Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

Alright as many of you know PVP just isn't very good right now and with the high combat timers it really isn't possible to have any real PVP.  Unfortunately major changes to combat will likely also effect COM missions. So I have a solution to the problem.  We keep the current server as it  but SirEmi creates a 2nd server where everyone will start fresh.  Modules involved in combat would have a max level of let's say maybe 100.  That is Weapons, Marines, Living Quarters, Armor and Shields.   You may ask why do this?

As it stands now there is no limit to any of these. People's power has grown to the point that combat timers are very long.  Combat itself doesn't even have any strategy to it. It is about who can make the biggest ship with the biggest marines, weapons and shields. That's it and unless you got a lot of QP to blow, the battle isn't even likely to happen.  There isn't even any real strategy to it.  This is where my idea comes in.  With a limit on those modules, it means our ships can only be made so powerful. So people will have to think on how to design them better. They can make certain kinds of ships with certain purposes. Perhaps even smaller fighter craft could have a real purpose.  This also allows for shorter combat timers.  Perhaps there could even be modules created specially for this server that can decrease the attack timer.  True this would allow them to do COMs faster. But with their being a limit ship power, they won't be bringing in huge chunks constantly.   Also with their being a limit and their being a need for multiple ships, ship licensing cost could also be reduced.  Of course this will also increase the need for Siremi to come up with new branches of research in Weapons, Armor, Shields and maybe even personnel type in the future. Though Weapons, Shields and Armor I think should have priority.   To reward older players who have been playing, since SirEmi has all our emails from signing up with our accounts in the game, a special link could be sent out to existing members when the new server is added that when clicked will allow them to create a new account that automatically skips the whole academy portion of the game and lets them start out with 3 cruisers with some basic mods already equipped to them. This could be his way of showing his appreciation to existing members.  Of course this is a one time only thing.  New players would still have to go through the basics as usual.  This would help out old players though without giving them a big advantage over new players who sign up.  Overall this would give us a new server that actually is more geared towards pvp then the regular server which is geared more towards missions.

Definitely the game needs a paradigm change on PVP. At this time, the game is all about brute force and financial resources: doing COM for solars (mining is a huge waste of time in my opinion), upgrade modules and buy QP for VIP and officers and to speed up attacks on PVP if it is the case (speed up with QP on COM is a waste of resources, obviously). There is why a state of war between two or more players or CORPS is a concept devoid of content. All of these generates in time nothing else than boredom: there are almost 5000 accounts but only a few hundreds are active and only a few dozen really counts.
The game needs to be more dynamic and attractive, both for the new and for the old players.

IMO the biggest change the game needs is an emphasis for new players to join corps apart from SOL. Or at least more support IN SOL (like a real leader?)

Newbie travel timers are ABSURD and are likely the main reason people quit the game. With new players joining corps they can have access to faster engines and get moving faster and enjoy the game more as a whole

You are correct. That is the problem for new players.  For older players it is because we get to a point when all there is to do is do the next COM or try to do some meaningless mission such as ships.  Death-Rays aren't even that good of an addition for us.  At the point where some of us are at we got weapons that make them look like child's play. In order to get them up to useful levels you would have to reverse engineer a crap ton of them.  It's not even useful.  Though if we went with my idea, they would become more useful.  With weapon techs locked, it might be possible to get death-rays up to equal or better levels of our other weapon techs.  They might be useful when you use the right strategy. Strategies that at the moment just aren't very feasible.  Also with a limit on the combat mods, smaller players would feel like they actually have some hope of catching up. Which in some ways they will.  In other ways players who stick around will have more ships with better non-combat modules. So their fleets would actually be larger and more versatile.  I am talking it actually being possible to send in larger ship with a small fleet of smaller fighter type ships that are useful in combat and you not have to deal with an insane timer length.  Hell imagine loading a shuttle up with just death-rays reversed engineered to a higher level and it being optimized (assuming they can afford to), with the camo mod. The things dodge would be huge. A small fleet of them could cripple the enemy.  Assuming of course they don't already have similar fleets themselves or thing in place to help protect them from this. Such as nukes. You could give nuke defenses to a shuttle but that would mean 3 death rays instead of 4. Considering though many targets likely wouldn't have nukes, there isn't a lot of reason to throw them on them. Especially a small fleet of them. So nukes could actually have some use.  Then there is the bomber mod that some ships can get.  We could actually have small fleets of ships capable of doing larger damage grouped together without a huge combat timer to go with it. Siremi could possible even create a new weapon tech.  Perhaps some new type of torpedo that would be perfect for ships such as this.  Like maybe without that bomber optimization the damage formula for is about equivalent to say vipers or lasers. But with it (before the actual boost percentage is added in) it can do nuke level damage but with a chance to miss. So with it it gets nuke equivalent damage + the percentage boost.  This makes it when used on them smaller ships extremely useful. But not OP since they can still miss.  Also like vipers it should do the same amount of damage on shields as it does armor.  This would make it not really very economic to actually use on large ships but it would work great with that optimization on the ships that can have it. 

