Postmortem for game "Bob" and rules discussion for version 4.0
Attached are some of the statistics from the game, including NNP, Population, and VP per turn, and the obvious question from that is DJ, how the HELL did you not win this game? Not asking for you to give away any secrets but your production lead was so out of proportion to your population lead it's incredible. Darn fine job.
In any case, that's followed by my thoughts for the next game, which are in some cases based on the stats. For the version 4 rules, I welcome discussion, but want to be clear that this is not a design by consensus kind of thing; I love the conversation, if there is a recurring theme among most of the players on a suggested change, I will certainly count it as more valid than my opinion, but I will make the final decision on what to implement for the next game.
The interesting stuff - game stats
NNP vs turn
Pop vs turn
VP vs turn
Game end point
Well, some may feel like the game ended a bit early. I kind of agree, but on the other hand, it was interesting how close it was at the end, there was a fair amount of conflict before the game ended, and the lead players were pretty far up the tech tree, with DNs arriving on the scene for most of us (while maybe way behind in the offensive/defensive/fast chains). I also think a lot of players are, at this point, thinking they are never going to catch up and probably looking for a fresh start (but you can talk for yourselves). So I’m not all that unhappy with the early ending; there is something to be said for allowing people to jockey for position for a period of time... we could make the VP total 2000 or something and look forward to 10 years of playing... but there is also something to be said for games ending at a reasonable point and giving people a break (and a chance to break away without quiting if they are getting tired of the game, giving other people a chance to win a game, etc. etc.
I’d like to increase the VP total to 100 instead of 80. I think that would take the game for another 10 turns or so, which is getting close to the 60 turns I was originally shooting for. Modify the tech tree to require more techs to climb the ship lines, so introduction of new ship types is slowed a bit.
VP for Stats
I’m happy with VP for stats; yes, it leads to a certain amount of weird and arbitrary futzing with things to try to get number 1 in the starports and stuff, but it also was the tie breaker for the three front runners and lead to some interesting tradeoffs. On the graphs, the sudden plummet in my NNP was due to shifting most of my systems to 80 10 10 production (and setting the CAP to 100) to get a max happiness burst, but the jump in 12 VPs was due to capturing 3 systems (6 VP), getting DNs (3 VP), 2 points from going to 1st in happiness (from 2nd) and 2nd in growth (from 4th), and 1 from going to 1 in starports (from 2nd) (which also required building a lot of them but I didn't expect to get 1st out of it, just stay ahead of the joneses).
Leave it as is, except I’d like to remove the VP for NNP, add the VP for the tech stat (the tech stat is based on total number of techs rather than the expensive ones). Rick's suggestion for adding Ground Troops is an interesting one, and I think I will do that; Shawn's suggestion for adding "successful defends" is too hard to figure.
Sneak attack
Raptor tried to screw me and would have cost me the win if they could have done something to grab a system in the newly conquered (and therefore not well defended) VOGON space. Would have been nice if he could have been more effective. Weaker players need a play to burn the guys in the lead.
This is kind of a combo deal; DOCT comes back in all it’s glory, with the burn-off adjustments for PD/APD/SWW. And tech capture chance increases, but only if you are 2 levels or lower in the tech stats. Let the back-runners try for the system grab and get a tech out of it as well.
Also, while we are at it, change the MR -> SC to happen when a T or S show up… it just confused too many people when their MR light cruiser pulled up along side the enemy scout and waved. Maybe change it so only enough MR ships "flip" to SC to have attack = defense.
Ugen
Quite a few complaints about the Universe Generation algorithm; the universe was too rich, my starting position was too poor, sys distribution was too clumpy, people were too intermingled, voids were too large, the pattern of stars that made a giant smiley face was too obvious. I can go back to the original (no whining about my VH 2R was closer to someone else than me), keep the current, or give it to someone else to implement. The code for the Ugen program is not that complex. First come, first serve.
Also, just because someone felt I had deliberately given them a bad starting position, I think I will farm out the “hand editing” to make the starting positions a little more equivalent to someone else, and give a third person the player order to make sure it is completely random who starts next to who and what your starting position is.
Economics
I think, based on DJ’s awesome lead in NNP and Patrick Rusk’s econ-maxing strategy not playing as well as expected, that there needs to be a better strategy for the economic win. I think the “1 gifted or researched tech a turn” should become “1 researched tech a turn, or X researched techs, with the cost doubling as you buy multiple techs.” So you could research one big tech and buy, say, a 250 EU tech for 500 and a 100 EU tech for 400 in the same turn.
I also think the game play around economic build decisions stagnates at the end; you run out of things to spend IUs on other than warships.
So, I’d like to do the following; modify some of the “EU” only tech artifacts to require IUs. Modify starports so they give you an across the board 10% increase in production for each level (so a level 4 starport will give you 40%). Decrease the general production capability from 6 points per billion population to 5. And, to make PD/APB/SWW more interesting to build in a resource-scarce environment, give each one a small (half of EHC) happiness boost to the population, because who wouldn't feel more secure with a gigantic gun sitting over their heads? To fight aliens, of course.
NPRs
The NPRs suck. I’m rewriting the algorithms for warships from the ground up. This should mean less NPR cheating, less buffing if someone does go NPR (and, actually, auto-buffing so I don’t have to look at someone’s position). I will do a general writup on the NPR algorithms but not distribute the code since it leads to an unfair advantage if you know exactly how the NPRs are going to respond (and, in this case, the algorithms will be more deterministic than the convoluted mess that was the old NPR decision making process).
Trade routes
There’s been a lot of discussion, but the easiest, most flexible thing is to allow a player to shut down all or part of DCT flow, like a reverse of SD… DD for Deny DCT, still on a player basis, and like SD 0-100 %. I could add a cost to doing this if people want it to be an economic decision point.
Bugs - report them if you've got them
- On a previous turn, I set a fleet to intercept a (P7) ship. Enemy ship got killed, but others showed up at that system, so I didn't issue new orders for the fleet. On the last turn, I have ships that I want to reinforce the fleet (and in range to join that turn), so I issue AF orders. The added ships don't move. My guess is that the intercept didn't work, so there were no move issues ordered for the fleet and therefore no move orders issued for ships outside the fleet. Or maybe the ships also tried to intercept, which resulted in no movement. (I didn't issue a new intercept for the fleet, but the results still show that order.) I would expect that the fleet would move (or not) and that all ships would move to the fleet location.
- PLOI doesn’t kill the leader after 5 turns
- I have 5 battleships in GC over the Sasquatch system TauFearLiath. They attacked last turn, but this turn they just didn't attack at all! His system has now gone Normal.