We've never been super happy with the original stock system - in which after all of a player's stock is purchased, another player can buyout that player by paying double for all stock owned by other players. Although the initial period of stock buying is exciting, there is also a long period of time while players are just stockpiling cash for the final buyout, which can be a little boring and also has gameplay issues as players with hundreds of thousands of liquid cash can cause massive swings in the market by buying up huge quantities of resources.
Thus, we are trying out a new stock system in Beta 8, which is termed the No Buyout game option and is on by default. Here are the rules:
We tried out this new mode during our weekly stream (with Gameslayer, Blues, and #Slind):
http://www.twitch.tv/mohawkgames/v/26741023
This new mode is now available on the next_version branch, which can be accessed by right-clicking on the game in Steam, selecting Properties, selecting Betas, typing in the code "MohicanSun2015", and then selecting "next_version" from the pull-down menu. Please try out this mode and let us know what you think in the forums.
There's too much dogpiling. What incentive does a player have to buy someone's stock? The subsidiary bonus is not amazing, so the main bonus is: kill the threat. The top player gets his stock bought out. It's a little painful to lose just because you are doing well.
I don't have any problem with incremental buyouts, but there should at least be a second reason to buy someone out, rather than just "he's doing too well for my comfort". That is, the player who does the buying should get some other significant benefit as well.
Having stock distributions dependent on share ratios is also a bit too arbitrary; the stock buyer sometimes gets a huge stock payout and sometimes not.
When people play with this option, I would highly encourage them to stream so that they can point to any bad effects of this new system (via Past Broadcasts).
And - we will definitely have a 4p tournament once Beta 8 launches to see how this option works under competitive play.
Killing the main threat is usually the thing to do, no matter what the stock mode is. The only time someone else was purchased happened was they lagged far behind and/or debt spiraled and were cheap. I don't think changing the function of stock is going to change this aspect very much.
The cashflow from the subsidiaries will hopefully justify the "investment" into stock, instead of trying to snowball enough cash via resource manipulation to win.
Either way, I'm thrilled to see experimentation with the stock buyouts and winning because the old system was arbitrary and led to some awkward situations. Without playing yet, this seems to be a step in the right direction, and strike a balance between the destroy buy out and the old standard buyout.
The no buyout name should be changed since it won't mean anything to someone new and not familiar with "buyouts".
To be clear, the option is there so that there isn't a big backlash by people not ready to switch to the new system. We will choose one or the other; I don't think we can support both. As for issues with the new system, please keep in mind that it is literally 3 days old at this point, so there are sure to be bumps as the old system, warts and all, did have 1.5-years of iteration behind it.
Cashflow is pretty low at 25%. The main difference is that now it's main threat vs everybody together. Before, it was main threat vs every other player individually. There was a way for the main threat to still combat things, but there isn't anymore.
yes, I am concerned about that too. Need to see it in action, however.
That's very reasonable. When everyone in an FFA is allowed to mess with everyone else equally, it's difficult to make the incentives cause interesting things. The most common system is Risk-like, where murder has gradual benefits instead of all-or-nothing, but it may not be the correct choice for OTC, and there are other choices as well. Having stock purchases steal tiles could make markets much more interesting, but it could also be complicated.
