Just a few ideas

Suggest and discuss new ideas or ways we can improve the game.
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Seraphim
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:52 pm

Just a few ideas

Post by Seraphim »

Before I get started I just want to say that I like TVS as it is, and if the TVSGods disagree with anything in here, just ignore it – it’s your game and the last thing I want is to put pressure, these are just some ideas that may or may not address certain less-popular issues with the current game. Use them as you will.
This thread bundles some ideas, and throws out some new ones. The forums can be quite messy, and a lot of these actually have been discussed before. Not all of these ideas are mine, some have featured here earlier, and some come from IRC – so there’s your disclaimer.

1. LC Job description
In most people’s eyes, an LC should...
...be online end and start of every tick to make an informed target call.
...notify you 3 ticks in advance where he wants to jump, if you get jumped in the meantime and die because you’re waiting for others, it’s the LC’s fault.
...be flexible and order a jump out THIS tick, if you’re not online at the time and miss the jump, it’s the LC’s fault.
...keep enemy legions distracted with the other legions until you are confident enough.
...only fight enemy legions when you are sure you will not die.
...keep everyone alive at all times, but especially you.
...do everything else to boot.
In fact, the LC is the main scapegoat. If things go well in general, but you lose your ship because you were occupied for 3 ticks in a row, it’s not your fault; it’s the LC’s.
Now, if we take a realistic look at the function, here’s what an LC should do:
1) Politics.
2) Rotate VCs who will then handle the tickly running of the legion (decide emergency jumps, call targets, etc) – because there’s 3 of them, and you can replace 1 at your will.
3) Keep an eye on the grand scheme (in 6 ticks we wanna be near the Bor HW).
4) Give a motivational speech every now and again.
The rest... it’s a bonus, isn’t it? You can’t expect someone to be online 24/7 because nobody else wants to take responsibilities. VC were added to prevent LCs from burning out, so that there’s a team up top who can handle the, well, more menial tasks.

It’s unbelievable how people blame LCs for everything, yet take no effort to help the poor sob or even do a better job themselves. Which brings me to the next point.

2. Voting system revamp
Last 3 betas worked like this:
1) Who wants the LC?
2) Nobody, it’s an ungrateful position that eats your life.
3) Fine, someone will take it.
4) Someone else dies because they were inactive for a day, they anonymously vote against.
5) LC becomes demotivated and eventually quits, or worse, gets voted out.
6) Who wants the LC?
7) Nobody, it’s an ungrateful position that eats your life...
...

Tell me, do you detect a pattern? Sometimes 100 ticks go by, but then it happens again. And it’s not always the case, sometimes an LC manages to convince the locals that he needs their help and everyone actually gets on board and stays relatively active. That’s when you win TVS.

But 3 out of 4 legions, I daresay, have this cycle going on every round.

It’s to do with the unrealistic expectations of an LC, but also the voting system.

People vote against, nobody knows who they are, and they don’t speak up and don’t offer a reason, they don’t offer a better idea, they’re just silently killing your LC’s motivation.

An idea I think might be worth replacing the current voting system with is this:
Start of round, people nominate LCs. Lets say we keep the current time window.
LC candidates go in a second voting race, you see who’s nominated, candidates who don’t want to can withdraw (up until 1 remains :P), and an LC gets picked, and 3 people currently online get the VC position assigned, because LC might not be online at that time.

The LC then stays LC, but that’s not to say you cannot remove him or her from their position. You can start a vote, motion of distrust if you will. This is not anonymous, it shows your name and you can fill in your reasons. People can vote, publically, yes/no and give their reason, and if 51% says remove, you remove the LC. The person who started the motion is automatically nominated.
It means you actually have to take some responsibility, rather than just voting no in the dark without doing anything constructive at all.

You choose an LC because of their experience/available time/knowledge/strategic planning ratio. You will rarely get the perfect LC, but you will often get someone who wants to try hard and work hard, and with the VCs help can do well for your team. But they get shot down anonymously by someone who doesn’t do anything to improve the situation, but just makes it worse.

And yes LCs will make decisions you may disagree with, but sometimes you just gotta have some faith, let them do their thing, and see how it turns out, and in the end it may be worth some bad results. You can never please everybody all of the time, so if you’re displeased but the rest is pleased, shut your piehole and take one for the team.


3. Scrap for score

This is a wild idea that I’m just throwing out there. It offers more strategic variance and also encourages aggressive gameplay (the passiveness and caution of legions is often criticized) – 2 things I am a fan of.

Here’s the idea. With every kill you make, you get scrap. Reppers can, call it salvage, this from wrecks, right? You can implant it on your HW to grow it. But imagine more scrap is dropped, and imagine if you could also exchange it for score. (perhaps add salvage as something else than scrap).

You’re probably dismissing this idea right now, but consider this. It addresses several issues, such as fear of losing your hard-earned L5 ship: if you die and go back to L1, you can get a ton of scrap and level up much faster, meaning you’re less scared to lose your L5 ship.

