From: Michael v. D. <mi...@ci...> - 2003-01-14 21:12:57
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Paragon The Paragons used to be a fairly normal race in the global scheme of things. Their culture and technology were all standard up until a few dozen years ago when a huge change in racial mentality occurred During the global communication era the entire population became caught up in a race for the latest technological oddities. This resulted in a mad drive to fulfill the demand of the population which flooded the market with all sorts of unique tech. Even their first steps into space and subsequent trading were only a side effect from their search for new resources to produce the next generation of gimmicks. Or ---------------------------- Having evolved from a pirate like society the Paragon have a rather unusual view of both life and goods. While not as ruthless as the old civilization they nonetheless believe that what they can see, they can take. At first glance a typical Paragon comes across as very friendly with the best of intentions. However it is best never to turn your back on them for they are not as friendly as they appear. Thanks to their way of life the Paragon have mastered the art of lies and illusions in order to lull anyone they encounter into a false sense of security. Once they see an opportunity though they won't hesitate to relieve you of your money, goods and ship. On the other hand some Paragon have schemed for years and made themselves very popular across the galaxy without ever committing an act of evil . but that just means they are going after very big prizes Mawlor The Mawlor as a race has always been very aggressive and warlike throughout history which has been rather big problem the last few decades. With their weapons becoming bigger and better their population began to decrease at an alarming rate. In order to cut down on their losses some Mawlor generals began probing the idea of using robotic warriors. Even in the early stages of development this plan proved to be very effective and after a few short years most of the fighting was between drones instead of the population itself. This freed up a large portion of Mawlors to finally begin looking towards the stars. This eventually led to the discovery of the other races where the Mawlor soon found a new outlet for their warrior instincts. KEA Despite what people may think the KEA do not focus on trade because of some desire to buy out the universe. They simply have to buy more resources because their factories are incredibly inefficient. To even produce the most basic commodities they need vast amounts of resources due to underdeveloped industry and a horrible bureaucratic system of management. So they were one of the first to enter space in search of more goods because their home world no longer had any. This has forced the KEA to become expert barterers that are valued, and needed, by other races throughout the galaxy. Xollian The Xollians today are a far cry from their earlier civilization. Several hundred years ago their planet was polluted beyond it's capability to support normal life. This had such a disastrous effect on the Xollian population that each next generation was born mutated. The parts of the population that weren't yet afflicted began casting out the mutated people to desolate regions of their planet and were not allowed back into the normal cities. This resulted in violent hate from the mutated ones and soon they started researching ways to move about the "clean" Xollians unnoticed. After a few decades where the normal Xollians kept decreasing and the mutated gained numbers they finally perfected the first cloaking devices. Armed with these devices and a xenophobic hate they quickly killed off the rest of the old generations. And now they have been let lose on the galaxy . Zyck'lirg The Zyck'lirg are a class 4 insectoid race with a high degree of intelligence and strong aggressive natural instincts. They are governed by a single Hive Queen through a telepathic link but there is a slight problem with that. Their Hive Queen is psychologically unstable. Whether this is due to genetics, technology or any other force we cannot say but the result of this is that the entire Zyck'lirg race is unpredictable. Over the course of many years this has resulted in a certain degree of individuality of the worker class, the gathering class and the warrior class. Zycklirg are good at trading and fighting but without the normal unity of the Hive mind they are not as efficient as you'd expect. This is compensated by their large numbers and low labor costs. Or ---------------------------- The Zyck'lirg are angry, there's no doubt about that. Why ? Someone has stolen their Alpha Queen. While the next generation of princes has taken swift and decisive actions to find the persons who abducted her, the search has yet to produce any