• The Hunt is on, also My Retirement.

    Hi Dschibait, thanks for chiming in.

    Apologies if I've misunderstood that.

    I'll outline what I'm trying to do and perhaps there's a way of doing that.


    When people quit this game I believe they fall into one of 2 categories

    1. Rage quit, delete all their planets except for the smallest one with no fleet

    2. Apathy. Meaning they either just don't sign in the next day or perhaps they give up mid raid and just sign out.

    As you've mentioned a number of people would burn a planet with their fleet and leave the rest to yellow out.


    The cycle I've seen though is that either someone's planets will either disappear nigh completely or they'll have their fleets mopped up and then the planets farmed by the smaller players once the x100 runs out.

    I've always though rage quitting was a shame, since it robs smaller players of a potentially valuable farm that can be a big help. And the apathy side of things while understandable is always just that bit, sad or anti-climatic I guess.


    At the very least having the planets available for farming is great for the smaller players. But I also understand how boring it can be for players higher up where there's a very limited set of players they can interact with. So having some kind of farewell such as this might give them something more interesting to do.

    Which sums up my goal here. Instead of just being a name that falls of the list, that there's something else to do. Both for smaller players to try and rig up a fleet to go for and for the larger players to try and catch.


    Just deleting the fleet seems, unfortunate and boring.



    As far as the rule regarding pushing. My understanding of that was that it related to making the allowance (likely in coordination with) a specific other player or group of players so that they were able to destroy the ships and gain the rubble. Hence the push.
    Having a player abandon the game and their fleets go rest leaves them vulnerable to everyone, and playing the game occasionally I'll find a yellow player with some fleet score and try and track down where that fleet is.

    I do understand the concern, that a leaving player might provide the exact information regarding where the fleets are or when they will be available to someone and that would reasonably be considered pushing.


    Which is why I made efforts to use different times and some of excessive length with mine. To make it a proper free for all and thereby not a push.

    Many of the fleets are timed to not return until after the 7 day inactivity limit to properly open it up.

    The initial post did have a coordinate, which I've edited out.
    It also had a vague description of a fleet, which not knowing more could look like an actual detailing of a (my) "player fleet" so I've also edited that down to much less information.

    The pushing concern would be an issue with the core of the whole deal.

    Though again, I think that this particular case could be reasonably considered to not violate that rule.


    If you clarify that this would in fact violate that rule, I'll sign back in and arrange disposal of those fleets.

    Or if there might be another way to restart things in a manner that would comply, please do also clarify.


    My concern is just that otherwise this would just be unfortunate and boring.
    And that seems like a sad way to leave things.


    Thanks again for the response though. I'll keep checking back here to catch what you decide.

  • The Hunt is on, also My Retirement.

    Hi All.

    The Hunt has begun.

    I am now retired and my fleets are scattered to the winds on Escape Flights of various lengths.


    My current resources up for grabs in the hunt are: 138 Billion Pig Iron; 120 Billion Metal; 125 Billion Kryptonite; 168 Billion Spice



    You can find some of my planets near the center of the first 2 galaxies

    The last fleet will have returned within 18 days from today.


    Smaller production planets generally have smaller fleets

    Higher production planets generally have much longer escape flight times.

    Planets have minimal if any built defences

    About an hour before this message was sent my x100 renewed, so my planets should gather a few resources for people to collect.

    Most, but not all, planets have a starting fleet of at least 1,000,000 phoenixes

    The larger planets generally have larger fleets

    It matters more for smaller players obviously, so they know what they might be raiding.


    I am about to sign out of SI2, but will check on this thread tomorrow and maybe after that in case anyone has any questions.


    Best of Luck

    I wish you all a good game and the best in life.

    Investigator Zorci

    Forever 22 ;) (my SI2 rank when I signed out)

  • Joke

    The one above 143 is 1:042 ;)

    The numbering system seems a bit special


    In other news, having the numbers in the suns is kind of annoying and difficult to read.

  • Is the game boring?

    Quote from dark angel

    I catch your fleet from the rescue flight))))

    it’s enough for me to rob your planets 1 time, the rest is hunting for the fleet)))) especially since it worked out several times 8o 8o 8o

    You've forced me to keep changing up my return times.

    You're still surprisingly good at guess them sometimes. It's impressive

    but if you ever see a 101, just know I'm laughing at you 8o

  • Is the game boring?

    Quote from HanaBi

    If I understand correctly, you use the number of points scored as a benchmark (scale) to compare with the rest of the players.

    But that's only partially true, because the way we play is very different from each other.


    I refer to scaling more as how far removed you are in power from the next set of players.


    Not a critique of play style there all. Very familiar with both DA and your Playstyles :) This applies to both of you just in how to compare to everyone else in strength.

    A similar comparison is I had an AZ15 player start raiding one of my planets, but he stopped when I parked 1.2m phoenixes there for him to see. IF it came down to it, I could safely raid him and his only answer would be to dodge. Same as when it comes to You and DA. If you send a fleet, there's very few people who could try and smash it.

