^ Agree totally.

I think we should at least drop 2k green planets and have between 15k - 20k spc planets.

I agree

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A True Underdog

Stronghold

@ZH your numbers are pretty solid - I'd say you're a bit high on the actual HW count (which I should probably keep secret), but that shouldn't change the overall nature of the numbers. Yes, there are very few SPC systems out there, and there should probably be some more. Your argument about fun I find very compelling - though EL pointed out that fun isn't the same for all players.

I think I'll drop a couple k planets, unless there is a compelling reason not to. I'm not sure about regular planet drops though (okay, aside from the already regular planet drops which I'm still unsure about but which are an established feature by now ). How would the game change? I imagine eventually a glut of too many planets would be as monotonous as none - the latter, the 50 planet empire slowly acquiring wealth and attacking every 3 months (though you might admit the points earned are pretty high). How might we best strike an effective balance?

I realize it might seem odd to discuss basic resource allocation and game design for a game 13 years old - but I might say "better late than never" , or mention that EVE Online, of similar design and age, are still adjusting their own resource issues. So - input is very valuable

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SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.

Simplest solution would be a set number that is at the very least double why we have now.
Have the system auto drop nightly or weekly to reach that number. Would be minimal code and may need to bet weaker from time to time or as the game picks up and slows down but dedicating a ton of time to this particular issue for a more permanent fix is not likely a priority.

I would feel better about my chosen play style if I knew the planets would be replaced.

As stated before I am playing in a way Ido not enjoy as much let alone as resource efficient because the planet count is too low.

Ps. My hw count can't be off by much.

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I am here to help in anyway I can! Let's have fun!

My first post may have been a little more passive aggressive than it needed to be sorry
Love you!

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I am here to help in anyway I can! Let's have fun!

> Ps. My hw count can't be off by much
Take that to mean you know where most of them are then .

> ~"feel as though the way I enjoy the game is not well supported"
tl;dr: I wrote an essay and parts of the design doc that I wish I had in response . I agree, and I'd like to change that. I feel dropping planets isn't the only or possibly best solution, but it's quick and now. So - bumper crop later today, drop rate doubled.

This is a valid concern. You mentioned earlier that you lean towards raiding in a take vs. make balance. Games certainly should be fun, and not everybody enjoys the inexorable exponential growth of resources like Iiridayn, Professor, and Cajin (probably). Games thrive on conflict - you have to exert effort to get what you want - and while in a take vs make model, while make is generally superior (or makers often leave), takers provide a useful pressure on them to provide gameplay experiences for both.

Ultimately I feel that you are right - that game balance in SL is skewed too heavily towards makers - which ultimately would result in a massively single player game (Facebook games are often of this nature). Personally I don't find those compelling.

Ogame provides an useful example of a balance between these game modes, and buildings were implemented with those concepts in mind. Unfortunately, Ogame provides new players equal ground by separating the universe into dozens of shards - which while technologically feasible (and relatively easy), is not in the game design and balance of SkyLords.

EVE Online is another instructive game - in part because they still don't have the balance solved, but are trying with a single universe and far more players (and smart developers). One thing they do to try to encourage interaction is to use timers to bring players together. I'd like to implement some sort of timers system eventually in SkyLords - as well as opportunities for meaningful offline interaction like the resource stealing ship.

SkyLords is a fixed position "hidden information" style game, much like Stratego where, once a location is discovered, there is little that can be done to defend it. So planets are massive fortress HWs with mathematical formulas demonstrating the exact cost of attacking or frequently harvested production planets which are replaced as needed from nearby or other sources (warp, saved coordinates, etc). Resources are then drained from stores to create large attack fleets to covert into points with substantial bonuses per round for the top players (potentially offsetting the cost of attacking). Like hide and seek, players use newly created nearby planets, probes, and the warp to find and destroy opponent planets. To balance the risks of a fixed position, bonuses are applied to planets which last longer (which are then generally used for fortresses first instead of production).

The warp is rate limited because it provides a relatively cheap option to find otherwise undetectable systems, and to provide drivers for conflict. In this I find it has been moderately successful - players now enter the BZ and sometimes kill each other, for more than just the thrill of combat (like Deemers). Probes are rarely resource efficient as I understand them, unless the planet density is relatively high - in which case they are only used when all nearbys have been cleared and more planets are still desired. Nearby is fast, free, and intuitive. A star map was originally conceived, which may have guided probing efforts, but was abandoned at some point before the game came to my hands - possibly because the nearby system was superior.

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SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.

Currently one system is dropped each hour - 24 per day, which you point out is not sufficient to sustain active hunting. In the past, enough new players joined and then abandoned the game - good website conversion rates are still < 10% - but while removing planets from (very) dead accounts is good, it wasn't the best for new and active players either - they'd get "chained" to death, and in the past couldn't restart without waiting for the end of the month. Still, assuming 1% of players stayed, that is still only 99 systems over the lifetime of an account the average new player contributed to the cycle of hide and seek. Even a single active "maker" player can go though 4-20 systems each day, depending on work load - based on distant memories of when I played actively, I think I felt 20 was a pretty heavy nearby load, 4 wasn't bad, and I probably had to clear out about 10-20/week. I was never the most effective player though, so feel free to correct me there. My reaction to dropping more systems has been more visceral, based on my preferences as a player to have less weekly "cleanup".

In response - what I would like to do is adjust the hide and seek parameter of the game to provide useful alternatives. One such experiment was the BZ planets - because they are not destructable, a player can use them to hide in density instead of sparsity. Sadly, probes made that ineffective, and the close distances made them moderately dangerous as well. Unless there is a reason not to, I should probably disable probes in the BZ area and shuffle the planets around a little if I want to give that another go after I'm done simplifying the code. Another option would be to adjust (possibly dynamically, as you suggested with drop rates) probe costs, the range of probes and/or nearby, or the drop radius of the galaxy.

Anyway, regardless, I have realized that you are right, space needs more action now - so I'll be dropping about 6-700 systems (~2000 planets), doubling the drop rate, and slightly decreasing drop radius for now. Hopefully this will provide slightly more interactivity.

Personally, I've never been a huge fan of the lore that planets are generated and destroyed, and would like to consider alternatives eventually, such as the biosphere is nuked but they still exist and might eventually be colonized again for sufficient V or something like that.

Edit: Had to run - another idea to alter the hide and seek mechanic would be to make coordinates ephemeral - planets move from time to time, so held information reduces in value, and a planet can hide/be held more effectively. (The obvious counter is to track high value targets with invisible ships - which to me doesn't sound like a bad compromise).

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SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.

I love you.
This is a perfect solution for how the game is currently.

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I am here to help in anyway I can! Let's have fun!

So would the invis ship have some sort of 'link' to the planet... but that would be cool to have planets move, it would make finding HWs more interesting, though that would just mean I'd need to build 800 invis ships before it happened and you'd end up with a chance to have your planet move into nearby range of another player, offering up some conflict.... and yes, probing is not very useful, warp is much better or just nearbying people that aren't around enough- I did toss out a few thousand probes last month looking for something specific, but it cretainly wasn't a worthwhile venture

You never did tell me what you were looking for.

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I am here to help in anyway I can! Let's have fun!