Victory conditions for shorter games and more fun

from Sins Forums

I wager many gamers are put off by the length of typical Sins games, we get comments like "plays the speed of molasses". This hinders the multiplayer scene as well, because players perceive that games can drag on for hours and hours. IC should give us an option to make games shorter - and there are ways to do this so the boring parts are cropped out and the most fun parts remain.

One option is to shorten the game in the beginning. After all it's mostly the basic expansion stuff, and the vast majority of players will research the core technologies pretty soon anyway. It does not pit the skill of a player versus others in any major fashion. To fix this, IC could give options in the game setup to give everyone some extra planets, tech or resources in the start of the game. (We had an option in HW2 to give players extra RU.) Or we can get things like this from community-made scenario maps.

The other option is to shorten the game from the end. I find the late game tends to be uninteresting, when one side has lost its fleets and the other can press on freely, even if slowly and painfully. At this point most players seem to lose their morale and just quit the game.

As a solution to shorten the late game, I propose new victory conditions to be added, for example:

  1. The team achieves 80% of galactic culture
  2. The team achieves 80% of galactic economy (credits and other RU)
  3. The team achieves 80% of planets colonized
  4. The team achieves domination (100%, 1000pts, whatever -> Domination game mode)
  5. The team eliminates 75% of opposing players/has 75% of all players left in the game

There would be audible alarms when an enemy team reaches 60% and 70% in a given parameter. Pressing an F key would bring up a screen that lists each player's percentage (so you know whom to attack to fix it) as well as each team's total. Having victory conditions like this would actually bring about a more intense late game, when the winning team pushes over the threshold - instead the people in the losing team quitting the game one by one, resulting into a miserable trail-off.

What's really interesting is the middle part of the game, when both sides have fleets built up, some research has been done, and there are planets to fight over. This is the part that generally will decide the outcome of the game, when the results of one's strategic choices are seen, and definitely the part where the vast majority of tactical skill that matters is shown. In essence, this is the part of the game that is most balanced, most lively and consequently, most fun. IC should endeavor to make this part of the game dominate.

13,615 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

In the map files there seems to be a starting planet amount including type, location and upgrade level. Even in the random map file. I tried changing this with no luck.

 

Anyone else tried this?

 

Having 3 -4 planets at the start would significantly shorten the game time and increase the pace. It wont stop spammers, but at least it will give you the same amount of recourses to defend early

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

I completely agree.

When my brother and I play it's always a tough call to decide wether or not we have definitely "won" and can safely exit without missing out on a couple final epic battles with some hidden fleet.

A couple things would definitely help with that (and fit nicely into the next diplomacy xpac):

 - an obvious readout at the top showing resource income, fleet strength, and culture strength so we can eyeball progress - the galactic rumor mill ought to cover this sort of thing

 - the option to check off those extra win conditions based on that info.

 - make cultural domination directly useful to game speed as well: IE planets with very low allegience don't commit self-genicide, but instead become nuetral, than if the enemy culture remains stronger simply switch allegience whole hog.  Attacking a nuetral planet counts as HUGE propaganda against your culture and will make it switch nearly instantly (hey, they're trying to kill us, get help!)  If your cultural takeover is fast enough, you might even be able to stop them from scrapping all the buildings.

- make econimic domination directly useful to the game speed as well: let buying metal and crystal from the black market actually reduce the output of your enemies refineries in some way that scales appropriately based on number and allegience of refineries (after all, it does represent resources being sold on the sly - and improve trade among allies and bonus for extra trade posts - thus when your team owns 3/4 of the trade outposts your team is getting 3/4 squared trade income, while your foe is only getting 1/4 squared.

 - the ability to give teammates ships and planets (thus keeping "eliminated" PLAYERS in the game and simplifying combined fleets, without making it slower) although some things would need to be polished (specifically, all buildings at planets you own need to use your logistic and tactical slots)

 

As for the other end of faster games - a faster start - I started one of the small maps - I think point blank and it gave me a bunch of frigates right off the bat.

So clearly starting fleets and additional planets are possible, and definitely would help game kickoff.

The only question would be which caps?  Or just start with cap factories.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

What Shawn suggests could be quite nice mechanics, like them. Maybe some research items for galactic espionage, so you get more reliable and more accurate information about where the other team is going? Trader wars, corruption... keep the ideas coming, they could use a few for the coming expansions! :)

Of course, there are game balance issues. If you give the experienced players more ways to dominate the weaker ones, even the middle games will be over faster! But I would give the final call to the players entering the game: Big maps, and especially those that are prone to stalemates, need multiple ways to achieve victory, so a smart team can pursue a different avenue when they see a direct victory is not likely. If you want a longer game, you will disable some victory conditions or could make them more strict.

Actually if you have suggestions for maps, you can submit them in this thread: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/334437


Mapmaking is easy and straightforward with Sins, unless you want to do a lot of playtesting, so I'm planning to put some coins where my mouth is and I could really use a few ideas/opinions on what to include in those maps.

Some suggestions could be easy for the modding community to implement, so remember that forum... Or check this thread:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/334476