The Island Conundrum

[Jemaat]

I'm sure everyone noticed the gargantuan argument today between Rasteroid and JC, with other temporary participants, over the implications of the island - a group of players supporting each other.

The actual island is harmless, of course. Unintrusive, remote, peaceful, and not particularly well coordinated. But apparently it is the first time a group of players have cooperated, which poses a threat to game balance. A group of players could coordinate over an instant messenger or a chatroom to wreak much havoc and generally make the game less fun for others.

The discussion belongs here, so here's the thread for it.

[Jemaat]

Oh. Quick disclaimer on the island itself.

Even though my own perception of it varies wildly, one thing it is not is a fixed alliance of players, nor is it exclusively for democrats. Among other things, it was ideally meant to be a dynamic place, with people coming and going, and acting as anything from a pit-stop for adventurers, to a long-term residence for those who want to advance a few hull upgrades or tech levels, to a haven for players who've been repeatedly nuked back to the stone age on the mainland. Once, I even briefly considered the possibility of it becoming the new mainland, except with only active players. My motivation for encouraging its creation was to add variety to the game, not the reverse.

I don't see it holding together after Rasteroid's extensive denunciation of it, I just wanted to dispel some illusions that may have arisen from the somewhat misleading title of this thread.

[jc]

Yeah, sorry for flooding the Communications page.

It's an innocuous island, but any other group of players could coordinate rather easily.

I personally think that the best way is to actually encourage grouping : allow players to spend a resource (Glass?) to join an established Alliance (which would cost a bunch of each resource to actually establish, but the Founder would be the one to approve any would-be joiners, and designate others as "Founders" as well - Founder beware, new Founders can kick out old ones!) in order to gain some benefits.

#1 ) Alliance members cannot attack one another, and any vassalages are removed if players join an Alliance if those vassalages conflict with the new Alliance.

#2 ) Players can set a single Alliance-Only Trade, which can only be accepted by someone in their Alliance.

#3 ) Players can use their Alliance Channel to chat with each other.

#4 ) Other players can see the alliances from the Foreign Affairs screen, and in profiles.

Alliances would have a limit to players: 3 to start with, and further increases would cost more resources (perhaps like Hull Upgrades, only X DMND / X ALU / X STEEL / X GLASS / X EUR , so it's more like super-terraforming) to make bigger groups...


I dunno, if it had something like this, joining a big alliance could be a bit prestigious ^_^ You might get some new people caught up in the middle, but that's why you'd encourage the alliance members to shuffle towards each other for inter-alliance warfare.

Perhaps disallow Alliance members to attack players who aren't a member of any Alliance? So they'd have to quit their Alliance in order to attack a player who hasn't got an Alliance yet, and then pay yet another 3 Glass to join the Alliance XDDD

Hmmmm....

It'd be a way to prevent the big groups of Alliance members from picking on the little guys, actually. If they're going to be a group regardless, might as well make it official, and just make it really hard to attack someone who isn't wanting to play the Grouping Game XD

Maybe make it impossible to attack an Alliance smaller than your own (or perhaps not smaller, but like 2/3 the size or smaller... so a big 7-person Alliance can't attack the 3-person Alliances... , or the 1-person not-even-in-an-Alliance)...

Bah, this post is no help, I'm sure, but I like talking about ideas XD

[jc]

Oh, just thought I'd mention that I'm not with Jemaat on this one I want a nice peaceful island filled (if possible) with Democracies who are peaceful and tree-loving and who sit there churning out DDRL for the world populace.

But Jemaat's got a nice idea there, anyway, for two reasons: 1- a place where there's no idle players, and 2- a nice place to rest.

Both are good ideas for the Island. I just want a little nonviolent niche XDDD

I still like my ideas, though. :3

[Ular]

Well... I think this alliance idea should be entirely voluntary, with absolutely no benefits or costs associated with it. The Battle Mine world has an underlying structure of chaos, mayhem, and self serving interests. Any alliance should be a verbal agreement, with the inherent risk of treachery, just like real life.

If an alliance gets out of hand, ideally players will self-police and voice their opposition. Sure, the island can be a temporary refuge, but if some enterprising warmonger makes his/her way over, so be it.

