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

General Talk => General Discussion => Topic started by: BadGuy on March 18, 2008, 04:06:42 PM



Title: New Ideas for SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 18, 2008, 04:06:42 PM
It seems to me as if we have lost a lot of players and the game is now a ghost of what it was when I first started playing.  From articles that I've been reading, it seems that MMORPG games that are based upon spending a lot of time pounding away is losing ground to games that reward based on obtaining more tangible objects (accoutrements that you may have to pay for such as better ships or new abilities) than time spent.

Does anyone have any ideas that we can share with Sir Emi of how we can rescue this game?


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: davey boy on March 18, 2008, 07:07:36 PM
i still think the game is great but a few more turns would be nice  :))


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: AFB on March 18, 2008, 07:24:16 PM
http://forum.spaceo.net/index.php/topic,3774.0/wap2.html

Maybe its not exactly a solution, but i dunno, maybe it will work.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: SirEmi on March 18, 2008, 09:19:12 PM
I wanted to have many features, however now I'm starting to think it has too many features and people get confused by the complexity...

If it doesn't work out and people stop playing & donating to support the servers, I will split the features and make different games but will keep the current versions running.

For example a SO that is concentrated only on the Galaxy and the combat in there, lose the main interface and have only Galaxy interface to reduce confusion.
And a SO like in the old days, where there is only rank based attacks and no secret bases, just design, mothership missions and hack your way to the top...

If those versions come out they will have their own game name and domain, too many servers in the list also cause confusion...  :2:


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: the broken on March 18, 2008, 09:28:58 PM
i would like to see missions/encounter (other than black holes) giving twice the reward on wars. this is because planets use so many resourses such as segs/CP's/Turns. this would make planets much more viable and also retain you secret asteroid base as well. thats my opinion anyway :6:


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 18, 2008, 09:31:39 PM
nah i say keep em the way they are
that keeps the planets rare


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: the broken on March 18, 2008, 09:35:02 PM
doubling them would also mean that newer players have chance to catch up a little, give them a better edge, they will never catch players with 20mill segs up otherwise, also to make planets a better source of profit (than they are now) wouldnt it be better to be able to invest more?


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: lostedchylde on March 19, 2008, 10:07:30 PM
SO main rocks - Don't mess with it people.

                                                                                        :spider2:


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Silence444 on March 20, 2008, 05:26:52 PM
idk about u guys, but i seriously don't think its a game-play issue. SO is relatively simple, evolving and one of only a handful of games where the creator participates in the forums. the #1 complaint i have heard from friends i have tried to get hooked is that all of the text/reading gets real old real fast. i guess my suggestion is shifting as much of the game as possible to a graphics oriented engine. i dont rly know how this would work, but maybe even just adding in simple battle animations would boost popularity.

personally my biggest complaint is the encounter system (they should work the same as mission contracts - the multiplier)


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 20, 2008, 05:39:49 PM
u have a good idea about the graphics stuff. maybe instead of the mothership ai giving a few paragraphs to read, maybe something more interactive or 'colorful'


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Cameron07 on March 20, 2008, 06:14:41 PM
true, and possibly work on a better instuction guide to the game, especially with all the new stuff here...


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Silence444 on March 20, 2008, 06:21:55 PM
true. a list/introduction to all of the basic formulas would be good too.

-edit-

any chance we can start new players with more stuff? as it is, it is dang near impossible for a new player to make it into the top ten let alone rank one.

maybe have a sponsor option that allows player to pay a small penalty (like 5%) and gift resources to friends that are just starting out.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: lalelulilo on March 20, 2008, 06:34:58 PM
Spaceo is a very simple game in my opinion, i feel that the thing that is killing it is lack of advertisement, i only found out about spaceo from a friend of mine, i also think emi should select a few choice people to perform certain task's these would include:
A Forum representative, this person would browse the forums and simplify the suggestions to a small piece of text (basic outline, popularity, etc etc)
An External Representative, this person would advertise spaceo around the web.
And last but not least a writer, to make manual's and guide's for all the parts of spaceo
 :12: What do you think guys?


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 20, 2008, 07:33:13 PM
For those of you that thinks this game is so simple, tell me that you know the formulas and methodolgy to design all different types of ships, that you know battle strategies and that you know how to gain in ranks in the game. Then also tell me after that, that you have the time to invest to do all of the above to do well in the game. Some of you still think that the "TnS Mk2 1" pships are the best pships out there because they have 3,000 weapons and that more weapons must be better as opposed to the FP that you get per credit cost.

I am now 81 in rank not playing the game and could easily be 20-30 points higher if I wanted to be.  I would be lucky to be top 200 with the same power ranking a year ago when all the good players used to play.

Most of you guys are noobs who don't know how much you don't know about the game and think that because you're high in the ranks that you're doing well. Doing well in the game is all relative.  The only top player still playing now is Losted and with J-Bomb ahead if her, I know that there is no way that she is seriously playing.

I think that with all the other games out there and other things competing for our precious time, a game where you get ahead mostly based upon time that you spend pounding away on missions is, no matter ow addictive it is in the beginning, is bound to fade away.

The thing that first attracted me to this game was the battling as I hated losing and I spent a couple hundred dollars doing that, but it took me a long time to learn the intricacis of the game how to get ahead and then I didn't have the time needed. As for ship desigining, someone had to give me the formulas to make efficient ships that I then had to couple with research and know-how to start designing decent ships, something that was also very time-consuming and I think that Sir Emi did good by putting in the multipliers for equipment so that you didn't have to make the same design multiple times.

Anyway, unfortunately, I don't know that there are too many people still playing the game from the glory days still here to leave their opinion.

One thing that may be helpful is if Sir Emi could contact people who tried the game and quit within a month to get their feedback as to why they quit.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: lalelulilo on March 20, 2008, 08:09:41 PM
Having Emi ask every person who quit within a month would take up way to much of his time, and this game is pretty simple, the layout is easy to use, the way things work isn't to confusing, sure the formula's are a pain to get used to, but apart from that this is probably one of the easiest games out there, it just takes some getting used to, plus most of the formula's are on these forums anyway :D
Anyway, this is to off-topic, thought we were here to talk about getting spaceo more players, not flaming others because they say the game is easy.
Anyway, we should wait to see what else Emi has to say on this topic, i personnaly would be willing to advertise this game on other forum's, etc etc.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: zephyrblade on March 20, 2008, 08:25:47 PM
Maybe battle graphics or something. Most people I introduce to the game say "Why cant I see my ships?"


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: AFB on March 20, 2008, 09:09:43 PM
Lal, SO is easy to you, but that is because we take some stuff,e.g. ship terminology, for granted. and besides, we know nothing compared to the players like tzark, or vic and der, and other supers. and i suppose it was not easy for everyone.


