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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:09 pm 
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Kwae Zar wrote:
Tarnus wrote:
While you may think the changes are tail chasers they still solve some greater issues.


The change log is all the proof I need to make an assessment. When was the last time something significant was changed in this game to IMPROVE the game for new folks? It hasn't. The last several rounds of tail chasing have been fixing up holes. Whether it is renaming SG entrances, team cash or bounty cheats.

AAT's continuing problem is the STEEP learning curve. In order to make this game flourish again (which I still remember fondly) we need to be able to attract and maintain new players.

Make the next investment of time in this game a step in the direction of making the game more palatable for new users. I know the people that I invited into the game took about 2 hours of flying around to decide to never come back again due to its complexity. These people still invest their time heavily in other web games (that I do play with them)... but never AAT again.


KZ keep this in mind. A training ground will only teach players how to play. It will not prevent exploits. SO... in the end we will still have to find good fixes for exploits regardless of a training ground or not. But again, I find it hard for you to say something is broken when your not even playing. I can stand on the sideline all day, but until I get to be quarterback, I will never know what its like in the real game.



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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:58 pm 
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Tarnus wrote:
A training ground will only teach players how to play...


That's what I am asking for. I know it is hard for you to divorce yourself from the game and look at it with a fresh perspective; namely that of a new player. In fact with all your insider knowledge of how the very detailed intricacies work prevent you from doing that. I don't need my own personal experience to know this, I have invited others to play the game and attempted to help them and they gave up due to the monster learning curve. Currently, Fed Space is a safe place for players to do one thing: TRADE. And we all know that trading doesn't even factor into the end game. It is such a small portion of the game. Why only let new players experience a tiny fraction of the activities that AAT offers in a safe environment?

Tarnus wrote:
I can stand on the sideline all day, but until I get to be quarterback, I will never know what its like in the real game.

I can look at a stock and know it is volatile without owning it.
I can evaluate a course of action and its risks without needing to engage in the activity that I am evaluating.
I can look at the reviews of WarHammer Online and know there is no way I am buying that game...
I can plainly see that Obama will never win the election without needing to vote.

We take actions every day Tarnus which we base our decisions on our own experience and that of others around us.

But, using your own analogy... I know when I am playing sports that sometimes the best way to see "the whole game" is to sit myself on the sidelines for awhile and watch what is occurring. You can gain a new perspective when you are not close to the action that you would not have gotten if you had remained in the game. Then I can relay a new strategy into the team...


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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:01 am 
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Kwae Zar wrote:

That's what I am asking for. I know it is hard for you to divorce yourself from the game and look at it with a fresh perspective; namely that of a new player. In fact with all your insider knowledge of how the very detailed intricacies work prevent you from doing that. I don't need my own personal experience to know this, I have invited others to play the game and attempted to help them and they gave up due to the monster learning curve. Currently, Fed Space is a safe place for players to do one thing: TRADE. And we all know that trading doesn't even factor into the end game. It is such a small portion of the game. Why only let new players experience a tiny fraction of the activities that AAT offers in a safe environment?

Tarnus wrote:
I can stand on the sideline all day, but until I get to be quarterback, I will never know what its like in the real game.


KZ, how many times do I have to say it. I like the idea and would love to have it... LISTEN TO ME!
But its gonna take time to find a way to implement.

Quote:
I can look at a stock and know it is volatile without owning it.
I can evaluate a course of action and its risks without needing to engage in the activity that I am evaluating.
I can look at the reviews of WarHammer Online and know there is no way I am buying that game...
I can plainly see that Obama will never win the election without needing to vote.

We take actions every day Tarnus which we base our decisions on our own experience and that of others around us.

But, using your own analogy... I know when I am playing sports that sometimes the best way to see "the whole game" is to sit myself on the sidelines for awhile and watch what is occurring. You can gain a new perspective when you are not close to the action that you would not have gotten if you had remained in the game. Then I can relay a new strategy into the team...


