PlanetsCentral

Hi everybody!

I propose to make changes to the configuration of the "North Star" games. I concluded from the first game that Plist 3.2 is strongly unbalanced for a single game. Some races have a serious advantage over others in their development (fed, lizard, cyborg, klingon). In addition, they have a powerful fleet, the strength of which only increases in the late stage of the game. There is still a need to give all non-cloak races the opportunity to have a scout ship with a stealth device. (for this role is well suited Taurus). I still have many ideas, but first I would like to hear your opinion. Is it necessary?

I still have many ideas, but first I would like to hear your opinion. Is it necessary?

I think it is. Yes, PList 3.2 is greatly unbalanced for the wolf games. It seems to me that PList authors tried to balance out the battleships combat but didn't consider much other aspects of the game like economy, racial abilities and so on. May be Stefan knows more.

We could collect proposals from players and apply them in next games. Minor changes are welcome.

Here is my offer.

Default PList settings. Don't know why they were reverted to default phost.

TerraformRate = 2
MaxShipsHissing = 3

Return back to normal robots and birds shields. Why should the robots has the weakest battleship? Only The Birds race has no economic bonus among torpedo races so we don't need to weaken it.

ShieldDamageScaling = 40 for them.

And I support your idea to give cloak scouts to all races. May be from experience level 1-3.

Meanwhile you can use my approach. Choose a difficulty your want to play with and then according to it select the race:

(Increasing difficulty) 2, 5, 4, 6, 11, 1, 7, 10, 3, 8, 9

Of course I mean here that you know how to play the race.

I am not so sure about tweaking the settings or shiplists.

Planets in general can be labeled unbalanced, since the game was set up in a way where no race would be capable of defeating all others on its own. Alliances are a vital part of the game and on the way to success.

Since the Northstar games however forbid alliances, the outcome of them is often determined by who is going to be your direct neighbour, and of course which strategy you choose. If you play the Empire, and your closest neighbour is the Privateer - well, get ready for your death, unless you lay out tons of minefields, which will slow down your growth and make it impossible for you to quickly expand.

The result is that certain races have a huge advantage within the early game, while others might have their glorious time in the endgame. That's also the reason why I was fighting so much to make the Northstar games a setup with no turn limits - to give those "late" races a chance of winning.

So, from my point of view, I dont thinks it's really necessary to change the shiplists or the settings, the people just need to adapt more to this unique kind of game.

Is it necessary?

No it's not. To what are you comparing PList3.2 to make the statement that it is unbalanced? Have a look at the planets.nu statistics. 90 percent of the games are won by either priv or borg or empire. Compared to that we are quite balanced here.

The imbalances we are encountering here are mainly an outcome of different playerskills and not to mention drop outs. There are cloaking races and non-cloaking races and the latter devide into the balanced and the heavy races - and only together do they form a complicated balance of power.

NS1 is a good example. What happened there was that most of the heavy races vanished around turn 25, the last one at turn 40 (borg). Since they vanished the cloaking races lost their prey and the balanced races lost their natural enemies. So noone could hope to stop a good player playing one of the balanced races - namely FED or Lizzys. And thus the outcome was inevitably:

1. Lizzy
2. Klingon
3. priv/crystal

As far as I can say only the bird is a weak race. Dunno why. Maybe I just did not encounter any good bird players yet. Though I did once. However that's nothing new for PList only. Have a look at planets.nu. That's T-List. Birds are negligible there too.

Thus a cloaking scout for every race is pretty much out of questions. Last reason to play bird... but if you want to make changes in the config, focus on those to benefit the birds.

Guys, I really don't understand why do you oppose to few small corrections in pconfig. They are not game breaking. It is just an attempt to make some races more attractive to play.

Remember, that we don't have so many players nowadays. It is difficult even to start one game. I would agree with you easily ten years ago, but now every chance to keep players in the game should be exploited. It is not fun to play only with 4 opponents in 11 players game.

Is it necessary?

I think not. It's much easier to start the game with standart config, vs modified config.

Why the hell we'd give cloaker to each race, who will play 1-5 then?..

I don't really bother about terraformrate or so.. races with terraformers (1-2-6) are able to build lot of them, terraformrate 2 is needed for those who steal 1-2 terraformers at all

And the main point - any changes needs to be tested good. I'm not happy to implement some settings just because it seems good for 2-3 guys at the forum...

If you wish an advanced wolf-style game, try G-List. It was created especially for non alliance games, and was tested with couple of simulations and real games, through 4 generations of setting (last version 4.1). Originally based on PList 3.2

TerraformRate = 2 is required for ore condensers to make them usefull.

Nevermind. Since many players are against changes the only way to do it right is to create a custom game with modified config. May be we will do so later.

