Session Start: Wed Mar 25 17:40:42 2009 Session Ident: PM mz // Heartless 2009-03-25 17:40:57 man, you got me thinking about the whole geography thing again 2009-03-25 17:41:55 it's an interesting concept for pa, imo, and would pretty much turn the game upside down 2009-03-25 17:43:52 I know 2009-03-25 17:43:59 thing is 2009-03-25 17:44:16 the current setup with having planets, galaxies and alliances will never work out fine 2009-03-25 17:44:30 planets is cool - that's a single person's representation in the game 2009-03-25 17:44:49 but having two instances of cooperation which cause issues with each other is simply damaging 2009-03-25 17:45:06 * mz nods 2009-03-25 17:45:09 so I rather eliminate the smaller instance of the two 2009-03-25 17:45:19 another reason why rob's private galaxy idea is so good 2009-03-25 17:45:30 actually wait 2009-03-25 17:45:35 no, that makes no sense 2009-03-25 17:45:37 it's not. how does new blood get in. 2009-03-25 17:45:49 he wanted private galaxies without alliances and random galaxies WITH alliances 2009-03-25 17:45:53 ah right 2009-03-25 17:45:57 but for the latter of the two, the conflict still exists 2009-03-25 17:45:59 yeah, that was the ultimate concensus. 2009-03-25 17:46:06 and yes it does Session Close: Wed Mar 25 21:55:59 2009 Session Start: Thu Mar 26 22:57:49 2009 Session Ident: PM mz // Heartless 2009-03-26 22:57:49 let's revisit the sphere 2009-03-26 22:58:14 first of all, offering a way for friend to start in the same area of the sphere 2009-03-26 22:58:31 aye 2009-03-26 22:58:38 you agree that random distribution is a bad idea? 2009-03-26 22:58:39 we could do it like travian, i.e. suggest 4 quadrants for placement and then have the algorithm place planets somewhere in there 2009-03-26 22:58:50 yeah, totally random distribution _is_ a bad idea ;) 2009-03-26 22:59:22 actually travian offers you 5 choice: one of the four quadrants or random 2009-03-26 22:59:28 I've never played travian 2009-03-26 22:59:35 I'm not sure what you mean by quadrants 2009-03-26 22:59:38 it's world is somewhat like a sphere's surface 2009-03-26 22:59:45 literally quarters of the universe? 2009-03-26 22:59:46 so you can tile it into 4 quadratic zones 2009-03-26 22:59:48 yeah 2009-03-26 23:00:01 obviously, for 3d you'd have 16 of those zones 2009-03-26 23:00:07 8? 2009-03-26 23:00:21 right 2009-03-26 23:00:28 too late for maths ;p 2009-03-26 23:00:31 :P 2009-03-26 23:00:46 those 4 hours of programming test for ccp have been pretty exhausting right there 2009-03-26 23:01:04 anyway, your opinion? 2009-03-26 23:01:23 what happens when ascendancy (strong alliance) ends up in the same quadrant as orbit (farms)? 2009-03-26 23:01:41 the same as what would happen with the current universe: orbit would be farmed like hell. 2009-03-26 23:01:56 unless other alliances at the ascendancy's borders would turn up to try to farm ascendancy 2009-03-26 23:01:59 but orbit planets in ascendancy galaxies aren't usually farmed 2009-03-26 23:02:03 so what's different 2009-03-26 23:02:32 I'm thinking variable travel times are to blame 2009-03-26 23:02:47 time travel would have been my next topic ;p 2009-03-26 23:03:40 we could have something similar to the real life's "timezones". except that there's a base eta. 2009-03-26 23:03:58 so traveltime would be: base eta (let's say 7) + class eta penalty + amount of timezone 2009-03-26 23:04:31 timezone being the number of quadrants a planet is away? 2009-03-26 23:04:35 for example 2009-03-26 23:04:45 the advantage would be that a stronghold could not penetrate all the universe equally, leading to the rise of several "local" leader alliances 2009-03-26 23:04:56 that's a good example, yeah 2009-03-26 23:05:13 that depends 2009-03-26 23:05:19 sooner or later, brute force is going to prevail 2009-03-26 23:05:22 despite long tt 2009-03-26 23:05:32 indeed. but it's rather later than sooner. 2009-03-26 23:05:52 because even if one stronghold should arise pretty fast, due to higher traveltimes it becomes less mobile thus more vulnerable again 2009-03-26 23:06:27 ok, so let's go back to our ascendancy/orbit example 2009-03-26 23:06:37 I think it's a bad thing that orbit gets farmed by ascendancy 2009-03-26 23:06:59 there should be some way that orbit can make itself less attractive 2009-03-26 23:07:05 planet movement? 