I must say, I agree with mz wholeheartedly. XP is a terrible excuse for being lazy (coming from one of the worst offenders) and while it levels out the playing field, it contradicts the basic premise on which PA was created.

I strongly feel that while you should encourage competition, you should take a long hard look at what competition you'd like to encourage. There should be competition for all ranks, not just the top (1) position. In football, you don't get 20 teams going into the English Premier League and expect them all to compete for #1, so to try and create an environment in which you force Manchester United to have to compete with Wigan is laughably misguided. If the only goal is to try and allow everyone a shot at finishing first, then you're destroying any significance the remaining 19 positions may have.

If nothing but finishing first matters, you kill the scale of competition and make competing 1-dimensional and boring.

Eventhough I agree with your analysis, hardly anyone remembers who ended #2 and #3 5 years ago in the Premier League, be it without having to look it up. Also, there are alot more reasons for a Premier League team to perform well (playing for EU seats, avoiding relegation, Receiving more TV money next season, Increasing Ticket Sales, ...) then there is for an alliance to do it's best once it can no longer win the round aye.

In PA, you either win or you lost. #2 is the 1st losing alliance really. It's been like that in the old days (and very few people remember who ended #2, if they remember something it's more like which block won the round) and I assume it's the same today.

[Sun_Tzu]

Not quite true Kj. An alliance through its actions and rankings does get a reputation as to how good it is, which has an impact on the kind of players it's able to recruit. It's just like the Premier League, when a player decides he wants his League win, he'll accept greater scrutiny to play for a better alliance, where as for a weaker alliance would need to give him greater personal freedom to retain him.

You might not remember what exact ranking say Virus has rnd4, but you'll certainly know what tier of alliance it was, which is the more interesting bit, as politics may swing from round to round.

[Kjeldoran]

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

Not quite true Kj. An alliance through its actions and rankings does get a reputation as to how good it is, which has an impact on the kind of players it's able to recruit. It's just like the Premier League, when a player decides he wants his League win, he'll accept greater scrutiny to play for a better alliance, where as for a weaker alliance would need to give him greater personal freedom to retain him.

You might not remember what exact ranking say Virus has rnd4, but you'll certainly know what tier of alliance it was, which is the more interesting bit, as politics may swing from round to round.

What you said is indeed true. When it comes to reputation, it's important yes. But reputation is relative to some extend and a matter of perception. It's also very subjective and 'flexible'. It can take a while to build it up and it takes seconds to lose it completely. Also, once the reputation is established, an alliance can afford playing a "ahh fk, we can't be arsed anymore this round" game.

And regardless, in most competitions, only winning is what matters and anything else is considered losing. That's a truth in PA aswell ... I'm sure you remember the countless threads on AD bashing the #2 alliance for losing the game for whatever action they did :-)

[t3k]

KJ, you seemed to have missed one of the points I was trying to make. Whereas you've picked up on the obvious criticism I was levelling against the current system (the same one it has ever been) is that the focus on acheiving success is being levelled at the wrong area.

Instead of placing the emphasis on finishing 1st, how about creating some kind of significance for the rankings that say.... aren't 1st? Like Tzu said, positions in the EPL have some kind of significance, based on their monetary rewards. There's reason to compete for 4th spot as it grants passage into the Eufa Champions League.

In PA, the top 3 gals and planets are acknowledged in the EORC, but only the top alliance is? The game itself places too great an emphasis on winning without paying any kind of attention to anything else.

The whole point of creating this ridiculously poor APS system is to give joe bloggs and his schoolmates who've just signed up a chance to compete. I'm saying they shouldn't come into the game expecting to win, that's retarded. The people at the top are the people who've played for rounds and rounds and rounds and deserve to be there through hard work and in most cases a lengthy PA career.

There will be NOTHING keeping these career players interested if the game turns round and tells them that all their hard work and experience counts for nothing if the ONE THING they've always played towards is no longer worth playing for, which is exactly what this APS system will do.

HEED MY WORDS!

[Kjeldoran]

Originally Posted by Kenny

KJ, you seemed to have missed one of the points I was trying to make. Whereas you've picked up on the obvious criticism I was levelling against the current system (the same one it has ever been) is that the focus on acheiving success is being levelled at the wrong area.