I appreciate the COM balance cannot be upset by screwing with timers. But... wouldn't a very, VERY simple way of facilitating better PvP combat be for the server be to recognise a certain battle IS indeed PvP, and just cut the timer by whatever factor is required to allow for proper PvP on one hand, while still allowing significantly weaker players to run for their lives if they so desire?

Having said that, PvP will never be interesting to me without the possibility to actually destroy ships. I know that would be a major change, and also *looks* like a big threat to newbies, but I suggested this safeguard against that before:

Your ship can't actually be destroyed, but would instead make an emergency jump, if you've not attacked a real player's ships or installations WITH THAT SHIP before. So peaceful ships, even from an aggressive captain/corp would remain protected against destruction. In short: he who lives by the sword, *may* die by it.

I appreciate that sometimes one has to remove inactive players' modules from a planet or something, so perhaps actions against inactives should not mark one's ship "killable".

i was already play game where staff is decide to make new server on players demand and what happen
old server have large down of activity and at the end dead and new one didn't have activity like first one so i think that this is not good idea ...

There is tons of PVP game why you want " another PVP game"
There is lots of things to do here and with new updates i am sure that will be more things to do
this is exploration game and i will like to stay as it is  :)
With smart play any newbie can be  in top 20 in 6 months ...

Viracocha: I wish the same future for the game as you. I agree with you.

Then why make PVP as an option at all? Why even make it possible to attack ships?   If an option for pvp exist in a game it should at least be made viable.  With a 2nd server, this allows for one more geared towards it while there still being this one which seems more geared towards missions.  I imagine some people would play on both like myself.  But honestly I think I would be getting bored with that other server a lot less sooner then I do on here.   Also these other space games with PVP are nothing like Astro.  That is why I don't even really care for them. Astro has a lot that I like that others are missing. Astro on the other hand is missing one key thing and that is viable pvp.  No one would be forcing you to come play on a 2nd server that is more pvp oriented, Though that server would be just as geared towards exploration as the main server.  There wouldn't be a limit on non-combat modules on that server.




So why not on this new server make that possible as well.  Perhaps the odds of a ship being blown up are low to begin with. But they are increased the more safety override modules a person uses. This would make that mod a double edge sword.  So yes they could fight longer but at an increased risk of losing their ships.  So say it starts with a low 2 percent chance. As we use overrides. it can increase up to say maybe 98 percent or something like that.  I know that low side is a bit low but it beats how it is now and it gives the Emergency Jump a real function.  Plus if a newer player gets hit, the odds of them losing a ship is low so they won't necessarily just quit because they get hit.  They likely would if it destroyed their ships a lot.

Proposing a new PVP server at this time is not wise.  ( yes I don't like the way is setup too  :( )
but it need some more work before another server is to be proposed.