2009-03-26 23:07:26 maybe. but I don't think that solves the issue, really. 2009-03-26 23:07:47 it's an interesting point your brought up there, though: "how can smaller alliances make themselves less attractive" 2009-03-26 23:07:56 not just smaller alliances 2009-03-26 23:08:00 new players too 2009-03-26 23:08:10 yeah 2009-03-26 23:08:26 actually, I don't think new players can make themselves less attractive by location 2009-03-26 23:08:31 only by having few roids 2009-03-26 23:08:36 small alliances cannot either 2009-03-26 23:08:55 actually, how do we want to define unattractive for a start? 2009-03-26 23:09:10 "not a good target" would be suitable as a definition, no? 2009-03-26 23:09:15 yeah 2009-03-26 23:09:19 so we would just have to work out what make a "not so good" target 2009-03-26 23:09:29 depends on your race 2009-03-26 23:09:36 for ziks, anyone can be a good target if they're inactive 2009-03-26 23:09:53 for anyone else (or anyone without steal ships, more generically speaking), it's the roids that matter 2009-03-26 23:09:54 true 2009-03-26 23:10:13 and in case of cathaar even the amount of ships is rarely a matter ;p 2009-03-26 23:10:32 yeah 2009-03-26 23:10:52 hm. this really makes me ponder, I don't have an easy answer to this. 2009-03-26 23:11:08 (I think more variable strategies could be used for races btw, but that's a different subject) 2009-03-26 23:11:17 I'm not sure there is one 2009-03-26 23:11:19 actually 2009-03-26 23:11:21 maybe there is 2009-03-26 23:11:28 there is not in the current set up 2009-03-26 23:11:31 how do we define farming, in the loose sense of the word 2009-03-26 23:11:45 "big planets hitting small planets that can't defend themselves"? 2009-03-26 23:11:47 repeatedly grabbing cheap roids from a given planet 2009-03-26 23:11:58 so your suggestion would fall into that more generic description, yeah. 2009-03-26 23:12:16 and what we need to do is to make it less attractive for big planets to attack small planets 2009-03-26 23:12:23 what makes small planets attractive is roids 2009-03-26 23:12:28 so we can either reduce their roids 2009-03-26 23:12:32 or reduce the cap 2009-03-26 23:12:53 reducing the cap might be an idea. but it should certainly not be done by fleet value. 2009-03-26 23:12:58 there used to be a formula that compared the attacking fleet value to the defending fleet planet 2009-03-26 23:13:04 which ruins big teamups on big planets 2009-03-26 23:13:16 but comparing attacking planet value to defending planet value could work 2009-03-26 23:13:28 indeed 2009-03-26 23:13:36 that's a good idea. 2009-03-26 23:13:41 this works on all levels too 2009-03-26 23:13:48 ascendancy -> orbit as well as orbit -> newbie 2009-03-26 23:13:53 yep 2009-03-26 23:14:44 so, assuming that it's getting less and less profitable for bigger planets to hit smaller planets we'd actually make bigger planets start looking for more profitable markets again 2009-03-26 23:14:55 assuming they can't cheat their value 2009-03-26 23:14:57 outside their near-by travel times. resulting in making them more vulnerable again. 2009-03-26 23:15:07 yeah value should not be hideable. 2009-03-26 23:15:21 nice kiss solution: value in prod counts. 2009-03-26 23:15:22 at least not without a penalty of some sort (stock piling -> bank hacking) 2009-03-26 23:15:28 yeah, totally agree on that 2009-03-26 23:15:37 never understood why they introduced this in first place 2009-03-26 23:15:55 I kind of like the production system as it is now 2009-03-26 23:16:05 but yeah, they should've given it a bit more thought, heh 2009-03-26 23:16:14 with the exception of prod hiding it's really neat 2009-03-26 23:16:21 it always takes 3-10 rounds before a new feature works as intended 2009-03-26 23:16:37 well ok, prod hiding is OK as a tactic, but it has no penalty which makes it superior to most other available tactics 2009-03-26 23:16:51 I have no issue with prod hiding per se 2009-03-26 23:17:20 (there is a penalty though, but