Instead of placing the emphasis on finishing 1st, how about creating some kind of significance for the rankings that say.... aren't 1st? Like Tzu said, positions in the EPL have some kind of significance, based on their monetary rewards. There's reason to compete for 4th spot as it grants passage into the Eufa Champions League.

In PA, the top 3 gals and planets are acknowledged in the EORC, but only the top alliance is? The game itself places too great an emphasis on winning without paying any kind of attention to anything else.

The whole point of creating this ridiculously poor APS system is to give joe bloggs and his schoolmates who've just signed up a chance to compete. I'm saying they shouldn't come into the game expecting to win, that's retarded. The people at the top are the people who've played for rounds and rounds and rounds and deserve to be there through hard work and in most cases a lengthy PA career.

There will be NOTHING keeping these career players interested if the game turns round and tells them that all their hard work and experience counts for nothing if the ONE THING they've always played towards is no longer worth playing for, which is exactly what this APS system will do.

HEED MY WORDS!

I understood the point you made and I gave the example with the Premier League where ranks do matter alot, even if it's only for rank 6 or 7 or rank 17 and 18 (relegation). I'm just saying that, much like in PA, the focus is on winning, but that in a game such as PA ... this focus is abit more extreme.

I don't know how to resolve that though. Perhaps create side ranks (much like they used to do with the golden roid). Similar to football, tons of statistics data is available which can be poured into some kind of ranking, both on alliance level as on individual player level.

Or create some sort of achievement system (on alliance and planet level) which you carry on to next rounds. A system not giving you any actual bonus becides the prestige of having achieved something.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

It removes the penalties for too many kinds of behaviour.

No it does not. Constant crashing will not win you any round. If you start arguing with round 16 now, all I am going to say about that is: XP not limited, and bash limit not considering score.

[lokken]

If alliance points reflect and manage to quantify the old standard of victory known as 'domination' (a combination of score, military and political success) then I view that as a positive. Why? Because it encourages aggression and good play as opposed to victories which in recent years have been simple roid and score accumulation.

The problem I see with that is what constitutes victory is extremely subjective and the points system will not satisfy people with different views of the game, never mind everybody. There are a number of rounds where the victor would be up for debate were alliance score. So what I want to know from a lot of people here tinkering with formulae is what constitutes victory? Once you have worked out conditions for victory you can start building formulae to define victory or defeat. Or indeed realise that some may be so unmeasurable that you have the choice of either ignoring them because they create factors for the other fundamentals to increase, or just so fundamental in themselves you can't ignore them and that any APS system or whatever is futile.

[t3k]

But that takes us back to the passport system which they've not been able to implement in 10 years of "development" (lol).

With a working passport system, we could do any number of things which we're currently unable to. Given the lack of a working passport system, we should try to come up with ways to create new competition without killing the one that's been consistent for 38 rounds now. And you and I are at least both agreed that the APS system is shit and should be scrapped.

Unfortunately, because it takes so long for anything new to come along in PA, once it's been put in place PATeam would never remove it, ever. It's a sorry state of affairs that we're now in a position whereby the only discussion PATeam will listen to is one that discusses how to fix the problem they've put in place, rather than take it away altogether.

Viva la Spinner. Anno Domino 2459+1 ftw.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally Posted by lokken

If alliance points reflect and manage to quantify the old standard of victory known as 'domination' (a combination of score, military and political success) then I view that as a positive. Why? Because it encourages aggression and good play as opposed to victories which in recent years have been simple roid and score accumulation.

Destroying score is near impossible these days, which is why it's not as beneficial to push for military dominance. If the current system extends that nature of making it easier for the weaker parties to gain score through alternative means than the stronger parties, this will only emphasize victory based on something quite different than actual domination.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally Posted by Heartless

No it does not. Constant crashing will not win you any round. If you start arguing with round 16 now, all I am going to say about that is: XP not limited, and bash limit not considering score.

Perhaps not, but crashing won't lose you a round either, and tactical crashing may help you win a round. Call me crazy, but crashers shouldn't win rounds.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

Perhaps not, but crashing won't lose you a round either, and tactical crashing may help you win a round. Call me crazy, but crashers shouldn't win rounds.

When would tactical crashing be beneficial? I fail to see a use-case here. You advocate that the xp gains achievable after you crashed your fleet out weight the amount of score you can gain without crashing, so please bring up numbers for this with the current game mechanics.

