11 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

As it is, the inner sphere has a TON of planets. Even if CW picks up dramatically, the amount of time it takes to get anywhere is on the order of months. Even if Davion lost every single game over the entire CW season, it would probably still be largely intact by the end. That goes for most of the other large IS factions.

There is also the problem of how hard it is to jump start a small faction. Just look at the clans at the moment.

We need to modify the current planet capture mechanic slightly. The larger the faction the more planets should be at stake. If Steiner loses a defense, it shouldn't just lose one planet. It should lose a cluster of planets. As factions shrink in size, fewer planets are at stake. At a certain size it goes back to only one planet per capture.

This would do several things.

First, it would allow small and previously struggling factions to really jump start their counter-attack.

Secondly, the more successful your faction becomes, the more of a target you make yourself. A faction might be more willing to attack the big faction if they can grab 3 or 4 planets in one go.

Third it makes the map much more responsive to player activity.

fourth, it slows down the onslaught for small factions.

Finally, it helps clans get their invasion off right


Planets captured tangentially, would go to the faction, but would not go to the unit that got tagged. They would get the reward of the 1 planet they captured.

An Alternative idea is to keep it 1 capture, 1 planet most of the time, but have Hub Worlds littered throughout the innersphere. If you capture a hub world, you get several other neighboring planets with it.

We need some way to balance the imbalanced faction sizes and make attacking these super-sized factions less galling.

[BSK]

This post is absolutely obsolete due to the announcements on CW phase 3 ..

[Heckbird]

Do you remember how the map looked in Community Warfare phase 1 or 2? FRR has been reduced to just it's capital world and grown back to great strength before. Jade Falcon went all the way south to Liao in the last phase. In the first iteration of Community Warfare Marik put a huge dent in Steiner and Davion and made the claims as the defenders of Terra.

The map is dynamic and it reflects the cohesion of the players playing and the popularity of said factions.

[Sinister Maestro]

CW Phase 1

http://web.archive.o....se/auagbo.webm

Last Day of CW Phase 2

[Jman5]

BSK, on 04 February 2016 - 10:26 PM, said:

This post is absolutely obsolete due to the announcements on CW phase 3 ..

How so?

Sinister Maestro, on 05 February 2016 - 01:01 AM, said:

CW Phase 1

http://web.archive.o....se/auagbo.webm

Last Day of CW Phase 2

Yup. And look at the big Factions: Marik, Steiner, Kurita, and davion. They probably all had more planets than any clan faction despite being pushed around so hard for all those months.

Edited by Jman5, 05 February 2016 - 04:33 AM.

[Sandpit]

The OP is actually right.

There are too many planets, options, borders, etc. for the size of population we have here. Limiting attack lanes (just like they already do with the code they use to determine next attack lane after a planet is flipped) in a more direct and discreet manner would fix a lot of the issues with CW

[Khereg]

I've seen complaints that the map actually changes too quickly, although I don't agree with them. I like the idea of scaling the stakes according to faction planet count. It's a pretty easy math problem: X% of your factions planets are at stake each attack phase. Minimum of 1 planet at stake at all times (except your faction's homeworld, if that remains sacrosanct). X is probably somewhere between 3% - 5%.

For a faction starting with 200 planets, using 5% at stake every attack phase, it would take 65 straight losses to reduce the faction down to 1 planet, for example. If they lost every single attack phase, that's about 3 weeks to take a large faction down to its homeworld. Nobody loses every attack phase, and there is some ebb and flow, so I could see this standing up for the 4 - 6 months we hope to see constitute a CW "season" but still show dramatic map swings that would aise the stakes in CW.

PGI might have some issue with the algorithm considering how often wormholes continue to pop up, but if they can get the concept of adjacency down, I don't see why not.

Depending what PGI has in mind for Phase 3, this might need some tweaking, but the core idea is a good one.

One thing to consider - how would you ration rewards for units if they starting tagging clusters of planets very quickly? This would provide substantial incentives to attack the biggest faction every phase, with the net result of an equilibrium where all factions get to roughly the same size and stay in that general vicinity. That would actually be a little boring once things stabilized...

