| No-com games and runaway players |
Mon, 18 April 2016 06:11  |
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 iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
I'd like to point out one problem, that has quite general nature: the "runaway" player in a no-comm game in medium or larger uni. Let's have a look at the rather-usual situation.
The "runaway" player in large lead KNOWS he will win. He has already taken space of 2-3 "dead" players  , his econ is still growing from that taken space, he's not in any serious war, because his enemies are dead, and most other players simply don't know what's going on, so the victory's just a matter execution: taking out one remaining player after another. But execution will take countless DAYS of MM, and MM is not fun. 
There's also the other side: other players had lots of fun building their empires and fighting their wars. Since they're limited to just their space, they can't really grow, they fight about equally-matched neighbors, and victories in these fights are in rather far future, because they can't ask for help. The only sign something is not right in the game is players start dropping, one per 15-20 turns. Then all of a sudden, there comes someone and claims he has won, but most of surviving players barely know his position on the map. "How can he claim victory, when I'm doing so well?" Well, the real fact is you're lacking a lot of info.
This is rather common for no-comm games, esp. with more players and large distances in universe, so players don't know what's going on (no comm, so no messages from the other part of the uni) and also can't organize their own all-seeing sensor network, because universe is simply too large to be covered in such a way.
I've been looking for solution and came out with some ideas:
- The purpose of a no-comm is to limit the time players would need to spend on diplomacy. So lets keep that spirit, but give SOME info on how a game proceeds. I'd allow just one public ("to-all") message per turn per player. So small amount of text to process, tho the benefit of that would be everyone would gain some general info on what's going in other parts of the uni.
- No uni above small, no more players than 6. In such an uni a player COULD organize decent sensor network early to get general info on what's going on. The bad part here is no sense of "epicness". Tho IMX the only thing that becomes epic in medium+ universes is the MM.
- "Public player scores" available early, turn 40 or so. I'm somewhat reluctant to this solution, because it gives away too much info on any player in the game. I'd rather have some neutral party (game host) periodically (each 5th turn) made public just player scores, but that'd require some additional work I doubt host would be happy to do.
This is the way I see the problem tackled. I would be happy if some other solution could be presented.
BR, Iztok
[Updated on: Mon, 18 April 2016 06:15] Report message to a moderator
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