If anyone wants to add something to the topic, do not hesitate to write here.

TerraformRate = 2 is required for ore condensers to make them usefull.

Nevermind. Since many players are against changes the only way to do it right is to create a custom game with modified config. May be we will do so later.

If anyone wants to add something to the topic, do not hesitate to write here.

It would be nice if you help Stephan to set up G-List game with multiscore Count me in

It would be nice if you help Stephan to set up G-List game with multiscore Count me in

It is quite a radical proposal Do you think we can assemble 11 players? Yes, G-List is well balanced for the wolf games. But it will be like a completely new game for other players. Anyway, at first I want to port tequilla addon to linux and to persuade Stefan to use it for solving our notorious "open end" problem It will take some time.

It would be nice if you help Stephan to set up G-List game with multiscore Count me in

Who is this Stephan guy you keep mentioning?

If we have a good chance of such a game filling, I have no problem with that. I mean, I also created Titan 8X, so it seems only fair.

--Stefan

I propose to make changes to the configuration of the "North Star" games. I concluded from the first game that Plist 3.2 is strongly unbalanced for a single game.

Between the lines, I sometimes read the question how PlanetsCentral's configs come from. A quick answer before I go back nurturing my cold, so no big research today:

For the main configuration, I compared many pconfig.src files from other sites; mainly PlanetsServer but also some others. I probably have to dig up my digital backyard to find the spreadsheet I did that with.

The main game configuration is amended by a shiplist-specific configuration. That shiplist-specific configuration can be seen on the Host Software List, for example, here for PList 3.2.

Finally, the configuration is amended by what other add-ons are used on the game; for example, the "No alliances" block will just set "CPEnableAllies = No".

Some of the last changes to the Host Software List part included making it more talkative about the configuration, so you don't have to buy a pig in a poke. Displaying the default configuration for a host version is still missing.

--Stefan

Guys, I really don't understand why do you oppose to few small corrections in pconfig.

I don't. You have mentioned giving cloaking scouts to all races. That's not pconfig. That's shiplist. And that I oppose.

Anyway I've had another deep look into pconfig and I don't see much what you might change. Do you really think terraformrate makes a difference concerning game balance???

I don't. I've argued that the only race I regard as weaker are the birds. And looking into that there is only on parameter we might change in the pconfig (besides raiding some explicite race advantages). That's

EPTrainingScale = 55,48,55,55,80,52,55,48,71,67,67

But that does only affect ships idling around in some owned planetary orbit. Not very bird style.

The only other line, I'ld change is this one:

 FreeFighters                    = 0,0,1,1,1,1,1,15,0,0,0

into

 FreeFighters                    = 0,0,1,1,1,0,1,15,0,0,0

But that doesn't help the birds at all.

So if you regard balance as a problem tell us why exactly and what you'ld want to do about it. Okay you did that. Well I'll reply to your proposals here:

Here is my offer. Default PList settings. Don't know why they were reverted to default phost.

Sorry no comment on that. I don't know what you mean. I am probably not playing long enough.

TerraformRate = 2
MaxShipsHissing = 3

Terraformrate see above. That's got nothing to do with balance. MaxShipsHissing is nonsense vor weakening a lizzy. The limiting factor here is max cash - which is 6k here and to do the job you may decrease that to 5k again. A lizzy who is usually hissing with more than 2 ships at a planet is a weak lizzy. It would improve his gameplay to forbid such nonesense.

Return back to normal robots and birds shields. Why should the robots has the weakest battleship? Only The Birds race has no economic bonus among torpedo races so we don't need to weaken it.

ShieldDamageScaling = 40 for them.

Again I don't understand what you define as normal robots/birds shields. However the ShieldDamageScaling is at 40. For everybody though.

Meanwhile you can use my approach. Choose a difficulty your want to play with and then according to it select the race:

(Increasing difficulty) 2, 5, 4, 6, 11, 1, 7, 10, 3, 8, 9

Of course I mean here that you know how to play the race.

You see the privateer as the second easiest faction in a P-List game? Sorry but looking at the stats it is not easy to play a strong priv. We had some here at P-List. But it was a good overall player all the time. Never even once a just about average player playing a good private but each and every time a strong player also giving a strong priv. Same for klingons. I've got some respect for this faction since I encountered strong klingons under extremely heavy pressure. They look like shiny diamonds - as long as they get the pressure to cease from just being a lump of coal.

But as for the privs - they need a strong player to do so - you've got to withstand the pressure. That's nothing like easy.

Can't say that's just my two cents. But I will stop here.

I don't. You have mentioned giving cloaking scouts to all races. That's not pconfig. That's shiplist. And that I oppose.

I wont argue here. It is only one of the many ways to make some races more fun and easier to play.

