Proteus Test Game

[AlienGamer]

Never thought about building them near an ally, would be interesting to try it, but then what if your ally turns against you and becomes the enemy lol

To be fair since research costs get more expensive you would need to be able to see more science with scanning anyway just for it to be effective late game, so naturally increasing your scanning would allow the idea to keep up with the pace of the game without making any balance adjustments.

And yes you would defiantly be able to see the different between two players when one builds science in the wrong places even though it costs exactly the same price.

[MajorAwesome]

Personally I think it would be interesting and make sense for economy, science AND industry to all get destroyed when a star is taken.

[JayKyburz]

Industry is a nice reward for taking the star. We wan’t there to be good rewards for aggressive play!

[xjhdexter]

Using Scanning to steal RP will help the weaker players. I think this can be a good idea.

Scorched Earth is a strategy that helps the weaker players. This might be good idea too, because it can slow down the steamroller effect when a stronger player captures a star. This could greatly change the character of NP2 though.

I have a Wizard badge, and I am aware of 6 other players who earned Wizard badge.

[Omnimal]

Think that’s a really great idea. Agree with what @AlienGamer said, but also

1. It’s going to make alliances more interesting. Players will probably trade off a single star inside their empires with their allies just to get the most of this. Expansion (especially in Twin ring circular games) might change. Instead of neighbors expanding away from each other, they could split their starting rings 50-50 top-bottom and expand in a single direction together.
2. Question: how is it going to work with Formal Alliances? Will you only consider scanning range of your own stars?
3. I kind of feel that full research points might be a bit much. 1/2 points per hour maybe?
4. The very best thing this brings forward is that this is going to benefit middle players a lot more than edge players. We all know how much harder it is to start in the middle instead without a single space wall to keep your back on. This will definitely help balance things out.

Also I’m mostly ambivalent towards the idea of destroying science when capturing stars. On one hand, it’ll tone down the research boost this scanning change will provide, but on the other, science is the most expensive infrastructure… And when destroying economy, you get plunder, maybe something of the same for science as well?

[wfmcgillicuddy]

Your first idea has the virtue of simplicity, and judging from the feedback deserves at least to be tested

i think destroying science in late game is likely to reinforce a leader’s momentum, at least late game. Newly conquered stars will be easily rebuilt, as they will be the cheapest for a leader, who will be awash in cash. But i agree midgame it will force more strategic calculation as to location… So once again, why not give it a try?

[xjhdexter]

@JayKyburz

Also. I think both science and economy at stars will be destroyed when they change hands. just to slow the growth the players a little more.

I wonder whether the owning player empire could have optional control over this, similar to destroying WG. What does everyone think about this ?

[xjhdexter]

What if the SCI could be jury rigged to explode and have a percentage chance of destroying just the enemy carrier ? HA HA ! Once armed, that SCI will stop producing RP.

[saradav]

It seems that the trading restrictions make things unnecessarily complicated.
For instance- what if you make a trade deal and happen to lose a star before the other person can reciprocate?

[saradav]

Also, I just checked and I did not get a lab rat badge either

[SteveLawUK]

@saradav

It seems that the trading restrictions make things unnecessarily complicated.For instance- what if you make a trade deal and happen to lose a star before the other person can reciprocate?

I’m struggling with the trade restrictions to be honest. It seems to have more or less removed trading as a viable option, certainly at this early stage which is when it’s most fun.

@JayKyburz what was the reasoning behind these? What are you trying to achieve?

(P.S. Why doesn’t Jay’s username come up as a choice when typing @jay…?)

[wfmcgillicuddy]

Rationale starts above at this link:

Proteus Test Game

I’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. I’d be out of the game. I think I’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…

[SteveLawUK]

Thanks for that I think I need to go back and read this all from the start - I’m still playing catch-up here

What about, for example, only allowing trade if your total stars are within +/- 10-20% of your trade partner? Maybe have a couple of brackets so its more tolerant/generous early on and then tightens as you grow?

[MLaZz]

Hi all,

on the topic of rewarding player after winning a battle. I posted this a few days ago in the Facebook group, not knowing about all this new experiments…

So, here it is.

When a battle takes place, winner should earn some research points towards any tech (but only one at a time) - think of it as scientists getting their hands on destroyed weapons, scanners, … and trying to reverse-engineer it (history teaches us that victorious side always looted the loosing side for weapons, clothes, other items…).

But there’s a catch: this only works if loser has any higher level tech.

Example:
Player A (higher weapons level) attacks player B. If player B manages to win the battle, his researchers are able to get some research points towards Weapons tech. If player A wins, they get nothing because they already have higher weapons technology and there is nothing that can help them with weapons research.

But if loser (player B) has any of the other technologies with higher level, player A is able to advance their research in that field.

To make things even more interesting it should be different if winner is attacking another star or if they are defending their own.

To explain:
Scanners are located on stars (not on ships) so if player A (with higher scanning) attack player B, they will not be carrying their (better) scanners in the fight. If they lose, player B won’t be able to reverse-engineer that tech.

I don’t have any concrete idea how many research points should be awarded to the winner. One idea that came to mind is to base this on the size of the losing fleet - bigger the fleet, more stuff that scientists can look through in order to reverse-engineer the tech.

I think that this post-battle reverse-engineering could potentially change the attacking dynamics because players with lower techs would be more interested in attacking players with higher tech levels. Also it would be more interesting for bigger players to attack other big players (with higher tech levels) and leave players with lower tech levels alone (since they don’t get any research point from them).

And BTW, I’m also in test game 3 and didn’t get the lab rat badge (yet)

[JayKyburz]

The reason I’m keen to try the trade rules are becuase right now I think it’s just too easy to ally with your nearest neighbours, form a tight-nit trading group and then just race your allies for victory. I want alliances to be more fluid and situational.

The rule changes might not break that, but it makes it more difficult at least.

When you want to race ahead to victory, you can’t get free tech from your allies anymore.

When you start to get hit and lose a few stars, are your allies going to help bring you up so keep trading with you, or are they going to turn on you and devour you?

[Victreebel]

@JayKyburz

The reason I’m keen to try the trade rules are because right now I think it’s just too easy to ally with your nearest neighbors, form a tight-nit trading group and then just race your allies for victory. I want alliances to be more fluid and situational.

i think we are going in the right direction but i think as the trade restrictions stand it still has the effect of allying with our nearest neighbors but instead of just the ones around us its just based on size causing the big to group together and the smaller ones to either band together or get swallowed.

our salvation will be the wormholes however, maybe if they moved in some way

[SteveLawUK]

@JayKyburz

The reason I’m keen to try the trade rules are becuase right now I think it’s just too easy to ally with your nearest neighbours, form a tight-nit trading group and then just race your allies for victory. I want alliances to be more fluid and situational.

The rule changes might not break that, but it makes it more difficult at least.

Restricting trade to scan range actually locks in the “nearest neighbour” option, we can’t do anything else. Maybe next time try the numbers of stars limit but without the scan range limit? That way you have more chance of finding someone to be able to trade with.

[SteveLawUK]

@Victreebel

our salvation will be the wormholes however, maybe if they moved in some way

Ooh, that’s an intriguing idea. Or randomise the links perhaps? You enter a wormhole and exit a different random wormhole…