I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be nice to have a “random” main game option with it’s own medal: each game has a random configuration requiring players to adapt strategy and style to the strucutre of the game, rather than do the same thing the always do. Variable tech costs/banned trading etc could all be parts of that.
3 Likes
my thought for making smaller alliances (smaller being a relative term there could be more players in the smaller alliance) more competitive is to be able to link sciences. the big alliance has 4 empires working together. the rest of the galaxy are trying to fight them but don’t have the science to keep up with the big 4.
so here’s a thought. allow a percentage of alliance B player 1 science to combine with Alliance B player 2 science to research the same tech. say the percentage is 75% (just a figure I pulled out of the blue no thought other than it was easy to do the math- would have to be tested or maybe even a sliding scale?) both player 1 and 2 have 100 science when combined they have 175 science to research the tech of their choice (must be same tech).
of course the big 4 can do the same thing, but that would also limit how many techs they can research. preventing them from forming a monopoly on Weapons, Manufacturing and Terra.
1 Like
I like were the idea about pooling science go, kind of like formal alliances.
There will be probably a lot of reasons against simple pooling but maybe there is something to get out of it.
But then we need proper limitation so it can’t be abused.
I think if the big 4 pool on just weapons, with the current Triton tech, they would just crush the others, as even with low manu, if you manage to get double weapons…
I agree it needs limitations.
How about the science cannot be any higher than the highest person with science in the game?
Hi Jay,
I am totally find with the proteus engine, it’s just the rules I am not 100% on. My recommendation would be to just give us the ability to turn on all the different rules at will.
For example
Wormholes = one or off (or maybe like warp gates common, dense etc)
gate speed (4x or cap at 12hour or something like that)
Retain infrastructure on captured stars true or false ( or give us options for each indy, science econ separate maybe)
gather economy on the cycle or on the tic
enable scan science true or false
etc etc
This will solve all your issues as now the the user has the control to mess with the different options and can’t complain anymore 
-Nick
1 Like
This reminds me of an old post: https://forum.ironhelmet.com/t/crazy-idea-to-make-the-game-more-friendly-to-new-players/4068?u=wfmcgillicuddy
Always surprised to find a part of the gray matter that the Jameson’s hasn’t degraded
1 Like
Thanks for the link. I have absolutely no memory of writing that. I should probably read back through the forum and read what other interesting discussions we had.
1 Like
Based on that linked discussion I do like the idea of economy, tech etc being shared automatically when forming alliances.
Another thing that would hinder the largest players getting exponentially bigger would be to institute an economy tax based on number of stars that would increase incrementally due to costs associated with “star maintenance”.
I think the idea of carrier cost getting exponentially more expensive was aimed at inhibiting the larger empires, but since money becomes nearly negligible at a certain size, a tax seems more appropriate or at least easier to manipulate.
3 Likes
Lots of stuff building up here, let’s not make it too complicated!
@wfmcgillicuddy trust you to come up with a vassalage idea!
I meant to say that I liked Jay’s suggestion of a Carrier Tax is a nice one - makes you need to trade off cost and benefits in an interesting way.
Hey @JayKyburz, I wanna start out by saying I really appreciate the community engagement, and I’m excited to see more active development for NP2 in the near future. Proteus has some great concepts in it (Banking/Experimentation changes, the ledger, wormholes, changing colors mid-game), but there are also several fundamental issues that keep it from truly replacing Triton. These are some of my main concerns and suggestions for how we might modify Proteus to become an improved Neptune’s Pride, not just a different Neptune’s Pride.
Production:
Hourly production was introduced to even the playing field for players who weren’t able to logon right after production, but it actually had the opposite effect. Hourly production tipped the balance even more heavily to players who refresh the game all day long to reinvest their cash at every tick. This is honestly a bit of a turn off for me, since I like being able to set the game down for a few hours and think about other things. Knowing I’m actively losing cash by not playing every hour can get stressful over time. Maybe I just speak for myself, but if the only ‘downtime’ is between separate games, I’ll need to drop from playing 3-5 games at a time to only 1 at a time with breaks in between them.
