ayrm wrote:Put me down for $100.

Knew I could count on you

Put me down for as many forum games as Ron and Noel would like and these words.

Ron? Noel? You can read this? If this is you guys, please have a cracking day.

Hey!

First forum post, and you can thank Stash for sending me here.

Couple of observations -
1, I've been playing for a year (almost to the day) and this is my first forum post. You guys have a serious problem getting people onto the forums. I think that's probably because it's kinda old technology, things move forward - social media is all facebook and twitter and instagram these days, people have 5 second attention spans, so don't engage in text-heavy forums. I don't know how you fix this.

2, I work in the game industry (have done for over 20 years), $3000 ain't a lot of money, believe it or not. For that, you'd likely get a few quick bug fixes and minor tweaks to existing features. Developing a whole new specialist is likely to take in the order of several man-months (and you'd expect to pay for those at around $8-10k). Not trying to put a dampener on things, just reining in expectations.

3, Talking of funding - kickstarter or gofundme might be options, although I would probably consider donating $5-10 per month on something like Patreon. I don't even care about getting some gold-embossed nameplate or medals. If a game is good, why the hell not pay for a subscription? WoW has millions of subscribers who pay $10 a month (for the last 12 years), clearly it's affordable at that price range. And this is way better than WoW. Maybe have a subscription as L3? L3 = Kudos only, when you stop subscribing you drop down to L2 again.

4, Specialist stacking.
- I hear a lot above about "stopping stacking" effects, but maybe a better approach would be to make stacking have diminishing returns. For example, Admirals might take you 50% of the way towards x2 naked driller speed (which is frankly plenty). Initial admiral is therefore identical (as you go from x1 to x1.5), but the next one is only a net 25% boost (as you get 50% of x0.5 speed), the third is a net 12.5% etc. So, there's an advantage to stacking Admirals, but it becomes prohibitively expensive to get the gains after the first couple. I speak as a man who's had 5 Admirals (x3.5). Noone can escape me!
- Continuing the example, with Kings - first king gives you 1 in 3 bonus (33%), 2nd is 2 in 4 (50%), then 3 in 5 (60%), 4 in 6 (66%, same as current 2 kings), etc. Again, the advantage increases, but to a point where spending two hires to go from (say) 60% to 66% probably isn't worth it.
- Ditto Engineers. By doing the same thing as admirals, you'd get an effective natural cap at 100% anyway (so first Engi is 50% repair, 2nd is 75%, then 87.5% etc)
- Apply the same logic to Princess, IO, .. whatever it is you think is broken. For full marks, make it a game setting - "specialists have diminishing returns", then people can play with it or not.
- Tycoon is a bit of a weird one, I don't agree he's broken because you have to give up the smuggler to get him (a great spec), and you rarely ever take more than one tycoon (except maybe in a large domination game). And having the option to shorten the game by mass production of drillers is surely a good thing?
- Infiltrator needs a huge boost, he's currently very crappy. However, I think he's only crappy because of the strength of Kings (and hence general lack of shields). If you removed the shield-loss on taking king (and I agree you shouldn't get the +20 local shields for kings as they just feed tinkerers too well), then maybe Infiltrators would see more play naturally?

5, My "top four" specialists - the current game basically revolves around 4 key specialists and their promotions, NOT taking one of these options means you probably need your head examining. This usually means they're overpowered as the choice element is removed (and the choice-of-3 is one of the best bits of the game).
- #1 Navigator; almost always promoted directly to Admiral, because stacking admirals is pretty much the key way of winning the game atm. Even without promotion they're an incredibly powerful and useful specialist, that finds its way into a lot of killer combinations.
- #2 Smuggler; generally only need one of these, but multiples can be useful and promoted to Tycoons, which are borderline broken as well (you generally need at least one to guarantee a win)
- #3 Hypnotist; as with Nav above, this is generally only useful for its promotion, but having one lying around to hoover up captured specialists can be useful in domination games. When promoted to King, that's when he really shines.
- #4 Tinkerer - as TK notes, this is powerful, but generally only in combination with King. I suspect if King numbers were reduced, then Tinkerers would become less valuable. 1 Tink with Queen (on a double shield outpost) is worth 120 extra drillers, which is nearly 2.5 outposts. That's crazy good. Not as good as the other three, but still pretty bloody good. As TK also notes, it doesn't take much to boost Tinkerer to be better than his promoted form, the MoE. I don't think you'd need to change the Tinkerer, if changes to the King were made. The combo of Tink+King is what makes Tink OP.
- Honourable mentions to the likes of Pirates, they're very good, but I don't consider them a requirement to win a game.

6, Funding costs the funder. I don't like the idea. I think there has to be a net boost (free stuff) that the game provides, otherwise why do it? I could just gift you drillers rather than funding. I don't even think the current funding is especially broken, even when you have 3-4 people funding you (and you have seriously good diplomacy skills if you've managed to wrangle that situation).

7, Reduced / Zero hire rate for all-but-eliminated players. Again, not keen on this, but fully understand why you've suggested it. I think it'd take quite a bit of playtesting to get the balance right (given you start with 5 bases, does that mean you start with a reduced hire rate??). I don't think it's bad as it is. Your analogy to large country = large army is not quite the same, as the 1-base dude doesn't have a large (driller) army, but he still has a (civilian) populace, and that populace can generate key individuals at a similar rate to any other country. So I'd say leave that alone.

Anyway, that's already a huge chunk of text, feel free to dissect! I may fund, but only after I've finished paying for Christmas

-Dinelli.

Welcome to the forums Dinelli,

I agree with much that you said, and I support the subscription as an L3. I know a lot of us forumers at least are highschoolers (like me) or college students (almost me) who have very limited income. I think that having the optional L3 would work, as long as it gives something.

Hope you stick around on these forums!

Great input Dinelli! Glad you made it over!

I agree with L3 wholeheartedly. It's more of a long term solution. Now, whether we have the player base to support any type of significant L3 contribution is up in the air. But it's very easy to create an additional iOS subscription model as opposed to balancing a new specialist. (3rd party subscription? I don't know much about those outside of iOS)

In reality, it's the revenue model that's currently broken. If that's fixed, the rest of the game could be worked on. Revenue + marketing = any changes the community wants.

Another small idea is to turn off/on factories and mines

I love the concept of L3, dinelli.

mrfulloffish wrote:I love the concept of L3, dinelli.

So do I, copycat.

And this, cut this out too

aclonicy wrote:And this, cut this out too

Aclo, it's like you're my alt. You follow me and fish and pig and goat around from post to post, telling us to 'stop it sheep' and 'cut this out' whenever we come online.