I managed to take the win off @Dr_Gaming in game 36 (previously adjudicated by @Trucriot for me) after they decided to quit with me needing just two more stars. It was a close game, and I lagged on tech throughout which left me uncomfortable. But I had a ships lead at just the right moment to make advances. I also took a Range advantage so I could launch attacks against my enemy’s home star, which hopefully disrupted their supply lines. Another great NP 1v1 galaxy!
Hi @AllSkillNoPants - still waiting for you to join our game (No.53), and looking forward to playing against you. I have my opening moves all set and ready… should be fun, and the map looks great!
I just conceded to @Solfyre. They bought more carriers than I on turn 1, which enabled them to find WG on the front line and take advantage of them, jumping to my WG before I even captured the stars. From there, they managed to take a 20 star lead, and while it cost them many ships to do so, there dominance on the WG meant I was not able to convert that ship lead to equalise star count again. So I have conceded rather than play and drag out an eventual loss.
What happened to you @BelSon is similar to my game against @DarkDragonwing … where I landed on a WG in the middle before he did … and was able to jump to the matching one on the other side while he was still en-route … nothing he could do about it … and made a HUGE difference in the game.
While I like the random warp gates to speed the game up and an additional element of fun/strategy, this is one of the downsides … a lucky opening can result in a huge advantage. Not taking anything away from @Solfyre (who is a fearsome foe), but just pointing how this one aspect can end up being a game-decider.
Maybe something to think about for parameters in future 1v1’s.
Another thing is in both this and the last game I played against @Solfyre (which was an LLL game), this is how @Solfyre took me down. I think this is more an argument that I should change my opening play than it is the settings should change!
No argument that @Solfyre has GREAT opening moves that we can all learn from.
There’s always some randomness in NP, especially the opening … but if by the luck of your initial moves that you are able to get BOTH Warp Gates on the border (that you had no way of knowing existed) at the very opening, that really tips the scales and as you saw (and I saw in my game against @DarkDragonwing), it’s almost impossible to recover from … so then it’s game-over in less than two cycles.
As I said, I like random warp gates - just pointing out a downside … but there are lots of tradeoffs.
@HULK and @BelSon The warp gates can be tricky and claiming one a turn before your opponent on a border star is a significant tactical advantage. Leaving it up to chance is really not an sound option. In more traditional games without warps enabled, just making sure you arrive ahead of your opponent to claim defender status is all that really mattered. Not the case here.
I claimed victory in my match against @Lex a very good fight, in which they fought bravely, but I managed to build a good lead and ultimately utilize a warp gate to claim their home star, upon which they conceded. Well fought!
Great win @Satirael !
I tried to do something I watched @Solfyre pull off with an early warp gate attack… I was missing the secret sauce and fell behind never to recover.
I agree @Solfyre leaving it up to chance is not a sound option … but given that there may be a dozen (or even more) stars on the mutual boarder, how do you KNOW which ones have Warp Gates … and send enough ships to those specific stars? You can’t do it to all of 'em.
If you guess wrong and your opponent is lucky enough to guess right, they get that big tactical advantage. In a non-warp game, you might still lose the star, but it’s not such a big swing.
I’m not trying to be a nay-sayer for Warp Gates - just pointing out the downside is that the random element of luck is increased a LOT in the opening moves … and it can be “game over” just after it has started.
I was the fortunate beneficiary of this in my game with @DarkDragonwing … but it just as easily could have gone the other way - I got lucky.
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Yeah, it can be tricky @HULK and can be stress inducing early on trying to decide how to position ships. But, if you plan for your carriers to arrive at those stars in question ASAP, then at least you won’t be at a potential disadvantage against your opponent. If somehow you are behind or want to play it safe, scheduling arrivals at increments of 6 ticks at least prevents your opponent from taking a big advantage from it as the warp is only functional for 1 tick(or maybe none? That’s a tricky order of events question I’m not even sure about.)
If an arrival at star in question happens to be 7 ticks, then you have a tough choice to decide whether to leave your ships there or press ahead. But, again, if you’ve chosen the shortest possible route, then your opponent has at most the exact same information as you. So are they making a really bold choice attacking from a star that they don’t know is warped and attacking blindly to another star that might or might not be warped? That’s too bold for even the likes of me!
