Please: don't take this as an absurd proposition, at least take it seriously and think about it (and post here your opinion, arguing it). I started playing many years ago, so this proposition is not an idea from someone who has been here for just a few months.
Disclaimer: all numbers are not thought thoroughly, so think about the idea, and the optimization of numbers will be a different matter that will come later.

It started as a mid-joke, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it might really have a shot. This would create a completely different experience, the same way it happened back then when OGame opened universes with defense to debris, or with more than x1 speed, or ACS. Those are completely different experiences, this is another proposition.

What if there was an universe in which planets would be smaller?

For instance, the biggest planet possible had 110 fields (as I said above, the numbers should be also discussed / decided, this is just to show the idea). That would mean that mines wouldn't be bigger than a certain number and all planets would eventually be practically filled. Imagine one manages to get mines 35 29 31, then to compensate for this limit, the speed of the production should be high, like x10, to achieve a production of 100-200M daily resources.

So building construction would eventually end for a planet, and only three remaining options would be there: defense, technology or fleet. And I think the third one would be the most chosen. Plus, anyone that starts the universe late could get at a decent speed in a matter of few months (which is one of the problems of ogame, that there's no late addition of players to an universe).

Only a second thing, since people would in some way would be forced to have fleet, it should be a livable universe, so not more than x2 fleet speed (if it was x4 or such it would be a massacre from the top players, and would be monopolized fast). In fact, I think x1 would be okey, that way one could “easily” survive.

I have a few more things to say, but I will leave the ideas out so you can think about it more freely. Please, ask, talk, suggest, argue, etc. so this idea at least passes through peer review in some way.

Summary (just to throw some numbers): x10 economy, x1 fleet speed, 30% debris fields, −100 fields per planet, ACS.

And, if it gets attention, and you decide to try it, you could open the universe as an international one (as you did with prOgame a ton of years ago) and give it publicity so people from every community come to it.

Why would you say that? It's a x1, so you got much more time than in speed universes, but from that to say that nobody would fleet? I mean, OGame has been x1 for a long time and for sure people learnt and needed to fleetsave.


What's the impossible? That's the twist, with those mines you would produce a lot, so the growth would be comparable to a speed universe, but it wouldn't be no Farmville 2.0 (that's what would happen if you use x5 mines x1 fleet, because then people would grow only mines, but here they won't be able to).

This is by no means constructive criticism I hope that more people would write answers and ideas here, because then it would be more dynamic; right now trying to explain an idea here makes longer posts which might bore the reader.

The main purpose of this discussion should be if this universe would actually be playable, its viability; I say this because “this game must provide a variety of gaming shapes” is not how OGame works: OGame provides this, but different configurations of the universe make different ways of playing much more possible / profitable than others. For instance a few examples of universes, (x2 speed + defenses to debris) makes almost impossible for turtles to play; (x5 speed) makes it difficult for fleeters that can't dedicate every day to play (casual fleeters), if they don't become part of the monopoly, they can't play without vmode; (x1 speed) makes it difficult for pure miners to grow the first months of the game; and more examples like (50 galaxies 100 systems in each galaxy), (No ACS), etc. all of them make things more easy for some ways of playing and not for others. I expand a little bit more below.


Again, the proposal is not an (x10 mines + x1 fleet) universe, it's (x10 mines + x1 universe + 110 fields maximum) you can't leave that third factor out of the equation. The intention is that the third factor, planet size, balances the universe.


That might be true. But is there a problem? On a speed universe, one reaches 15M in a matter of few months, and even if at first people dedicate more resources into mines, some would go to fleet, crushing a fleet or a bunch of cargos full of resources surely will give a boost, even when mines are affordable. But, again, why don't you think of a way to stabilize this (constructive criticism), if you think this first months are a big problem: may be 50% of fleet to debris fields would encourage fleet even in the first months?


This does not stop anyone from trying to do anything, it just makes something more appealing. And it happens that precisely that something is what mostly made this game interesting years ago. If someone wants to be a miner / researcher, it is completely possible, but the mines would become much less profitable since they will spend a lot of resources in terraformer.

I have more to say but this is becoming too long. The questions is if this universe would enrich OGame community, if opening it will be a terrible catastrophe, then no, it wouldn't enrich the game, but I don't see if catastrophe is what this would be, and in fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it may actually be entertaining.

The minus 100 fields planet size was just a way of talking, the whole planet sizes would have to be tweaked (today we can get 90 fields planet, that would make -10 fields :P). “–100 fields” was the slogan

The main idea is that max planet would make too difficult to have above 20-30M mines, even when accounts get bigger than 100–200M points.

Research labs, in particular, are going to be less needed, since the speed would be high, but yes, it would make more probable than people spend a little bit more dark matter when the game advances and people would probably star tearing down labs when not needed (that's strategy).