As i said in my other post, main problems (and not just in SO) are :

1)Too much stuff. Some of it came around in our time, when we knew our basics, but new players have to learn it all at once.

2)Grinding. the whip of 95% mmos. repetition is the only way to progress, which tires out people.

3)Time. people just don't have the time to put in.And the sheer mass of info can give a false impression that learning will take long. ppl want fast progress, which sadly is not usual.

I might as well add on 4th.

4)sence of achievment. to some, there is no sence that they are achieving anything. being high in ranks is usually only temporary, or getting too high means nothing else to do. ever played lineage2? nothing to do except kill more monsters.


So, what to do? Jess had a good idea on to the death server, i put forward base build up, and domination ideas. please, read up, maybe it will help.

What i think is to be done:

1)Grinding can't be removed completely. instead, there should be alternatives.

2)Teamplay should be introduced, as right now, alliances are basically mini-forums, and nothing else.

3) maybe add a award/record system to add some achievment sense.

4) Add a storyline. yes, a storyline with quests just for the player, it may get him/her interested . also, encounters should be more than just battles, but right now i'm still thinking about that.

Ok, I hope this will help. cheers.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 20, 2008, 10:11:17 PM
the last thing u said was brilliant
'encounters should be more than just battles'

maybe if u hit a certain encounter, it could be called like a recon outpost or something like that, then it reveals the positions of 3 other normal encounters within a 25% fp margin of the recon outpost. they would be the closest possible to the current location.

this would make things a bit more lively while grinding missions or searching for encounters


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: davey boy on March 20, 2008, 11:22:19 PM
well as i said before ive played untold rds now and i no the game inside out and i can say i love it as much as when i first played it emi does a great job trying to keep us amused with all the updates i no not everyone likes certain updates sometimes but no one can say he does a bad job and i will continue to play for rds to come :)


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 20, 2008, 11:25:06 PM
And, davey, you could possibly end be here months from now with only a handful of others grinding away.

Anyway, to continue on the points above, I think that one of the most discouraging parts of the game (especially if you're new and can't afford to donate) is trying to get started, where you really have to grind away until you can afford ships larger than 1 bil to be able to really start doing encounters & get going.

Maybe one of the solutions is to making pay for play an integral part of the game where for a nominal amount you could afford to keep up with those who have the time to spend the time.  Unfortunately, right now based upon the credits that you get for donating, someone would have to donate huge sums to be able to keep up with someone who is able to spend hours of time a day on the game.  Balancing this equation may attract or keep those who want to stay in the game and can afford to pay a reasonable amount to do so and be competitive.

I also agree that alliances don't really seem to be able to do much for individual players. If some way could be developed to aid each other in an alliance that really brings out the team spirit such as in Tribal Wars, that would add a new dimension to the game.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Seither on March 21, 2008, 12:46:08 AM
I wanted to have many features, however now I'm starting to think it has too many features and people get confused by the complexity...

If it doesn't work out and people stop playing & donating to support the servers, I will split the features and make different games but will keep the current versions running.

For example a SO that is concentrated only on the Galaxy and the combat in there, lose the main interface and have only Galaxy interface to reduce confusion.
And a SO like in the old days, where there is only rank based attacks and no secret bases, just design, mothership missions and hack your way to the top...

If those versions come out they will have their own game name and domain, too many servers in the list also cause confusion...  :2:

We need SO classic, the old style of gameplay was addicting, it was fun, it was strategy, it was sparta. I know i personally would be much more active in the game if we had SO classic, rather than the few pot shots I take at people now. And I know there are many Veteran players who would return to play SO Classic.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Cameron07 on March 21, 2008, 12:46:36 AM
i agree


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Seither on March 21, 2008, 12:55:43 AM
4) Add a storyline. yes, a storyline with quests just for the player, it may get him/her interested . also, encounters should be more than just battles, but right now i'm still thinking about that.

I like that idea, one HUGE thing I look for in my MMOs is a story, as it makes it more interesting, and makes grinding a little less tedious if you know you're working towards something, even if it is just the next part of the story.

And, emi, should you wish to take up a storyline, I'd be more than willing to write/help write/supply parts/ect for it.

For those of you that thinks this game is so simple, tell me that you know the formulas and methodolgy to design all different types of ships, that you know battle strategies and that you know how to gain in ranks in the game. Then also tell me after that, that you have the time to invest to do all of the above to do well in the game. Some of you still think that the "TnS Mk2 1" pships are the best pships out there because they have 3,000 weapons and that more weapons must be better as opposed to the FP that you get per credit cost.

I am now 81 in rank not playing the game and could easily be 20-30 points higher if I wanted to be.  I would be lucky to be top 200 with the same power ranking a year ago when all the good players used to play.

Most of you guys are noobs who don't know how much you don't know about the game and think that because you're high in the ranks that you're doing well. Doing well in the game is all relative.  The only top player still playing now is Losted and with J-Bomb ahead if her, I know that there is no way that she is seriously playing.

I think that with all the other games out there and other things competing for our precious time, a game where you get ahead mostly based upon time that you spend pounding away on missions is, no matter ow addictive it is in the beginning, is bound to fade away.

The thing that first attracted me to this game was the battling as I hated losing and I spent a couple hundred dollars doing that, but it took me a long time to learn the intricacis of the game how to get ahead and then I didn't have the time needed. As for ship desigining, someone had to give me the formulas to make efficient ships that I then had to couple with research and know-how to start designing decent ships, something that was also very time-consuming and I think that Sir Emi did good by putting in the multipliers for equipment so that you didn't have to make the same design multiple times.

Anyway, unfortunately, I don't know that there are too many people still playing the game from the glory days still here to leave their opinion.

One thing that may be helpful is if Sir Emi could contact people who tried the game and quit within a month to get their feedback as to why they quit.

The main attraction of the original SO was the fact that it took SKILL and only skill to get a higher rank. There was NO galaxy, NO missions, just you, your ships, your alliance, and a good couple hundred players trying their hardest to pound you into dust. And back then, losing your entire armada could end your game for that round if you didn't prepare right, but if you did, recovering was a 2-3 day process. You could also not log on for a few days, and not really be too far behind. Now, even a day of not logging in can put you too far behind to ever catch up, and even the greatest player to ever walk the earth will get beat by someone who can grind missions all day.

