[UI] Spaceball - A better way

Hi,

I've been playing Darkorbit for a long time, a lot of and on, but I was thinking of one think and why I don't like the game as much as before. Many people are talking about how we fled around as big "zergs". Me myself are also thinking about that, and what caused the big fights. As I remember it was often the Spaceballs. The Spaceballs got big groups to flock around and fight for the Victory! The thing at that time was that there where no invisible players lurking around and snipping all the loot, and therefore everyone was fighting for their faction and for the loot.

The problem with Spaceball today is first of that literally 0-2 players are shooting the ball. There are a lots of players online, meanwhile so few shoots it. First of, shooting the ball gets you no extra rewards, and you lose /Seprom/ from the lasers. And when the ball first gets to the portal, someone snaps all your loot - even from another fraction. I’ve been thinking for a long time why you lose Seprom when you shoot the Spaceball - this is very demotivating. But what if you, BigPoint, where to change the reward-system from the Spaceball completely? What if you got rewards compared to the damage done to the Spaceball, and you ONLY get the rewards if the Spaceball goes to YOUR FRACTIONS PORTAL. This way you could solve all the problems with the Spaceball today as different fractions supports each other, few people shoots the Spaceball and a LOT of invisible players snapping others loot. As the only ones from the same fraction gets the loot, you increase the loyalty within fractions by making everyone from the same fraction having the same goal.

To make this work the best, I would suggest having a minimum-bonus everyone who shot the Spaceball gets (only if the Spaceball hits your portal), so small/weak players also get some rewards for shooting the ball. To make this work, and not let the good players get insane loot, I would also suggest using a logarithmic function. I have a feeling someone at BigPoint know what that is, but for those who wonder, search for f(x)=log(x) on Google. You could for instance make it start from x=2 (minimum-value) and stop at x=10 (maximum-value).

/Damage-value:/ The amount you've done compared to the maximum damage that you can do to the Spaceball before reaching maximum reward.

/Maximum-reward:/ The maximum amount of loot you can get from one Spaceball going in to your fractions portal.

/Minimum-reward:/ The minimum amount you can get if you’ve hit the Spaceball. Any damage to the Spaceball will secure this reward (or say .5% of max-damage).

/Logarithmic function:/ Starts by increasing a lot, then slowly increases less and less the further out you go. The speed of the decreased increase depends on the function. An example to this could be something like this (really depends of the function, but to set it to perspective): This means that to get 50% of the loot you need to do 20% of the maximum damage-value, and to get 80% of the loot you'll need to do probably around 70% of the maximum damage-value, and to get 100% of the loot you'll need to do 100% of the damage-value. As you can see, to get 50% of the loot is really simple, but to get twice the loot (from 50% to 100%) you need to do 5 times the damage (from 20% to 100% of maximum damage-value).

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/Example:/


/Loot:/

The maximum value of shooting the Spaceball would be settled by BigPoint, but I suggest using some of the same value of todays Spaceball. For instance what you would get if you where a bit lucky and got 3 of the todays lootboxes. But let's for this example say that the maximum reward is 2000x4, 1000uri, 10gg-clicks. And you get this amount by damaging the Spaceball with 1 million damage. (/I do not/ suggest to put a bar over the Spaceball to let the players know when they’ve reached the maximum damage-value. This can prevent players from shooting after they’ve reached the goal)

I’ll also under use numbers as Bx (ex: 2,33x), which means how much percentage more they get of the loot, compared to the damage they’ve done. So someone who does little damage but get a good amount of the loot (say 15% damage and 35% loot, will the get factor 2,33x (0,35/0,15) - which is 133% more of the original loot, but will still get less loot since the damage they’ve done is less). This is used to show how the calculations work. While someone who does 100% of max damage to the spaceball will get 100% of the loot (1/1 = 1x).

/Low damage:/

If you damage the Spaceball with very low damage (say .5% damage-value is minimum, which in this example equals to 5k damage), and it gets to your fractions portal, you'll get about 10% of the maximum value (200x4, 100uri, 1gg). This is just here to include everyone, so even the smallest players can get something.

/Medium damage:/

Say you do 15% damage (100k damage), you’ll get about 35% of the loot (700x4, 350uri, 4gg) - 2,33x which is a good amount for the players that aren’t too good. And if you do 40% damage (400k) you’ll get 60% of the max loot (1200x4, 600uri, 6gg) - 1,5x.

/Large damage:/

This might be for the stronger players that do more damage. Say one player does 70% of max damage (700k), they’ll get 85% of the loot (1700x4, 850uri, 9gg) - 1,21x. And one that does 90% of max damage (900k) will get 95% of the loot (1900x4, 950uri, 10gg) - 1,05x. 100% of max damage will get 100% of the loot (2000x4, 1000uri, 10gg) and will have the factor of 1x.

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This is btw my first post and therefore I didn't know where to put it.

Hope BigPoint understand my example, wants it, and takes contact if they like it. And I also hope someone else reads this and that we get many likes or comments to this post.


Best Regards

Tangen (Deecay)

 

Your post is a good idea. I totally agree that the event has evolved into "hurry up and shoot the ball" so I can steal the rewards while I sit cloaked event.

The downside that I see is the MCCs will dominate the event and the little guys won't get anything because they can't shoot the ball.

Currently, the little solo player can snipe some rewards without getting killed 50 times during the event.

A modification to your idea... maybe have 2-3 balls going on at the same time... that would be insanely fun and give everyone a chance to shoot the ball thus get rewards.

 

It would be a good possibility to let 2 Spaceballs go at the same time. But personally I think that having it the way I told, will stop the MCCs to dominate, as they currently do on live servers. Because this will prevent everyone from the MCCs to get rewards. Since the only ones that get the rewards from the ball will be the ones where the ball goes to. Say a clan with Mars, Venus and Earth in that clan, only one of the fractions (say Venus) can shoot the ball. This is the same as today, but the difference is that now it'll also be that only the one shooting it (say Venus again) will get rewards. And this way it'll be an unbalance in the MCCs, as everyone wants to get the ball to their fractions portal (specially if you give them good rewards, maybe even more than what I used in the first example - maybe include XP and Honor?).

Another modification that could be implemented to reduce the dominance of MCCs and to make it more of a bit deal around the ball, would be to modify the speed of the ball. What if the max speed of the ball changes by the amount of players shooting it. Say the max speed is reached at 30 players shooting the ball, and if only 1 player is shooting at it, the Spaceballs speed would be 1/30 of the max speed. This way the MCCs would need many players from the same fraction to keep the intervalls short - to get the most amount of rewards. Lets say that 250 speed is the maxspeed when 30+ players are shooting it. If it where only 2-3 players (as it often is today with the MCCs dominance) the speed would be extremly slow (a speed of 17-25. Could even make it even slower, depending on what todays spaceball-speed is), so slow that it would not even be worth co-operating with other fractions when the event is going on.

 

Your idea is way how to privatize the spaceball for the strongest MCC clan or alliance. On us-3 server the Spaceball play for years the alliance of the same players with some new members of the strongest MCC added. The way you suggest, they will simply take turns, the other fractions gards and kill anybody who want join and isn't in alliance, as they do now. Now the weaker players not allowed to play can snitch the cargo and you want to remove the only option for them.
On the other hand, the guy shooting the ball should get bigger reward. Either double the boxes for him, or some special box visible only to player who do at least 20% damage to the ball.

 

Hello,

Due to the inactivity of this idea it will be close, archived and listed on the Update&Idea Pool index. Should you wish to re-open the thread please post on the chat board.

Closing as inactive, archived and set to Index.