I've been invited to re-post some of my ideas here, which originally appeared in the .org suggestions board. I'm also going to repost an idea I had about making the galaxies circular... I wasn't invited to repost that one in particular but I do think its a good idea and it's been getting good responses from other players, and it was also in that thread that I made a proposal for a new procedure for testing new features that involves having players in a uni vote on whether they want to test a new feature for a given length of time, be rewarded with dark matter for filling out somewhat regular surveys (the kind which produce aggregate quantitative rather than qualitative data) and then allowed to vote again at the end of the test period on whether or not they would like to keep the feature. A 75% approval threshhold might be necessary in some cases to prevent massive boycotts of a test uni. Without further ado;
---
Everyone seems to be aware that OGame is struggling to stay alive, its getting harder to retain players. I do my part and advise the noobs I raid on how to be less of a target, what to build if they have an obvious weakness, how to find good targets for themselves, go on expeditions, etc. But the game itself needs to be altered at a fundamental level, and perhaps this alteration should be introduced into existing unis so that they don't die out. Now, I'm starting out by being vague because I want to leave the discussion as open as possible, but generally I think that the primary goal of such a change should be to ensure that players of all ranks and skill levels keep coming back for small victories, and small defeats, perhaps. Another goal should be that players are more motivated to interact with one another - its networks that keep this game alive.
For the sake of suggesting something specific, here's an idea to get the discussion started, it's not entirely new, but it's a good place to start - although I hope that the discussion won't revolve around this one idea.
Pirates and aliens should have planets. We could make OGame a lot more complex, there could be multiple alien nations and pirate factions going in and out of war with one another that would be able to make basic agreements with human alliances, but it doesn't really need to be that complicated. I'm thinking of a very basic sort of AI that has a few planets, builds up its mines over time, has a 90% predictable online/offline/fleetsave schedule, and launches probes and attacks on any targets that seem profitable - and a pirate's profit margins could be extremely narrow! Pirate empires could pop up in particular neighbourhoods and become a menace - or a good source of farming. They could pop up anywhere - the GOs could run them in a macro sort of way, deciding to put 15 pirate planets off in the middle of Galaxy 7 and see if anyone moves in to stop them from getting too powerful. Players in a particular area might have to cooperate in order to put the pirates down, you might have a weaker player telling a stronger one "hey, pirates are attacking me from their moon here, so their fleet should be returning at this time, you can blind phalanx them and maybe pay me for the info", etc, etc. Inactive planets that are due to be deleted could be taken over by pirates instead. Aliens might operate on a completely different ethic, two tribes could be warring with one another with such a rage that they don't even pick up their own massive debris fields...
Other types of random events that could increase activity would be like... a large comet that passes through a region of space, scattering debris fields of varying sizes around random planets - even uninhabited ones. A large enough fleet could destroy it to grab a large amount of debris before it went off to an unreachable location. Stars could occasionally go supernova (but miraculously reforming somehow ;p), giving a 7 day warning, which would destroy all fleet around all planets in a given system in a single instant - requiring players to move their fleets away or to be in the middle of a fleetsave for that moment. Perhaps players would somehow be able to CAUSE these supernovas in another system... deliver 1kk deut to a sun? That would simplify a graviton crash! The real cost of solar satellite energy would be driven up generally if everyone knew that regardless of whether or not they were attacked, they would have to rebuild their satellites eventually. Minor (unpredictable?) solar flares could either cause solar energy production to shut down or skyrocket for a short period of time, triggering a flurry of graviton attempts!
