Planet Wars Prototype: Limited Force
I devise a Planet Wars implementation based on Points for various
ingame statistics(Ratio Based).
The goal being to keep players interested in playing games past the point where they are slowly losing, to the point where they can no longer really kill any enemies. Also at the same time creating a reason not just to "win" every battle, but to be the most effective player in the battle.
I don't like people resigning just because they are likely not to win. This really bugs me because I'm not JUST playing to win, I'm also playing to play, and ending the game before I'm done is just bullshit.
I want people to resign when they no longer have any means of further hurting the enemy, or are so overwhelming outclassed by enemy players that no one wants to continue. I want to see some scorched earth like play, where people are playing losing games just to bleed the enemy to death.
I understand how some people don't like this type of play, and you can just go suckit! Playing just to win is boring, mind as well go play something faster and simpler like call of duty. I want to enjoy the experience of playing the entire battle.
Account Influence
To increase the meaning of being an effective player, Have Influence
Ranks based on effective playing.
Such as someone who maintains top percentile of Damage Dealt / Metal Used. + 25
And a positive Damage Dealt/Damage Received + 25
And a Most avg Damage Dealt/Avg Game Times + 25
+2% influence for avg 14 games this week. with progressively less % gains for more avg games per week/time frame. Call it the Battle Experience Modifier
Have these statistics possibly fade over time, so the person needs to maintain these stats, not just gain them and keep them forever, so people with 1000 games cannot throw a single game and not care.
This means throwing games away, or playing badly will negatively effect
your influence for your faction(In every game you play). Give Highly influential players cool Titles/flashy or custom non game changing items like your colored laser beams. Something that distinguishes them in-game to other people. People like having flashy/cool meaningless crap that distinguishes them from the rest of the crowd.
So you see godde play a battle as an attacker, and the defenders do not gain as large a morale boost for inflicting damage on their enemy.
Godde is Rank Galactic Emperor 250 Influence : Laser Beam Color Black
-10% Morale Bleeding +10% Morale Damage
Klube is Rank District General 75 Influence : Laser Beam Color Blue
-2.5% Morale Bleeding +2.5% Morale Damage
Sakoth is Rank Boonies Commander 0 Influence : Laser Beam Color Pink
Give Planets Multiple Maps based on Defensive Hardpoints on the planet.
Give Factions a Select Number of "Fleets" or "Armies" each with certain
Metal Storage, Build Power, Morale. Games Played Will decrease Metal and
Build Power based on Ratio's of the teams such as some ratio of Metal
Used and Damage taken effects Metal and build Power loss. Whereas Damage
Dealt and taken effects Morale gains/losses.
Morale ratio effects the rate at which hardpoints are recaptured by the defenders(without winning games). All planets tend towards single ownership. This can be based on per turn, or by battle, each battle progressing the time before the point becomes recaptured by the enemy.
The US arguably lost the Vietnam War even though they inflicted horrendous casualties on the Vietnamese AND won pretty much every single battle.
Killing lots of attackers influences the residents of the planet to "rebel" and side with the defenders again. Losing Defenders may lessen the influence gain, but just the act of killing the enemy will always gain more influence to retake points.
I want to see people to continue playing games they may lose and turn their intention to killing as many enemy as possible/doing as much damage.
I've had resigns where I still had plenty of buildpower and like 30 unit army, AND they still had enough left to mount a sizable defense to kill units. I don't want to see this.
Also, highly influential players will have incentive to jump into games that may be lost just to apply their bonuses to bleeding enemies morale/metal/buildpoints. Or to try and bleed the enemy out before they can conquer a planet, since a fleet/army with no metal/BP/Morale cannot conquer anything.
I would also say, the more battles played per timeframe/the more income the following timeframe to allow more battles.
You could also have a Mercenary Fund where battles can be played past the fleet/army running out of resources, the fund being "owed" in the future and the effects for gaining/losing planet influence being lessened considerably.(Games have less meaning) This mercenary fund could also be applied to when players play on teams not their own, they gain their faction metal, and increase their own Influence. Also the more games they play, the more battle experience they gain to help their faction.
Also, the extra effects of each players influence could stop if there is no resources to fund the battles, or if factions don't want to pay mercenaries.
Not Sure on specifics of everything, but I'm wondering if some system like this could lessen the effects of purposely lost games, people resigning early, people not playing due to clanstack, and clanstacking in general, and abusing alliances, or ungood/noobier players being excluded.
I kind of agree with some of the arguments I've seen on how current planetwars is and can be abused, and that it is likely an issue with how PW works fundamentally.
I want a system that provides incentive for playing more games, not a system that provides incentive to pick and choose if or when to play games. That type of system DOES NOT help a low population game like zero-k. Gotta get people playing more games not less. In current system there are times when you just don't play because you probably won't win. I want to see people playing to play, not just playing to win.
Winning is fun yes, and provides incentive enough to try and win if you can. But there needs to be incentive to keep playing even if you might lose, this is an RTS game, you can still have fun playing a losing war just by making it as difficult as possible for the enemy to win effectively, having high kill rates/efficiency. But people aren't going to do with without that extra reason PW could provide.
Maybe some type of system similar to this could work?