At the moment, you can get all the technology your friends have in a matter of seconds. That’s not very realistic. Even if you “get” the technology, your scientist still have to study it and your technicians would have to be trained to implement it. Therefore I suggest you can only get 85% of the tech and still research the remaining 15% yourself.
What do you think?
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Would also limit you to gaining a single level at a time.
Put every tech purchased into a queue and let scientists find a way to use them. This “research” would take 1 hour regardless the amount of Science one has.
1 level at a time.
What if all the research was pooled together that was given away. If you bought 5 research techs they would have 15% of the research to go. The tech would be randomly assigned by a special research team. This will not affect your main research. If you bought weapons 3, hyperspace 3, and manufacturing 3 then it will delay you getting the research for a few hours and cause more strategy to be involved. Possibly days if you buy too many research techs. I also think every player should be allowed to give away and be given only 1 tech a cycle.
This will also prevent the AI players from becoming too strong and prevent the game being all about trading. People need to determine what research is important and try to research it instead of trading their highest techs as fast as they can when their research is high enough. People should only train for 1 tech then trade for everything else and it has very little strategy involved. If they can trade more than 1 tech a cycle, there needs to be some limits in place so they don’t receive the techs right away.
Also how fast you receive the techs should be dependent on your science level.
Let’s keep it simple. I think it would be easiest if a player couldn’t get a higher level if he hasn’t fully implemented the previous level and it is implemented by finishing the last 10% or 15% of the research.
That would be the least coding I think.
I will be fine if there is a limit on trading techs to 1 time a day. Just something so the AI players don’t get too strong. The coding on that should be very simple. We can see how that goes then maybe decide if more should be added. The game needs to stay simple and I think adding in all the extra stuff could cause confusion between players.
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Yes, that would work.
Is there really a problem with AI getting too strong?
I know early on the AI’s ability to trade with each other gives them an early defensive advantage. I find, though, that since they can’t expand, and in fact are rather dumb, that that particular advantage goes away with time.
I LIKE the AI to be strong. It helps limit the advantage that neighboring players get when a player goes Quit or AFK.
As to trading techs, it seems to me the current system works fairly well, with each new tech getting more and more expensive. I suppose you could get a whole bunch of timid players in one game where trading becomes the only way to go and the game lasts forever. So be it. That is the nature of things.
Honestly, in the seven or eight games I’ve played it seems to me the balance has been quite reasonable. I just don’t see the advantage to making these changes.
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The problem is not the AI. I’ve played a 64 player game and have seen players with very low science who were way ahead in the science race because they traded with everybody. When someone hands you the scientific data, all of a sudden your ships have better weapons. That’s not very realistic.
Also, I got attacked and he had more science than me, but another player was also at war with. He simply gave me all the weapons & manufacturing science he had right there.
As much as I love the 16+ player games, the amount of Quit/AFK is absolutely brutal.
In the regular games I played there is not much of a problem with AFK or quit players. They are pretty easy to take out. It is when you have 20 people going AFK and trading with each other that it becomes a problem. In a day or 2 someone can go from weapons 7 to weapons 12 or 13 very easily. This is not at all realistic. The 64 player games definitely need a limit on trading tech. I don’t think it will hurt the regular games to have this limit either. Not many people trade more than 1 time a day in a standard game.
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I know this is not exactly what is being suggested, but I am keen to add a rule for the larger games that limits trade to only players who are in scanning range.
I think it might be interesting to see once are of the map more advanced than others and local communities having to work together to keep up.
I haven’t played a 64 player game in ages but I would like to try one again with this new rule.
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So far in my game then 29 players have gone AFK out of 64. There are also some that quit or KO’d and became AI. There are 23 players left and it is only cycle 18 tick 440. 75% of the people are gone now.
This isn’t as bad as my last game either. We had the top player end up quitting then the AI got the top technology really fast. He had to go on vacation. I know we had a lot of people going AFK and it was worse than the current game. I don’t remember how many but it was mainly their high techs that killed the game for me. I couldn’t wipe out a single star because the AI gained 4 levels of weapons in no time after going AFK and kept gaining tech. After a while I just gave up. It was his home star so it would’ve been nice to have.
You were stranded in a Borg universe. Resistance was futile.
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In the 64 players games it would be nice to have factions of AI. Each with their own personality. There could be Borg like assimilators on one side of the galaxy, and federation good guys on the other. They could message each other and cc all the remaining players.
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Can we have premium 64p games? Also, can we have a 3 strikes rule or something and then have “3 strikes rule” 64p games - where if you afk 3 times, you’re banned from playing the “3 strikes rule” games for a month or two. Or you lose renown or something. Just some way of making people not afk so much.
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Oh yeah, Premium 64p games. Perhaps another mode where half of the galaxy is AI, evenly distributed!
(in other words a 64p game for 32 premium players)
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If the 64 player games were premium we would have to wait a while before there are enough players to join. Most of the people that play the 64 player games do not have premium. 64 players is a lot of players to join in a game and we need the non-premiums to play in the game so we can start
Also Jay I think that is a great idea to have factions of AI. Maybe 4 factions of AI would be good. The AI team choices can alternate between the new AI players and the AI going by some name. Instead of AI, they should have the AI team name. Something like wreckless (Borg AI), qwerty (United Federation AI), rubberband (Klingon AI), JayKyburz (Freelance Federation AI).
Maybe even the AI having different strategies of play. Some might focus on some tech more than others or maybe defend against the bigger players more than the small players. Maybe always having mobile fleets would be interesting too.
@jason3609 Thats along the lines I was thinking.
Also, I want the AI to know who it like and who it doesn’t like. If you start attacking one of the AI on a team, all the AI of that team will attack you back. I would like it that players are basically forced to work together to take down an AI team.
Oh and it would be cool to see AI teams fighting. (And even individual AI’s occasionally backstabbing other AI)
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