Forum - Space Odyssey MMORPG - a massive free online space game

Well i would really like to see this put into place.. i think it would only work for wars.. and i think it would be a good idea since wars never resets but i think new accounts should get like a grace period of no attacks, or at least no attacks on their stations for the first week or two.. it would help them get a start and a chance for a cloak before someone thats been here longer comes along and just kills it right off the bad

yea... right now ive had a lot of complaints fomr my lower members about there stations being destroyed like an hour after they get setup, a chance for them to at least get a low level cloak would probly put an end to some of this
as for attacks on the players themselves it is the wars server...so....

i think new players shouldnt have protection from attacks- its better that they geta compensation for joining later than the start (like on main server- new accaunts getup to 5k turns)- they should get turns (up to 5k) some cp (enough to get about lvl2-3 cloak) and a bit more creds :)

i say average all of the current commander's stats/powers etc and give them that. (or at least base what they get off of the average player so that balance can be maintained as the game gets older).

when the game gets older we will have more and more accaunts- and those accaunts that were just barelymade and left will drop the bonuses quite a bit- maybe something like average from top 200 could be calced?

instead of mining/researching 1 base to begin with give them a basic base with the resourses to build them, for the top players, or atleast it should be, what a base will make wont be a major advantage over them, most people will tell them how to use them and there are guides about how to ue them, then if they get it wrong then its their fault. to help them with this have it so as only people in normal attacking range can hit their base, like the idea cameron07 said where they cant get attacked for a week or until they get over a certain power, otherwise those bases will be gone in hours if not less. this will help them on their way because creds are harder to make on wars, and as all new players will get a base its then the players that make the mistake not the game letting them down. just an idea  :21:

broken- i dont want to be mean or anything but your last post is the worst suggestion ive seen :D without even trying i know 2 ways to abuse the sustem you suggest :D

10 days or 2 weeks protection on a new base is like 30 Billion or so ... It'll die the day after it comes out of protection and the player won't be much better off. It'd be far better to teach them how to play from the beginning and for them to play smart than give them a free lunch. I see swarms of alts being created to abuse this suggestion anyway ... :-(

New guys shouldn't build bases, simple as that. And if you offer advice to the contrary, then your not doing anyone any favours.

Creating 100 alts and then killing their bases  :12:

that type of abuse seems to me like it would be obvious and a bootable offense. but i do agree simply on the grounds that noobs should not have bases because everyone else had to take the time to figure em out and research + they will just be killed as soon as they are vulnerable. i think that maybe noobs get the resources to get to the top some odd %. for example they start with a "ship credit" or sumtin that is good for 1 free gold account ship search, 10k turns, 100k segs and 100bil cash.

Well...I was thinking about making a video tutorial with voice over...(good quality video...lol), just don't know what others would think about it.  If I didn't make a video tutorial, I would atleast like to make a flash tutorial...just to give players the basics (I will make one for each game).  What are your opinions on it? (yes...this is on topic, as it has to do with the issue)

~100th Post!!~

A video tutorial would be very cool :)

Silence you want to give them half my segments :o

was an example... and wow ftp i am way below u in rankings and i have 400k... the numbers would change on a sliding scale based on certain player averages. for example take the top 200 and give 2 thirds the amount of segs that the average player in that group has.

Maybe 2/3 of the average of the 180-220th players. And lower the rank as more player come in. It would be difficult because you'd need to have someway of determining the number of active players

well im not sure what exactly but there needs to be something thought of to help the new players out a bit...

hmmm maybe active = 10-30mil power shift (or more) within a week?

I mean, there are ways of doing it, just none that i think would be quick or easy for emi

A little off topic, but I think we definitely need a way of making more newbies read the guide.
Most don't even realise that it's there until you tell them.
=/
Also, I like Snipe's idea with the voice over.
xD
:P

I dont think its so much they have trouble finding the guide i just think most people dont want ot read all that....(i never did)
I think jsut giving more info through the mothership A would be good, pherhaps making it a bit more interesting looking

hey hey.. back on subject... need a way to help noobs on wars... some sort of better start or some kind of protection

Let them start with 5x the current credits donation and 5x the current commandpoints donation. And ofcourse 5000 turns.

Let the Mothership AI mention the guide several times, and when they visit the resupply ship screen let her say they should design ships first and include a link to the guide again.

That would be 5x 2,9 mill and 5x 58 cp

And maybe let them start in a nebula for 1 day so they have time to get used to the game.

