A big change

[Kahless_]

So basically, i've been talking to a few people, i guess from a very select group, namely iggy and erke about why they are quitting. Biggest issue we have is SC. The problem being the unlimited nature of it. And even fundamentally how it works.

The gist of our discussions were that we like the concept of Ship Condition, but think it needs to be linked closer to a turn based system to achieve balance. The infiniteness of the current SC system is killing the game. The fact that turn management has gone out of the game has removed 1 important aspect of strategy in the game.

There really seems to be this misconception in this developement group that "fun" is being able to play forever, but i really want to counter that with the idea that having to strategize about how you use your turns makes the game fun, cause without strategy, what does this game offer?


So,
[22:46] <kah> you know how i imagined SC? you got a limit fo 500ish for the day...then everything to do with the size of your ship determines how quickly you use it
[22:46] <kah> if you have a big ship, say a big raider, every sector takes more to move than a little theif
[22:46] <kah> so you use .5 for big ship to move a sector, .1 for theif maybe
[22:46] <kah> then you have your holds
[22:47] <kah> 1000 holds takes more to load than 100 holds
[22:47] <kah> then guns
[22:47] <kah> 10 low power guns takes less SC to fire than 10 high power guns
[22:47] <kah> similarly, 5 guns takes less than 10 guns


Now, that suggestion involves a major major major change in coding, which is alot to ask of page, probably too much , but its a wish for what i think would have been a great way for the game to go..and i still hope it could go that way..

BUT Failing that, i think there atleast needs to be some kinda immediate change..

We have the limit of when a ship becomes un-viable for trading/shooting etc..I(and others) really think that there needs to be another cap after this at which point you can't buy any more SC...

I cant remember what the formula is for the diminishing returns, its not really important to know exact numbers. But i would propose the cap comes at 150% of the diminishing returns number that renders your ineffective in trading/shooting..So you get half as many turns as you have used so far to then go and do some other things, but you eventually run out.

Thoughts?

[canff]

people quit all the time...the game is changeing not everyone will like it... can't make a game that everyone likes...

[Edgecrusher]

Well, Canff, I think that's a rather general comment we can't do anything with.

As to SC: I have been raising the same objections, as well as many others. But the fact is that reverting to a turn-based system will require a lot of work. With the fact that much of the game hasn't even been implemented yet, it wold take too much work. It's not only the implementing, it would also destroy all our efforts to balance things out.
Therefore, as much as I'd like to go back to turns, I think it's more practical of a way to tweak sc. Some of your suggestions have been mentioned before, by me and others. In addition, things such as making excavating repair history dependent will matter a bit, as will the doubling of movement cost. But as you say, that doesn't change anything fundamentally. Nothing we can do, I'm afraid, except keep coming with suggestions.

[Kahless_]

Well canff, yes, people quit all the time. And yes, we can't make a game that everyone will like..

But am i the only one who is concerned that the number of people who quit is getting higher than the number of people that are joining?

We can go on thinking everything is fine, but well, i dunno. I look at the reasons we have blamed in the past for a lack of players. Namely bugs and lag in previous rounds.

Now the game is honestly as buggy(or as "not buggy") now as old SMR was in its prime, its faster than old SMR. Yet old SMR had a decent player base. New SMR doesn't. Tells me there is something else at play than just bugs and lag.

And edge, like i said, i know that this is probably a way too major change. But i don't think the repair cap being added to current system is too much of a change. We halved alliance cap "just to see what happens", so i kinda look at this the same way..

[Infinity]

Well, from what I've talked to Erke two nights ago, I realized he believes that limited movement was the exact thing that people hated about SMR and that he liked the SC as it is, including being able to spend hours in doing something in the game. Hence, why I find weird that you mention Erke and unlimited moving as a bad thing in the same sentence. Now, since the guy is gonna get a hickup of us talking about what he said and what he thinks, I'm gonna stop now

Just as Edge said, game was put online in a horrible state March this year. Imbalances were HUGE, from round to round we try to balance things out, which mostly cannot be achieved by making some huge changes all of a sudden but ironing out one tiny thing at a time. Every round shows an anomaly in some other place and some things take a whole round or at least a month of game play to be spotted in their full effect. Process is slow and painful, but we will get there, I'm sure about it.

Thing with movement cost increased, I did some calculations about it, posted it on the other thread, but we actually can't know for sure what would the exact impact to each aspect of the game be. It just takes time. Like with any other change we agree on.

What has brought a great push in the right direction are new people in the beta team, that are all good at the game, have will to brainstorm and have lots of ideas, and even that has only happened recently.

Kah cut in, gotta add something.

But i don't think the repair cap being added to current system is too much of a change.

There are few changes that may push people away from repairing to insane amounts of repair history::

# Make repairing cost dependent on ship speed.
# Money now diminishes as quickly as exp. (note by Inf. - it was twice slower, and it never reached 0)
# Drop minimum money from trade to 0% from 25%
# Double movement cost. (0.1 to 0.2)
# Change 25% chance for move to cost 0SC to 15% chance to add/subtract 0.1SC from move cost.

(from Changelog:: http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php ... &sk=t&sd=a )

This means that trading for money only after there's not much xp won't exist anymore, as traders simply won't be getting money. Also, they will have to make a choice between trading for cash and trading for xp, and think about which route is traded first and which the last. Repairs on a PSF will be almost two times more expensive than on an IST, which will set limit on how much you can excavate after that or how long you can buy and dump goods to raise neutral relations (usual things you do in a day or two if you have cash to pay for repairs). With big birds, there were no actually problems, sure you could bring a guy to a fleet fight that's high on repairs to be a cannon fodder, but this way he only has fun while the game balance doesn't really suffer too much.

So let's just see what happens with these changes in, as I mentioned above, it takes time to see their actual effect.

[Kahless_]

Yea. All those changes are great, But, still leaves in more aspects which should be limited. Building, stocking, mining and excavating are all still free from limitation. Which still doesn't feel right. Doesnt fit into the role playing side of things if a player can trade then build, mine and excavate all in the same day.

[Infinity]

What SC has taken out are roles of planet builders/stockers, that I agree on. Excavating is going to suffer these changes the most, for repair money cost, and doubled movement cost (excavating is mostly movement, searching for asteroids, donating... sometimes you have no choice but to walk 20-30 sectors to donate goods). Mining... cost of forces went up, 2.5 times for mines, cash going down... I'm not sure yet how exactly it's going to look like, but I am sure its going to be tougher than this round, much tougher.

Your suggestion stands as a very valid one, I'm not throwing it away (if you've by any chance gotten that impression).