• Posts: 7,941
  • Tag points: 14

Re: Role Specialization

If thats the goal then let me sleep on it, I will come up with a solution that does not destroy the game.

Everything bad in the economy is now Obama's fault. Every job lost, all the debt, all the lost retirement funds. All Obama. Are you happy now? We all get to blame Obama!
Kemp currently not being responded to until he makes CONCISE posts.
Avogardo and Noir ignored by me for life so people know why I do not respond to them. (Informational)

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 131
  • Tag points: 6

Re: Role Specialization

Torqez wrote:

Okay, so what's your guys' proposed solution?

By now... with this playerbase... difficult.

Torqez wrote:

Easiest way (imo) to implement this in the short term, would be to have a gal like Pinwheel or Milky Way, with settings as normal, but just disable aid between empires and disable the market.  This way, you are tasked with fighting as well as infra on your own.  Take some iniatiaves, work as a team still, and have more control over the way you run your own empire.

You have basically 2 different games: the high-specialized IC (IC of now) and one which rather leans to the HC-rules, to the beginning of IC but also to the future of a holistic integrated form of playing.

It's probably wise to also treat them as 2 different games with 2 different player communities. As a matter of fact only one of those player communities is here at the moment, the other big one is gone. Both "games" should be available continuosly. I would call for a fork of the game but in IC, I think, we get away with just taking different galaxies.

Galaxy 1, let's call it MW, is for the highly Specialized IC (short: S-IC).
Galaxy 2, let's call it Orion, is for the new old way of playing we need to (re)develop. To give it a short name let's call it C-IC, for hard Core-IC.

Define what kind of playing you want to encourage in C-IC and write it down. To give it a start (not more time right now):

1. Teamwork is great as long as its limited to the maps page and not allowed onto the planets page. (Jaguar)

Whenever you make changes to the rules, compare it with what you have written down and wether it fits.

Some rule changes would be:

  • 33% tax on aid

  • 10% tax on market buys and sells (but keep the market)

  • as a start get rid of morale (if necessary introduce it again later but not based on planets but on NW or something completly different)

  • as a start and to bring back some thrill and "conflict", lower the number of planets in a galaxy to about 50/player... but to give everybody some breathing space lower the number of planets per system to about 10

  • if there is anything helping with "cores" or "permanent" NAPs, get rid of it

Define some more variables (like those above) and play around with them in the next rounds to get a feeling when (good) players start to feel forced to play highly specialized or when they judge it better not to.

Be patient. It will take time to get back players.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to take Orion with HC-rules and change and develop it slowly from there.

Another old bloodstained Harkonnen.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 960
  • Tag points: 58

Re: Role Specialization

Excellent post Altruist. That gives us a great methodology to follow for this project as well as a start on changes to be implemented.

I would gradually add the following
- Remove intra-family infra passing. Everytime someone takes a planet in intra-fam or intra-alliance attack, kill all the buildings on said planet regardless of NW range of the empires involved.
- Merge Economy and Resourcing sciences into one. Anyone who has played SS at a high level knows how difficult it is to get more than 2 sciences up. This would remove one of the deterrents of people wanting to play SS.
- Equalize cash and resource decay. At the moment cash is allowed to be saved on the market while resources aren't; and this creates an imbalance. This could be implemented in the s-IC galaxy as well since it affects both forms of gameplay.


From a technical perspective I know there might be challenges with implementing different game mechanics for different galaxies, but seperating the two versions of IC is useful, specially considering the mindset of current players and their reluctance to get out of their comfort zones. This means one of the following:

1) We need stefan to be 'bought in' as he would have to create a seperate server for this new version of IC
2) A fair amount of re-design of the existing code to allow different mechanics in different galaxies
3) Don't seperate the versions and start the gradual change in the current live galaxies itself. Personally I am ok with this, but some might find this path a tad risky.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 5,199
  • Tag points: 19

Re: Role Specialization

Why would we want to get rid of specialisation again...?

