Idea for phantom x

[Commlink]

I have started playing and enjoy phantom x, the idea is very similar to the starcraft version. Even so because of its similarity thought i would post a few things that may or may not be capable of in fa from the starcraft version that makes things more interesting.


Did you see that?
1) shared vision
Shared vision means that along with allying, unallying people you also have the ability to make it so allys only see fog of war instead of your base, but can remain allied this makes it more interesting for phantoms.

1a) Along with shared vision a setting so that at certain timed intervals the Lights or vision will go out this will allow phantoms to break and attack one person and as the lights come back on claim innocence and that they where attacked first.
A timer on screen could be counting down so that that players could prepare themselves or start panicking.

1b)If this is introduced the host could put a setting on at start of game to make it so others cannot see another person, unless they shared vision with another person.


Show me the money!
2) A setting to change the amount of resource a phantom receives e.g a resource injection at timed event, killing an innocent comm.

2c)increased resources the longer the game goes on, the longer the game goes on the more resources a phantom gains this makes innocents want to actually find the phantoms faster and for those sneaky phantoms that love to hide this gives them more of an edge in the later games and still able to keep there role as phantom after sim city.

2b)in line with what i said in 2) another idea could be to calculate what each inno has coming in and give half to the phantom, currently not sure how the phantom resources are done so im just putting out ideas .

A new challenger
3)Paladins
if resources are increased and 2 or more phantoms, 1 paladin is chosen from the innocents, he is the champion innocent and gets a bonus resource of 1/2 or 1/3 of what phantoms do, but like a phantom no one is told who they are only the person knows.


Dude his got t3 mexes!
4)Random phantom, o the fun!
Basically random phantom can be set by the host before the game launches you still get the count down timer till phantom is chosen, but players are never told how many phantoms where chosen only that there are phantoms . There is no selection as the game random selects players and makes them phantom inno or paladin(if on).

Who's a phantom? I'm a phantom? everyone loves a phantom
5)Phantom on phantom, paladin reveal time. At the moment we have phantom reveal to everyone, we should also see a setting that allows phantoms to know who other phantoms are to maybe increase the chances of teaming up.

5a)Paladin reveal instead of everyone finding out who the phantoms are it could be revealed who the phantoms are to the paladin, but can the players trust who the paladin is .. or is he a phantom playing possum.


The changes i mention might allow for a more dynamic gameplay of the phantom, With different settings you never know what game of phantom you may end up playing and increases the range of something for everyone.

Alot of games i see end up on 6castles a revel time for 30 minutes and everyone sitting there for 30 minutes and then killing 1 phantom then the second one and thats it repeat etc. it very rare to get an exceptionally good phantom, but manipulation is a good trait to have for weaker phantoms an some of the game mods allow for this to be a more dominate role and really play on some of the strengths of being a sneaky phantom.

And i made an 8 player map based on the starcraft version for phantom, not enough 8 player maps for phantom .

Any ways comments welcome love to see what can and cannot be done.

[mead]

1) shared vision
An interesting idea. It would probably become customary to just park scout planes in allied bases where you have no shared vision. Still a good idea, might allow phantoms to try to be more sneaky. Assuming this isn't too much work, I'd be happy to see this implemented.

2)c) is a very bad idea. Particularly for no reveal games, since it encourages the excessive sim city playstyle that most (good) phantom players find boring and loathe. Since the phantom bonus is calculated as a percentage of inno income, it is already time-dependant and typically grows throughout the game until people start dying.

3) Interesting and worth implementing. As it is, in the customary 6 player-2 phant setup that is played in the vast majority of phantom games, innos seem to be at a slight disadvantage, since phantoms have learned that teaming up benefits them. Assuming equal skill of all 6 players, the 2 phants working together will win the majority of games. Introducing a Paladin might make it more balanced.

4) Seems bad for balancing. In the typical 6 player setup, a single phant has no chance, and with 3 phants, innos stand no chance. I dont see how this would add to the fun.

5) Should be considered only after Paladin has been introduced to the mod and tested extensively.