It's certainly an interesting idea. Need to play it more but I played about 6 games tonight in a 4 player FFA with Blues, Zuzani, Wino, and 1 with Hydroponos. I'll play it more and give some additional feedback as well. Some thoughts:One problem we ran into was a player (Zuzani) getting really far ahead and just sitting on cash. This was a very dominant strategy (and you could say a problem). He didn't buy any stock in anyone...just hoarded cash. Nobody wanted to mess with him because if you did he could buy you outright. Eventually the other players made a move against each other while he just sat there hacking and accumulating tons of cash. After the rest of the other players cannibalized each other he just swept in and finished the game with a string buy of over $1m for the last person standing. Not sure if this will become a dominant strategy or not. Too early to tell. Another game Zuzani and I had a bunch of cash and went after each other. After we both evened the score on stock Zuzani pulled about 1 share ahead in our race to buy each other. Because Blues didn't want Zuzani to get the buy he bought one of his shares which tipped the balance over to me thus eliminating zuzani from the game. From then on I owned 90% of the highest profitable HQ plus my own one and all but one share of my own stock so the game was long over. Most games we played people would buy most or all of their own stock first. There's not much incentive right now to buy other people's stock early. The only time you can buy your own stock is at the beginning so you have to handle that first or you'll become a subsidiary really quickly.Sabotage has the potential again to become a huge problem. One player saw that they were losing and people were buying them out. He had plenty of time to switch all of his tiles to 100% pleasure domes because the new buyout is a very slow decline. So all of the stock that everyone invested was now pretty worthless. The person that DIDN'T invest in that HQ was the one that made out the best. Before you could just restore what the buildings used to be but in this case it's a very slow gradual decline where you pretty much know you lost. Plenty of time to screw over other people if that's what you wanted to do.
I will say that the game feels more enjoyable when you get rewarded for doing well. I liked the solution the team came up with where you get the extra HQ and territory and then applying the slowdown strike as a solution to prevent snowballing. I like the reward of taking over someone and getting their stuff!
I personally don't prefer the subsidiary concept because it feels really hollow when you buy someone. You don't get any more "stuff" - you're just eliminating an opponent from the game. The interest payment you get isn't a very tangible thing you look at all the time so it's doesn't feel like you've advanced or that you're really being rewarded (even though of course you are). There's no telling how much money you'll get in interest payments either so it's not like you can strategically plan to buy one player over another to get an advantage. Haven't really figured out if i like it or not. Definitely requires more playing and experimenting.
PS- string buying is an issue with this new mode. Saving up a ton of money and then just buying everyone's stock with no delay didn't seem to work very well.
One last question on the new mode. Suppose a player has an offworld market and has carbon queued up to send. When that player gets bought out how does the AI handle it? Does it continue to ship carbon forever? If they canceled all launches before being bought out does the offworld still operate? Does it ship whatever is most profitable at all times?
I don't agree that the subsidiary mechanic is too weak. At 25% 3 times a day that gives you 60% every day. I would hope that the subbed offworlds would always send whatever is most profitable when there is something profitable to send. I generally really like the game mode.
Yes, the OW's will always send the most profitable resource.
Oh, 25% of money, not 25% of revenue. That isn't weak. As Cubit notes, 58% of any moment's production is in your hands by the next day.
No need to dance around it, I'm the player who ruined my territory when I started getting bought up. Unsportsmanlike? Certainly, but I can't help but think that it's almost always a mistake to go after a player who isn't a threat to win the game. Both times I blew up my own territory, a significant amount of my stock had been purchased by others and I was far behind in cash/swimming in debt. Because it's so easy to see the end coming in this mode, doing things like what I did makes sense to an extent; at least it made finishing the buy on me highly undesirable. With buys, the same sort of thing is possible, but much more easily reversible.
That's just part of a bigger problem in the mode, though. The ability to play kingmaker is stronger than ever, as stock purchases can create such large swings. I disagree with blackmagic's description on the game he won off my stock buy, but it is certainly true that Zuzani would likely have had a very good chance at winning in a more traditional buyout mode (5-5 stock split on Zuzani, 2-8 on blackmagic before I stepped in). I believe I had a very good chance to win that game post-buy, until Galactic Wino started buying into me. The four fewer shares that blackmagic had to buy made a huge difference, especially considering I only had two shares left to buy in him. Here's the replay: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BySpM5yAo8atN3RqVW1ZampQVTQ/view?usp=sharing
As for whether being invested in subsidiaries is rewarding enough, I'm not sure. Especially with highly successful subsidiaries, the income can be very substantial, but I worry about the cost of buying those shares and how it paints a target on your back. Because there's no real way of defending yourself once all your stock is bought, except by buying others, saving money to defend against threats seems like a superior option in many cases. Couple that with how the hacker array's profitability increases with the amount of money you have (though the risk also increases), and aggressive buying seems like a mistake, unless you're confident that it'll push others to make some mistakes.