[Jemaat]

Ah. I guess that was kind of the point of contention, because we're rather well armed and we produce enough food to vassalise an enterprising warmonger for as long as circumstances permit (the idea being that they will get bored of being a vassal and go away).

[psiweapon]

god I love this ( ) smiley!!!!!

Well Methuselah knows I very rarely show up here at the forums but I think this is worth it.

Well, about the island... Most of you know that I have been a warmonging, kamikaze, fascist bastard before. That's how I got the max of 12 vassals. But there's so much more about this game. And coordinating your actions with other players is one of the possibilities.

Come on, this is not "ogame" (how the hell did they came up with such a stupid name, I'm still wondering), we are 42 players, with a LOT of idles (perhaps the global number of idles should be shown somewhere?). We are not zillions upon zillions of players running unchecked. We are just 42 and the admin (and game creator) is alive, kicking and around. This is a controlled environment.

If something really stinky arised, the rest of the players would nuke it to ground level, or Rasteroid would go "ahem" and flash his admin badge and it would all be over.

There have always been peaceful players around, and I don't think that having four or five of them hang together will do any harm to the rest of the players or the game. Yes, it *might*. But at least let us try, don't forbid something beforehand just in the light of something that might happen. And remember that everything can be changed... Battle Mines is constantly changing and improving, why not take this as another chance to do so?

And about giving factions/alliances an in-game system... I think that anything beyond displaying the name of your faction or some other identifier, is too complex and elitist. If it needs resources to be set up and managed... newcomers won't be able to do anything with them, and I think that preventing the game from becoming *Even more* hard for newcomers is a priority.

Or whatever. That's just my two cents.

[Lynx Shaman]

An island built around Methuselah could work, if you're going for peaceful. Of course, you wouldn't be able to produce Diamond Drills (or much of anything else). Still, relatively peaceful. Unless you want to pick a fight with him, of course. ;D

[vilhazarog]

I think Rasteroid was really complaining about two separate issues:

1) Players cooperating.

2) Players moving themselves away from the threat of combat.


#1 is a difficult issue to deal with in any game, assuming you don't want players cooperating but instead competing. The problem here is that there is no way to win. In games where you can 'win', you don't want to cooperate because then your helping someone else win instead of yourself. But in Battle Mines, what are we trying to do? Well, looks like it's different for everyone. Some people just want to attack as many people as they can and see how many wins they can rack up. Other people just want to build out their terrority to max buildings and start pumping out hull upgrades. Some people just want to trade. Some people want to get to the top of the rankings. Some people want to fire off a DDD.... There's no way to win. So people make up goals and some of those goals are easier if you cooperate. Doesn't bother me if my neighbor builds up to max buildings before I do, so why don't we help each other? There are almost no perks to gaining rank, so no reason not to help my neighbor gain some hull upgrades if I can get some too.
Then there's the issue of two (or more) players ganging up on another player. This is a problem in just about any game, and the answer is usually either to tell the picked on player to go get some help, or tell the gang to cut it out, it's not fair.

#2 I think is a reaction to the fact that for some of us combat is the least fun part of the game. If your goal is hull upgrades, combat is not helpful (witness SUD, who never attacks anyone) and in general is very random and feels like flipping a coin. Add to that players who's goal is NOT hull upgrades, but to see how many combats they can win, and they don't care if you obliterate all their buildings, they can get back enough cannons to get back into combat the minute they are no longer vassalized, and they attack again, hoping for a lucky hit while you get a unlucky miss. Add to that losing a few combats where you fire 5 and get zero hits, or get vassalized three or four times in a row.... really combat feels like an unlucky production event for me now sometimes (even if you win, still feels like you've been hit with that goddamn meteor strike event)....

Anyway, I hope you don't take these criticisms too hard Rast, because the rest of the game is awesome!

[xadeington]

lynxshaman said:

An island built around Methuselah could work, if you're going for peaceful. Of course, you wouldn't be able to produce Diamond Drills (or much of anything else). Still, relatively peaceful. Unless you want to pick a fight with him, of course. ;D

But you sure could trade all that glorious food for a few...

And just think, if you surrounded him well enough, then you could protect the secrets of Democracy...