Ok, I can see the very extreme case where you're dealt utter utter shit and that's a problem. I'm not going to say that it isn't.



But I see utter uniformity being a worse one personally. And not having tier 1 planets I never found to be a big deal, I spend most of the game dealing in tier 2 planets, there's probably more bonous to doing it in many cases. and even tier 3. (whoever said asteroids were tier 3 and gass giants tiere 4, I have to dissagree and would personally have swapped them the other way around, but that's a different matter)



But here is the thing. I like unbalanced, it's a matter of playing with what you're given, and whilst those extreme cases exist where you are utterly utterly boned from the get go, most aren't that, most I've played at the very least I've found stuff I can expand into given a little shunt. Exploring to begin, sometimes you strike gold, sometimes you don't, but I've never flailed so badly as to find it utterly impossible to continue on.



And as has been said several times, it's not just a 'I'm the biggest and the baddest' game. Especially with the time it takes to establish on a world if two low players are there why fight the other low guy? taking out his resources and tying up your own, when instead you can leave the system not striking and both turn against the guy who's gonna pound both of you into the ground if you do nothing.



Perhaps the points thing, I can accept that as middle ground, but I wouldn't have it hard and fast even there, but within a range. all sectors (insert arbitary measurement from home worlds) will consist of between x and y points at the start. this way you get more variety and less of a level playing field still without it being crippling. Also I think multiplying it out would work better as suggested earlier than straight addition, but I'll run some numbers on that later and add them in.



The option for mirroring I'd vote against, it makes everytyhing too homogenous in my opinion.



And a seed being known, well, hounestly I personally play random seeds, so yeah don't know there s'much.

While I agree this is a problem I think there is another option open to fixing this apart from normalizing or post generation balancing.



[Suggestion] Amorphous Race Choice



That is a suggestion I wrote that I think addresses this problem in a unique way allowing people to see there immediate starting areas and to adapt their race within the first 5 turns so that bad starting areas don't effect them as much.



Though to be honest what that in practice means is if you got a bad starting area go sowers because they are better able to use worse planets and some planets like deserts and tundra actually are better for them by far than others races. What would make this work better is if there were other races beside Sowers that preferred non standard planets.

I just got done with a game with a friend and two AIs, and I did extrordinarily well compared to him. Small 4 armed spiral, normal speed, few planets per system. I did a fairly deep AAR of the situation and found I had played significantly better, but also found he was at a severe disadvantage based on starting arms. I had only half the number of systems he had, but I had more tier 1, 2, and 3 planets. Let me say that again, I had half the systems, but more tier 1, two, *and* 3 planets. What he did have was 8 barren planets and 6 asteroids to my 0. Resources and anomolies were relatively well balanced, he ended up having quite a few more temples. What this meant in terms of gameplay was that I had a few very high quality systems that quickly filled up with high-value population, while he had a bunch of systems that required very deep research to fill slowly. I had minimal expansion disapproval, and spent a minimum amount of time building system improvements. Could he have won, certainly, especially if he managed to hold on till late game when he could teraform all those planets up, but what ended up happening is that I exploited my great (small) start to quickly fill up the middle (average systems, lots of tier 2 planets), grabbing 4/5 of the systems and leveraged from there into a vast lead.



Now, here is why I wrote all that out, based on a pure points system, we probably would have been roughly equal, but in practice, it was a far cry from fair. Some kind of system that ensures at least a nominally standard distribution of those points would also be key. Ofc, a contributing factor is that arid and barrens are much worse than their tier implies due to the standard strategy of dumping tax rate into the dirt to keep happiness up, which I hope is being worked on. Of course even just making the starts a little more fair based on points would be a big step in the right direction.

davea wrote:
Fun for you, maybe not fun for everybody. Imagine starting a game of chess where you have no queen or bishops and only four pawns.

Very good parallel.

Saranea wrote:
For multiplayer a mirrowed map would be the best with a random mid.

(horizontal and/or vertical mirrowing)



Alternatively the comunity needs to do a little research on the seeds.

The sowers are even more an exception (coloinze a +10 prod gasplanet is viable even turn 3), or the amoba which can expand fast to key areas of the map.



Tunier-maps with and without randomized locations for stratetic resources/luxery resources would be fine too.





But as long as I play for fun with friends and not competitve it is fine right now.