it's shared by your entire alliance, thus people don't care) 2009-03-26 23:18:28 and it is not really a penalty unless your alliance could do with those ships 2009-03-26 23:18:40 which half the time it doesn't, true 2009-03-26 23:19:29 right, let's keep the value based capping then. :-) 2009-03-26 23:20:02 I am currently pondering if score should be included there, too 2009-03-26 23:20:07 me too :P 2009-03-26 23:20:10 I'm thinking no 2009-03-26 23:20:17 that was my first thought as well 2009-03-26 23:20:37 yeah, I agree. that could be an option if value only does not play out as intended 2009-03-26 23:21:06 it's tweakable anyway 2009-03-26 23:21:11 indeed 2009-03-26 23:21:12 and really, an implementation detail 2009-03-26 23:21:40 same with the amount of time to add to traveltime for each timezone and ship class ;-) 2009-03-26 23:21:54 even the mechanism itself 2009-03-26 23:22:04 quadrant-based tt has its downsides 2009-03-26 23:22:19 I don't really take it as "quadrant based" though 2009-03-26 23:22:27 it's more like making 24 slices all around the sphere 2009-03-26 23:22:55 I toyed with abandoning ticks altogether for a moment 2009-03-26 23:23:00 for true continuity in tt 2009-03-26 23:23:09 but I think that's taking it a step too far 2009-03-26 23:23:27 ticks are still worth it. 2009-03-26 23:23:29 pa being a tick based scifi browser game 2009-03-26 23:23:42 travian has no ticks but is real time, and that really makes a mess for organizing defense and attacks and all that 2009-03-26 23:23:48 http://www.netspeed.com.au/minnah/TimeZonesGS.GIF <-- some sphere slicing like that 2009-03-26 23:24:20 actually that's a shit picture 2009-03-26 23:24:24 we could slice it up however we want tbh 2009-03-26 23:24:33 yeah 2009-03-26 23:25:43 but it is an interesting topic 2009-03-26 23:26:02 assuming I'm on the edge of the sphere 2009-03-26 23:26:19 we could just use distance to 'me' to divide it up 2009-03-26 23:26:33 while for someone else, the distances (and slices) would be completely different 2009-03-26 23:27:09 assuming I'm on the edge of the sphere <- that assumption is not even needed 2009-03-26 23:27:47 travian uses the euclidian distance between two points 2009-03-26 23:27:57 right, yeah, that's what I meant :P 2009-03-26 23:28:23 actually that's an interesting idea. take a base eta of, let's say, 7 ticks for examples sake, and add distance / speed of slowest unit 2009-03-26 23:28:33 and ships would get a fields per hour value indicating their speed 2009-03-26 23:28:42 (that's so travian, but meh!) 2009-03-26 23:29:03 well, ticks are a limitation here 2009-03-26 23:29:10 we can't make it continuous 2009-03-26 23:29:32 so there's going to be 2 slices at eta7, 3 more at eta8, another 3 at eta9, etc 2009-03-26 23:30:43 obviously it has to be rounded to nearest, lowest or highest tick that results from the distance / fields_per_hour. that way we do auto-slicing. 2009-03-26 23:31:13 do we want it to be so closely dependent on location though? 2009-03-26 23:31:32 or would simply creating a number of zones be a better approach? 2009-03-26 23:31:55 (I have to admit, I kind of like the travian-steal idea) 2009-03-26 23:32:27 it's actually the only thing I like about travian (world layout and, too a far lesser degree, travel times) 2009-03-26 23:33:32 I am unsure to be honest 2009-03-26 23:33:41 both have their impact on how player interaction would happen 2009-03-26 23:34:01 if it's a number of zones then it would be fairly easy to gather up with all your alliance in exactly one zone, making it harder to penetrate 2009-03-26 23:34:17 location dependant means more scattering, making alliances a bit more vulnerable 2009-03-26 23:34:29 *making the edges of alliances more vulnerable 2009-03-26 23:34:34 which I really really like 2009-03-26 23:34:35 yeah 2009-03-26 23:34:38 dito 2009-03-26 23:34:52 "Things to think about would be how wars would be fought, if planet stealing/destroying/moving should be possible, how safe planets in the center of the sector can support war planets on the borders of sectors" 2009-03-26 23:35:32 I am against moving 2009-03-26 23:36:15 destruction is also