Astyanax

For extremely uneven flag games of size X or more, offer increasing rewards (dependent on unevenness of teams and duration of unevenness) to hop to the smaller team, then take the some percentage of the rewarded money out of the jackpot. Nothing like someone willing to sell out their team for a quick buck to even things up. I'm sure the motivation to milk games drop once the certainty of a large jackpot is put into doubt, especially since the incentives to hop to the smaller team get larger over time.

Another implementation might be for players to donate towards additional temporary HS features, such as +1 priv size for a week, global x1.5 kill money for a week, or 15% less experience loss when gifting for 1 week. Little things that players already want that might be a slightly broken, except they can actually have them for a little while if they're willing to pay the price...

An idea for the next reset, to help with uses of money on the 1% side... Research and development After a reset, the selection of items and equipment would be modest, but functional. Players can donate money and experience to R&D to hasten introduction of new types of items. Donations may be general (split evenly among all item types [e.g., guns, bombs, addons, etc.]) or targeted (for a premium, donors may select a class of equipment [e.g., bombs] to support. After donations reach an unstated(?) threshold, the item becomes available for purchase. Note that specific items can't be researched, only item types. The item that becomes available may not be exactly expected. For instance, highest available bomb is HE missile, but the next bomb researched could be equivalents for Tau, Smart, or some yellow prox bomb. Another example might be researching new ships... the next ship developed could either be a terrier, spider, or weasel, but there is no certainty. Donors may receive a % discount, possibly based on the amount donated... maybe a % discount of 0.25*[amount donated]/[total donations]

As a way to reduce equipment stagnation, why not implement the kill counter found in parasite/shell into other items? Some examples of the concept (pardon the unimaginative names): Parasitic equipment a pea shooter that morphs into lvl 2 gun after X kills a gimped SOP with 2 bombs that increases the number of bombs every X kills (to a preset maximum) a pathetic sublight that increases thrust/max speed every X deaths (to a preset maximum) armor that increases damage taken, but slowly improves its defensive capabilities when deaths and kills both pass X a certain addon that allows a ship to morph into ship 8 (unbuyable) after X kills If the idea is popular enough, items might have multiple upgrade options, and players could influence the "upgrade path" of an item by having different addons (that impart various penalties) equipped when the kill/death threshold is reached. For example, say a pea shooter might typically upgrade to a plasma gun after 1000 kills, but if the ship is equipped with a "speed" addon, the item would morph into a shredder. If the same ship was equipped with a sublight after 1000 kills, the engine's top speed might also increase (as opposed to the default balanced upgrade) Other addons might be "power", "capacity", or "mass" (to change the handling of a ship, upgrades might allow increased or decreased mass) Temporary effects This is the opposite of parasite/shell. After X kills/deaths, an item disappears or morphs into another item. For example, once shell or nano is achieved, the bonuses stay active only for X kills or deaths, after which the item morphs further and loses the bonus, but can be sold for even more money, or exchanged for a modest amount of experience. Or, the item might continue to morph into rarer forms with different temporary bonuses. "Overdrive mode": a weapon that goes into overdrive and increases rate of fire after 50 kills, but only lasts for 20 kills, after which the kill counter resets "Starburst mode": a state that is achieved every 10000 deaths for a particular mount, but allows a ship to release unlimited bursts for 5 seconds. In actuality, there are many, many alternate ways to implement this idea. Frankly, I'm not sure how the presence of so many kill/death counters might affect the game, but it's a fun idea to think about.

I haven't played in a while, but reading some recent posts, it looks like some of the same issues still exist. I was thinking about ways to tweak game balance and thought this one up. Karma device: Upon death, has a 5-25% chance (higher % with lower experience) to destroy your killer and gaining appropriate experience and money. However, it passively reduces your bounty to 0 and halves all earned experience and money. It sounds silly at first and could use some refining, but it has some merits (aside from the being recognizable by the 0 bounty): Centering Pros: Newbies will still die, but they can't be "farmed" quite as easily if they've bought this item. Buying this item reduces their earnings, so it's not a choice to be made lightly. Cons: More experienced players have to choose their targets more carefully (or accept the small risk of death), making bountying more difficult. Also, strays will cause a great deal more aggravation. Perhaps the item should be inactive in center? Basing Pros: Helps to prevent stagnation in games by causing some attrition, and somewhat reduces "stay in one spot and shoot/bomb until the enemy ragequits" since there's a small chance of death. Partly helps with unbalanced teams; the team that's dying more has the potential to make better use of karma devices. Of course, they're still dying more often. Cons: Could really wreck the usefulness attack fields (dunno if they're currently usable or not) if kills are credited to the fielder. Any other thoughts? Before people get too caught up in the unfairness of this item, I'd like to point out that although this item is designed to be a "the meek shall inherit the earth" type item, the person using it does take on some pretty hefty disadvantages, as well as using up a slot (addon, emitter?) that could be better filled otherwise.