Expeditions could be enhanced - the sixteenth slot could actually have its own debris field that everyone could see, destroying a pirate/alien fleet could actually provide some benefit. Fleets lost 'to a black hole' could actually re-emerge somewhere else (slot 16) - unpiloted, ready for another player to see (scan) and capture (send 2 LC to capture 1 unpiloted one, for example) and the player who lost their fleet to a black hole would be the first to know where it went. Droid colonies could be discovered, providing a short term production boost to one of the mines on the planet from which the expedition was sent. Wormholes with short lifespans could open up in pairs in different slot 16s across the universe, suddenly shrinking the distance between two places (distance calculating here would be quite complicated, also how to specify to a fleet that it goes through this wormhole and comes back before it closes etc, but it could be worked out)
Each system could have an asteroid field between planet slots 4 and 5 (that's what we have here in Sol anyways) each with 7 different asteroids that could be captured (requires the continual stationing of a colony ship) and mined. Example; you target an asteroid (4:237:4,5c) and scan it: 1.439.776 metal, 814.113 crystal and 11.929 deuterium, no mines or solar plants, 64 fields. So you capture it with a colony ship and a few truckloads of res and then decide what to build on it. (The colony ship is sacrificed when you capture the asteroid) To the right of your 'planets' column you have an 'asteroid' column. Let's say that each 3 levels of astrophysics lets you mine 1 additional asteroid, and you can automatically occupy one asteroid without any expedition tech. For this asteroid specifically, it probably would not be worth the effort to build a deuterium mine. And it wouldn't necessarily be beneficial to build the metal or crystal mines too high, since youll lose them eventually - they should be just high enough that you can farm it in a reasonable amount of time, without worrying that someone else will just capture it, but not so high that your profits from the asteroid are actually lowered by the input cost. While you mine it, the metal/crystal/deut remaining on the asteroid diminishes. Because an empty asteroid might actually be valuable to a player as a place to launch a fleet from, they are only destroyed when the player decides to destroy them. If an asteroid is left undefended, it can be captured by another player's fleet - and they would get all of the mines that have already been built on them, and 100% of the resources that have already been mined and are ready to ship! Shipyards and robotics factories would be the only FACILITIES that could be constructed on an asteroid, but defenses could not be built. When an asteroid is destroyed, a new one takes its place 48 hours later. Another possibility is that the asteroids aren't actually mined with buildings, but with Colony ships themselves, which land on the asteroid with their little mini colonies for a set number of hours (taking up an expedition slot!?) and pull out a set number of metal/crystal/deut per hour per colony ship (a rate adjustable by further research into... say... ion and plasma technologies?!)
And, one thing that could be made UNRANDOM: When you colonize a planet, you know exactly - in terms of size and temperature - what you are going to get because of which slot it is. You know what's not fun at all? Spending a month looking for the right planet.
I'm just brainstorming to get the discussion flowing, we need to generate ideas, flesh them out a bit maybe but generally just try to produce something that the programmers could get a hold of and actually IMPLEMENT - leave the real fleshing out of details to the people that code the game to be balanced and fun.
Let's keep this game ALIVE!
....
Alright, let's work on the comet idea.
Let's say the comet appears and disappears in different unoccupied planet slots in different solar systems each day, as if it were moving. On any given day, the comet can be seen in these three places, it's 'trail' (a comet trail which can be scanned, the espionage report will reveal the current location of the comet) where the comet was yesterday, the comet itself (which can be scanned, revealing the 'size' of it and the server time at which it will transition to the next location), and the comet's trajectory (which, like the trail, can be scanned to reveal the comet's actual current position) where the comet will appear tomorrow. Here's what an espionage report of a comet might look like.
Comet "Anonymous Hamster", 4:215:6
Mass: 378.000 tonnes
Here until: 0:00:00 server time (T-13:24:56)
Now, the player knows that in order to destroy this comet they need to have a fleet arrive in the next 13 and a half hours that deals 378.000 damage in a single round to blast the comet into a debris field. This debris field will be made up of a RANDOM mix of metal and crystal, that would add up to a total of 378.000. So, you get your fleet together, and destroy it - turns out it was 40% metal and 60% crystal, a damn good find! a debris field of this size will appear:
151.200 metal
226.800 crystal
So, this would be a medium sized comet, one that 30 destroyers and 70 battlecruisers with level 12 weapons technology could destroy. If the amount given is too high considering the investment in fleet that was necessary, the percentage of mass that goes into DF could be adjusted, but probably not down to 30%.
Comets would encourage miners to actually have a fleet of battleships they could use to snipe out passing comets.
The amount of comets that would appear/disappear could be random, as could their sizes, but actually - THIS WOULD BE AN EXTREMELY USEFUL MACRO-MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR GOs! Once it was established - through some testing and some guessing - how many comets would be needed to spike interest and retain players in the game, they could adjust the number and size of comets accordingly. Maybe it would be beneficial to create large numbers of comets that move through unoccupied areas, motivating people to create temporary planets way out in G7 to chase a large number of these things. And fleeters could chase the comet chasers.
