Robots - Love them or hate them?
Jon
real player drops the game. I have been opposed to this from the
start.
The game is a combat game, but only a player can win. At the end of
the game, you have either been destoyed or you survived and all of
your PI is tallied up and then the Masters decides who wins. Dropped
positions run by robots are not eligible to win.
In the old Galac-Tac, when a player was behind in the percentile,
could crush a un-played position and gain half the built up stockpile
- this could put them back in the game or make a nice down-payment on
tech. Players would still have to be wary of un-played Empires
because they might become active (a player picking up a dropped
position).
With a robot playing them, you can lose a large fleet attacking
something that is basically worthless to you. Oh, you gain the charts
and a couple of colonies, but other than that it's useless. The robot
spends all of the PI stockpiled building defenses and you lose a good
chunk of your fleet killing an Empire that is worth nothing to you in
the standings. You waste PI in ships and repair costs, while saving
your enemies PI, since if they have any scouts out will detect the
change of ownership and grab a few systems for themselves, which they
won't have to destroy!
I would like to propose that we go back to the old Galac-Tac and
eliminate robot played positions entirely. They add nothing to the
game.
Genny White
In this particular test game, we were hoping to have a full
complement of active human players, whose individual creativity and
different tactics would push the limits of the game and test as many
possible scenarios as such a combined brain-trust could come up with.
I think at one point we had 3 live human beings playing, when the
minimum for a "real" game is about 10. We thought we were starting
with ten, or close to it, but many changed their minds when the game
began. To make game play feasible, and not have those three
individuals chasing each other all over a mostly-empty galaxy, some
sort of artificial player had to be invented to give the live players
something to encounter and challenge them. Knowing that there were
few "real" players in the galaxy also meant that the unplayed
homeworlds and all their surrounding territory were up for grabs as
soon as anything with guns to take out the default initial defenses
could be built. Again, since the purpose of this particular game was
to explore varieties of interaction and expansion etc. etc., the
"unplayed positions" needed to have some sort of colonizing,
shuttling, and defenses going on. I see the "robot player" as a
necessity, sort of like a "rigged demo" where you set up examples to
test your code and show the consumer what is possible. As one of
those few initial flesh-and-blood players, I have been extremely
careful to NOT know which positions were played by people and which
were automated, and I have never wanted to make an assumption and act
on it because I thought I could get away with "easy pickin's" because
an empire was known to be automated. As we have had some renewed
interest in the game, and people have been willing to join in after
the initial colonization phase, the robot positions gave them at
least something to start with, with basic defenses and a colony base,
so there was some point in playing. Since the robot was designed by
one person with his own ideas of how to do basic colonization,
shuttles, and defenses, of course they are all done more or less the
same way, and that might not be the way any other individual would
choose to plant his or her flag in the galaxy. So... in this
particular "beta test" experimental game, I definitely feel the
robots had a place, since we couldn't get enough human beings to
participate at the early stages of the game.
Should "robot players" be part of a production game in the future?
Personally, I think not. The point of the game is to play against
other live players, all with varying levels of experience and
strategy. There are plenty of games where you play against the
computer. However, if you can't meet a minimum number of players to
establish a reasonable game, perhaps it could be one of the game
setup options to allow or disallow computer-played positions just so
a smaller group could have a game going. Then again, as Jon said, a
computer position shouldn't be able to win the game - or should it?
How many of us have had an attack or other plan fail because of a
typo, which an inhuman "typist" would never make? Since the robot's
"strategy" is based on one individual's concept of colonization and
defense, by defeating a robot position you are effectively proving
your strategy (and luck) is superior to one person's style, but that
doesn't mean that you are the smartest cookie in the jar as long as
other human players remain in the game. So, how far should such an
entity go beyond that initial spurt of colonization? Should a dropped
position stay dropped, which may make the position easy prey for
anyone who knows the situation, or should some form of automation
continue to build that empire in some conservative fashion? What
about allowing someone to pick up a dropped position mid-game? If the
position was dropped in the first few turns, if there's no automation
then there's no position to pick up... no territory, and no prospects
for an economic base to build from. It's also not very satisfying to
win by being the last one willing to play the game when everybody
else has lost interest or never even turned in their first orders.
This forum is for gathering opinions of all the past and present fans
and players of the game. If you, that worthy body of knowledge and
opinion, say there should be no robot positions under any
circumstances, then you represent the players yet to come who
hopefully share your feelings, and we will certainly value that
opinion very highly. Jon, as Founder of the Feast, so to speak, your
thoughts are especially welcome as the game evolves.
Another very different purpose for "robot play" is to have the
computer perform certain default actions when the human player fails
to turn in orders, an option which we have considered for players who
know they will be out of town, etc. I personally wouldn't choose to
have this option turned on for me except in the very first handful of
turns, when it's critical to do all the territory-grabbing you can, a
process that is easy to automate and which is pretty much the same
for everyone. Beyond those initial turns, what the "robot" might
choose for me is probably not what I would want to do anyway. I do
NOT think it should ever create any actions unless the player has
specifically requested that it do so for the immediate turn. I'd like
to hear other thoughts on this particular use of the "robot". Would
you ever use that option, if you knew you would miss an upcoming turn?
See you in the stars... (I've missed saying that, trite as it is!)
Genny
Davin Church
for thought...
