Well I first started thinking about it because of the wear and tear on the servers, but I should be able to fix that easily.
I’m pursuing it because I think games should have a momentum that brings them to inexorably to conclusion. I think this keeps the game exciting for all players, the winners and losers.
Now in theory the game already has this, because as you start to get ahead, you get more science and better tech and the strong get stronger etc, but in some games it’s not working.
Perhaps some players find it difficult to to see they have the advantage and should push home for victory, this is fair enough and all part of the game.
But perhaps a winning player doesn’t want to push for victory because they are just enjoying the game. I’m not a huge fan of this because, when you are on the losing side it can feel a little like a cat playing with a mouse. I think it’s polite to get in and finish off the weaker empires. (Because I think there is an obligation for all players to keep logging in and playing until it is very clear they have lost.)
My first reaction was to punish large players for not using their resources to bring the game to a close, ie stop ship production. But perhaps this is not the right strategy.
A time limit is a nice, clear and obvious way to bring the game to an end, but I think it would be very difficult to pick a good time limit, and it would really suck to hit the limit just when you were about to win by conquest.
It’s not the biggest problem facing the game right now so I don’t want to stress over it too much. I threw in a quick fix which which was probably a mistake, we’ll see if we can do better in future,
I think you almost got it to be honest… when you read the comments here the overwhelming response is nice one for trying something new, and by adding either the upkeep or decay approach it might work… and please please don’t add game time limits!
Sorry, that is extremely overpriced. My maintenance cost per day in my latest game would have been 1,000,000$ and I didn’t stockpile anything. It just took a week (warp speed) to get ships from one side of my empire to the other side.
Sure, I could have built 500 economy on every star and every ship would have been fine
I’m not completely against a maintenance fee but it would have to be much lower. Also it should be paid only when a galactic cycle is completed.
I like the idea of a slow degradation of manufacturing efficiency depending on terraformed ressources more (see xjhdexter’s post 7).
Ive def refreshed my browser…several times across phone and laptop the past day…not that Im obsessed with checking on this infernal creation of yours or anything…
You know, another thing that prolongs games (in a bad way) and increases ship counts dramatically (and unfairly) is when a player decides to quit and instead of just quitting starts handing all their ships over to an ally. This is just wrong on so many levels.
I’d really love to see an option (or a global change) that prevents allies from sending each other ships. Maybe make it so that instead of the ships being absorbed, they automatically turn around and head back where they came from and if there’s no where in range, they self-destruct. Or even make it so that carriers can go to allied planets, but orbit them and do not change ownership. That would actually make alliances more valuable if you could hop past each other or share ports - and it would encourage more combat more often.
@JayKyburz if you added some kind of time limit the winning player should not earn a recorded victory, as they didn’t actually win, they may have just grown to the biggest and then gone ultra-defensive.
You could offer the choice to end the game after a certain time. So after 6 weeks a window could pop up saying ‘the game has gone too long, are you happy to call it a day?’, and if the majority of surviving players say yes the game ends.
@cptcrackers that wouldn’t have anything to do with the game we’re playing at the moment would it? It wasn’t my idea but there’s currently no way to prevent your ally from surprise giving you ships during the 24hr turn if they really want to.
As for your suggestion:
-An interesting idea but I don’t see much difference between two allies beating everyone and one dead-ally-reinforced player beating everyone.
-If anything it makes the game end quicker because the two allies wouldn’t be slugging it out at the end of game. Also, if you won a game because the other side’s friends all quit it’s not really much of a win, is it? I think it would just increase the likelihood of more quitting.
-If it had to be implemented, it could be tied to the anonymity option, so that in games where you can’t tell if someone has 2 accounts the sneaky player couldn’t send ships to themselves.
However, I think by itself the suggested mechanic of allied fleets orbiting stars without changing hands could be a really fun, game changing option. Allies could reinforce remote fronts and skip past each other without causing one player to become the shield for the others. When your ally goes AFK their ships orbiting your star could be absorbed at a reduced rate, say 10% absorbed to 90% lost.
I personally like the ability to spite someone attacking me by giving all my stuff to another neighbor. That being said, the ability to have allied carriers orbit a foreign star but not change ownership is very interesting, and it certainly could help encourage more combat. One issue is if an allied carrier is orbiting a foreign star when the alliance is ended, although I suppose they could simply be destroyed or “captured” by the home star’s owner.
Are you SURE ship production is actually being limited?
I haven’t bothered flushing my browser cache … so I still see the red error message … but I’m pretty certain that some low resource stars are generating ships despite being “over” the limit.
The ship production is done on the server side, so if that is patched, you should be getting 'em.
What if instead of manufacturing inefficiency at only one star here or there ( causing players to pull their hair trying to find the few stars that are slowing or stopped), it was over the entire empire instead ? This might be simpler ?
The empire would just get one alert notification for the empire instead of individual stars ?
What if it was not just 100X resources, but 1000 or 10000 ? for the combined sum of empire Terraformed Resources ?
Is there some place in the UI that would sum all the Terraformed Resources for the entire empire ? Hope this does not break the server ?
Anyhow, this stop in manufacturing has been pulled. But if the idea comes back, then I am just suggesting these simplifications.
It wasn’t my idea but there’s currently no way to prevent your ally from surprise giving you ships during the 24hr turn if they really want to.
