Scoring on Empire Standings

[AnrDaemon]

"Forcing cooperation" by a paywall is the worst idea possible.

[Ripticus]

The empires that have had the most active members like the French Empire and the Syndicate are the empires that have most exploited the possibilities of the game. The experience is much more interesting than solo.

Moreover, generally, solo empires seeing that they can not defend their empire in case of attack during their absence always end up allying or vassalized between them or a more powerful empire without really sharing the means of production. It is in this situation that is currently Shores Of Hazeron.

In addition, by charging the creation of empire, it limits or even prevents the creation of empire grievance like Harvesters or empires doing the dirty work as was the Exiles.

[Deantwo]

I don't think I like the idea of using avatar stats for empire rating. By the I mean "number of enemies killed" and such. It is easy to exploit and it won't decease when an empire is not maintained.

I would much rather see the number of avatars in an empire count, and the overall age of the empire (age of oldest cities and ships). We all have 6 avatars that we can add to an empire per account, not everyone will do this, for example if an empire heavily relay on proxy empires, they will have fewer avatars in their empire.

What about something simply along the lines of this:

Code:

empire_score = ( ( number_of_colonized_worlds + number_of_cities ) / 2 + number_of_officered_spacecraft + number_of_empire_members ) / 3

It is also somewhat important to make the score not totally reflect the empire, or you can sit and calculate the amount of ships they have.
I am not completely sure how best to add age or tech into the formula though.

In my opinion, the creation of an empire should be paying, as for example $ 50, but with the possibility of shared the cost with several players. This would greatly limit the creation of a fictitious empire and force cooperation.

This is off the given topic. Make a separate discussion thread about it if you want to discuss it more.

[Vectorus]

I think Ripticus is onto the right general idea. None of the counting methods we've tried till now have really been accurate; the opposite problem, as Dean points out, is being too accurate. The rankings screen once listed all your cities by name, which, as Haxus correctly decided, was too much.

Personally, I would measure empires by industrial capacity. Resource throughput is, in the end, the driving force of all Hazeron gameplay, though good strategy and creative dispositions are increasingly important with the new designer. But the strength of an empire is not measured by production cheese production. Instead, I would create a "standard" starship in the designer and determine how often each empire could actually fill that order. 

Filling the order for one ship every day would be 100 "Industrial Units"; an empire that could fill the order every hour would have a rating of 2400. Perhaps the ship should be max volume, with a sensible all-rounder system allocation, for whichever Q gives a x1 effect on the Q curve (Q87?). Empires which haven't yet advanced to that production Q would be listed in their own "junior member" section, where calculations could be made on a junior scale, perhaps using a Q1 planet hopper. The game could either tally all the resources produced in your empire or it could try to simulate a fictional process at every city with an actual spacecraft factory, but the second option might be too demanding.

The details are just suggestions; but is that idea broadly workable? I'm worried that any system which takes military action into account will fall apart once people make alt empires, and restricting empire creation is not something Hazeron is ready for (if it's even desirable, which I'm not sure of). Simply counting worlds, pop or resources produced doesn't really determine whether those numbers are being marshalled for any useful purpose. Shipbuilding has always been a solid measure of an empire's infrastructure, since it's one of the most complicated and expensive in-game operations. My system may be more accurate than simply measuring actual hull volume produced, since, for example, it would have rated the US Navy in 1941 much more highly than its pre-war building schedule might suggest.


Final request: Could we please have a population counter somewhere on the standings page or elsewhere? It's a really useful way of checking if your empire is being hit by some catastrophe, even if it's useless for ranking. I was away from my computer for ages during the Oxygen Crisis last year, and I wouldn't have known anything was happening, if not for that page.

[Ripticus]

So in this case DeanTwo, with regard to the points awarded for wars (killed enemies, destroyed ships, bases captured), we can put a notion of degressivity for example: -1% per day. Only the points awarded for the captured cities and the victory of the war would remain in the end. Thus, the points of war would be temporary and reflect the power of an empire. If he wishes to keep these points, he will have to consolidate his acquisitions and use them in the development of combat and patrol fleets as well as the development of inter and intra-empire trade.

