OK, so now that I have a couple of plays of Proteus under my belt, here are my thoughts on this version, especially as compared with Triton (sorry, this will be a lo-o-o-ong post!):
Reduced Decision Space:
First up, my biggest concern with Proteus is a reduced decision space. For me, often what makes a game interesting is the need to regularly make interesting and significant decisions (ideally along multiple ‘axes’ that interplay in interesting ways). This gives you a great sense of agency and satisfaction over how your position plays out - often even if the tide turns against you! After trying to put my finger on what it was about Proteus that was leaving me less enthused than playing Triton, I realised that it was that Proteus seems lessened in this regard, with my course of action feeling more scripted and invariant between games.
This is not to say there are no interesting decisions, just that I have found Triton to be richer both with tactical possibilites in combat, and with competing strategic options that needed to be weighed against each other, both between games and within the one game. When I first tried Neptune’s Pride, I expected to play a game or two, get a sense of the game (to compare it with other efforts, such as Stellar Crisis, and a game I developed myself in the old play-by-email days), then move on. Instead I found that most games gave me new, unexpected challenges that kept me intrigued and entertained - enough that I eventually felt it appropriate to reward your effort, JayKyburz, with the buying of Premium membership - I know something of the labour of love involved in developing something like this and I am very impressed with what you have achieved. I suspect if my only experience had been with Proteus, though, my original expectation of moving on fairly quickly would have proven accurate.
Aggressive Exponential Growth:
The first aspect that I think leads to this reduction in decision space is the massive exponential growth rate in Proteus - it swamps a lot of more tactical concerns. In Triton, a unit of Industry produced around 1/4 to 1/3 of a ship per tick. In Proteus, it starts at 3 ships per tick and readily becomes 4 and then 5.
This is a massive scale-up and completely dwarfs your starting forces, for example. There is little difference, for instance, in deciding on whether to post 0, 1, 5 or 10 ships from a start world on this or that colony to protect the path inwards, or try an early rush against a neighbouring target with 30-50 starting ships, when the forces that will actually be slung around even very early on number in the 100s, with no defensive bonus to help.
I do like the more natural and streamlined idea of having Econ, Ind, and Sci all give something every tick, but I think the numbers could be scaled back a lot. 1 per tech level per tick is easy and seems ‘obvious’, making the Proteus rules feel simpler and more streamlined (which is generally good), but a rate of 0.1 per tech level per tick (across all three production categories), for example, doesn’t seem like it would feel particularly less straight-forward (eg. you could show incomes as-is, except with a decimal point added in, and I think it would still convey the same sense to the rules and production rates) and could drastically reduce the early exponential surge.
With the numbers as high as they are, though, there seems to be a definite potential for exponential run-away from the get-go by players with a solid initial build-up and maybe a good start claiming nearby colonies to build on. There is a distinct sense of everyone needing to join in on this or get left in the dust by those who do it better. Compare this to Triton where some people emphasise early military investment, versus an econ push for the first cycle or two, and have significantly differing levels of investment in tech, too.
And yes, I know diplomacy makes a huge difference in how any given game will actually play out, but this is also no less true of Triton - in addition to the broader range of viable early investment and expansion choices there. That is, diplomacy shouldn’t be the only driver of difference of approach between the players and between games, nor does it preclude other sources of interesting decisions within the game, as Triton shows.
Higher tech level start:
Added to this, starting all the tech levels at 3 exacerbates the fast build up and exponential growth. It might not be so bad if the research rates are reduced, so that players don’t typically end up with tech levels around 5 or 6 before they even start to clash, but maybe pegging this back to level 2 at least - that, and reducing the research rate - will I think inject more challenging decisions in terms of which techs to research first. This may necessitate adjusting the tech level costs, too.
As is (with rapid research rates of 1 pt/level/tick) I feel tech is too cheap, although if rates are decimated as I suggest above, it may even become too expensive if not adjusted down. I do agree with others who have noted that all the tech areas feel much better balanced in this version, but as it stands I find I don’t need to choose too carefully which tech to focus on next, so much as just grab all of them, because it doesn’t take that long to get any one of them. I’ll also put in a thumbs up for choosing tech strengths and weaknesses for your race - although this works better in Proteus where the techs are better balanced.
Warp Gateways:
I can’t say I like the way these operate in Proteus. Until your range is up high enough, they don’t provide much benefit, I think (I’m not talking about the random wormholes here - those I do like, as I’ll talk about later). They also no longer play the same tactical role they had in Triton, where you could surprise opponents with well-placed, well-timed gate creation and destruction - even in close-range operations. The Proteus gateways only have effect at longer ranges, so that there seemed no value to using them in tactical ways - they only served to shunt troops to the front line faster.
I miss the phase-shift that tends to happen in Triton where in a well-progressed game you find wars start to turn on who can come up with (and afford) clever warp-gate hijinks in relatively close quarters fighting. In comparison, in Proteus all battles - even entire wars - seem to amount to little more than throwing ever-increasing numbers of ships at each other to see who gets worn down first. There is, of course, a strong element of that in Triton, too - but it never felt like it was only that - tactics and ship disposition choices could and did make a significant difference.
Game Phases:
I guess that’s another aspect of the difference bewteen the two versions: Triton feels like it has a distinct early game (manouvering and researching with very limited resources), middle game, and late game (with warp-gate tactics coming into play). I feel Proteus’ growth rates overwhelm the early game, and the game quickly devolves into a game of steadily grinding your opponent’s forces down with your (hopefully) higher ship production rate - there just isn’t (for me) the same feel of different phases within a game.
