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I am getting the general system error and can not play online
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Ennui,
I’m glad you’re back at it. I have ideas but would prefer to talk over the phone. If you email me at dougman4@yahoo.com we can connect.
Best,
Doug
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11. My previous comments on improving map balance remain relevant. Map makers need to be allowed to vary money and units by player position and race so that any map can finally be made fair.
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6. Unit colors are still messed up. Having black look green for some units (Titans/khraleans) makes no sense. There is so much orange and brown in the khralean green color, that the black color is more green than the green color. Having orange and red look so close makes it difficult to differentiate, and practically impossible for khral units. Only sapiens colors seem to be true.
7. Rotate future modification of unit values to another top player. We have disproportionately allowed a single player to warp the game too much to his preference, which certainly differs to what many other top players prefer and is in some ways at odds with the history and style of the game. I find the unilateral nature chilling. Clearly, the best path forward though, is to make all the unit values individually toggle-able so we all can play how we wish. SUCH A FEATURE WOULD BE THE GOLD STANDARD AND THE SINGLE BEST ENHANCEMENT TO THE GAME.
8. Early rounds on unbalanced maps created rigged, uncompetitive results. We have had several maps recently unworthy of tournament play. Being on the wrong side of a unbalanced map results in automatic expulsion from the tournament - which is unfair. Better to repeatedly play a half dozen proven tournament quality maps, then to pursue variety at the expense of proven game play fairness. Tournament maps should always be play tested in advance. I do it and know immediately when it is not fair. So, it bewilders me when they are selected for tournament play.
9. Random games. I've been keeping record of the maps selected for random play in my games. And, I'm certain they are not random. Some maps are never selected. And, others are repeatedly selected. It becomes statistically improbable. In these games too, it would be better for only a dozen fair maps to be chosen from instead of the full universe where a substantial portion have bias.
10. Tournament team ladder. Where is it? Why are tournament teams not ranked? Tournament play is far superior to other play because it is mirrored and should be given as much or more attention/recognition. Having a ladder based on unmirrored play is nonsensical to me.
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These are the most urgent modifications needed. Keep in mind that I love the game, and I still marvel at the massive improvement the pinch to resize the map has made. It makes me happy every time I resize, which is dozens of times a day. So, my thoughts here may seem critical but try to address the areas I think still could be meaningfully improved, so I can also smile instead of frown in these situations:
1. The in game chat input field is one line, it needs to immediately revert back to the previous paragraph size field where you could see the whole text at a glance. I constantly have to scroll around to read what I have written. It is dreadfully cumbersome, and easily the worst thing about the game currently. Improve what was previously done with the paragraph size field by showing the characters remaining so that words aren't clipped when the text is sent.
2. When a unit is clicked on to move, the X in the lower right hand corner needs to come back to deselect the unit. This is easily the second most irritating thing in the game, having to go way up to the upper left corner to exit and deselect the unit.
3. The unit status text crawl at the top of the screen STILL OBSCURES JEEP MOVES. It is awful to have to wait for the crawl to come around for the moves remaining to be displayed. In games where you accumulate a handful of jeeps, this becomes a miserable game experience. Please, for the love of god, get rid of the text crawl entirely or figure out a way to show moves on the unit hex.
4. When you finish a movement with jeep, it stays selected. It should not automatically be selected, which requires needless deselecting and frustration.
5. Team games. Kill quantity and kill value should also be individually shown by player.
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1. I don't care how long a round is.
2. This is a bad idea. Sims, forgive me but I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a cultural gap here. It is customary in sports and competition and life in general to have fixed rules. There should never be a provision where a player can change the rules, especially mid game. Especially too, when you also play in tournaments. Pick a time round timeframe, and set it in stone unchangeable. That is nothing more than what the entire world is based on, unchangeable rules and regulations to avoid chaos. You have to understand game played for a 14 days expiration is different than one played for 21 days. And, several days before expiration everything is played a certain way. Your deciding to play god right before expiration by jerking the rug out from under our feet is simply complete nonsense. I've woken up to expired tourney games because you unilaterally and without notice extended games in the middle of the night. If I see 2 days remaining, or 11 hours remaining, or 3 hours remaining, or 20 minutes remaining - then that's all that ever should be remaining. Simple, basic, common sense.
