Economy perspective on competitiveness of rounds

General
1

Introduction
Currently there is a topic on MW65 being boring. The large galaxy size and low resources start resulted in slow development. Yet there are few fams that have a much more developed economy. These fams utilize a few game dynamics that I think everyone should know to be able to compete at all currently.

Also I think a discussion is needed on removing some of these dynamics as the advantages for organised fams grows exponentially.

In this topic I’ll discus:

  • construction science takeover builds
  • cutting portal cost
  • cutting expo cost

Reference case
Let us consider a banker with:

  • 201 planets
  • Average planet size: 250
  • 300% overbuilt planets (200,000 cash factories, ignoring home planet)
  • Networth: 1.5 million
  • Construction science bonus: 50%

Actions
Suppose this banker wants to:

  • jump to 700% overbuilt planets
  • portal 150 planets
  • explore 40 planets

Cost reference case
If this banker is going to built this by himself the cost for this would be:

  • Building 200,000 Cash factory: 40 mill gc
  • Portalling 150 planets: 31,5 million gc
  • Exploring 40 (with space amazement): 7,2 million gc
    Total cost: 78,7 million GC. I am ignoring ressies for now.

Cost optimized case
A good fam would take a whole different approach. They would have a con builder. A small player with low NW, low size, high construction science. Because NW isn’t instant this person can takeover all the planets of a high infra player and built with high construction bonus and low empire size cost. It would require sending a lot of fleet, triggering and building everything in 1 tick before NW kicks in, but it’s well worth it.
Also when the con builder took all planets, the banker will be small cutting expo cost dramatically
In addition, upon retaking all planets portals can be queued after each retake cutting down portal cost up to 50%.

Let’s assume the con builder has:

  • 200K NW
  • 10 planet size
  • 99% construction science

This case would look like:

  • Sending 200 fleet by con builder: 400K GC
  • Building 200,000 CF by con builder: 14,5 million GC
  • Sending 200 fleet by banker to take planets back: 400K GC
  • Exploring 40 planets: 36,000 GC
  • Portal 150 planets by portal directly after each retake: 12,5 million gc
    Total cost: 28 million GC

Added bonus, because the banker dropped a lot in NW his construction science just went sky high and those portals finish in about 21 ticks.

So just by swapping around planets we are saving over 50 million GC! These differences get bigger when you add more planets in the mix and higher NW.

Pro’s and cons MW65 setup
MW65 was and is especially good for con building. Due to the shear distances in the galaxy a lot of planets have been safe for swapping a around. Active well organised fams have a very big advantage here building planets up to 1500% infra and fully portal easily where there majority struggle to even reach 700% ob.

_Learnings: To make MW more competitive and get more conflict I think a few things can be done:
1: less distance - this makes con building a high risk to loose infra which forces those organised fams to do more regular builts
2: make NW instant: this kills a lot of the benefits of con building (empire size cost being the most dominant on cost), which in turn forces the well organised fams to do more regular builts or gain less from this swapping of planets._ With less difference in infra it will become more beneficial to take infra from others or disrupt the building of others.

Formula’s
I left out most of the detailed calculations and rounded some numbers. But to get a feeling for the dynamics at play it is good to see what elements impact cost. Below the formula’s that are mostly hidden in the faq:

  • Expo cost: 1500*size + 100 * distance
  • Expo cost get reduced 40% with SA
  • portal cost: 15000 / (1+ cons%) + 1000 * size
  • Building cost: Base price / (1+ cons%) * (Empire NW / (10^6) +1) * (OB%+1)
1 Like
2

Just remove the ability to attack fam members … problem solved :smiley:

2 Likes
3

or if you do all infra is gone. I think I am in favour of this.

4

I don’t like organising these jump’s, so I’m in favour of removing them bymaking the NW apply instantly, or some other method.

I also agree that they take a good amount of coordination and activity todo and the smaller less active families are not able todo these so are further disadvantaged.