And if you have a bad start? Well, complain to them the whole game or play as a total jerk.

Just feed the cravers with fleets, send their war enemys money and tech and so on.

It's a multiplayer - so just start backstabbing and unfold a greater plot.



And normaly ONE PLAYER wins - the rest LOOSE.

The fun part is the way to get there, not the outcome.

Nowadays many people seems to forget that.





Sincerly

Nice.



I mean, if you're worried about fairness, why not just take away each race's specific abilities and the like - it's not fair the Sophons get better tech abilities and the Cravers can amass huge fleets, right?

Fact first:



- all (human) players are garantied a 3 planet system in the current build. (no tier 1 planet except if your race starts on one).

- Constelations are all the same size (plus/minus 2 on medium sized maps -> 3 to 7 is a constelation then)

- the "viable startplanets" (T1 and T2) are defined by the age of the galaxy, the junger the more of them, the older the rarer

- the total of anomalys + luxury + strategic resources are round about the same in each constelation (also with a normal derivation)

- the larger the constelation, the highter the likelyhood to have negative anomalys



generally speaking: the galaxys are balanced - not perfectly, but still in an okey shape.

The biggest problem are the people and their expectation to "find everything they need right now and there".

For that it's the wrong game - it would be a 3x then - because: who needed to explore then?





Sincerly

Unikraken wrote:
Think of it like this: there is a scale of being screwed over by galaxy generation from 1 to 10. 10 being everyone has equal start position and 1 being the worst possible starting position. [...] No one should blame a player who gets a 1-3 starting position from bailing to find a more enjoyable gaming experience.

I think this is the same point I was trying to make above. And I think the particular example of Saranea is not bad enough to illustrate the point. The starting position of your friend might be a 5-6 in this scale, while your starting position might be 7-8.



Now think of some third player in the same game, who starts with his home planet plus one asteroid in his home system, and after scouting all systems in two jumps he has found no tier 1 (terran/jungle/ocean) at all. No matter how much that player enjoys a challenge, he has no chance of winning. It is the start positions which are 1 or 2 on the 1-10 scale which need to be improved by the post-generation balancer.

I dissent unikraken,



I want an enjoyable game: yes

Does/need/can it be absolut perfect balanced: no



I just played a game vs. a friend.

He started with no Administration hero (he quited, right? no he didn't!)

He started with 3 decent systems, rest was walled because of wormholes, I had a decent 6 System. (So he tabbed out? no!)

As we played on he had the 4 early strategic resources in his cluster, I didn't have one. (Did I tap out? no!)



He answered his problem with massive teching (wormhole -> expand).

I answered mine with expand in my constelation and preparing tech for wormhole and prod.

And yes, 3 system constelation will outtech a 6 system constelation -until you catch up around turn 50-60, at turn 70 he will at LATEST catch up in systems/prod.



At turn 80 we were pretty even: me as I killed the sophons and gained the resources i needed with Kinetic destroyers only (Kin / flak, mind you suicide fleet spammer! ^_^ ).

He went tech to colonnize the mid early, resulting for him in some nice monopols (jardonix and the 10% fids tech).

We were today at turn 90 when we quited the session. And we were quite even then (he started going against the Hissho, while i tryed to devide the middle out of his grasp)



There are in every map some hard parts where it gets edgy and you need to do a decision.

But just because "it seems bad" doesn't mean it is.

Or because it is not "optimal" you have no chance of winning. That is giving up befor even trying.

And even IF you loose (which is even with a "bad start" not set in stone, but challenging), you can make him WORK to win.

That little kid tantrum "i want easy wins" is what CybrSlydr meant with gamers desease. Cannot win without trying and a 50% chance of loosing? *running away*

You are supposed to work, it's supposed to not work all the time, sometimes the odds are against you, sometimes with you, sometimes it's even.



In other games many people would say "deal with it" - or worse "learn to play".

Or for the EVE-player in our community: "harden the *uck up".





@SomethingBlue:



The galaxy is allready pretty balanced and randomized. Just pick amoeba and play till round ~60 on fast that you see all strategic resources.

It's still not perfect, and there are some edge-cases were murphy just hates you, but still, they are workable.