3. 1 day is better, some players milk the entire 2 days.
4. Keeping in sync is absolutely necessary. But, it should definitely be the same turn. Even 1 turn either way causes rigging of outcome.
5. Auto skip is fine.
6. This needs to be last finished round of the SAME TURN NUMBER, otherwise rigging still occurs.
7. This misses the need to for head to head matchup winner to advance above all else. It also misses the need for surrender to be removed from tournament play. Moreover, unresponsive players should be auto skipped and the normal game AI used to play out non-responsive players' games.
8. I like this. If you wait to play 10-12 hours in, then you get docked 2 hours for your next turn.
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And if you are going to make tournament rule changes, you ought to do this:
1) When mirrored, the winner of head to head matches should advance to the next round. Say, in a three team mirrored bracket that player A beats players B and C head to head. Well, obviously player A should advance even if player B had shorter times to win games. After all, player B lost to player A in head to head play. I've been dumped this way, and player B took second place in tournament although losing to me in an earlier round. Especially aggravating is player C resigned his game to player B several turns earlier than need be and rigged the outcome.
2) The determination of mirrored game victory should be the total bases owned between the two games, unit value killed should only come into play if the same number of bases are owned. This avoids the situation that happened to me. In the first game, I captured all bases and won the game outright. In the mirror, I fought off my opponent from capturing any of my bases. My play was clearly superior, but I lost. Someone could lose this way currently be either losing more unit value over the two games or having one more turn in the winning game. In my case, I had one more turn. Obviously, a terrible adjudication!
3) Awarding victory for shortest number of turns should only come into play when BOTH games are COMPLETELY finished. Otherwise, number of turns is too easy to manipulate to be a valid discriminator.
4) There should be no provision to resign in tournament play, since resigning early before the natural game end rigs outcome to the detriment of other players.
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I think tournament round times should not be changed mid tournament, and certainly not mid round. I couldn't care less how long the rounds are. Pick a timeframe, and then set in stone for that tournament. We've had enough tournaments to have a good idea of how long to make rounds. Not all games will finish, unless you set a very long round time. But, that's the nature of the beast. What we can do is eliminate the capricious whiplash of unannounced and last minute round extensions. Organizers shouldn't be interfering with outcome. Set whatever time, and let us play to that time and no more.
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I had no interaction with Talone since flying the runiwar flag a year or two ago. Most runiwar players similarly had minimal contact with Talone. What runiwar is is a loose connection of mostly Russian speaking players that network among themselves.
Talone built something greater than himself. Punishing Russian speaking players smacks dangerously close to discrimination. My involvement has less to do with Talone (though the club would not have existed without his nurturing) and more to do with wanting kinship with talented Russian speaking players. What just happened here is ham handling of the Russians players through no fault of their own. That the developers allowed runiwar to occur in the first place means they have skin in it and this should've been handled in a more sensitive manner.
Keep in mind Russians have long dominated the tournament chess world. It should be no surprise that they should continue to have success in this strategy game. Rather than knock them, perhaps the rest of the uniwar community should have come up with their own clans or clubs.
This now starts to resemble unilateralism and petty fighting and loses sight of the greater good of the game. Surely the developers could've communicated with the runiwar players in advance and a compromise reached. Having our flag changed without notice is simply not something that should've happened.
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I encourage all runiwar players to change their flags to the Bangladesh flag, which is most similar to what we had.
Non-runiwar players misunderstand what runiwar was. Mostly it was a loose affiliation of Russian speaking players. Because of collaboration and training they played better than average.
Anybody could have done similar, but no one did. Tearing down initiative is deplorable behavior. Anybody can criticize. Few can create. In this world we are too quick to hate.
This action should not have happened without warning. There should've been another flag already provided that we were automatically switched to.
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i and a friend can not login. for last half at least.
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- Underling: I think adding a low air attack would help khral vs khral gameplay that always becomes a swarmer fight. Letting underlings play would enhance game play. Or at least add variety and complexity to something so tedious as a swarmer fight.
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SECTION FOUR: Ok, on to unit values. In my opinion there need be only a couple modifications:
- Jeep: Ok, we all agree the jeep double hit causes some problems on the first move on some maps. So, just make the jeep able to move once on the first turn and lets stop the silly discussion of ruining the jeep.
