I was reading some of the responses in the topic "Return" by zerohours and others, and my reply was getting wordy and veered somewhat off topic. At the same time, I felt that what I had to say was more broadly relevant, and ask a question at the end, and so felt that my reply deserved it's own topic.

I agree with some of the comments that although regular resets can breathe activity into a game, game balance changes would also be required in order to avoid ultimate stagnation. My personal thought is that a simple database wipe would be counterproductive right now - regardless of the value of such a thing in general.

One might make an analogy with surgery - though it may be beneficial when required, it does stand a chance of killing or doing greater harm to a patient without the energy to recover.

That said - changing the rules, though challenging to manage correctly, can also breathe new life into a game - that was Professor's ultimate intention with the changes that he made over the years. Personally I enjoy both the longer strategic games and the shorter term limited time/resource (arcade style) games, and find that SkyLords has somewhat of a mixture (however well balanced) of strategic and tactical play currently with the rounds system in place. I would personally enjoy seeing both aspects of gameplay expanded on -- ideally in the same universe.

I am somewhat familiar with the conventions of the 4X genre, including Elite (a spiritual great grandfather as it were of SkyLords), and various related games both ancient and modern, but I am interested in learning from you (all) what games have struck the right balance for you. What games or genres are you wishing SkyLords was like? I promise that I won't implement every suggestion .

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SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.

I go back to "Gallatic Empire" (if the spelling is rigth), which was before graphics. All text driven. When I tried to find out if that game survived I found this one.
What I did not like was how it was controlled by those with the fastest modems (300 baud was the standard back then) and how it became micro driven.
What I did like was the complexity of planet developement. It depended on satisfaction levels of the planets. This was in part controlled by how you played the game and how you tended to your planets. Poorly taken care of planets went "ANON". Defence ratings of the planets was based on satisfaction level as well.
My major complaint about the game right now falls into two areas-
1. Number of unattended HW's
2. The way excess planets are handled when the player does not up grade.
I would suggest something other then putting item 2's planets into SP status. So that points for taking them out makes them worth taking, or just having the system "Nova".
There was a proposal to have planets covered by item one start loosing defence and that seems like a good idea.
What I don't want is an arcade type game!

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"Is not easily provoked"
Translated:
It is not good to wake a sleeping bear

and i have a new idea, i write you Iiridian about this think.

i think it's time to clean up a SkyLords space with a new probing ship !!!
This ship can detect another ships! and new building with scaner in the HW - to detect enemy ships neabry the planet.

wow !! this is will be a bomb !!!!!

I think system clean-up could be greatly enhanced by both the gradual decrease in defense of unattended systems mentioned by Tom and the take-over of SPC systems with greater the 1M defense by AIF. Right now, there is no incentive to blast the old SPC systems with high defense (and some with turrets) because of the 10% point issue.

Maybe change the HW situation... (ultimately urge to have smaller hw counts) cause resource requirements based on "Occupancy" ie if you have 10 mil "People" (troops) you need X values of Silicon, Hydrogen, Uranium, gold etc to assure "survival" this would not only keep people from just putting TnE on a planet with 70 turrets but it would also give an incentive to attack a planet with lots of RES!

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Professor's V2Prof3 & UniverseCtr, Statula's Alekara, Teldin's 0 HW 3, tawny32's Sphinx 002, Finch709's 00

Get rid of HW's completely. Set up much lower troop & energy limits on planets and get rid of the ability to be "defeated" and let players come up with new strategies to staying alive without masses of defenses piled up. Active players will still be difficult to completely wipe out and good clans will keep a player going even without any planets.

This will bring up the problem of what exactly to do with those huge amount of resources without homeworlds. Increase the sizes of transporters would be a good start, but it's not a permanent solution. What we need is some sort of resource sink, something that occupies rich players and gives them motivation to actually spend their resources.

On detecting ships in the area, I am not so sure this is a good idea. While there have been times I wish for it, over all it might prove cumbersome to program and in the end more then likely would not change the results much. Players would just keep ships out of the scan distance of a planet.
On the subject of clans, it would be nice to have a maximun number of allowed members.
It needs to be realized this is a strategy game, right now several have the strategy of building a planet for production and defending it in such a way that taking it is not cost effective, either for points or resources. If the rules are changed, then new statagies will develope only to leave a new comer still at a disadvantage.
But kind of on this subject, but not- troops are not people but were to my understanding robots or maybe cyborg. Adding the element of population growth might be interesting. Meaning factories require not only defense streight, but also a population base. But programing in factors such as satisfaction with the systems owner would also prove to be time consuming. It would be a shame to add such to the present program only to have the players revolt against the idea.

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"Is not easily provoked"
Translated:
It is not good to wake a sleeping bear

I like Wiz's idea, it gives much more of an actually "ruling an empire" feel. I also think that if we could get low morale causing revolts on old HWs mabe turning them in to Greens with the res as is on them?

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-People in the dark cause accidents, accidents in the dark cause people.

-Eternal Light "Yeah, You pretty much just "Head F****d me".
-Eternal Light"Ill get training them now your highness"

Crazy ideas-
1. Have a second game portal on the home page. That game could be more archade in fashion. Have alien forces to be fought and any other player that is acitve in that game. Have it reset high scores each month. Maybe have a way to post challanges to another player to do battle with.
2. Make a worm hole to a new universe that players can migrate through and leave the present game behind. They would have to have ships built to migrate in and would have a specified time period to complete the migration (bring supplies from the present game to the new universe) or abort the plan. Players wanting to stay in the present system could.
3. A planet shuffle, so many HW's are known right now and by just migrating the planets we will all have to find out where there are all over again. Kind of hate suggesting this, but it has crossed my brain more then once.
4. Another one I hate, but will suggest- one round with a maximum of 35 planets to a player. This will force some of old timers to scale back our build up planets. The limit would be enforce by stripping a player of planets for the first week or two.

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"Is not easily provoked"
Translated:
It is not good to wake a sleeping bear

What the game really needs is players first and foremost. I'm going to get into contact with a few small gaming blog sites and see if I can start getting some interest in Skylords. We need to develop a community, not just veterans playing against each other.

Word of mouth, advertisement on forums, and university campuses are our best bet.

@GS: That would just give advantages to older players that have played for long enough to know the coords for most of the homeworlds in the game, letting them just colonize the greens and become even stronger.

Gato yes and no. Yes a lot of the old HWs are know by most of the vets but none of us really keep an eye on all of them all the time, we just squirl the coords away until we need them.

Most vets don't want to hold a known HW and be a target, so yes if vets got the HWs they would would move the res off of them and obliterate them cleaning up the game.

Plus lots of Noobs get to spawn in the real arena near old HWs so they would have the best chance of finging out when the planets reverted to green which would help them build up quicker.

__________________________
-People in the dark cause accidents, accidents in the dark cause people.

-Eternal Light "Yeah, You pretty much just "Head F****d me".
-Eternal Light"Ill get training them now your highness"