Might not be a bad idea to make some bricks recharge (or maybe a certain mount?) like antideath does... maybe 1 per 10 minutes? Only ships that stay alive benefit from it. Imho, it'd give non-rushing ships something to do. On the other hand, it could be a problem when a team is trying to win a flag game, and defending players start using their bricks in succession...

Though only obliquely on topic, maybe make a beginner's mount that takes up 2 mount slots and prizes a free repel each life. In a way, it's similar to the design of ammoless guns/bombs: something is sacrificed to gain the ammoless trait. Instead of a reduced rate of fire, the beginner's mount would sacrifice an additional mount slot and a burst (compared to a defense mount) for a low price and the ammoless trait. For new players, this would aid survivability and not harm their income. However, as they advance in experience and earn more money, these not-so-new players might consider selling the beginner's mount to gain greater functionality (such as more repels and/or other items) from their mount slots. A repel would be a minor help to new players during centering, if only to buy a few extra seconds of life. Odds are that they will still end up dying, but there's a chance for them to run- to a teammate or for cover, perhaps. Currently, new players play a very passive role in basing, imo. A beginner's mount allows them to take a more active role and assist their team during basing, though it would make for a bit more repel-spam. On the other hand, there would still be less than before the reset since the beginner's mount takes up both mount slots, so it's only one repel per life. And that one repel could help against a rain of thors, though it's not enough by itself to render the tactic completely useless.

1.) Was it fun? I enjoyed it because it was a nice change of pace from pub, particularly because there was more changes in scenery- multiple bases to defend prevented the stagnation of pub basing, where the defending team just holes up while the attackers get slaughtered. I'm not saying that this is ALWAYS the case, but this is the main drawback of pub basing imo MOST of the time, though it seems better now than right after the reset. The rewards also added to my enjoyment; the current settings in pub seem austere compared to the last reset, so people are more concerned with making money than having fun (which leads to a lot of pretty lame behavior, imo). High rewards allowed people to feel like they weren't wasting time even if they were losing, which helped keep the game from ending with stacked/uneven teams. Still having a fast-paced game with an objective made it more interesting. 2.) Was it more fun than main arena flagging? Yes, mostly because it's novel (to me). People with ships that were less upgraded could still impact the game as a whole (by attacking a weakly defended base)- something that's sorely missing in pub: the game is significantly less fun if your ship is weak because all you can do is die and make money by leeching off other people's kills. However, I do think turf would get old to me very quickly. 3.) Were the rewards good/fair? The rewards were very nice- I enjoyed them immensely. Other players might hate me for saying this, but I thought the rewards were a bit high, considering that I was making far more money and doing far less. On the other hand, I think that if rewards were lowered slightly, there should less of a difference between the maximum and minimum bounty. If the minimum bounty gets too small, people will quit once they start earning too little, reasoning (correctly) that they can make money more efficiently in pub. However, I don't think they should be reduced too much; after all, people want to have fun without worrying whether they could be making more money somewhere else. Having higher rewards would make players feel like, well, they ARE being rewarded, particularly if turf remains a hosted game. I have no doubt that players would very much frown on paltry rewards (which is basically what's happening in pub after the last reset- the good ol' days are long gone, but in turf, it's possible to recreate that feeling, if only for a brief time). 4.) How was the map? I liked the altered bases, partly because they were novel to me. Also, due to the fact that multiple bases must be defended, the significance of massive gun/bomblines was reduced, making progress easier and speeding up the pace of the game. Like I mentioned earlier, the reduced occurrence of the attacker/defender imp!@#$%^&*e in pub basing was nice. The roles were less clear cut, so a losing team could still be defending instead of only attacking. More fun imo. 5.) Would you like to see it become the public arena? No. The fast pace game is great as an occasional hosted game, but imo, interest would pall quickly because it doesn't suit the role of a pub arena. For instance, once the game gets going, I don't doubt the teams would become stacked. While it would be easier to take one base from a stacked team, there's little chance of turning the tide, imo, so a losing team would continue to lose more money for a long time- not really fair to players who happen to enter later on. Rewards on a timer are nice, but that sort of reduces the impact of making money on your own. True, people have to have flags, but I'm sure there would be people just leeching/afk if they can't actively play. On the other hand, there's less of the greedy-!@#$%^&* behavior in turf because of the fast pace of the game. For instance, would a player want to waste so much money thoring/fielding/item spamming to take a base if there's a change they could lose it (or another) in short order? Some would, but it is a huge waste considering that the difference in earnings between attacking and defending are closer to parity. Overall, I think turf would remain a better hosted game than a pub arena, but that doesn't mean that lessons can't be taken from it for the pub arena (like more parity in earnings between attacking/defending, less of a bimodal system (not just attacking OR defending, but more of a blend), and reducing the utility of items (I feel making defensive items free- or free with the requisite mount- is a good idea considering the fact that you can't force pub players to always play in the most logical fashion- they all play their own games, so there should be multiple avenues to have fun, instead of saying one MUST buy and use items to have any sort of impact at all, otherwise get the tar kicked out of you by better equipped players). This is a lot of text. Still, perhaps my perspective could provide some insight.

