balancing legions

Suggest and discuss new ideas or ways we can improve the game.
Nivara
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Feb 05, 2011 7:05 am

Re: balancing legions

Post by Nivara »

Ok before I head off to work, I'lll post a comment. I did have some ideas along these lines, but I think Itsje's idea is actually better than mine. It makes more sense.. a percentage of the work you've put into the game, I think is a great idea.
Cleff
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 5:43 pm

Re: balancing legions

Post by Cleff »

I like Itsje's idea. The actual percentage of points retained is up for debate but the idea doesn't seem like it would break the game.

We could actually adapt it to deal with unbalanced legion sizes as well by setting the percentage to be dependent on the number of actives in the legion (Legions with lesser actives get a larger percentage retained).
This would also make sense game play wise since smaller legions would have lesser ships and hence have more resources to devote towards building stronger (higher level) spare ships.
Seraphim
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:52 pm

Re: balancing legions

Post by Seraphim »

+1

Me likey!
Britnoth
Posts: 22
Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2011 12:55 am

Re: balancing legions

Post by Britnoth »

I was discussing parts of this thread with someone in Tara's without knowing it had already been brought up here.

As I said there, the main issues with 'helping' the weaker side are:

1. It makes the task for the stronger legion to actually try to win the game harder. Prolonging the game.
2. It devalues the benefit of actually making ticks or following orders.. in which case, you're rewarding not playing the game.

One side having more actives is an inherent design of the game. Splitting pilots evenly between legions is a coding issue, however the lack of any way to make up for being the smaller force is a game feature issue. TVS lacks any of the mechanisms a normal wargame might have to try to even the odds a little - there is no real 'terrain' except homeworld PDS, which is rarely enough to help and only comes into play when one side is strong enough to finish another anyway. By then it is too late.

Concerning restarting with a fraction of your previous score when destroyed.

I feel this is just addressing the symptom rather than the disease. The problem here is that it is too hard to catch up to a legion already winning as you tend to die more and more compared to someone in a successful legion having to start again. Giving someone a few thousand points is not going to help that much.
Let us take the suggested 20% figure. I have 10k points, and die, i return with 2k. I can get 2k points in 2 turns in a blob fight.. or I can spend 6-10 turns doing pickups safely somewhere instead. Ships are supposed to score quickly via bonus points when lvl 1-3 anyway - so we already have the mechanism to help catch back up, it just isnt working properly.

I am strongly against adding a new, possibly compex feature to the game just to fix an existing feature. Fix whats broken, dont add new stuff to hide it. :)
iceblink
Posts: 294
Joined: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:46 pm

Re: balancing legions

Post by iceblink »

That's all very nice, but how do you propose to "fix what's broken" then?
Seraphim
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:52 pm

Re: balancing legions

Post by Seraphim »

15 Cerberus Krilgorian 181 29,312
16 Cerberus Krilgorian 87 28,608

This kind of says it all, the problem in a nut shell.

87 x 3 hours
94 x 3 hours

Don't have an obvious solution, just wanted to point this out. For those like me who live purely for legion win, this may be acceptable. If you play for pilot win, it's not.
Seraphim
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:52 pm

Re: balancing legions

Post by Seraphim »

I moved this from the other post.
iceblink wrote:
Seraphim wrote:Honestly, I don't think NAPs are bad. With TVS set up how it currently is, a legion blobs up and whoever is lucky enough to have the most active players and people wise enough to call the right targets and decide place of engagement wins. If you wanna break a deadlock like that you have to nap.
Well the way it works now is that the legion which is "lucky enough to have the most active players and people wise enough to call the right targets and decide place of engagement" always loses because they get napped against, lose a few capital ships, and then they get demotivated. Not good for the game.

Naps would be okay if they would not automatically lead to the above scenario.
Yeah we did have a few peeps who didn't play because of the NAP, or who quit playing mid-round.

Imagine if the legion balance was like some suggestions, powered ships. Tibs not only helping the Bors, but pumped up extra strong tibs. Impossible. I'd go rogue and suicide on them.
Sephiroth
Posts: 50
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:03 am

Re: balancing legions

Post by Sephiroth »

iceblink wrote:That's all very nice, but how do you propose to "fix what's broken" then?
Seconds Iceblink
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