Skyward Collapse 1.008-1.009 "Massive Bigness" Released!

[PokerChen]

The rolling of a random map type has been brought up, yeah.  In terms of randomizing the game starts for the maps, that's actually just the sort of thing that I tend to love as well.  I'm looking at it!

Lol. We did mention/desire it in alpha, to have randomisation in all map-types (the idea wasn't fleshed out) - iirc the chaos map-type was the stop-gap to please the proponents while you finished the code.

I'll need to finish reading A dance with dragons first before getting into the game again...

[x4000]

The rolling of a random map type has been brought up, yeah.  In terms of randomizing the game starts for the maps, that's actually just the sort of thing that I tend to love as well.  I'm looking at it!

Lol. We did mention/desire it in alpha, to have randomisation in all map-types (the idea wasn't fleshed out) - iirc the chaos map-type was the stop-gap to please the proponents while you finished the code.

Shows you how good my memory is.   Now that you mention it, I do recall that actually.  I just get too much information every day in order to retain all of it, so I have to kind of pick and choose what stays.  It's one of the reasons mantis is so vital.  Anyhow... yeah.

[Billick]

I got in another game last night.  For this one I tried Expert/Expert/Expert.  A few more quick hit thoughts:

 - I got a chance to use the new soul abilities, and I think those are pretty fun, and they give you some interesting choices.   
 - Having the scoring being based off of deaths instead of kills is a different dynamic.  You get points for letting bandits destroy your stuff, but no points for killing them.  You almost have to let them trash some of your towns to hit the harder score goals (as if you have a choice on expert).  I haven't decided whether I like this or not. 
- I think the rebalance of the myth units is almost perfect.  They can still be powerful in the right circumstances, but spamming them late game doesn't work any more.
- Expert difficulty feels pretty challenging.  I never felt like I was in control, and I was always scrambling.  Expanding doesn't feel like cheese, because you need those spread out expansions to survive. 

I managed to just barely hang on and win, and got back the high score with 11,186,625.  I got hit with Fey Moon and Serial Killer back to back, and the Greeks almost ate it.  They wouldn't have made it very many more turns.

[x4000]

Awesome!

In terms of the score being based off of deaths, there's really no other way to handle it that will make any real sense in terms of the way that people want score to be calculated (more points from higher-rank units, etc).  THAT said, it could be something where we wind up needing to make yellow losses (buildings and units) grant you points just like red and blue do.  That would make it not so defensive, but it would raise overall scores by quite a bit, so the score gates would then need adjusting in some way... thus making older savegames a real bear, although I guess if the score gates go up 30% then I just add 30% of the existing score in each game to the new score total once the savegame is upgraded.  That would work actually, so nevermind on the worry about old savegames.

[Billick]

I do like that you get more points for higher level things dying.  Giving points for bandit units dying might be a good idea.  Possibly kills made by bandits don't count toward your score... but that could be confusing.  I'd like to hear what other people think.

[x4000]

I'm a bit inclined to keep trying it this way before really jumping to a new thing, though.  Having some incentive for your stuff to get messed up is actually a good thing in my opinion.  Or basically an incentive to quickly kill bandits and churn out your own fellas so that they meatgrind one another.  You don't HAVE to be defensive, you just can't be only moderately offensive.  It's very aggressive or very defensive.  That might be just interesting enough to advocate for staying the way it is, I don't know.

Anyhow, I'm open to changing it, but I don't really want to flip-flop back and forth and so would rather at least give this a fair shake unless people really hate it or something.

[x4000]

New one!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13377.0.html

[nas1m]

The fact that kills done by bandits count should not be changed (again) imho.
The fact that they did not in the past was what really had me scrambling the wrong way in Hard and up in the past (what? I am fighting for my life with all i got here for an eternity doing all i can and it does not even count against the score gate?!).

As i feel Hard is the way the game is meant to be played (with the Veteran system and such) i don't feel like this would be a good change.