IF you do it like you mention there are many problems:

- creating an to strong system (3 postive anos in a 2x jungle system with 6 planets ... well ... very strong to say the least)

- making the game stall, old, no value for replaying (all galaxys would be alike or with to little differention to be fun to play again)

- spezial options for creating the universe would solve it (mirrowing f.e. would be the fairest aproach, but you would know how the other side looks like)





@thegreedyturtle:



With that kind of attidude I would play exactly once with you. Until you quite without a real reason.



What can you say about your start at turn 1-5? not much, really. Strategic resources are quite potent, and the lack of them challenging (and only crippeling if you are a new player which does not knows the way around it). Also players that are "behind" get more positve events while leading players are more likely to get neutral or bad events.



As you can see I dislike bailing pretty much. In a single player game it is not a big deal.

In a Multiplayer game you "get out" without anything, the rest of the human players now face a choice:



- bailing too (you know that of other games when one guy quit, all other follows one by one, after a few trys you play another game)

- stick to the game with one player less and an AI where the interaction are limited (silent alliance anyone? ^_^ )

- if it is a team game you pretty much let your team die

short: you are being rude to anybody you play/started the game with (to put it very mildly)



Which brings me to something: I need a bannlist for players. As in "rude", "rage quiter" or "feeder".





Sincerly

CybrSlydr wrote:
So, in effect, you want to foster a community of players who dip out at the slightest hint of adversity?

CybrSlydr wrote:
Nice.



I mean, if you're worried about fairness, why not just take away each race's specific abilities and the like - it's not fair the Sophons get better tech abilities and the Cravers can amass huge fleets, right?

This sensationalism is incredibly annoying. Think of it like this: there is a scale of being screwed over by galaxy generation from 1 to 10. 10 being everyone has equal start position and 1 being the worst possible starting position. You're acting like people are complaining about getting a less than perfect hand, but in reality people are talking about getting a 1-3 starting position that will ensure they have no chance of winning. You're painting people who disagree with you as being sensationalist when in reality you are the one being unreasonable. Accepting a 5, 6, or 7 starting position should be something we all push for in our community but you are telling people that a bug in the game is a feature. You're not adding anything to the discussion and you're probably making it harder for people who actually understand what's going on to discuss ways to fix it.

CybrSlydr wrote:
That player that bails due to a less than optimal start would most likely have bailed at a later state when they started losing anyway - that's just the way gaming works. It's a symptom of the gaming disease.



This really is a non-issue.

No one should blame a player who gets a 1-3 starting position from bailing to find a more enjoyable gaming experience. You're trying to make this issue very black and white but it's much more in the gray-scale than either you understand, or are willing to admit.

Galaxies are separated into zones, correct? And each player starts in their designated color zone? It would make sense to set a certain point value based on number of planets, types of planets, sizes of planets, and good/bad anomalies, and randomize through each zone, which should contain the same number of systems. This way, while still having some randomness to the picture, each zone would have the same capabilities for each player. At this point it depends on the player to expand to their full potential before a neighbor comes in and takes it.



Would be cool to have a 8 arm galaxy map with each of the 8 arms completely separated from each other until they meet in the center. Each arm would be exactly identical to the others, aside from each factions starting planet. The very center of the galaxy would be rich with strategic resources and there would be none in the arms. This would cause a race to the center to get the resources, and constant battle throughout the game for control of them.

That player that bails due to a less than optimal start would most likely have bailed at a later state when they started losing anyway - that's just the way gaming works. It's a symptom of the gaming disease.



This really is a non-issue.

I don't think you understand: The game mechanics as they stand encourage bailing out early, so if you don't want to foster that type of player, the starting positions need balanced better.



The crap hand won't be embraced except by hardcore players. There just isn't anything that's going to change the way an average player will respond. Even if everyone stuck it out, there's just not much fun in playing a game where you are doomed from the start.



I don't see why you can't set up games with a high degree of starting randomness, but I don't think that many people would play that way if they were offered the choice. And that's the real problem here, there isn't even the option, you're stuck with whatever the generator decides to give you.

CybrSlydr wrote:
So, in effect, you want to foster a community of players who dip out at the slightest hint of adversity?



Honestly, the whole chance of you getting dealt a crap hand in the way of planets and starting position is part and parcel of the game and should be embraced.

I honestly doubt anyone can be dealt such a crap hand that a colony ship won't fix a temporary inconvenience..

thegreedyturtle wrote:
Have been meaning to get on and mention this.



