quote:Originally posted by Xentropy

True, and that's part of what makes the playing field even. The top corp could recruit allies just as much as the corps further down the list. Everybody loves an underdog, but they also like to be on the winning side, so diplomacy can get thorny sometimes.

I just find the "every corp for themselves" mentality to be limiting. If alliances are absolutely forbidden, it's almost impossible to make up for a disadvantage against a decent opponent. I'm surprised you pulled off #SD#ing an entire enemy corp with that much of a head start on you. I suppose it happens, but it sounds like they just weren't as careful as they should have been; maybe their resources made them too arrogant and they didn't think anything could happen to them. [:)] Or maybe they were just good at cashing/building but not at combat?

At any rate, I can see both sides of the coin. I'd just enjoy trying out a few games with publically listed assets to see how they turn out. Listing exact citadel counts may not be worthwhile, but perhaps a net worth and a few other very basic stats wouldn't be too far out of line.


The corp wasn't careful and they were not good at ship-to-ship.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

What Promethius wrote is exactly what I was trying to convey as what could happen if this type of information is publically displayed, i.e. if I go into a game and know that corporation X has a total of 5-million fighters and I only have 2-million fighters and I was planning on invading them today, well I just found out I have a lot of work to do and better hold off on my attack plans for now. Or if I know that Player A has 4-planets and a 10-billion credits and I was planning on taking out corporation Y to gain control of their 10-planets, I would now want to take out Player A first to get my hands on those 10-billion credits.

Though ultimately what information is displayed should be left to the SysOp/GameOp to allow them to create their own theme-specific type of game, there should also be the ability to constrict what information is allowed to be seen by the players of the game and the information available to the SysOp/GameOp, i.e. as a default allow users to only see the net total aquired assets of the other players, or only allowing them to see what percentage the other players/corporations are in the lead or trail over themselves, or to just simply display what rank position they are in, etc.

Giving out to much information could be related to a military force giving their battle objectives to their enemy on a silver platter, for instance: what if Saddam knew that the US was planning to lay down a massive airstrike meanwhile sending in ground troops before the war actually started or if Hitler knew that the US was only planning to make a single full-scale amphibious attack the night before D-day began, these two wars might have turned out very differently.

Just a history footnote: Hitler DID know that we were doing a massive amphibious landing, we just tricked him into thinking it would be at Calais instead of Normandy.

What a min, ok the way I understand it is that Hilter thought the US was going to run two seperate attacks (although the US actually only planned to attack at Normandy), and Hilter and his irrational wisdom swore that the US was using Normandy as a distraction and demanded all troops stay as they were, then after the US had taken the beaches and Hitler's troops requested assistance, Hitler was unable to be reached because he was suffering from one of his drug addicted psychosises and was passed out asleep in his vacation mountain resort home. So his troops remained positioned as previously ordered by Hilter, (may he and his troops roast in a fiery hellacious pit for eternity!)

quote:
Originally posted by Xentropy

You can tell whether a player's planets are lvl 5 or 6 by whether they're <<< SHIELDED >>> in sector, so that's a pretty moot point.
Although you can only tell what level they are after you are already in their sector and use your planet scanner and even then you do no know if the planets actually have shields on them. If all users could see that Corporation A has 6 L5 planets and only 2,000 net shields, they would be able to determine that photons would be viable for use in their attack.

quote:Originally posted by RexxCrow

quote:
Originally posted by Xentropy

You can tell whether a player's planets are lvl 5 or 6 by whether they're <<< SHIELDED >>> in sector, so that's a pretty moot point.
Although you can only tell what level they are after you are already in their sector and use your planet scanner and even then you do no know if the planets actually have shields on them. If all users could see that Corporation A has 6 L5 planets and only 2,000 net shields, they would be able to determine that photons would be viable for use in their attack.

You can tell level 5 and 6 planets from others with a holoscan. They display at the sector level, without having to try to land, as:
<<<< (L) Planetname >>>> (Shielded)

Whether or not they have any shields, or how many, is completely impossible to tell without attempting a landing, as once a planet is lvl 5, even with 0 shields, a planet scanner becomes useless as well.

Also, I never proposed that data down to the # figs/shields per planet level be displayed during a game. That'd be silly. More general data is all I'm proposing would be an interesting variation from a standard game.

Oh im sorry I assumed those were part of the consideration, (but you know what they say about those whom assume.) I was thinking that each player/corporation gross-net totals for: mines, fighters, planets w/ citadels, maxed-out ports w/ fighters in sector, credits, experience, shields, colonists, percent of explored space, percent of controlled space, captured ships, kills, planets captured, ports destroyed, and ships owned could be used to determine their ranking in the game, (of course the SysOp/GameOp would still be able to determine what and how the information is used and seen by their players.) But I was worried some of this might be to complex to achieve?

The total from each item could be multiplied by that items price, (as indicated per the games settings.) Also there could be a setting that allows the figures total to be divided by the number of players in the corporation, to thus give an accurate depiction of single player vs. multi-player rankings, (obviously a single player is not going to be able to competitively compete against a four player corporation, assuming the players are all active within the game.)

None of it is "too complex to achieve". It's just a matter of what is worth displaying. Too much detail just removes all of the surprise from the game.

The only way in which every fighter, shield, mine, and so forth would be included in player rankings would be as a composite value. e.g. net worth might be credits OH + fighters (whether planetary, sector, ship, anywhere) * current fig price + shields * current shield price + mines * mine price etc. But announcing to everyone that Planet Arrakis has 50000 fighters and 2000 planetary shields? Nah, that'd just be silly.

Instead of raw numbers, a power graph sort of display could work, too. Updated every 6 hours, displaying relative net worth over time. It would still be possible to glance at the V screen, look over your total assets, and calculate everyone else's total assets based on your own and the pixel scale of the graph, but it might be just abstract enough that players would be less taken aback by it than concrete numbers.

There are a lot of great turn-based strategy games, such as Master of Orion and Civilization, which include power graphs that are visible as the game progresses, as proof that access to such data does not ruin the strategy of a game, only morphs it.

Edit: And of course there's also the option that a sysop could collect the data on a daily or 4x daily or whatever basis and then display the whole graph after the game was over. Could be interesting to see how the dynamic changed as the game wore on. It's too bad I won't have something ready in time for endgame graphs to be available for Corp Wars.

Alright that sounds outstanding, im glad you said that and I like that graph idea, I had not even considered something to that effect. Don't worry about the CorpWars there will be plenty more to see how something like this would effect its outcome. Also I hope your not feeling pressured with your project, what your doing is very noble and im positive that everybody would agree for you to just take your time and pace yourself; besides it is always better to get it all right the first time, right! [^]