MW75 suggestion: fix construction jumps

Suggestions
21

I would be very careful about completely doing away with con builds. I am 100% in favor of trying new things and it’s totally fine to try this for a round or two to garner feedback, but I hope that Pie is open to bringing back con builds in at least some form later on.

My preferred option would have been lowering the max build limit from the number of existing buildings to 100-200% of the max size, so con builds would still be another tool to utilize, but would have much less potential since the jumps would be much smaller. Touching the NW building penalty would really change things up too, but that would be more unpredictable.

Using con science isn’t an exploit, it is designed into the game. I understand it gives an advantage to better players, but at a certain level I think there absolutely should be advantages for players willing to plan and coordinate. Particularly important to me is that this advantage is one of the only ones that isn’t purely predicated on sheer ingame activity.

Whatever you end up deciding, please don’t do real time NW adjustments. The game is already too laggy during the first tick of wars due to excess page requests and i think that would practically slow the servers to a halt during wars. The existence of con builds had extremely little impact on MW74, so I hope that continuing to turn other dials on game balance can be considered and the endless bashing of con building can move onto more productive ideas.

22

NW not updating the tick you gain a planet after an attack is a fault, abusing it is borderline an exploit.

This isn’t going to kill con science, it is still going to have a large impact, you just won’t see max con bonus every time.

It is also pretty much entirely predicated on activity, fams with low activity cannot do the science flips, and someone not showing up for a planned science jump was actually a reason for dropping way behind.

Don’t worry, con bonus isn’t gone, it’s just got a nerf, or perhaps been brought into reality. Those excessive jumps aren’t fun at all, good riddance.

23

NW not updating instantly is absolutely a design choice to limit server loads. I don’t at all understand how con builds are going to continue to have a large impact with these changes. It will likely devolve eco strategy to simply building buildings on whoever is least OB, which doesn’t sound that interesting to me since there aren’t many impactful choices left to make.

24

:sweat_smile: because you can focus all your con bonus onto a single person and have a higher net saving when building, but once you get to the mark you suggest, say 200-300% it will be completely pointless. You will still have huge con bonus when exploring.

And sure it is absolutely a design choice to limit the server load, but the side effect is what we are abusing, not the design choice.

25

Also, I would further the point that this then makes where and how you explore a bit more important, since the only goal isnt imperial construction. It brings other elements into play that are largely overlooked.

I can understand it may be uncomfortable to see a change when you are happy with it the way it is, presumably you haven’t had to manage these builds, it is tiresome after the first couple. And forces teamwork rather than promotes it. New people coming in won’t want to log on once a day and just be carried through, and then be expected to stick around.

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26

You’re right, not purely, just for like 90% or so.

27

all the same tick NW change would do is have you send multiple fleets to science planets, pass them around on the same tick without blowing infra and then whomever has the most or least (still not figured that bit out (most likely least)) Research points will keep the planets (final attack, send the most ground possible) and build lasers until ready to do again. The reason for using the science planets and not something like octarine planets is that they will most likely be the most built for the strategy to work and will carry the most NW to ensure no infra is lost and that you can get as low as possible once you pass the planets to someone else (ensuring higher science when you build).

If the NW is calculated mid tick (such as on planet hands change), you could even run this strat between multiple groups of 2 players because the only real thing that needs to change is to have as little NW as possible so that A) you can have massive science and B) you can take the planets back without blowing infra (so that the other empire can then have super low NW and build that tick).

Yes this is slightly slower than having one high science player that takes all of the planets but due to the nature of it, it can be done every tick-2 ticks or whatever so that you are constantly building.

Here is an example scenario (E = Empire):

E1 has 5 planets that they want to build on and 5 science planets that they have just held for 10 ticks, giving a lot of RP but due to NW has a little amount of con science.

E2 has 5 planets that they want to build on, has recently held a lot of science planets but has just passed them onto E3.

E2 has now had his NW recalculated and so his con % hits like 70% or something. E2 builds until he has hit his next building cap (doubling his OB% or whatever).

E2 or E3 takes the 5 science planets from E1 (if E2 is the bigger banker then it may be nice to let him have the 5 so that he can keep building RP for when that infra comes in, allowing for another jump in 12 or whatever ticks).

E1 has now got like 50-60% con or whatever because his NW has just recalculated the same tick. E1 builds big.

The details are not there clearly but my point is that if NW can recalculate on the same tick, it will have the opposite effect when you give planets to another empire (increase science) to that of taking planets off of a player (decrease science (the thing that a lot of people are mentioning)). The way proposed and looks to have been coded by pie, with the NW still being on next tick but not allowing new buildings on them for x time is a lot stronger against con jumps.

Even though it stops the current way of con jumping, my second point there is that there are always ways to do so and tbh, the example I showed will still work with the way pie has coded, just needs the one tick to do so (as it waits for NW recalculation).

Please just wait and see what happens as I am more than sure that if you want to find a way to con jump, you sure as hell will as nothing will take away cheaper buildings unless pie turns around and disables con science for the round.

28

You ignore the fact that currently we are completely ignoring NW, ignoring it, it’s value is 0 in the calculation, so con bonus is extraordinarily high with relatively low RP input.

There was no con % difference between OB on 0% or 700%.