To Cybr: playing the hand you are dealt is fine if you are able to play 50 hands before settling on a victor. You have to suspend the 'real' world a bit here and remember that it's a game, if the game is rigged, it's not much fun to play. And I won't be surprised if we start seeing people quit at turn 1 much more often as people realize that the starting position isn't in their favor. To be honest, If I get dealt a home system with my home planet and a lava planet, I'd probably dip out myself, and if I said way, I don't think any of the other players would blame me.

So, in effect, you want to foster a community of players who dip out at the slightest hint of adversity?



Honestly, the whole chance of you getting dealt a crap hand in the way of planets and starting position is part and parcel of the game and should be embraced.



EDIT: For that matter, do you want to balance things out to compensate for difference in player skill too? Better players have a bigger hit on tech research and the like than lesser players?



Come on guys, embrace the suck.

isn't it the uneven distribution of resources that drives conflict?



you have it, i want it!

Everyone arguing that the galaxy is in any way balanced currently (apart from the home systems), are simply wrong .



Yesterday i sat and generated some galaxies on a spiral 4 medium map (as amoeba so i could see everything) and in every single game there was a situation where one player had maybe 3-5 tier 1 planets in his arm, and others had zero. so one guy could expand from the get go, and another has to tech for it, and even when he does, grows slower.

in addition to this, there were vast imbalances on the number of planets in the arms, some people started with 8ish systems in their arm, others had 3, and there was no apparent connection between number of systems/planets/planet size/quality.



Yesterday in an mp game, i started as sophon with a medium terran microfactory, and a huge jungle planet, right next to my homesystem, that was a huge advantage and the players who started with "soso" systems were immensely behind, and had no chance of catching up - because like most 4x games, its a snowball effect once you tech/build fast, you build even faster....so the ones with a bad start never catch up, they can just wait to be butchered.



In this game that wasnt me, but its just a matter of time before im the guy with 3 uncolonizable systems facing that dude with jungles and terrans, and that wouldnt be any fun.

Have been meaning to get on and mention this.



To Cybr: playing the hand you are dealt is fine if you are able to play 50 hands before settling on a victor. You have to suspend the 'real' world a bit here and remember that it's a game, if the game is rigged, it's not much fun to play. And I won't be surprised if we start seeing people quit at turn 1 much more often as people realize that the starting position isn't in their favor. To be honest, If I get dealt a home system with my home planet and a lava planet, I'd probably dip out myself, and if I said way, I don't think any of the other players would blame me.

For multiplayer a mirrowed map would be the best with a random mid.

(horizontal and/or vertical mirrowing)



Alternatively the comunity needs to do a little research on the seeds.

The sowers are even more an exception (coloinze a +10 prod gasplanet is viable even turn 3), or the amoba which can expand fast to key areas of the map.



Tunier-maps with and without randomized locations for stratetic resources/luxery resources would be fine too.





But as long as I play for fun with friends and not competitve it is fine right now.

And if you have a bad start? Well, complain to them the whole game or play as a total jerk.

Just feed the cravers with fleets, send their war enemys money and tech and so on.

It's a multiplayer - so just start backstabbing and unfold a greater plot.



And normaly ONE PLAYER wins - the rest LOOSE.

The fun part is the way to get there, not the outcome.

Nowadays many people seems to forget that.





Sincerly

raw wrote:
I think noone here argues against small differences in quality of starting location to spice up the game, but what were talking about are differences of night and day. Ideally you don't want to have differences in quality but differences in availability, so that you have to adapt your strategy to your surroundings.

And also, this thread is specifically talking about multiplayer. Against the AI, it can be quite fun to have a weak position and try to win anyway. Against other players, getting pwned is no fun.

CybrSlydr wrote:
But isn't overcoming obstacles and triumphing over adversity part of the game? Sometimes you get crap, other times you get Dust.

Yes, but again, the first few minutes/turns are the most crucial in any strategy game and on some positions you simply can't get far. Conversly, sometimes you're dealt so increadibly good starting locations that it's no problem to send 5k stacks into the enemy territory... in the first 20 turns. While keeping economy and expansion brimming.



I think noone here argues against small differences in quality of starting location to spice up the game, but what were talking about are differences of night and day. Ideally you don't want to have differences in quality but differences in availability, so that you have to adapt your strategy to your surroundings.