In my eyes, it would be the most accurate system, certainly, it would be perfectible, but would be the most accurate.

[Ripticus]

I think Ripticus is onto the right general idea. None of the counting methods we've tried till now have really been accurate; the opposite problem, as Dean points out, is being too accurate. The rankings screen once listed all your cities by name, which, as Haxus correctly decided, was too much.

Personally, I would measure empires by industrial capacity. Resource throughput is, in the end, the driving force of all Hazeron gameplay, though good strategy and creative dispositions are increasingly important with the new designer. But the strength of an empire is not measured by production cheese production. Instead, I would create a "standard" starship in the designer and determine how often each empire could actually fill that order. 

Filling the order for one ship every day would be 100 "Industrial Units"; an empire that could fill the order every hour would have a rating of 2400. Perhaps the ship should be max volume, with a sensible all-rounder system allocation, for whichever Q gives a x1 effect on the Q curve (Q87?). Empires which haven't yet advanced to that production Q would be listed in their own "junior member" section, where calculations could be made on a junior scale, perhaps using a Q1 planet hopper. The game could either tally all the resources produced in your empire or it could try to simulate a fictional process at every city with an actual spacecraft factory, but the second option might be too demanding.

The details are just suggestions; but is that idea broadly workable? I'm worried that any system which takes military action into account will fall apart once people make alt empires, and restricting empire creation is not something Hazeron is ready for (if it's even desirable, which I'm not sure of). Simply counting worlds, pop or resources produced doesn't really determine whether those numbers are being marshalled for any useful purpose. Shipbuilding has always been a solid measure of an empire's infrastructure, since it's one of the most complicated and expensive in-game operations. My system may be more accurate than simply measuring actual hull volume produced, since, for example, it would have rated the US Navy in 1941 much more highly than its pre-war building schedule might suggest.


Final request: Could we please have a population counter somewhere on the standings page or elsewhere? It's a really useful way of checking if your empire is being hit by some catastrophe, even if it's useless for ranking. I was away from my computer for ages during the Oxygen Crisis last year, and I wouldn't have known anything was happening, if not for that page.

 
Your idea seems to measure industrial capacity using a conventional vessel common to all as a unit of measurement.
The downside to a ranking like this is that it would not allow to see the logistical capabilities of an empire, or defense of it, nor its past.
An empire can be TL32 / Q255 but have bad logistical capacity that in reality will not produce more than 20% of the theoretical production of ships per day, unlike a very well organized empire. very well defended which him, would be able to reach 90% of the theoretical production.

I'm sorry Haxus, we're making the system more and more complex: D

[Norm49]

Yes you are making it more complex! One ting important here is to not count the score by the amount of city because a empire can only put flag and a farm and have to work less for one city that a other empire for 10 city. Same principle for the amount of system and sector.

Now I agree that basing the scoring on military achievement may create a situation were small empire will get attack. A other problem with this is that some of dose point will stay so it is almost impossible for a new empire to climb the scoring board.

Also we should have a system make a empire lose point if it is not active like the present system.

I also think that Ripticous is right with is point about logistic. But this mean that the game must recognize the ship yard and this is will be complicated and all the possible ways I cant think of wont work because it will be possible to trick the game in believing a planet is a active ship ward even if it is not. Like produce a ship the size of a TL 1 but at TL 32 one per month or even less often. The game count the capacity of that planet but it is not a real ship yard because the empire do not have the resources and/or the logistic to maintain it.

I am not sure that counting the 10% or x% of the HP of the empire ship is a really good idea. Compare a military empire with one more base on politic and trade. The trade empire may have a more complex fleet, cargo ship, harvester... but less HP since most of them are not wars vessel.

Personally i am fine with the actual system.