that would open up a need for SysOp scripts for scheduled function
to turn photons or eprobes on @ day xx.

But I thought the request was just to jack max price to a greater limit.

Ok, just thinking about some ways to explore Etherprobe use. I could add an edit setting that provides for a variety of Etherprobe rules.

- Use Based: Cost starts low, increases with personal use, decreases over time. This would spread the use of Etherprobes over a longer time frame, and one person's use would not effect another's. Potential dupe exploit.

- Market Based: Cost starts low, increases with demand, decreases over time. As players buy Etherprobes, it drives the price up, and over time the price will decrease. This does allow a player to effect the Etherprobe of other players, but might introduce some interesting tactics, giving an advantage to the team who is able to probe early, but not so much that this would be the deciding factor in the game.

- Time Based: Cost starts high and decreases over time. This simply makes early Etherprobing more costly, so you can do it but you'll devote a lot of resources to it. Cost comes down over time so later in the game it gets easier to locate bases. Can specify how many days, starting multiplier and ending multiplier. For example, 60 days, x25 to x1. Probably just a linear decrease.

- Constant: Cost is a constant at x1, x2, x3, etc, of normal Etherprobe cost. Constant x1 would be standard play. Constant with a high multiplier would be the behavior Sing originally asked for.

I can see benefits to all of these approaches, and they'd be pretty easy to implement. Would they be useful, or maybe just one or two of them?

Rewards large corps w/ data sharing. A group of casual players would not be able to
compete against a group of players that share their data.



Rewards people who buy probes early. Rewards automation over manual play.
Rewards scripters over ppl that play by hand.



Later in the game, grid will be more common. After the first week, probing is more
or less useless given the grid. The point of a decreasing eprobe cost is to just make
it more expensive early on, making probes less useful.



All I really want is a way to set probe cost from 1k to 65k. As it is now, it's 1k to like
12k in an MBBS game. If you do a multiple, it's impossible to set fractional levels, and
sysops are going to get confused. "I want 7000 per probe, I set it as 3500 and multiple
of 2?" That could be a nightmare in the making.

Expand the max probe cost. For stock edits, raise the bar to like 10k. For everything
else, well... if you're running an edit, then you understand the settings and can change
them.

I like this one. As Sing stated, later in the game grid is present, so gridding isn't as productive. If the cost starts high and drops later, that would be good because the ones that want to probe early will have to devote the resources to it and not spend as much on fighters, yet later, you can still eprobe somewhat at a lesser cost.

I also think the upper end price should be raised to allow sysops to make them more expensive in edits with higher cashing ability.

Two things I'm trying to deal with here, so bear with me.

One, I don't want a solution that's only useful for savvy gameops. Having a situation where eProbe cost depends on a hundred other edits is not a good solution. A better solution is some way for eProbe access to adapt to actual game conditions, since settings effect so many things. Can you tell me that having eProbe set to X credits would fix eProbing for all games? No. Is there a way to make it adaptive to address the problems in all games? If there simply isn't a way to improve eProbes across the board, then there isn't a good solution.

Two, I don't want to deal with changing the structure of the data files at this point if I can possibly avoid it. If 65K cr as a max is sufficient, that's fine. Providing a multiplier would give a greater amount of flexibility, as long as you're ok not being able to have a large prime number for your eProbe cost. It would be transparent to players, and frankly it's a bit too late to worry about confusing ops

I guess what would be really nice would be some sort of algorithm that could project a good eProbe cost based on other settings. I'd love to provide that rather than expect gameops to figure that out for themselves. A "market" approach has the potential to automatically adapt, and what you call problems may in fact be interesting gameplay. I also heard some requests for eProbe costs decreasing over time, so that might be interesting to some.

Ok, eProbe cost max is 65K. But I'd still like to seek a better solution. Sing, you spelled out some logic for why you think eProbes should be set at a particular level under certain edits. Could you (or anyone else) propose a set of variables that might be used to project a good eProbe cost? It would be nice to at least give ops a hint at what a good eProbe cost might be based on potential cashing levels.