Carrier Cost:
The current state of carrier cost is not fun. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t play Proteus very often. In Triton, it’s possible to “out logistic” stronger enemies by getting your ships (albeit smaller quantities) to the frontline faster than them. Allowing players to experiment with building an efficient carrier network is a big part of skill expression in NP. I feel that limiting carrier purchases to the point where I must choose between 1 carrier or several economy per tick in mid game removes that aspect of gameplay entirely. I know the carrier cost in Proteus was meant to match the increased income levels, but the current system doesn’t work in my opinion. Yes — there’s a strategic choice between investing in economy or building more carriers, but it isn’t fun to watch thousands of ships pile up because I can’t afford enough carriers to retrieve them efficiently.
All that said, I actually don’t think scaling prices need to go. The concept isn’t bad in and of itself… the problem is that carrier prices scale much faster than income does. I’m not sure what the right balance is, but the price increase rate should definitely be lowered significantly. Maybe carriers start at $50 and increase by $15 each purchase?
Warp Gates:
Triton Warp Gate – Carriers move 3 times faster between gated stars.
Proteus Warp Gate – Carriers reach the destination in a maximum of 12 hours, no matter the distance.
The Proteus style of warp gate is interesting, but does the game a disservice by replacing Triton warp gates. 3x speed via gated stars allows for tons of tactical skill expression and potential outplays. Oftentimes, we’re turning gates on and off every hour trying to gain the upper hand in a close fight. Removing the Triton gates cuts out that aspect of combat entirely. That said, I do appreciate Proteus warp gates as well. A 12 hour maximum travel time between gates provides some interesting options with logistics networks, and also makes range much more impactful later in the game.
My suggestion is to include both types of warp gate in the game, but only allow a star to contain one gate at a time. It probably wouldn’t be hard to differentiate between them visually, and perhaps the long range gates are more expensive. But keeping both types does leave more strategic options open to the player.
Wormholes:
I like them a lot, but I think they should be a bit less common and trend away from the center of the galaxy. I like the idea of instant travel through wormholes, but not sure if I’m sold on it though. Also - what about scanning through wormholes?
Miscellaneous:
- I think the defender bonus is great and would love seeing it added back in.
- Same thing with the “Home” button (the house) on the in-game menu screen. I use it dozens of times a day and I’m not sure why it was removed. If you want to limit the buttons to one line, maybe have it be Home - Ruler - Quick Upgrade - Bulk Upgrade. I think clicking the timer at the top for refresh is pretty intuitive, although most the time I just refresh my browser since it’s quicker.
- Would also like to see renown, victories, and rank count on the bottom of profiles. Badges are awesome, but I don’t think anyone would be happy to see their stats disappear. Plus, badges can be bought by anyone and aren’t always an indicator of a strong ally, but hundreds of renown points usually aren’t wrong.
- Custom game options to enable/disable wormholes and adjust carrier prices.
I haven’t thought too much about the alliance issue, but personally I’m not interested in betraying right at the end to steal a victory. Especially when I see the same players game after game, lying and backstabbing doesn’t feel great and also restricts my options for trustworthy allies down the road…
5 Likes
Hourly production was introduced to even the playing field for players who weren’t able to logon right after production, but it actually had the opposite effect. Hourly production tipped the balance even more heavily to players who refresh the game all day long to reinvest their cash at every tick.
A possible solution to the production issue would be to allow players to choose when they collect income in a real-time game. Income would collect from tic to tic in a separate pool. Players would have a button to release that income to themselves, but it would have a cool-down of maybe 12 or 16 hours before you could collect again.
2 Likes
LOVE to see you back in action tweaking the game. It’s been a while since I got a game in but a fresh wave of tweaks will certainly get me going again.
