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Planetwars balance!

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5 years ago
Hey, since planetwars is starting this weekend again, i wanted to find out how the balance is at the moment.

I wouldn't like to see us beeing the largest fraction by far, again...


So which active/relevant clans have picked a side so far, and are motivated to play this one?




ps.
At the moment mumble is descided to fight for federation again, but we would be willing to switch if it helps the total balance.
+0 / -0
If PRO is going to be around and play for Empire, and a couple more individual high-rank players play for Dynasty (raaar? probably needs one or two more who are currently assigned as well), I think that's probably about as good as we're going to get, outside of a major clan reshuffle.

My understanding is that several of GBC's players will not be very active and GoogleFrog is not unlikely to take a more administrative role.
+0 / -0
Here are the current numbers of top50 players for both ladders in each faction.
It sums below 100 but above 50 because some players are in both ladders.

Faction	        RankingPlayers
------------------------------
Neutral         30
Dynasty         12
Empire          13
Federation      18


As-is, Federation has 150% of the ranking players of their closest competitor.

There are 30 neutral ranking players, though - there's still some time for them to fix that issue!
+2 / -0


5 years ago
The same is true for non-ranking players:



Allowing the Federation to exist was a mistake, i think.
+0 / -0
What if every fraction that wins planet wars had to retire and choose new backstory, colour and logo?
+2 / -0
5 years ago
I don't know how much it matters, but from an outside perspective, the short blurbs make it sound like the Federation are the good guys and the other 2 are elitist, narcissistic, genocidal bad guys.

This is the start of a good idea:
quote:
What if every fraction that wins planet wars had to retire and choose new backstory, colour and logo?


But shouldn't we encourage good logos and backstories? What if we do the opposite, and the losing team(s) faction is retired?

If entrenchment due to returning winners is still a fear, then we could make the winning faction sit out for 1 planetwars season after a win, or handicap it will a small starting disadvantage for each successive win. Or even more ideal, maybe: have some kind of general balancing limit, where no faction is allowed to have +10% players/skill of any other, and will temporarily halt any additions that would skew that.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
There was the idea that the loser faction gets retired and the winner faction splinters into two, which both have some shared ideology with the original one but are polarized on some other issue. For example when Dynasty wins it splinters into two factions which are still about bloodlines, hierarchy and genetics but one wants to push the boundaries of genetic manipulation (eg. produce chicken/human hybrids or whatever) while the other wants to keep humans pure (kill the mutants). The leading players would probably have some say about which axis they want to polarize along.
+1 / -0
The federation were created specifically because Licho wanted a faction 'who was the good guys'. Which, yeah, makes no sense in a 3 way FFA. Their blurb is fawning, the other factions would have to be intergallactic peaceniks in order to be on the same level. Each faction is meant to represent a tension: Stability versus Despotism, Human Preservation versus Human Supremacy, Machine Rights versus Revolutionary Violence, Genetic Improvement versus Tyrannical Monstrosities.

In Planet Wars 1 there was a faction called the Unaligned Worlds (Whose logo the Federation basically uses), whose tension was Freedom versus Anarchy. Pirate always ended up there, which makes sense, and that's what I suggested the Federation model itself on so they would have a clear tension, but that's not what we ended up with. Their blurb was "The Unaligned Worlds are more of a category than a faction, composed of all those bands, nations and planets who refuse to recognize anyone elses authority, lying somewhere in the spectrum between absolute liberty and absolute anarchy." which I think is much more even-handed, conveying something similiar but also a potential criticism of their system, but if you DO really believe in freedom and liberty, be a space pirate. Or if you really want a faction that stands for rights and freedoms and against oppression you go with the Free Machines: They were always meant to represent left-wing revolutionaries.

On the whole the fiction was very effective, the Dynasty players are very attached to their faction (Even as, because I am totally biased against them, I write them to be more and more monstrous) the Machine players get called 'toasters' and have the clans have names that really relate to their fiction. So you're right that federation does not fit.



We tried the thing where the losing faction was wiped out and the winning faction split in two, but in reality most members stayed were they were. A part of the problem was that we just renamed the factions rather than kicking everyone out and having them re-select, but that itself feels kinda like a punishment for winning.

The proposal I came up for this set of Planet Wars was Federation, Dynasty and Machines as the three factions, and every round they win they get a chance to spend points moving down a 'track' towards different objectives. Either they can found a new empire (A Machine empire, Dynastic Empire, or Federated Empire), or work towards two opposing objectives that shape the direction their faction takes and has an impact on the fiction of the larger universe, possibly with quirks and changes to the game state when they complete their path down the tracks.