For those of you say we need to make SO more flashy....you're superficial...and stupid. Flashy can attract attention, but if the substance is poor, you won't keep their attention (unless they're shallow too). Soem of the greastest games of all time have horrible graphics nowadays, and only decent ones back when they came out. Take The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Most people consider it one of the greatest games ever made. It's graphics....no where near all that flash or amazing. They were good back then, but it was the gameplay that kept people playing. I STILL go back and play it over and over, because it's fun to play, not looks good. In a game type like this, graphics would only be a major hinderance.

Basically, to save SO, the following MUST be done:

1) Complexity MUST drop, there is just WAY too much going on now to possibly keep up in the average amount of time the average person has to play/is willing to (4-5 hours). Be this splitting some of the features to just certain game types, or whatever, something has to be done to fix it.

2) A better tutorial MUST be made, and should be incorperated into the gameplay. One big problem is just trying to figure out how to play now. having a manual in the upper right hand corner to click on does little, as most people nowadays hate reading and don't learn well that way anyways. Basically, just like at the start of all games, you need something that walks you through how to do what IN GAME, with little pointers saying click here, ect. And leave the ability to turn it off in the commander options area only, so you have to look for it to turn it off. People will go through the how to play stuff if they think they have to.

3) an SO Classic server MUST be created. Back in SO's golden age, right before the missions were released, we had HUNDREDS of active players, approaching the thousands, we were in the top 10 of game rankings. Since the missions update, we've lost countless vets, and our recruitment numbers have plummited to nearly standstills. Basically:
a) Remove missions, galaxy, market, everything that came from the mission update onwords.
b) Upgrade what an alliance actually IS, while it did work decently in SO's golden days, ally supporting needs to be incorperated somehow, even if it is just helping with credits (obviously, thier must be a range restriction on this, otherwise masive abuse will ensue)
c) Alliance wars need to have joint attacks. You officially declare a war on an alliance, it informs both alliances (one easy way is to make all people in that alliance turn red in rankings), then both alliances can have thier members combine forces to attack high rank players in enemy alliance (In old SO, top players could anniliate entire alliances on their own without fear of being destroyed, that needs to be remedied). This could easily be a seperate attack option, called team attack (or something similar) which allows you to select 1 fleet, and pulls that fleet from being destroyed. Then a 24 hour (roughly the standard amount of time people took to log in at least once) countdown starts, and up to 10 people can add a fleet to the attack, and once the countdown expires, the attack is executed. To prevent abuse, power can be limited to at least 2x your own or something, so no high rank players can join up with a really low guy to blast him into spacedust.

4) No more turn donations, as in SO,Classic that would be MAJORLY abused. Worse than it is now. Turns are your life in SO Classic.

5) Lower or remove the rewards for taking top 10 in SO Classic. Anything over $25 would almsot ensure a skilled player will take a top 10 spot again, which means no competitiveness, which means people will quit again.

6) This one is optional. Maybe up the rewards for PvP in SO Classic, to make it seem more worth it. Like, maybe keep the item update around, but make it if you do over a certain % of damage to a commander, you get a random item, and the stronger the commader is, the better the item. But if you attack someone weaker, you get no items. So like, 2x you'd get a decent item, 3x a good item, 4x a great item, 5x an amazing item, ect. This would encourage risktaking as well. This of course, would not apply to joint/team attacks in alliance wars, to prevent abuse.

As for a name for the new SO Classic, as it would ned it's own name and server, I like the following:

Battle Universe
Galaxy of War
Spacedust
Star Fighters
Interstellar Conquest


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: SirEmi on March 21, 2008, 01:43:41 AM
Well I see a lot of great ideas in here, the storyline idea is brilliant, new players could start with this storyline where the story would also get them trough the different parts of the game, making it like a tutorial but in the same time providing the newbie player with enough credits to start out...

Also like the idea of a the SO Sparta, all out war :)

Also like the idea of very rare encounters where you have to follow a certain story to get some big reward:
- for example a 1/10000 encounter where you could have a chance to find a planet long lost planet...
- a 1/1000 encounter where you follow a lead to some lost ancient ship that was lost and you get a prototype of a ship in the range of x billion (or whatever the reward) (get the ship + blueprint)
- a 1/750 encounter to get some rare CP item or turn item... (1000+)

etc.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: ars68 on March 21, 2008, 04:03:50 AM
ok, I'm even coming back to put in my 2 cents here...

lemme put it this way.

turns = the equivalent of time your playing the game
in this case, 1 turn = 1 minute of you playing

if someone pays to get an extra turn every minute, he is effectively playing twice as long as anyone else, even though it's over the same timespan

and if there ever comes a point where he/she is getting more turns then losing, they effectively become gods compared to others, only able to be put down by those who share that luxury.

my point? take turn rewards out, or at least SEVERELY limit it.  turns is your amount of time your spending in game.  not just another resource...


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Seither on March 21, 2008, 04:05:21 AM
ok, I'm even coming back to put in my 2 cents here...

lemme put it this way.

turns = the equivalent of time your playing the game
in this case, 1 turn = 1 minute of you playing

if someone pays to get an extra turn every minute, he is effectively playing twice as long as anyone else, even though it's over the same timespan

and if there ever comes a point where he/she is getting more turns then losing, they effectively become gods compared to others, only able to be put down by those who share that luxury.

my point? take turn rewards out, or at least SEVERELY limit it.  turns is your amount of time your spending in game.  not just another resource...

Well said.

and OMGZ, ars68 lives again!!!!!!!!!!!


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: lalelulilo on March 21, 2008, 04:42:19 AM
For me, its the lack of features in area's like battle's and the alliance that stop me from playing, as well as the tedious mission grinding, i have the time to do it, it just gets old VERY quickly and i go of and play some other game.

Some things Emi could consider would be:

Adding more twists to battle's, like critical hits or something more than this boring battle report, another space game i played was uc, and if more than one stack attacked a single one, it gained a flanking bonus and the enemy had a penalty when attacking and you gained an increase to your's.

More alliance features, all we actually do is have a mini forum as was said earlier, so why not (as in one of my suggestions) have a info hub and research for the alliance, or add in group attacks etc etc.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: AFB on March 21, 2008, 07:22:21 AM
Ok, I think I got an idea to elaborate on the storyline:

You know the way alien encounters work? you travel off a system to where they are. The same thing can be done with story quests, so no-one can interfere.

As for the quests themselves, i'm still thinking.

Similar for encounters- for example, the derelict mothership, u travel off, and come to the site. you send a ship to board it(max marines depend on fp of encounter), no-one there, then the timer starts running, and enemy fleets appear (a la aliens :) ) in waves. you have to hold them off for the period of time. If one of the fleets stays alive until the next wave, it "attacks" the derelict, and u lose 20% marines. If you win, well, you win. dependant on how far the research team went,if you lose, you may get an odd item or two.

so, what do u think?