bad, unless you also have expansion 2009-03-26 23:36:17 it was mostly the first and last parts I meant to paste, but it's something to think about anyway 2009-03-26 23:36:38 I know travian allows people to have multiple settlements 2009-03-26 23:36:42 in my opinion the game should finally make universe wide trading available 2009-03-26 23:37:13 where I can offer X units of resource A to be traded for Y units of resource B 2009-03-26 23:38:02 as I said before, I would like to see more varied strategies in pa 2009-03-26 23:38:18 beyond mass FCs or mines 2009-03-26 23:38:38 trading, stealth play, fortress mode, piracy.. 2009-03-26 23:39:07 races could play a bigger role than they do now 2009-03-26 23:41:20 wb 2009-03-26 23:41:45 ty, connection fucking around >< 2009-03-26 23:41:47 right, what was my last sentence? 2009-03-26 23:41:51 03-26 23:37:13 where I can offer X units of resource A to be traded for Y units of resource B 2009-03-26 23:41:51 03-26 23:38:02 as I said before, I would like to see more varied strategies in pa 2009-03-26 23:41:51 03-26 23:38:18 beyond mass FCs or mines 2009-03-26 23:41:51 03-26 23:38:38 trading, stealth play, fortress mode, piracy.. 2009-03-26 23:41:51 03-26 23:39:07 races could play a bigger role than they do now 2009-03-26 23:42:01 [23:38:48] to prevent abuse of trading you could have something like "market places" at your planet as construction, allowing one trader per market place, which has a limited capacity of carrying resources 2009-03-26 23:42:02 [23:39:05] or make it a ship or something that carries a limited amount of resources 2009-03-26 23:42:28 well, next point would certainly be races 2009-03-26 23:43:06 I want to get rid off them as they are and get something like in master of orion: a race has certain perks. while there is a universe-wide tech-tree each race could research 2009-03-26 23:43:39 the perks would be bonuses / maluses on things like firepower, armour, production costs, trade interests etc pp 2009-03-26 23:44:02 I have no particular objection to races as they are now 2009-03-26 23:44:12 in any case, that system already exists, to a certain extent 2009-03-26 23:44:26 http://game.planetarion.com/manual.php?page=2 2009-03-26 23:44:56 yes, so it would mainly boil down to re-uniting the ships available and mixing the tech-tree again 2009-03-26 23:44:57 it would perhaps be more interesting to not have races as a set of predefined perks 2009-03-26 23:45:05 bur rather a number of perks you can choose from, freely 2009-03-26 23:45:09 or a combination of the two 2009-03-26 23:45:30 or you can mix that: have a few pre-defined races and offer the ability to create a custom one 2009-03-26 23:45:33 this would also allow people to delay their choice until after they've actually signed up 2009-03-26 23:45:36 yeah, that's what I meant :) 2009-03-26 23:46:34 you could call them classes and it'd be dnd 2009-03-26 23:46:45 ;) 2009-03-26 23:47:19 anyway, for a start I guess "enable trading" and "make the universe sphere-based and kick galaxies" are the most vital changes here 2009-03-26 23:47:33 vital as in: offering most game play profit for players 2009-03-26 23:47:45 increasing the amount of options available 2009-03-26 23:47:46 minor changes include: fix prod hiding, fix capping 2009-03-26 23:48:11 both are needed to create a more healthy roid flow 2009-03-26 23:48:12 this are actually not minor when changing to that sphere based universe ;-) 2009-03-26 23:48:26 yeah, I was just thinking that, heh 2009-03-26 23:48:46 actually it could be done iteratively: first do that prod hiding and capping fix 2009-03-26 23:48:55 then do that trade market 2009-03-26 23:48:57 that would already resolve a lot of issues 2009-03-26 23:49:02 and then switch to that sphere based universe 2009-03-26 23:49:22 indeed, the sphere is the long term goal 2009-03-26 23:49:34 well, the long term means, more accurately speaking 2009-03-26 23:49:42 it's in my opinion the ultimate fix to the "galaxy problem" but it's one that really takes time 2009-03-26 23:49:58 because it touches a very foundation of current pa 2009-03-26 23:50:00 it's a lot of coding, in pa-terms 