Here is the image I made for that (Icons are not final):


You can see the Federation basically take the place of the Cybernetic/Ascended, because that's the only thing that makes sense in terms of further development for an organization that promotes a peaceful relationship between humans and machines.

But nobody seemed interested in this proposal.
+6 / -0
5 years ago
the thing is, what would change except for the backstory?
+0 / -0
PLrankAdminSprung AUrankAdminSaktoth I love this discussion, great stuff.

quote:
the thing is, what would change except for the backstory?


???
What would change? The backstory would change.
:P
+0 / -0

5 years ago
I mean it's a chance to change the fiction, that's kind of the point. Wipe out the humans, crush the machines, forge the (5th?) Empire.

But potentially also getting cosmetics, icons, perks, changing the starting conditions (Forge an empire and you start in the middle of the map wit more planets, which makes you the target of both factions but gives you a stronger start: Sort of balancing being a faction that can win consistently enough to be the first to form an empire). We could add ingame items to planetwars matches too if we were so inclined: Pursue the genetic engineering option to get chicken weapons for your comm.

But that's all cute ideas rather than stuff that's necessary for the system, it's mostly about the fiction.
+3 / -0

5 years ago
Saktoth speaks sexily
+0 / -0
5 years ago
While we're at it, any chance we could make Empire names' text color something other than approximately black?
+1 / -0
5 years ago
If the Federation was more nuanced, it could work.

from EErankAdminAnarchid
quote:
I don't know what federation was ever meant to be, but here's what it's now: a corrupt sprawling bureaucracy of galactic oppression.


If the blurb is closer to this than the current propaganda bullsh positive spin, people would be less tempted to join it by default.
They don't need to be complete bad guys, but a corrupt, ponderous bureaucracy based on what should have been, ideally, a nice political model, will probably talk to many without feeling like the good guys.

Dynasty feels like those unrepentant bad guys we love to hate (and play), and should definitely keep playing that angle.
Good old evil ancient conspiracies are always fun!

Empire is facing an old and interesting dilemma.

On one hand, empires are very romantic. I mean look at those monuments! Look at those flags! Look at those uniforms! Look at this badass military administration!

On the other hand, they have, with very few exception, always been historically the worst jerks around - by nature. An empire is, fundamentally, a wealth pump: a political system that exploits the periphery to enrich the core, and that play every level of the system against each-other (each group trying to get a higher place in the pyramid) in order to prevent them from uniting. Which often results into long-standing hatreds long after the empire is gone. Also, it is fundamentally unstable: the core always wants more, which requires a harsher exploitation of the peripheries, at some point beyond what is sustainable. As such, it ends up running dry, and crumbles.
Of course, the Empire pretends to bring peace, order and prosperity, its But those always finds itself moving from the peripheries to the core, strangely enough.
The Roman Empire is the archetypal example of both.
As fictional examples go, the biggest one is probably the Galactic Empire from Star Wars.

One of those very few exceptions was the Achaemenid Empire, which is the only lasting one I can think of to actually live to standard imperial propaganda: an efficient, rather fair administration, peace, economic development and infrastructures ending up profiting to all... It was, for its time, one of the nicest places to live. Even more impressive as it nearly covered half the world population.
The fell mostly because their didn't reform as the situation changed - when a system has always worked, after all, it can be hard to fix it.

But I digress.

The point is, by playing on both the romantic appeal and the sinister reality of what an empire is, they can be made to work at any desired nuance (ideally leaving it open to interpretation) from the dream of Cyrus the Great, to the which example to choose without offending anyone. Not this one, not that one, not this one either, certainly not this one... well, let's go for the cliché then Third Reich.
+3 / -0


5 years ago
quote:
the thing is, what would change except for the backstory?

He who controls the past, controls the future.

Changing the fluff changes what kind - and what portion - of players will want to join up.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
LUrankAdminAnir i play for whatever faction you want as long as my name is green. Who cares about lore? Colour is important.
Fashion-K is the true endgame!
+4 / -0
Nobody made any changes to the lore. Patches welcome (although at this point, likely for future rounds).
+0 / -0
5 years ago
commanders atm:
dynasty 186
empire: 234
federation: 257


the distance became shorter
+0 / -0

5 years ago
dynasty will be sad again
+0 / -0
Make Dynasty sad again!

We will build a porculon of defense in Empire space and make Empire pay for it!

quote:
If the blurb is closer to this than the current propaganda bullsh positive spin, people would be less tempted to join it by default.


The blurb was written by the Ministry of Truth, for the purpose of promoting truthfulness and impartial information.
+2 / -0
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