Personally i think that is a little high but sounds good. Also, some better ship designs and how to build a superhsip rather than a swarmer would be good

Everyone who is weaker then that can restart his account to get the bonus anyhow.

And I mean a 5 dollar donation would give and 8 dollar reward so 1 donation is already better then that.

Good point

i think its a great idea! (but perhaps they should get a lil bit more?) it would certainly pump a lot of desperately needed new blood in to the game. i am sick of having only 9 guys in the whole galaxy that i can attack and of them 7-8 i have truces with :( its a bloody WAR server and there are barely enough strong people for 1v1s.

lil bit more - maybe give them a decent supership design to start with that costs roughly the amount of cash they are given to start (sorta like how they are given a swarmer design)

Silence thenn you should be happy with my AoF doesnt truce ;)

alright... leme rephrase that. of the 9, there or 6-8 at any given point that I either don't want to fight and/or am obligated not to fight. besides... this is off topic. noobs need more stuff so that slightly larger players can take it, then give it to larger players which then finally leads to people my size killing the larger players.

Id be happy giving the designs i made that are on the cota website. Its what they're there for

i could throw a few ships together as well.. zerg covers the ships under a bil cost and i can throw in a few after that.. im not great with small ships, that should be good to get them started and see the basics of designing.. thats if emi see's this idea fit

I don't like this idea about new people getting 'stuff' .. Sure, give them info, and make them a better player .. stick em in a Nebula for 2 weeks or whatever ... But Credits and or Command Points as freebies on a new account is just asking for someone to create a gazillion alts and abuse the system. Sure, they will get caught, but who is gonna catch them, Emi, and how? By checking logs ... Wouldn't he be rather doing something else ... like other game enhancements, rather than policing players.  L:)

80% of all you need to know comes from reading the forums, the other 20% is trial and error. People who can't read the forums are not going to be any better off for having a few extra Billion to play around with.  :wounded1:

As for ship designs .. I wouldn't go overboard .. Once you think the game is good, you pay $20 to Emi for all his hard work creating this game and maintaining it, last I heard, bandwidth wasn't free. Then they have access to a Gold Account, and most of all the ship designs, and search functions and with a basic amount of math they can reverse engineer any ship design they want or take the easy path and just clone a Gold Design.  :19:

Rich != Smart  :))

Anyways, just my thoughts.  :21:

alright... leme sum your argument tzarkoth we cant compensate people for starting ate in a universe that doesnt reset because they might violate terms of service. so... i guess since new acounts can create alts so can old acounts... so... i guess we just have to ban all acounts other wise people could violate tos. i know this is a ratehr incomplete thought but you should get the gist... my point is, we cant not do something JUST because a player might violate tos with it. thats what tos is for. a player that does that gets kicked to the curb. that problem is solved and i am sick as it coming up as a reason for not giving noobs some MUCH needed help.

No, my point is that it you don't have to give anyone anything.

Giving free stuff to new accounts is a dumb idea.

The bonus of starting late in the universe is that you are small, you can go about your business un-noticed, you have a 95% chance of warping away, and most people won't even bother to attack you. Every so often you'll come across a retired player's mothership in your FP range, and you can LOOT it to your hearts content.

The voting mechanic already gives the new guy a huge leg up.

All they need to do is learn how to play by reading and asking questions etc.

i still say there is no way for a new guy to catch any top guy on wars... expecially the top ones with cloaked bases

Well, I'd be annoyed if a new player could challenge the months of effort the top guys have expended.

... right now, i think that i new player could catch up in 6-8 months if they RLY tried and got a gold account. a year from now it will be virtually impossible for a new player to catch up. maybe noobs don't need anything NOW but i think that in the not too distant future, if u want the gamer pool to increase, they will need SOMETHING.

im not saying make it to where noobs can come in and rule.. just give them a better start..

If you al start small but equal, well ok thats fun. But if you cant build bases and have to relie on missions solely, you'll have a slower start then I had. And then the money to do encounters would come in handy and if you would give them a reasonable start it will increase the mid-ranked battlefield alot and will increase the number of possible attacks instead that the power of everyone gets spread out more and more and more because the new players will have a though job on getting anywere near players that already played for a extend period of time.

I agree with FTP. i started a couple months ago, got a gold account and STILL cant build bases without them getting killed (and i'm in the top 30!).

Need more cloaking imo.