Carrier costs:
In principle, the escalating carrier costs should add another dimension to the decision space - do I allocate my money to infrastucture, or another carrier? In practice, I think - per (I think it was) TheLastHero’s comments, that the price increase is too steep, overly hampering early development, while not really providing a sufficient retardant to large, developed positions (its original intent, if I understand correctly).
At least maybe make carrier cost escalation a parameter - none/low/mid/high (i’d count the current rate as ‘high’) - and trial what works best? Or think about panblanco’s suggestion of a kind of ‘beaurocracy tax’ for burgeoning empires as an alternative (it could be based on infrastructure, total tech levels, or both).
Wormholes:
I do like the random wormholes, though (and a fixed travel time for them seems appropriate - although maybe putting warp gates at either end could, say, halve that travel time? Another interesting decision to make later on…). It is good that you trim out wormholes that are too short (from what I read somewhere), as it means that most of them connect areas close to the map edges, which reduces the advantage of having a safe back for those starting near the edge, versus those stuck starting in the middle. Again, these add to the decision space of the game, without drastically changing its nature.
I note blckmn’s suggestion of making wormholes not be actual (ownable) stars - could be an interesting idea. Not sure about scanning through wormholes, though - the need to have to go there (risking war with someone on the other side) to see anything is good, I think.
Shades of Dark / Combatting Huge Alliances, and Lack of Stabbing:
I concur with exOrbitant’s call for (what I think of as) an intermediate ‘dark’ option: you can see all the star locations, but get no knowledge of who might be based where amongst them until you get in scan range. This also plays into discussion of how to make stabbing and alliance-breaking more common: the more anonymised the players, the ‘safer’ they will feel treaching on others. Overall, though, this is a bigger meta-game problem, as most people typically want to retain clean reputations from game to game. For example, I can go into a game with an alias (and started off doing so), but it is somewhat pointless when my account name is revealed anyway when the game ends.
Tech Trading:
I do think tech trading is too cheap, and encourages strong multiple-member alliances, which some have called out as a problem. Alternatives could include that it costs tech pts instead of (or in additon to) money. Eg. you speed up their research while retarding your own (you’re taking time out to ‘teach’ them a tech you already know) - for example, you research at -1 to your Experiment level, while they get +2 - so long as you know the tech they are researching. They could be training you on another tech at the same time (so you each get a net gain, but it isn’t as significant - nor as instant - as just buying the whole tech outright). That said, and as has been generally agreed: the ledger is fabulous!
Spying / Experimenting:
I also do quite like the ‘spying’ bonus in Proteus - that combines the effects of your Experiment and Scan techs, making both more valuable, and does feel like it enriches the game. As with the experimenting bonus in Triton, though, I feel it might be better split between two techs each cycle, as it can lead to someone becoming ascendant through sheer luck of getting the bonus applied to, say, Weapons tech 2-3 times in a row. At least make it so the bonus never goes to the same tech twice in a row.
Cycle Times:
If sticking to Triton-like production cycles, I would suggest that a 20h cycle length would be a better default than 24h - that will generally be good for everyone at some times, and not at others. Works quite well in the 32p and 64p games. There was also a good suggestion from Nomad316 of having build queues for stars, although I agree that that would potentially be an immense job to implement.
As a possibly simpler option, perhaps set cycle collection times separately per world. Eg. you can choose for a world to ‘mature’ next tick, in 3 ticks, 8 ticks, or 24 ticks. This can be used so you can align your worlds so they all mature around the same time - one presumably convenient for you. Also, the longer the cycle you choose, the more you get per tick (eg. 3 ticks gives you 4 ticks worth, 8 gives 12, and 24 gives 40), so people able to log on and harvest every hour get less per hour for their troubles. It also effectively rewards longer-term planning, and further enriches the decision space.
Maybe you could also then add in raiding - battles where you are just trying to get away with someone’s accumulating monies rather than capturing a world outright - your ships could drain money at a certain rate per battle round, getting you something even if they all get destroyed.
Defences:
I’m with exOrbitant in retaining the defender bonus (if all techs - or at least Weapons - started at level 2 or 3, that would reduce its impact, if necessary) - makes for more interesting and challenging interactions - wars are not solely determined by ship count even when Weapons levels are the same. Strategic use of the defender bonus can even the scales of an otherwise over-matched fight considerably - again, increasing the decision space. An alternative might be a ‘virtual ship’ bonus that grows according to how long you have held a world (‘entrenchment’) - eg. +5% to the effective defending fleet’s size per cycle the world has been held. So battles at the fringes of empires might be quite even, but taking out someone’s core worlds gets quite tough.
I do also like exOrbitant’s suggestion of neutral ships to defend unowned worlds - (not necessarily strictly) proportional to the resource value of the world. It would also help even out ‘good’/‘bad’ starts due to the proximity of rich/poor worlds near your start.
Finally:
It is important to note that it may be that simply reducing the production rates as I talked about above (or some similar alteration) might be sufficient to reduce what I feel is the dominant significance of the exponential build-up in the Proteus version over any other aspect of gameplay, and I would be interested in trying a tweaked version of Proteus that played with that. For your current efforts, though, I hope you will keep in mind what I have written up here when blending ideas between the two versions, and endeavour to make sure any changes try to add to the interesting decisions available within the game, rather than dilute them or wash them out.
All of this is, of course, purely my impression and opinion, and you and others will likely disagree in part or on whole with all of the above. All grist for the mill!
) 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.
