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Post by mikeEB on May 1, 2011 19:01:27 GMT -5
Abandon effectively neuters one of the key online PvP techniques, Arataking (named after the first player who I saw doing it)
Arataking is knocking an opposing square down to 1 unit, then taking it close enough to an update that the opponent cannot counterattack before reinforcements even if they are online.
If you try Arataking now, your target just abandons the square and makes you pay them for the privilege of taking over a square after you've already put in the effort to capture it.
EDIT: And missiles now make attacking even an offline player a huge risk, since any other player can try to steal the square out from under you at the last second. And then abandon it at a net profit if you try to move in anyway.
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Post by ellipsis on May 3, 2011 17:22:33 GMT -5
I go away to Europe for a bit, and when I come back, everything's changed! Oh well, so much for my empire.
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Post by ourjake on May 3, 2011 18:41:25 GMT -5
when i saw your name i expected it to be dark blue... on a different note: do the missiles calculate proximity by square number, or by position on the grid? for example: do you get better the same odds attacking 7 to 8 as you would from 7 to 1?
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Post by deleted on May 3, 2011 22:16:07 GMT -5
I really like how abandoned squares represent physical debt. If I give mikeeb 100 gold by annexing one of his abandoned squares then when I abandon it again it represents 100 gold that I will eventually get. The symmetry would be enhanced if claiming a square in any fashion sent 100 gold to the previous owner, even by invasion.
also I'd really appreciate it if there was some easy way to give gold to other players.
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Post by nawglan on May 6, 2011 21:49:28 GMT -5
Do missiles take clout into consideration? Also, the math seemed odd in the logs. I was attacked by 50 rockets, yet the log indicated Losses: 30, Wins: 30. (what does this log actually mean?, and shouldn't the numbers add up to 50?)
Also, how about having it so that each farm can support up to 250 troops... so if you have 3 farms on a square, it could support up to 750 troops, etc. Farms could also allow for more troops than what the maximum normally would be for a player's given size on the grid.
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Post by succat on May 9, 2011 3:01:21 GMT -5
Mike, it's true you can abandon a square right before another player can take it by force, but I think that if another player will go through all the trouble of invading to get a square they'll probably pay up $100 as well if they want the square bad enough. They they can always fire away some missiles, too, and knock out a bunch of units at once so the abandoner can't abandon in time. Speaking of missiles, I still don't know how powerful offline missiles can be. They are somewhat pricey, and I think a player can do some good short term damage against a fairly weak square, but in the long run it's gonna sap away a player's money to do much against a heavily guarded squares, and as the Grid grows larger, missiles will have even less affect because they will have further to travel. Also, at first, missiles did not take clout into consideration, but I've since adjusted that, so now they do. Ellipsis, sorry to see your kingdom go! It was holding strong for a while, and then the barbarians poured through Next time, take your laptop to Europe with you! OurJake, missiles calculate by the square number. So yeah, there's going to be an ever so slight favor in attacking from 7 >> 8 than from 7 >> 1, but as the Grid grows larger you'd have to split a hair to see the favor, and even then you might not see it. And when it comes to missiles I give the attacker the tie breaker because of the surprise attack factor. Deleted, I don't know that I would want to give gold to the guy who loses a square to an attacker. They can abandon the square at the last minute if the battle is going badly and they haven't yet been bombarded with missiles. I am working on a feature to let you give gold to allies (and maybe units too, will have to see about that one). Nawglan, I'm still experimenting with the farm / unit ratio. Something like what you mentioned could be in the works, though. As for why the logs showed that you were attacked by 50 rockets and there were 30 wins and 30 losses... I'll have to check the code but it looks like this appears to be a bug. It sounds like the missiles are not stopping at 50 but are continuing on to the point at which either they run out, or the units on the defending square run out, or when both of these events happen possibly.
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Post by mikeEB on May 9, 2011 9:46:00 GMT -5
They they can always fire away some missiles, too, and knock out a bunch of units at once so the abandoner can't abandon in time. The real issue: missiles now make attacking even an offline player a huge risk, since any other player can try to steal the square out from under you at the last second.
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Post by ourjake on May 12, 2011 11:31:43 GMT -5
the answer to both of those problems is...you need more missiles or they need to be lower than they were when you go for the kill.
i've seen the log say numbers for missiles that didn't add to the total missiles. it was always when i was taking a square. did you lose the square you were attacked at? it could be that you killed 30 of his troops before he took your square that had 30 on it.
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Post by deleted on May 13, 2011 10:34:35 GMT -5
could you make it so that when you capture a square it doesn't get filled with units from the square you attacked from. It often takes alot of gold to rebalance. I would prefer if it was like buying a square and just came with one unit on it
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Post by ourjake on May 13, 2011 15:29:17 GMT -5
or if all of your units went with it so you could move your whole army. on the other hand, it is supposed to cost money to maintain an army
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Post by nawglan on May 16, 2011 21:01:22 GMT -5
Idea: for the Color link (where you change your grid color). How about having it pop up to a window with a random color on it and an example square, or text showing the color as it would appear on the grid. Then the player could click OK to set the color, or Next Color to get a new color (just set the property on the example, no need to ping server), or Cancel to abort the color change.
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Post by nawglan on May 16, 2011 21:03:33 GMT -5
Also, could you put the header in a separate div than the grid, so it's always visible?
