Proteus Test Game

Right now it was just counting combat, but last night I made it count ship casualties.

Then you will get a weapon skill bonus where Math.floor(Math.log(exp) * Math.LOG10E)

So 10 will be +1 ws, 100 will be +2 ws, 1000 will be +3 ws, 10000 will be +4 ws.

I’m thinking a small dot on the carrier icon for each level.

Is weapons skill bonus currently enabled?

Thats Great, it makes the Carriers more valueable.
I like the tactical implications:sunglasses:

Are you sure it would not be better to start +1 on 100 or 200 because the first battle might be with over 100 ships which would mean you would get 2 ranks up at the start, that is just because of fast ship production.

Could consider it for sure.

Not yet, I only got halfway through.

I think I don’t like the new scanning where you can’t see the stars of the other players.

I don’t like that it’s much harder to see and enjoy “the story” of what is going on in the rest of the map.

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I feel where Jay’s coming from. The idea is nice, and in the beginning it’s paranoia heaven, yet gets kind of… lonely, stifling, even.

Maybe have it so that you automatically see every star of a player once coming into contact with their first scanned star you encounter? That way you’d have a clear view of your immediate neighbors, while the other empires are still a mystery. A compromise, if you will.

I don’t agree. It forces you to study the Intel, and talk to other players, to infer what’s going on

I assume you are talking about the partially dark Galaxy. The + 3 scanning blackout is a different topic, that Z addresses.

What about of just reducing the precision of what you can see based on the difference in scanning against your opponent?

For example, a star has 6432 ships:

  • he is 3+ scanning than you - bad precision: lots of ships
  • he is 2+ scanning than you - medium precision: 6K ships
  • he is 1+ scanning than you - high precision: 6432 ships
  • same scanning - very high precision: 6432 ships in three carriers, you also can see how many in each carrier, the experience of the star and the carriers

I think the “Heroes of Might and Magic 2” (and 3) had sometHing like that (a few, a lot, a horde, then you were able to see the exact number).

I agree and disagree… I like that it is different and adds a new complexity to the game but for the same reasons I also did not enjoy not knowing what was going on it makes making longer term strategic decisions extremely difficult… it is a big part of strategy knowing who to attack first, not knowing means its mostly luck.

However I would enjoy playing it like that though maybe if it was expanded upon… like if there was random moments of Intel.

Maybe every tick you have a small chance to gather “Intel” on a star that is not in scanning range, and you are able to see who owns that star. However if the star was captured by someone else it would not show the update unless you got Intel on it again.

Or maybe you could get Intel on groups of stars in a certain radius, so the random star reveal could reveal stars within a 3ly radius or a 4ly radius or 5ly radius.

To expand on it further maybe you could even upgrade the radius of the random intel by levelling up your scanning level and scanning could make you immune to intel if 3+ levels higher.

Though you would only see who controls the star and nothing else, if the control of the star changes maybe it would just go “neutral” colours again.

I also very much like Zoquete’s idea of having precision based scanning on stars.

About the other techs…

Maybe could we start with an entire level bonus if we choose superior in that skill?? So if you choose superior scanning you get cheaper scanning but also start with +1 scanning? same for the other techs. I guess it would expand on the empire ability’s adds new strategy’s for the early game since +1 tech only matters for the early game. It will make people think more about what they want there empire bonus to be because everyone is just going to choose banking, but if you start with +1 you could start with 4 experimenting, or start with 4 manufacturing and get way more ships, or weapons or whatever. Even you could start with level 4 scanning would be very good.

Also if that happened you could force start people with -1 of there inferior tech which will really get poeple thinking about what to use, because if you start with -1 hyperspace that is very bad, you will not get a good expansion as everyone else, start with -1 scanning… bad… I suppose it would even things out?? because it would be bad to choose any tech as inferior but thats why you get +1 on your superior tech.

Also you would not want to choose scanning as your inferior tech and get -1 scanning at the start while your neighbour gets superior scanning for +1 scanning and cheaper scanning lol… that means your neighbour only needs 1 more scanning level to become invisible on you, so it would make that decision of what to make your empire so much harder instead of it just being like… well i am going to put banking as my superior tech and hyperspace as my inferior tech and let that be that…

Start with -1 hyperspace and risk opponent start with +1 hyperspace? wouldnt want to…

On one hand I want Proteus to be new and Interesting for Veteran players, but I want it to be easy to learn and welcoming to new players as well.