Anyway I've had another deep look into pconfig and I don't see much what you might change. Do you really think terraformrate makes a difference concerning game balance???

Vchc in Re: Change config of North S...:

Here is my offer. Default PList settings. Don't know why they were reverted to default phost.

Sorry no comment on that. I don't know what you mean. I am probably not playing long enough.

Game balance includes many small bonuses given to different races. This is the one of them. Some races have ore condensers to quickly mine rich planets.

In the PList documentation there is a recommended config section. You can read it here.

Default and recommeded settings for PList 3.2 are

TerraformRate = 2 MaxShipsHissing = 3

So I wonder what was the point to change them to

TerraformRate = 1 MaxShipsHissing = 10

Now ore condensers are almost useless and lizzi has the additional bonus to his economy which is already the best in the game.

You see the privateer as the second easiest faction in a P-List game? Sorry but looking at the stats it is not easy to play a strong priv. We had some here at P-List. But it was a good overall player all the time. Never even once a just about average player playing a good private but each and every time a strong player also giving a strong priv. Same for klingons. I've got some respect for this faction since I encountered strong klingons under extremely heavy pressure. They look like shiny diamonds - as long as they get the pressure to cease from just being a lump of coal.

But as for the privs - they need a strong player to do so - you've got to withstand the pressure. That's nothing like easy.

Of course that is my personal subjective raiting. And the easiness there doesn't mean you can win by doing nothing. It means objective abilities of the race. Skills of players are out of my rating. The privateer is unbeatable in defense and very strong in offence. It was already strong in PList 2.4. But now with gravitonic VOGON as sweeper and anti-cloak immune COBRA it is simply overkill in the hands of skilled player. I want to test it myself in North Star 4.

By the way. How can someone pressure the privateer? Mines and anti-cloak ships aren't a concern now. May be I dont know something.

The klingons is the well balanced race. It has strong ships and good abilities and can counter any threat. The other races (except 2,4,5) have one or many critical weaknesses that can be exploited so overally they are less easy for me to play.

I want to express my opinion.

MaxShipsHissing = 3 is a parameter that restricts only Lizard. I would like a more universal solution, so I propose to set MaxPlanetarincome = 3000 ... 4000

In addition, playing for a robot, I was convinced of the low effectiveness of minefields. This is due to the fact that most of the ships in Plist 3, much heavier than their counterparts in the standard shiplist.Therefore, I propose to strengthen such an element of the game as minefields by setting the parameter
MaxHitDamageFor100kT=150...200

About the cloak scouts. Their presence does not affect the combat capabilities of the races, but will increase the dynamics of the game, make it more aggressive, allow players to better plan their combat operations. As a compromise, we can give the property of cloak to the scout not from the level L0, but from the level L1 or L2.

And the last. I propose to somehow strengthen Robot, as this is the weakest race in the game. Even the developers of Plist admit this.

Hi.

I've read the thread and all of it is interesting.

I just thought I could drop a couple of ideas here to make the game more balanced (I mentioned them here some time ago).

Basically:

- Let all players play the same race. Let's say 11 Colonials, or whichever race all of the players decide. All of them have the same abilities, all of them have the same ships. It's a good way of showing who is the best player, who handles best their economy, who is the best strategist, who takes the most risk.

- Or... let all players choose the race they want. Let's say 4 players choose to play Lizard, 3 Crystals, 2 Privateers, 1 Fed and 1 Borg. You choose and race and stick to it. Be happy with your decision. If you want to join a game but the race you want to play has already been taken, maybe you will wait until another game appears and you are lucky to pick that slot. This way you don't have to wait. You choose your race. Choose wisely because you can end up playing Privateer in a game with 10 Klingons. Or you can be Empire in a game with 6 Privateers and 4 Feds. I have played a game like this once, hosted privately by friends, and I was the only Bird in a game with 2 Lizards and 2 Privateers, and I had a blast playing it.

Just a couple of ideas worth considering...

If there aren't many players nowadays, why shouldn't we make it easy for people to test their skills in a true balanced game or in a game where they can choose to play what they want?

Cheers.

I want to express my opinion.

MaxShipsHissing = 3 is a parameter that restricts only Lizard. I would like a more universal solution, so I propose to set MaxPlanetarincome = 3000 ... 4000

In addition, playing for a robot, I was convinced of the low effectiveness of minefields. This is due to the fact that most of the ships in Plist 3, much heavier than their counterparts in the standard shiplist.Therefore, I propose to strengthen such an element of the game as minefields by setting the parameter
MaxHitDamageFor100kT=150...200

About the cloak scouts. Their presence does not affect the combat capabilities of the races, but will increase the dynamics of the game, make it more aggressive, allow players to better plan their combat operations. As a compromise, we can give the property of cloak to the scout not from the level L0, but from the level L1 or L2.

