I love playing dark galaxy, but for some games, I’d like to take it even further. What I mean is disabling as much intel as possible. You can only get star count, ship count, industry, etc totals based on what you can see with your sensors. Even better if tech levels could be hidden too, but I understand that would require more coding changes regarding trading techs.
As it is, everyone knows the relative strength of everyone else, and that will strongly influence alliances and targets of attack. Which can be a fun part of the game itself, but I’d like to mix in games where you just don’t know who’s in the lead or how strong this person you can see a few border planets of truly is.
I think this is a cool idea. In the past I’ve also seen people suggest only being able to communicate with discovered players which I think would be interesting. I forget what came of that suggestion. Someone may have pointed out that this vastly benefits players who prearrange to join a game together and therefore have other means of communication. It would be fun if all was fair, though.
Plus: By not knowing how well you’re doing, maybe fewer people will drop out the moment they’re not in the top 5-6.
Minus: “Hey, I’m doing pretty well, I might have a chance at… STOMP, SPLAT, whimper.” That sense of hope that your 3rd or 4th out of 64, then finding out you’re in the mid-50’s.
However, I think a realistic implication would be that you know “everything” (i.e. what you know now) about other players that have a planet that you can scan.
What if there was a dark galaxy game where trading wasn’t allowed? You have to research your own intel and hope your tech is better than someone else’s. A player doesn’t need to know the total stars a player has. A warning system that a player is about to win would be nice. Maybe a countdown when a player has less than 5% of the stars left to go. It might say a player has 10 stars left until they win. People will be like Oh Crap he is about to win! They would have to guess who is about to win, the name will not be revealed. Players would end up changing strategies fast so that person can’t win. It would make players more cautious before they capture the last stars because of the warning system.
The minimum amount a player needs to know about their neighbors would be Scanning, Hyperspace Range, Weapons, and Manufacturing. I think this should only be revealed if a player is in range. A game like this would also prevent cheaters from joining since they can’t trade with each other. An option in a normal game to prevent trading with anyone in the game would be nice.
Thread bump. because i was just about to write a post about ‘deeper darkness’.
my ideas on this are as follows… it should be as dark mode plus these additions…
tech levels, economy and research should be hidden. only shown though if you join an alliance.
you shouldnt get a battle report unless you win the fight (where a fight actually happened). this will stop you sending a single suicide ship to calculate their weapon tech. if you lose you just get an alert to say you lost, and where you lost)
research levels should be permanently hidden. even to formal allies.
all scanner/warp templates should be disabled, so you cant see how far they can see…
you shouldnt be able to see a list of who is in the game, and should only be able to send messages to people inside your scanner range.
noone should be aware of their own colour/icon… it should just default to a white circle (when they see themselves).
if possible when you first encounter (in scanner range) an opponent, the system could assign a random icon to them, then keep that info for the rest of the game (so that player is always, say, blue triangle).
the combination of 5/6 should stop most of the issues with people joining up pre-game. as noone will know who they are, where they are. when you get close to someone you can send them a message, and it may be your ally, but thats hard to stop. point 7 would mean that you and allies could not be communicating outside the game and both say that they see orange circle, as you may both see the same opponent differently.
i thik the problem there is that you are having o introduce whole new mechanics… and you say you are not excited for that particular reason… but thats the reason i would be super excited about it…
i see the ‘even darker galaxy’ as a ‘real life’ tactical system… if you not know that they exist, you shouldnt be able to know their tech… if you can only see one enemy star that you have just discovered then you shouldnt be able to know all their infrastructure…
i do like the idea of adding mechanics for spying… it hass been dont in a number of other games i have played (ikariam for one). perhaps you could attempt to spy on an eenemy… for example
click on the player
select spy
3.select wht you wnt to know. for simplicity this could be:
a) a tech value
b) eco, ind or res value
c) fleet size.
aswer could be given with some degree of error… for example, tech could be given plus or minus one. fleet could be an estimation (‘about the same’, ‘vastly bigger’, ‘slightly bigger’ etc)
the big problems this introduces though is giving advantage to those in contact with each other outside the game… personally, i prefer the outline i gave in my previous post… i think it prings it very close to a ‘real world’ situation, cuts down on external alliances, and doesnt actually intruduce too many new mechanics…
i like this game, becaus of its simplicity in mechanics…
I got an idea for an even darker galaxy. I call it the Helen Keller mode. You don’t get any information at all on anything not even your own infrastructure. It’s quite possible you’re not even on NP2 site but rather EBay.com and you’re unknowingly bidding on a phallic looking sculpture from Pompeii. Either way, I’d hang on to that it might be worth a lot of money. But I digress. You can even turn off your monitor while you play. Wouldn’t that be fun!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist…I actually think this idea is a bit interesting. I was thinking that the intel part of it could show the mean of what everyone was researching compared to you. Also, it could show average number of stars, industry, eco, ships, etc., without showing what any one person’s attributes are but only you compared to everyone else. It could also show what the high and low value is. Such as, average stars = 35, high = 40, low = 10. This would at least put everyone in the same ball park and kind of moving in the same direction.
on the subject. I would like a galaxy midway between normal and dark. a grey galaxy per say. . a galaxy where you can see all the stars. they all appear white or unowned to you unless they are within your scanning range.
I really REALLY like the DEEPER DARKNESS - @JayKyburz
6 + 7 would be great. Preassign color / shape automatically and then reveal to others but not to player. Have a uniform player color (white or whatever) …
ISSUE with 2, I like the battle report and it makes sense. If I kamakazi I would likely get a feedback from the ship before they died about what they saw… what level the enemy was at.
