Slowing down the game and some balancing

[Infinity]

Baalz, Jett, Page and I have had several discussions on what to do to slow down game progress from the beginning of a round which would, hopefully, lead to more balanced game. This thread is supposed to be a reminder on changes that should be done.

Game length should be time to build planets + 2-3 weeks. Lander needs 1803 hours, which is ~75 days (2 and a half months) if planet population is bellow 200 mils. This brings us to round length of little over 3 months (13-14 weeks?). So far it has been proven that experience, 20 ship sizes and vast amounts of alien knowledge can be obtained with aggressive game play in very short time, so suggestions are following:

-> starting relations with all races should be set to -500 (this is a must)
-> total amount of GHP needed for 20 ship sizes to be moved to 60-65k, but it should be done so that first 15 ship sizes are only slightly moved up, while last 5 should take more time (I can elaborate on reasons to do it this way)
-> alien knowledge needed for weapons to be moved to 900 for lvl4 and 1350-1400 for lvl5 weapons
-> GHP needed for better types of mining drones should be higher as well (I don't know the current conditions, so I can't suggest the exact numbers)
-> as much as trading offers on high multiplier ports are rare, I'd like to see experience multiplier capped at 50-60


Other balancing issues that need addressing:

-> asteroids need expiry time, it doesn't have to be a fixed time interval but a random number of days, between say... 3-4 and 10
-> alien weapon's accuracy should be lowered to 37% and 42%, they're still vastly overpowered
-> probability of finding ancient goods when excavating should drop with past repairs, not too much, but for few percent
-> damage done to forces should drop with past repairs (far slower than when shooting ships tho)
-> ... (there was more I believe)

[JettJackson]

2 things

1. neutral id leave at 0 relations cus after 500 it moves by 1 relation

2. asteroids should have expire time if and only if new ones show up after the old ones expire or else there wont be asteroids

[Infinity]

1. neutral id leave at 0 relations cus after 500 it moves by 1 relation

Was always like this, then again, good to remind, so we're not at war with neutrals, who ever they are.

2. asteroids should have expire time if and only if new ones show up after the old ones expire or else there wont be asteroids

How else?

[Baalzamon]

I was going to make a post like this, but you're way better at writing things out in an organized manor then I am...thanks kiky!

Also...Accuracy. We need to do some work with this in beta a bit after the new round starts, JJ had a couple good ideas about fixing the problem of lvl 5s with >100 accuracy.

And Stats. There was some discussion between Kiky And JJ And I and we have a good system. Hopefully next round we'll have basic stat recording to work with numbers, and assuming all goes as planned, the round after next will have full out stats

[Kahless_]

Key to slowing things down is making things take more SC. Moving and mining are the 2 aspects which seem to be the most out of balance (a trade can take 2-5, shooting takes plenty too). Mining should be similar to both of these actions and moving needs to cost more than .1/.2 .

[Infinity]

How about just changing the xp and profit formulas so one can trade less?

This can be tweaked depending on the size of the player base and the map.

[Infinity]

-> total amount of GHP needed for 20 ship sizes to be moved to 60-65k, but it should be done so that first 15 ship sizes are only slightly moved up, while last 5 should take more time (I can elaborate on reasons to do it this way)

I've re-done the formula::

$max_size = round((-0.00000042 * $ghp * $ghp + .0556 * $ghp + 121.8) / 100) * 100;

This gives following::

1400 ship size = ~28030 GHP (on the current system 1500 was at ~26000)

2000 ship size = ~60670 GHP (current system - ~42000)

Basically, 14-15 ship sizes is what many players do have and it's not much further than it was, while last 6 ups are spread over next 30k GHP.

[Dilbert]

How about going back to basics, before free maps, ppl had to donate money and then buy the maps at bars, while not a brilliant idea i suppose it got cash to smr, before that maps were always unknown and you had to go discovering. Even with an organised allaince working together it would take at least a week to get full maps, which would be less time now due to sc being greater than turns but it would still be a good thing to bring back imo.u

[Page]

There is currently no way of telling what has/hasn't been explored by a player, simply exploring hasn't been implemented..

[Infinity]

Which is too bad, cause alliance can't keep their route hidden once made. Just have this in mind for future Page.