Arga wrote:Dazamin wrote: Also having a 'good' Island, will to some extent paint a big target on your corp, everyone wants to bring the big guy down.
Yes. If your the King, being the King is good.
If your the little guy trying to fight the king, that's not so much fun.
Game Theory Hat On:
I like the idea of small groups/small corps being able to move to the Gamma Islands, but a certain other game with vast tracts of open "wild space" has been trying to do that for years and it hasn't worked. The big ones just grab more space and have roaming fleets to defend them. Some may rent space, and various have more draconian or more generous "sharing" or "renting" plans, but frankly, if they put a big effort into grabbing it all, they expect to be able to profit from it, and fair enough.
That brings it back to the game infrastructure and the game population. Certainly lots of space may reduce crowding until the player population grows-- but then again, see above. Unless there is enough space that even a large corp would be spread too thinly to take it all, there may be no population-driven benefit.
In a sandbox game, it is usually anathema to have any mechanic or infrastructure that is perceived as "player-directING" rather than "player-directED". This is, of course, an illusion. There is always a limited menu of options from which to choose. However, providing plenty of drama and possibilities for player-driven conflict tends to obfuscate that: artificial complexity can also be used as an easier substitute for actual depth.
So: what are some options that could be implemented that leave it up to the players as to how to react and to play, yet which do stimulate a desire for a large population to try out the Gamma Islands? If Perpetuum can figure that out, then it will defintely have one up over the other sandbox. PvP will be part of it, but economy and other relationships will be what makes it endure. (Yes, PvP is a relationship. )
One thing that I will be intrigued to hear about-- or to see at implementation-- is simply the geography of the implementation. That will have a huge effect on what the Beta Islands end up becoming, as well as the 1st and 2nd order relationships between the Gammas. There would be a huge difference simply in linear links radiating outward, compared to branching links. How many entrance/egress choke points there are is another factor. For example, the perceived value of a Gamma "cluster" or "region", or even a single island, should include how easy it is to access, and therefore how easily it can be invaded, defended, and how easily it can communicate with large markets. Links will definitely be one of the island "resources", especially if not all islands are created equally from the link standpoint.
As a corollary, if Perp will ever include other modes of transport in the future: flight, water surface, subsurface tubeways, whatever-- that may heat things up and introduce more choices and dynamism.
The issue that of course crops up is balancing the worth of trying to build things up, versus the worth of destroying them. While the "epeen" and "just want to see things explode" camps will always want to destroy stuff, because that's an obvious ego-stroke, there still has to be incentive to see things being created. Large wallets are not enough; numbers become boring after a while. The power-ego-rush of claiming chunks of territory is one thing, and the sense of accomplishment of building outposts/fortresses/whatever, with useful facilities and factories, is another.
Devising how to let things be accomplished, at the same time as letting things be destroyable, is another thorny issue with which other games have wrestled. Destruction drives the economy forward. If it is the only thing which does, then the game is doomed to become just another mech shooter-- and there will be too much competition in that department. More on that in another thread, "How can we support Perpetuum in the Year of the Mech?"