The second issue it addresses is how hard it can sometimes be to make a fist as a smaller legion; after all, you could try a heavy suicide attack with low level ships, and have the reppers take all that scrap and pump it into their most active pilot, who can much easier become a carrier, which increases the chances of your entire legion. So your flagship pilot could basically become your shield, rather than a big juicy target.

So it also encourages team play and sacrifice, qualities we all admire in sports heroes and soldiers.

Now, it’s a wild idea and right now probably creates more problems than it solves, but just imagine the tactical options. Not only that, but being aggressive, even against a superior foe, is suddenly not such a bad idea, because you actually have score to gain. And for the larger legion, they will be more inclined to engage in risky or balanced combat because kills directly benefit them.

Lastly it adds increased playability for fighters and cloakers.

Just throwing it out there, it’s certainly not as radical as some suggestions to make folks more aggressive. It rewards killing more, and being safe less. Less waiting, more shooting = more action.

Now there’s more, but I’ll save that for another time. Watch this thread, and discuss.
LoB
Posts: 27
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2011 9:06 pm

Re: Just a few ideas

Post by LoB »

Agree with LC problem. Not sure if the suggestions would actually adress it. In the end if VCs are doing a bad job it's LCs fault as well so whenever things go wrong the ultimate blame will always fall on LC. I do like removal of anonimity in No Confidence votes.

I had an idea regarding "player draft" which would address most of LC issues as a side effect, i'll put it down at some point.

As for scrap idea, not sure who benefits more then, bigger legion or smaller. If it is in considerable quantities and only reppers can pick it up it would be a lottery of who's online and who's got faster fingers. Not sure if i'd enjoy it.

Similar idea I had addressing similar issue in similar matter (and related to ideas given in other topics) is: When a ship dies 10% of its total XP is distributed evenly across all the ships in the sector. Think about the consequences... Cloakers in fallback sectors, low levels lvl up fast in big battles, a ship going into vac has ability to suicide (go rogue) to distribute it's points to friendlies.
Not sure if the consequences are positive or negative though (especially the last one feels somewhat wrong, but it reduces the huge loss legion suffers when big ship goes to vac)/
Seraphim
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:52 pm

Re: Just a few ideas

Post by Seraphim »

I dunno, I guess both are probably difficult to balance. My initial thought was that either the reppers, or the LC, should automatically get it in their bank. But with the LC the problem is: (s)he can hog it. Reppers are a bit safer, especially if they couldn't give to themselves (so only away, but they can receive from others). But if you put it on reppers automatically then I suppose the ideas are more or less the same just in a different form.

Which brings us to balance. Do large blobs get more score for killing? I'd say no, I'd put an inverted multiplier regarding the total amount of friendly levels in it - but then you run the risk of making battles too hard to win.

A plus side, on the other hand, would be that reppers become a more favourite target. Since I am always repper you might wonder at that, but it does take some danger away from the fighters, once more increasing the willingness to have small legions take on larger legions. Now, it would probably actually even itself out, because it's a lot harder for a smaller legion to kill someone from a larger legion, so my concern isn't nescessarily there, but there should of course be limits.

Thinking ahead, instead of giving it to humans directly, reppers collect salvage automatically and can then install it in their HW, and NOT in ships. That XP is then spread out every time you make a move. But won't that kill the added tactical options? Say every tick there is a salvage "budget" (which, if you want to add tactical options again, the council can "release" or "hold") - every time you use a move, you get a bonus.

Say the budget is 50000 scrap/score, and you have 10000 in general reserve, you have 20 active pilots, that means your budget per pilot is at that tick 2000. If you make the system so that you can release over a time period - so not all instantly because lets face it that would be bad gameplay, say 4 ticks for this example, you get a bonus per move.

Scaled to the level, would be something worth looking at.

What this does is you can actually take a break, rep up, and still gain score.

Why is this important?

If you don't have anything on the bank (= you didn't go out and kill stuff), you will lose score to your enemies who actually go out and kill stuff, while it doesn't necessarily turn the game into a suicide frenzy.

Why is this important?

Because it rewards going out there, doing damage, then getting the hell out of dodge, OR overpower your enemy - aka strategy. And by choosing the "score release" moments well, you can save up for a rainy day, or have it as a failsafe in case you pretty much die with 10 ships. There should be a max cap then, because obviously more action should not equal invincibility.

Ahh I'm just rambling here - it seems difficult to implement, but I gotta say, the underlying idea itself - rewarding fighting more than we currently do (and making dying less of a penalty) - is appealing, if not desired, and something worth looking for in out-of-the-box solutions.
whykt
Posts: 53
Joined: Fri Feb 04, 2011 10:23 pm

Re: Just a few ideas

Post by whykt »

I think increasing VRs to four instead of the current three might be useful. I sometimes found three wasn't enough!

The scrap/points redistribution is interesting. I think anything to lessen the blow of losing ships is welcome, because TVS has such a harsh death penalty. Has the idea of going down two/three levels when a ship is destroyed been discussed before? Don't know if that would benefit the top legion too much though?
Seraphim
Posts: 81
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:52 pm

Re: Just a few ideas

Post by Seraphim »

Yeah I think it was in this thread: http://www.violetsector.com/agora/viewt ... p?f=4&t=47
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