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 21, 2008, 07:50:17 AM
I agree with all of the comments above by Seither.

It sounds like SO was even better in the days before my time, when there was no pouding away at missions and it was all strategy and battling. 

I certainly would like to try the original SO that Seither describes.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: zephyrblade on March 21, 2008, 08:14:43 AM
ok, I'm even coming back to put in my 2 cents here...

lemme put it this way.

turns = the equivalent of time your playing the game
in this case, 1 turn = 1 minute of you playing

if someone pays to get an extra turn every minute, he is effectively playing twice as long as anyone else, even though it's over the same timespan

and if there ever comes a point where he/she is getting more turns then losing, they effectively become gods compared to others, only able to be put down by those who share that luxury.

my point? take turn rewards out, or at least SEVERELY limit it.  turns is your amount of time your spending in game.  not just another resource...
Aye, good point.
WB ars.  :P


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 21, 2008, 12:46:47 PM
great idea afb
i like the 'hold off thew waves' thing

theres a lot that could be done with those

and btw, good thread badguy


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Seither on March 21, 2008, 05:21:40 PM
I agree with all of the comments above by Seither.

It sounds like SO was even better in the days before my time, when there was no pouding away at missions and it was all strategy and battling. 

I certainly would like to try the original SO that Seither describes.


A classic SO has been brought up many times, even befre the Wars server was made. Maybe now with interest so high it will actually happen.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 21, 2008, 05:54:15 PM
the way u describe it, id like to try it out as well.

maybe emi could set the test server like the old so for a week or so?


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: AFB on March 21, 2008, 07:51:02 PM
Ok, another batch of thoughts are born :)

Storyline: in a summary, player is hired by the council to investigate a series of increased reaver attacks on the border stations. First he is tasked to bring supplies to some stations, then he picks up an SOS call from one. Player arrives in time for a rumble, and then follows their tracks. he comes to a large debris field, mostly reaver ships. then he discovers an alien object. he brings it to a council research facility. soon weird things happen. station becomes infected with a virus, so do nearby patrols. soon the nearby mining stations(as council informs) are under attack from unknown aliens . they are after materials, and they bring it all to the research facility. player participates in some heroic stand-offs, then it all stops. Still reading? good :). instead aliens become defensive, and a probe captured an image of a construction site. guards are now a mix of alien and infected, and are too strong for anyone, as they use  weapons which are unknown. Then the player is tasked to oversee construction of a forward base, with materials from the mines.  and waves of attacks by infected have to be repelled, while constructed. each wave repelled gives +15% to completion, every infected that survives to next wave takes down 4%. the waves will increase in quantity, as building progresses.  now player gets a new mission- investigate an unknown ship. next it will be just like derelict mother ship in my other post. the away team brings back data and samples of alien material and tech. player now needs to try out the ensuing weapon/armour upgrades on live aliens. that is when he gets a call about aliens attacking  a planet. he comes in time, attract attention of aliens, so that they deal with him. first fleets r dead, but  now comes the heavy nexus command. attacking it will be like- instead of fleets, there will be names of systems, e.g.

plasma turret, numbers 1000 attack/hp whatever. well, u get the point. first will come armour systems, last ones will be guns. (contd.)


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: AFB on March 21, 2008, 08:21:42 PM
contd. however, it attacks first like a station. affer all is "destroyed" like a large hull remains. player will tow it back, and attempt to restore it. this will involve some missions on raiding alien convoys for resources. then the player effectively gets a very big ship, which is sentinent and intelligent. (for campaign only,and only controlled in last mission)so then he is to rally more ships from other stations to help,and showdown begins :). player must go and destroy the infected research facility. it turns out, that aliens were constructing a portal to our galaxy, and the station now acts as a beacon. player now has to destroy the station, while keeping  an eye out for alien waves. station also takes damage in %, and waves repair it. ok, its all done, and then player is being confronted mentally by alien leader. he sais stuff like, destroy portal and we  will find another way into ur galaxy. and that he still has billions human captives which will be mutated into more alien soldiers. so player decides to go into the portal and finish them off once and for all. alien leader is in fact, a biological size of a station, only so tough, that it can destroy a planet with its blast. it tries to destroy player, but sentinent ship sacrifices itself to save him. now player must take out the gun before it reloads. it will be alike fighting the nexus, only now there will also be enemy waves, and attacks can only be made when there are none left. for a bonus, player will also be called to destroy "purgatories" or mutators, ships that infect/mutate captives.they will only be out for a small period of time. so, once player takes out the gun (which will be fortified harder than scorpion's backide), it will cause an overload in leaders organism resulting in a massive blast, destroying all . player escapes through the portal which is destroyed seconds later by the blast. the end, he is a hero :)

so,what do you make of this? and btw, i was thinking that there should be a button with a quick explanation if player gets stuck.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 21, 2008, 10:39:13 PM
Since Sir Emi needs to get paid for his work, as I had mentioned before, I think that a way must be made to balance donations versus time so that those who can cannot afford the cash but can afford the time can pound away but those can afford to donate (maybe say $10 to $20 per month) can also do so and be pretty much be even with those that do not donate.

Another idea that has been mentioned to me that may be unpopular with a lot of the players is getting rid of alts, which I actually think has some merits.  Most other MMORPG games severely limit the use of alts (by identifying accounts from the same IP address) and I think that this must also be given serious consideration here as their use is often abused by some of the players who know how to do so.

Also, if Sir Emi does let us do a test server, it would be nice to have my ships there so that I don't have to start from scratch  :)


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: davey boy on March 22, 2008, 12:12:57 PM
ars i dont no when you last played but emi has severly cut the turns you get a few rds ago


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: drakken on March 22, 2008, 12:17:15 PM
alts suck major, i know a certian someone who used 14 alts to vote and extend to boost one of his accounts in start of round, he stopped when he told me he did it because i said i would report him if he didnt, but that was a few rounds ago and who knows if he or others do it now. but then again, i have three brothers, 2 of them played this game with me for a round, so if you went to limiting accounts by ip then there would have to be exceptions for cases like that where family's play together. the time the game takes to contend with the top ten sucks, reason why i play pve server now i only play on it for 30 min a day and im in second atm,


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 22, 2008, 01:00:05 PM
I also share an IP address sometime which is why I didn't advocate an outright ban, but some games limit the ability to assist others on the same IP address, which would be one alternative. Anyway, the example that you used could easily be used to abuse other players or protect your main to help it grow.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: ars68 on March 22, 2008, 01:48:39 PM
---alts:
account is tied to IP address
-not allowed to attack, board, or otherwise directly influence another account with same IP address

problem solved


---storyline:
-setup special systems throughout the galaxy that can only be found either if your E lvl is high enough, or you advance far enough in story.  when you travel to these places the AI (yes, same one for tutorial) can pop up giving you what's going on, with the different options presented to you through the mission encounters

example:
jump to storyline  system, AI comes up saying that a station is under attack by reavers
-in system there is a station, and a reaver encounter or 3.  you win by finishing off the reaver encounters and possibly delivering x credits and resources to station.
-reavers in system X destroyed,  it brings up system Y in galaxy map, with a tip and/or message with coordinates (or perhaps the station tells you to check on the next one...)



