Hi,

In my game there's a player that didn't do any action since the beginning of the game. I'm next to him, one of his factories is in my radar. It's been a while since it has the blinking red light of a stopped production. However, I can see the factory still produces drillers (number on the left keeps getting higher), and on and on with the time machine.

This is a 5-player game, by the way.

Thanks

yeah, that's because the time machine strives to give you the worst case scenario.

it's possible that someone will attack that player and destroy some of their drillers, and then production will resume. if the time machines assumes they will not produce any drillers, you might plan an attack that looks like it will succeed when it launches, but then you find out it failed. and you will be very angry at us if that happens

Ok thanks! I figured it might be the case afterwards, when I saw that it was in fact the same with all the other players (we reached the cap pretty fast in a 5-player game).

I think the decision to keep increasing drills in the time machine on opponents is counter intuitive.

If the future events in the time machine are based only on formation I have, then I don't think it should advance on factories without power at all. Every time I see those numbers going up it looks like a bug and it is the only thing in the time machine that is not based on visible information.


Opponents managing their drill count is part of the strategy, and launching an attack into a base should take that strategy into account.

The drill count ratcheting up also could be providing fast intel and dissuade attacks which would otherwise be successfull.

Also, if I launch an attack on that base, the combat predictor doesn't take the same drill production into account.

I would prefer to make the strategic call without automatically assuming my opponent is going to get power back online or lose drills. Otherwise, I have to look at the future scenarios and mentally subtract the drill productions from my calculations.

fate, totally agree with you that it goes counter to what the time machine normally does.

what we weigh more heavily than consistency is player experience. if you launch an attack and you end up with more drillers than you though, you're happy. if you launch an attack and then lose, that's half a day or more down the drain, possibly along with some specialists, which is a really bad user experience.

What about being unhappy because you didn't launch an attack because it *looked* like they would have more forces?

When the Time Machine tells me something, i think it's important to believe it within a set of definitive and predictable bounds (like available information).

This may be less true outside the beta, but when I see something behaving in a way contrary to all other properties or information, I am forced to decide if it's a bug or an unpredictable quirk. I would prefer it to be neither.