A really wild and crazy idea

[Enfant Terrible]

I have a pretty crazy idea. I don't think I'm going to post it yet though.

Edit: OK I'm posting it now

Basically this all stems from something I've been noticing of late. Namely the game is more and more moving away from being stargate "wars" and becoming stargate "economic management techniques". I for one have stopped attacking altogether in quantum because it does me no good. And now I've read that _Apophis_ is selling his attack turns in the main game for much the same reason. This indicates to me there may be a fundamental problem. It seems to me that this stems from the infinite growth that is inherent in the game. What I mean is that everyone's realms are just growing and growing with no end in sight. And ultimately attacking someone else is becoming less important a factor in the game since it actually ends up hindering your own growth. Personally I would rather this game was more about strategies for attacking people and growing that way than being about strategies for maximising efficiency and building a growing economy and my suggestion is proposing a way to this.

So on with it. Basically it's quite simple. I think that the universe should be finite in size. To do this I think a new quantity could be added to the game.

Realm Size. i.e. your realm consists of 8000 planets. or whatever number it's grown to. BUT. there should be a finite number of available planets in the game. So let's say there are 100 people playing. Than the universe consists of 100,000 planets (1000 per player) The ONLY way to make this number bigger is if more players join. So if then 1000 people are playing there would be 1,000,000 available planets.

Now there are three critical components that go along this.

1. Planets have a carrying capacity.
2. Income is dependant on realm size not army size.
3. When you attack someone and defeat them you get a certain number of their planets. (like stealing naq but now attacking's main purpose is to get planets not naq)

Point 1. Carrying capacity means 1 planet can support a certain number of units. Let's say 100. So for every planet you can maintain 100 troops (including spies), Instead of troops producing naq and not spies. Now troops cost X naq/turn and spies cost X + Y naq/turn. Additionally weapons will cost naq/turn to maintain. Bigger weapons will cost more naq (and yes if an army gets too big naq/turn could become negative). All this leads to point 3 (point 2 is pretty self explanatory, more planets means more resources).

Point 3. If you want to grow you need to attack people and conquer their planets. If you want to protect your realm you need defenses. And if you want to plan a good attack you need spies.

What all this does is two things. It means that players need to strategise about how to beat other players with limited resources rather than just grow out of control which is what seems to be happening now. One needs to build an good size army but not build too big of an army that they can't afford to support it anymore. A player can still grow but only at the expense of another player losing something.

Now one point I can see being made is that what's the point of having unit production if population maxes out. The point is that in having to attack people players will suffer casualties and unit production will ensure that you replenish your losses. As a side note I think casualties should be heavier.

As for newbies. I think they will have a certain safety in that their realms won't be large enough to make an attack worthwhile from more established players. It also means that players need to think about their ability to defend their realm before trying to expand it too much.

I suspect some people will not like this idea, but I think it would make the game much more strategic and consequently more fun to play.

One problem is that it may be difficult to implement in the main game without resetting the server. My best response to this would be to implement it in quantum and see how it plays. If the response is good then consider a server reset with this implementation. Of course this is all assuming other people see any value in this idea. Any further thoughts suggestions or feedback are of course welcome.

[IcER]

I have a pretty crazy idea. I don't think I'm going to post it yet though.

Edit: OK I'm posting it now

Basically this all stems from something I've been noticing of late. Namely the game is more and more moving away from being stargate "wars" and becoming stargate "economic management techniques". I for one have stopped attacking altogether in quantum because it does me no good. And now I've read that _Apophis_ is selling his attack turns in the main game for much the same reason. This indicates to me there may be a fundamental problem. It seems to me that this stems from the infinite growth that is inherent in the game. What I mean is that everyone's realms are just growing and growing with no end in sight. And ultimately attacking someone else is becoming less important a factor in the game since it actually ends up hindering your own growth. Personally I would rather this game was more about strategies for attacking people and growing that way than being about strategies for maximising efficiency and building a growing economy and my suggestion is proposing a way to this.

You are spot on here, I am playing Tauri and I am only really attacking people to keep the game exciting, I am almost definitely losing in the long term every time I do it, but just sitting there buying unit production bores me.

As for the rest of the post, its well thought out and explained. You have actually covered all the points that first spring into my mind, which is rare nice going

Lets see what forum thinks....

