11-17-2019, 06:22 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 06:25 PM by OriginalGangstaStaines.)
Hello
I finally made an account.
For the record, the "Staines" account is Mortius.
Here's my.. testimony and recommendations based on almost a decade of the game.
Firstly, let me preface this by saying that many of these recommendations have been made in the past, and while they were rejected by players in the past due to the frenzy of drama when Syndicate was an active empire in SOH - many of these people have entirely flipped their stances now and in fact, asked me to make an account to talk about my feelings on SoH.
Galaxy Scaling - A shared universe.
First off, player numbers, activity and social enjoyment of Hazeron has very much been proportional to the proximity of players to each other. This game thrives when people can interact, and while yes, there was a lot of drama in the past, most of those players that are still around on the Hazeron Discord are friends with each other and enjoy the history of the game. Some people are even dedicated keepers of the lore for the game, even almost 6 years on.
When players spread out, as they did in late U4/U5 when new galaxies were added and the playable area expanded incredibly... galactic tensions dropped, galactic society became a hushed whisper, and boredom set in. -- Spreading players out causes social heat death of the universe. In order to vibe together, we need to be close enough to interact and have fun, conflict and trade with each other. The game is almost meaningless alone.
Galaxy Scaling - Calculations and Numbers.
Many will remember "The Box". The infamous Box was the limited play area at the start of Universe 5. Although there was a lot of drama and conflict in The Box, it is now pretty fondly remembered by many, because it was one of the few times when anything interesting actually happened. Friends were made, lasers were pewed, and there was generally a lot more fun.
The Box was 9x9x9 sectors - so the loremasters have foretold.
-> At 300X in the galaxy, that gives us an average stellar density of approximately 23 systems per sector.
-> 9x9x9 sectors, this gives us 729 sectors total.
-> 729 sectors x 23 systems gives us a total of 16,977 systems, approximately.
-> Syndicate required approximately 650 of these systems to supply full TL-32
-> So... The Box could have easily supported around 10 Syndicates's, and a hundred minor empires too.
The Box, was, I think, the highest player count we ever had, and it easily accommodated us all.
So, what went wrong?
This is up to interpretation. In my opinion, the Box was a poor shape. Due to the box being a relatively compact cube, warp travel was extremely quick, and huge fleets of ships could be anywhere in the box within a couple of hours travel. Additionally, due to the nature of the star maps, to our human brains it was difficult to determine territory when looking through 9Z levels of ownership.
There is also the obvious Syndicate factor. Although in my opinion, a relatively considerate and civilly fought war, maybe people at the time thought we were bringing the apocalypse to the universe. This caused a huge amount of drama on the forums from people who, in hindsight, perhaps consider this a highlight. Sadly, in Shores of Hazeron there are virtually no empires with more than a couple of people working together, so counter balancing a titan like Syndicate is a very tall order.
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So, what would I recommend?
I'd recommend a few things...
Scale the Playable Area for Playability
Scale the playable area in a way that encourages player interaction. To start with, a single galaxy of around 20,000 stars would be extremely sufficient, even extremely spacious for our current playerbase. A little distances helps people feel like they have some safety and room to grow, but they still need some neighbours to interact with. Creating a flatter, wider galaxy will let human brains make sense of a 3D area by making it more 2D-like. With a flatter galaxy, people have an easier time making sense of territory, politics and expansion. It also has the advantage of increasing travel time, especially if warp is given an substantial reduction.
There are three ways to do this;
1. Turn "The Box" into the Pizza Box at around 21x21x3 with 20,000 stars within a small section of a 600 sector wide image-generated galaxy - expand as needed.
2. A small flat, wide disk/ellipse galaxy around 21x21x3 that thins out to 1 star per sector at the edges - create more galaxies as needed.
3. A small flat, wide disk/ellipse galaxy around 21x21x3 - expand X/Y axis by adding more star density and sectors around the edges as needed.
Resets can't be avoided due to development of other critical mechanics right now, but the universe should be designed to expand/contract based on player need.
System Permanence
I'm not sure if it still works this way but, with a smaller universe, there will be fewer star systems that could possibly be cached. For that reason, I'd recommend that when a system is generated, the information for that system is permanently logged by the servers, instead of the system regenerating worlds/qualities. This should create areas that are permanently desirable this has the benefit of creating legendary systems and regions and galactic terrain.
FTL Rework
Make smaller bigger. Create the perception of distance by rescaling the speed of ships travelling through the universe.
1. Slow down warp travel and maybe even remove it entirely as a separate drive type - instead relegate "Warp Travel" to being an inbuilt system-to-system function of the Gravity Manoeuvre Drive that is approximately 10x the speed of light, but only outside of a gravity well entirely.
2. Revamp the wormhole drive and wormhole drive mechanics -- the only natural wormholes that exist are blackholes, all others must be temporarily generated by ships on the edge of the system gravity wells. Wormhole drives start with low-range and low-mass, but can get better latter on - this helps introduce players the galactic scales of Hazeron over time. Additionally, permanent wormhole gates could be generated WITHIN gravity wells by cities or stations in the inner systems.
Give players the freedom to travel, but slower than before, and allow them to build up travel infrastructure.
Alter the City Capturing Mechanics
I've been out of the game for a long time, so you're going to have to discuss this one yourselves - basically it seems like city capturing mechanics are still pretty bad. Strong defence is mostly based on exploits. Defence should be strategically favourable to the defender so that the strategic situation in the galaxy changes relatively slowly rather than entire empires falling in a day with little recourse.
I don't plan on returning to the game, but I think it's great a lot of people still play and are passionately discussing improvements to it.
