Proteus Test Game

Hi, another question I have about the new game mechanics.

I attacked a star and happened the following:

While the calculator says:

The carrier defending the star had 2 points of experience.

Does that means that each point of experience adds 1 to the weapons?

If I use the calculator and replace defender weapon technology by 5 (3 + carrier exp), it gives that result. Else nope.

I think itā€™s more likely that the calculator doesnā€™t actually use the +3 defence bonus and is only using a +1 from NP2. Thus adding +2 gets you to where you should be and what the game is actually doing.

Could be wrong though. No idea what the experience things do. We should really have asked for a rulebook before startingā€¦

I donā€™t know of experience does anything yet or not. But Kay did say that defending bonus was 3 weapons levels now- to make early game more strategic like in triton.

Youā€™re right, the calculator is using +1 as defender bonus instead of +3.

Tried with the same data in a Triton game calculator and gave the expected result (used 5 to give a total 6 weapon to the defender, that is the same as 3 +3 bonus):

Bugs aside all this talk is making me excited. count me in for the second game when it happens please /beg

The weapons bonus started at +3 becuase all techs start at level 3 now. I wanted the defers to get double the attacker for the first few days of the game while we build up our strengths.

I will see if I can fix the calculator later today.

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Observations on the economy:

With 20 points of economy and level 4 banking (1 above start) Iā€™m making $80 a tick. That equates to $1920 a cycle. In Triton that would mean I have 192 points of economy. So yeah, Jay was right about all the extra cash.

However, everything is way more expensive so the extra cash is still needed. A point of industry might cost me $200, but it is producing 3 ships an hour. In Triton, a point of industry might cost $40, but only produce a fraction of a ship an hour. Basically single points of infrastructure cost more but they go a lot further.

I would suggest maybe bumping up the cost of science. Theyā€™re only a little more expensive than mfg or eco, but way more useful.

Carriers still seem hella expensive to me. I just have trouble shelling out $150 for that next carrier when I could invest it a lot moe usefully somewhere else. I agree that carriers should cost more than a flat rate of $25, but 25x-25=P seems a little much.

Another note- I would enjoy it if scan trade was enabled as the default for these games, with perhaps a higher starting scan level. It makes sense flavor-wise. You canā€™t see where anyone is, but you can still trade with them? Makes more since for scan-trading.

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This glitch is popping up in the new game also. Now itā€™s going the Intel drop down instead of the keyboard.

now thats wierd

Ok. I am the first to go, it seems. As you all know by now, probably, I ended up in the Cursed Position as the middleman. Hereā€™s my analysis of my situation:

First, it was probably doomed from the start, but as per the new game mechanics, it was impossible. Iā€™ve won some games before as the middleman, with due help from allies who buoyed me up of course.

However, the new learning curve aside, I donā€™t see my position as anything less than impossible. Not doomed, as per player action, but impossible. The new pricing ensures that the infrastructure will take ample time to spiral out of control. What this does, perhaps intentionally, is create a new dependency on star resources, now that Terraforming Tech is no longer with us. Even then, with the new pricings, star count is inferior to star quality. This might be no bad thing, unless you end up with fewer good stars right off the bat, which happens frequently.

Suppose thereā€™s a lack of expansion, as in my case and a few others. What this means is that there simply wonā€™t be more room for economic growth in the short term. If there is a war, that means even less, as funds must go into building ships for protection and retaliation. Now, that seems par for the course, but the returns from econ take time to manifest, and with pressure on from enemies with superior Banking and stars, there is only so much that can forestall the inevitable.

I had great allies, and perhaps in a game where tech can be traded cheaply, this would be different. In my case, though, the stars were very small, and while that could be overcome with Econ, it couldnā€™t be while war was afoot.

The new weapons tech advantage is nice for defenders, but it really just means prolonged conflict, which ensures a middle playerā€™s demise if theyā€™re not positioned with allies right to engage the enemy. With this position, thatā€™s usually the case, with the middle player blocking their comrades from getting elsewhere, or them being often unable to directly reach the aggressors.