2009-03-26 23:50:03 and there's that 2009-03-26 23:50:08 resistance from the community ahoy 2009-03-26 23:50:28 I don't think there'll be many good arguments against it 2009-03-26 23:50:42 actually I cannot think of any except for "but that's something new we would have to get used to" 2009-03-26 23:50:58 many features boil down to that 2009-03-26 23:50:58 and that's not even good 2009-03-26 23:51:01 and personal preference 2009-03-26 23:51:15 people resisted the landing scan 2009-03-26 23:51:33 until pa team came up with this halfbaked piece of shit compromise :\ 2009-03-26 23:51:35 people always resist to change 2009-03-26 23:52:08 yeah well, the landing scan was something ... strange anyway. there is a big issue with how scanning works in pa, that is true. 2009-03-26 23:52:36 but that's something fundamental that should be fixed later on, I think 2009-03-26 23:52:49 f.e. it could work with "drones" 2009-03-26 23:52:59 you build drones and these only fight against each other 2009-03-26 23:53:08 (oops, that's the scout system from travian - not bad there either!) 2009-03-26 23:53:08 the first part of this posts is the easiest short term solution, I think 2009-03-26 23:53:08 http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpost.php?p=3159661&postcount=2 2009-03-26 23:53:24 basically give people a personal jgp and cloak scan 2009-03-26 23:53:30 within 12/24 hours 2009-03-26 23:54:00 yeah, interesting idea 2009-03-26 23:54:26 right, at that to the first milestone stuff 2009-03-26 23:54:32 s/at/add 2009-03-26 23:54:37 under the 'easy as fuck' header 2009-03-26 23:54:50 the first milestone should be nothing else 2009-03-26 23:55:09 anyway ... I am off to bed now first, though 2009-03-26 23:55:45 I should do the dishes 2009-03-26 23:55:49 off to belgium tomorrow 2009-03-26 23:55:57 don't want to come back to a moldy kitchen :\ 2009-03-26 23:56:10 indeed 2009-03-26 23:56:19 enjoy your work. I'll write down a nice forums post tomorrow or so 2009-03-26 23:56:30 with a well laid out argument for the changes we discussed 2009-03-26 23:56:46 I look forward to reading it :) Session Close: Mon Mar 30 03:09:32 2009 Session Start: Mon May 04 11:28:24 2009 Session Ident: PM mz // Heartless 2009-05-04 11:28:25 around? 2009-05-04 11:30:53 yeah 2009-05-04 11:30:55 somewhat at least 2009-05-04 11:31:07 watching some game trailers as well ;p 2009-05-04 11:31:10 I've been thinking a bit about the removing galaxy idea 2009-05-04 11:31:25 atm, galaxies are the best place for newbies to get into the community 2009-05-04 11:31:33 what would happen if they were removed? 2009-05-04 11:31:44 actually I consider galaxies to be the opposite 2009-05-04 11:31:44 and np, I'm not in a hurry 2009-05-04 11:32:11 because if those other people in the galaxy do not want to cooperate or communicate with you, then you are doomed 2009-05-04 11:32:38 I'm not actually sure how many people help their new galaxy mates and how many just exile them 2009-05-04 11:32:41 you get exiled around (+maybe even bashed before to reduce exile costs), and probably end up in a dead galaxy 2009-05-04 11:35:37 but I take it youthink most galaxies just exile? 2009-05-04 11:36:30 most active galaxies 2009-05-04 11:36:37 those which would be suitable to build up a new playerbase 2009-05-04 11:37:35 ok, but how would removing galaxies help in that department? 2009-05-04 11:38:48 do you still have the log files from when we discussed this first? 2009-05-04 11:38:58 yeah 2009-05-04 11:39:00 Appocomaster is bringing up a lot of the things we discussed back then already 2009-05-04 11:39:00 * /run: unable to open 'D:\Documents\mIRC_logs\2009\.log' (line 120, aliases.ini) 2009-05-04 11:39:07 maybe just forward the log files to hin ;-) 2009-05-04 11:39:09 *him 2009-05-04 11:39:37 right, removing galaxies would help because you are no longer limited to relying on 10 to 15 or so people in your primary interaction pool. 2009-05-04 11:39:52 instead, your primary market (or pool) for new contacts is only limited by reasonable eta range 2009-05-04 11:40:22 let's say for simplicity that the primary market would now be clusters 2009-05-04 11:40:30 (from