Good points Brian … not sure of the “right” solution here.
Note that once a large galaxy reaches a certain point, Banking and Experimentation matter much, much less than techs such as Weapons & Manu (sidenote: be nice to re-balance that somehow - you did good job in the current game Brian making 'em expensive) … so it may very well be worth it for a team to lose B&E in order to completely consolidate on Weapons.
Plus until we have team-based percentage to win, it could be tempting to do the “collapse into one for the win” to grab a premature victory if the percent win is 33 or even 50 percent.
Just trying to think of the corner cases and/or areas where it could be abused.
Again, I certainly agree there needs to be some sort of mechanism to handle the situation where a teammate has to bail for whatever reason - terribly unfair to the other teammates … plus upsets the whole game play.
Hulk- abusing that tactic would get you a win, but your allies would get last place. As for B&E, I find that they can still be worthwhile in the mid game. You could counter balance that by making those two techs cheap.
Rosslessness- That could take forever to convert everything, and what would those ships and stars do in the meantime? Say CaptA suddenly had to quit our current game. How much chance do you think his allies would have taking over his territory before it was completely gutted by their enemies? Might as well leave is go AI in that case.
Well, you’d grab all the existing ships on those worlds without a fight, whereas your enemies would still have to fight them. Not as good admittedly, but better than grinding an AI
True Ross, but still could be extremely time consuming. If the ships keep running their loops, it makes for some really bad defense against enemy invasion.
Jay- I really like the updated list at the top. Please consider the Limit Trade issue as a setting people have an option to use, but something that I know several of us would really like included. I also think having setting/option for team trades cheap/er but really expensive cross team could create interesting play. I think there would have to be a pretty steep premium on trading with another team in option.
Ross -Not at all, that’s why I suggested the star transfer, and am against the idea that you would have to claim them. I just want to make sure we suggest the most balanced solution to Jay. We want to avoid a situation where Quitting or AFKing can be abused while making sure a team isn’t forfeit because one player quits.
Would there be a way for combat to be adjusted just in team games? Another team in our current game just ran into the allies battle when arriving at a star at the same time. They weren’t aware of this issue with Formal Alliances.
All the normal complexities of multi alliance/multi player combat are reduced in a forced fixed team alliance situation. You can’t have A+B, B+C, C+A so who does B fight when they get together.
For team games, could it be adjusted that one player’s ships just transfer ownership before the battle, just as they transfer when arriving at another allies’s star? If both teammates are attacking together, it could transfer based on distance or randomly assigned. Something would be better than the current system when it comes to Team games.
You may are probably referring to the situation below … where I was the player who saw the simultaneous arrival of two allied forces, and then intentionally abandoned the star so they would fight each other, with another fleet showing up an hour later to take out most of the remnants.
As labeled on the image, fratricide happens in RL … so probably reasonable that it happens in NP.
Adds to the “fog of war” … although sure, it could be changed if you want to remove that element.
Yes, I get the fog of war, but I don’t believe it is realistic to claim that two allies show up at the same place, which has been deserted by the enemy, so they shoot each other.
The combat was left as it is, so that Jay wouldn’t have to code for super complicated battles between unpredictable combinations of allies. In a Team game, each team should be viewed as a single entity. Those are like NATO forces attacking that star. They may come from different countries, but they are working as a single force.
I checked with the other players involved. They were unaware of this particular nuance of Formal Alliances and combat. Maybe that is their fault, for not reading every single help box and the codex, but there is plenty of stuff that isn’t written in the game. How many times do people end up asking the same questions here and on G+? Even you, Hulk, asked Qwerty and myself to remind you what happens in this situation.
Actually, I knew what was going to happen if I abandoned … but I was curious what would happen if I stayed - would there possibly be double damage on the allied attackers. I’m posting our in-game discussion for others that come on to this thread.
From: HULK
So what happens if I’m defending a star, and two fleets from different players that are allied hit me at the SAME time.
I.e. lets say I have 200 ships defending on Star XYZ. Player A (with 100 ships) arrives at the same time as Player B (with 500 ships). Player A and B are aligned. What happens in the battle?
Here’s what the Codex says … but it doesn’t address the issue of if Player A and B are aligned.
More than 2 Players
In combats that involve more than two players, you can imagine each participating player sitting around a table in the order shown in the character portraits across the top of the screen. Starting with the defender, each player will attack and deal damage to the nearest enemy to their right.
From Brian:
Attacks go clockwise and they fight each other. AvB. BvC. CvA. I believe only the defender gets the bonus
From: HULK
Thanks Brian - was just curious if it makes a difference if the two players are aligned.
It seems like you know how this works, so maybe write it up and submit to Jay for possible addition to the Codex? The key language is already available in this thread so it should not take long to draft.
Alternatively, write up a different approach and submit as a Feature Request, right?
The Codex is brief – from my perspective a little too brief – and it even has video supplements. Are there other people who believe that it takes too long to read the help boxes and the Codex as they are now?
Arg, sorry folks, I really want to fix this one day. I think its a broken rule but it would be a major rewrite of the combat code.
The reason its complicated is because the game needs to support any amount of players arriving at a star, and there can be all kinds alliance rules. A allied with B but not C. D not allied with anybody. E allied with A, B and C. It gets complicated.
What we decided about 6 months ago was that a combat should always simply be divided into two teams, The Defending team is anybody allied with the player who owns the star. The Attacking team is anybody who is not.
Any players who are not allied and both on the defending team will not fight each other while occupying allied space.
Players who are not allied on the attacking team will concentrate efforts on the defending team, and the star will be given to the player with the largest forces. Then if necessary another round would be fought the following tick.
For reference, if A attacks B, and arrives at the same time as B’s ally C, C’s ships transfer to B and then only A and B fight.
Anyway, I was just discussing an AFK problem with Team games with Qwerty, and we had 2 ideas. Either a setting to turn off AFK for team games, or a setting that replaced the AFK with an automatic pause when a player has been away too long. Neither is idea, as it either leaves a player doing nothing in game for a long time, or stops the game indefinitely, but they are potential solutions for a real problem.
Also, can I throw out another pitch for 1.5h Ticks in real time? Production would alternate 12h, as each cycle would be 36 hours. That way Production is at two different times, causing half the strain of a 3AM Production time! It also stretches the AFK clock to 108h. Plenty of time for a long weekend away.
P.S. Got the following warning. Apparently I’m not letting others have the opportunity or enough time to chime in here.
If the game used a team’s combined star count for the victory condition, then it should be able to just award the team a Team Victory point, and their rank points without having to manipulate the leaderboard. I would maybe have the setting demand that at least 50% of the team be in the top spots on the leaderboard. That would allow for variable team sizes.
We also need a work around for the star abandonment/gifting issue. When a team member had to leave suddenly, it ruined that team. If the game could automatically gift stars from an AFK/Quit player to the surviving teammates, based on proximity, that would be best.
I don’t agree, I think being able to have all your science work on just one tech is better than splitting it. Get Weapons when you need it as fast as possible. Then switch to Man or Terra.
I think the whole point here is testing how well a group of 3 or 4 players work together. How many miscommunications, how many crossed wires, how fast are they able to react and get on the same page. None of those things are issues in a team of one.
Thats the point of a team game if you ask me. Please let me know if I’m not thinking about it right.
Yes, I was thinking that the leaderboard would have sorted team scores, but…
I need to know what this means. Does the game automatically re-assign stars so this is the case?Do I penalize the team somehow until they do it themselves using star gifting?
Do you think its important in a game game that each player have their own empire?