-----edit:
btw, before  going on about how to improve SO, perhaps 1st you should see what's good about it?
my favorite part is the fact that you get to completely design your own ships, and would like to see it go further with able to do graphical things with them (kinda like the pic of the ships in view/edit room)


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 22, 2008, 02:11:48 PM
I believe that I've posted my likes in other threads but the two main things was the thrill of battling and the challenge of mastering ship designing, although for a nubie, the standard stuff given out to make a ship with is very misleading, although I can't say that what I liked may not be what attacts other maybe more casual gamers.  I think that ship designing is difficult enough even if you know what you're doing, that certain equipment (such as shields and computers)  should be pre-made and the formula given to make the other equipment and then your main challenge will be putting the equipment together to make the best ships instead of spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to do.

Unfortunately, I spent a small fortune donating to battle, which wasn't sustainable. After that, tried to spend the time to earn creds to support the battling, but that wasn't sustainable either. Eventually had to just cut back on the battling, which left me with only the final reason left to keep coming back, the friends that I had made in the game, but I find that every day there are less of them and when they are gone, I will probably be too.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: BadGuy on March 22, 2008, 06:00:27 PM
The thoughts of someone who wants to remain anonymous.
===========================================================

There have been several "improvements" lately that actually give the advantage to those that save up their turns and use them to buy tech and then use very few turns to take away in minutes what the pounders spend weeks accumulating.

The second cardinal rule this game violates is that you can lose everything if you miss a day or two playing.

The next biggest problem, which is somewhat unusual, is that Sir Emi keeps introducing changes mid round without making the users aware of them (at least the ones that don't care to read the forums every day) and the few who find out about them first have a overwhelming advantage. And a lot of the changes are unbalanced to begin with. (Exploration last round, warp disruptors this round.) Any change that forces players to play in a specific fashion, will alienate those who don't want to play in that fashion. In the case of warp disruptors, the only way to stay alive is to convert to using 90% of your turns on an endless arms race to match your stablizers to the attacker's disruptors. I had my entire fleet one shooted by guys 10x - 20x times my power in a week because their disruptor tech was so high they had a 100% chance of hitting even with huge multiples of the target FP. That totally flew in the face of the obvious intention of the always in place limits to the range of people you could attack.

The voting system has issues too. Nobody wastes time voting after the first couple of weeks. And that is the one thing any game has that gets the users to help attract new users. I'm to the point I won't click the mouse once on anything that makes less than $1b. And Sir Emi wants us to click 30 - 40 times to make $250m? The voting should pay the same as the reward for the max size mission the player can fly.

And there are tons of minor irritations. Like needing to mouse over the mission bonuses to see what it is. While a great improvement over actually needing to click it, it's still a PITA to even have to mouseover. It should just say what the reward is and let them mouse over for the popup if they want details (like what the market value is). Some of the mission descriptions are novel length, so it's not like putting two or three extra words in them would do any harm.

Then there are things like selling items taking hours. Every category should have a control that let's you sell everything below a specified level.

Same with rebuilding bases/mines. I have three blown bases right now that I haven't bothered to rebuild because with five or six things at level 10+, it takes 100+ mouse clicks to rebuild one.

What it all comes down to is poorly thought out ergonomics. Nothing wrong with most of the features conceptually, just the interfaces to them being poorly designed. Most gamers game to relieve tedium, not increase it.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: zephyrblade on March 23, 2008, 04:58:19 AM
---alts:
account is tied to IP address
-not allowed to attack, board, or otherwise directly influence another account with same IP address

problem solved
Nope, you can change your IP easy.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Prophet 01 on March 23, 2008, 05:49:23 AM
I've spent awhile thinking about this, and here's some of my thoughts:

Improve Alliances to make the game more social,(if the players choose to be.)
        Create an alliance 'Bank' where the leader can set a tax that is subtracted from all members.  for example, 2% of creds and workers won from missions/encounters are placed into an alliance account and can be distributed by the leader.  Modify the ship cloning so you can set ships to private, public, or alliance.  create an alliance title system that would allow the leader to designate players as ranking members.  create a set of special missions that could be "team play" for a group of players to take part in together. 

Make starting out easier for new players.
        Create a 'catalogue' of sorts with premade ships for new players to purchase rather than the misleading components that they get now.  The catalogue could have basic designs for ships for the entire round.  I like the idea of a tutorial to guide you through your first mission and also have an faq for beginners perhaps even a printable version.

Find a balance between grinding missions to stay competitive and using all your turns in 30 minutes.
         This is probably the most difficult.  The die hards want to play the game 24/7 and the casual gamer wants to play 15 mins-1hr but how to keep them competitive?  This would take extensive testing but if you reduce the turns drastically, say 1-5 turns per HOUR.  Eliminate turn costs from research and mining, keep the turn costs for building stations and planets and just have encounters cost turns.  Keep the missions but their rewards would be experience and if you are a Gold Member you get special items (eliminate the ability to sell them but they make doing encounters easier)  This would obviously require tweaking but provides a balance between those that can spend HOURS each and every day online and those that can't. (Hopefully)

Create more incentives to having a Gold Membership.
         Cloning ships, Royalties, Discounts.  Keep everything that Gold members get, and add some more.  Not to be too overpowering but to add an extra incentive.  Perhaps some special missions or secret ship components.  In most cases these are your players that have more time to spend online, they need stuff to do.  It dosn't have to have huge rewards, just fun.

Create more graphics and eliminate the mind-numbing text.
          This is the complaint i get from most new players.  They want to SEE their ships, not just the mathematical vomit that their ships are made of.  It dosn't have to be animated in full 3D with textures and explosions and trillions of marines floating through open space during each and every combat, maybe just a "Fleet view" of the armada.  Make the missions more interactive and add some strategy.  Allow players to choose a formation.  Attack Flank, right/left, focus on largest/smallest, all-out attack, defensive attack.  Each formation would have certain bonuses/penalties versus specific formations.  make missions 3-5 steps.  1/Long range sensors indicate enemies appoaching, do you attack, retreat or scan the ships?  scans tell you the number of ships and their FP.  attack or retreat?  choose formation and attack.  You have 3 tries or whatever.  I dunno, just throwing ideas out now!