I'd be all for tweaking the low lvl encounter spawns for people so they can generate CP, segments, turns etc through encounters.

tzarkoth..i agree...for late comers getting higher encrypts spawn rate and maybe a x2 or x3 turn gain...for abt a mth or so..that way they can grow in segs and have turns to use for research if they should choose that path.

I, As a new player, Believe that a change in new accounts is in order.
Though i havent been attacked i feel that most players shoudl have a small grace period.
However i do not agree on it being time related.

I am a programmer, Thus these types of games Are all i can actually play on my limited spare time.
thus so that when i played this certain game i realized they have a grace period set based off turns.
Emi already keeps track of number of turns that were taken, this means using that variable he can disable the ability to attack or be attacked by other players till the turns reach a certain limit... I just reached my 20K turn mark. maybe 10K turns is a good cutoff from protection.

im sure that if some players have such an experience that I have had, they would be more likely to stay and not retire immediately.
Playing the game and dying right off by a high ranked player is a real turn off. that 10k turn grace period may bring about a longer lifespan of players and More support for the game itself... Eh Emi?

I have a suggestion here also - I think that some mechanism is needed to not only push up the bottom, but to slow the top as well (dont throw a fit here ok lol - Im top 10 also).  The more we can compress the players power, the more competitive it will become.

I suggest a simple way is to have 3 bands of encryption rewards.  Low, medium and high.  At the low end, segs reward is doubled, in the middle its normal, at the top halved. 

So for example if you have an encryption level of less than 100, then you get 100 segs per mission (of any level).  Then if your encryption level lies between 100 and 200, then you get 50 segs per mission - agin its not the mission level itself that dictates the reward - but the players encryption level.  After level 200 encryption reward is 25 segs.

Every month the encryption caps can be reviewed and if needed they can be adjusted.

This will tend to allow starting players to quickly become competive, it will also compress the top of the ladder as well, which in my view is a good thing - more viable PvP targets are available.

I should also draw reference to the other suggestion I made about increasing turns costs of missions and increasing segs reward - this will also tend to attract and benefit starting players.

As an aside - new players simply shouldnt be trying to build bases - they should be investing in cloaking and getting their segs up.  Scanning is so much more costly than cloaking, so much so that even new players will be able to get cloaking over the highest scanning tech available within a reasonable time period - we have seen this is the case several times within our own alliance.  Members have joined - built segs - got the cloaking they need, then installed bases successfully.

And .. mining facilities are great sources of income - but they arent the only source of income. 

I agree with Tz - I dont think anyone needs a free lunch, but a broad mechanic designed to compress players into a similar band of power I think is a good thing for the PvP game.

i think it dosent really matter a whole lot.... this server goes on forever so if someon wants to devote teh tiem requitred tyo go form last too # 1 then they should be able to do it. giving them boosts and ect and slowing down players highger up dosent make much sense to me, if someone wnaqts to reach teh top then thedy can sooner or later.

Any sort of crepression of the top isnt needed. The seg missions will eventually reach the point where you will find enough missions where you can use all your turns without moving. When you get near this point, you grow linearly rather than exponetially. This will mean that the differences between players matter less and less

Needs something.

My personal preference would be this - any new player starts with a Commander who has an XP level as if he had been created at the start of the game.  Comes along with all that CP.

If you put this in - then you should automatically advance anyone who's commander is below that level up to that level.

THey wouldnt have the cash etc to spend it all on tech etc, and turns would be a constraint, - but at least they can hide and get some segs and so on - and if they spend wisely they will become competitive fairly quickly.

Alts exploiting that - well  - so what.

I think just give them 10k turns anything else you give them will be wasted anyhow because they don't know how to play yet. As for bases I'm fairly sure we all lost some before we got our cloak up high enough to keep them (as i recall cameron had no problem with killing my bases when I started playing on WARS )

You could start new accounts in a training galaxy - a small non pvp galaxy filled with lots of resources - thats how the galaxy was when i started, now it been heavily mined - and there wasnt that much PvP really early on - everyone was just focussing on getting started.

They could play there for a fixed amount of time -  then the account gets transferred to SOWARS - obviously any base they built doesnt come with them - but cash, workers and ore would.

This has the advantage that it reflects what the galaxy was like when the first players started - lots of mineral around, and also keeps them safe from getting nailed at the outset - so they can learn the basics if they need to.

Also - for alts - well, you need to play abit to get an advantage from that time - so its not a free gift that could be overly exploited.