Bob De Quatre

Future of AG - It's feedback time!

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By my current estimate there are 2 more build weeks and then 1 week to wait for the judges before we are able to post our final build. So including this week I would think 3 more roughly. In part depends on participation.

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So Bob... can you give us any hints as to what will happen story wise after Octan wins? you've been posting mysterious hints about an increase in radiation...

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I'm sure by now it's far too late to change anything about upcoming game mechanics, but I thought I'd at least throw in my two cents as someone who has long observed this game from the shadows but hopes to be involved in the future.

I'd personally like to see the job system and the tag system be tweaked to influence the way that new planets are controlled and end up producing resources.  I think that a series of steps in the planet controlling process would add to the sense of having smaller short term objectives that encourage teamwork and strategy.  What I'm thinking is, rather than having all builds generate domination points and resources, certain types of builds generate one or the other.  For instance, military and exploration builds generate domination points, while civic builds generate resources.  On top of that, builds that depict resource generators, like an awesomenium mining rig, a biomass farm, or an oversized water pump, will continuously generate resources every turn at a rate determined by the score they received (meaning that the bonus provided by a player's job will add to the long-term impact of their builds).

Hand-in-hand with this mechanic would be that a corporation needs to have a certain number of domination points on a planet before resource-generating builds could happen there, so certain players with certain jobs would have key roles on different planets at different times.  Also, in order to unlock a new planet for building, corporations would have to commit a certain amount of resources and/or research a certain type of technology, as if to show that they are funding and outfitting the new colonizing efforts.

To this I would also add that corporations could directly target each other to reduce the capacity to produce resources or to take away domination points.  This would provide a role for piracy and special ops, as well as adding a new twist to alien activity.  The judging for such an activity would have to be based on the size of the enemy resource/fortification/force being disrupted by the player.

Regardless of how AG2 shapes up, I'm planning on participating, these are just a few thoughts I've had.  Thanks Bob for all the work you've done, and to the rest of the community for entertaining me for these last few years as I've been away from my own collection.  There are some really inspirational builds out there and some great stories being told!

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On 14 April 2017 at 5:22 AM, The Stad said:

What I'm thinking is, rather than having all builds generate domination points and resources, certain types of builds generate one or the other.  For instance, military and exploration builds generate domination points, while civic builds generate resources.  On top of that, builds that depict resource generators, like an awesomenium mining rig, a biomass farm, or an oversized water pump, will continuously generate resources every turn at a rate determined by the score they received (meaning that the bonus provided by a player's job will add to the long-term impact of their builds).

Hand-in-hand with this mechanic would be that a corporation needs to have a certain number of domination points on a planet before resource-generating builds could happen there, so certain players with certain jobs would have key roles on different planets at different times.  Also, in order to unlock a new planet for building, corporations would have to commit a certain amount of resources and/or research a certain type of technology, as if to show that they are funding and outfitting the new colonizing efforts.

To this I would also add that corporations could directly target each other to reduce the capacity to produce resources or to take away domination points.  This would provide a role for piracy and special ops, as well as adding a new twist to alien activity.  The judging for such an activity would have to be based on the size of the enemy resource/fortification/force being disrupted by the player.

Those are some really excellent game-centric ideas. I hope that some of this can be incorporated; resource generators especially!

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Those are indeed some nice mechanics, I will discuss them with Bob if any can be incorporated. 

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9 hours ago, narbilu said:

Those are indeed some nice mechanics, I will discuss them with Bob if any can be incorporated. 

Please, just get the game launched. I just want to play AG again, new mechanics or no. 

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On 4/13/2017 at 10:22 PM, The Stad said:

To this I would also add that corporations could directly target each other to reduce the capacity to produce resources or to take away domination points.  This would provide a role for piracy and special ops, as well as adding a new twist to alien activity.  The judging for such an activity would have to be based on the size of the enemy resource/fortification/force being disrupted by the player.

I agree with the whole post except for the bolded part, but maybe that's because I don't quite understand.

Are you saying that the damage done to MANTIS if Octan pirates them should depend on how much presence MANTIS already has? Because that doesn't make sense. Whether or not MANTIS has a lot of builds on a planet or not, the amount of damage should only be judged based on the quality of the piracy build.

This also leaves freedom for builders to create their own story. If you are an Octan pirate and want to raid a MANTIS awesomnium refinery--but MANTIS hasn't built one yet--then go ahead and build one yourself!...and then pirate it :pir-sweet:.

Part of the fun of AG1 was building things that "belonged to" the other corp just to destroy/infiltrate them; I don't think the ability to do that should depend on whether or not that corp has actually built it or not, nor should the judging/reward.

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4 hours ago, rodiziorobs said:

Are you saying that the damage done to MANTIS if Octan pirates them should depend on how much presence MANTIS already has? Because that doesn't make sense. Whether or not MANTIS has a lot of builds on a planet or not, the amount of damage should only be judged based on the quality of the piracy build.

I didn't really choose my words very well on that.  I agree, the build quality is what is most important.

What I'm really driving at is that the damage to a corporation should be related to their loss depicted in the build, but not necessarily to the size of the aggressor force.  For instance, if I build a massive Octan battle tank blowing up a Kawashita scout on a speederbike, Kawashita would lose relatively few DP because their asset was not itself a very valuable build.  However, if I build a large, complex Kawashita anti-aircraft outpost being blown up, even by just a single Octan saboteur, Kawashita would lose much more DP. 

And you're right, it also shouldn't matter how many builds a corporation has done on a planet before they're attacked, only that they do indeed have an established presence to attack.

Edited by The Stad

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49 minutes ago, The Stad said:

For instance, if I build a massive Octan battle tank blowing up a Kawashita scout on a speederbike, Kawashita would lose relatively few DP because their asset was not itself a very valuable build.  However, if I build a large, complex Kawashita anti-aircraft outpost being blown up, even by just a single Octan saboteur, Kawashita would lose much more DP. 

Ah, that makes more sense, I can see where you're going with that: the bigger I build my enemy, the more I can destroy them! :moar:

I don't know how you would implement that fairly though, but that's why we have excellent game-runners like @Bob De Quatre and @narbilu, to figure stuff like that out (if this kind of thing makes the final cut).

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As mentioned in a couple of other threads, I would like to participate in AG2 when it is launched. Whilst I didn't participate in AG1, and don't know the format inside-out, I like some of the points raised in the first few posts of this thread.

The biggest barrier to participation for me is when the build rate is too high. I would never be able to participate weekly, thanks to having a small child plus an intensive full-time job. I would likely only be able to participate in challenges.

One suggestion to overcome the issue of Google forms is I could write a scraper to scrape the forum and automatically read the details of each build provided there was an agreed template. The output could be a CSV file or database that the organisers could use. This would of course be subject to approval to the EB admins as I don't want to fall foul of any ToS breaches, but if this is something that would be helpful please PM me.

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