[Jman5]

Khereg, on 09 February 2016 - 01:21 PM, said:

One thing to consider - how would you ration rewards for units if they starting tagging clusters of planets very quickly? This would provide substantial incentives to attack the biggest faction every phase, with the net result of an equilibrium where all factions get to roughly the same size and stay in that general vicinity. That would actually be a little boring once things stabilized...

That is something I thought about when writing this. As I see it, there are a few options:

1. Conquering a cluster of planets at a time only tags the planet you captured. The other planets would just be untagged and attributed to the faction.

2. Conquering 2 or 3 planets would award planets to the second and third most successful Unit in that attack window. So if Kcom carried the hardest in taking a planet, but 228th was right behind them in wins, 228th would get the other planet. You could always make the reward for secondary or tertiary planets lower.

3. Another approach is that instead of making is based on territory size, you seed the inner sphere with Hub worlds. Capturing a hub world grants you several of the surrounding planets with full tags, but they are spaced out a bit. Obviously, the larger your territory, the more of these hub worlds you will have to manage. This would add some strategic element in deciding your invasion path. You might even treat this like a sort of player-driven mini event as the two factions wrestle to maintain control of this lucrative planet. This would also not preclude small factions from being attacked if they have one or two hub worlds by their border.

Edited by Jman5, 09 February 2016 - 02:11 PM.

[Kin3ticX]

There arnt any self sustaining border wars in the south. Not enough population for all these factions

[Khereg]

In thinking about the ideal map dynamic, I think it boils down to 2 competing approaches:
1. Getting to a "winner" where one faction eventually dominates the map, thus ending a "season", or
2. Maintaining a dynamic steady state, where map changes are constant but no one gets wiped out (or even driven back to their homeworld)

I think people may mistakenly believe they want 1, but they really want 2. The faction loyalists will all want to prove their faction the best, after all, but every winner means 9 losers and those 9 losers will complain to the ends of time at how unfairly the winners won.

I think PGI would prefer 2 since it means there's no big events to manage, no map resets to handle, etc. But I like the idea of some "special" worlds (hubs, you called them) that have increased rewards. Just varying things across the map in general provides meaning to CW. I'll beat the dead horse of saying we should have variable tonnage limits on drops for different planets, for instance, to give different flavors of battles over the course of a CW campaign.

If rewards for planets start large when first won and diminish over the time they are held, that would promote constant attempts to conquer new worlds, as another example.

There's so much that could be done here...

Edited by Khereg, 09 February 2016 - 03:34 PM.

[Sandpit]

Khereg, on 09 February 2016 - 03:31 PM, said:

In thinking about the ideal map dynamic, I think it boils down to 2 competing approaches:
1. Getting to a "winner" where one faction eventually dominates the map, thus ending a "season", or
2. Maintaining a dynamic steady state, where map changes are constant but no one gets wiped out (or even driven back to their homeworld)

I think people may mistakenly believe they want 1, but they really want 2. The faction loyalists will all want to prove their faction the best, after all, but every winner means 9 losers and those 9 losers will complain to the ends of time at how unfairly the winners won.

I think PGI would prefer 2 since it means there's no big events to manage, no map resets to handle, etc. But I like the idea of some "special" worlds (hubs, you called them) that have increased rewards. Just varying things across the map in general provides meaning to CW. I'll beat the dead horse of saying we should have variable tonnage limits on drops for different planets, for instance, to give different flavors of battles over the course of a CW campaign.

If rewards for planets start large when first won and diminish over the time they are held, that would promote constant attempts to conquer new worlds, as another example.

There's so much that could be done here...

based on past experiences in participating in, running, admining, and otherwise being involved in IS Wars, I can almost guarantee that your 2nd option is a much better way to go.

It provides enough freedom in the map to allow players not to feel "confined", but keeps enough parameters to disallow any one unit or faction dominating the entire map and making for poor player retention in many other factions.

Then run Tuk as the season finale and repeat. Run a few tournaments like Tuk during the season to spice things up and add some lore depth and you've got a very strong framework for a fun CW environment that's much more active

[Wildstreak]

In Phase 3 the number of planets being fought over will shrink. CW does not have the numbers to support more planets.