Getting away from the traditional turns based system

[Captain Black]

Freon22 in another thread mentioned this:-


I would like to see ideas for turning away from the old "Turn Base" game. But it is a start I guess, to a more time playing game.

I have been playing with the idea of fuel cells for ships. If you have the money you can refill them if not they will regenerate over time. But the idea will not work with how maps are done in the game now.

New players would get a credit for x amount of fuel cells where vets have to buy or wait for the normal time.

It also follows along the lines of ship classes. Different ships have different amounts of fuel cells

I like this idea as I think each playing 'period' for this game is far too short. I only get about 30 mins of turns every 2 days or so which is quite 'boring' from the noob perspective and given the attention span of folks nowadays, they would play for a couple of weeks but because they can not play for hours a day every day, they get bored and look elsewhere to find something to play instead and then don't come back as they are hooked onto something else. Could this be one reason why the player base is not growing? But, being the new guy I am still unsure of SMR's dynamics.

Why would this idea not work with how the maps are now?

What happens if there are no limits to turns anyway and you can play for as long as you want?

You could even have it set up so that everything you do uses fuel, like cloaking, firing weapons, using the jump drive. In the case of planet ops, you could add another ship type for refulling ships while on the go rather than having to go back to fed space or wherever.

[buttsack]

The only problem with this, with the current way that SMR is played, is that an opping fleet would be able to do TONS of damage in a single OP if all they had was extra cash. I'm talking, they'd be able to kill 4000 scans in 10 sectors, and bust 2-3 70's and maybe even take on a parked fleet, heck kill their port too... the only restraint is time on the individual OPers.... and if they feel like sitting and Planetbusting for 3-4 hours then they can do some amazing things... they could completely ruin an alliance in a matter of 3-4 hours.

Because of this, unlimited turns or the ability to buy unlimited amounts of fuel cells would kill the game, planet galaxies would mean far, far less, and a new style of game would emerge... or it would have to be adjusted so that an OP could be limited in how much damage it can do in a single day... that's the main concern. But it would be awesome for traders to have unlimited turns to trade, and hunters unlimited turns to hunt.. man that would be so much fun.. I'd play for hours.... hunting of course.

[Harry Krishna]

I think it's a decent idea worth serious consideration.

The fact is that people do like to play for longer than the 1/2 hour or hour that their turns allow. If they're lucky they fall in with a group of people in an alliance that makes it fun to hang out in chat with outside the boundary of the number of turns your ship earns in 24 hours. If not, I agree it would be boring and not worth the time.

The problem with breaking out of the turn based system is just what Buttsack says. It would require a rework of the entire planetary, port, and economic systems to accommodate for unlimited movement.

[Captain Black]

would it work any better if fuel cells were like trade goods? so an opping fleet would have to stock pile loads to be able to pull off a planet bust etc or possibly make weapons use ammunition which also has to be purchased and stockpiled?

or maybe even a limit to how many times a ship can be fully refuelled in x amount of hours or how many times a weapon can be fired before it needs to be *maintained* and unable to be used for a period of time?

this would force a hunter to be more stragegic in his hunting, picking out only the targets he wants to have a crack at and not sit there all day podding all and sundry.

I don't really know, just chucking em out there.

[Kahless_]

Could really make trading unbalanced aswell. 1 person could continuously trade, and the level system would need to be redefined aswell (We would have spooky's everywhere).

Maybe an ammendment would be to have an multi-faceted turn system. Tieing in with the idea of having points for skills (Trading, opping, hunting whatever), you could get X number of "Opping turns". i.e a limit to how many attacks you can be involved in, "Trading turns" to limit how many trades you can make in a day, "Hunting turns" limiting how many things you can shoot at in a day.

If you add points to your hunting skills then you get more hunting turns. (same for trading and opping obviously) Maybe it could even just be a turn system dependant on the type of ship your in.

If your a specialist hunter, you get in your DC, and say you have points added to your turns, maybe you get your 500 base turns+extra turns.

In the end though, this game is designed to be a turn based game. If we completely get rid of turns then we give the advantage to the person who can spend the most time online. One of the aims of thia game (and SMR 1.5) is to make it so that time online can be rewarded, but it cant be the #1 factor in success.

Would hate for SMR to turn into WoW(never actually played the game, but just my perception) where the more time you spend online, the better you get and the more advantage you have over players who can only play like 30mins a day.

So i would think the sensible comprimise is to make the turn system more involved, not to get rid of it.
(some people do make 200 turns last all day when they want to hehe, imagine how scary they would be with unlimited turns. )

[Captain Black]

I agree, that it's certainly not beneficial nor was it my intention to allow people to spend all day gaining the advantage. what I would like to see though is someone being able to actually play the game for at least a couple of hours a day constantly doing stuff. Whether it be hunting, trading etc.

however a good things is that, you are still bound by how much trading you are doing by the current economics. If your route runs out of goods, it's your choice wether to call it a day or move onto another, possibly more dangerous, route in another galaxy.