I could see granting some amount of points being granted for yellow deaths, though. Few enough to encourage going for blue/red deaths instead, but enough to make them count in very narrow games. Maybe a half or a quarter?

[LaughingThesaurus]

Aren't yellow deaths encouraged enough by yellow wanting everybody else dead (which is actually a failure condition)?

[nas1m]

Aren't yellow deaths encouraged enough by yellow wanting everybody else dead (which is actually a failure condition)?

What i was after was not to encourage them but to make them count something in games you are barely holding on to due to *lots* of bandits being present...

[x4000]

I'm not sure quite what you mean -- "kills" are not "counted for score" in any fashion anymore.  Right now it is literally deaths for red and blue units that count for score.  Right now yellow deaths don't count.  The question is whether or not yellow deaths should count or not.

With that in mind... thoughts?

From the 1.010 thread it looks like folks want the yellow deaths to count, as they find that confusing that it does not.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, despite my last post (which I don't know WHAT I was thinking then), I feel like any given death is 'causing chaos and conflict'. So, unless there were a really really good reason for bandit deaths to not count, it's going to feel more arbitrary that they don't. It also might lead to a situation where, if you as a player are really kicking bandit ass, you might not get quite as many points as if they kept killing your units out of the gate... and that'd just be weird.

Edit: That said, I'd encourage you to follow others' logic before mine. What seems arbitrary to me might not be a problem at all in the long haul.

[x4000]

I suspect that the arbitrariness is going to be an issue that ultimately makes this something that needs to count bandit deaths, personally.

[Mick]

Well, despite my last post (which I don't know WHAT I was thinking then), I feel like any given death is 'causing chaos and conflict'. So, unless there were a really really good reason for bandit deaths to not count, it's going to feel more arbitrary that they don't. It also might lead to a situation where, if you as a player are really kicking bandit ass, you might not get quite as many points as if they kept killing your units out of the gate... and that'd just be weird.

Edit: That said, I'd encourage you to follow others' logic before mine. What seems arbitrary to me might not be a problem at all in the long haul.

I agree with your feelings of weirdness. On the harder difficulties, the bandits are quite a challenge, but all that time spent pushing them back is "wasted" when it comes to the score gate. It feels very unrewarding, and a bit odd considering you'd gain more points by playing badly.

[nas1m]

The fact that deaths inflicted by bandits gives score now should not be changed (again) imho.
The fact that they did not in the past (i.e. before the scoring was migrated from kills to deaths) was what really had me scrambling the wrong way in Hard and up(what? I am fighting for my life with all i got here for an eternity doing all i can and all the deaths inflicted by bandits do not even count against the score gate?!) - so I am making a stand for the new status quo here .

As i feel Hard is the way the game is meant to be played (with the Veteran system and such) i don't feel like changing scoring back from deaths to kills would be a good change.

I could see some amount of points being granted for yellow deaths, though. Few enough to encourage going for blue/red deaths instead, but enough to make them count in very narrow games. Maybe a half or a quarter?

(Hopefully) clarified my above statement - in case you meant me Chris .

To repeat my main point regarding your question:
I could see some amount of points being granted for yellow deaths, though. Few enough to encourage going for blue/red deaths instead, but enough to make them count in very narrow games. Maybe a half or a quarter?

Well, despite my last post (which I don't know WHAT I was thinking then), I feel like any given death is 'causing chaos and conflict'. So, unless there were a really really good reason for bandit deaths to not count, it's going to feel more arbitrary that they don't. It also might lead to a situation where, if you as a player are really kicking bandit ass, you might not get quite as many points as if they kept killing your units out of the gate... and that'd just be weird.

Edit: That said, I'd encourage you to follow others' logic before mine. What seems arbitrary to me might not be a problem at all in the long haul.

I agree with your feelings of weirdness. On the harder difficulties, the bandits are quite a challenge, but all that time spent pushing them back is "wasted" when it comes to the score gate. It feels very unrewarding, and a bit odd considering you'd gain more points by playing badly.

Seconded.