result. In a rare act among insectiod species the worker class and the warrior class are now coordinating their efforts to begin a massive sweep in search for their beloved Queen by rapid expansion of their fleet and resource gathering abilities Even though this race has never posed any major threat to the security of the galaxy their sheer numbers and efficient way of working will surely overwhelm anyone who harbors the thieves The race abilities setup version 2 Goals : Promote teamwork Force players to choose a style Create diversity Balancing tool for ship list Possible coded modifiers : Research Production Building Personal race relations Global race relations Racial kill Local tax Maximum Alignment Xp loss upon death *All subdivided into positive and negative Possible non-coded modifiers : Starting Alignment Robbery Alignment gain Xp gain upon kill Drone/mine cost *All subdivided into positive and negative *In all that's 28 possible modifiers without counting values Default assignments per race :1 permanent positive bonus (PB) 1 permanent negative bonus (PN) 1 positive bonus that promotes teamwork (PT) 1 negative bonus that promotes teamwork (NT) 1 starting modifier (SM) Perceived race segregation : Zyck'lirg - A bug race that has so much population that building is fast and xp means very little. Their ships are meant for traveling long distances and they range from medium sized traders to large warship. Since most of their ships are biologic they do not show up on any long range scanners. Xollian - Evil Hunters that have trouble getting along with other races in various ways. Their main power is the cloaking technology and their efficient weapons factories. KEA - Major traders that are friendly with everyone but have trouble producing due to inefficiency. They are liked by all other races for their trading abilities and can continue trading even all the races are at war with each other Paragon - A tech loving race. They are masters of deception even going as far as masking their own ships. Due to their love for technology they keep large supplies of power ready so they can install the latest devices. Mawlor - Born warriors that are good at fighting but don't like to lose and consider building beneath them. They dislike sharing any of the glory of combat with others of their species so they rely on a few per ship compensated by immense amounts of robotic drones Now to assign abilities to each race without values Zyck'lirg : PB) X% less xp loss upon death PP) X% less xp gain upon kill PT) X% less cost to build NT) X% more cost to research SM) -X alignment Xollian : PB) X% more alignment gained upon evil kill PN) Maximum Alignment < 500 PT) X% less cost to produce weapons NT) X% more cost to research SM) -X global race relations KEA : PB) Unaffected by negative global race relations PN) X% less money from racial kill PT) X% less cost to purchase drones/mines NT) X% more cost to produce weapons SM) +X alignment Paragon : PB) X% less alignment gained upon evil kill PN) Maximum Alignment > 500 PT) X% less research cost NT) X% more cost to purchase drones/mines SM) +X personal race relations with all races Mawlor : PB) X% more xp gain upon kill PN) X% more xp loss upon death PT) X% less cost to produce weapons NT) X% more cost to build SM) -X personal race relations And finally to assign some values based purely on impressions since there's no formula for this yet. Zyck'lirg : PB) 3% less xp loss upon death PP) 2% less xp gain upon kill PT) 9% less cost to build NT) 12% more cost to research SM) -50 alignment Xollian : PB) 20% more alignment gained upon evil kill PN) Maximum Alignment is 450 PT) 14% less cost to produce weapons NT) 9% more cost to research SM) -X global race relations KEA : PB) Unaffected by negative global race relations PN) 5% less money from racial kill PT) 10% less cost to purchase drones/mines NT) 13% more cost to produce weapons SM) +50 alignment Paragon : PB) 15% less alignment gained upon evil kill PN) Maximum Alignment > 550 PT) 16% less research cost NT) 7% more cost to purchase drones/mines SM) +100 personal race relations with all races Mawlor : PB) 3% more xp gain upon kill PN) 2% more xp loss upon death PT) 8% less cost to produce weapons NT) 6% more cost to build SM) -50 personal race relations Now while some argue that this will affect the ship balance I fail to see how. Except for the permanent racial traits the rest is all focused on other aspects of the game. The only exception is the purchasing of drones so I gave that to those races that don't really need them to encourage planning and teamwork. The permanent changes are balanced in each race and even have a counterpart in another race save KEA so they only help to accentuate playing style and confirm the race descriptions (my race descriptions). As for the some the values . they're open for change based on in game feedback. I made most of them based on how much you use each in the game itself over a long period of time. Ok that's it for today, you have 12 hours to come up with comments |