Edit: You said casualties should be heavier, I agree BUT on the condition that its based on damage rather than army size. Just makes more sense, otherwise you are just gonna need the same number of men as weapons, and people with small forces can play havoc with large armies (go check my attack logs forum )

Edit 2: Hmm been thinking about it and I have found a slight issue here. Lets say there is a Tauri playing my tactics, he can grab land off anyone he wants but he cant keep it against the worst strike players in the game. There is an asgard with a huge defence, slowly building up his land, then suddenly the aforementioned Tauri strikes and steals a load off him. I can see this going in circles with no-one ever becoming a clear leader. I doubt the replis and goa'uld will even get a decent shot at it, as they will always be help off by asgard and broken by the Tauri. Maybe im wrong...

[Enfant Terrible]

You said casualties should be heavier, I agree BUT on the condition that its based on damage rather than army size. Just makes more sense, otherwise you are just gonna need the same number of men as weapons, and people with small forces can play havoc with large armies (go check my attack logs forum )

Edit 2: Hmm been thinking about it and I have found a slight issue here. Lets say there is a Tauri playing my tactics, he can grab land off anyone he wants but he cant keep it against the worst strike players in the game. There is an asgard with a huge defence, slowly building up his land, then suddenly the aforementioned Tauri strikes and steals a load off him. I can see this going in circles with no-one ever becoming a clear leader. I doubt the replis and goa'uld will even get a decent shot at it, as they will always be help off by asgard and broken by the Tauri. Maybe im wrong...

I think casualties should be based on army size and attack strength combined personally.

As for edit 2. I think this is where finding the right strategy comes into play. Someone will figure out the best attacking defending strategy and start to pull ahead.

My main thought behind this is other strategy games I've played which all have either direct or indirect limits on size and production, but someone always figures out a way to pull ahead.

[Asger]

A step in the right direction I think... it would really differ this from many of the other KoC clone games The infinite grow has bugged me somewhat too as there is very little attrition ingame. Its made even threats of someone sabing all your weapons a joke cause you will only come back stronger than before.

[Xavier]

Hmm been thinking about it and I have found a slight issue here. Lets say there is a Tauri playing my tactics, he can grab land off anyone he wants but he cant keep it against the worst strike players in the game. There is an asgard with a huge defence, slowly building up his land, then suddenly the aforementioned Tauri strikes and steals a load off him. I can see this going in circles with no-one ever becoming a clear leader. I doubt the replis and goa'uld will even get a decent shot at it, as they will always be help off by asgard and broken by the Tauri. Maybe im wrong...

But you could say the same thing about the game as it is. Think about what you're saying.

It has been proven Goa'Uld and Replicators have their own ways of reaching high ranks, through their own unique abilities. There is no reason why EnfantTerrible's suggestion would not allow this.

I like the way he has structured his point and arguments, particularly regarding the way some people no longer attack.

Although his ideas of countering it are good, Forum will no doubt have some ideas of his own, or possibly variations on what Enfant has suggested.

BTW, I feel some people have wrecked this important thread a bit, and their posts should be removed. I realise that at the time, they had their reasons, but, seriously, use your brains guys...

[scben]

the other thing that would be interesting would be that defence would be a per relam thing instead of an overall thing which would allow for more changing of relams since u won't be able to get to defence up quickly if u have to buy for 100 plantes/relams. i also think that u should have to have relams that determine how many men u can train since u need somwhere to put them which would make u have to have more realms to train more men. also there would need to be ships that u need to transfer men to attack other realms then u could send a certain number of attack weapons/ships/men to attack other realms. i like this ideal a lot i just can't be implemented in the game with out a reset since how would u set it up with the way things are now. also about the bonuses, they would have to go so that everyone could actually be able to attack defend and all since everything would be about attacking, which isn't a bad thing so people would just play as a race for the fun of it not the bonus.
edit 1
i just though of something start everyone with 10 planets
1 planet is your homeworld and makes u 20000 naq per turn it is your main planet and therefore u cannot lose this one
however the other planets are worth 7500 naq per turn and can be lost in an attack.what do u all think?

[Xavier]

i just though of something start everyone with 10 planets
1 planet is your homeworld and makes u 20000 naq per turn it is your main planet and therefore u cannot lose this one
however the other planets are worth 7500 naq per turn and can be lost in an attack.what do u all think?