1.) This game need more active player. ( we can not see any active at all, maybe a hand full at best. )

2.) New player should not let alone in sol with out guiding. I declare all new player shall be drafted to all active corp for guiding and service.
     ( The Corp will provider training and upgraded modules to the new recruit for a set of time. If the recruit wish to stay or muster out. )

3.) Corp structure need to be rework as of now is one person view. Since is a Corp, Captain of the same Corp shall able set some of there modules as Corp use.
     Any Corp members can barrow form the Corp Headquarter or pay a set price for the modules. Also the new recruit will give a set of instruction to empty mining
     modules at XY system. One is training and recruit to be pay a % of the load and build up cash for more better ship and weapon.
   
4.) The game been updating, until all is settled and full tested. I believe we all need to wait and see how the last two update finished go before add more request.
     ( yes I not happy about the long waiting time. )


Any Caption wish add comment or debate... 

Perhaps right now isn't the best time for the 2nd server to be made but my idea shouldn't be tabled either.  This idea could be something to consider in the future. Though to be honest I don't see the player base getting bigger with things staying the same as they are now. The player base is still roughly the same as it was when I first joined the game in 2012. Yes new players have joined since then but many have also quit. I would say the same amount of active players hasn't really changed all that much.  We need more stuff that can draw in the people.  Now I wish my idea could just be implemented on the main server but that just isn't possible simply because it would require a pwipe. No one wants to lose any of their hard work. The only other option would be to downgrade all current combat mods in the game to MK 100. This also wouldn't sit well with a lot of players.  A 2nd server is just the best option for this.

jam we may ask for a combat arena in sol. one on one and cut down the time for combat.

And what is even the point for a combat arena?  So we can just flex our muscles and show off in a meaningless arena battle for glory?  This is not going to fix any problems with actual pvp.  As it stands now it is impossible for Corps to have real wars with one another.  Sometimes we get into pointless bickering that ultimately leads to war. But nothing ever gets solved cause no one can ever really do anything to each other.  This game pride's itself on realism. Well space combat between enemies is part of that. Yet real combat is impossible. In order for this game to be truly complete in all aspects it needs just that. When SirEmi first created this game I am sure this timer looked liked a good idea. However he was looking at it from a small scale.  Let's face it those of us who did a lot of combat early on didn't have to wait too long to attack at first.  But as the power of our ships increased the numbers just turned to unrealistic amounts.  Some of you are stubborn and want things to remain the way things are.  So fine lets keep a server that keeps PVP crappy. But we also need a version of the game where combat can actually be done in a reasonable time. Honestly I think if a 2nd server is made it could end up being far more successful then this server. Simply because the game will feel a bit more complete and less unrealistic. Hell the way it stands now practically all the combat optimizations are useless.  Take for example improved attack, shields and armors.  The only ship that is somewhat useful on right now is the battleship. Since battles come down to who has the most mods and the biggest guns/marines/shields, anything less the battleship is just pointless unless on a small raiding ship hitting lesser targets. Even then, you likely will get more out of using more mods on a titan. In the case of shields there the Reinforced hull which is more useful when just thrown on a titan since your using more shield mods.   Both Interceptor and Assault bomber are practically useless since small ships really can't do much even with these.  The way things are in the game your better off using an unoptimized titan then using these. Even the Camouflage system has limited uses. Best used on smaller ships which once again are just not that great to use. The Boarding ship optimization is also not very useful since if your going to make a marine ship your better off going with the hull upgraded titan then this.  After all that gives it the much needed shields marine ships need. Plus it gives you more marines to make use of.  You can't even make the argument that these optimizations would be better for newer players then older players since it isn't likely newer players will be able to afford these optimizations. Not to mention they just don't have the tech levels to make smaller ships even somewhat useful.  As it stands the vast majority of ship hull sizes and a good portion of the optimizations just aren't really that useful.   You can tell what they are designed for and if the game worked as I suggested for it to on a 2nd server, they might actually be able to server their purposes.  Right now though it is just a bunch of garbage. One big mess. In my opinion that makes the game look bad and not well thought out.  It's great we got the exploration stuff in the game.  It is great we got the missions. It is great we are getting more. But we shouldn't ignore a portion of the game that vastly needs fixed just because not everyone likes that aspect. There are people who do.  One should not be ignored over the other.