And you can still make mistakes without actual experience. I don't know about you but when I was in school I learned more from labs than I ever did from lectures. Its the experience through doing that teaches you. In any game I have played and am playing I can be very competitive. When I first started playing tradewars type games more than 20 years ago I sucked at it, but by playing and trial and error I learned what to do and how to do it... (I know... I know.... Training ground so stop preaching) Back to my original premise. Play the game, show us the problems, so we can fix them, quit working against us and work with us. All the screaming and yelling for a training ground wont make us want it more but we do listen.

Do you understand that what your asking for isn't just slapping a little code together to enable it? It takes planning and alot of programming to get it done. We technically have 1...hear that 1 programmer and thats PJ, I have to spend all my programming time making money so I have to let PJ do all the heavy lifting. This brings it back to playing... I play the game to make him aware of issues that I see as they are happening, so I can prevent abuse in the future. One game I may play as a builder, another I may play as an attacker, then another a super defender. Now with the shorter games coming there may need to be some econmic adjustments to speed it up so that a 3 month game can net a 100M score. Help us Help you... Play the game.



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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 9:52 am 
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Tarnus wrote:
KZ, how many times do I have to say it. I like the idea and would love to have it... LISTEN TO ME!
But its gonna take time to find a way to implement


OK! I have done my quarterly harping about training grounds. Now to tie all the points home.

Currently, we KNOW we have problems with people finding loopholes.
We KNOW we need to make the game more friendly to new users.
We KNOW how much time and effort it takes to code -- (I work with developers all day long PJ, I do understand!)
We KNOW the last several "patches" have been gone toward curtailing "creative user activity".

So, when I propose making a system where people can not exploit the bounty -- in the end it is to free up PJ's time so he can make the game more newbie friendly and thus grow AAT. *light bulb moment!*


------


Tarnus wrote:
Now with the shorter games coming there may need to be some econmic adjustments to speed it up so that a 3 month game


Suggestion there: Make trading more viable for a longer period of time. Put the "T" back in Alien Assault. =)
I would suggstion making ports initially worth more to trade at, allow for more goods to be traded at them, and decline less quickly in prices. Also, letting them bounce back in 12 hours instead of 24 hours might be a good idea.
This will encourage a quicker enconomy, more players will get the cash they need for upgrades faster, and ultimately put more cash out there in the universe.


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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:04 am 
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Kwae Zar wrote:

Suggestion there: Make trading more viable for a longer period of time. Put the "T" back in Alien Assault. =)
I would suggstion making ports initially worth more to trade at, allow for more goods to be traded at them, and decline less quickly in prices. Also, letting them bounce back in 12 hours instead of 24 hours might be a good idea.
This will encourage a quicker enconomy, more players will get the cash they need for upgrades faster, and ultimately put more cash out there in the universe.


One of the things we have talked about is having ports pay better the farther they are from sol. At the start of the game we have made it easy to find ports in fed space to trade at while ports outside of fed space are a bit tougher to find.

If a port isnt traded it already increases, by having the prices drop you force the users to look for better paying ports. The larger your hull and the more you drain, the bigger the price drop. The problem is once someone gets a hull that can haul that much, they can deplete it in like a few runs. How do you bump the port limits without skewing it too much? We could start it with higher limits but if your draining thee port the prices should plummet and we could always have the numbers bounce back but the prices should still stay low if its over traded.



I'd like to see more trading as well, but its a very hard thing to do as once people are making money from planets they no longer need to trade. We have also talked about the possibility of players getting higher return on autotrades, this would bring more autotrading back to the game but even that has limits.



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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:01 pm 
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I think that ship trading is such a blip on the radar in the timeline of events that it hardly matters if even double the amount of goods and prices are done that it would affect much in the long run.

Let's say that trading is viable for the first 15,000 turns now. If trading is changed by doubling prices, doubling the amount of stock that can be traded, and double the asking price regeneration rate you might make trading viable until 30,000 turns. What's that... 10-15 days out of 90 days of game play? Roughly 15% of the total game play?

This will be good for more reasons that just a quick start --
As you mentioned Autotrades become viable again.
Restarts would be quicker (for those who got podded).
Infuse more money into the economy
Create more strategy branches (Do I trade longer or do I go start an SG now?)