Regarding 6 castles, my impression is that fortunately roanoke still is ahead as the most played phantom map. 6castles seems to be favored by noobs, and additionally is a very badly designed map (probably the reason it is so popular similar to thermo). That considered, it is hardly surprising that most games there end up uninteresting.

Your point regarding sneakiness is valid, of course. However, sneakiness should not be confused with noobs whose playstyle as a phantom is playing so badly noone suspects them, until inevitably everyone else has twice the eco and four times the military assets.

Your new 8 player map is well made and a welcome addition to the small pool of good phantom maps.

Lastly, a suggestion of my own that is inspired by point 2). To adress the balancing concerns mentioned above (tandem rushes being almost unstoppable), one could test giving the phantoms a permanent resource bonus if they manage to kill another phantom (NOT another innocent). This would encourage earlier backstabbing, giving innos more of a fighting chance; it would also improve games where one phantom out of two is a complete noob and the other is forced to fight 4v1 without assistance. Initially I'd set the bonus at 10% of the players regular eco income. Of course, this would have to be tested.
Alternatively, vampire mode could always be enabled between the phantoms even while innos are still alive. I do favor the first idea however.

[Commlink]

i think you misunderstood on 4)

basically; lets take a 6 player game the random would always only do 2 or 1 phantom taking into account there are only 6 players, when you go up to 8 it goes 2 or 3 phantoms maybe 1 but low %. The idea is the innocents have no clue how many phantoms are in that game basing it on statistics they could assume 2, but only have 1 this would leave to a lot of internal fighting among innocents.

Its random, but still balanced according to player count so:
players - Phantoms available at random
4 - 1
6 - 1 or 2
8 - 1 or 2 or 3
12 - 1 or 2 or 3 or 4?

But the player is never told how many there are in a 4 player its obvious you only have 1, but in 6 player could be up to 2 but it might only be 1, Might increase innocent conflict.

Just a balance suggestion to this if random is played reveal should be disabled or only to paladin and if only one phantom is created he should gain a bigger bonus in resources to account for lack of other phantoms e.g his a super phantom .


And im editing again, this is about 1) this is for the future nuke problems that may a rise from not seeing allies and getting allied nuked, prehaps when a nuke or the sound is triggered if vision is off on everyone at the time it can ping on map the location its launched from or general area.

[Duck_42]

Comm, I can see you're going to keep me busy for a while. Good job with the map by the way.

Anyway, here's my take on your suggestions.

1. I agree with Mead. This is an interesting idea. However, I believe you'd just see a bunch of scout planes running around to compensate, so the net effect would, pretty much, be zero. In addition, I think it would probably be a bit complicated to implement. As the game is designed to share vision to allies, I'm not really sure if it's feasible. If someone else wants to attempt to code it though, go right ahead.

2. Bonus income events (i.e. killing an innocent, etc) might be ok, as long as the bonus is reasonable. This can be done fairly easily, but I'd like to see some more discussion (balancing, bonus amounts, events to use, etc) before I start on this one.

2b. Essentially, that's how it's done now.

2c. Again, I agree with Mead. Phantom income is percentage based, so I don't really see a need to increase it as time progresses. This would just encourage the phantoms to slow build (hide) till late in game when they have more of a resource advantage.

3. I like this one. The addition of a Paladin could make for some very interesting games. It'll take some work, but I think it's doable.

4. This might be fun as an option in some scenarios, but I'm not sure that it will really get that much use. It will take some work to add this feature too, so if I do this one, it'll probably be a while.

5. As a phantom, there actually is a way to tell who the other phantoms are (99% of the time). I figured out the method some time back, but it's not just handed to you (i.e. you do have to put some effort into figuring out who the other phantom(s) is/are). Still, it might be good to add a "Reveal Phantoms To" option with choices such as "Phantoms Only", "Paladins Only", "Phantoms and Paladins", "Everyone", and "No one".


@Mead

To adress the balancing concerns mentioned above (tandem rushes being almost unstoppable), one could test giving the phantoms a permanent resource bonus if they manage to kill another phantom (NOT another innocent). This would encourage earlier backstabbing, giving innos more of a fighting chance; it would also improve games where one phantom out of two is a complete noob and the other is forced to fight 4v1 without assistance.