a size point of view) 2009-05-04 11:40:52 let me sketch something up 2009-05-04 11:41:27 where does he bring it up? 2009-05-04 11:41:53 he pm'd me about 5 minutes after you 2009-05-04 11:42:09 ah 2009-05-04 11:42:09 http://pastebin.ca/1411963 2009-05-04 11:43:38 there's the first pm missing ^^ 2009-05-04 11:43:57 * /run: unable to open 'D:\Documents\mIRC_logs\2009\heartless.log' (line 120, aliases.ini) 2009-05-04 11:44:07 nope 2009-05-04 11:44:11 that's all I have 2009-05-04 11:45:15 ok, I'll check at home 2009-05-04 11:46:20 back to your question, though 2009-05-04 11:46:35 let's keep in mind that ETA is organized like timezones in my model 2009-05-04 11:46:44 uh-huh 2009-05-04 11:46:58 this means, that in theory, everyone within your timezone + neighbour zones would be a suitable candidate for cooperation 2009-05-04 11:49:21 yeah 2009-05-04 11:50:04 granted, it means that a player has to be more proactive in seeking cooperation 2009-05-04 11:50:06 but that's cool 2009-05-04 11:50:22 I was going to ask about that :P 2009-05-04 11:50:37 the nice thing about galaxies is that it places a clear boundary 2009-05-04 11:50:47 when you click the button, you see 10-20 people that you should be cooperating with 2009-05-04 11:50:58 without that, many people may just simplanet it out 2009-05-04 11:51:07 and subsequently leave, because that shit is boring 2009-05-04 11:51:30 I do agree on that point, but that does happen right now as well 2009-05-04 11:51:48 so is nothing that can be used to counter my model in a way that its not worth it. 2009-05-04 11:52:09 I think the current approach has the advantage of having "auto contact" mechanisms, i.e. welcome mail and stuff like that 2009-05-04 11:52:29 this could, however, be replaced by ingame mechanics 2009-05-04 11:52:33 i.e. the mail you get on sign up 2009-05-04 11:52:50 maybe even introduce quests that can only be solved by cooperation 2009-05-04 11:52:55 oo 2009-05-04 11:53:20 there are already tutorial elements which point into cooperation direction, just go that road a step further 2009-05-04 11:53:52 if there'd be a trade market implemented you could have a quest where it says "sell x of any resource" or "buy x of any resource" 2009-05-04 11:54:06 "establish a trade route with one of your neighbours" 2009-05-04 11:54:40 one of the issues right now is that you can be useful in only one way towards your galaxy. once we manage to have multiple ways to usefulness the game gets more addictive and automatically enforces more cooperation 2009-05-04 11:57:04 I have to admit I wasn't sold on the idea of a trade market earlier either 2009-05-04 11:57:09 I don't really see how much it'd add 2009-05-04 11:57:17 why would I trade? for what? with whom? 2009-05-04 11:57:38 because I need some of resource X while I have to much of resource Y 2009-05-04 11:57:49 someone else might need Y and has too much of X 2009-05-04 11:57:56 would be just perfect to trade there 2009-05-04 12:01:57 imo that'd require an overhaul of the resource system as a whole tbh 2009-05-04 12:02:09 as the 2% of my income that I trade in the galfund is quite insignificant 2009-05-04 12:05:05 lets put this on hold for a bit :P Session Close: Mon May 20 12:06:00 2009 Session Start: Mon May 04 11:58:01 2009 Session Ident: #sphere_galaxy mz // Heartless // Appocomaster 2009-05-04 12:03:32 since I had both on you in pm, where to continue? :p 2009-05-04 12:03:38 :P 2009-05-04 12:03:43 I had both of you in pm as well /o\ 2009-05-04 12:03:47 idneed 2009-05-04 12:03:47 proper threesome 2009-05-04 12:03:49 *indeeed 2009-05-04 12:03:52 yeah 2009-05-04 12:04:00 and appoco needs a better spellchecker 2009-05-04 12:04:04 indeed 2009-05-04 12:04:15 well 2009-05-04 12:04:52 I just have enough issues with it :( 2009-05-04 12:05:15 understandable, it's a complete overhaul of the game. basically throwing away most of what is existing 2009-05-04 12:05:47 I agree that exile and disband are not the answer 2009-05-04 12:07:14 but I think galaxies offer enough support 2009-05-04 12:07:54 why? 2009-05-04 12:09:03 when you join you have a group of people, however artifical, there 2009-05-04 12:09:21 