Just a few ideas.  I've got tons more but no time.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Spayed on March 23, 2008, 08:27:34 AM
proph the alliance idea is great, not sure on the others tho


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 23, 2008, 10:16:21 AM
team bank is a great idea, but what about for wars server? u cant just have a segment bank, although that would help smaller players a lot.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: waylain16 on March 23, 2008, 06:13:51 PM
The bank idea would go a long way to help out smaller players and/or support more pvp actions and more excitement and bring life and war back to SO.

I have heard rumors of great wars that used to go on, but i havnt seen or participated in a good war since i have been here. And that is a year now.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 23, 2008, 07:17:07 PM
i havent seen a good war either. and i tried waging one... the oponents just dropped their power and hid. few attacks were made


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: lostedchylde on March 23, 2008, 08:25:49 PM
SO is text based that means people like me with dialup can actually play it, if you start putting up interactive graphics me and my ilk are screwed. its not like theres some shortage of graphic video games. SO stands out as the most original and challenging and different of text based games. if you make this game graphic you'll be playing eve online!

                                                                     :spider2:


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: deezee66 on March 23, 2008, 10:31:24 PM
Kudos to BadGuy he got everyone talking, i do hope a classic version is brought back i enjoyed that and as most people that got to know me found out that i cared more about alliance rank than personal rank but would love to see more inter alliance stuff going on that would rock and lets bring back alliance wars that was also fun cya


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: jessiedog on March 23, 2008, 10:32:59 PM
lostedchylde has a point about graphics. i think the story line will have that problem tho

dz, if u want a war, start 1 !!!

or come to wars server, were at a bit of a standstill but it will start back after everyone's planet tech is higher


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: deezee66 on March 23, 2008, 11:03:00 PM
Actually there really isnt anyone to have a real war with at the present time and i have never liked the war server but at the present time i'm not even playing except on my other game i just check in every couple of weeks to see if anything has changed


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Pirates on March 23, 2008, 11:18:50 PM
I agree with all of Prophet's suggestions.

In order to correct some of the commented upon problems and implement some of the new ideas,
I would suggest the following.

Recombine the three servers. All styles of play will be accommodated in a single game.
(Multiple servers only further fractionalize an already too small user base and lessen interaction
between the current groups because most people now play in one of the other but not both.)

Expand the gal map to a 3 x 3 grid with the current map as the center.

Each of the nine maps would represent a galaxy and have a unique map. There would be a 1,000 turn cost to warping between galaxies.

It is an on-going saga and never ends (ala WARS) but monthly winners based on top ten alliances/
individual scores. No more D-Days (only the strong love them, which means 90% of players hate them)
and no tediously slow restarts. No more maxing of cash. When an individual player hits max cash,
he just gets +1 in another counter and resets to 50% of current cash on hand or in stash. If she runs
out and has a positive value in the max counter, decrement the counter and resupply with 50% of
max to the active. The only adjustment to ships is that defense can only be 10% of HP, so even maxed
ships (which continue to max at the other current values) can be killed by other maxed ships,
if there are enough attackers.

Put the central (current)  galaxy under council protection and only allow flying missions and encounters in it.
No building bases, system fleets, planets or PvP attacks in the central region. This would give
noobs or low involvement players a safe haven where they could learn the game, build their skills, power
and knowledge and give the grinders a place to grind, but with very little chance of finishing a round
ahead of the more daring and successful players/alliances who did their business in the uncontrolled gals.
(Maybe allow one base/system fleet per player in the protected galaxy, to experiment/ become familiar with.)

In the outer, unprotected regions, double mission/encounter rewards, base production/earnings
and allow all advanced features.  (Another way to look at this is gold bonuses would only become
available in the unprotected galaxies, even for gold players who chose to park in the neutral gal.)

Allow each alliance to claim one star system for the alliance and make it so all member's ships, system fleets
and bases at their system present a joint defense against attacks, so that every defender attacks in
turn until all attackers have been beaten or all have had a battle. If more than half defending
ships are eliminated, the attackers take control of the system and inherit any bases and planets there
and any remaining defending ships are scattered to the wind, each fleet warping to a random place.

When an alliance has built bases at every star in a quadrant, they control the quad and their fleets
will automatically move to defend any planet in the quad. But system fleets and bases would, naturally,
be bound to the planet they were constructed at.  Bases/Mines can be built by any member of the team
at the planets/quad that is controlled by the team. Of course, this will mine them out more quickly, but
no one bothers with mining once they have high levels of replication skills anyway.)

If you randomly hop into an alliance's home system/quad and there are more than double your FP
in combined defenses, you bug out, back to the starting point of the hop, with a report that you
have evaded X Allaince's Home fleet. (The odds of this happening often are low because it's going
to be a big universe and the locations of allaince home ports will become public information before
long.)

This would encourage teamwork because it would take multiple, large, attacking fleets to take over
a claimed system. And would give people a place in the battle galaxies a semi safe place to park.
For instance, if ten attackers attack 20 defenders, they will each fight two defender's bases/fleets. If one attacks,
he would fight 20 times. If 20 attack ten, each defender would fight two. With the matchings being
strongest attacker vs strongest remaining defender. So in a ten attacks 20 situation, #1 attacker would
fight #1 and #11 defender.)  And would increase the intensity and complexity of battles to a level far
more interesting than single PvP's are.  And it would encourage all players to get into an alliance
because surviving very long in the eight non protected gals would not be very likely for solo players.

And add a new mission type, Scout System, that gives FP of combined system fleets, number of bases,
number and FP of defenders (but not their specific ships.) System probes can be performed remotely,
at the cost of ten turns per probe in gal and 100 turns out of gal.

At unclaimed systems, anyone can attack anyone they find there, but with the following
modifications to the battle rules.

1. Specific mission objective: marines, workers, credits, segments, minerals.

2. When players are of equal (within 10%) TP (not FP) the max booty is 10% of the goal resources.

3. When the players differ in size, the max booty is adjusted up or down by a scaling factor. Perhaps
something along the lines of +/- 1% for every 10% difference in TP, with a max of +100% (20% of total
available on target) and min of 1%.

4. No more remote attacks. You can only attack people in the current system.

5. Three levels of alliance relations, Allies, Neutral, War, with all defaulting to neutral until changed.

6. Can not attack ally fleets. Always automatically attack enemy fleets within a settable percentage of FP
or automatically warp away from any that exceed your FP by the set amount to a point somewhere in the
current region. Which could leave you far from your alliance system and unable to return immediately.)
Non allied players (those not in alliances) are always neutral. No auto attacks, but you can always attack
manually if desired or set up your to automatically attack neutrals. This works in both directions, no
matter if you were sitting at the planet when they arrived or are the one doing the moving.

