RE: [VANILLA-LIST:3228] ping

[ronbarry@es.com]

I had grabbed a copy of the cvs tree and was beginning to
slog though it.  Since a couple of you asked, I might as
well expound:

The way I see it, LPS is the bane of the game.  A lot of
purists love it, but when it comes down to a situation
where you spend half your netrek time in LPS, the game
gets tedious and boring.

My opinion about LPS, I keep to myself, but like I say,
I think it does a lot of harm to the game in the eyes of
the newer players.  Frankly, it has got to go.

Timercide was obviously an attempt to chip away at this
old problem, but it was a hack - one that has stood for
far too long, in my opinion.

So here are the ideas.  The more complex parts could be 
delayed or ignored, depending upon the broad opinion of
the rest of the developers.

The logical problem with LPS is that it makes no sense
that a race with 1/19th the planets of another would be
able to fend off that enemy for an extended period.  The
resources required for such a feat just aren't available.
Any solutions to the LPS problem would make the best
sense to me if attacked as a resource allocation problem.

Most of the stuff I've toyed with falls along the line of
restricting the capabilities of your ship based upon the
number and quality of planets your team holds at the time.
For instance:

Number of planets remaining            Ship Types Avail.
1							scout only
2							<=dd
3-5							<=ca
6-8							<=as
9-12							<=bb
13-15							<=enhanced bb
15-19						something cool.

Another option would be to have the 'completeness' of a
ship depend upon the availability of resources.  E.g., a
team with only 1 planet could still put out bb's, but 
they would only be able to fire 4 photons and have half
the phaser range, until refit after the planet count
increases to a better state.

There is a major problem with this, though.  A team that 
is tending to lose will continue to lose.  8 twinks in
starbases against a league team in scouts makes for an
interesting game to watch, but not to play.  There needs
to be some level of team skill that leads to this 
enhancement/degradation of available weaponry.

Part two of this little disaster of mine involves planets
being resource producers.  Depending upon a planet's
capability to produce ore, the planet occasionally
fires off a mining shuttle full of 'stuff' to the home
planet, which refines it to make ships.  

When you die, there would be a shipyard of completed
ships sitting there waiting.  If you want one of them,
you select it and are back in the game.  If resources have
been short, you may not have the ship you want available
and might have to wait 30-60 seconds for it to be built.
In the meantime, you would be allowed to watch as if
connected to the observer port.

===========

The second idea that comes to mind actually involves re-
instating a bug.  Several years ago - sometime around
'94, I logged in to one of the vanilla servers I'd been
playing quite a bit and found my ship had a mind of its
own.  I'd set a course and then find myself headed
somewhere else.  The details are not important, but I
managed to figure out that I was sharing a ship with
another player.

By sending messages to myself, and him doing the same,
we managed to communicate effectively and coordinate our
play pretty well.  I drove, since I was better at 
avoiding fire than shooting, and he handled the weapons.
Our kill ratio and planet taking rates were spectacular.

Anyway, the point was that it made for team play on a 
small scale and was a helluva lot of fun.  We would
have to figure out how to work it into the game while
preserving balance, but it is something I'd love to
try again - even if it means hacking the code to 
support it myself.


I need feedback on all of this before I start trying to
hack it together.  Let me know what you think.  The
resources system is going to take some time.  If you
want the full explanation of how I intend to deal with
mining shuttles and the like, I'd be willing to give it.

	rOn