Tarnus wrote:
One of the things we have talked about is having ports pay better the farther they are from sol

I love the idea that ports farther from Sol are going to pay more cash initially for trading commodities.

Tarnus wrote:
We have also talked about the possibility of players getting higher return on autotrades

Perhaps ports that are in sectors that one owns pay a 20-50% premium for the goods... After all they are getting "free" protection and a guaranteed trading partner.


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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 3:16 pm 
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A question to PJ.
Is it possible to make all players part of the same team so that they can't attack each other, but no 'team' benefits; sharing planets / sectors?

Just trying to think of working a 'Learners' game.

That way we have a game were they can't attack each other but can still attack Indy planets. We then tweak down the Indy planet settings so that they don't grow too strong. Players are then protected from each other but can still attack the Indy planets.

:)



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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 4:50 pm 
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Alf wrote:
A question to PJ.
Is it possible to make all players part of the same team so that they can't attack each other, but no 'team' benefits; sharing planets / sectors?

Just trying to think of working a 'Learners' game.

That way we have a game were they can't attack each other but can still attack Indy planets. We then tweak down the Indy planet settings so that they don't grow too strong. Players are then protected from each other but can still attack the Indy planets.

:)


Not right now but that is an interesting idea. One of the things we have in the works are multiple galaxies in a single game with worm holes that take you to them. Each galaxy is totally separate from the others but your score is calculated based upon everything you own in each galaxy.

It would take some work but we might be able to have rules set for each galaxy that the admin can set. Here are a couple of examples using a 3 Galaxy game.

Galaxy 0: Normal Game

This is the main galaxy everyone starts in and the current rules apply to everyone.


Galaxy 1: Traders Paradise

This Galaxy can be accessed through a wormhole in Sol Sector. In this galaxy no one can build any planets, sector defenses cannot be placed, no one can attack anyone, ports have way higher prices and can hold far more commodities. If you log off without leaving the galaxy you will be towed to a random sector in Galaxy 0. Players will not be allowed to sleep in Galaxy 1 as it is only for trading. The only ships allowed in Galaxy 1 are Super Cargo's. When players reach a certain score they can no longer enter Galaxy 1. If their score drops enough they will be allowed back into the Galaxy.


Galaxy 2: Combat Training Arena

This Galaxy can accessed through a wormhole in Sol Sector. In this galaxy no one can build any planets, sector defenses cannot be placed, no one can attack any real player, there are no ports. If you log off without leaving the galaxy you will be towed to a random sector in Galaxy 0. Players will not be allowed to sleep in Galaxy 2 as it is only for combat. Any ship is allowed in Galaxy 2.

Galaxy 2 will contain Non-Player Character (NPC) planets owned by Independent, Alliance and the Federation. All players will be able to attack ANY of the planets and defenses freely without any retribution. Planets defeated in Galaxy 2 cannot be captured but you can recover salvage credits from what the planet was worth. Enough to pay for the attacks and a little profit to make it worth while. Players will still be able to lose ships and be killed out of the game if they don't have an escape pod if they lose an attack.

These are just a couple of examples of how the Galaxy system could be used. Most of the code for supporting Galaxies is in 0.31. The thing that is missing are the rule settings. This might be the way to go.



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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 5:15 pm 
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Yeah, I like the multi-galaxy idea. Even if all the galaxies have the same rules, it would still make searching for players and everything way more interesting, adding a lot of dynamic to the game.

Though I'm allowing myself to go quite off topic, one of the things that I think would be cool with the multi-galaxy idea is having overall rankings and individual galaxy rankings, so one team could be massive over all, but by looking at the galaxy rankings, one could see that they aren't present in another galaxy at all. The game would become a little more modular, which I think would be an interesting dimension. "Turf wars" would become more intense, with big teams fighting over dominance in one galaxy.



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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 7:04 pm 
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This is my first time playing AAT 0.30, coming from BNT and the bounty settings are frustratingly lopsided! I understand wanting to punish players who are wrongfully picking on smaller players, but the settings are off. Here is what happened to me...