7. All warps use the number of distance/turns you warp. Including warping away from retalliations.
Warps are never further than 50% of available turns. When you run out of turns or there is no system
within 50% of your turns left, you can't warp away. Meaning if someone with a retal has more turns than
you do and is willing to burn them until you run out, you get hit. And the attacker will be able to tell when
the defender is running low by seeing the hops to the new location getting shorter. Or, alternatively,
players with retals can also warp in pursuit and not burn turns. Just so both sides are the same price.
Or something in between, say like warping costs 10% of the distance moved.

8. Warp disruptors/stabilizers are capped at 50% (level 25) to prevent those who are willing to spend
all their turns on techs can not gain an overwhelming advantage and force everyone else into a
never ending arms race of using turns on techs. And the formula for stabilizer/disruptor effectiveness is

Warp Chance - (WC * (stabil - disrupt))

Which means, even at max disrupt against no stabil, the most you could increase your odds would be
50% of the initial odds. So, if you were 10x more powerful and had a 10% chance, the max you could
have is 15%. Since your reward for that attack would only be 1% anyway, there would be no big incentive
to attack much weaker players. You take a shot and if they warp, they're gone, but you did cost them
a bunch of turns. Which means weaker players could sustain dozens of attacks without losing significant
percentages of their resources, but could lose a lot of turns and wind up far from home or safe port.

9. The winner of a battle gets scrap recovery from all ships, their own and enemy's, destroyed in battle.
50% of ships cost and 50% of marines. Surplus marines are held in reserve in a separate group on
the mothership, just like workers are on the secret base or mins are on the mothership. When you
add marines to new ships, they are first drawn from the available pool until exhausted and you have
to spend credits hiring more. You can hire reserves and resupplying marines after battle is only done
from your ready reserves. When you scrap a ship, 100% of its marines go into the reserves. (There
are naturally material recycling losses, but marines can just disembark and odds are not many of them
will not fall the gangplank. And, I would like to be able to control how much of my cash on hand
can be used up on marines before I am willing just to sacrifice my ships and percentage of targeted
item rather than continue to resupply marines.)

10. As long as a player, defender or attacker, has at least one surviving ship to report in,  they get
a full battle report. Otherwise, simply a statement their fleet was wiped out in a battle at x location.

11. Motherships always warp away if their fleet is entirely destroyed in a system battle, even if their
side prevails in the overall battle. In PvP battles, the Mship warps away after losing a battle and being
plundered.

12. No more nebs. If you need to be AFK for an extended period, you park in the neutral zone.

13. Auto resupply of fleets after losing battles, just like resupplying marines, if that option is turned on
by the player and up to the percentage of mothership cash selected.

As weaker, protected area players got stronger/bolder, they would begin making border raids into the
wild regions, meaning to retreat back into the safe zone after flying some high value missions. But, with
auto attacks, if they happened to run  into more powerful non allied fleets, they would get warped deeper
into the region. Perhaps running into more hostile fleets and burning more hours and risking running out of
turns deep into hostile territory. And the stronger players/alliances would most likely tend to congregate
near the borders of the protected zone, making cross border raids a risky venture for weaker players.

The whole crux of this is the auto battles in the unprotected regions. You're playing whether you
are logged in or not. You will get battle reports and may have gained or lost things while you were
not logged in, but the odds of being seriously damaged would be fairly small. There would be far more
battles, but the loses to individual player's wealth would not be greatly diminished, even if they had
lost several battles since last logging in. You gain stuff (creds, mins, marines, from successfully defending
against attacks) so you may just as well have improved your standings as lost stuff while you were AFK.

While the changes would be extensive, a lot of the current issues would be addressed and the game
would be more varied and active, without forcing anyone to adopt a certain style of play. And it would
add a lot more random events. Any time you hop to a new system (without scanning it first)
you risk running into a more powerful enemy fleet and getting warped far away. Perhaps making it
impossible to quickly return to your alliance system, leaving both yourself and your alliance less well
protected. Any time you do a coordinated team attack on an enemy alliance system/quad, you leave
your own team's system quad undefended (or less well defended) and may end up all scattered all
over the universe and a long time before you could regroup to defend. Which adds new considerations
for the players to make as to how many of their turns need be held in reserve to provide warping and
returning to base after forced warps capability.

Now, I know a lot of the present day killers are going to say that this will reduce their chances of
PvP battle and force them so spend more time playing. Which will most likely be true in the short run.
But the main objectives are to increase the retention of new players and to add more variety and
randomness to the game. If successful, over time, there really will be far more players and the
chances of finding targets in the unprotected gals will increase. And, frankly, people who spend a
lot of time playing, should do better than insiders who know all the tricks and can currently beat
the pants off everyone while only playing a very limited amount of actual time. Those players do
deserve to do well, but not to the point of dominating the game and driving away newcomers.
And it will introduce a whole new aspect of team battles that can be had for the taking at any time
once an allied system/quad was located. The only way to control multiple quads would be to take
other alliances systems. The losers would simply regroup and rebuild somehwhere else. But the winners
would be forced to split their player fleets between the controlled quads and holding many would
reduce the chances of defending all and the shoe would soon be on the other foot. Or they would
be forced into making major investments in system fleets/base tech to attempt to hold them without
a lot of player fleets being present.

And it provides for all styles of play, no PvP, wars and SO on one combined system, rebuilding
and maintaining contact and cohesion within the entire user community. And, to further encourage
that, add a newspaper where everyone can read reports about major events (large team battles.)
And allow an alliance an extra ten members for every quad they control.

And of course there are many possible variations within the multi galaxy framework.
Perhaps the entry point to a galaxy is a council controlled base where you  can
safely warp in and do system scans from, so that your 1,000 turns aren't wasted or result in
instant annihilation or losing many more turns warping deep into the gal and away from the ext, and
weaker players could get in some high value missions without too much risk, at the cost of
spending ten extra turns for every planet visited for system scouting, whereas stronger players
can just fly them without scouting and let the chips fall where they may.

Finally, I do not claim any of this is deeply or well thought out and it is only offered as a banquet
of ideas for purposes of discussion.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: Prophet 01 on March 24, 2008, 01:09:22 AM
Pirates touched on a number of my ideas that i did not post.  For the sake of discussion here is a list of those other ideas.

