Topic: Economies, OOBs and stuff

[Gook]

I posted on Taldren and alternative economy thread used in TOC style campaigns. Tracy asked me to look at it further for OP. The main difference between the capaign rules posted and a Dyna is in the campaign a person runs a race and can fly any ship produced. In a dyna a person flys for a race and is more interested in what particular ship they can fly.

I have some ideas, but before exploring them further want to know whether people think an "honour" system would work, whereby the players police the rules themselves and apply the restrcition or whatever, rather than being policed by RMs admins etc. For example if player had a pool of points which they used to buy any ship they wanted, then had that ship destroyed they would only be able to buy a replacement ship that fitted their remaining points for a given time cycle. The book keeping for admins would be too much, but if players were on their honour to apply the rule (whatever it was) then we could have a system which allowed lots of free choice of ships, but had penalties for that player if the ship were lost in combat.

If people think we are mature enough to police it ourselves I'll look at it further.

Alternatively, way back at the begining of Dynas, if you lost a ship you were busted back to an FF, and lost all the PP in the ship you lost. This caused problems as the game was unstable, connections were bad and the hand of Bekthe struck way too often. If the game is now stable enough, the old system could be restored as an effective means of enforcing an OOB if the bigger ships and some speciality ships were priced appropriately.

Thoughts please.

[Fluf]

I think we have grown up around here enough that the players could do this.  I like the idea.

[Surfal]

I think most of us are big boys (and girls).  The hard part will be informing everyone and keeping folks up to date on what they are allowed to have as build cycles progress.

[Bonk]

Not a bad idea, but I think it would be too much for players to remember. (for me at least )

I am roughing out a flexible OoB system with Rod and DH, it will take some time to implement but just may satisfy all.

However it is contingent on stable SQL... if we get the kit source it may be doable, even if not, we still have not seen a high playerload test on an OP server running on a Linux hosted MySQL db...

I just got the parts for a second server PC today, I just need to get it built and get the current stable fedora distribution installed (I forgot to get cd blanks...  it needs 4...). I want to run the next SQL test on a Linux hosted db, we may find we don't need the source to fix SQL after all... (though it would still be nice).

The same strategy could be employed with the flatfile too, but would require periodic server shutdowns for OoB maintenance. (and would take me longer to develop)

The ideas that Rod, DH and I are exploring involve laying out the OoB for limited ships in a config file and then use it to count the total number of limited ships in the db (owned and unowned) and add or remove ships as necessary. (One possible strategy, which can account for trade-ins)

The idea is that the limited ships will be available to anyone with enough dough to buy it, when they run out, you'll have to ask a teamate to trade his in to give you a turn in a limited ship.

No promises here, but I intend to do this and am confident I can make it work.

[FPF-DieHard]

The idea is "OOB-less OOB."  basicly, get the shipyards totally controlled and only produce a certain percentage of specialty ships based on legal F&E ship production.   Set the shipyards to hold ships FOREVER and only add new ships once per day.   Pilots can fly anything they want, but if the empire runs out of F-CLCs for example, they gotta wait until the next production cycle to get more.

Again, this can only work if SQL gets stable.

[Gook]

Not a bad idea, but I think it would be too much for players to remember. (for me at least )

I am roughing out a flexible OoB system with Rod and DH, it will take some time to implement but just may satisfy all.

However it is contingent on stable SQL... if we get the kit source it may be doable, even if not, we still have not seen a high playerload test on an OP server running on a Linux hosted MySQL db...

I just got the parts for a second server PC today, I just need to get it built and get the current stable fedora distribution installed (I forgot to get cd blanks...  it needs 4...). I want to run the next SQL test on a Linux hosted db, we may find we don't need the source to fix SQL after all... (though it would still be nice).


The same strategy could be employed with the flatfile too, but would require periodic server shutdowns for OoB maintenance. (and would take me longer to develop)

The ideas that Rod, DH and I are exploring involve laying out the OoB for limited ships in a config file and then use it to count the total number of limited ships in the db (owned and unowned) and add or remove ships as necessary. (One possible strategy, which can account for trade-ins)

The idea is that the limited ships will be available to anyone with enough dough to buy it, when they run out, you'll have to ask a teamate to trade his in to give you a turn in a limited ship.

No promises here, but I intend to do this and am confident I can make it work.

This sounds great and I am the first person to want everything automated, however it will take time and will inevitably have it's problems. The "manual" system can be implemented immediately with little effort, other than people just reading it. It can always be replaced by more sophisticated systems.

[Bonk]

Yup an automatic OoB will not happen right away, it will take a while (september?)...

Absolutely, it's worth a go. I can stick to an honour based OoB system if there is someone online I can ask what I'm allowed to buy.  I have no printer at home to print out a list for reference, but I suppose I could do so at work and bring the list home - I'd never be able to keep it in my head, its too full...