Regarding Proteus production time: I would suggest an odd number so it gradually rotates throughout the week. Production every 7 hours or every 11 hours for instance. Sometimes that would be midnight for me and inconvenient, but not always!
I very much like the idea of total anonymity. One thing that actually turned me off from the game way back was how everyone knew everyone and “deals” would be made in one game to effect another (i.e. let me win this one, I’ll help you win the next one). Having a reputation in the community cheapens the “diplomacy in space” feel in-game to me. I know that’s not everyone’s opinion, and some people love being known from one game to another, but I don’t. I feel like a lot of the systems people are brainstorming to encourage more dynamic backstabbing, risks, betrayals, etc., are only needed because people have long memories from game to game and don’t want to risk their reputation in the community. This does not mean I want to be a total backstabbing ass all the time, but rather I want to feel like it is a person’s actions and interactions THIS game which define their performance and mine.
4 Likes
@JayKyburz I am quite new to the forum and a veteran of only 5 or 6 games, but I have been thinking a lot about the issue of production time and incentives that you are trying to address in Proteus and @TheLastHero mentioned. I think he is right about hourly production rewarding hourly play and that being a problem.
I think the best way to address that is an Improvement Queue. I know it is a big feature, but I think allowing players to queue up the improvements they want to purchase in advance would solve almost every issue with production time incentives you’re facing, in Proteus, Triton and even Turn-based games.
It also makes sense because in the game you’ve provided wonderfully functional carrier movement planning which has prevented any similar complaints about troop movement. Even though checking your map every hour for tactical movement opportunities is technically advantageous, you never hear complaints about that because the planning function works so well the gap is pretty narrow. If you provided a planning feature for investing resources I think the complaint would similarly disappear and you’d be free to make everything tick however you think best. With an improvement queue freeing up players to log in whenever is convenient, I think hourly ticks across the board, Proteus-style, is the most intuitive and satisfying.
5 Likes
I love this idea!
1 Like
Hey folks, lots of interesting stuff here
I’m still pretty new but I think both Triton and Proteus have a lot of great things going for them.
Just gonna dump my personal wishlist:
- Defenders Bonus returns.
I think the problem is ships only dealing 1 damage, so a +1 bonus in the early game is much greater than getting tech from 3 to 4, for example. Weapons tech creates an arms race and having +2 or +3 on your enemy is extremely advantageous. That +2 or +3 is only a +1 or +2 with the defenders bonus making a return. I just like the defenders bonus
- Infrastructure loss on capture.
I can see the intent here to stop snowballing / an empire running away once capturing all the infrastructure of an enemy. But, it also creates the odd situation where overwhelming attacks just suicide and nuke a players core economy and there is no recovery from that. I like the more attrition based style in Triton.
I’d like to see the infrastructure lost scale to the size of the combat involved. And happen even if the defenders win. Eg. 500 ships attack and the defenders win, the attackers did 374 damage before being wiped out. This equates to $374 loss in infrastructure at that star, iterating from the highest developed. Numbers are made up just to illustrate the idea.
- Terraforming returns (in some way)
The scaling costs need a mechanic like terraforming. I’d be curious to see what it would be like if captured stars don’t lose all their infrastructure - as above - but instead lose 20 (or 30?) Resources. A star system was just invaded, rebuilding the infrastructure should be more expensive. This penalty to resources will lessen over time until it reaches the natural resource value; maybe +1 every hour?
It would create a warzone whereby stars that are traded often become almost impossible to develop until they are held for a long period of time.
- Terraforming pt2
If you can’t expand to new stars you are essentially climbing a wall against the scaling costs of developing infrastructure vs the easy first few levels of infrastructure on a newly captured star.
There is no real way to “go tall” but I feel it could be a nice option to have, especially in cases where you are trapped by cycle 1 or 2 and have literally no where to go except into another player (who coincidentally has 2x your stars).
If terraforming research made a return it could work as a +5 Resources split between all your stars every cycle. Adds a lot of depth - in my mind - to capturing low resource stars and letting them increase in value instead of just zerging out and grabbing everything / the biggest stars. Terraforming maths out at far more cost reduction the lower the resources are on a star.
