Balanced Scale Game

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XDemonX
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Balanced Scale Game

Post by XDemonX »

Draelock's Balanced Scales Game

This idea is spawned from Draelock's idea.
Hello Page. I am Draelock . I used to play Space Merchant waay back During the time of the first 4 or 5 rounds or so. I have come here to play but find that the current round is very slanted and not much a competition . It just deosnt seem like it would be appealing to new players. They would either be grabbed by a winnning alliance and unbalance it more or witness stompings and think the game one sided and beleive there is no way to survive to become good at the game and get into the groove. I would like to pitch you the idea of a randomized start to the next round. Perhaps Premaking , (but no prenaming) 5 alliances and spreeading the player base randomly upon trader creation among them and locking them into teams or something to that effect? They could then be allowed to recruit new players ( I have been told they are reffered to as "Italics) as they see fit and perhaps even then limiting/timeunlocking more player slots per alliance to allow for even distribution ? Perhaps allow Inactive or Quit, Italics to be dropped making room for Italic replacements? The entire goal being to create a diversified playing field thah presents a more chaotic or option oreiented environment for newcomers whom I bet pop in on occasion and make it no farther than 100 turns and a few glances at the scoreboards. Thank you for taking the time to hear an old returning player out :) Draelock - Matthew"
The idea of this game as Draelock stated, is for things to be balanced.

How will this work?
We will try this with 3 alliances. There will be 2 alliances that are decided by a council (admins and maybe a select few other players). The whole idea is to make it as balanced as possible. There will be early registration before turns are given similar to that of a draft round. This is for council members to have time to figure out who should go where.

Who gets to lead?
Volunteers will be taken, and council will pick from those volunteers. A admin is not allowed to be on council.

Other game variables:
Map will be symmetrical. 2 planet galaxies. 4-5 planets in each galaxy. Uno will be decently far from planet gals. Thinking 14+ from closest planet. CA can be 7+ from closest planet.

This is to provide more strategy involved in busting as in, it will be extremely difficult to take more than 1 planet per op. Most likely will NEED clearing ops before a actual op. This is to make planets safer to land on. THERE WILL BE NO FED LOCATIONS. "Wait what?. There will be 2 pre-built planets (level 40 or so). There rest will be level 0 start. The level 0 planets are inhabitable with random timers on when they become habitable. I don't want alliances to have too much of a problem building or finding a route. Want this game to be more about combat then the struggle of trying to get money.

Here is where things get interesting:
HQ's will be located in the middle of Neutral galaxy in a block like so:

Image

This is almost like a "town square" so weapons, ships and THE ONLY BANKS are located here. The block is so it is nearly impossible to mine in and control but there will be a lot of action here for hunters. Placing the only banks here inputs more strategy into the game. When you op, you're going to have to plan to bring enough money so you don't waste turns running all the way to the town square to grab more money. Also, planets will be more juicy to go after because maybe a alliance will decide to have people use planets as banks. There is a lot of fun strategy that can be involved with this.


Max Level Planet: 70
Force Time: 2hr per Mine Neutral/4hr per mine galaxy
Game Speed: 1.5
Game Length: 2 months (Unless one alliance owns all planets)
Ports in Pgal: 5, one on each planet. Level 1-5 random if possible
Port Density In Neutral: Fairly low.

Image

Other Alternate Changes:

Alignment Changes:

(1)
>=+300 gives you a dark green name color
>=+450 gives you a white name color(black outline)
<=-450 gives you a black name color(white outline)
<=-300 gives you a dark red name color

(2)
Shooting a port gives you +/- 1 alignment per shot.

(3)
Having +/- 450 gives you access to a new ship. This can be expanded to a ship depending on race as well if this is popular, but for now we will introduce 2 new ships to test.

(4)
Federal Destroyer
Cost: 46,275,532
Speed: 6tph
HP: 7
Shields: 825
Armor: 525
Combat Drones: 120
Mines: 0
Scouts: 0
Hardware Supported: Jump, Scanner, Drone Scrambler
Class: Raider
Death Penalty: -150 alignment change.
+50,000,000 bounty awarded for claim from underground (to person who killed you)

(5)
Death Dealer
Cost: 32,242,543
Speed: 8
HP: 6
Shields: 800
Armor: 400
Combat Drones: 100
Mines: 125
Scouts: 25
Hardware Supported: Cloak, Scanner
Class: Hunter/Miner
Death Penalty: +150 alignment change.
+50,000,000 bounty awarded for claim from government


(*1)
One of the factors SMR is missing is a sense of excitement and accomplishment. A cosmetic effect is not much and does not unbalance but the game but makes it fun. I personally would go for this alignment just for the cool colors.

(*2)
It is currently wayy too difficult to change your alignment. This will also promote more port raiding. Shooting a port causes a news event, which will attract enemy hunters towards you which will cause more action in the game.

(*3)
This plays off of (1) gives you more benefit to try to change your alignment.