Agreed. Right now, there is no resource boost to Phantom A for killing Phantom B.

We could tackle this by either:

a. Giving Phantom A the additional bonus that Phantom B would have gotten. i.e. if bonus was 15% for Phantom A and 15% for Phantom B then it's now 30% for Phantom A.
b. Having the game use the eco table for the new phantom count. As I said, right now it doesn't recalculate, so even though Phantom B just died, for eco calculation purposes there are still two Phantoms (see table below). This option wouldn't double Phantom A's bonus in all scenarios, but it would provide a substantial benefit for the remaining phantom.

Current Phantom Resource Bonus Percentages

Code: Select all

Phantom Count   Allied  Mixed  Enemies
-------------------------------------------------
      1          20%     25%    30%
      2          10%     15%    20%
      3           8%     10%    15%
-------------------------------------------------


(Allied means allied with all innocents, Mixed means at war with at least one innocent, Enemies means at war with all innocents)

If we do the second option, I'd suggest it apply regardless of who kills the phantom (i.e. if either innocents or another phantom kills Phantom B then Phantom A still gets resource boost). However, this would potentially make the other phantom much harder to kill, and order becomes important (i.e. It's in the innocents best interest to kill the strongest phantom first).

[Commlink]

Hmm if you get a bonus for killing phantoms or phantom vs phantom bonus, I'd like to see a wild card basically if you do introduce paladins when a phantom kills them they get + bonus, but if an innocent kills a paladin they get some kinda penalty like -resource drain(for a certain amount of time?, 5 minutes?) after all he was their champion ^^, The paladin would also get some bonus if he kills a phantom he gets an increase in his amount of resources, but killing an innocent means he loses his bonus income for a time period like a penalty box.

Paladin walks the fine line of pure, defender of justice .. he shouldn't be mass murdering innocents that would make him a fallen paladin and no better then a phantom.


Phantom war could we enable, disable this option as host please? i see it as a game at the end of the main game ^^.

some players just kill innocents and leave also paladin vs phantom ending could be given some rules as well like unholy crusade, basically paladin failed to protect all innocents phantoms done his job .. paladin is no longer paladin he wants to wipe the phantom out resource balance so paladin becomes as strong or phantom becomes as weak resource wise, Paladin losing all innocents = fallen paladin,(name change?) this is how phantoms came to be .


In your post duck
if phantom A kills Phantom B, Phantom A will get a bonus? What if we introduce Phantom C? will the kill bonus from Phantom A killing B be received by both Phantom A and C ? or just A

i'm sure i'll grab some more stuff as time goes on, if more people contribute to this post for ideas it will keep it neat
and your could also make another one for balancing ideas that would be cool means you know where to check to get god feed back .

[Commlink]

With all the being said, i'm designing a 9 player map just for Phantom X Paladin. i will do an 8 player verison as well so it increases the map base gonna use the idea of small islands in a circle.

I'm always looking or ideas for phantom maps especially 8 player designs trying to break this 6 player trend.

[mead]

Still, it might be good to add a "Reveal Phantoms To" option with choices such as "Phantoms Only", "Paladins Only", "Phantoms and Paladins", "Everyone", and "No one".

Agreed.

a. Giving Phantom A the additional bonus that Phantom B would have gotten. i.e. if bonus was 15% for Phantom A and 15% for Phantom B then it's now 30% for Phantom A.
b. Having the game use the eco table for the new phantom count. As I said, right now it doesn't recalculate, so even though Phantom B just died, for eco calculation purposes there are still two Phantoms (see table below). This option wouldn't double Phantom A's bonus in all scenarios, but it would provide a substantial benefit for the remaining phantom.

If we do the second option, I'd suggest it apply regardless of who kills the phantom (i.e. if either innocents or another phantom kills Phantom B then Phantom A still gets resource boost). However, this would potentially make the other phantom much harder to kill, and order becomes important (i.e. It's in the innocents best interest to kill the strongest phantom first).

I agree that the recalculation should happen independently of cause of death, and apply to all remaining phantoms in case there were more than 2 at the start.

