Dominant legions being bor-ing

[LoB]

I suggest to add some sort of incentive for the strongest legions to aim and finish the game faster rather than gloat in their superiority.
For instance if the leading legion doesn't change for 100 ticks - double the PDS/roids damage they receive, then double it again every 50ticks until they're no longer the strongest legion.
Tweakable, simple, and encouraging to destroy planets for good rather than point whore from one planet to the other.

[Demolition]

I kind of like it, but at the same time we'd have to establish how far ahead the leading legion has to be to activate this. And 100 ticks is way to long at only 8 ticks a day.

[Fwiffo]

You do realize that this would simply extend the game an extreme amount right? When the top legion takes a ton of PDS damage it's a disincentive to bombing home worlds and instead they'll wander around not getting the game over with. High chance of it just ending in a stalemate.

[Fwiffo]

Oops, that was supposed to be an edit.

[LoB]

Well I see it in complete the opposite way. When PDS increases for the first time it's not so huge yet, but they are forced to move and risk it, otherwise the damage will start to increase to the point where there is absolutely no hope for them to attack a homeworld, and even passing through roids ridiculously hard. So the legion must try and get something before it. If they fail and PDS increases for the first time they still have chance, it's not so big, they may need to pull out a few times for reps but still very much possible. If they try hard and fail, they might not be the strongest legion and everything is reset but we have to ~equal legions to fight it out. If they don't try, pds keeps increasing to the point where they stand no chance and need to either sacrifice a few ships so it gets reset or sit it out in HW till the end (That is ofcourse the worst possible scenario so a way to remove that option can be thought of as well, for instance the suggestion bellow could kick in.)

Alternative suggestion (or addition to previous one) we could have regions with PDS expanding. Say after 100 turns regions adjacent to HWs gain pds against top legion, 150 turns - all the inbetween regions, 200 turns - all but their HW.

Demolition suggest making the timings shorter, I sorta see it two ways, we can either make it very long (my initial suggestion of 100 turns) but also don't discriminate top legion too much. I.e. the criteria for top legion is: Most points of active + vac ships.
So this might not be fair, top legion might not actually be the strongest legion at some points, but the times are so long that it shouldn't matter often, 90% of the time there should be no reason to think about all this mechanism.

Alternative is to put a softer cap on top legion, and shorter time limits. So this would kick in more often, but it would also be easier to reset it. Say the criteria for top legion is: Points of active ships + ships in vac (less than 16 turns since vac) > same for legions (2+3) x 0.8, or maybe 30% greater than legion 2. The time limits would then be first double after 48 and then every 24. This would start faster so weak legions might try to defend for long enough so pds increases, but the top legion then also has ways of reseting it without becoming the weaker legion, but giving a fair fight for others for at least a few turns.

Another reason why I like this idea, is that not only i think it can work mechanically in game terms, it is also flavourful. Having the same main enemy for 100 or 48 or whatever turns, signifies research being focused on defeating that enemy and so guns gets adjusted, traps get set just to fight that one enemy.

[Demolition]

Fwiffo, the idea is to encourage planet killing over point whoring. If you decide to spend 100 turns getting 7 cruisers over killing a planet, you should take the consequences of that action.

This also would allow legions that are out of it a chance to get back into the game.

I think the turn amount should be 50 max, but should reset on a planet death. To encourage the top legion to end the game vs just point around.

And there needs to be a point gap amount set between first and 2nd place to start the timer to begin with. Also I'd suggest a minimum tick for it to start looking for this difference

[LoB]

Hm maybe, I am a bit concerned if time limit is too short it might feel too forceful. I don't want legions to be fighting against the clock all the time, or thinking how to supress their point gain (for that matter perhaps scores of cruisers should only count as 75k).
Reset after planet kill could be a good idea though.

[Demolition]

50 ticks is 6 days and 2 turns
100 ticks is going on 2 weeks.

In my opinion if your the dominate legion for 6 days(and we really need to define dominant well here for this to work) and you cant take a planet, then we have defined dominant poorly

If we put it at 100 turns that's 2 weeks. Do you know how annoying it would be to watch a legion point up for 2 weeks when they could have just ended the game?

Ask the tibs how boring it can be, they've been out of the race for most of the game.(sorry not trying to knock the tibs here, they just had bad luck in the draft of active players this game)

I dont want to force it either LoB, but I also dont want the time limit so long on the initial pds increase that by the time it kicks in the dominant legion is double the 2nd place legion and doesn't even care about pds anymore, even with the increase.

[Fwiffo]

Fwiffo, the idea is to encourage planet killing over point whoring. If you decide to spend 100 turns getting 7 cruisers over killing a planet, you should take the consequences of that action.

This also would allow legions that are out of it a chance to get back into the game.

I think the turn amount should be 50 max, but should reset on a planet death. To encourage the top legion to end the game vs just point around.

And there needs to be a point gap amount set between first and 2nd place to start the timer to begin with. Also I'd suggest a minimum tick for it to start looking for this difference

I know that's what your idea is, but that's not what will happen with just a PDS increase. You're simply going to end up with the strongest legion camping their home world once they hit 2 or 3x PDS damage. Nobody will be able to attack them and they won't be able to attack anyone else, you end up with a stalemate.

If you want to penalize the top legion, then give them PDS everywhere or have them take constant damage outside of enemy home worlds. Something to actually encourage them to go to home worlds instead of elsewhere.

Another bad side effect of this is that you're going to encourage yet another huge increase in the bomber population. Having a legion full of cloakers/fighters while your clock is ticking in being able to kill a home world would be a terrible situation.

[Demolition]

Fwiffo, the idea is to encourage planet killing over point whoring. If you decide to spend 100 turns getting 7 cruisers over killing a planet, you should take the consequences of that action.

This also would allow legions that are out of it a chance to get back into the game.

I think the turn amount should be 50 max, but should reset on a planet death. To encourage the top legion to end the game vs just point around.

And there needs to be a point gap amount set between first and 2nd place to start the timer to begin with. Also I'd suggest a minimum tick for it to start looking for this difference

I know that's what your idea is, but that's not what will happen with just a PDS increase. You're simply going to end up with the strongest legion camping their home world once they hit 2 or 3x PDS damage. Nobody will be able to attack them and they won't be able to attack anyone else, you end up with a stalemate.

If you want to penalize the top legion, then give them PDS everywhere or have them take constant damage outside of enemy home worlds. Something to actually encourage them to go to home worlds instead of elsewhere.

Another bad side effect of this is that you're going to encourage yet another huge increase in the bomber population. Having a legion full of cloakers/fighters while your clock is ticking in being able to kill a home world would be a terrible situation.

As I said in my previous post you have 6 days(if we go with 50 turns) to attack and kill a homeworld before the first increase. If you can't manage that then we defined dominant incorrectly. And If the dominant legion camps in their hw, the other 3 legions can get points off each other to catch up and then the dominant legion would not be the dominant legion anymore.

You are however correct in that it would encourage bomber legions, that is a side effect I hadn't considered.