Make single player games not give victories

So I read on here somewhere that someone created a game to play against the AI so I did that myself. I learned quite a bit but something else that I learned is that I could play through a whole game uninterrupted by waiting for another player and finish a game in just a few hours. This would allow me to test some theories and just enjoy more np in short order. BUT! I get awarded victories for those. perhaps there could be a single player option that automatically spawns AI’s force starts and does not award rank or victory points?

OR even have a “ranked” and “unranked” version of games. I have a feeling I’m going to play more single player games in the future, perhaps not time will tell. Someone could abuse such things to artificially increase their victory stats on the intel page though. Personally I’m not a fan of being able to see that and/or badges either but I guess badges had to have a place if they were to earn some money. I guess there is the “extra anonymity” option which I presume hides that.

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Yes for this. I have also expressed a similar wish.

Create a 2 player game, 8 stars each, starting stars 10. Choose blue circle and win.

Wining a 32 player game instantly against AIs should be possible with a custom layout. You could choose double-ring layout and cluster all home worlds close to each other.

I’m all for the ranked vs unranked games. But why no victories? I can tell you that playing against the AI is no child’s play currently. It’s pretty tough in fact. And with Jay indicating that he’s going to be improving the AI further in the near future, I’d say a victory against the AI is earned.

I setup/played several games against with AI (some with other players) when we were analyzing the AI algorithm. Most/all of those were password’ed … so when we were done testing, I could close-down the game so no stars were rewarded. Here’s an example of One Green Monster versus 7 (and then 15) AI Robots! :wink:

But yea, I’m generally in favor of NOT allowing you to get any stats for just playing against the Bots unless you truly have to fight 'em for it - maybe a minimum number of turns, etc.

Which ironically ties into AnnanFay’s great example of how you can create a game and immediately claim victory - LOL! :wink:

Played against 3 AI’s the only attacks that ever happened in that game were my attacks and cyan trying to reclaim stars I took. The AI shared tech the whole way so I just got tech from them and invested in weapons. once two levels ahead at weapons 8 I sniped the closest AI’s homeworld, took over all stars which made me -1 with both other AI. paid them off for 2 cycles while positioning myself to take as many stars as was needed from both yellow and green in one go, winning before they could launch a counterattack since I wouldn’t be able to keep bribing my way out of being attacked.

I easily outpaced them in economy and industry the whole time. Perhaps if I was having to deal with aggressive players it would have made it more challenging but the AI seems pretty simple to get one over on. The logic is pretty straight forward. But as annanfay said, it’s easy enough to cheat your way to victory with “single player” games.

Edit: wrong link

AI only games are boring games, but usually winnable.

They take time skill and patience, so victories don’t bother me.

Games created with instant win conditions are a different kettle of fish.

Well after reading this and trying it out, I was able to give myself a win without doing much work. I was easily able to take the lead and then due to the fact that I was a) in the lead and b) the last human player, there appeared a button at the bottom of the “leaderboard” UI that says I can wrap up the game.

So after this discovery, I’m changing my mind and agree somewhat with @Gawadroit that maybe there should be a change in how this works. A true victory against the AI should earn you a victory boost, but not how I was able to achieve this.

How should I detect if its a single player game?

If the game starts populated, and everybody concedes when they agree you have won, the game becomes SP.

I haven’t been too concerned with this because it pretty easy to set up a turn based game with my phone, iPad and Laptop and fake a win with no AI at all. The victories stat is nice… but it doesn’t really mean anything

I disagree, to many players it means something. The number of games I’ve been in where you can tell how much the victory means to people, and that mark symbolizes it.

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You can check end game count of warp gates by the remaining players after victory detection. I have never seen the AI players build any. Following the star count/ship count checks, run a per player warp gate count if they detect a winner. The button for claiming victory could then offer a second button for a test AI game, with (0 victory / 0 rank), well , maybe 1 rank for not going AFK.

This system will not be foolproof, since an AI player could conquer one of your WG’s, and hold it as you gain the last star of the test game.

Excuse me for reviving this topic, It happened to me yesterday.

I just wanted to try some things and started a 2 player private game forcing start, so it was me against AI.

I just configured it as Circular-Twin Ring with 50% of stars for victory, once captured my ring stars and one of the AI, as expected, I won: Neptune's Pride

I also think these stats are important and this allows to fake data. I didn’t expected to receive victory and rank points.

Games that could be checked:

  • forced start games with 50% AI players
  • games won by not killing ships, or by killing only a few (I won by killing only 3 ships!)
  • private games in general?

Or could be ranked games: only the standard game and some selected games from the board (some mod could enable a game for rank if it’s requested, after review it?).

Yes, I could do better with this. But really anything I code will easy to work around if a player wanted to artificially inflate thier victories and rank.

There is only sign of a great NP player. Badges. And more specifically, this one

:slight_smile:

Is this why the stats are gone in proteus? Or is that just for the testing phase.

You’re right in that players could almost always hack the system, but the current state makes that stats near useless, like not giving much information.

One good alternative I read yesterday, when browsing related forum threads (I don’t remember in which one) was to store the player history.

Player X Played games:

date       | players | game type  | ... | AFK | QUIT | awarded rank | win
2016-05-01 | 8       | turn based | ... | no  | no   | 1            | no
2016-06-03 | 32      | real time  | ... | yes | no   | 0            | no
2016-07-21 | 8       | turn based | ... | no  | no   | 4            | yes

Making that visible in the profile. (And in the forum profile, maybe?)

That makes hacking the system too difficult because the other players can judge with the available data.

I say let those who want to spend the time inflating their victory points do it, because if they spend there time doing that they are not going to learn anything about how to really play this game, and get crushed by those who earned them legit. plus you can kinda tell based on wins/rank/badges if they are spoofing there numbers. Unless they are going so far to spoof their numbers as to buy them self badges in which case really let them do it because it just puts more money in jay’s pocket to put towards better things.

because when it comes down too it, spoofing your wins/rank just makes you look good on paper, not in combat

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I understand that, but a record of the player games is still a nice thing I’d like to have.

for you too see in matches? why? and if you really wanted to break the game you could just make 8 accounts and fill all the standard spots as you then rotate who wins…how would you track that?

If the table also has a link to a page with the game details where you can see the participants (and navigate to their profiles), that is solved.

And I’ll not reply your question “why”, but ask you why not.

Because its heaps of work for me and I’d rather be trying to make the games fun! :slight_smile:

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