Maar doodslaan deed hij niet, want tussen droom en daad,
Staan wetten in de weg en praktische bezwaren,
En ook weemoedigheid, die niemand kan verklaren,
En die des avonds komt, wanneer men slapen gaat.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 367
  • Tag points: 2

Re: Role Specialization

Because newer players who are figuring out the game gets either A. Killed off, or B. Micromanaged to such a level that they find it boring and leave.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

31 Reply by LordTriumff (edited by LordTriumff 03-Jul-2013 05:16:39)

  • Posts: 126
  • Tag points: 4

Re: Role Specialization

It's the attitude of must win that's ruined the game when I first started the game was a hoot and popular because of galaxies like the Orion beta rounds where there used to be in fighting in families for leadership and survival was your goal, you had no choice but to work together once unity was restored otherwise you'd get wiped out and there was no banker resourcer attacker then everyone was ss

We need to go back to playing for fun not weve got to win if you can't help us get there get out

im back

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 207
  • Tag points: 2

Re: Role Specialization

Torqez wrote:

Okay, so what's your guys' proposed solution?

Here's mine:

Torqez wrote:

Easiest way (imo) to implement this in the short term, would be to have a gal like Pinwheel or Milky Way, with settings as normal, but just disable aid between empires and disable the market.  This way, you are tasked with fighting as well as infra on your own.  Take some iniatiaves, work as a team still, and have more control over the way you run your own empire.

This would be a blast. Maybe keep the market with a high tax rate and the chance of getting ripped off occasionally. Keep aid too but limited - 'We cannot send more than 5% of our resources per tick, o glorious leader.'

One by one the penguins steal my sanity.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • BNRG
  • BNRG
  • Player
  • Offline
  • Posts: 628
  • Tag points: 17

Re: Role Specialization

Why not disable aid the first X days/weeks of the round? Forces everyone to be active! Make it work like the market/attack/op delays.

Retired.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

34 Reply by LordTriumff (edited by LordTriumff 03-Jul-2013 12:26:06)

  • Posts: 126
  • Tag points: 4

Re: Role Specialization

I think you've hit it on the head guys if you delay the aid action with the excuse of negotiations are still on going with the family over resource sharing and then when it kicks in you cam only send a percentage of your income per tick it will still promote working as a family but make each player more aware of how the whole game works and they get a crack at trying everything and then if they want to have ago at a role set family they can go into a well established galaxy where family's are a cohesive unit and not in the early stage of diplomacy and forming

im back

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 126
  • Tag points: 4

Re: Role Specialization

As it is at the moment supernova is ideal for new players but you are on your own so dont get the full feel for the way the game plays but a galaxy like above would be perfect for new players to learn alongside vets without being bullied into playing a certain role

im back

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Mace
  • Player
  • Offline
  • Posts: 655
  • Tag points: 5

Re: Role Specialization

Specialisation started in the betas in any case. In any case when people enjoyed the game the number of planets / player was much smaller. Altruist talks of 50pp. I think even this may be too many. Incomes much over 2M/tick should be a major achievement and land needs to be scarce to encourage conflict.

Rounds need to be short enough that getting hit hard doesn't force too many into inactivity and not returning. There should also be two galaxies on staggered starts. The gap between rounds also needs to be sufficient... with perhaps special HC rounds taking place during the gaps) to keep people logged in.

Race bonuses should be smaller. Everyone playing at Revalons and Partaxians is just boring.

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

1 Tag Point

  • Posts: 330

Re: Role Specialization

could make each "family" smaller like 3 or even  1 person

just up the amount of ally's you can have


SS in a family of 3 is very plausible  so is  a role based team of 3


easier for friends to kind of play together then  but could cause other balance issues

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 751
  • Tag points: 2

Re: Role Specialization

old thread but something to think about considering the current situation

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

0 Dislike 0 Post Points

  • Posts: 3,202

Re: Role Specialization

if people wanna learn and play solo, we have the solo gal for that, anny other gals teamplay wil be required.

people allready have a choice.

Colorado: even in the 11/01 war i made more hits.
Colorado: 447 blow jobs.
Big Gary:  Only a fool cannot admit when he's wrong...
AW:    i love rim jobs
RisingDown: I know you do

0 Dislike 0 Post Points