I repeat my suggestion for a quick fix: make PvP timers a factor x shorter than COM timers. Problem (at least partially) solved.

Jam

I have the same feeling too about the combat system of this game. Just for Sir E to set up a combat arena to test the combat system is most easily them a hold server. If work out can be updated as hold to the game.
that should be the next set of request to be updated.

This would never work for the whole game though. There is a lot in the game that is broken itself. Including the unlimited power of a player. Even if timers were dramatically reduced, it is still going to be about who has the biggest and most powerful ship.  Most of the optimizations will still remain useless. There will still be no need for strategy in battles at all.  The only way to truly allow for real strategy in battles and bring balance is for there to be a limit to the combat techs. Of course this would put more pressure on SirEmi to keep coming up with new weapon, shield and armor techs.  I had another idea that a 2nd server would be perfect for. It would be the perfect test to establish a real economy.

I was talking to Harachte and he told me the main reason he quit was because of the lack of no real economy.  Well here is another idea for the new server. It would actually slow growth and we won't meet the max tech levels for our ships right away.  Eliminate the the buying of resources from Sol. Or rather make it so miners can sell their resources at a market on Sol itself.  This could create a real economy in the game.  Obviously we can't just up and do this on the current server. Those that are further ahead already will forever remain ahead without a chance for the lesser players to catch up. They could easily dominate any resource.  Even once Novas are brought in this would likely be an issue. Also to me it seems fair that if there was such a system added in that everyone starts off at the very beginning from equal ground.  I admit it would make the game a lot harder. But it would also encourage us to interact more with one another and possible to work together.

SirEmi has added a lot of good things to the game. But there is problems that have been around for ages that he just hasn't fixed. Economy and Combat being 2 major problems. Even adding in optimizations did nothing because all it did was make clear just how messed up pvp actually is.  Before it was obvious titan was best. But when an attempt for strategy was added in because of the flaws of the system it made most of those things useless.

PvP definitely needs some work, and it has for quite some time, but I have some other thoughts you might be interested in. First of all I'm not a fan of adding a 2nd server to adhere to player desires or for testing purposes, mainly because I've seen that before in games and I've been a part of it and generally it doesn't go well for both the game itself or the player base. Secondly I'm not a big fan of stat caps, it's always been my stance that if you have to cap levels and stats in order to keep a combat system balanced then it's garbage that should be scrapped or redone in the first place. Those are just my opinions though.

I like Raptors idea about how to lower the combat timers. Certainly Jam the combat isn't very strategic or in depth but at least lowering the timers would mean PvP would be something that actually is viable rather than waiting around for a week just to fight somebody. What I would propose is that the timer be reduced based on the weakest ship in an attack or defending fleet. The reason for that is that you wouldn't want to have it so that a ship with 20 mil power gets like a 5x reduction in it's combat timer even though it's attacking some noob with say 200k power right? Basing it on the weakest ship involved would still allow for the little guys to get away most of the time.

I also don't see much point in combat the way things stand now, mainly because there isn't a great deal of consequence even if you do lose a battle. I understand the whole emergency jump system being designed to make it so noobs don't just instantly get wrecked and then quit the game in frustation but at the same time it vastly limits the possibilities in combat as well. I would like to see it where there is a slim chance that the emergency jump system fails (let's face it, in every space exploration sci-fi show/movie you will inevitably have some kind of safety mechanism fail and face certain death) and your ship gets blown up creating a debris field that could contain resources and modules. It would take a certain amount of time to search the field and organize everything to be taken aboard so give it a small timer (say 1/10th of the original combat timer or something) to do that which would allow for a brief window to counter attack with another ship. Of course that would mean you would have to risk another of your ships against a strong opponent but you could possibly get back everything you lost (minus the ship itself) and more should you defeat the opponent and drive them out or even blow up their ship.