Possibly: ?shipdata ?shipcompare ?shiplist Maybe a command to sell an item and replace it with a newly bought item? Might not be necessary, but it would be nice: ?sellandbuy ?replace ?tradefor ?upgradeto Along the lines of ?equip and ?unequip, perhaps ?inv should show all unequipped items.

I like the idea of making the lanc more interesting. Having some sort of impact other than passivity is a plus. The Bombardment Cannon idea sounds good imo. Maybe like a built-in mount that recharges a thor every 20 seconds or so. I liked lancing before the reset because AD allowed items to be recharged- repels, bursts, and energy bricks. Every life I had a set number of tools at my disposal, so I had to use them judiciously, but I got them back after I died without having to go back to the center safe. That meant I could play a little more recklessly if I had all my items and AD and even die once, but then I would have to back off and be careful while AD recharged. It was different from now primarily because of two things: 1) I could change my playing style, meaning I could be more aggressive on occasion, and 2) I could stay in the field indefinitely if I was smart. I don't know what exactly it was, but post-reset, death came so much quicker, so there's no choice but to play it safe, which is part of the "boredom" forced on lancs.

Maybe make item-use based on a timer, e.g., you can't rep more than once every 10 seconds, you can't burst more than once every 5. If that can't be done, perhaps have one repel that recharges after 10 seconds, or one burst that recharges after 5. Possibly make recharge times different on different ships- like rushing ships recharge in 8 seconds for repels, 4 seconds for bursts, or somesuch. Make items cheap/free since item use would be limited by time rather than finances, and you've gone a long way towards leveling the playing field. Making items commonly available raises the importance of having better (and rarer) equipment. Better equipment would still offer a better chance of prevailing, but at least this way, people without money won't just be fodder, they have some chance of actually making money and climbing the ladder of improvement. The current setup punishes people without money, since it takes money to make money. While this sounds good on paper, it fares worse in practice. Since people start off with very little, there's little hope for any new player to actually get ahead in an appreciable time frame. Running on the financial treadmill of the current settings is nothing but a slippery slope- three steps forward, two steps back...and since, in my view, a large part of the appeal of HS is about improvement, the current setup runs cross purpose.

I'm not sure if you counted me in your tallies, but here are my sigs: Warbird: Omega Drive Terrier: Ampere Imploder Lancaster: Radiating Coils

Those are good points, Cerium; I hadn't considered those. But your comments make me think that suiciding is the larger issue, particularly because dying currently allows for more items to be used, and with my ammo suggestion, free ammo. Currently, buying ammo represents a way to slow down money making, but it hinders new players (with little money) far more than those who have been playing a while. Instead of paying for ammo, maybe a better solution might be to impose a "death penalty". Perhaps when you die, you lose a modest amount of money, like experience/1000 or (experience-1000)/1000. Of course, rushers would hate this, but if people think that item use is running rampant, perhaps an incentive to stay alive is needed (beyond bounty, since not everyone can stay alive for long). Then again, I doubt that this would deter anyone... Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I've heard people liking the new ammo system, citing that it adds a new dimension to HS, but there are also those that dislike the forced micromanagement and would prefer the old way... How about combining the two systems? Simple- every time you die, you're ammo is refilled. If you stay alive and shoot endlessly, you'll have to buy ammo to keep up your offensive capabilities. Perhaps also reduce ammo capacity somewhat, thus making capacity something desirable? + People who don't want to buy ammo don't have to, unless they've been firing virtually nonstop. Then, it'd make sense that you'd have to buy ammo. + It still places a hamper on endless bountying by forcing bountyers to restock on ammo. + It doesn't punish new players for shooting and missing a lot. And since they probably are dying a lot, they never have to buy ammo... at least until they get better. + People can leave safe without having to check their ammo- they're full! And they needn't worry about their gun/bombs accidentally running empty shortly after exiting safe. I personally would prefer this system, because I'd rather focus on the action and be less distracted by (imo) lesser concerns. Thoughts? EDIT- Upon later consideration, this idea isn't a good one... please disregard.