(*4)
Essentially, this thing is a beefed up, slower Fury. This ship will be exciting to own but it is quite pricey at a 46m price. You may only see a couple of these per round but owning one will be quite the sense of accomplishment. I added a new twist to owning them. Some penalties to dying. My thinking behind this is owning one is a special privledge giving to you by your government they do not want to see it get blown up. The -150 alignment change is so once you get one, you cannot keep dying in it and immediately get it again. This will make it more fun to own and possibly even more fun for another person to pod it knowing they got rid of it. Also introduced a bounty that is placed on you immediately after purchasing the ship. This is to make it more of a swing you die. Not only are you losing a 46m+ ship but you are giving the other team 50m as well. Maybe your alliance leader won't let you have one! Switching out of this ship (into another ship) does not effect your alignment.

(*5)
Made this like the old Death Cruiser, but made it slower and gave it more fire power.

Combat:

(1)
Experience Gains/Losses

Port Attacking:
Old: Port Damage = Round(TotalDamage / 20)
New: Port Damage = Round(TotalDamage / 8)
Planet Attacking:
Old: Planet Damage = Round(TotalDamage / 20)
New: Planet Damage = Round(TotalDamage / 1)
Planet Dying:
Old: Planet % = 27 - PlanetLevel/10
New: Planet % = 14 - PlanetLevel/10
Last edited by XDemonX on Fri Dec 06, 2013 6:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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silverx2
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Re: Balanced Scale Game

Post by silverx2 »

I just want to state the obvious issues here that may make this difficult(although i would play this round as it currently stands)

1.) cliques. SMr has certain groups of people that like to play with each other, and only will play with each other. if this random thing happens they will either not play or create second accounts and "get recruited" to the team their friends are on, causing lopsided teams. Picking leaders doesnt work. Not everyone likes everyone. and if someone gets randomly put with someone they dont like they wont play/complain.

2.) one giant neutral galaxy means 2 giant mine fields that make the game essentially one giant turtle fest.

3.) prebuilt planets, people like building them, some people only play so that can build planets.

4.) Shooting fish in a barrel one neutral galaxy means hunters will have a much easier time of knowing where traders are trading, and since there are no fed sectors will be able to easily know where traders are "running" to. Like the last draft round this will make it so hunters with lots of time can stay on 24/7 and use minimal turns to basically remove any trading from the game.

5.) we should be encouraging people to op more often, and as a result defend more often, havign the CA's at a minimum distance of 15 sectors from the closest planet makes that nearly impossible, 4 hours of downtime for each shot on a planet seems excessive.
i killed orca.
Incognito
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Re: Balanced Scale Game

Post by Incognito »

Most of my comments were already made in IRC, but some things I'd like to see changed (in no particular order):

- Fed Destroyer def: from 675/675 to 825/525 to make it more useful at raiding.

- Port exp: damage/10

- Planet exp: damage/2

-Alignment from ports: As long as it is only the trigger who has the align change, I think it's fine.

Now for the questions:
1. Would the leaders be chosen before or after between are thrown into alliances?
2. What size is the neutral?
3. Do you mean 2 lvl 40 rocks per alliance or 2 lvl 40 rocks in the game total at the start?


I think that's all I have for now. More to come.
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XDemonX
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Re: Balanced Scale Game

Post by XDemonX »

Bump. Would like to see this happen next game. Did some searches and topics already addressed in this thread are being discussed again on new posts via myself and lotus.

Issues that need to be addressed:
1) Neutral size / tunneling
2) Planet gal size/tunneling and uno/ca placement (possibly use a similar idea to this game's depending on how people liked it.
3) Are the small coding changes required possible to have Astax/Page spend a little time to make the changes
4) Are the new ships or similar alignment built ships feasible?
5) Picture I posted of "Town" layout is just an example. I would like to reduce the number of banks so using the bank will be more of a strategy and possibly using the planet as a bank will be more widely used.

To expand on point "4" more, I would really like to have something to work towards and I think other people feel the same. Something as small as having a unique ship will give people more motivation to try new things.
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Aendar
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Re: Balanced Scale Game

Post by Aendar »

1) no comment
2) i'll quote what was aid in 2nd post by SilverX2
2.) one giant neutral galaxy means 2 giant mine fields that make the game essentially one giant turtle fest.
3) no comment
4) i like the ships and alignments idea
5) I dont like the example of the map. This benefits hunters greatly and will stop trading unless you as an alliance are able AND maintain a minefield inside a pgal you control. And as we have seen in this draft, as soon as one alliance gets the upperhand financially, you're screwed.
Rosen
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Re: Balanced Scale Game

Post by Rosen »

I'm confused. Three alliances but only two of them will ever be able to log off safely?
adam_phg
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Re: Balanced Scale Game

Post by adam_phg »

Think we should try one where there isn't planet galaxies... Just have a big ass tunnely neutral w planets strewn throughout... Instead of defining territories, let an alliance define why they can handle...
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Astax
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Re: Balanced Scale Game

Post by Astax »

adam_phg wrote:Think we should try one where there isn't planet galaxies... Just have a big ass tunnely neutral w planets strewn throughout... Instead of defining territories, let an alliance define why they can handle...
That sounds like Chaos game, happens from time to time. Can be fun. I really like it personally. Most people whine however.
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