    The scale that you operate on is outside where everyone else is. While I'm a big fish to someone in AZ15, there are plenty of other fish my size to keep the game turning.

    The issue is that if the server runs long enough, I think it's difficult to prevent someone from eventually taking a position where they outclass everyone else.


    I mentioned the Pareto Distribution, which even alone is a hard thing to prevent from taking over a game like this. Not so much with activity, but with the eventual settling of points.

    The speedup I think is an attempt to deal with this, I mean it's all based on DA's points. But it doesn't truly address the issue of that scale, it just allows faster recovery.

    Which leads to what Dschi said.

    Quote from Dschibait

    scaling is a topic, thats right but, scaling just in that speed-up; if we would take a 100x speedup until 90% of the points of p1, anyone could easily catch up to place1 - the problem with that is simple - you can destroy someone, and he comes back so fast, in that situation, the alliance with more players active will winn all the time, and its a pain of time until these losing players will leave.


    but, if we combine this with our AZ system (maybe with the one from Sirius), we could achieve a long-term high speed experience with chunks of players, where the alliance can't hold any of these point areas ...

    A valid concern. Most active = complete domination. Without a similar competition it's a similar scaling problem, just by alliance instead of individual player.

    It's going to be a hard thing to beat though, because it comes back to the Pareto Distribution. Which is kind of a natural thing, and much more savage when it comes to smaller player numbers.

    Might be able to counter act it by forcing an alliance to split once they're #1 for too long, but that's just likely to be a pain. Also runs the risk of creating shadow alliances.

    It's a spitball, but I don't like it.

    Not to mention that I'm just layering mechanics as we go at this point, which is a horrible way to build something like this game.

    Not pushing anything I'm saying, just putting it out there in case it's useful.


    Another idea could be to limit the number of attack actions in a day that a fleet base can make. Make Aliens and inactive planets exempt obviously. And that way people would need to pick their targets more carefully.

    They can't overwhelm 1 person by spamming them because of the 3 attack per planet limit, and they can't farm an entire galaxy either.

    Though this only mitigates the issue, and could easily cause more problems than it solves.

    It might encourage ninjaing more, but it's probably just going to lead to fewer but definitely overwhelming attacks.

    Would need some raiders to chime in on how much that would suck I think.

    Editing to mention that this could also make the game boring for other people if they aren't getting raided. Or lead to people leaving their fleets out like a chump because nobody ever attacks them and losing it all.


    Quote from Rozpruwacz

    Cool post. Thanks for that and your opinion in topic. It's a long message so I will not refer to every thing you said. But mostly I agree with your opinions. Maybe only this 'reset' it's a bit controversial for me. I personally do not likethis reset mechanic in game. I feel like I have to do same thing over and over :D But maybe most of players would like it and maybe it's kind of solution. But maybe if a parallel server was running for SI2 (something similar to Genesis but maybe for 3 months not a year? maybe that would be something, It's server that's getting reset but you don't really lose everything cause you can transfer built account to endless SI2)..

    Cheers 8)

    I don't like the reset idea either.

    I only mention it because it takes out the run of time that allows someone to gain a substantial lead.

    A seasonal server is the obvious solution, but when the server ends there's going to be a natural exodus from the game without an endless universe to transfer into. Which is going to have the same problem we have now eventually.

    If we found a mechanical solution to the scaling problem, then for it to be effective we would still possibly need to look at a reset. Because it's hard to rebalance something that's already so far out.

    Personally I don't like either idea, but I understand how the second (restart for new mechanics) might be necessary to create a balance that the mechanics can try to hold onto.


    third spitball might be to have a time limit on an account's activity.

    Maybe a year, after which you get given a new planet with 10% of your available resources and 2 weeks-1 month protection maybe.

    That could keep things fresh and introduce a new rush to scale mechanic. I can't imagine starting with several billion resources, would be an interesting race to invest and create a fleet to carry them before the curtain drops and I'm fair game.

    Does create the problem of accounts being reset, and unless you knew about this going in, it's a nasty surprise (Would be unfair to spring something like this on DA) but it could create a natural ceiling of sorts.

    Probably would still have a similar problem, would just be a smaller big fish that's still near impossible to fight off.


    I don't really like the idea of resets at all. But I can see how they could be very necessary. Third idea might at least make it kind of interesting.




    Quote from dark angel

    you are my favorite and kindest player!!!!

    you never scolded me like others for robbing you

    Naww

    I've said a few times that you only catch me if I stuff something up ;)

    The way you raid does make it quite difficult to recover if you do catch all my caches. That's only happened once though.

    unrelated to this discussion, but more that when raid that hits in 30 minutes. 101 is me trying to say lol by the way. Because I'm online and it's not goin to get anything valuable 8o

    Realized that might not make sense off hand.


    Editing to mention that I did almost leave when you did catch all my caches.

    Had Eternal correcting my math and Hana helping me with resource trades to get stable again.