And the last. I propose to somehow strengthen Robot, as this is the weakest race in the game. Even the developers of Plist admit this.

Some games take ages filling because nobody wants to play {Rebel,Empire,Bird}. Maybe somebody convinces a friend to join and let the game start... and the friend drops out and we have 10 players playing.

BTW, I like Pleiades or North Star (I haven't played NS actually) as they are, but maybe from time to time we could have a game like the ones I have suggested. If that attracts more players or helps player reliability and decreases drop rate.

Hi.

I've read the thread and all of it is interesting.

I just thought I could drop a couple of ideas here to make the game more balanced (I mentioned them here some time ago).

Basically:

- Let all players play the same race. Let's say 11 Colonials, or whichever race all of the players decide. All of them have the same abilities, all of them have the same ships. It's a good way of showing who is the best player, who handles best their economy, who is the best strategist, who takes the most risk.

- Or... let all players choose the race they want. Let's say 4 players choose to play Lizard, 3 Crystals, 2 Privateers, 1 Fed and 1 Borg. You choose and race and stick to it. Be happy with your decision. If you want to join a game but the race you want to play has already been taken, maybe you will wait until another game appears and you are lucky to pick that slot. This way you don't have to wait. You choose your race. Choose wisely because you can end up playing Privateer in a game with 10 Klingons. Or you can be Empire in a game with 6 Privateers and 4 Feds. I have played a game like this once, hosted privately by friends, and I was the only Bird in a game with 2 Lizards and 2 Privateers, and I had a blast playing it.

Just a couple of ideas worth considering...

If there aren't many players nowadays, why shouldn't we make it easy for people to test their skills in a true balanced game or in a game where they can choose to play what they want?

Cheers.

kite in Re: Change config of North S...:

I want to express my opinion.

MaxShipsHissing = 3 is a parameter that restricts only Lizard. I would like a more universal solution, so I propose to set MaxPlanetarincome = 3000 ... 4000

In addition, playing for a robot, I was convinced of the low effectiveness of minefields. This is due to the fact that most of the ships in Plist 3, much heavier than their counterparts in the standard shiplist.Therefore, I propose to strengthen such an element of the game as minefields by setting the parameter
MaxHitDamageFor100kT=150...200

About the cloak scouts. Their presence does not affect the combat capabilities of the races, but will increase the dynamics of the game, make it more aggressive, allow players to better plan their combat operations. As a compromise, we can give the property of cloak to the scout not from the level L0, but from the level L1 or L2.

And the last. I propose to somehow strengthen Robot, as this is the weakest race in the game. Even the developers of Plist admit this.

MaxShipsHissing = 3 is a parameter that restricts only Lizard. I would like a more universal solution, so I propose to set MaxPlanetarincome = 3000 ... 4000

A rather bold approache. That's in effect quite similar to the idea to restrict native government to represantative at best. It looks strange to me.

In addition, playing for a robot, I was convinced of the low effectiveness of minefields. This is due to the fact that most of the ships in Plist 3, much heavier than their counterparts in the standard shiplist.Therefore, I propose to strengthen such an element of the game as minefields by setting the parameter
MaxHitDamageFor100kT=150...200

That's really not possible. I do understand the argument behind, but... Plist ships are often designed to get a specific outcome of a minehit. Example: Consti has 101kt mass. Why do you think that is the case?

Another: Buccy has 90kt, Corsair 150. Deridex has 600kt (it is able to cloake even after 1 minehit). Hansa 110kt. Thus giving minehits another damage than 100 let alone 150+ destroys ship balance as a whole. What could be done - in respect of the same argument is reducing the beamdestroymines factor (but is ther a parameter). PList ships in general got more beams and are able to sweep mines faster than their original counterparts from Tims Host. That could be changed without destroying the whole concept.

But looking at the stats I don't think it is a good idea. MAybe I am looking at the wrong games but I get the impression that the strong factions are Empire, Borg, Colonies, ... well and Lizzys sure. But they all get stronger especially against cloaking races if minesweeping is harder.

- Let all players play the same race. Let's say 11 Colonials, or whichever race all of the players decide. All of them have the same abilities, all of them have the same ships. It's a good way of showing who is the best player, who handles best their economy, who is the best strategist, who takes the most risk.

That's actually an idea I have been tossing around for quite some time. It also allows the games to be smaller, thus fill faster, and probably be more fast-paced. Something like five Empires, five Privateers, or five Federations, on a smaller map.

--Stefan

I suggest also changing the parameter EModExtraFighterBays = 0,1,2,3.
This will slightly strengthen Carriers in the late stages of the game compared to Battleships.