I'm not so sure about the SP system though, why not just set reasonable prices and let people fight it out over the good ships? One complication I see is how to keep count of the limited ships when we know all the players are not going to be logged in at once?

[Gook]

Yup an automatic OoB will not happen right away, it will take a while (september?)...

Absolutely, it's worth a go. I can stick to an honour based OoB system if there is someone online I can ask what I'm allowed to buy.  I have no printer at home to print out a list for reference, but I suppose I could do so at work and bring the list home - I'd never be able to keep it in my head, its too full...

I'm not so sure about the SP system though, why not just set reasonable prices and let people fight it out over the good ships? One complication I see is how to keep count of the limited ships when we know all the players are not going to be logged in at once?

You can buy anything, see the draft honour thread.

[Laflin]

Just have the damned thing ready to run by March 2005 - I know of at least 3 people that will be drawn back to the game by changes like this, and the possible source code release.  They are chomping at the bit 

[Grim]

Just have the damned thing ready to run by March 2005 - I know of at least 3 people that will be drawn back to the game by changes like this, and the possible source code release.  They are chomping at the bit 

Maybe so, but as a result you also may lose players, things to ponder.

The way i see it is up to the server Admins on how they run the server, if they want to have loads of OOB etc then its their choice. The player then has a choice on whether to fly the server or not.

I'm not a fan at all of creating a set of rules/guidelines/procedures for servers, that all the servers would follow. Because its more fun to be able to switch between a server that has full OOB and server rules and one that has little. 

[Bonk]

Just have the damned thing ready to run by March 2005 - I know of at least 3 people that will be drawn back to the game by changes like this, and the possible source code release.  They are chomping at the bit 

Maybe so, but as a result you also may lose players, things to ponder.

The way i see it is up to the server Admins on how they run the server, if they want to have loads of OOB etc then its their choice. The player then has a choice on whether to fly the server or not.

I'm not a fan at all of creating a set of rules/guidelines/procedures for servers, that all the servers would follow. Because its more fun to be able to switch between a server that has full OOB and server rules and one that has little. 

As it stands right now I have essentially an anti-OoB in place, you can buy ANY ship from the shiplist directly whether its in the yards or not, if its on the shiplist you can buy it. I intend to leave that as an option for admins if they use my php webmap/shipyard. Ideally that option should have the ability to follow the years of availabily if enabled as well. Give everybody enough PP or make the ships cheap enpugh and this way every player can fly a BB if they like, the BB fest seems to be a time honoured tradtion that a lot of players enjoy. (In a BB fest you'll see me flying three MDC+'s though... )

Beyond that, if an admin wishes to run an OoB, that will be an option in the shipyards that will require configuration (a list of limited ships and how many of each available when).

I agree Grim, some players don't want OoB (~50%) so it certainly should not be the standard for campaigns, just an option.

[FPF-DieHard]

Just have the damned thing ready to run by March 2005 - I know of at least 3 people that will be drawn back to the game by changes like this, and the possible source code release.  They are chomping at the bit 

I'd reather play with a smaller group who beleive in a balanced system than a server full of cheesers.

[Bonk]

Just have the damned thing ready to run by March 2005 - I know of at least 3 people that will be drawn back to the game by changes like this, and the possible source code release.  They are chomping at the bit 

I'd reather play with a smaller group who beleive in a balanced system than a server full of cheesers.

Whaddya mean? If everyones in a BB - thats balanced! 

[Hexx]

I'd ratehr play with someone who doesn't need to fly around in BB's for fun..
( Don't think 3xCWLP's are going to take out a BB , least not if I'm flying them ...)

Still I wouldn't mind something like this for controlling the speciality ships and everything up to DN's.

[Bonk]

Please note my sarcasm if its not obvious... Dunno about 3xCWLPs, but I've taken down more than one BB with 3xMDC+s.

(In particular I fondly recall being drafted by 2 player controlled ISC BBZs, I blew one up and chased the other off...I got a few scratches on the paint... boy were they ticked...)

[Hexx]

Whihc is because the only thing cheesier and more of a "crutch" for the ...less skillfull player than a BB is a multiple droner fleet.. 

[Laflin]

Cheesers my ass - some just wish for fun again instead of rigid control

[Bonk]

You got it!  A totally illegal (Classic CnC-wise) triple bombardment ship fleet is the best answer to massed enemy BBs running co-op missions together. I will not deny it. I'd prefer a good F-CA / K-D7 battle myself...

[Bonk]

Cheesers my ass - some just wish for fun again instead of rigid control

I see Laflins point... shutting down 2 ISC BBZs with 3 MDC+s was a blast, and made a rather satisfying crunch! 

[Laflin]

Actually I was refering to DH's post  - I am not a big fan of ANY types of fleets