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Post by succat on May 19, 2011 22:28:55 GMT -5
Thank you for the feedback, guys. Unfortunately, I have not had a chance to work on much lately due to work, but I will when I get the time. Things to do: - fix the timer (in certain browsers) - fix the bug with missiles (the numbers don't add up even if you don't take over a square in the process) - fix the issue with old alliances that really should not be valid any more and try to compensate players for their investments Features I hope to add soon: - Clans (still not sure how I want to implement this) - Terminal Prompt (basically a way to type in all your commands through a mini terminal for the sys-admin types out there) - Bases (I think this will be a way for a player to have squares that can have a really high number of units and not be penalized by units tapering off at update time) - Announcements ( so a player can essentially buy (with gold) some real estate and [length of time for it to run] at the top of the Grid where they can write out whatever they want in text... ie, a link to their own site, favorite game, an advertisement - pretty much whatever as long as it's not offensive. MikeEB, if you feel that missiles are too powerful because they can wipe out offline players, what do you propose be done about it? Should the price of missiles go up? Should missiles only be able to fire at online players? Nawglan, the Color suggestion, as well as the extra div for the header are definitely doable and make a lot of sense so I think that I will use those suggestions. About the farms/unit ratio, I may just make it where you can add a Base (for a hefty sum) to any square you really want to protect (like a square with a lot of farms on it) and that way there will be no penalty for having a ton of units there. I'm thinking each base will be able to support 10,000 units, and it won't hamper your farm update gold (if I can program this correctly). Deleted, that is an interesting idea to only have a certain number of units spill over from your attacking square to the square you have just defeated. Originally, I figured I would just have half the units spill over, and that way, the newly conquered square could now attack the next closest enemy square (if there is one), and this works well in a lot of situations where you just want to blaze through a few enemy squares, halving your units with each takeover. I'd have to think about a way where to now only let 1 unit spill over, or maybe let the player choose ahead of time what they want their 'spill-over' number to be: 1 unit, or half the units from the attacking square, or maybe some other figure. Anyway, I will try to look into that. I realize I probably need to do a better job explaining the game mechanics to new players. I see a lot of newbies asking a lot of the same questions and I don't know if I'm just not spelling stuff out enough via the HELP button and Rules page, and maybe i also need a FAQ area, too. Maybe so. If you guys have any ideas on how to Promote the game, I'm all ears. Most of my time lately that I have for working on The Grid actually goes into trying to promote the game. I don't want the game to die before it even has a chance to run it's course, so I am promoting it as best as I can. I won't pay for advertising, and I don't like using banner-exchange. My best idea was to have an in-game Promote feature that any player can take advantage of, and it's actually pretty simple to use. Only one player has used it so far, who shall remain nameless, but their link was disqualified because their link led to a post that they hadn't actually posted. Shame on them! I knew this for a fact because I had posted the link myself to that particular web site. Oh, besides the features I've mentioned, I have others in mind as well that I probably won't get around to for a while. One of them will be an in-game simplified version of warlocks that players can play while they're waiting for the happy hour update. I think that will really add some excitement because it will give players a whole other set of (warlock) statistics to be proud of (or ashamed of). And yes, paralysis will probably be a weaker version than what you're used to. Another feature would be an idea I got from the old game 'Utopia' played on the Intellivision system - Hurricanes! Yeah, random events (mother nature) could wipe out farms, units and whatever else on unfortunate random squares. And yet one more feature would be a way for players to build their own mini-grid (that other players could pop into) as an off shoot of the main Grid, which I don't have all the details worked out on that one yet, but hopefully it would give players a way to have more control over different game attributes within their own mini grids which they will basically be the gods of.
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Post by nawglan on May 20, 2011 17:34:04 GMT -5
Thing is, a Farm could be considered a base. And the level of the farm, would affect the number of troops.
As it is, your code could do something like this:
if (square has farm) { max allowed = farm level * 250. } else { whatever you have currently for determining max allowed for still letting the gold / units be updated. }
it's already expensive enough to increase the level of the farm. I have a level 6 one, and it has cost me 21k so far. Which would only allow me to store up to 1500 troops there.
The price of the farm would need to be square based instead of player based, so that a player with 2 level 1 farms could upgrade both of them for 4k. A new farm on a empty square would always cost 1000.
Then to calculate the player's refresh gold 0 unless qualifying square is found let _cash = rand (100) let new_cash = _cash foreach square with farm new_cash += _cash * farm_level
if new_cash > max_allowed new_cash = max_allowed
then if the player has <= 100 and the new_cash is bigger, set player's cash to new_cash
The amount of cash that farms generate should be decent. Right now, to get enough cash to buy a farm / form new alliances we are forced to abuse the annex / abandon aspect of the game. There isn't a way to get enough cash without a seriously lucky streak with gambling.
If farms were able to kick us up higher than what they do now, you could limit annexing to just squares next to what is currently owned if the square has more than say 5 units on it (same algorithm as attacking basically).
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Post by mikeEB on May 20, 2011 17:36:58 GMT -5
MikeEB, if you feel that missiles are too powerful because they can wipe out offline players, what do you propose be done about it? Should the price of missiles go up? Should missiles only be able to fire at online players? The problem with missiles is that they make conquering a territory without them obsolete. If I try to take a square by invading it repeatedly, anyone can wait for me to bash it below ~10 and then use missiles to steal it.
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