- Eclipse: Make it bit cheaper and make the air attack a bit lower and the heavy attack a bit higher, and maybe defend a bit better. But, by tweaking values in this way it might not need to be cheaper.
- Tank: It should be slightly better defense, and a minimal air attack. Cost should not be touched. Games where you get 400 a turn already favor the sapiens player. Just like games with 450 a turn already favor khrals player over titans player. If you reduce to 350, then games where you get 350 a turn would also favor the sapiens player. Money per turn should always be considered in changing unit prices. Allow such cheap heavy units allows them to be spamed and maps to be clogged. Too many maps are made with unmaneverable terrain, so this only makes such games a quagmired mess to play.
- Battery: Way too much help. Pick more movement, or more movement after shoot, or more attack range, or make just make cheaper. But don't over do it!
- Plasma: Reducing air attack a touch not a bad idea.
- Mecha: Increasing air attack is a horrible idea. It already does considerable swarmer damage.
- Swarmer: Reducing swarmer defense is a terrible idea. It is already fragile and slow to heal.
- Swarmer: Reducing attack against heavies is a bad idea. It already does minimal damage to heavies. If anything, attack against light units should be reduced.
- Pinzer: I see no reason to increase air attack. Especially if plasma is being reduced, and if tank has little or none.
- Wyrm: I see no reason for increasing air attack or decreasing heavy attack. The logic makes no sense to me.
- Garuda: It is an all around unit that gets shunned by top players. To make it a touch more appealing, maybe increasing heavy attack a good way to go.
- Leviathan: All navy units die too quickly when attacking each other. I don't see the imbalance when compared with price. I've seen numerous games where the cheapness of leviathans prevails over other units. This should be a individual map setting change that I proposed above.
- Engineer: Changing EMP internal fine, will rarely matter though. Reduce Titans assimilator interval too.
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SECTION THREE: I work in statistics, and I greatly fear tweaking values without a sensitivity analysis being performed beforehand. A particular percent change to an attack or defense value, for example, could cause a much greater percent change in the damage curve distribution. I think people are thinking the proposed changes will cause linear outcomes with good gameplay. People don't understand that the outcomes may be magnified results that actually harm the gameplay experience from what it is today. I think unit values should not be rounded to the whole number. I think it should be tracked to the tenth or hundredth. I think in most cases, these changes should be made at less than one. So, if a unit is thought to need an attack reduction from say 8 to 7, it could very well be that 7.5 gives the best results. I also think it would be interesting for hit points to be tracked at least to the tenth of a point as well.
I want to give a prime example of what I fear by changing unit values. There are certain exciting events that occur in Uniwar. Those exciting events drive an enormous amount of pleasure in the game. Sure, it is not fun when it adversely affects you. But, it is exciting when you are able to pull it off. And, I (da)grudgingly admire when someone pulls such off on me. Things like a bonus 2 or 3 attack, a resurface attack, a kill 10 attack on an engineer/assimilator/infector, a copter/speeder hit and retreat cover of a base. And, a jeep double attack kill of infantry on base. YOU DO NOT WANT TO REDUCE ATTACK VALUE ON LIGHT UNITS SIMPLY BECAUSE THAT CAN OCCUR. THE GAME IS GREATER BECAUSE IT CAN OCCUR. Moreover, permanently hobbling the jeep would make it comparatively unfavorable to a swarmer or speeder. And, especially because an elegant solution to the jeep exists without changing any values....
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SECTION TWO: I want to float another idea that would really make the game interesting. We long time players would like to add new wrinkles and complexity to the game. A new race is not as interesting to me as this idea. We ought to create two versions of each 250 unit. Make one version a light/weaker version and another version a stronger/heavy version. You might make one cost 200 credits and the other 300 credits, or whatever. Experienced players know that the 250 units are the key to the game, so why not make the most important unit even more interesting? And refresh the captivation and complexity of gameplay.
The next unit to add is a lighter boat for each race. The navy is modeled too simplistically to add value to gameplay, IMHO. I always avoid joining maps that model navy as it ruins the fun for me, because of the disproportionate and simplistic affects. Incidentally, navy values desperately need tweaking so that they don't die after a couple hits to each other. Just like a jeep can't so easily kill another jeep, so shouldn't boats to each other. Especially due to the enormous cost involved.
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