I think the more complex you make it, the harder it'll be and the more savvy sysops will need
to be for it to work. A simple "here's the cost" thing is simple enough that people don't need to
be savvy for it to work. At worst, they'll just unbalance the eprobe cost and get the same
results we're getting now. At best, they'll import balanced edits and not have to worry about it.

It's not really tough, just figure out how much cashing a team can do and charge based on that.
There's no magic level for every edit and for every game, because the needs are so diverse.



As long as it makes sense to people operating it. Reminds me of doing CPU calculations... I want
a 3.6ghz with a 200 FSB, so I need a multiplier of 18, etc. That gets confusing. But, if it's the only
way to avoid making a change to the data files... which is problematic at best, then go for it. 65k
is pretty good tho.



A market approach will promote fast cashing and probing. I've already got scripts that will go to dock,
sell down, start a well-coded PPT around the universe, xport back in, run thru X ppl of PPT, store
all the data, spit out SDT or SST ports, start corpies running a ztm (usually while everyone is PPTing)
and use the map, grid and explored sectors to setup SDT/SST. In like 2 hours, I can have everything
done from start to finish in about 70% of games. 3 hours, 95%, plus base building. In some cases
you need to SST or SDT stack instead of running together, but it's all the same time-wise.

Knowing that, I'm going to have a huge advantage over ANYONE that tries to probe after me. I'll
be able to lock out anyone that isn't automated. At that point... it's script wars. Now I'm not really
opposed to that style of play. It's pretty much the style I'm good at, so why not? But... I don't think
it's the style we're aiming for, is it? If you want to go with it, that's okay. I'm sure ppl will use it to
their advantage. I'm not opposed to it, I'm just not sure it'd fit your goals.

Anyway, I don't think there's any magic formula that will balance eprobes. Too much depends on
the size of the universe, the structure of the universe, turns, tpw on ships, turns per player, corp
size, player skill, mapping skill, planet edits, and more. I could be mistaken there, there might be
a magic formula, but I certainly don't see it. It's all based on cashing, really. But that depends on
a lot of factors.

Ok, so thinking about this a little... and it's far from perfect
and quite messy, but just as a rough thought:

corp turns = corpies * turns per player

probes allowed = ((deadends * 2) / 5)

(cash base / probe cost) = probes allowed

(cash base / probe cost) = ((deadends * 2) / 5)

cash base = probe cost * (deadends * 2) / 5

5 * cash base / (deadends * 2) = probe cost

So if I make 30,000,000, and 3500 DEs...

5 * 30000000 / 7000 = 21428

This way, if you spend half your cash... 15m, you could send 700
eprobes, or get about 10% of the universe's DEs probed.

So now the question is: What's the cash base?

In that, you have... eh...

1. PPT
2. Planet nego
3. SST
4. SDT
5. Megarobs
6. Alien capping
7. CBY cashing
8. others I'm missing

So for each....

cash base = (corpies * turns * turnmult) / 2

So if you have 5 corpies, 1000 turns, and are SDTing with a turnmult of
17k, you'd have...

(5000 * 17000)/2 = 42.5m

But of course that gets messy in a hurry because now the sysop has to
figure out how much everyone is cashing.

So maybe there's a better way. If you use the corp's alignment, you can
kindof determine how much money they're making. It won't be perfect, and
it's got a lot of room for improvement (maybe someone here can help w/
that?) but it could be a rough estimate.

With megarob, credits stolen = 2*alignment change

So what if you added up a corp's alignment between all of it's players,
divided by the V to determine the average alignment per day, and multiplied
that by 2?

Corp has...
-28,000
-32,000
-35,000
+ 1,000

total: -94,000

Say V=5. Avg align change = 18.8, say 19. 19*2 = 38m.

5 * 38000000 / 7000 = 27000 (rounded to the nearest 1k)

This would encourage balancing alignments. Likewise, if people kept low
alignments of around 1000, then they're blue builders and should be given
cheap probes to compensate (perhaps).