Four more little things:
Thanks, really good feedback.
The grieving problem is fixable by letting the AI fix a player's bad arrangements, which currently it's not doing under the subsidiary rules.
The issue I'm concerned about is the issue of pushing out a leading player early by ganging up. I think I'll increase the stock boost you get from owning other people and also increase a player's stock price more as other players buy into them so that the first few shares are a lot more cheaper than the last few shares.
Good suggestion on solving the u splittable stock proble.
Thing that bugs me the post about the new stock situation is its non-symmetry. Why can I only force buy one persons stock at 2x price? Why cant i force buy back my own stock anymore?
I do see a situation where you end up playing tug-of-war over a single piece of stock... not sure how to avoid that particular issue though putting shift-buy back in would probably help with that.
at the moment stock can be insta bought, that's just a bit funky. I'd like to be able to buy my own stock too. And finally, the buyout % is inaccurate.
edit: we played a bit too,
Strange bug that just came up: http://prntscr.com/95ee16
Basically, a subsidiary somehow bought a share of my stock (with no unowned stock available). Replay didn't manage to save, unfortunately.
Tug of war can be solved by increasing multipliers (2x cost, 3x cost, 4x cost) every time stock is repurchased. I won't state whether this is a good idea.
If you can buyout your own shares one at a time, the game would basically never end. The old system got around this problem by forcing full buyoutS which could not be countered (even if you have a bunch of cash).
Here are some videos from the group sessions. The titles of the videos describe some of the common themes that occured during a dozen or so games we played. Some of my stream of consciousness commentary here is probably PG-13+ so I apologize in advance for my potty mouth while gaming
Edit: I feel bad that so many of our posts in this thread seem to complain about the new game mode. We know that this mode is in alpha stage and my video stream of conscious comments aside, I do understand this. In truth, myself and others have mentioned many positive things about this mode that we forsee (after a few game tweaks):
Very good:
Pretty good:
Somewhat good:
New version up on next-version. A number of changes for No Buyout:
- Stock delay on buying shares is fixed
- AI will manage buildings better as a subsidiary (should delete unprofitable buildings)
- Stock price only goes up when a RIVAL buys a share of your stock (which means it is better to buy one of the first shares)
- Get a bigger stock bump from buying shares in other players
If anyone wants to try next-version, I can play sometime around 4:30 or 5:00 EST.
http://puu.sh/lwGrr/dfb43c3bd9.jpg
We did a game just now and Blues had -700k Debt but his Stock price was still Too high to really matter. This screenshot was taken just before the end but he had around 38$ stock price before he started to buy bradbury. It is a bit silly that the stockprice is still that high with that massive amount of debt.
http://puu.sh/lwGsf/c8c9d6d584.jpg after he bought out bradbury
Looking at the screenshots his next worth is 3.5x his debt so if the cash is coming in then I doubt his creditors will pull the plug as there is now a monopoly on Mars!
So Blues stock price is held up by his Subs, his shares are $0, so also seems like when you hit the D rating or maybe a bit lower, Debt becomes irrelevant. Seems that you can set a minimum price for your stock by owning other peoples shares, so you could ignore debt, hoard cash and buyout the leading player (who hopefully has 2 very profitable offworlds) if your taking 60% of Sub profit a day and have a minimum share price, your in a good position.
I sort of do like the current buyout, but it gives alot of power to the 2nd and 3rd placed players, which maybe is not a bad thing, without Masq some people will get bought because of the threat they may pose, better to have 1/2 or a 3rd of a Sub and good player eliminated. The fact your out when you don't control a share is a double edged sword, just because your #1, then your vulnerable to being jointly taken down. I like the jeopardy of it, but it only takes 2 guys on skype working together to potentially ruin any FFA game.
Overall the new mode is looking promising.
yeah, that's a weird situation. It looks sort of like his price is correct because he is basically a full owner of the other two players.
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