However what you explain passes the NW, but also passes the planet so you can’t build on it. In order to build you have to retain the planets with buildings. All of which will yield a much higher NW than the current amount we are used to dealing with.

Your method would likely be plausible early with low planet count. But when you have high planet count you can’t escape the NW because you need to build on more than 5 planets at a time.

29

People keep talking about how everyone wants a chance to plan eco, but it all gets taken away by the one person in fam who is best at it. This round clearly showed that very few people are interested in doing the planning since practically nobody had good eco starts. That may well mean that people also don’t want to execute other people strategies’ but I’m not sure that follows.

Mace is actually right that instant NW does leave more opportunities open for con jumps at all sizes than the proposed change. It is definitely incorrect to say that con jumps will still be around with this change though. Sure you can still try do it for FB or 100% like you say, but it really isn’t better than just spreading the research across all fam members to not have to pay fleet sending and the lost income from travel times and people sleeping and such, when that research becomes close to useless once you pass 300%.

I don’t know why I need to keep saying that I’m okay with testing changes to this. I’m all for checking it out. I just want to point out what I see as potential issues and assess what to look at later on.

I also don’t know why people complain so much about “imperial infra.” The game is 75% diplo now anyway. The two families with by far the best eco starts are going to finish last. There are a ton of game design and balance issues that I would put as higher priority than this.

30

Please feel free to mention them in MW75 recommendations.

A comment in that thread is what resulted in this change being prioritized. Other requests are welcome.

As with most new changes, this has been introduced as a galaxy setting. If we find that it isn’t desirable, changing it back will be as simple as flipping a switch.

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31

Glad to hear it. I’ve been meaning to type up a post in that thread, but it keeps getting longer and longer. I’ll finish it eventually.

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32

Looking fwd to it!

As for the debate on whether or not the con jump thing is an exploit, we have to remember that it’s impossible for us to know that for certain one way or another. Unfortunately, like many things, the previous owners didn’t document this. Therefore, we don’t know the intention.

It’s true that the NW delay is a design choice, but having that in place to limit server loads is a web design choice, not necessarily a game design choice. Just the same, we can’t know whether or not that choice’s effect on the construction bonus jump was intentional and anticipated by the prior developers, or a player-discovered loophole.

What we do know though, is that all of the science types are tied to Networth, but construction is the only one that players use in a way that is so heavily dependent on the tick delay. It’s only an inference, but that doesn’t feel like a conscious choice for game design. It feels like a byproduct of a technical limitation.

It feels like an exploit, albeit one that has become part of longtime player strategy.

Either way, we’ll assess the change and adapt accordingly.

33

Yeah I agree, it certainly opens the door for more opportunity to move your bonus up or down, but this change certainly reduces how fruitful the rewards are, so it definitely won’t be worth doing it at such volume.

It’s also worth considering that science jumps this way really aren’t difficult to plan, they are just boring to plan, “build as much as you can of this, and then build this with leftovers” is no plan. That is simply “winging” it.

34

I was tired, didn’t read my message again and frankly got bored typing, but had invested too much time into it. I did explain that the details were not there and I fully understand that it isn’t only 5. Further to it not only being 5, it also isn’t the planets that you pass that are being built on. It’s the person that gives up the x planets that will be building on whatever they keep behind. Sure it might not be a big help later on but that’s why I added a clause that if you want to find a way to do it, you can do. I literally looked at it for 2 seconds and said to myself, if NW recalculates mid tick, you gain science when you lose planets. We will see very quickly what happens with con jumps next tick. As the implementation looks to be that you cannot build for a tick and not NW changing mid tick, you will need to wait for the tick anyway to lower that NW from giving up planets but if you have enough RP from having a large amount of RC (for example but just throwing out a number (again no real details), 100K NW of RC (plus planet/pop NW)) then you have just dropped a bunch of NW from giving up the planets. Obviously, as I said, it will not be as good as current con jumping but that’s the point of the change and also I have admitted/said that better options than my suggestion exist.

35

What you explain here is exactly what should happen logically, we aren’t trying to kill con bonuses, the idea is to kill a loophole which has created a meta game.

Sure we will always find a way to find tune a strategy, but play a few rounds managing the current flipping and you burn out fast.

I’ve taken a few rounds off specifically because of the tiresome min maxing, it’s too much along side other stuff I am doing.

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36

Historical Assessment:

  1. Con-Jump tech has been in the game since R1.

  2. Flint-Jump Patch is (still active!) that you can only double the infra on a planet.

  3. Con-Jumps at their core are player to player FJumps.

  4. Con-Jumps behave the way they do because of the in-game limits governed by the FJump Patch.

  5. C-Jumps were discovered many years later as they economically and tactically became conceivable.

  6. The F-Jump Patch pushed their discovery far (something like a decade) into the future.

The signs kinda point at MM/Stef not knowing at all (thus the F-Jump ban) about C-Jumps.
Not sure this changes anything either way or if the question even warranted a closer look.

If not, chalk this up to trivia. :love_you_gesture:t2:

37

Con-Jumps + Flint-Jumps… lol they existed together as possible for the first 3-ish years of the game.

38

I am surpised you dont call them Darrk jumps …:stuck_out_tongue:

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39

I had nothing to do with their discoveries.

40

Reduce the building time on all buildings by 1 tick to work with this new change, otherwise people may genuinely die of boredom.

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