I may sit this one out due to some travel, but it would be interesting to see how W4 plays versus W3 … plus the other possible changes.
Locking Scan at 1 is a pretty wild idea - would be almost like a dark galaxy … although yea, could actually result in LESS attacking - I’m not sure. Another reason maybe not to do it is that means one less tech to choose to research … so you’d be down to just 4 to choose from…
Right now, it’s helpful to research Scan to get Intel … and also see those Warp Gates … but Scan (and Hyper) do eventually top-out. I don’t know a good way to address this …
Note that the downside of making the galaxy smaller is if you make a mistake, it’s harder to recover from. I.e. if someone grabs a key stars, it may effectively be game over … since there aren’t as many other areas to try to grab.
The REAL solution is to modify the map generator so that there is more “clumping” of stars at the border that results in multiple attack vectors for both sides. If you think some of the current 1v1 maps can lead to deadlocks, you should see the majority that I toss because they are even more unplayable.
BTW, since it’s difficult to get a “tight” map, you could change the “jump time” from 6 to 8 ticks … which would effectively “tighten” up the map a bit and open up more attack vectors.
But this makes the game more “jumpy” and random luck can play a bigger role.
Those that have played a 24-tick jump game can attest how that is just crazy!
I would like to put in my 2 cents as well. Making scanning more expensive or locking it at level 1 would only make games much longer and end at a stalemate. This is because all attackers lose more ships than a defender does, so unless they know they can win a fight, they aren’t going to attack. Raising weapons really doesn’t make too much of a difference so if that’s what people want to try, then we can if we want.
These were the things I was worried about when fixing Scanning, but making it more expensive and not locking may mitigate it partially or could make it even more likely to cause less attacks. Might as well go all-in if doing that change.
Some more cool ideas all around. The real solution of a code change is obviously hard for us to implement and as you say, we have to throw out a lot of maps already. One interesting idea by Gabrio on Discord was also to add one star in the exact middle of the mirrored galaxy, though it’s questionable who reaches that star “first” and gets defender’s advantage.
I’m gonna start a poll (let’s see how that works here) on potential setting changes and then implement the result for this round. At the end we can also do an “exit poll” how well the change was received.
@HULK: Give it some thought, you’d only have to start the game within a week after the match-up release. Last round you earned the right to challenge @Solfyre for the title again
@BelSon: Thanks for the input! Can I count you in for the LLL?
IMHO, if you slow down or reduce scanning tech, then this can filter out two types of players. Those who might turtle vs those who use Reconnaissance-in-force . Setting the galaxy to W4 could help to reduce turtling.
RE scanning- I found that I rushed to get scanning to be able to see across the gap between myself and Macomber, and just enough stars to see how many ships he could amass if I launched an invasion, and how many ships he could launch at me and therefore how many I would have to stay behind. However in that last game as I was behind him at the start, I needed intel to know that I would be able to take my stars. Like Belson, when I’m not messing around in a game, I rely on intel to make sure my attacks will be effective. And when I’m unsure about my opponents forces, I know I should be more reluctant to attack, but for some reason I play more aggressive when I don’t have scanning and don’t know what they will have. Depends depends
I am open to settings changes, but i do like the basic settings already… seems like the fewer variables we throw at the settings, the better in terms of fine tuning or isolating factors.
Agreed, I’ll only change one setting this round based on the poll above and create an exit poll at the end to see how well it was received.
Good point, I think @Dysp brought this idea up a while ago, just to mix things up every round.
I’ll have to give it some thought, but maybe I’ll create a very basic “setting randomizer” that gives me 3 or 5 potentially crazy setting changes for next round (i.e., changing cost of infrastructure / techs, tech starting levels etc.) - then create a poll at the beginning of the LLL thread and the most popular one gets implemented just for one round
Random changes are an interesting idea. I know we are trying to “optimize” the settings for a clean, fast, 1v1 mano y mano challenge. But there are lots of settings that would be “fine”. It might be an interesting challenge to know that every month there is a new twist.
