Strongbad - read my post here:
http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/showthre...of-the-Eclipse
Strongbad - read my post here:
http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/showthre...of-the-Eclipse
That's a nice guide, I don't disagree with some of your points, but I think you underestimate the wargame, you will get seriously burned.
A couple other options for dealing with high population colonies - Equip your dreadnaughts with Biological Weapons, or use smuggling to sap their population then attack, or just use blockade running so you can trade with them while at war status and then crank up your counterfeiting skill and economically strangle them. Just a few thoughts anyhow.
Raven has a good point about waiting. Granted most of my skills to this point have been in advancing my riches through more ships(Advanced orbitals), defense, mineral collection, and getting cargo ships for long distance trading (Of course, i'm a trader so all valuable skills.) I've seen what he currently has, and lets just say I'm glad I haven't pissed him off yet. I've also seen another neighbor be aggressive, and while he's done some impressive things he's pretty much locked in a battle at someones home world and I'm not sure it's going to end pretty for him.
On a side note, Leedot, can you choose to use counterfeiting on certain people or once you've researched it, it's always active?
Of course quietly amassing a huge empire of resources is the best the long term strategy, but is it the most fun?
The problem with that style of play, in my opinion, is that it's kind of boring. I am curious to see how the game pans out, but with 150+ players, I'm guessing the winner is going to be someone on the other side of the galaxy from me that I never even encounter over the course of 2 months. He'll blow up 15 planets or stars I've never seen, or use his vast network of harvesters to get the trade win without me having much to do with it. I know I'm not going to be the last man standing, so to spend two months shuffling harvesters around and trying not to piss anyone off feels like a pretty banal exercise. I'm not out to be an aggressive jerk, but if it means some interesting multiplayer interaction, I'd rather do that than play it like a singleplayer game.
But again, we'll see how it pans out. While I do like the idea of a single winner, the largely "individual" win conditions make me think the game can be won by ignoring everyone else in the game. That kind of defeats the point of an "MMO" game like this, doesn't it?
Everyone has a different play style I suppose. I am curious if you could think of different win conditions. Maybe even not really have "win" conditions per say, but maybe a score based system. Where each action effects your score.
Then at the end of 2 months scores are tallied and a ranking is displayed. I suppose if that was the case we could probably display in game details live rather than have a global score. Since if we had something like fighting gives you <x> points, trading gives you <x> points, discovering sectors gives you <x> points, holding artifacts every day gives you <x> points.
As always we are open to discussion on things and peoples thoughts. So then even people that do little skirmish type battles on a regular bases might end up with the same points as say someone with Ravens play style.
As a side note, while his guide is a good foundation if there were too many Ravens doing land grabs it might not be as easy for him in the long run. Since in reality you have major contention if everyone grabs their allotted 13 planets.
OMG, maybe this is crazy or impossible, or just not your thing, but I think having a persistent never ending server, in addition to the winnable game servers would be very cool, and might draw a wider audience.Originally Posted by zarkwizard
Agreed! Part of the reason I posted that was because I seemed to be the only player doing the land grab strategy and at 150+ planets on Aruru, I felt like I was getting too far ahead of everyone. I did run into one other land grabber, but he started the process later than I and has a lot less planets.
I've been thinking about alternative win conditions, but I don't have any bright ideas yet. I think the score based system is a good idea, possibly better than the current one. The problem, I think, is coming up with a system that both encourages player interaction, but also is not prone to "runaway wins," because those are annoying.
I very much like the idea of some kind of live statistics that indicate everyone's progression towards the end game, assuming you can influence the outcome as a result. Another aspect of the current system that feels less than ideal is the fact that the inevitable win is going to come out of nowhere. What I think would be really neat is if everyone received reports when a player reached certain milestones towards victory, so that they could react and maybe form alliances against that person to beat them back down, etc.
Another half-thought I had, although this would be tricky, is to give effectively defeated players some kind of "nuclear option" that would have a significant effect on the rest of the game. Again, I am trying to think of ways for all players, even the ones who aren't able or willing to be hardcore about their strategy, to have some agency in the outcome of the game. I'm not necessarily thinking they should be able to detonate their homeworld and take out half a sector, but maybe something like pledge their resources to another player or something, or allow themselves to be assimilated by the some AI Borg collective that gives them some interesting powers but removes them from victory contention.
Anyways, I think at the very least you need a scoreboard so that that everyone has some feeling of progress at the end. When only one guy can win, 149 people have to lose, and to lose a 2 month game with nothing to show for it is kind of sad. With a scoreboard, at the very least you can have micro-competitions between local players and that sort of thing. If I know I'm not going to be #1, I can at least focus my efforts on finishing ahead of my neighbors.
Yeah, this is the major issue with the current system. You have already won Aruru, so what is the point in continuing for another 7 weeks? Granted, you have played this game before and no one else has, but still, you have the runaway win, no one is going to catch up to that. Even if I played aggressively, I'm not devoted enough to this game to hunt down 150 of your outposts. I think that's probably true of a lot of players, who will all just get left in the dust.
Somehow the game needs to acknowledge "micro-competition" within the larger "there can be only one" format. Not totally sure how to do that, but live scoreboards are a good start.
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