Fun times!
How could this be improved?
EDIT: Dark matter could be used to 'buy' a subscription to a prop astronomer's newsletter which tracks the largest clusters of comets and the locations of their expected appearances.
---
Everyone seems to be aware that OGame is struggling to stay alive, its getting harder to retain players. I do my part and advise the noobs I raid on how to be less of a target, what to build if they have an obvious weakness, how to find good targets for themselves, go on expeditions, etc. But the game itself needs to be altered at a fundamental level, and perhaps this alteration should be introduced into existing unis so that they don't die out. Now, I'm starting out by being vague because I want to leave the discussion as open as possible, but generally I think that the primary goal of such a change should be to ensure that players of all ranks and skill levels keep coming back for small victories, and small defeats, perhaps. Another goal should be that players are more motivated to interact with one another - its networks that keep this game alive.
For the sake of suggesting something specific, here's an idea to get the discussion started, it's not entirely new, but it's a good place to start - although I hope that the discussion won't revolve around this one idea.
Pirates and aliens should have planets. We could make OGame a lot more complex, there could be multiple alien nations and pirate factions going in and out of war with one another that would be able to make basic agreements with human alliances, but it doesn't really need to be that complicated. I'm thinking of a very basic sort of AI that has a few planets, builds up its mines over time, has a 90% predictable online/offline/fleetsave schedule, and launches probes and attacks on any targets that seem profitable - and a pirate's profit margins could be extremely narrow! Pirate empires could pop up in particular neighbourhoods and become a menace - or a good source of farming. They could pop up anywhere - the GOs could run them in a macro sort of way, deciding to put 15 pirate planets off in the middle of Galaxy 7 and see if anyone moves in to stop them from getting too powerful. Players in a particular area might have to cooperate in order to put the pirates down, you might have a weaker player telling a stronger one "hey, pirates are attacking me from their moon here, so their fleet should be returning at this time, you can blind phalanx them and maybe pay me for the info", etc, etc. Inactive planets that are due to be deleted could be taken over by pirates instead. Aliens might operate on a completely different ethic, two tribes could be warring with one another with such a rage that they don't even pick up their own massive debris fields...
Other types of random events that could increase activity would be like... a large comet that passes through a region of space, scattering debris fields of varying sizes around random planets - even uninhabited ones. A large enough fleet could destroy it to grab a large amount of debris before it went off to an unreachable location. Stars could occasionally go supernova (but miraculously reforming somehow ;p), giving a 7 day warning, which would destroy all fleet around all planets in a given system in a single instant - requiring players to move their fleets away or to be in the middle of a fleetsave for that moment. Perhaps players would somehow be able to CAUSE these supernovas in another system... deliver 1kk deut to a sun? That would simplify a graviton crash! The real cost of solar satellite energy would be driven up generally if everyone knew that regardless of whether or not they were attacked, they would have to rebuild their satellites eventually. Minor (unpredictable?) solar flares could either cause solar energy production to shut down or skyrocket for a short period of time, triggering a flurry of graviton attempts!
