Dominant legions being bor-ing

Suggest and discuss new ideas or ways we can improve the game.
LoB
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:06 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by LoB »

Since it wouldn't kick in before top legion has cruisers (by most definitions of dominant), it should never be impossible to destroy a planet.
You are right that it migth favor bombers a bit more, but maybe that is what we need? Currently bomber legions are encouraged by enormous point bonuses, if we "nerf" then perhaps a different incentive to pick up bombers will be needed when they no longer level up so fast?
Demolition
Posts: 147
Joined: Wed Jun 08, 2011 2:39 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by Demolition »

Well here is what I was thinking to myself at work last night.

For starters we dont even check for a dominant legion until turn 100.
After which we define a % say 20% And thats how we see if we have a dominant legion

If legion 1 is 20% > legion 2 then legion 1 is dominant. At which time we start the tick counter.
We continue to check each tick to make sure they are still dominant. If after 50 ticks they are, then we increase the pds.

The idea fwiffo is to encourage legions that have sealed a victory to end the game, not to discourage them from leaving their home.
Jhyphi
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:09 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by Jhyphi »

You're only going to make it harder to end the game.

Bases are not that easy to take out. If we had tried before getting 3+ cruisers, we'd have gotten nowhere but feeding you points and losing ships. Even now, ajaxus wouldve been a tough fight if they had actually stayed. It was 15vs11 level 5s with the jax having pds which would even it quite a bit.

There's also built in mechanisms such as pds and NAPs. Not our fault you completely failed at actually doing anything with a NAP let alone a trinap. In most other betas, the NAP more than makes up for it, in fact 2nd and 3rd place legion usually are 50% stronger combined if they work well together.

If you're so bored then next time don't run home to defend your HW and we will blow it up faster.
LoB
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:06 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by LoB »

Yes games might take longer, but they would be more interesting for all. After the failed trinap neither legion had any chance of fighting the bors, yet the game kept going with bors not taking any risks and just slowly but steadily going for the win, thats almost two weeks when 3 quarters of players contemplate suicide only to have the game finish faster. WIth this system in place bors would've been forced to act faster giving chance to other legions.

I do see one potentially big disadvantage and it would be unfair not to mention it. In this particular beta bors were the strongest because they had the most active players, great discipline and overall sensible tactics. If for any reason Jax or Krills were to become stronger it would've been very likely that they'd still have seen bors as the main threat and napped to destroy them. With this system in place strongest legion might change more often and then enemy #1 wouldn't necessarilly be the most powerful legion, but the legion with the best players - penalizing good playing. But that's the problem with naps and I'd like to see more incentives to break the naps anyway. I'm thinking about it.
Jhyphi
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:09 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by Jhyphi »

You're way over-exaggerating everything.

First off, the tri-nap failed only 1 week and 6 turns ago. Meaning in that 1 week, 2 and soon to be 3 bases will be killed. I don't think that's "taking too long to finish the beta". That's almost 1 base every 2 days. I hate to see what you consider not boring then, if 1 base blew up every day once there was a dominant legion? If you want 5 day long betas, go play a frantic instead.

Also, if the jax had stuck around in Ajaxus, would've been a better fight. It was 11 level 5's vs. 15. Not that insurmountable. And if you're mad that the Tibs didn't like you, maybe you shouldn't have pulled out of the tri-nap to save your ships and let krils and tibs all die in Boraxus while you saved your precious ships. Next time, realize that strategically, that was the best chance to get back in the game and win and hypering out of the 3v1 was not. Therefore, don't blame the bors for being boring when you made a huge mistake strategically.

I see no problem at all with the legion that is most active and played the best strategically winning. There were many chances for Jax + Krils to do something before it got away from you but you did not. In fact, at one point, bors were in 3rd place at about T90 and no possibility to farm Tibs unlike Krils + Jax and still managed to come back. So don't blame bors for being boring, blame yourself for making poor strategic choices.

TL:DR - Don't whine about the game and make suggestions to change it because you lost, learn to play better for the next beta.
Seraphim
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:52 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by Seraphim »

It's a game that lets you make 5 moves every 3 hours, so yeah, people will get bored.

I thought this round was more or less fine, and I pretty much drew the short stick if you look at our legion's activity fluxes throughout the round. Except for a strong start we were pretty much unable to do anything of importance. I'm not saying it's perfect but this beta was pretty ok for me in terms of action. But if folks are winning they play relatively safe and if folks aren't winning they're complaining about the winning team not rushing in like idiots.

The problem isn't that people don't wanna take risks, - there's even enough merit to take risks. Problem is people don't wanna lose their ships and wanna play safe if they get anywhere near a high score count. This is true for a lot of players and legion position doesn't seem to influence it much.

Also a problem is that if we start with an active legion and we actually do go out to make things happen early, like go kamikaze on a homeworld, we can take on 1 maybe 2 which basically leaves us eliminated for the rest of the round. And the score caution, again.
LoB
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:06 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by LoB »

Jhypi you completely missed the point of my last message.
I do agree that bors deserve to win, I even might agree that there was nothing wrong timing wise in this beta, in fact if we take Demolitions proposal PDS might not even had kicked in, you blew PK just in time.
I do not want short betas, and you yourself suggest that this proposal would lengthen the betas.