if you're willing to learn and get on irc, the galaxy probably educates more than the manual 2009-05-04 12:09:58 there is an issue with inactive planets 2009-05-04 12:10:21 there is a 'flow' of asteroids, and the smaller players are at the base and basically have to provide them 2009-05-04 12:10:39 as there's so few, they're generally picked on until alliance politics kick off 2009-05-04 12:11:18 in that respect, I almost want smallish bot planets replicating them to provide a wider 'base' for the asteroid flow 2009-05-04 12:11:23 the fact that there are so few tells me the current system is failing 2009-05-04 12:11:39 so few inactive planets? 2009-05-04 12:11:43 especially considering that there used to be quite a lot of them 2009-05-04 12:11:53 well, the game goes 2009-05-04 12:12:01 we lost about 65% of them in the last 15 rounds 2009-05-04 12:12:22 as a result, I see jgps that show 6 waves on planets with 200 roids 2009-05-04 12:12:23 sign up => be active => join alliance => attack regularly (say 3+ times a week) 2009-05-04 12:12:31 indeed 2009-05-04 12:12:34 or 2009-05-04 12:12:37 the issue is between sign up and be active 2009-05-04 12:12:40 sign up => not be active => exiled lots into c200 2009-05-04 12:12:48 => quit 2009-05-04 12:12:52 because in the game we're currently seeing, no one gets to the point where they WANT to be active 2009-05-04 12:13:38 they sign up -> dont understand it -> no one helps -> exiled before they get to like it -> quit 2009-05-04 12:14:05 and how will they understand it if they sign up and get dumped in the universe and lots of incomings? 2009-05-04 12:14:09 and no one to even talk to 2009-05-04 12:14:26 quests at least drive them on to the forums 2009-05-04 12:15:02 which, let's face it, are rarely used 2009-05-04 12:15:08 it's a start! 2009-05-04 12:15:12 my gal forum is empty 2009-05-04 12:15:22 the next downside of your argumentation is the requirement of IRC for communication 2009-05-04 12:15:43 we do have simple ingame mechanics which could work, but most galaxies refrain from using them because they don't suit their needs 2009-05-04 12:16:09 so its somewhat risky to rely on the existing things 2009-05-04 12:16:14 there's 845 threads in total 2009-05-04 12:16:35 how many of them with more than one reply? 2009-05-04 12:17:48 anyway, there's still the issue that you are forced into a group of people which might not want to cooperate with you, or which don't know how to 2009-05-04 12:17:51 3678 posts total 2009-05-04 12:17:54 keep in mind people in different timezones etc 2009-05-04 12:17:58 yes 2009-05-04 12:18:08 but the alternate is not having anyone 2009-05-04 12:18:09 interesting. less than 5 posts per thread 2009-05-04 12:18:21 this is for galaxy forums :p 2009-05-04 12:18:43 alliance forums is 785/2058 2009-05-04 12:18:46 no, the alternate is to tell people: "here, you can cooperate with everyone within this area, because they are considered as nearby from a travel time point of view, choose with whom you want to play by yourself" 2009-05-04 12:19:05 how? 2009-05-04 12:19:10 how do they meet people? 2009-05-04 12:19:13 how do they talk? 2009-05-04 12:19:17 it removes the element of rejection 2009-05-04 12:19:18 how do they get support from defence etc 2009-05-04 12:19:26 it removes the element of support 2009-05-04 12:20:26 the quest/tutorial system can play a bigger role here 2009-05-04 12:20:45 'get defence from someone who is 6 or less hours away from you' 2009-05-04 12:20:46 do you know how hard that is to maintain? 2009-05-04 12:20:52 how/ 2009-05-04 12:20:56 how are they going to do that? 2009-05-04 12:20:59 mail random planets? 2009-05-04 12:21:03 yeah 2009-05-04 12:21:05 "hi, could you send me defence please?" 2009-05-04 12:21:05 exactly like that 2009-05-04 12:21:14 would *ANYONE* respond to that? 2009-05-04 12:21:16 how do you think real world contacts establish 2009-05-04 12:21:26 certainly not by sitting at home and waiting for your neighbours to phone you up 2009-05-04 12:21:37 you go out to the pub, to the disco, to somewhere and meet people 2009-05-04 12:21:48 you have to be pro-active on that side 2009-05-04 12:21:56