One thing I’ll add is a drop down in the trade section that says, send this player enough cash for them to send me back level x tech.

I’m pretty sure I want some randomness in the price of technologies as well. Some small chance that a level will be cheaper or more expenses than normal. Good players will identify when I tech is good value and switch to it at the right time.

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Would the research cost get randomized every tick? or would it just be randomized when the current level of tech is finished and the next level of that tech gets random?

If you want it to be easy for new players does that mean you are going to not hide players stars when not scanned?

You could do a lot with the Intel thing… I only pointed out a few things that could be made possible with it.

You could expand on scanning even further and say that everything 1ly out of the radius of your scanning range could have all movements revealed however not perfectly revealed… you would not be able to see where the carrier is exactly, or how many ships, or who owns the carrier, or how long it will take to get where its going.

All you would see is a black line with grey outline, kind of following the stealthed out colour theme of the neutral stars, which would indicate there is movement either leaving that star or going to that star when the star is 1ly out of your scanning range.

If the star happens to already be in your scanning range, you would get an early warning that your being attacked from a fair distance away before the carrier actually arrives in your scanning range, however if carriers can make jumps far enough to completely evade that +1ly movement detection its likely scanning could already see that far anyway, due to scanning will likely be more than hyperspace level for everyone.

So I would not see any major balance changes, it would give new players an early warning at the start of these proteus games if they dont know how to plan which stars they can expand to safely. Because, scanning level 3 naturally scans 1ly less than hyperspace 3 can jump to if I am right?? so there’s always that possibility that you can jump to a star that is not scanned even if you have the same scanning level as your hyperspace.

So it would fill that gap with this movement detection, if the star is +1ly out of your scanning if you have the same hyperspace range as scanning the chance is you can jump to that star, but you would see a stealthed out waypoint indication someone is nearby and already travelling there. The only way you could determine exactly where carriers are from that earlier than normal, is if you already had the star for awhile and you check every hour for these way points to appear, then you know the carrier is exactly 1 tick through the jump of the two indicated stars, you still would not know leaving or going to.

It might take a few reads of that to fully understand what I am trying to describe lol

It would also make the galaxy feel less “lonely” because you would see things happening around you but you would have to constantly work out what is going on. And, it adds a little mystery to what you are getting your self into. :slight_smile:

For the role players maybe hyperspace jumps have a dramatic ripple effect on space that can be detected but not precisely identify where carriers are, you just know that a jump has been made to that star 1ly out of your scanning range or a jump has been made from that star 1ly out of your scanning range.

This is why I love complex games, there is so many ways you can play it, and many ideas you can just throw in :stuck_out_tongue:

If you liked that idea and wanted to try it you might get to a point where you consider even more exiting things, like adding a new stealth tech which can hide your carriers from this ripple effect, which would follow the theme of this hiding stars and the new scanning.

It would also be nice for some indication of where battles are across the entire galaxy, but not know who was involved.

Maybe large battles could become “famous” and everyone gets to know about it ;p this would also be realistic in real life, and adds some more interaction to a galaxy you cant see.

The game would probably have to check the largest fleet someone has and decide if it is a big battle or not.

Some cool ideas @AlienGamer. I’ll have a thinking about how the interface might work.

Thats what I was thinking.

Cool :slight_smile:I cant wait to see what happens. :grinning:

Jay, Somehow I have managed to create a 1v1 proteus experimental game…

That last game I made by accident, but I made a new one on purpose to actually play I dont know if that is ok :slight_smile:

I guess you was trying to make one yourself but accidentally did it for every new game not just your own.

Even more fun: I can join the game, and I’m not premium. It doesn’t seem to count against my game cap of 2 concurrent maximum. You’ll want to fix that :wink:

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Well I dont know if I am going to get banned for abusing a bug if I actually play the game…

Correction, it won’t let me join. I came all the way to the actual Join button, but once pressed i get a half-obscured red flag telling me to not be a cheapskate and buy premium :slight_smile: All’s well!