5

I’m going to make an uneducated guess here that recoding the formulas to adjust instantly for net worth and morale would be a big undertaking. The game has always made all those calculations during the downtime between each tick.

6

Yeah the change may not be a simple one, or have other unintended consequences.
There maybe an easier way of removing this advantage or mechanic.

7

Limit intra fam attacks would kill con building, but harms fams with little players more than big fams.

Bigger fams will have more morale to waste on this swapping around. You don’t want to kill attacker effectiveness in fams with just a few players.

8

this sounds the easiest way, intra family swaps lose all infra

ah and its my IC anniversary as u can see by the cake, i accept planet-gifts pls send coords ingame to bubble, fam 30, MW thx :slight_smile:

1 Like
9

Nothing new here.

The only thing which has changed is the map size and travel times. So unless you feel this has always been an issue, I don’t even see why we are considering other options than going back to a smaller map and cutting back travel times.

10

I feel nw not being instant has always been an issue.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the challange maximizing builts this way.

NW not being instant allows for some stuff that I think is unwanted if you want more competitive rounds.

I think con building in its current form is unwanted. Too much focus on creating a safe environment to swap hundreds of planets around instead of steering towards conflict.

Interms of coding I think its relatively easy. Alrdy unit counts and infra numbers get updated. Calculate nw worth from that and update player nw.

11

It is a strategic element of the game, so for me this has never been an issue. Science builds make you fragile, so it’s a risk you chose to take.

This didn’t used to be possible. It’s the map which makes this possible and necessary to keep up with competition. Give us a map with 15-18 planets per system, 80x80 and problem is solved. You want to create conflict? No need to take away strategic elements of the game, there are plenty other solutions.

12

yawns

I’ve been back for what three weeks and I keep saying it - intra family attacks should be subject to morale loss. Allows jumps as active fams should have some advantage, but not these crazy insane jumps we are seeing create such massive divides in the Galaxy.

13

Bring me back to pinwheel

14

@ Orion
Very well said, pretty much all of it.

@ Pickle
Haha!
Taking away intra fam attacks would actually solve Gun’s short term issue neatly. It would maul the game for a round till everyone asked for it to be put back, but it would likely totally equalize family econ for a really hideous round.
Smiling the whole time I typed this, hilarious. =)

@ LGuns,
Econ strats are not all known by, and not all utilized by, in any given round - in any given family.
There is an art to econ that comes with time, experience, and organization. The great leaders (almost to a man) are able to get their family to adopt new policies based on need, family composition, and map position on the fly.
That’s why all fams grow at different rates.
Orion is quite correct, map size is key.

15

I agree make it smaller but systems bigger makes it nice when you portal next to someone and can take 18 planets

16

At the heart of it all, the problem is the lack of active players. Anyone that ends up in a non-drafted family is going to get screwed. Anyone returning to the game who gets farmed is going to leave after their first round back.

I understand that the top fams who put in the effort to coordinate this type of activity should reap some reward, but all you’ll end up doing is driving the casual and low fam active players away.

If this means introducing morale for intra-family attacks or losing buildings when passing planets I’m all for it. I’m sure the top fams will survive being 5x rather than 15x larger than the small fams.

Making the map smaller (which I think is necessary for other reasons) is still only going to screw low level fams more unless other stricter rules are in play to discourage attacking far smaller fams.

Ideally, these changes wouldn’t be needed - but until there’s a more competitive player base there needs to be something to help balance the game for newcomers, random families and returners, or you’ll end up with nobody to pick off.

17

Have a non draft round

18

sorry daddyfat that we were fighting u, we kept it civil and i hope u had some fun skirmishing with me :slight_smile:

i agree to a non draft round, but the veterans here like to play with their buddies etc they are old people who wont open their minds… but if drafts are allowed then there should be at least a NW rule for attacking smaller fams

19

Very good post, thanks for sharing this info. I didn’t quite understand it entirely, due to my lack of experience, but I did kind of learn something new.

What is con building - what does the “con” stand for?

1 Like
20

con = construction, u can add it to IC wiki :slight_smile:

1 Like