From: Angelo S. <ang...@oo...> - 2003-01-14 21:32:39
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Hi, nice work Michael. Only I question the team work aspect. The role in the team will likely be determined during playing and be far away from the races abilities(IMHO). Frankly: I realy doubt I can convince one of my "builders" in my alliance to play Zycklirg. (The race you gave the build advantage to) The guys making the building will very likely be KEA ... because they have to carry hughe amounts of goods to the bases for construction. The same for paragon ... in ship iteration 2 they had not realy competitive traders (KEA top traders, Mawlor second best trader) ... but their personal relation bonus affects trade. All traders will choose KEA or Mawlor .... (as long as the trade ship advantages do not/have not shift/ed) People currently choose race because of the ships. To get them choosing race for other reasons ... the ships should not conflict with the races special abilities ... or vice versa. What about XP gain? And time? E.g. Zycklirg could build faster .... and KEA gain more XP via building, but lets say it takes longer for them? aos ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Angelo Schneider OOAD/UML Ang...@oo... Putlitzstr. 24 Patterns/FrameWorks Fon: +49 721 9812465 76137 Karlsruhe C++/JAVA Fax: +49 721 9812467 |
From: Angelo S. <ang...@oo...> - 2003-01-14 21:36:07
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erm ... IMHO your proposals do not affect ship balance. aos ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Angelo Schneider OOAD/UML Ang...@oo... Putlitzstr. 24 Patterns/FrameWorks Fon: +49 721 9812465 76137 Karlsruhe C++/JAVA Fax: +49 721 9812467 |
From: Farid K. <Far...@ro...> - 2003-01-14 21:53:41
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Yes they do affect ship balance. But the effect can be minimized. The proposed setting changes still puts KEA on top for trading. They will have an easier time trading anywhere they want simply since war and global relations won't affect them. Nothing will take that away from KEA. However, another race, say Paragon, can be given a large heavy mover having the same number of holds of the KEA ship, and if paragon's ceiling for personal or global relations are significantly lower than KEA's then they will always make less money and less experience. BUT, it won't affect trading with regards to upgrades petitions or refilling ports, since their large trader will annihilate them as fast as any KEA would. Don't get me wrong, it could be that upon looking at the end result that we won't propose any changes to the shiplist to compensate. But, assigning racial criteria like this allows us to assign artificial values that can be compensated with different ship design. All in all, I STILL like the concept. However, I don't believe that rushing into it is a good idea. I also believe that a broader spectrum should be applied to all the races, and we also should avoid assigning negative values as much as possible. But as it has been said, it is only one person's view Hawklan -----Original Message----- From: ope...@li... [mailto:ope...@li...] On Behalf Of Angelo Schneider Sent: January 14, 2003 4:36 PM To: Michael van Dongen Cc: ope...@li... Subject: Re: [Openme-developers] Race abilities with values and more stuff erm ... IMHO your proposals do not affect ship balance. aos ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Angelo Schneider OOAD/UML Ang...@oo... Putlitzstr. 24 Patterns/FrameWorks Fon: +49 721 9812465 76137 Karlsruhe C++/JAVA Fax: +49 721 9812467 ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: Take your first step towards giving your online business a competitive advantage. Test-drive a Thawte SSL certificate - our easy online guide will show you how. Click here to get started: http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?thaw0027en _______________________________________________ Openme-developers mailing list Ope...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openme-developers |
From: Angelo S. <ang...@oo...> - 2003-01-14 21:59:40
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Hi, A note on Hawklans comment: > I also believe that a broader spectrum > should be applied to all the races, and we also should avoid assigning > negative values as much as possible. > This makes sence. Another game I play, space at coldfirestudios, has about 12 races. None has a negative value in its abilities, all have one(or more) positive bonus somewhere. aos ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Angelo Schneider OOAD/UML Ang...@oo... Putlitzstr. 24 Patterns/FrameWorks Fon: +49 721 9812465 76137 Karlsruhe C++/JAVA Fax: +49 721 9812467 |