I have some thoughts on balancing the combat and making it more strategic and tactical but I should probably put it all down on a piece of paper (or several) so that I'm not just going back and forth between thoughts randomly. I'll try to post it before I go to bed.

First things first, some mechanics I would love to see put into the game would be energy for ships, more shield options, more combat tactics, as well as fleet formations. It would make sense to me that energy is required to fire weapons like lasers as well as power things like shields and engines. You can argue that each of those modules has it's own self contained power device but I think having energy be part of the game would add more diversity to the game. I know I've brought that up before on here somewhere but it makes sense to me that it would be a crucial tactic to try and take out an enemy ships power source to immobilize them in combat. So having a module that produces power for the rest of the ships systems just seems natural to me. I can post some specific examples of what I have in mind should anyone be curious, I don't want to take up too much space in this post. (Though I likely will)

Secondly I would like to see more control options for shields. A feature where I could take the total amount of shielding on my ship and say "I want x% of my shields to go towards defending my engines, y% amount to go towards defending my weapon systems and z% amount to go towards defending my power module." This would allow any number of ships that might have the exact same modules on them to perfom differently in combat. It would also mean that even though you might beat someone in combat once, the next battle could be completely different depending on how both combatants change their shield systems to counter act what the other is doing.

That ties into the next part I would really like to see in the game, more combat tactics. Specifically I would like the ability to set my weapons to attack specific parts of enemy ships before others. The way it works now is weapons fire and take down the enemy shields/armor bit by bit and then the damage starts going towards the personel and eventually the ship reaches critical damage and jumps. I would like to see it where I could target say my enemies weapons systems, if I manage to do enough damage to take down the shields protecting their weapons then my next attacks would wipe of the personel manning those weapons and possibly avoid having those weapons fired at me at all in the next rounds of combat. For example my opponent has 20 laser modules of varying levels, I take out the shields protecting them after only 6 of them have fired and then my next attack takes out all of the personel manning those weapons, it would effectively neutralize and stop the other 14 lasers from hitting me during that battle.

That would allow many types of tactics, perhaps you could go all out with massively powerful weapons and try to just take out the enemies weapons before they ever get to fire on you (a very risky tactic but potentially very rewarding). Or maybe you could use a small "kamikaze" ship to wipe out enemy personel manning their power modules and essentially cripple the ship and allow another of your ships to possibly defeat it even though it was originally weaker than the enemy. If you consider my next idea as well then you could create one ship entirely composed of shields to draw enemy fire and then use another to essentially flank the enemy and do massive damage.

One of the things Jam said is something that bothers me in a lot of other games, this game is all about who can build the ship with the most power. I would like to see fleet formations become an important feature in this game, by that I mean a small group of ships working together to perform some kind of strategy that could not be done by a single ship alone. For example I would like to be able to send a fleet of 3 ships into battle, the first and second ship could be a normal mixed ship of shields, weapons and marines, and then have the third ship be a flanking ship with nothing but weapons equiped on it. Basically the first two ships would exchange fire with the enemy like normal and hopefully destroy or force an enemy ship to jump, then if my fleet still has 3 ships and the enemy only has one or two my third ship would basically be able to "flank" an enemy ship that is still recovering from a round of combat with my other ships and basically be able to fire without taking any return fire and do massive amounts of damage.

This would allow tactics for a number of smaller less powerful ships to be able to take down much bigger ships(especially ones that aren't in a fleet). I would keep the limit on these fleets to something small like 3 or 4 ships that way you can't create large fleets of "dummy" ships to protect one large main ship from being flanked. When you start throwing in things like corp members being able to defend other corp members and even other allied corp members (something I know has been talked about on here before) then you could create some formidable defenses without being one of the top 5 players in the game as far as power goes. It would really create a sense of teamwork over coming single powerful opponents you otherwise would have no chance against, not to mention change how we all approach creating a ship for both COM's and PvP. I have more ideas and examples of how/what to change to make this all work but this is getting rather long, I don't want peoples eyes to bleed from reading my walls of text (not too much anyway =p).