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I’ve really enjoyed your discussion @HULK and @Solfyre - on this question it feels to me that ‘luck’ doesn’t quite capture it, given the complete symmetry, but there’s definitely an enhanced slice of double-guessing what your opponent will do. In fact, that’s the defining feature of these 1v1 galaxies - getting inside the mind of your opponent and then working out a plausible counter-move that doesn’t take unnecessary risks. I quite like the extra stress (and opportunity) that comes with the common warp gates myself, but I can see the downside too.
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Glad you enjoyed the discussion. And yea, you can see your map, so you know what your opponent has - that’s what great about Mirror’ed maps … and why I lobby’ed Jay to add 'em! 
To be clear, after the opening moves, you are “on your own” to decide about defending, destroying, etc. Warp Gates - that’s part of the battle!
It’s just that very first border encounter when a little bit of luck (or whatever you want to call it) can make a big difference since if there happens to be matching Warp Gates on close border stars and you get to yours ever-so-slightly sooner and/or with a bigger force, you can snarf your opponents … and destroy it if you can’t hold it.
Sure, this means you have a smaller force elsewhere … but that may not have a warp gate … so the net results is the scales are tipped strongly your way.
I’ve been away for a while, but… i have to agree with @HULK about the random warp gates. Too much rng about those things in a 1v1.
An experienced player could take advantage of those under the right conditions and it’d be the end of the contest. Doesn’t sound right to me.
Despite losing twice to exactly this to @Solfyre, I think the warp gates should stay.
An experienced player could take advantage of anything under the right conditions to make it the end of the contest. I know this is ‘earlier’ in the match and thus may feel more ‘unfair’ than when the experienced player pulls a spectacular move later on, but I think that in the end, it’s still an equal opportunity and just another place the experienced player can show their skill.
I think it would be worth considering why there might be this inbalance in the first place. As far as I can see it, there are three reasons why there might be this inbalance:
- One player had more optimal carrier pathing - this isn’t luck, rather good planning by the player who had the better pathing.
- One player valued an area more and so sent more ships. Now there is a bit of luck here - the player happened to have a WG spawn in the area they valued more than their opponent. But I think there are two subpoints I want to bring up here.
The first is that the opponent could have easily prioritised the mirrored location, and so have the exact same advantage as you. Remember that chance affects both players the same way, it’s only what they do that can cause it to be lucky or unlucky (in this situation).
The second thing brings me to something similar to what @Solfyre has said - if you want to play it safe, then make sure you claim every star within the earliest turn possible. If you capture a star a turn after your opponent (even if it is one tick later!) then you are giving your opponent an information advantage about if it has a WG. But if you capture it on the same turn, you should have the exact same information as them, and be able to destroy the WG if you cannot defend it. In both my cases against @Solfyre, I captured the WG star on the turn after Solfyre, because of my strategy. I chose to go for less carriers and less ‘fast’ pathfinding in order to preserve credits. It was a risk I chose, and it did not pay off. And as a result, I let Solfyre gain information on the board that I did not have, that Solfyre used to their advantage, as any good player would. - Maybe it was all down to luck - the players sent a random number of ships in each direction, decided to randomly attack from a star in their territory to a star in the opponent’s territory, and both of them happened to have a WG, and neither player had intelligence on both stars. Then yes, it was lucky, and that lucky move won the game. But I think this is a contrived example that we should not see in the higher level games, since doing so is a huge risk (even more so when WG are rare!), for the chance to win one game. More often than not, this would cause an advantage to the player who played it safe, and when games are so close anyway between top players, doing so would often be a death sentence.
So in conclusion to my essay, I think all this WG ‘luck’ comes down to good vs bad play rather than actual luck, and thus WG don’t have anything to be sorry about. The mirrored galaxy ensures that all chance outcomes are even, and it is purely down to the players to plan based on the visible and unknown terrain. And, like always, the one who played better, given the terrain, wins.