However had not destroyed PK and kept going Ajaxus - PK - Ajaxus - PK this could have lasted another week or two, and it wouldn't be incorrect tactic, it would be just boring. This proposal suggest eliminating possibility of such a tactic for prolonged period of time. I am trying not to talk like Ajaxian, because it's not about one game, next beta you might see roles reversed. But from ajaxian point of view, the biggest problem was that you never gave us a fight, and in a game about fighting that wasn't fun. Sure you'll refer back to our two shameful retreats from Boraxus and Ajaxus (I need to take personal responsibility for one of them, but i can argue why it was the right thing to do, but it would take up too much space and noone would care).
But the problem was you were only interested in fighting us alone outside Ajaxus or us + krills in boraxus, we were only interested in fighting you in ajaxus, or us + krils outside boraxus. As such we never could fight you. Whenever we tried fighting anyone else you'd get into Ajaxus. So for over a week we were making 4 jumps, shooting for a turn, making 4 jumps, making another 4 jumps etc, etc... Again can't blame bors for playing it safe, but I would like to see faster development of state, still 50 turns, at 10 minutes per turn is 8 hours of one's life to dedicate only while waiting for the inevitable to happen.
Jhyphi
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:09 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by Jhyphi »

Hi Lob,

So as you mentioned, the "problem" is that "you were only interested in fighting us alone outside Ajaxus or us + krills in boraxus, we were only interested in fighting you in ajaxus, or us + krils outside boraxus".

I don't see this as an issue at all. Everyone wants to fight where they feel they are either equal or slightly advantageous. Given this is a war game, how is that a problem?

You'd have to make a brand new "Street Fighter" type of game where everyone instantly appears in a sector with 10 level 5 ships on each side only and fight street fighter style if you want perfectly balanced battles.

For most of the beta, it would've been perfectly ok for Jax to fight Bors in neutral zones. Somewhat like when Bors jumped Krils in roids. At that point, the krils were even slightly favored since Bors had to jump in when the 2 legions were about equal strength.

If either side retreats/runs away from a fight, there's bound to be stragglers so there's the benefit to trying to fight. Say when Jax went back to Ajaxus to try to force a fight, you'd still get points from shooting/killing any stragglers. It's calculated from both sides whenever Jax or Bors retreat, that they'd rather leave 1 or2 stragglers than to fight at that point.

In your example, you said you were interested in "[Jax] + krils outside boraxus". There are ways to make that happen but it just seems this particular beta, both Jax and Krils were completely disorganized at any coordination.

Taking this 1 example by itself is not valid, IMO. Take for example last beta. The early/middle strongest legion didn't win when the 2nd + 3rd place legions actually got their act together and blew up Tibrar.

I don't think the fact that Jax + Krils couldn't get their act together this beta means that we should change it to penalize a coordinated team with the lead. With any of your proposals, what's to stop the "lesser" legions who could only be 10% behind from bunkering in their HW until PDS got to ridiculous amounts and the top legion is severely disadvantaged.

I think the worst part of the proposal is that it creates so much disincentive to playing well for a whole beta. What's the point of trying hard when the game makes it easier for the other legions to catch up? Why bother putting in effort when there's backup "baby hand holding" if you start falling behind?
Demolition
Posts: 147
Joined: Wed Jun 08, 2011 2:39 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by Demolition »

As I have said repeatedly Jhyphi and you fail to read I am guess, if a legion would fail to take a planet in 6 days, then we have obviously failed to define dominant legion correctly.

And the game was boring before the tri-nap failed, which is the point of this thread.

The trinap as you call it, (which btw was no real trinap as the krils naver had any nap agreement with the tibs we just chose not to attack them in boraxus as it was for mutual gain that they stayed) was a last ditch effoprt to topple the bors in a game that was already so boring that activity was dropping off for both the krils and jax.

As noted, it was mainly jump to unoccupied HW, bomb for 2 turns then rush home cause legion x had choosen to jump to your HW instead of picking on the other legion.

For instance every time the krils went to tibrar the bors fairly quickly set course for PK instead of going after ajaxus.

Likewise in return fashion when the bors went into ahw usually another legion would enter theres.

You bors started that whole boring HW poke which ended in a downwards spiral of base bombing then running when the legion got home.

Its extremely boring when there are only 3 real battles the entire game.

The 3 battles where: roids battle at the start, 81103 battle, and the roids battle mid game.

sad beta indeed, because the rest of the round consisted of set ap to X planet.
LoB
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:06 pm

Re: Dominant legions being bor-ing

Post by LoB »

Completely agree with Demolition. As jax I can only remember two fights. And as you said yourself it is only natural that legion looks to pick a fight where it is advantageous for it, meaning it's disadvantageous for the other one so we don't have a lot of battles. I would like to see more and this proposal is one of the suggestions how to make it happen. If majority of players felt that 5 battles in 3 weeks is fine (working out at less than a battle a week for a legion) then i could find another game i suppose, but i'm trying to see how this can be improved.
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