Of course idk if any of this is possible with the way SirEmi has created the current combat system. The current problems with it make it clear that SirEmi didn't design it with long term player development in mind so I doubt it's all that flexible right now. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the whole combat system would need to be re-done from scratch to get these things implemented. Those are some of my ideas for the combat system, I've posted some of them before either in a different way or as an incomplete thought, but that is largely what I would like to see the combat in this game become.

Hey Fenix what you describe there reminds me somewhat of Master of Orion 2. But that's an entirely different game. Its combat wasn't always tactical, as oftentimes you were faced with an opponent far superior or weaker. But sometimes it WAS tactical. The combat system we have is not like that. But it definitely needs to be more tactical than it's to be interesting. Most combat, as it's, is just a linear numbers game where you gauge the weapon power and shield/armor power of your enemy and counter it with your own by powering down or powering up. That's about all there is. It's mainly a spreadsheet sim. The combat in this game reflects the rest of the game, being that it's a spreadsheet farming sim.

I agree this game's PvP is meh. I basically play it single player and take a hit from PvP once in a blue moon. The problem is players can be so immensely powerful. This creates a problem when they defeat opponents who present NO threat. How do you protect the inferior player from the far superior player? This is by far the most important thing in PvP MMO open world. Usually there're safe zones (with no PvP) and mechanics which discourage griefing in the PvP zones. Other things too I'm sure. Bottom line, few people enjoy to be zerged by a superior force or killed when they're weak or focused on something else.

More and more I find myself not liking the immense differences between high level players and low level players in different MMO's I've played. But neither do I like FPS skirmish matches. There's just no immersion in FPS games. While htey can be tactical and stimulating, they have no permanence. You pop in and out and there's no sense of world or place or character. It's just action. Like sex without the buildup. A heroic warrior without a soul. An environment without substance.

I play in Wurm Online for example, on Chaos. it's open world PvP without any restrictions on who can attack who. This means a high skill player can kill a new player out the door. It's not that which bothers me so much. What bothers me is how much more capable high skill players (or players who spend lots of $$$$) are than inferior players. Sometimes I think the big gap between the low end and the high end just causes problems. It'd be better to shrink its absolute difference while maintaining everything else. For example, skills would increase just as slowly. The main difference is spending lots of $$$ or playing 24/7 will only gain you a small advantage in hard stats. This would encourage new players to work with the veterans. It'd put priority on knowledge, not stats. Stats would still be there for progression, but they'd be less tangibly important. Taken to hte extreme, they'd be little more htan "/played". They'd ONLY exist to show you how long you've played and what skills you've focused on. Other players could view these stats and so get a feel for what you know and what you don't. They'd act like a class designation.

But ultimately even doing that won't remove the fact players who play the longest and hardest will have a bigger bunker and potentially be that much more difficult to defeat. In the end, the game has to somehow figure out how to limit that. One way is to have periodic server resets, while preserving some bank space or something. Or restricting how much a player can build and how many players can build together. This would be a hard (or soft) cap on the size of their bunker.

But too many server resets or too many restrictions and it's full circle and back to being an FPS game. The world needs some permanence. Players need some freedom to buildup their bunker. You want something inbetween.

What of players who just know more about the game, so play better and obliterate inexperienced players? This is similar to the problem posed by the big bunker or the big stats. You can't erase what a person knows. They know all the tactics and this allows htem to defeat an inexperienced opponent rapidly. YOu should strive to keep the standards of excellence high enough so experienced players are still rewarded. This might mean keeping an active watch on things. Whenever a new tactic surfaces, you have to account for it. You want yoru game to be challenging, but not so much the 1% rule. Maybe you could tier the server so more experienced players end up mostly playing with other experienced players.

Of course if your game is single player or has lots of safe zones, these concerns have less import. Also many MMO's use instanced PvP which is largely stat driven and with heavy restrictions on who can attack who.