-I create a planet with a genesis torpedo, setup a base and buy a Super Cargo ship. Leave the planet to go trade, because I am first starting and didn't realize I would lose my Pioneer, so had no way to stock the planet.
-Another player finds my planet and takes it over
-I keep trading, eventually build another base on a different planet.
- Buy a Stealth ship and store my Super Cargo.
-I go back to retake my original planet from the player who at this point has more points than me
-Attack the planet and with no warning, the Fed places a 230,084,584 bounty on me!

Now I am stuck with a Stealth ship, 180,000,000 in debt, basically no trading ability and no way to access the Shipyard to. Let's see, it will only take me... 97,600 turns to pay this off by trading. What am I supposed to do?? Can I sell blood? To add insult to injury, the news reports this other player somehow already has amassed 25,000,000+ colonists (my Super Cargo was only worth 700,000), just took over my only based planet (which was defended) and while I was staring at the screen dumbfounded, I just got a message that he was attacking me!!!

WTH.


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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:05 pm 
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WiCKeD wrote:
This is my first time playing AAT 0.30, coming from BNT and the bounty settings are frustratingly lopsided! I understand wanting to punish players who are wrongfully picking on smaller players, but the settings are off. Here is what happened to me...

-I create a planet with a genesis torpedo, setup a base and buy a Super Cargo ship. Leave the planet to go trade, because I am first starting and didn't realize I would lose my Pioneer, so had no way to stock the planet.
-Another player finds my planet and takes it over
-I keep trading, eventually build another base on a different planet.
- Buy a Stealth ship and store my Super Cargo.
-I go back to retake my original planet from the player who at this point has more points than me
-Attack the planet and with no warning, the Fed places a 230,084,584 bounty on me!

Now I am stuck with a Stealth ship, 180,000,000 in debt, basically no trading ability and no way to access the Shipyard to. Let's see, it will only take me... 97,600 turns to pay this off by trading. What am I supposed to do?? Can I sell blood? To add insult to injury, the news reports this other player somehow already has amassed 25,000,000+ colonists (my Super Cargo was only worth 700,000), just took over my only based planet (which was defended) and while I was staring at the screen dumbfounded, I just got a message that he was attacking me!!!

WTH.


Actually not lopsided at all. If you had scanned the planet, and or the sector you would have seen the planet was bounty. Also if you had checked the rankings you would have seen the player was bounty to you as well. Bounties are based on your networth, not what ship your flying. You will notice players rarely get bounties in the game. Once and a while they will but very rarely. Game will be reset in a short time so you might be better off starting then or you are probably better off starting over or asking for a couple donations... wait long enough and a lucky embezzlement might show up on your ship.

The number 1 thing to remember is to always scan and also watch your ranking. Sometimes if your attacking a smaller player there are all kinds of things that can happen. The game is designed to keep players attacking in their score range but doesn't prevent the smaller player from attacking you.... So you have to get creative, and keep a good head on your shoulders. Much of what KZ has said about a training area we would like to do at sometime, but this wont help you today. Finally, do not play this like BNT. While the concepts are similar the games are far removed from each other. As your playing and you have questions, ask the Guides, thats what they are there for.



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 Post subject: Re: Final Bounty Changes Added...
PostPosted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:33 pm 
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WiCKeD wrote:
This is my first time playing AAT 0.30

-I go back to retake my original planet from the player who at this point has more points than me
-Attack the planet and with no warning, the Fed places a 230,084,584 bounty on me!


This sounds more like a problem with the server you were playing on and not the game. We have absolutely no control over what the admin does to their game. There normally is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY a lower ranked player can get a Federation bounty unless the admin places it on the player themselves or they have modified the game to do that. So if I were you I would yell at the admin of the game you were playing.

I know it wasn't our game because there is no fed bounty of that size in the news and you mentioned 0.30 and we are running 0.31.

We will be resetting our game on the 1st of October and that will be a good time for you to actually try the game on an OFFICIAL server that is just starting.



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