If, and I don't play turns, a red cashes at 10M per 1k turns in a corp then what should the cost per probe be to reach the desired number of probes? 10M at $20k/probe would give you 500 probes.

A formula might be: turns x 20 x (20 / (sectors / 1000))

1k turn 20k sector
1000 x 20 x (20 / (20000 / 1000)) = 20000 x (20 / 20) = 20000 x 1 or 20k

2k turn 20k sector
2000 x 20 x (20 / (20000 / 1000)) = 40000 x (20 / 20) = 40000 x 1 or 40k

1k turn 10k sector
1000 x 20 x (20 / (10000 / 1000)) = 20000 x (20 / 10) = 20000 x 2 or 40k

2k turn 10k sector
2000 x 20 x (20 / (10000 / 1000)) = 40000 x (20 / 10) = 40000 x 2 or 80k (65k exceeded so 65k max)


Prices go up as the universe gets smaller and/or turns go higher. The maximum cost would be the 65k or whatever exists.


Ok, I am tired and math isn't my strong suit, but maybe it gives a phosphor green screen with vapor trail type clairty to what I am thinking, and someone can provide accurate numbers.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Problem with basing it on sectors is that not all sectors are created equal. If you
probe furthest DEs first, you'll cover a lot more space in less cost. It's a way of
basing the cost off the structure of the universe.

If you make 10,000,000 and are in a 20k uni w/ 3500 DEs, my formula nets:
50000000 / 7000 = probe cost
cost = 7000 (rounded to nearest 10k)

With this, you could send 1428 probes. That would cover approx 1000 DEs, which
would cover about 20% to 25% of the universe, provided you don't do anything else
with the cash. Naturally, this forces you to balance probing with buying figs, which
means you'd probably spend a lot less. You then have to balance probing with
invading. A team that doesn't probe but buys a lot of figs might prove very difficult
to invade. (ie: balance!)

1. PPT
2. Planet nego
3. SST
4. SDT
5. Megarobs
6. Alien capping
7. CBY cashing
8. Fig Farming

I think the old term "KISS" applies here. No since in making it too complicated. Basically the structure should be set up to discourage players and corps from eprobing early in the game.

I was thinking as simple as possible. Sing has probably the most accurate way to set cost. I think a range setting might be good to show for Ops setting costs so:

A formula might be: turns x 20 x (20 / (sectors / 1000)) to set max cost
and turns x 5 x (20 / (sectors / 1000)) to set min cost

1k turn 20k sector
1000 x 20 x (20 / (20000 / 1000)) = 20000 x (20 / 20) = 20000 x 1 or 20k (max)
1000 x 5 x (20 / (20000 / 1000)) = 5000 x (20 /20) = 5k min

If the "turns x 20" for the max was changed to "turns x 10", then the range would be 5k - 10k and I "think" be a better range if I read Sing's post correctly. This would still cause the cost to go higher based on additional turns and smaller universe size.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

That would be useful.

Wayne

I really like what I'm seeing here. I think this has potential.

Basically, this would be used as a suggestion to gameops, not as a hard setting. When Bigbang runs, based on the settings, it would generate a Probe cost, following whatever formula we decide has the most potential, maybe rounded to the nearest 10K or 5K or whatever, a clean number. But the op can then go into TEDIT and change it to any number within the allowed range (and I'm still considering making the effort to up this to a DWORD). Also, whenever any parameter is changed that is part of this formula, it would give you a suggested PTorp value and the option of using that or keeping the current amount. So from the perspective of an op, this is as KISS as you can get. From the developer standpoint, not so much, but I'm more concerned about what gives us the best chance of fun, balanced games.

The main goal of this formula is to estimate a maximum possible cashing rate, and based on that, set a reasonable eprobe cost. It doesn't need to estimate the actual likely cashing rate for any given game. That rate depends on player skill, etc. The proposed eProbe cost could be based on something like 70% of maximum cashing rate to make it less restrictive. We can balance that percentage as we go.