Proteus Test Game

The funny thing is if anyone joins it and doesnt know about proteus they are not going to know what is going lol

You can play it if you want. Needs more testing anyhow.

Just keep in mind the games rules might change halfway through. (And that it might crash.)

I wonder how many others were started last night?

thanks :slight_smile: the game is kinda broken for me right now, I cant see the transfer ship button but apparently my opponent can lol also we started with 100 scanning. I guess you was trying something new with the interface and using the dark blue player ID to test it?

And I have not seen any new custom games that could have started, so it might be the only one. Considering 1v1 start really fast dont need to wait for people to join.

Re: Scanning Ideas

Something I enjoyed in a game similar to Neptunes Pride was the ability to launch fake attacks at opponents and have them scramble. In this other game, you could not see how big the army was that was approaching. This lead to some interesting choices for players on whether or not to defend. And also some interesting choices for an attacker to mislead an opponent.

An implementation of this could look like:

  • A defender can see the owner of incoming attacks within hyperspace range
  • A defender can see the number of incoming ships within scanning range
  • Hyperspace range could scale out by more light years per level than scanning to make this effect more prominent.
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Iā€™m REALLY enjoying all the changes, and I donā€™t want to go back to regular NP2 after this! I say we start a new Proteus game right around the time I get eliminated :wink:

Yea I love it to, dont know if its the same in the proteus game you are playing, but in the 1v1 I am doing I have noticed an new option on carriers named ā€œspecialā€ so its possible he is testing abilityā€™s on carriers as well as empires, which I guess would mean you could make different types of ships?? depending on what special things he has planned, I did not notice in the actual test game. I am looking forward to finding what it is :stuck_out_tongue:

good discussion in game worth memorializing:

Speaking of increasing trading penalties, I pefromed breakeven analysis on my current stats per the formula from above:

Break even point to trade ---- Lowest Upgrade cost

Banking 503 ā€” 900
Manu 465 ā€” 1200
Exp 417 ā€” 900

(that was supposed to format as a table, oops)

So it costs more than twice as much to invest in the infrastructure than it does to trade for the tech. If you are not in a trading group, you are increasingly hosed. So maybe as your star count increases, your trading costs do as well?

Maybe the unbalance towards the leaderā€™s tech will be compensated once the carriers and stars experience bonus start counting.

Thatā€™s because if you defend well a star, may get more weapons bonus as a defender, reducing the Weaps tech gap with the attacker (usually higher tech players).

Maybe the carrier experience is not so important for that result, but at least a good star bonus based on experience and/or infrastructure will help a lot.

Or some kind of defending infrastructure you can buy in stars? Antiaircraft missiles, laser satellites,ā€¦

Iā€™m also not convinced by the scanning thing. I had a thought this morning that if both my enemy Zoquete and my ally BB got a scanning lock on me, I would not be able to distinguish friendly and enemy stars and would not be able to attack at all. Iā€™d be out of the game.

I think Iā€™m leaning towards it not being a keeper. A fun little mechanic to try, but not core to the game.


Ok, here is a completely out there idea for trade. What about as well as having to be able to see your trade partners, you also have to be also be about the same size.

Or perhaps trade can only go one way, down to smaller empires.

Err itā€™s only 6:45 in the morning so having difficulty thinking through what this would doā€¦ errrā€¦ Lets say one player was in the lead and running away with the victory, would the second largest player start pushing tech down to smaller empires so they could help him stay competitive, not by trading tech back to him, but my fighting the larger player.

Would anybody trade at all?

Perhaps an intresting experiment for our next game.

In early game, when stars are new or underdeveloped, you are better off not trading and investing in infrastructure. By mid game the crossover point has largely been reached, and trading for banking, manu and exp begins to be cheaper on the margin than buying e/i/s.

Two players who want to trade with each other by mid game would need to pace each other with star count, allowing each other to take the lead, so trading could stay two way. Quite a cooperation challenge, could be interesting.

Once a clear leader develops, it is possible to stay competitive by rotating research, but difficult. Would certainly put the brakes on a runaway tech lead.

A number two and number one who are competing would have incentive to bribe lesser players for support, but might be hard in scan trade only mode to make that happen.

A number two and a number one who are cooperating would have an interesting dynamic, with number two developing tech faster than one. Should make for an unstable relationship.

Plus Iā€™m assuming that trade between two players at any given tick would be one way, meaning no (immediate) reimbursement for trade costs. Two players trying to cooperate would have a major trust issue!