    Tight couple of weeks coming back from that.

  • Is the game boring?

    Look, I'm famous. ;)


    On topic

    I think the big issue here is two fold.


    1

    Like Roz has been pointing out the game is structured to have diminishing returns. Both in terms of returned investment from buildings, and in terms of the x100 booster reducing.
    (Personally, my natural lifespan in this game ends when I can't trigger the booster anymore. 1% growth is an increasingly difficult floating goal that will turn into a wall pretty soon I think.)


    2

    Scale. This like most things struggles with scale.

    DA is at scale, HanaBi is at a similar scale.

    Everyone else looks like new players compared to their points, and there's really no comparison.

    AZs are a cool idea as much to prevent griefing as they are to compare average rank as you grow. But they struggle with the sheer sense of scale.

    I could ruin any AZ15 player without much threat in the same way that DA could as Roz has been pointing out. In fact it would probably be easier because I get more spice production. But give them 2-3 months and they could take a swing back at me as Dschi has pointed out.
    When it comes to DA the main difference is that she's out of reach.

    Regardless of activity, the top 1% have to eat, especially with them not having the boosters, and there's noone else their size to eat.



    Of these two issues scale is the killer I think.

    Fixes would be focused on trying to keep people in neat little clumps, which is only harder to do with fewer players.

    Fixes would also have to counteract principles like the Pareto Distribution. Both in terms of trying to encourage wider engagement and in terms of where all the resources end up.
    Mechanically this can be theoretically done, but in practicality if run long enough something is going to escape and tear ahead.

    I would rule out pruning the exceptions, because we do want to keep people in the game and punishing the people who succeed too much is usually a bad way to run things.

    The only other easy answer is to limit time. Because in an endless period of time, there will always eventually be someone who sits in DA's spot. Someone who the other's can't compete with. If the system can't prevent that, or deal with it satisfactorily, then perhaps the system itself should reset.

    Not actually recommending that, but it does strike me as one of the only ways of rebalancing this without a lot of creative restructuring.


    The issue of diminishing returns is worth remembering though. This game isn't fun without a positive feedback loop.

    Early on there's a lot of that. But as time goes on there gets less and less. I think that this game isn't really designed to have people play it for a long period of time.

    I've picked this game up 3 times. 1st when it was self hosted, 2nd when it was hosted by bigpoint, 3rd at the end of January in this year. The first two times I never managed to unlock teleporting. I burnt out on the game well before that. Probably only had a 3 month stint each time round.

    This time I stuck around because the x100 booster changed the game a lot.

    It not only made things attainable in a reasonable timeframe, it also gave a daily progress goal that encouraged forward planning/preparation, and regular engagement. The only exception here is research, though I can understand why that caps out the way it does.

    Pre x100 the regular engagement incentive was to catch the Escape Flights. And when you missed them and got your fleet wiped it was very hard to recover. With x100 though, there's a reason to be constantly doing the math on what else you need to do today, and if you do get your fleet wiped it gives you a means to recover. (Which I can attest to). Missing the 1% window and losing the booster hurts a lot, but if you've got your resources you can recover it without too much hassle. It allows players to build themselves up, without needing to raid others. Which means they can usually rebuild themselves after getting raided if they build for it.

    These are good feedback loops to encourage engagement, and they are precisely why I'm still playing this today.

    It makes some sense to not have everyone on x100, because then scale becomes an insane problem.

    But if everything started from day 1 0 again, I would hate to play the game at x1 speed now.


    Someone made the recommendation that the booster be tied to AZs, which could be a decent option to balance things especially in an early game while still keeping things sustainable into a late game.

    Perhaps having a first-to-last type mechanic such as anyone in the #1 spot bein ineligible for the booster until they've been out of that spot for 24 hours. Could allow the leader to get knocked down a few pegs and keep things fresh and competitive overall.

    Eventually though I think people will run out of AZs. Which brings the question back to time.


    The only way I see the scale problem being properly resolved, once it's run away, is either by the server being refreshed or the far and away leader refreshing their account.

    Mechanics might help prevent a similar situation, or at least slow it down. But I think it's still quite possible things will end up in somewhat comparable state eventually.

    Neither of those are nice options. One means everyone loses everything, but at least it's fair. The other sees the leader lose everything, but is by its nature unfair. If the leader is happy where they are, then refreshing they aren't going to want to refresh their account. Forcing though would set a precedent that would likely not sit well on principle. As Roz has said, if the mechanics allow it we can't punish someone just for playing the game.

    The only way it works out nicely is if that player decides they want a fresh start and voluntarily restarts their progress. Which is understandably not something a lot of people would want to do.



    As a tl;dr

    In this current situation. I think the only useful thing I've can offer is that the issue here is, I think, one of scale more than anything else.

    How to deal with that, I don't know.

    But with the boosters, I've made more progress playing this game this time than any other. Although I can't say whether I had more fun, it's certainly kept me playing longer.