“How are you going to use your fleet if nobody sell deuterium?” You get around 100M–200M resources of daily production with 20M of mines (again, the slogan was “x10 mines”, but the idea behind it is “to get a decent production with small mines”), so deuterium would definitely be around. It would be like a typical x5 speed universe in that sense.

The problem with that sizes (130-150) is that it will actually possible to take mines to levels 45 38 40 or around that (at least I did some numbers some time ago, and I think I needed a planet of around 130 fields), which is kind of the opposite that this proposal wants.

I don't see why do you need “the universe to last longer”, in fact the idea is that the universe lasts longer by removing many fields in the planets. My way of thinking is that by letting it be x1 fleet speed we would fix the problem with monopolies or bashers from fast universes, making it easy to survive for fleets than speed universes, but with (x10 mines + reduced size planets) you would keep fast growth but controlling the miners.

And about 70% defenses to debris fields? That's killing. Personally I don't like these universes, I don't like too much defenses either, but enough to not have to connect many times a day just to fleet resources; by letting them go to debris fields it's the most unlivable universe I've played. And, not personally, but from at least experience in Spanish community, any defense to debris universe has ended completely abandoned (say rank 1 with 60M points and rank 100 with less than 2M points).

Dani, I don't understand your las message

If you mean that this will be turtle heaven, and everyone (or at least a lot of people) will be a turtle, well, turtles don't usually survive, wether the universe is traditional or high speed, so it would be controlled. But more importantly, the question is “What makes someone choose to be a turtle?”. The number of people that want to be a turtle is considerably small; the rest of them do that as a reaction to the universe, if they keep bashed by the owners of the universe, or if they don't have enough time to survive without being farmed.

In this universe in fact the key is to get people to survive more easily, which will (try to) reduce the abuse of defenses by reducing the factors that lead people to create bunkers.

And again, everyone could keep up mining, the only thing is that it will be less profitable so people wold have more probability to start creating other things. For instance, to get 30M points in mines, one would have to spend around 4M in terraformers, to have 50M in mines one would have to spend 10M in terraformer (just an example, I have not calculated).

A thing that would be interesting is that it would be a completely new experience, and we would all be blind at first. Ten years ago, people knew nothing compared to what we know today, there was much more different strategies because it wasn't know what was best with certainty (the game was young and people didn't have experience); nowadays at least the developement of a planet is basically an ordered list where people rarely take any different path. This universe (just the fact that planets will be eventually filled) will create the same sort of situation, were new strategies would arise.

In any case, talking about monopolies… I will stop coming here everyday to let others add answers and I hope this thread stays less monopolized

As iguypouf says, this is a special universe. In the same sense prOgame was special a few years ago (or may be not at that level, but each first speed universe in each community). That's a good point.

About the planet sizes, just to clarify, the “minus one hundred” was just a way of saying, taking the official sizes, here's a manual example, of course, GameForge should decide, but I the only thing important change from the official table would be the maximum size.

I think the current restrictions that apply into the current distribution are mainly that lower positioned planets have sightly higher sizes to encourage relocating to cold positions, even position 3 is a nice choice to colonize and then relocate to position 15. In this universe there should be less differences between one or another position, but still people would fight for places where they get higher planets.

(Do not take this completely seriously.)

Position 1: Maximum 172 → Maximum 95
Position 2: Maximum 176 → Maximum 99
Position 3: Maximum 182 → Maximum 102
Position 4: Maximum 208 → Maximum 107
Position 5: Maximum 232 → Maximum 109
Position 6: Maximum 242 → Maximum 111
Position 7: Maximum 248 → Maximum 113
Position 8: Maximum 252 → Maximum 116
Position 9: Maximum 246 → Maximum 112
Position 10: Maximum 232 → Maximum 109
Position 11: Maximum 210 → Maximum 106
Position 12: Maximum 186 → Maximum 105
Position 13: Maximum 172 → Maximum 96
Position 14: Maximum 168 → Maximum 93
Position 15: Maximum 164 → Maximum 90

A few extra points that might convince GameForge is the Dark Matter usage, I think that it might not be low, because, e.g., low level research labs might put them in a position where they “need” to spend more dark matter; plus accounts would grow more horizontally (astrophysics) than vertically (mines); other planet items would be more used (extra fields, which, by the way, should be accordingly resized, say they give +3, +6 an +9 respectively, for instance, because +15 would be too high); plus, since the growth speed would be like a fast universe, there would be more dark matter used; and, since the plan is to make the universe livable, but being high speed growth, big fleets would have much more mobility than in current traditional x1 speed universe, where moving a 90M fleet is a high risk of loosing tons of deuterium, which would lead to more dark matter paid by fleeters.

Of course, people with good strategy could live without dark matter, but the vast majority of average players would spend some money.

And an extra not perfect but acceptable point: newbie players could survive for a long time because in an x1 fleet speed one can survive on its own if it doesn't have mistakes. So, in the worst case scenario, it would have more activity because newbie players would like it because they would survive (with fleet) longer.