- Neutral ships
Stars with very high resources could be seeded with small amounts of neutral ships as a barrier to them being conquered. Even just seeded with industry could be enough.
- Truly dark galaxy.
An option to limit the intel panel to only show player data for players within your scan range.
Alternatively, (another option) to reduce the accuracy of the data shown in the intel (round to nearest x) but increase that accuracy for every star of that player you have in your scan radius.
The intel panel is huge in revealing little nuggets about two empires, seems a bit too powerful to me at least.
- Galactic Average
Another interesting route to take, especially for combat/scanning/hyperspace range is to use a galactic average of the tech level. And then your individual tech level gives you a bonus depending on whether it is higher, or lower, than the galactic average. Would both greaten the effect of a runaway tech advantage but also allow players to collectively combat that advantage. Also nerfs tech trading since giving a technology to another player would lessen the bonuses that tech level gives to both you the player recieving it - since the galactic average would increase.
- Experimentation (rng is bad in strategy)
I both like and dislike experimentation (espionage) in both Triton (and Proteus). Unsure of a way to keep the mechanic but lessen the purely luck based advantages it gives. You are essentially hedging your bets and in rarer cases experimentation hits the same tech two or even three times in a row. Perhaps the galactic average mechanic described above would soften the raw rng nature of experimentation.
The majority of my other thoughts have been covered by others in this thread; but primarily the hourly production and ship/economy scaling needs adjustment (i’d advocate for an 8 hour cycle and be done with it 
) and warp gates perhaps having the option of 3x faster within current hyperspace range or a 12 hour movement with maybe increased range? The warpgates in Triton offer serious outplay consideration in adding/removing them from stars but it also becomes a bit gamey.
Last thoughts, anything that can improve the trust between players would be an advantage. So many “backstabs” in game are just low-tier “lets trade techs” and then surprise surprise you don’t get the tech back and there are ships on your border now. A little Offer dialogue would go a long way. “eXorbitant is offering to trade Weapons 3 for Manufacturing 3” or “player A is offering to send $200 for Experimentation 4” accept/decline.
I’d go even one further and offer more systems like formal alliances (research coordination allowing you to see tech progress and focus, scan/vision sharing etc), open borders to allow movement (no combat), non aggression pacts (can’t initate movements into owned stars) etc etc etc. The clique-iness among veterans who have relations over years and the general “backstabbing is a part of the game” vibe sometimes outweigh the benefits in getting new players to a) enjoy the game and b) stick around long enough to become veterans.
Anyway, both games are fantastic and if I was allowed to only write one idea it would be to include as many options for customization when creating custom games. Adds a tonne of value into premium membership too!
7 Likes
empty stars should be inhabited by pre-space flight civilizations. they can never attack (i.e. pre space flight), but they can build up their individual stars economy, industry, and science they start out at one of everything. but since they are an individual star system. they will not do much in the way of science. unless they get lucky with experimentation. we being multiple world civilizations have the advantage in everything. but this would make it difficult to expand early game.
3 Likes
“pre-space civilisations” would be a nice optional setting
1 Like
It is an interesting idea.
I like the idea of emphasizing trust in relation to other players. I think the offer dialogue option you described is interesting, but wouldn’t want to do away with trust based on interaction. The option as described seems more like assurance than trust. Seems interesting but I would want there to be some incentive for putting your neck on the line and actually banking on the other folliwing through. It seems like that requires more diplomacy and foreign management.
If you could perhaps trade at 1/2 cost if you just send the tech and then keep prices normal for confirmed trade… or something like that.
I agree that some version of terraforming would be nice to be implemented somehow. But, I think I would like to see an even tighter balance on technologies. Not sure exactly if that’s possible without redefining all the techs. It already does better at balancing the techs than Triton does in many ways. Also, I’m curious what everyone else’s perspective is on superior and inferior tech research.