World Team Battle

Been meaning to write a response to this for a while, but planning it through it was going to be fairly long and I just haven't had the time to sit down and do it until now.

I like the general idea but I think there are certain things that just won't work or are too difficult to balance in a way that's good or interesting.

Preface: The world map is an odd choice aesthetically, but given that it's an arbitrary group of systems it doesn't really matter. I'd prefer a galactic war style map personally but that's a matter of personal preference.

1) Limited team sizes - please no. It's awkward enough for ClanWars and to be honest the total number of players is largely irrelevant. The important part is limiting the numbers taking part in a single battle. What would be more useful is limiting the balance of attackers to defenders to something like +/- 2, I do like your cost mechanic for fielding players though Which leads to :

2) Battle scheduling and concurrent battles - scheduling needs to be free and arranged between the attacking and defending teams as suits them (say any time within 1-2 weeks of the attack being announced) otherwise the game simply won't be able to run outside of a few small teams comprised of people with lots of free time.

3) Map design - This kinda needs to be fixed, letting each system owner design their own map is fine, but it should then stay that way for the duration, not change when the system changes hands. I appreciate that creating 100+ balanced and interesting systems would be difficult for the organisers but changing systems every time is too much work, you'll just end up with every system under a teams control being identical to save time.

4) Upgrades - One of the many reasons I don't play Galactic War, though again this is personal preference. While it could be interesting I would be afraid of it causing a snowball effect leaving one team seriously overpowered by the halfway point. It also leaves a lot of room for cheap defensive strategies (when combined with allow the teams to design maps) such as investing in naval and creating water/air only maps so that attackers can't build most of the units they invested in. The system you've laid out is also currently incredibly cost heavy, it would take months before anyone had enough systems and thus income to field an interesting army. Instead I would suggest the following options for attackers/defenders :

4.1) Stationed troops - Teams can pay to have various buildings and troops available in a particular system from the beginning of the match. We could use a modified version of the puppet master mod and create a new pre-game stage in which players can place their defensive troops around their chosen spawns before the match beings (limited to spawn circle to stop cheap tactics like placing defences in your enemies nearest mex field). For playability this should be limited to t1 eco, factories and defences. To increase the worth of the home system I would suggest having the full t1 spread available by default in the home system, with the ability to add T2 in that system only for a much higher cost. Buildings would be permanently available to defenders and only removed if the system was lost.

4.2) Honour guard - Team's would be able to purchase blocks (say 5 tanks; 10 dox; 5 fighters; 5 bombers. Just small groups for early game play) of units which could be included in an attack, these would be placed in a pool that all attackers could access. On launching an attack the team commander would release a certain amount of resources to the attacking team (say max 2-3 per commander). Placement of honour guard units on the map would also be done with the same modified puppet master mod. Honour guard units would be one use only regardless of whether the attack was successful.

Purchased additions to honour guard would immediately become available. Purchased additions to stationed troops would only become available after any matches scheduled for that system have been played out.

5) Automation - What this really needs is a complete overhaul mod that will automatically track teams system ownership, income, units etc and can be used for scheduling attacks etc. I suspect you were already thinking of doing something similar but I'm just writing as stuff pops into my head.

Having now attacked your ideas on to the points I liked:

1) The competition as a whole. I know you're not the first to suggest something like this, but it's the best thought out post on the subject and is far more interesting than the current implementation of galactic war.

2) Money system - should be interesting and makes for a nice metagame outside the matches.

3) vassalage - Such a cool idea, keep all teams involved even once they are ostensibly out of the competition.

4) intel trading - I like the idea, though I'm not currently sure what intel would be available to be traded.

5) anything else not commented on above.

From your friendly neighborhood icycalm: "So silly lol. And how are the battles even going to take place anyway? When you are fighting in Germany you'll use a lava planet? It don't make sense G!

And all that strategic turn-based stuff! He doesn't get that all the turn-based stuff is merely meant to facilitate the setting up of interesting battles and give a dimension of continuity to them, so that each battle will feel much more meaningful than before, because it will influence also all the others! So adding Civ-type stuff is silly, because instead of keeping the focus on the real-time battles it detracts from them, by placing a higher emphasis on the turn-based stuff, which is precisely what we DON'T want to do. We don't want the best TURN-BASED strategist to win, we want the best REAL-TIME strategist! The only reason we are adding turn-based stuff at all is because it is not yet possible to play out a galactic war in real time!

I hope this isn't the real Galactic Clan Wars project they are working on and that Gandalf just made this on his own. In Galactic Clan Wars the turn-based mechanics must be kept to the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM for the format to work at all."

Whoa Conundrum. O.O?

The original post was much more insulting than the one you see now. Looks like the mods took out the worst of it and left my post intact to teach me to use the report button. Lesson learned, mods.

Yeah I actually noticed afterwards, my mistake.

verynice man! Looks Great!

Yeah, icy, I was just going to paste this, but you said it would just make these guys hate you even more, so I plagiarized it instead.

Then the mods edited all the meaning out of it, so doesn't really matter now.

Or the stupid-head mods could haven not edited it. Then you wouldn't have looked like such a bitch!

You clearly don't know the rules here, I'm sorry that the mods are enforcing said rules.

Though I must say.. there isn't anything too wrong with what Icy said, as there is no real insults that I see?

Now the mods are going to edit that post, and then you are going to look like a bitch because you replied to it! LOL

If you hadn't been so abusive in your post, I wouldn't have had to edit it.

Yes, we'll I don't mind, as I can explain myself easy. People know me here.

I just don't see why you must delve into insulting people? =/

cwarner, why not just ban me instead of editing my posts so that they don't make sense? You're not just hurting me. You're hurting other people like cptconundrum whose post made him look like a touchy ******* because he replied to my original post.

Because it's unfair to just ban people, we like to give people some chances. Besides, when people see "last edited by moderator" it's not too hard to see what happened.

It's just what the mods have been told to do, they're not inept, it's just their job.

So the CULT comes into my thread and trolls it and starts fights with mods because you don't agree with my idea. You swear and insult people. I think it just confirms that the mental illness the competitive people have is not that bad.

Hey now, I agree with the trolling bit, but i feel it's a bit wrong to label this as the CULT in its entirety, it's like someone saying all Realm players believe they're better than everyone else, and etc...

Sorry I just don't like a group being blamed for individuals.

Am I the only one noticing that this is literally a ripoff of Civilization? Research. Gold. ******* square tiles. Turn based.

how so? The point of it is that it's part turn based, but then you play the tile you're currently on as a whole planet in real time.

Many many games have reaearch, square tiles, and are turn based anyway. =/

gold.


If only there was a metallic resource in PA that he could potentially use.

James is an impressionable 16-year-old new Cult member, and our clan apologizes for his behavior in this thread. He has been asked to not post here again.