This isnā€™t meant to be a rant, but again, an analysis of my experience. It was good, overall, but there needs to be work.

In short, the Infrastructure War is now next to merciless. If you get behind, thereā€™s not much to be done. This leads into another issue: that the new economy essentially transforms this into a 24 cycle game. Instead of needing to be online only once a day, I personally find it necessary to be on ALL day, for purposes of adding econ sooner, because otherwise I will always get behind in production. After all, every hour lost is 3+ economy or so that wonā€™t be there afterward. This makes the infrastructure extremely powerful, sure, but also dangerously precious and fragile.

n war, thereā€™s chance of losing precious infrastructure constantly. Ship and Science losses have always been easy to recoup, with econ being that one thing that was hard to get back. In the case of this 24 cycle game, if a player isnā€™t on all the time squeezing each hour they can afford from Econ, bigger games where fighting is very fierce, rather than stalled and centralized over one or two stars, as in my recent war, could easily result in irrecoverable loss.

The point isnā€™t how easy one can knock out another player, but how easily war-ravaged victors can catch up to leaders. The leader always runs away with the game, unless the pack drags them down. Now, the pack has even more difficulty because losing resources to the leader hurts them infinitely more than it used to.

Sorry, Iā€™m not 100% on any of these theories, but such are my concerns. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Whilst I agree with a lot of the above, especially the 24 hours total immersion, I thought Iā€™d add what Iā€™ve liked quickly to balance it out a bit.

Expensive carriers - Iā€™m a big fan of this. It makes the game a lot more strategic if you canā€™t magic a couple of carriers out of thin air when something unplanned happens.

Big stars good, small stars meh - Iā€™m a big fan of this too. Small stars seem less valuable economically and itā€™s not to much of a problem to cede ground if you have to. However build anything at all on one and you need to defend that star to the death because itā€™s loss will hurt you badly.

I like carriers being more expensive, despite it having negative implications down the road.

However, Snorkel, exactly what do you do when ALL of yours stars are small from the start? Uneven star distribution is killer with the current settings.

No, I agree, but thatā€™s a different point from the one I made. Starting positions should be balanced.

Ah, I see.

Iā€™m not in the game, but Jay should certainly be awarding you some points/badges for excellent feedback.

I stopped playing real-time games a long time ago because it messes with your sleep schedule - sounds like with the new mechanics, you need to check online every hour even more so to optimize - yowsers!

Hulk makes a great point. RT games already are hugely tempting for those so inclined to check in frequently. Iā€™m not sure this new scheme makes that any different. While spending immediately makes a big difference early game, I am finding that now Iā€™d rather husband my cash for trading, since increments to eis are so expensive.

Wrt equal distribution, I am a little skeptical of Smulmā€™s perception. He is in the middle, and is now the star count leader. As you might expect, since star density is the greatest in the middle. However, Iā€™m not convinced that he has a fewer number of high resource stars than the rest of us. He might have a lower percentage of high value stars, but close to the same number. I am guessing this game is set for scarce resources.

However, I feel for his position in the middle. I have written about that issue in the wormholes thread.

Yes, thanks for the great feedback @Smulm (and All!)

The change to receiving money throughout the day was more about relieving the pressure to log in at a specific point in the day. Also dont like the stop gap fix where were have 2o hour productions so ā€œwhen they happened in the dayā€ rotates around the clock.

Right now I dont feel more pressure to login than normal. That might change when the cash starts flowing faster.

In a Turn Base Game you should get a little cash each turn which will be nice I think.

I have superior science and the science upgrades are getting faster and faster, Itā€™s only 630 research points for level 8 and I have 12 Science. 8h hours. By next week Iā€™ll be doing a level of science every hour at this rate.

I really like the simple formulas of X tech times Y infrastructure, but it might just not work.

Or the scaling of each tech level needs to be steeper.

Iā€™m not building carriers so canā€™t comment on that feature.

I think tech trading is too expensive becuase the tech levels start higher.

Reward me? Oh, Jay knows what I wantā€¦:smiley_cat:

err, you might have to remind me.

NP1 character art?