This other route is probably used by other traders / alliances, so in effect you end up with a trade war which could force alliances to escort their online traders in case a 'poacher' appears.

[Freon22]

Universe is too small but put it with the expanding universe idea and it becomes a little more doable.

Downside of fuel cells
It would be hard to balance because the game is not only based on turns it is also based on teamwork. Each player within a team is working at one part for the good of the team. So one solo player could if he wanted to do an overnighter could single mine every galaxy. This player could drain every trade route. This player could hunt every trader online knowing they have fuel cells also and will be online trading for more then 10 ? 20 minutes. This player could if he had the money for ship replacements attack level 9 ports and take them down a few levels. And why would he not have the money all he has to do is trade 6 to 7 hours straight. I could go on and on with the downside of fuel cells.

Upside of fuel cells
Everything you do from firing a weapon to cloaking a ship would use fuel. So a cloaked ship would not be able to cloak in a sector and log off for days at a time. Because his ship would be using fuel at a faster rate then it can regenerate it. Over a period of time his ship would run out of fuel and he would become uncloaked. It would add a new element to fighting because not only do you have to watch your shields but now you have to watch your fuel also. New players would be able to play longer and would have the playing time to learn the game. It would become easier to recovery from a pod. Solo players would be able to do more and teams would be able to do far more then they can now. The leader of an alliance would not have to tell everyone to sit and save turns for an Op. I could also go on and on with the upsides of fuel cells.

The biggest problem with the fuel cells idea is now to balance it so that the players that wants to play for 4 to 10 or 12 hours straight are not over powered. If you based the average playing time of the average player to 1 or 2 hour per day. You could adjust aspects of the game that does not exist now like a random chance of ship malfunctions that increase with each hour you play. These malfunctions could range from simple things that would leave you stranded in the sector for x amount of time. To major malfunctions that would cost money and down time to repair. Even with this it would be a big job to balance.

[Puredeath]

Instead of fuel cells or what not, what about this:

To attack a planet, you are required to go into siege mode. This will make you have to invest a certian amount of capital for the seige specific guns, ships etc., This would make a fleet of siege ships vulnerable to attack, since they have seige guns, and not PVP guns

Trading and hunting should be allowed to happen freely, besides, the ports only carry so much goods, and would require another traderr to manipulate the local ports to make it regain faster.

For forces, make something similar to seige. Make the clearing have to occur to a certian shiptype, and you are not able to change ships for a certian amount of time. That should stop all out clearing, and again, guns are only good against forces. This will be tricky, as the forces are there to prevent unwanted intruders, but instead of having the mines detonate, make it so that they cannot pass that sector unitl it is cleared, costs a turn to enter, but you cannot go beyond that, and have to exit your green. Thus, PVP, traders and seigers cannot pass the mines, and must have clearers.

The amount of coordination, and with the limit to player alliances, should balance out what amount of damage could be done.

My 2 cents.


PD

[DarthNihilus]

I asked Lotus and JJ and a few of the others this question last game and now Im asking you all now.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY Back when SMR was in its infancy back when all the die hard vets first found this game way back when 56K was top of the line. How long did it take for you all to burn through 400 turns ( a perfect 1.0 game). Lotus said he remembers it took a bit of time. JJ said the same maybe 2 or three hours of constant moving and trading. I'm thinking maybe it was less than 2 hours maybe more like a hour but still thats alot of time to be doing something.

Today with a dsl or any other high speed connection you can blow 400 turns in 5-15 minutes. When I can trade safely and not have to worry about a hunter I can deplete a route and still have 50 turns left in about 15 minutes on my office connection and almost dang near 5 minutes on my smr laptop if there isnt much in game activity going on.

When did the game take a dive in players and fun? Could it be when everyone and their grandmother started getting a highspeed connections for 10-45 dollars depending on where you live and services available in your area.

I think we should really look for a new way to do turns. Someone suggested have trading turns and hunting turns and action turns and non action turns.

I like that idea.

You can go out and trade your route as soon as you run out of trading turns then you cant trade for a 24 hour period. But you could still hunt for a bit or just explore or mine (I would group the turns as Offensive Action Turns and Non offensive action turns and non action turns (basically movement)).

Moving a sector takes away from your non action turns. Anything doing with ports takes away from trading turns (maybe even raiding and when a person usees turns for raiding then he recieves less turns the next day becuase face it ports are not going to want to trade with a pirate he would have to use his less trading turns to actually trade to be able to re gain his original turn amounts) Turn based games where great in the days of the baud but when we can download a 100 meg file in 10 to 20 minutes thats alot of speed increase compared to 5 to 6 hours only 5 years ago.

[JettJackson]

Overpowered toward large alliances

rejected