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If both players had visibility of where the gates were, then yes it’s down to skill, experience or whatever you want to call it. Without visibility, then that comes down to luck, what you do with that lucky discovery is absolutely skill/ability. And yes it is an equal chance, but it is still nonetheless down to luck
I’ve never played a FS match and I think that only 1 LLL that I’ve played has had common gates (introduction, now it’s rare (?)), however I’ve never been too much of a fan of them. I believe my take is slightly different to any of these presented here…
I would like to start off by saying that I don’t believe random warp gates on a mirrored map introduce luck, it’s definitely something else. Warp gates are balanced between each player, however I don’t believe they are balanced as part of the game.
Why? Two main reasons…
Firstly, unlike the resource aspect of stars, you don’t know what is warped and not until you actually capture the star. I don’t like this because I believe to have the fairest skill based game, both parties should have as much information about the galaxy they can in order to make the most reasoned decisions. Unfortunately, warp gates are something you find out later, which I believe detracts from the competitiveness of the game.
Secondly, I believe that random warp gates worsen the feel of the game and negatively affect the game pace. Past the super early game where the frontlines can start to settle, warp gates can give an extra advantage to the defender, and if the defender can’t hold the star, they would destroy the gate, slowing down the advancing army… While the feature can be a way to delay stalemates which is good, the ability to move around faster between stars at the start of the game seems a bit counter-intuitive to me, as even on the home star warp gates only start to be worth it after unlocking terraforming 6, which usually only happens when a game is starting to become a stalemate. Maybe I’m advocating for cheaper gates (extra cheap?), but in this context, warp gates seem rather out of place, and when they happen to be on low resource stars (e.g. that cost over $200 even after terra 8), it just seems weird if the gates are able to be kept after the early game.
Now I’m not sure if this is a + or a -, but I’ve found that random warp gates can make hyperspace range stronger. Just an observation and something to think about.
I agree that there is a small part of luck in the game, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing
Reaching the front late is a bad play, warp gates are only making it more punishing
Luck also come into play when you try to guess where the enemy ships are, your opponent may be stockpiling ships just outside of your scanning range, and if you don’t have enough ships for defending that position (because you sent your ships on other part of the front) once the enemy attack, it’s bad luck and you are punished for not guessing right where your enemy planned to attack
We can play without warp gates and with high scanning range, but the game would be more prone to stalemate
Boy - I really sparked a discussion here!
First, I agree with @Solfyre that you should map out your routes “smartly” (he’s a genius at this - whereas I just build too many carriers!) so ideally you can arrive at the similar optimum times as your opponent. And @Belson had a good writeup with various examples that I agree with. Here’s a (simplified) corner case where it comes into play.
Both equally skilled players map out optimum carrier routing. Of the starting 100 ships, Player #1 sends 20 to the left, 60 to the center, and 20 to the right. Player #2 sends 40 to the left, 20 to the center (and a reinforcing carrier arriving a a turn later), and 40 to the right. It turns out there is a (mutual) Warp Gate at the border (within Scan Range) at the center.
Player #1 attacks and wins (because they can get there before the reinforcements) … and can then decide if they will destroy the warp gate. Because they are so expensive, this puts Player #2 at a big disadvantage - more so than if it was just a “regular” star.
Sure, player #2 could decide to destroy the warp gate … which in affect accomplishes the above.
Note I can “flip” the scenario with mutual warp gates on the sides - now player #2 gets a big boost!
You can say “but send 33 ships to all three places” … but there may be more than 3 points of contact at the border … so I can always construct a scenario where the number of ships can “luckily” result in a big boost at the star of the game.
Again, this is a corner-case … it requires mutual Warp Gates at the border, that they be within Jump Range (and ideally Scan also), and that you happen to get lucky and send more ships to that particular area.
There is always some element of randomness, but ideally you should have a chance to “recover” from it and the imbalance there will be offset elsewhere. But the Warp Gate factor skews that. And if I was on the “losing” end of a situation like this, I would simply say “Sh*t Happens”
And yes, over time, the more skilled player will win more games - just looks at the W-L records of @Solfyre and @Trucriot
I think the spawned Warp Gates are generally a good idea - again, just pointing out this corner case that has cropped up a couple of times.