Metagame/balance problems

[FunkOff]

GW metagame isn't very good right now. I see a few issues:
-It takes a long time to play: You cannot make any progress without other players around in under 60 minutes.
-It's too easy to "game". Because you have to wait 60 minutes to accomplish anything, your opponent can waste your time. Once an enemy sees you attacking, they know they can make you wait 59 minutes and then attack to stop you. That' encouraging a waste of 59 minutes.
-Multiple simultaneous attacks that fail is allowable, but dumb: All others attacks instantly fail when you enter combat for one of them. Why even enable multiple attacks?
-Auto-wins cheapen actual combat victories. They shouldn't be counted together.

Recommended changes:
-We need to dis-allow multiple attacks (which only favor people who play gw when all other factions are offline)
-We need to make progress more imminently calculable. I should be able to make progress if I can only play for half an hour, even if it's just a little bit of progress.
-Do away with auto-wins: Auto-wins completely cheapen the value of combat wins. Auto-wins and actual combat wins should not be counted together.

I have a few ideas how to implement this:
-Make players able to attack/defend only one planet at a time. You can only attack or defend one place at a time. This makes sense.
-Make control percentage change every minute. If you attack a planet for 1 minute and are undefended against, you should gain a small percentage of control, such as 0.1%. At this rate, you would take 6% control in 1 hour, and one person would require almost 17 hours to capture a planet by himself, unopposed. Credits could be earned along with this, such as +1 credit per +0.1% planet control.
-Make attacks continue until defended, counter-attacked, or retreated. If I'm on a planet for 90 minutes unopposed, I should get 9% control, then be able to log-off and go do something IRL without worrying.
-Do away with auto-wins. No more free victories for games that never occurred. You should only get % for time spent not playing FA.
-Make combat games worth more, proportional to how long they take. If idle GW control is 0.1% every minute, then an actual fought battle should give 0.2% control per minute. Therefore, the end of a 30 minute game would see a 6% shift in planet control to the victor (or 0% change if a draw.)
-Starting an attack or ending an attack pre-maturely should cost normal amount of credits. A defender losing should result in the attack auto-continuing. (It should continue until the attacker loses or retreats.)

I think with something more like this, you'll see an elimination of the meta game and balance problems we have on GW.

[Ze_PilOt]

I won't even read it, it's too soon to even think of that kind of problems.

The galaxy map is not even the final one.

Most of the numbers are placeholders, to accommodate a low numbers of players, or there to delay a reset of the map every 2 days,

[Golol]

i really like these changes. if galactic war goes open beta or release or idk it should be though about these.
how about the control you get for waiting increases exponentionally? that in the end you have to decide between stopping the attack and bring happy with what you got, or getting even more but risking to be defended.
and for the bigger map i think planets should be taken over faster
.

[LegoGuy]

I won't even read it, it's too soon to even think of that kind of problems.

The galaxy map is not even the final one.

Most of the numbers are placeholders, to accommodate a low numbers of players, or there to delay a reset of the map every 2 days,

Still, give him some credit for reporting what he perceived as bugs.

[Ze_PilOt]

I'm just saying things are they are. I'm not working on balancing the game at all for now.

I will probably read it later, but most of the stuff will probably be obsolete already. I don't want anybody to spend time on these kind of stuff for now.

[rkrempel]

I can understand the view that we're not at the point where we need to discuss these things and Funkoff's suggestions seem a little too detailed, but I agree there's a lot wrong with the present setup of the metagame. As a consequence, I doubt his remarks will become obsolete.

My own thoughts:
1) Credits should not be the (only) resource limiting a players ability to attack/defend.
How about "time", i.e. Let the number of minutes spent in battle be a(nother) limitation. Another could be distance, but that requires the characters to have a physical location on the map. Please do not be skimpy with limitations on what players can do: it is the choices you are forced to make that make a game.

2) It makes no sense to lock away options (to some players) during the play-test stage.
What exactly does this test?

3) I can only get my head bashed in by >2k players so many times before I become completely numb.
I have no idea how to solve this, but it has to be addressed. All skill levels should be able to participate in GW in a (somewhat) meaningful way. I'm fine for now, but I suspect some people are not.

I do not think these are all "balance issues", some of these touch the basic premises on which the metagame is/will be built.

[Ze_PilOt]

2) It makes no sense to lock away options (to some players) during the play-test stage.
What exactly does this test?

!?

For the others, same remark as FunkOff, and yes they will be obselete.

[rkrempel]

Now, to actually react to the OP.

First, I'll summarize:

-Make players able to attack/defend only one planet at a time.
-Make the control percentage change every minute.
-If you attack a planet for 1 minute, gain a +0.1% of control.
-Credits could be earned along with this, such as +1 credit per +0.1% planet control.
-Attacks continue until successfully defended, counter-attacked, or retreated.
-Make combat games worth more, an actual fought battle should give 0.2% control per minute (to the victor).

(I think that captures the core of it, Funkoff; Feel free to yell at me if I misrepresented your ideas.)

I do believe this would be an interesting change from the present system, except for one point: there should be no credit reward for attacking. The reason for this is that it is, by its nature, unbalancing to reward an action with its own cost. War is not an investment game with steady returns. War is a game of attrition where sides destructively expend resources against each other to achieve long term political (or strategic) goals. Think of planets as mexes. They are a drain on your resources until fully built/upgraded.

So, my suggested amendments would be:
-deduct -1 credits per minute during an "attack move".
-if there is an actual battle, deduct the total cost per minute played at the conclusion of the battle (from all participants).
-if a player reaches zero or negative credits, he is unable to attack further (so an attack move would stall when that happens).
-players with negative credits cannot defend.

Expanding further:
-allow multiple attackers for faster gain of control %, but a defender can pick which attacker to fight (first).
-this (implicitly) allows simultaneous and/or consecutive battles over the same planet.

This would also make defeats a more meaningful sacrifice and it raises the stakes (and thus the interest) for skilled players: the point is not only to win, but to win efficiently (aka fast). I would find it more interesting if the game allowed for, say Lu_Xun, to lose a planet while winning every battle on it, simply because he's outnumbered 4:1 (gaining +0.2% control per minute fighting, but losing -0.3% per minute in the metagame). Perhaps in the future, a defender could also choose to fight a 1:2 battle (only makes sense when facing known newbs or when bringing some heavy pre-built units, but it would be awesome).

[Ze_PilOt]

I'm running out of time, some features will be implemented, but certainly not "placing the player on the map and computing travel times".

For credits and stuff, again, what you are saying is obselete. Credits are working like that for the alpha, the final design is NOT like it is now, at all. Read my others posts in the non-alpha forum.

[Ze_PilOt]

I've finally spend some time reading the OP, and it's exactly what I've said : basically all points are planned for the beta (except winning more % depending on the game time). Multiple attacks are allowed because of the alpha, same for instant victories, ....

Remember it's only the testing phase for features right now.