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IDProjectCategoryLast Update
0003791AI War 1 / ClassicSuggestion - Campaign Management And SetupSep 2, 2011 7:24 pm
Reporterzebramatt Assigned To 
Status newResolutionopen 
Product Version5.015 
Summary0003791: New Game Lobby Indicator - Overall Campaign Difficulty
DescriptionKeith's idea but I thought it deserved a Mantis issue to gauge interest at least!

Assuming that such a thing is technically reasonable, the idea would be to add some weighting to all the various factors which influence game difficulty to derive a single figure indication of the general difficulty of any given scenario.

Factors which might need to be considered include:
[*] number of planets
[*] number of players
[*] lead AI difficulty
[*] other AI difficulty
[*] AI types
[*] AI & player handicaps
[*] enabled expansions
[*] available ship types
[*] AI progress increments
[*] minor factions
[*] AI modifiers
[*] AI plots

This would allow players (especially new players) to quickly get a (very) rough idea of the difficulty of complex scenarios, as well as the impact any given feature might have.

In addition, it might encourage more advanced players to get some use out of the easier versions of Spirecraft and Golems, since they'll be able to adjust the difficulty back up to a level which is still challenging.

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keith.lamothe

Sep 1, 2011 8:53 am

administrator   ~0013075

Bear in mind that the only reasonable way I can think of to calculate the "score" for a given scenario is to post it on the forum and ask players what they think it should be ;) It'd take quite a few go-rounds to derive a usable formula (and that only for a subset of scenarios).

But it'd be cool, yea.

zebramatt

Sep 1, 2011 2:41 pm

reporter   ~0013079

I'm inclined to think there'd be a lot of mileage in chucking up a (negative or positive) value against each doohicky to indicate its impact on difficulty and seeing how that all floats; then just reiterating until it's vaguely useful.

Once we've got that as a starting point you can build in more complexity perhaps - like, x only adds a little difficulty unless combined with y in which case it adds a whole lot more, etc.

mindloss

Sep 2, 2011 7:24 pm

reporter   ~0013111

I'm with zebra... and I still think an (invisible) rating system is a reasonable way to go. I have a couple of thoughts on how to get from here to there with minimal dev-time investment.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
Sep 1, 2011 4:35 am zebramatt New Issue
Sep 1, 2011 8:53 am keith.lamothe Note Added: 0013075
Sep 1, 2011 2:41 pm zebramatt Note Added: 0013079
Sep 2, 2011 7:24 pm mindloss Note Added: 0013111