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The PotBS HoC Devchat Log is posted!

  • Thread starter Dor of Sonoma
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Dor of Sonoma

Tonight's PotBS Stratics HoC Devchat in IRC was fun as well as informative. Aether, CoryH, Joe, isildur, Rhaegar and Rusty were all in attendance, and fielded questions ranging from expanded marketing to an upcoming new installer and free trials(!), drydocks, pillaging, removal of port protection and more! Huge thanks to everyone whom participated, for a quite enjoyable eve. :)

To read the entire transcript, pray visit this link and then let us know what you think of the forthcoming changes and additions that were announced therein.

Oh, and isildur & Co. had some additional answers and comments to make after the HoC had formally wrapped, in our #burningsea IRC channel. I will try to add those in here later on :)

Dor of Sonoma

After the Stratics HoC PotBS Devchat was wrapped up on Wednesday eve, isildur was gracious enough to drop by #burningsea and answer some additional questions for us before having to leave to attend a meeting. A gently edited transcript follows:

Cousteau: Are you going to make people flag to put a port into pvp status?
[FLS]Aether: That's a good question Cousteau.
[FLS]Aether: Cousteau: No, but we're going to make pvp flagging a more interesting component of putting ports into contention -- so the best way to do that will be to flag.
[FLS]isildur: Flagging will make ports flip faster. I am not saying any more because nobody has written the code yet so it will change and then you will be angry at me. And when people get angry at me I make Aether take the flak from it and he's sad.

Dor: I was wondering if the implementation of port governance and/or 'social spaces' was linked and if not, which has preference?
[FLS]isildur: Dor, eventually yes but port governance is a smaller and easier-to-implement system (which is kind of surprising to me)
Billy_Hicks: It is? We thought it was a massive job
kungtotte: Billy_Hicks: smaller than social spaces.
Xaphod: It's probably one of those wierd occurances where something seems more complicated than it really is.
Billy_Hicks: Yeah, I thought governance would be harder on the coders
[FLS]isildur: Social spaces includes decorating. Scary, scary decorating.
kungtotte: The big and important question about it is which ports will it be? Will players take over current ports, will new ports be created and auctioned off, can ports be created anywhere etc.
Undrsiege: Is the 100 mile contention rule global or can it be modified by port and red circle circumference?
[FLS]isildur: I don't want to get into too much specific detail because of the aforementioned 'change = hate' but right now current ports, including the national capitals. 100 mile rule sounds like a devco question which I will ask of them.
Billy_Hicks: Didn't expect capitals to be part of it.
kungtotte: Me neither, but I did expect it to only involve the current ports and possibly the forts that are scattered around.
[FLS]isildur: That's the system as it exists nowhere but in my design documents, so it is subject to sudden and brutal change when implementation time comes around and the coders all disembowel it.

Ranker: When can we expect player run ports to be implemented?
[FLS]isildur: Ranker: if I told you any date, any milestone, I'd be lying. Because honestly, I don't know. We end up shuffling features around a lot to ensure that the ZOMG CRITICAL stuff is addressed -- like the issue we've had with rollbacks, for example.

Billy_Hicks: Isildur, any news on Skirmish?
[FLS]isildur: Skirmish is in the same place as port governance: it always gives way before anything that's game-breaking or could become game-breaking.

ClericTaven: I do so enjoy a captive audience - is there a technical reason that we are limited to only 50 Friends in buddy list?
[FLS]isildur: Gotta have some limit. That's all I can imagine. Joe just wandered into my office so lemme ask him
[FLS]isildur: He says 'I think it's just an arbitrary limit' so I bet we can increase it easily.

ArmEagle: ohh.. When will we see some sort of support for Alliances?
[FLS]isildur: argh... must go afk a minute, then I'll come back and chat for a few minutes, then I will escape, because that spec? It's waiting for me.
[FLS]isildur: Alliances is on the List Of Critical Stuff I mentioned in one of my answers.

Cousteau: Any thoughts on changing the current underdog tool system? IE dynamically changing weekly, or awarding loot/xp books instead?
Undrsiege: heh I don't think they realize that underdog is a joke
ArmEagle: Undrsiege they do. It's tricky to find a good 'live' calculation though. So many parameters to take into account..
Billy_Hicks: Isildur said before underdog was just a temp fix
Cousteau: Change it dynamically every week, so one group of folks don't sandbag for 2 months while milking it.
Xaphod: My suggestion before was to just do it manually.
[FLS]isildur: Yeah, underdog stuff needs a lot of work. Faction balance is a huge nasty challenge, and something we're continuing to work on.

Ranker: What steps are being considered to deal with faction balance?
[FLS]isildur: Well, a big thing we don't do -- that seems simple and stupid but would make a difference -- is to actually tell you before you pick a server/nation who the underdog is. :) Also, our method for choosing the underdog is basically bs -- we have a design for a much more flexible and responsive system.

ArmEagle: btw, [FLS]isildur why did the Tax rates get increased?
Undrsiege: Maybe to get the PvE people to help protect the ports because most PvP people really just fight for the fight and the port doesn't matter.
Xavin: PvE people can't protect the port the way things are set up now, Undrsiege
Undrsiege: I'm all for it if when you lose the port all your structures get torn down
[FLS]isildur: Partially, yes, to make losing ports matter a little more -- but it's also to prep for port governance, because tax rate changes are one of the things governors get to do.
ArmEagle: Yeah, true. But it also means the true underdog being hurt the most.
[FLS]isildur: I'll see if I can figure out a way to get underdog stuff into the schedule sooner; it's just a matter of time and available dev resources. We have a list a mile long of stuff everyone agrees is Really Important, and all those things have to compete against each other. :(

Xavin: Are we going to see the port governance spec when there's still time to change things? I have nightmare visions of ways it could go horribly, horribly wrong.
[FLS]isildur: You'll get to hear more about port governance when I"m confident it isn't going to be bumped by something that's ON FIRE, which happens just often enough to worry me.
[FLS]isildur: Ok, Joe is actively trying to have a meeting about adhoc joining rules behind me, and I should really pay attention to it.
ArmEagle: Thanks a lot [FLS]isildur !
Billy_Hicks: Thanks for answering a bunch more of our questions Isildur
[FLS]isildur: ok, I am OUT
* [FLS]isildur has quit IRC (Quit: Leaving)