Call the other 9 planets asteroids and you have Planetarion.

I just wanted to use that smiley.

[Robosheep]

I really like where this could go. How about you have to assighn certian defensive weapons to certian planets, and people have to choose what planet to attack. Additionally, You could capture all of one persons planets, but the person would still have the option of taking refuge on either one of their ships or on an officer/commanders planet, or ask someone who they are in an alliace with for 'refugee' status while they attempt to grow again.

[scben]

Additionally, You could capture all of one persons planets, but the person would still have the option of taking refuge on either one of their ships or on an officer/commanders planet, or ask someone who they are in an alliace with for 'refugee' status while they attempt to grow again.

only problem with that is how do they get naq since the planets are what give u your naq production

[Enfant Terrible]

Actually in my mind the planets were just used to give a player an idea of the size of their realm. Not actually things that could be managed individually.
Personally I would still say they should be simply counted and assumed that all your defense defends all your planets. The main reason I think it would work better like this is simply it seems like it would be easier to program and implement it.

If however players were given the option to micromanage individual planets as part of their greater realm well that just opens up a whole new can of worms. For instance different planets could have different levels of resources. ie. richer and poorer planets. so certain parts of a realm would be worth defending more than others.

I will still say that for the moment it would be easier to simply implement something that says you have XX planets and all your army defends all those planets (ie no micromanaging planets) just because it's less work to implement.

On the other hand having the ability to micromanage multiple planets of your realm..that would be way too much fun. trying to find the right planets to capture and fight over...trying to defend them...ironically when i posted this never even occurred to me but I like it. I would say with that addition I would be 100% fine with a reset

[scben]

i see what u mean but i think that have each planet have its own defence helps weed out people that don't pay attention to their assests also it was a way to determine how much naq u made and would allow for people not to lose their big resource planets if thats a way it would go.

[Wolf359]

I like the idea and believe it deserves further investigation. the problem would be trying to implememnt it in the current game.

[IcER]

Hmm, this is beginning to sound like the only other online turn based game I played - Orbtialthreat. That was even more of an who can get an economy the fastest game, BUT attacking was seriously limited (bascially only could attack 4 planets in 12-15 hours). And a fight between two people or even two factions just tended to wear each other down without actually progressing anywhere. You guys are probably right about my edit 2, but the thing is with land it cant be banked or spent...that is why it is different from what we have now. (It works asgards save, I steal and spend, so noone else profits, but this relys on me banking my own income lots)

[Sleipnir]

There, I went and streamlined the topic a bit. There's enough to read as it is. This is actually very much like an idea I posted some time ago.

https://talk.gatewa.rs/viewtopic.php?p=12305

I never thought of a limited size universe though. I see one problem with that. More players would mean less for everyone. So the universe would have to expand with the number of players.

Please don't let the difficulty of adding it into the game dissuade you from posting your ideas on this. Eventually the game will have to be reset, and I for one, would like the new wave to bet even better than this game, so if there's any improvements that can be made, let's hear it.

[Sleipnir]

Sorry for the doublepost, but I thought I'd post what I suggested to forum before so you can give us your views on it:

Population control
There will be a cap on the number of units you can have.
You'll start out with a maximum of 125 units, so during the first few days, you won't have to worry about the cap.

Upgrade to: Cost:
250 - 100k
500 - 200k
1000 - 400k
2000 - 800k
4000 - 1.6M
8000 - 3.2M
and so on...

The current population growth can stay as is. Higher population growth allows you to reach the cap faster, and allows you to replace troops lost in battle faster. Loss of troops in battle is significantly increased. If you have 8000 units, a loss of 10-20 troops in battle shouldn't be unheard of.

Trained units no longer provide income. This forces you to make choices: Do I use my troops for attack, defense, spying or naquadah. Also, mercenaries will not count towards the cap so they will become a much more valuable commodity (which is probably what they were intended for in the first place). But they're still a bit weaker than your own trained troops, so, another choice to make.

You could have a balanced approach, where you spread your resources among all focuspoints. Or you could focus on 1 point. An alliance of players with different focuses would be very interesting.


Actually, I'm not sure but I believe Times of Conquest has an approach similar to the limited number of planets, from what I could make out in their reference file.