Keep the single galaxy but place 5-10 Coucil Planets where no attacks occur no missions spawn and players are completely safe when docked.  At these planets the Market would be accesible rather than from the main screen.  Each planet would only offer the basic resources and a different selection of the more expensive items.  You would have to buy from one and transport them to another planet where demand was high.  Put the asteroid resources into circulation as trade goods as well.  Then players don't HAVE to mine if they want to build and miners dont have to build if they just want creds.  Make mining a Gold Bonus.  Planets would also offer workers/slaves, bounty contracts, commander intel, Alliance advertisements, and Alliance missions.  These Game concepts could then be removed from the game console to streamline it and make it more user friendly.  Of course having a Gold membership would give you the option of doing some of these remotely.  The alien inursions could occur at these planets, providing a story/plot.  New content could be an arena to allow PvP battles using 0 turns and not actually destroying the players ships.  Each commander would pay an entry fee (say the FP of their ships in creds)  The winner gets the pot.  This would give players something to do when out of turns without providing a gigantic advantage.
Alliances could then build their own planets and research/buy their own structures, as the council planets.  The Alliance marketplace could generate royalties for the Alliance bank, A shipyard to allow non-alliance players Alliance specific ships, etc.

Create a character class system to allow players to differentiate themselves.  Something like Admirals can send more fleets into battle or provide bonuses to their ships.  Increasing hp, attack etc costs less cp for them.  Traders can mine asteroids better than others.  They get discounts on the turns + creds needed to mine, their warehouse hold more etc.  Bounty hunters are PvP specialists, They hold more marines, get a bonus when filling a contract hit, get more salavage, etc.  This provides a nearly endless opportunity to expand the game as more classes can be introduced and game play can be geared towards a players particular preference of game style.  Alliances could be based on these classes or carry a diverse team, thereby creating more PvP possibly.  2 Bounty hunter alliances could declare war on eachother.  Also, Alliance missions would require multiple players to complete and different specialists. ie, the group must go to a planet and clear the 5-20 fleets of reavers (or whatever), collect millions of units of carbon(or something) then deliver it to another planet but must defeat a Boss fleet.  There could also be class specific missions that have only experience rewards and require no turns to give players with more play time something to do when out of turns (like me right now, hence the essay)

Pirates had alot of good ideas and we need more players giving their opinions to make SO the best it can be.  The ideas here are mine and I think they are good but this might not be what the majority wants and that's who were looking to please so bring on the comments!


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: ars68 on March 24, 2008, 01:54:57 PM
heh, I know, I actually deal with people all day long now that there IP addresses change every 24 hours... even without them doing anything.  however there is other ways of doing it, that are effective.

anyway, on to suggestions:
-make an alliance able to support fully (within reason)
while some may think this will overpower lower people... your probably right.  until the game gets reset via DDay.  then it will actually give everyone a decent chance, including new people. 

-make a set (small) bonus to players that have been here longer.  for each DDay, they get 1, or 2% bonus to something.  non top ten get double (top ten get there own credit rewards... lucky  :14: ).  gold get double once more.  so a gold person in top ten gets 1*2*2 or 4% bonus for being so awesome, non top ten get 8%, helping them catch up.  however, then you cap it at say, 10-25%.  this gives people an incentive for staying a long time, however not so much that people will never catch up. 

-and for the love of all that is good, keep the missions easy!  people want to have a challenge going against others, not the computer  :4:  except for PvE... I suppose I understand the concept there, but still, making missions hard to do mean once you get knocked down, it's that much harder to get back up.

-make minimum for encounters in galaxy 3-5 mil (just now noticing this) even between voting, and all this, I'm still not ready to do the all important encounters.  and if I'm having this much trouble in SO PVE, I hat eto see what new people go through.

-set the missions back to % of total fp... the E-missions and encounters are already awesome at what you have the mothership missions doing...  and personally I thought mothership missions based of your power was ingenous.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: lostedchylde on March 24, 2008, 05:15:06 PM
here's an idea to scramble your strategy - make scouting enemy with little scoutship impossible.

xxxxxxx(#00000)'s fleet and mothership were huge.
Your fighters knew they would face certain death and turned back.

make it so you have to use fleet(s) with at least 25% of enemies power to be able to attack.



Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: drakken on March 24, 2008, 09:28:24 PM
Quote
-set the missions back to % of total fp... the E-missions and encounters are already awesome at what you have the mothership missions doing...  and personally I thought mothership missions based of your power was ingenous.

ars68, finally someone agrees with me that mothership missions in their current state suck and should be returned to the way they were..they were changed the round after bigbroni maxed out first....to try and stop people from maxing...which didnt work at all...changing them back would increase donations, we would have a way to grow without grinding and relying on luck in the galaxy....a big help to those of us who dont have hours to play. ive only been suggesting this since they were changed, i doubt E will listen now.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: waylain16 on March 24, 2008, 09:52:38 PM
well if they scaled back due to maxing then it wouldnt make a difference to bring them back to thier orginal power beings how there is so much other stuff to get people maxed now


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: SirEmi on March 25, 2008, 03:49:54 AM
The Interactive Mission Creator is working now:

If you want to create some interactive missions you can use it here.
We need players with a lot of imagination to create different evolving scenarios.

A mission can have more battles in it to progress to a higher reward or upgrade the reward (from credits to items for example).
A mission can contain more reward types, but once a reward is given the mission ends.
You can have endless possibilities and steps in the mission.
Please try to link the steps to each other in a storyline to make the mission better and easy to understand.
Please try to keep it simple and interesting...

http://www.spaceo.net/mission/

P.S.: Please preview your missions and try to make them as easy to understand as possible. Only the best missions will make it into the game. Thank you.

Project Details if you don't know how to make it work:
http://forum.spaceo.net/index.php/topic,3794.0.html

P.P.S.: If your mission is included into the game, you will get a prize, depending on the length and greatness of the mission.


Title: Re: Ideas to revive SO?
Post by: zephyrblade on March 25, 2008, 04:43:59 AM
SO is text based that means people like me with dialup can actually play it, if you start putting up interactive graphics me and my ilk are screwed. its not like theres some shortage of graphic video games. SO stands out as the most original and challenging and different of text based games. if you make this game graphic you'll be playing eve online!

                                                                     :spider2:
Why not have an option in the account room to turn on graphics?
I only changed last week from Dial-up to ADSL2+ Broadband, and on dial-up I still played many graphical games. It wouldn't have to be a full graphical game or anything, even just a small range of animated gifs or something in battle would liven it up a bit. A lot of people who join just say "CRAP game, can't even see the ships", Then they go and play all of those graphic video games you speak of, which you have to admit, have an easier time being more successful than text-based games. Again, It could just be turned on/off from the account room by those who don't like it. Just one of my two cents.  :P
A ramped up (optional) menu skin couldn't go astray either..


Title: Re: New Ideas for SO?
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