A comment on balance
Posted: 10 Apr 2014, 15:22
I have a suggestion about balance. I'm sure it has been mooted before so forgive me in advance if I am repeating something that has already been discussed ad nauseum.
One part of balance is ensuring that both teams are relatively even in their overall abilities. Obviously we already have tools that purport to achieve this - such as TS etc.
By contrast, my suggestion is towards dealing with imbalances between noobs and veterans. The community is not exactly welcoming to noobs and I can understand why they say it is dispiriting that they can get crushed very swiftly in multiple games and then end up finding a different game to play.
My suggestion would be to give genuinely new players a boost, such as increased m generation or speed of manufacture, relative to the default rules, to help them compete a bit more with veterans. I appreciate that the danger with this is that some players like to create new accounts from time to time and play via them. To counter that perhaps a noob would have to play a few games before the boost kicks in, so that some stats are available showing whether the noob is a genuine noob or a veteran in disguise. Also, it might be sensible, if the code allows it, for this boost to wear off as in-game time progresses because whilst I can it would add to fairness early on in a game, by the time one ends up with a decent sized T2 eco an early boost is not so much use and may become distorting in the new player's favour.
The other factor that may have to be taken into account is the new player "gifting" that boost to a veteran by, say, using it to build useful things like adv solar panels and then giving them to others.
Anyway, this is my suggestion.
One part of balance is ensuring that both teams are relatively even in their overall abilities. Obviously we already have tools that purport to achieve this - such as TS etc.
By contrast, my suggestion is towards dealing with imbalances between noobs and veterans. The community is not exactly welcoming to noobs and I can understand why they say it is dispiriting that they can get crushed very swiftly in multiple games and then end up finding a different game to play.
My suggestion would be to give genuinely new players a boost, such as increased m generation or speed of manufacture, relative to the default rules, to help them compete a bit more with veterans. I appreciate that the danger with this is that some players like to create new accounts from time to time and play via them. To counter that perhaps a noob would have to play a few games before the boost kicks in, so that some stats are available showing whether the noob is a genuine noob or a veteran in disguise. Also, it might be sensible, if the code allows it, for this boost to wear off as in-game time progresses because whilst I can it would add to fairness early on in a game, by the time one ends up with a decent sized T2 eco an early boost is not so much use and may become distorting in the new player's favour.
The other factor that may have to be taken into account is the new player "gifting" that boost to a veteran by, say, using it to build useful things like adv solar panels and then giving them to others.
Anyway, this is my suggestion.