I like it!

What about make the trading not immediate, but adding a time to it, proportional to the level of the tech.

For example:

  • send banking lvl 3 takes 6h
  • send banking lvl 4 takes 12h
  • and so on

It would decrease the speed at which the tech gap increases without removing the motivation to find allies.

And another thought, not related to the topic of making things balanced but just to trading itself: I think the cash sent for a tech should only be used to send that tech back. Else, some players may abuse, spend the money on his own infrastructure, wait some ticks and then send back the tech. (Yes, that may be some accepted kind of betrayal, but with the importance of techs here, itā€™s just too much imho)

Yes, thats is by design. Also, you canjust keep the cash and not send the tech at all.

Why not add a superweapon tech? the tech cant be traded so you must research it yourself.

The tech itself would not do anything, so if you researched level 50 you would not gain anything from it.

But if you researched it to a certain level you would automatically win the game, so say like if you got it to level 80 you win.

But since you dont get anything from it, its a complete waste of time to research it accept it isnt. You could waste days researching it for a win you might not get. But, this would slow down the top players on other techā€¦ the top players are still winning the game, but what if they tried to win by a technology victory.

There other tech would get slowed down because they research this tech instead which cant be traded, and anyone with high science level could easily research it first, so you would be less willing to trade with someone who is in the leadā€¦ because you would want science to make sure he doesnā€™t completely destroy everything.

But weaker players could put 100% focus on catching up instead of super weapons, yes they could still lose by a super weapon but they gain a chance of becoming stronger and then competing.

Maybe it would work maybe it would notā€¦

Or you could try scaling trade cost based on how rare the tech is that you want to trade, so if many people already have it or have higher levels of it, then its cheaper to trade it from then onā€¦ It adds an interesting market value to tech.

But, if the top players constantly trade, the more in the lead they get, the cheaper it gets for everyone else below them meaning they can play more efficiently and maybe catch up?

Jayā€™s mentioned nova bombs or somesuch. Perhaps something like a superweapon could be counterbalanced by a shield system? OR I guess that would be star experience for us Role Players.

I admit Iā€™m not as big a fan of how Proteus is starting to sound. The emphasis on trading sounds bad to me. What happens if someone canā€™t get into the game to do this all day long? Their allies would be sunk.

To fix this, maybe that idea of taking tech from fallen enemy home stars is actually a smart move. Or maybe have special carriers/tech/thingymcguffin that allows one to ā€œPillageā€ a system for its science. The more science points, the higher chance of taking the tech from enemy player? Thereā€™s lots of options there to toy with. That might make trading tech to a losing ally more questionable, and thus add politics to the game.

Could also allow weaker players a chance at sudden advancement through raider fleet theft, while also giving a treacherous ally an excuse for how their neighbor is suddenly receiving the tech upgrades that they doā€¦

hmmā€¦ It would be interesting if you had to send trade ā€œcaravansā€ to an star of the empire you want to trade with, when the caravan reaches the star it is destroyed and that empire gets the tech. You would only be able to trade with players who you can actually reach so it would be alot harder than trade scanned, because you could eventually have scanned alot of players but some of them will be behind other people.

But with this trade system you would have be right next to them, also the closer you are together the faster you could trade, so it rewards players making alliances who start right next to each other.

Also the trade could get stolen if someone lands on a star it is going to and stays there, which would be fun. Id make it so all of these trade caravans can be seen by everyone regardless of scanning just to take full advantage of the fun it would be to just annoy people, kidding I wouldnā€™t do it like that but it would be fun lol and it is a game, games are designed to be fun so why not ;p

I also thought about instead of having resources on a star, have planets instead, the number of planets would determine how much resources the star hasā€¦ it would make a bit more sense for role playing.

Since we all know more stars means better economy because you can spread the cost of economy over multiple stars while boosting economy on one star is extremely expensive. So having more planets on a star would naturally give more resources.

But not just for that reason I wanted to suggest that, you could then also have population on planets and you must capture more stars to get more planets to expand your empire, and if your empire is on max population and you run out of stars, economy should go downā€¦ the infrastructure should stay the same but there would be an economic penalty for not expanding, or you wont get to make full use of extra economy that you build or something.

Because you would have more people to pay for more than your economy is providing??

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Cool ideas!

About the pop, Iā€™d just send them in carriers against an enemy to reduce the number ir needed. So that way one could avoid the penalty and also annoy an enemy.