Proposal for a shared victory system

Neptune's Pride
1

There was an interesting discussion over on Discord about the pros and cons of handing your stars to an ally to help them claim victory towards the end of the game. I have been thinking about features for NP4 that I am working on now (weekends only). One possibility is a shared victory system.

The objective of the system is to give a small team of players a way to share a victory when within striking distance of the victory criteria. (50% of stars), and discourage players giving stars to allies to so they can steal victory.

It recognises that changing alliances and backstabbing can be fun mid game, but towards the end of large games, players just want to help their allies bring the game to a close, even if it means they wont get a podium place.

Also, this is a fairly dramatic change it would only be turned on for test games until proven.

Shared Victory System

  • There is a new concept called a Team. (Federation, Alliance)
  • Teams are created and dissolved by players during a game. (max 1 per player at a time)
  • Teams are public and appear at the top of the leaderboard.
  • Players may request to join a team and be approved by any team member.
  • Players may kick team members at any time.
  • Teams can claim victory if they have the required combined star count and has and unchanged members for more than 24 hours.
  • Max team size of 3, 4, or 5 (configurable), to insure the game is nearing completion.
  • Team members automatically in “formal alliance” with shared scanning and fleet movement.
  • Remove the existing formal alliance system. (to keep things simple)
  • Players can be in more than one team.
  • The game will provide stats and infrastructure summaries for the teams.

For later consideration

  • Is a win with two team members a better win than a win with 4 team members?
    • How do we reward it? Would it ever happen anyhow?
  • Consider that there is no such this as a podium you are on the wining team or not.
  • Consider a public policy that giving stars away is frowned upon and you could concede instead. (like cheating accusations)
  • Consider removing the ability to abandon a star, or make abandoning a star destructive.
  • The same code will be used to create static team games for those that want them.
  • Consider allowing teammates to command your empire while you are sleeping.

Some Scenarios

2 players on a team have 20% of stars each for a total of 40%
The remaining 4 players have 15% each but are not allied. 60%
The 4 small players create a team up and win a “4 player win”,
But if 1 of the smaller player can be convinced to join the 2 larger players they earn a “3 player win” which should be celebrated more!

2 players form an uneven team. One with 40% of stars, and the other with 10%
The remaining players must take stars from these two players to prevent the game ending.
A player with 40% of stars can choose any other player with more than 10% to share victory with.

There are 3 teams of 2 players fighting it out, each with more than 25% (but no player has much more than 15%) 2 of the teams can just choose to share the victory and take it.

Assuming max team size of 4, any 4 players in the whole map, with more than 12.5% of stars each could attempt claim victory. Neighbors of the 4 players would have to move quickly to reduce the teams star count.

Any players with more than 12.5% of stars, but with less stars than “the winning player” will be heavily incentivized to try and draw the game to a close by forming a team as quickly as possible. The players smaller than 12.5% will be incentivized to pull them back down.

The “winning player” with more than 12.5% may want to form a team from smaller players to end the game while on top and before other 4 smaller players team up.

The winning player may try and keep his team as small as possible so they they can claim the largest kind victory. 3 player or 2 player or even solo?

Questions?

  • Will it ever be possible to earn a win that is less than 4 players? Will 3 players always just invite a 4th to conclude the game?
  • Will teams just form and never change in the first few days of every game?
  • How much will it suck to get kicked out of your team. Is that too much of a stab?
  • should we encourage teams to change and merge as game conditions change?
  • should we encourage players to join multiple teams to create drama and relationship complexity?
  • how will the culture evolve around being in multiple teams. Will it be acceptable to “hedge your bets”?

Update after some thought.

  • The only thing that would prevent the top 3-4 players claiming victory as soon they can, regardless of former alliances or board position would be if there was a strong incentive to try and win with a smaller team, or a team you had been working with for a reasonable amount of time.
  • Perhaps teams have to be unchanging for at least 3-4 days or something.
1 Like
2

Intriguing ideas, for sure. I like the idea of teams… But i REALLY don’t like the idea that the game could end sudden because a team adds a member to put them over the top. In these types of cases, I’d like to see a notification that player x has joined team B, and then a big chunk of time has to pass before that can count to victory conditions.

Ill think on this some more…

1 Like
3

The two things I thought were most interesting/exciting about your proposal are team members being able to control each others’ empires, which would be huge, an individual being able to be on more than one team, and players being able to kick team members.

Et tu, Brute? It’d be amazing if a team member could route the leaders’ ships into disastrous choices while they sleep and then eject them from the team, enabling the rest of the team to bring them down. I doubt we’d ever see this kind of betrayal actually happen, but the possibility of it would be interesting.

A team member with multiple allegiances could completely dismantle the winning team so that their secondary team is in the lead. This at least people might see coming…

An alternate mechanic would be to put control of team membership entirely in the hands of the team creator/leader. They can pay to approve new members and kick. members at will. Each member joining agrees that the leader can claim victory using the members’ stars as if they were their own. This would put the leader significantly less at risk; is that a good thing?

O

4

Claim victory conditions appear when a live player reaches the threshold star count required.

Perhaps a team win condition should become available when the star count leader reaches 60% of the conditions to claim victory.

This Team win condition then opens for Only the star count leader to invite other live players to the team.
1 Such invitation alliances should become very expensive.
1a Example star count x terraform tech level x 10 credits to open the team victory alliance.
1b Once the leader starts such an alliance. All prior formal alliances are ended.
1c All other live players get notified as soon as anyone joins the leader’s team victory alliance.

This could set up end game dynamics where the #2 and #3 contending live players to become the spoilers , rally formal alliances against the original victory alliance team to eventually topple that leader, and get an opportunity to engage a victory team themselves. .

5

Other cost examples :
1a star count x (Weapons tech level + Mfg tech level) x 10 credits to open the team victory alliance, same cost to join.

6

I really like the concept of federations that can claim victory @JayKyburz - definitely something worth exploring. I think it will need some clarity about how exactly the team can form and change - my own gut feeling is that a new member would need approval from all existing team members, and that ejecting someone would also need approval of all the other team members. Also, I think a player should only be allowed to be in one team - if this is not the case you might end up with more than one team claiming victory at once.

In effect a team becomes a new ‘composite’ (and possibly temporary) player, which feels really good. Other than an adjustment to the ‘victory’ rule, this is often how things actually work anyway now, especially in the bigger games.

Feels to me that the concept of allowing other players to issue orders for your empire is separate, and could be the cause of difficulties and bad feelings if something goes wrong. Personally I’d be wary of this.

Thanks as always for making such a fantastic game!

1 Like
7

When some new contender qualifies for a team victory. The option to join any prior team for victory will expire. However, the alliance formed shall stand until either side decides to leave.

The new star count leader then gets to offer the same expensive alliance terms for a victory alliance to end the galaxy.

I guess the victory alliance should automatically end the galaxy at a combined total 140% of the star count needed for an individual victory.

8

After thinking about it for a few days I wonder if we just want something simpler where each player could just specify a list of 2 or 3 players that will receive a “winners allies” badge when the game is finished.

But that doesn’t address the issue where the allies of the player in second place give stars to them so they can turn the second place into a first place. In fact, it might make it worse.

Update:

More Brainstorming:

Perhaps we should embrace the idea that a small ally would want to give stars to a larger player, that when you concede defeat, you can choose to offer your stars to another player, if that player accepts them, they simply take full control of the stars and fleets.

Then on the final leader-board, all the players who gave up their empires go into a kind of tree of victory players, and the victory points are divided among them.

It might be cool to see a tree like structure that shows when a player conceded to each other player and when, leading up to the final few players.

1 Like