The only reason why I wanted to consider robots in the first place
was "fairness". If it weren't for the problems of keeping things
fair for all players (including those that want to pick up dropped
positions), I wouldn't have considered allowing robot players at
all. If a player drops the game and your neighbor is next to that
empire and can capitalize on it and you're not, how is that fair to
you? Your opponent gets to steal away an entire other empire's space
and PI for next-to-nothing, perhaps even bigger than his own, and use
it to "beat you over the head" with it. That sounds very unbalanced
and unfair to me. And of course, if he beats you up enough then
you'll also quit playing, giving him yet another empire's space to
freely glom onto and roll over the next guy in line. This doesn't
sound like a fair and balanced game to me. Why do we want to give
only some players a sudden and substantial advantage over their
neighbors, just because he had the good fortune to be next to the
player that simply decided to quit playing? Is that what we really
want to do? How important to us is "fair play" in this game?
As Genny noted, picking up dropped positions is also useless if it's
been sitting there doing nothing all that time. They should at least
have a running economic system bringing in PI for the new player to
spend. Otherwise, we'd NEVER have dropped positions picked up - it
just wouldn't be worth it.
Jon would really like to get more benefit from killing a dropped
empire, so what if we considered another possible option? What if we
"upped the ante" for killing any empire, making it more reasonable to
want to kill a robot position (with it's PI stockpile similar to
played empires). What about if you got ALL their HW PI, or maybe
even all their unspent PI empire-wide? Would that make defeating an
empire more attractive, whether it was played or not? Or what if you
got some random percentage of their research PI added directly to
your research, perhaps representing knowledge that they had found but
you hadn't yet? Would that also increase the desirability of killing
an unplayed (or played) position? Would it be enough?
Of course, there's always the option to have the rules explicitly
state that you have to defeat all EMPIRES, not just all real PLAYERS,
in order to win. That could have the unfortunate side-effect of
keeping the last real player from winning, if he had a tiny empire,
and I don't think that any of us want to see that happen. But the
up-side is that ALL empires must be defeated, robot and real player
alike, and so no longer may you simply ignore the unplayed
positions. And everyone will have a similar chance as everyone else
of fighting and winning, regardless of whether or not the guy next to
you dropped or not, thus maintaining some balance and fairness. In
addition, a real player who becomes the last real player in the game
might not be granted an immediate win because someone else may
suddenly decide to pick up the dropped position and start fighting
him tooth and nail. Hmmm.... What if we considered an intermediate
possibility... what if, to win, you had to defeat all empires (even
robots/dropped positions), or you had to survive until the Masters
returned and you were the REAL player left alive with the highest
PI. That way a robot could never win, but he could put up a fight
(keeping things fair) until the last fortnight. (In the old days
they wouldn't want to keep playing against dropped positions for
$6/turn, but it's much more reasonable when it's free.) For that
matter, we could even credit players back a small amount of their fee
every month for actively playing a dropped empire, thus encouraging
people to pick up dead positions and leaving fewer robots around to
cause trouble.
So what other issues might we include in this discussion?
Davin
Jon
Genny -
Let me attempt to summarize and then comment ;-)
1. Robots were used to fill out the beta test game
2. Too few "real" players
3. Robot player a necessity to start the game
4. Robots make unplayed positions more desirable for pick up
5. You do not support using robots in production games
6. Robots could be a set up option
7. When can a dropped position be picked up?
8. Robot support for played positions
Points 1, 2 and 3 really deal with getting the test game started.
Points 5 and 6 are off-setting, and I like the idea of an option to
allow ROBOTS. They should be designated as such so a real player will
know what they are getting into and Davin can have fun making them as
nasty as he wants. The players will have asked for it!
Which brings us to point 4 and 7 - in the old production games, we
never let a person pick up a dropped position past the second game
year. I think there should be a point in time where the game proceeds
with the folks that are in it to completion; with no further
distractions.
Point 8 is interesting and I think useful. I agree that your "robot"
sub-commanders should ASSIGN ships to carriers for repair, issue
DEFEND and PATROL orders, SCOUTs etc. They should not spend PI if you
miss a turn.
Jon.
Jon
Let me summarize -
1) Fairness
2) Dropped positions are useless for resale if idle for a long time
3) Perhaps a better payout when you destroy an Empire?
4) Rules changed to require you to defeat all Empires, regardless of
Played or Robot?
5) Dropped Epire fees are less
Point 1: Fairness. The game is not "fair", your position is random
and the stars around you could contain 2 PV to 10 PV. Your 10 by 10
could be devoid of stars. You could be next to me <grin>. All
players start with the same odds and the same chances. You could wind
up next to a player that dropped and be able to capitalize on it or
not.
Point 2 and 5: As I mentioned to Genny in her post, we only allowed
people to pick up a dropped position up until the start of game year
3. We also charged less for the turn, figuring some money was better
than none.
Point 3 and 4: The real problem is how you win. If you attack a
robot, all of your damage is for nothing - the robot can't win and you
are now weaker than you were when compared to the real players. If
you attack a real player, you can negotiate a settlement (by passing a
message), you weaken a real player improving your strength relative to
all other real players.
I like Genny's idea of making it a game option for robots to be part
of the game and if allowed by the players, then robots should be able
to "win". No one could afford to ignore them and they are a problem
for all players.
Jon.