Three simple suggestions for a better game

Ideas for expansions and improvements to Defcon

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PSBirch
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Three simple suggestions for a better game

Postby PSBirch » Thu May 03, 2007 7:07 pm

1. Lobby Notification : When all "awaiting new player" slots are filled, the "Launch Detected" sound is made -- this will help alert those who've wandered away from their computer or otherwise diverted their attention that the game is awaiting their Ready.

2. Conventional Forces Tally : Like the score board, a clickable panel that indicates the number of conventional forces destroyed on each team. Your own team's would be fairly accurate (Your's 100%, your allies +/- known sub losses) while those for opposing teams (and ally's subs) would only be indicative of those known to be destroyed via radar. This is just a common sense thing, especially given that it's a mechanical replacement for what one *could* do with pen and paper on Realtime.

3. Friends Page in Join Game Lobby: Maybe not so simple, but clients maintain a plaintext, tab/comma delimited file of the User IDs, User Name(s), games played with, games won against, games lost against for every game played, games dropped from. Clicking on this panel would indicate if the given Users were on-line, the server they're on (else "Lobby"), etc. Note that this wouldn't be exaustive, server side information, but only client side. Of course, the client-side info could be uploaded to Introvision to maintain a master win/loss/played/dropped record...
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Postby tl8 » Mon May 07, 2007 10:00 am

Good ideas. Especially 1 and 2.

Maybe xander might not rip of your head.

But there's more chance a fighter will shoot down a nuke.

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Postby shinygerbil » Mon May 07, 2007 12:01 pm

Number 1 is a very good idea. :)

Number 2 is a little debatable. I can see why you want it, and I'm not trying to flame you here, but I prefer keeping track of it myself. If every player had access to such stats, a lot of the skill and mind games would instantly evaporate, leaving behind a simple game of numbers. In my opinion, at least. ;)

Number 3 is also difficult, as nicks are not unique. Keys are unique, but we can't very well have a comma-separated list of all Defcon keys and who owns them, can we? ;P Perhaps if IV gave each key a unique ID number we might get somewhere - but as it stands, if I wanted to mess up your ratings, I could just change my nickname to PSBirch, for example, and deliberately play several really awful games, and your rating would go down the drain.

Those are better ideas than the majority that people come up with ;)
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Postby xander » Mon May 07, 2007 2:55 pm

I agree with shinygerbil 100%. He's da man.

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Postby shinygerbil » Mon May 07, 2007 2:59 pm

xander wrote:I agree with shinygerbil 100%. He's da man.

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Postby PSBirch » Wed May 09, 2007 8:08 pm

shinygerbil wrote:Number 2 is a little debatable. I can see why you want it, and I'm not trying to flame you here, but I prefer keeping track of it myself. If every player had access to such stats, a lot of the skill and mind games would instantly evaporate, leaving behind a simple game of numbers. In my opinion, at least. ;)


A fair point. My only argument against would be those occasions where you have, say, a naval battle going on in one ocean and then another starts somewhere else -- or your carriers sink a sub before you can mouse over to see whose sub it was.

shinygerbil wrote:Number 3 is also difficult, as nicks are not unique. Keys are unique, but we can't very well have a comma-separated list of all Defcon keys and who owns them, can we? ;P Perhaps if IV gave each key a unique ID number we might get somewhere - but as it stands, if I wanted to mess up your ratings, I could just change my nickname to PSBirch, for example, and deliberately play several really awful games, and your rating would go down the drain.

Ah -- I had thought there was some unique identifier under the nick. Without that, yeah, the logistics of this wouldn't work too well.

shinygerbil wrote:Those are better ideas than the majority that people come up with ;)

Thanks :) I'm sure there'll be some hare-brained ones coming soon enough...

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