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Empire Ranking and Leaderboard

#1
With the new changes to the decay and "Empire Standings" page, I think is is about time we discuss how empires should be ranked on the leaderboard once again.

We have discussed it at least once before, and I'll link to what I found here for discussion. Up until now all empire ranking has been based on empire size. Either number of (loyal) citizens, number of cities, or number of worlds. This all suggest that there is only one way to play the game, which isn't really something that sounds nice in a big open game like this. There are however issues with figuring out how to otherwise rank empires.

There is also the concern that any ranking would expose too much information about your empire to potential enemies. So any information should probably be obscurified in some way. Or at least so general that it is of less use to the potential enemies.

To further give players the feeling of having options, it would be interesting to have multiple stats to tracks and rank. Lets make some simple categories and discuss possible ways of calculating each stat.

Empire Size

It would be obvious to keep the systems/population count in some way, some indication of empire size. Rather it should be the pure number of either citizens, cities, worlds or systems, or some calculated average of them is definitely up for debate.

We don't want a lone capitol building in some system to count equal to a system with thousands of citizens. But at the same time it does count as territory that the empire is keeping safe from decay and defended against enemies.

So I would suggest either one of two (population or systems count), or both values separated into two separate columns (Territory and Population). But I don't know how we would obscurify them, or if we would even have to

Empire Military

This might be a hot topic. How to measure the military power of an empire without giving away too much information?

The first idea I had was simply to calculate the total volume of all fleet spacecraft AND military buildings. Spacecraft volume is what matter in the end-game, who has the bigger gun. But a good way to obscurify it is to just toss in military building volume.

There have been suggestions of just counting number of officers stationed on ships in the past. But that might give away too much information or simply be too easy to exploit with tiny ships.
Also, should company ships even be counted? I have not found a single reason not to make my flag ship as a company ship. A company ship can't be captured, so that is a huge advantage as long as you have enough money to cover the price of fuel and ammo. But that is likely a separate issue for another day.

Empire Economy

Economy in the game is mostly non-existent right now. Unless we count maximum quality of available construction materials, but that might be too much information and likely also a strain on the servers to calculate too often.

Could simply leave it blank while we wait for economy fixes, think of it as a goal. If any economy system that is implemented can't be used as an empire ranking statistic, it likely won't be good. But again that is likely a separate issue for another day.

Empire Technology

With technology it is also debatable rather or not it exist is a meaningful way enough way to measure. The correct patent system doesn't limit anything, it merely serves as a technological progression milestone or to hide things new players don't need to see yet.

In the current system the only patent that would be worth tracking the process of would be the warp FTL drive patents. But simply showing an empire's highest warp-drive capability would definitely be giving too much information to enemies.

Empire Diplomacy

We do not have any galactic community mechanics or grand diplomacy, so there are no good numbers to track here. At most we already have this in the form of allies and vassals contributing to empire size.
Showing how many empires have set your empire as "Friend" might be giving away too much information again, even if it would be a fun stat.

Anyways, thoughts?
This is very much a brainstorming thread rather than anything else. So toss your ideas in on the topic and lets discuss it!
Hazeron Forum and Wiki Moderator
hazeron.com/wiki/User:Deantwo
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#2
good ideas all around, although i think there is a very simple solution to the leaderboards potentially giving away too much information - just have all of the info be opt-in. make a tab somewhere ingame that lets you choose, with checkboxes, what information is shown publicly, and you could even opt out of ranking entirely.
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#3
(12-13-2019, 02:28 PM)Minty Wrote: good ideas all around, although i think there is a very simple solution to the leaderboards potentially giving away too much information - just have all of the info be opt-in. make a tab somewhere ingame that lets you choose, with checkboxes, what information is shown publicly, and you could even opt out of ranking entirely.

I was actually thinking of the same yeah. Not sure you should be able to opt-out of being shown altogether though. We should at least be allowed to know an empire exist, right?

The only concerns I have about opt-in of specific ranking stats, would be that it is close to falsifying data. I mean from not showing anything to showing false information isn't a far stretch.

Not that most stats can't be circumvented easily in someway or another. For example with alt empires being in control of systems or fleets until you need them. So maybe allowing opt-out would indeed be simpler than force players to do that.
Hazeron Forum and Wiki Moderator
hazeron.com/wiki/User:Deantwo
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#4
Every automatic metric is gameable, but maybe the most meaningful would be a production capacity figure. Take a standard spacecraft design, discount (ie. nominally refund) any actual ship production underway and check how many times an empire would be able to fetch and run the process each day. An empire that could click "run" twice would have a rating of 2.

Checks every shipyard throughout the empire.

Whether that gives away too much is a different question obviously.
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#5
I kinda agree with ship production being a ranking stat, seems like it's a good way to measure empire achievements
What even
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#6
At work we use KPIs (key performance indicators) for certain performance metrics. These are simple formulas that use multiple metrics to help synthesize to a single value that can be easily tracked. A similar formula can be used for leader-boards without divulging the core data sets. Perhaps a sample might look something like the following: Number of Military units + Ship Production capacity * Warp speed level obtained (even though one could buy this).
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#7
We could also do it like some 4X games do it. Rather than showing actual numbers, just show the rank.
For example Weltreich as the biggest military so they are #1, French Empire coming in #2 but no indication of how far is between them.
Hazeron Forum and Wiki Moderator
hazeron.com/wiki/User:Deantwo
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#8
(02-25-2020, 10:07 PM)Deantwo Wrote: We could also do it like some 4X games do it. Rather than showing actual numbers, just show the rank.
For example Weltreich as the biggest military so they are #1, French Empire coming in #2 but no indication of how far is between them.



LOL no Deantwo we haven't play in years trust me we wont finish second in term of military power for this universe we have noting. To give you a idea at the end of universe 3 I was in command of "papa" fleet with was the smallest fleet compose of obsolete vessel we had something like 7 fleet plus many ship not in fleet, we had hundred of them. Only the papa fleet was about 5 time more power full that the actual French Empire fleet so trust me when I say we have noting and they we ship form the old designer. Hour 2 most powerful ship now are one cargo and one harvester :D  but the universe will be rest in about 2 day so we don't care and we are not trying to getup the rank. Weltreich will be the victor of this universe by far.

When I say we have nothing, when we board your vessel I was half naked with a rifle of bad quality. I needed to use like 5 magazine to kill 1 troop we literary have noting.

The oldest system I can remember was showing the number of ship it was remove because it was giving too much intel. I thing we should just keep it simple. Any other system could be cheat it some ways or will give too much info.
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#9
(02-26-2020, 01:26 AM)Norm49 Wrote: LOL no Deantwo we haven't play in years trust me we wont finish second in term of military power for this universe we have noting. ...

Calm your horses. It was a random example.
Please don't go off-topic. You can brag in the diplomacy section.
Hazeron Forum and Wiki Moderator
hazeron.com/wiki/User:Deantwo
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#10
Ok ok fine i just couldn't resist because if find it funny!
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