We may also want to define the term crashing here then. Someone who has a 5 day ROI on captured asteroids is not necessarily someone who crashes from my point of view. How do you define a crasher?

[Light]

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

Perhaps not, but crashing won't lose you a round either, and tactical crashing may help you win a round. Call me crazy, but crashers shouldn't win rounds.

The thing is, the community now regards crashing as any land which wont repay the individual planet within 2-3 days.

What that means is we now have a game where combat is avoided at all costs and it is almost never beneficial to lose ships during combat. We have now ended up with a war game where the only losses (in a perfect sense) are roid losses with no ship loss.

Dont you find it sad, that in a war game.. to stand the highest chance of winning the round, you need/want 0 ship loss?

We need to find a way to encourage combat and ship-loss. XP is an artificial way to try and force this type of behavior but after many rounds of playing with a XP system, its clear that it has not had the desired effect.

The XP/Combat/Salvage system needs to be rethought to encourage combat. I certainly agree that the XP system is pretty **** at the moment but i dont agree that value > * and that we should just have a game which rewards 0-ship-loss play.

One possible way to force combat again, would be to introduce 'random-fire' as the last tier on each ship. However, then we hit the problem of the game becoming luck based on weither the defender moves his ships or not and the best case scenario is still 0-ship-loss.

[LordNieminen]

Originally Posted by Light

The thing is, the community now regards crashing as any land which wont repay the individual planet within 2-3 days.

What that means is we now have a game where combat is avoided at all costs and it is almost never beneficial to lose ships during combat. We have now ended up with a war game where the only losses (in a perfect sense) are roid losses with no ship loss.

Dont you find it sad, that in a war game.. to stand the highest chance of winning the round, you need/want 0 ship loss?

We need to find a way to encourage combat and ship-loss. XP is an artificial way to try and force this type of behavior but after many rounds of playing with a XP system, its clear that it has not had the desired effect.

The XP/Combat/Salvage system needs to be rethought to encourage combat. I certainly agree that the XP system is pretty **** at the moment but i dont agree that value > * and that we should just have a game which rewards 0-ship-loss play.

One possible way to force combat again, would be to introduce 'random-fire' as the last tier on each ship. However, then we hit the problem of the game becoming luck based on weither the defender moves his ships or not and the best case scenario is still 0-ship-loss.

Just saying this... the answer to that is, give some salvage to attacker aswell. Simple as that.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally Posted by Heartless

When would tactical crashing be beneficial? I fail to see a use-case here. You advocate that the xp gains achievable after you crashed your fleet out weight the amount of score you can gain without crashing, so please bring up numbers for this with the current game mechanics.

We may also want to define the term crashing here then. Someone who has a 5 day ROI on captured asteroids is not necessarily someone who crashes from my point of view. How do you define a crasher?

I did in my earlier post m8 :/ As pertaining to your old suggestion of "unkillable value score".

Light; Yeah, the funny thing is that after XP has been introduced and the game supposedly made more aggressive, you can actually only take so much losses any longer. Atm, 1k loss/roid is a crash. Rnd7, I remember taking 10k loss/roid, because I knew I could make it pay off. The worst thing is that it was rather damn obvious it would all turn out this way, and yet people kept pushing for this direction. Now they sit around wondering what went wrong. Ah the irony.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Sun_Tzu

I did in my earlier post m8 :/ As pertaining to your old suggestion of "unkillable value score".

Link? I am unable to find any reply of yours in the thread I wrote about a different approach to score, nor do I see any numbers from you in this thread.

[Mzyxptlk]

He's referring to this:

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

There is only one aspect of XP that I like: it is non-removable. That's something I'd like to preserve. If XP were removed, I'd want to change score to measure how many resources a planet, galaxy or alliance has spent, regardless of current fleet size or roid count. In such a system, value would measure how much the fleet of a planet, galaxy or alliance is worth (and nothing else). I think Heartless originally came up with this suggestion, and I wholeheartedly endorse it.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

He's referring to this:

Yeah but that doesn't contain any numbers backing up his claim either

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Yeah but that doesn't contain any numbers backing up his claim either

You've presented no numbers proving your suggestion to be worthwhile either. Pot calling kettle black?