I finally made an account.
For the record, the "Staines" account is Mortius.
Here's my.. testimony and recommendations based on almost a decade of the game.
Firstly, let me preface this by saying that many of these recommendations have been made in the past, and while they were rejected by players in the past due to the frenzy of drama when Syndicate was an active empire in SOH - many of these people have entirely flipped their stances now and in fact, asked me to make an account to talk about my feelings on SoH.
Galaxy Scaling - A shared universe.
First off, player numbers, activity and social enjoyment of Hazeron has very much been proportional to the proximity of players to each other. This game thrives when people can interact, and while yes, there was a lot of drama in the past, most of those players that are still around on the Hazeron Discord are friends with each other and enjoy the history of the game. Some people are even dedicated keepers of the lore for the game, even almost 6 years on.
When players spread out, as they did in late U4/U5 when new galaxies were added and the playable area expanded incredibly... galactic tensions dropped, galactic society became a hushed whisper, and boredom set in. -- Spreading players out causes social heat death of the universe. In order to vibe together, we need to be close enough to interact and have fun, conflict and trade with each other. The game is almost meaningless alone.
Galaxy Scaling - Calculations and Numbers.
Many will remember "The Box". The infamous Box was the limited play area at the start of Universe 5. Although there was a lot of drama and conflict in The Box, it is now pretty fondly remembered by many, because it was one of the few times when anything interesting actually happened. Friends were made, lasers were pewed, and there was generally a lot more fun.
The Box was 9x9x9 sectors - so the loremasters have foretold.
-> At 300X in the galaxy, that gives us an average stellar density of approximately 23 systems per sector.
-> 9x9x9 sectors, this gives us 729 sectors total.
-> 729 sectors x 23 systems gives us a total of 16,977 systems, approximately.
-> Syndicate required approximately 650 of these systems to supply full TL-32
-> So... The Box could have easily supported around 10 Syndicates's, and a hundred minor empires too.
The Box, was, I think, the highest player count we ever had, and it easily accommodated us all.
So, what went wrong?
This is up to interpretation. In my opinion, the Box was a poor shape. Due to the box being a relatively compact cube, warp travel was extremely quick, and huge fleets of ships could be anywhere in the box within a couple of hours travel. Additionally, due to the nature of the star maps, to our human brains it was difficult to determine territory when looking through 9Z levels of ownership.
There is also the obvious Syndicate factor. Although in my opinion, a relatively considerate and civilly fought war, maybe people at the time thought we were bringing the apocalypse to the universe. This caused a huge amount of drama on the forums from people who, in hindsight, perhaps consider this a highlight. Sadly, in Shores of Hazeron there are virtually no empires with more than a couple of people working together, so counter balancing a titan like Syndicate is a very tall order.
_____________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
So, what would I recommend?
I'd recommend a few things...
Scale the Playable Area for Playability
Scale the playable area in a way that encourages player interaction. To start with, a single galaxy of around 20,000 stars would be extremely sufficient, even extremely spacious for our current playerbase. A little distances helps people feel like they have some safety and room to grow, but they still need some neighbours to interact with. Creating a flatter, wider galaxy will let human brains make sense of a 3D area by making it more 2D-like. With a flatter galaxy, people have an easier time making sense of territory, politics and expansion. It also has the advantage of increasing travel time, especially if warp is given an substantial reduction.
There are three ways to do this;
1. Turn "The Box" into the Pizza Box at around 21x21x3 with 20,000 stars within a small section of a 600 sector wide image-generated galaxy - expand as needed.
2. A small flat, wide disk/ellipse galaxy around 21x21x3 that thins out to 1 star per sector at the edges - create more galaxies as needed.
3. A small flat, wide disk/ellipse galaxy around 21x21x3 - expand X/Y axis by adding more star density and sectors around the edges as needed.
Resets can't be avoided due to development of other critical mechanics right now, but the universe should be designed to expand/contract based on player need.
System Permanence
I'm not sure if it still works this way but, with a smaller universe, there will be fewer star systems that could possibly be cached. For that reason, I'd recommend that when a system is generated, the information for that system is permanently logged by the servers, instead of the system regenerating worlds/qualities. This should create areas that are permanently desirable this has the benefit of creating legendary systems and regions and galactic terrain.
FTL Rework
Make smaller bigger. Create the perception of distance by rescaling the speed of ships travelling through the universe.
1. Slow down warp travel and maybe even remove it entirely as a separate drive type - instead relegate "Warp Travel" to being an inbuilt system-to-system function of the Gravity Manoeuvre Drive that is approximately 10x the speed of light, but only outside of a gravity well entirely.
2. Revamp the wormhole drive and wormhole drive mechanics -- the only natural wormholes that exist are blackholes, all others must be temporarily generated by ships on the edge of the system gravity wells. Wormhole drives start with low-range and low-mass, but can get better latter on - this helps introduce players the galactic scales of Hazeron over time. Additionally, permanent wormhole gates could be generated WITHIN gravity wells by cities or stations in the inner systems.
Give players the freedom to travel, but slower than before, and allow them to build up travel infrastructure.
Alter the City Capturing Mechanics
I've been out of the game for a long time, so you're going to have to discuss this one yourselves - basically it seems like city capturing mechanics are still pretty bad. Strong defence is mostly based on exploits. Defence should be strategically favourable to the defender so that the strategic situation in the galaxy changes relatively slowly rather than entire empires falling in a day with little recourse.
I don't plan on returning to the game, but I think it's great a lot of people still play and are passionately discussing improvements to it.