Expeditions could be enhanced - the sixteenth slot could actually have its own debris field that everyone could see, destroying a pirate/alien fleet could actually provide some benefit. Fleets lost 'to a black hole' could actually re-emerge somewhere else (slot 16) - unpiloted, ready for another player to see (scan) and capture (send 2 LC to capture 1 unpiloted one, for example) and the player who lost their fleet to a black hole would be the first to know where it went. Droid colonies could be discovered, providing a short term production boost to one of the mines on the planet from which the expedition was sent. Wormholes with short lifespans could open up in pairs in different slot 16s across the universe, suddenly shrinking the distance between two places (distance calculating here would be quite complicated, also how to specify to a fleet that it goes through this wormhole and comes back before it closes etc, but it could be worked out)
Each system could have an asteroid field between planet slots 4 and 5 (that's what we have here in Sol anyways) each with 7 different asteroids that could be captured (requires the continual stationing of a colony ship) and mined. Example; you target an asteroid (4:237:4,5c) and scan it: 1.439.776 metal, 814.113 crystal and 11.929 deuterium, no mines or solar plants, 64 fields. So you capture it with a colony ship and a few truckloads of res and then decide what to build on it. (The colony ship is sacrificed when you capture the asteroid) To the right of your 'planets' column you have an 'asteroid' column. Let's say that each 3 levels of astrophysics lets you mine 1 additional asteroid, and you can automatically occupy one asteroid without any expedition tech. For this asteroid specifically, it probably would not be worth the effort to build a deuterium mine. And it wouldn't necessarily be beneficial to build the metal or crystal mines too high, since youll lose them eventually - they should be just high enough that you can farm it in a reasonable amount of time, without worrying that someone else will just capture it, but not so high that your profits from the asteroid are actually lowered by the input cost. While you mine it, the metal/crystal/deut remaining on the asteroid diminishes. Because an empty asteroid might actually be valuable to a player as a place to launch a fleet from, they are only destroyed when the player decides to destroy them. If an asteroid is left undefended, it can be captured by another player's fleet - and they would get all of the mines that have already been built on them, and 100% of the resources that have already been mined and are ready to ship! Shipyards and robotics factories would be the only FACILITIES that could be constructed on an asteroid, but defenses could not be built. When an asteroid is destroyed, a new one takes its place 48 hours later. Another possibility is that the asteroids aren't actually mined with buildings, but with Colony ships themselves, which land on the asteroid with their little mini colonies for a set number of hours (taking up an expedition slot!?) and pull out a set number of metal/crystal/deut per hour per colony ship (a rate adjustable by further research into... say... ion and plasma technologies?!)
And, one thing that could be made UNRANDOM: When you colonize a planet, you know exactly - in terms of size and temperature - what you are going to get because of which slot it is. You know what's not fun at all? Spending a month looking for the right planet.
I'm just brainstorming to get the discussion flowing, we need to generate ideas, flesh them out a bit maybe but generally just try to produce something that the programmers could get a hold of and actually IMPLEMENT - leave the real fleshing out of details to the people that code the game to be balanced and fun.
Let's keep this game ALIVE!
....
Alright, let's work on the comet idea.
Let's say the comet appears and disappears in different unoccupied planet slots in different solar systems each day, as if it were moving. On any given day, the comet can be seen in these three places, it's 'trail' (a comet trail which can be scanned, the espionage report will reveal the current location of the comet) where the comet was yesterday, the comet itself (which can be scanned, revealing the 'size' of it and the server time at which it will transition to the next location), and the comet's trajectory (which, like the trail, can be scanned to reveal the comet's actual current position) where the comet will appear tomorrow. Here's what an espionage report of a comet might look like.
Comet "Anonymous Hamster", 4:215:6
Mass: 378.000 tonnes
Here until: 0:00:00 server time (T-13:24:56)
Now, the player knows that in order to destroy this comet they need to have a fleet arrive in the next 13 and a half hours that deals 378.000 damage in a single round to blast the comet into a debris field. This debris field will be made up of a RANDOM mix of metal and crystal, that would add up to a total of 378.000. So, you get your fleet together, and destroy it - turns out it was 40% metal and 60% crystal, a damn good find! a debris field of this size will appear:
151.200 metal
226.800 crystal
So, this would be a medium sized comet, one that 30 destroyers and 70 battlecruisers with level 12 weapons technology could destroy. If the amount given is too high considering the investment in fleet that was necessary, the percentage of mass that goes into DF could be adjusted, but probably not down to 30%.
Comets would encourage miners to actually have a fleet of battleships they could use to snipe out passing comets.
The amount of comets that would appear/disappear could be random, as could their sizes, but actually - THIS WOULD BE AN EXTREMELY USEFUL MACRO-MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR GOs! Once it was established - through some testing and some guessing - how many comets would be needed to spike interest and retain players in the game, they could adjust the number and size of comets accordingly. Maybe it would be beneficial to create large numbers of comets that move through unoccupied areas, motivating people to create temporary planets way out in G7 to chase a large number of these things. And fleeters could chase the comet chasers.
Fun times!
How could this be improved?
EDIT: Dark matter could be used to 'buy' a subscription to a prop astronomer's newsletter which tracks the largest clusters of comets and the locations of their expected appearances.