Regarding possible changes in general, I think we should be clear what goals we want to accomplish, and how we want to improve phantom X gameplay. Personally, I'd like to see less passive behaviour (sim city) in general, also on the inno side, while discouraging FFA-style douchebaggery (which fortunately happens very rarely). Direct or indirect (by recalculation for example) kill rewards as discussed above are one way to accomplish this. What about extending the reward for killing a phant to innos who kill a phantom? That way, good and aggressive innocent players would be rewarded; killing another inno when being inno could be penalized in the same way, although reducing the amount of your allies could be considered penalty enough. If i recall correctly, Murder Party already does or did something like this. Paladins, should they be added, could of course be added into this reward/penalty scheme.

With Duck_42 being the only one I know with the rare combination of time, motivation and experience to actually code any proposed changes, I'd suggest prioritizing what is easy to implement (kill bonus and/or paladin). Changes should be incremental so they can be easily tested for balance implications until consensus is reached.

[Commlink]

@mead yea i agree about how innocents need to move instead of playing sim city.

innocents mind set is that they dont have to do anything in phantom, but play sim city and e.g wait to be attacked or wait till timer runs out. If the phantom does not do anything instead hides(i do this it helps loads if innocents can be provoked to kill each other off and more fun to much muhahaa) his accused of being ether noob(ok some cases they are) and that his holding up the game the goal of phantom is to eliminate innocents not for innocents to pressure phantom ..

Being phantom is almost like a punishment now in some games where innocents harass phantom verbally to own up. Had some problems like this in my games and to counter there argument i said there is nothing stopping you from unallying and attacking whoever you think is phantom, which i believe is how the games meant to be played personally.

You have 3 types of phantoms at the moment:
1)The aggressive player
kills as many innocents as he can caring for nothing that gets in his way. A lot of players see this is how a phantom should and needs to act, which is not always the case and leads to idle innocents and sim city in my eyes innocents are the lazy ones. 5 times out of 10 this is suicidal unless phantoms make themselves known and team up.

2)The Tactician
This is how i like to play as a phantom planting the seeds of mistrust between each innocent igniting a feud and provoking aggression towards another eliminating the odds. Using any means at their disposal provoking innocents to attack u, each other by private messaging. I find these games more fun for main reason you get a lot more banter and players having a fun even if they loose. 7 out of 10 times i can get 1 innocent dead without lifting a finger.

3)Whats a phantom
new to phantom or fa they don't use the resources to their advantage and can often lead to abuse upset games unsure of what they need to do, this can be partly the fault of innocents for not attacking. This kind of phantom never wins, not sure someway to better define the phantom innocents roles to new players?

not really ideas just thoughts how to clean up this defensive gameplay, its more like survival then phantom sometimes lol.

The key issue is making innocents move or giving the phantom some reason to expose himself to everyone. Currently how i play the game whats my incentive to go out right aggressive?
I'm not the best player and some innocents can out eco me even with the extra resources so i find it productive to be tactical.

i guess i just wanted to post this and see what you guys thought on the matter and see how we can change this?
food for thought.

[Duck_42]

The key issue is making innocents move or giving the phantom some reason to expose himself to everyone. Currently how i play the game whats my incentive to go out right aggressive? I'm not the best player and some innocents can out eco me even with the extra resources so i find it productive to be tactical.

Initially, this is how I played as Phantom as well. I'm still not all that good at FA, but I've picked up a bit about Phantom along the way.

Due to the way Phantom is structured, you either play a short aggressive strategy or a very long drawn out deceptive one. If you want to stay hidden, you're pretty much forced to throw away a good portion of the extra mass/energy that you get. So, you really can't leverage the Phantom bonus unless you play agressively. In addition, you get a better bonus once someone breaks with you (this is an incentive for innocents to remain allied with everyone, otherwise some people would just break at the start).

I can usually take out at least one innocent (sometimes two) right out of the gate (because people still don't defend against tele-mazer, my favorite attack strategy). So within the course of a minute I can take it from 4 on 2 to 2 on 2. Those are much better odds. from that point Phantoms go 1v1 against innocents and will usually finish the other two off. Taking out the other phantom is the tricky part. I'll usually plan an appropriate point and stab the other Phantom in the back just before I (or he) take out the last innocent. The bottom line is that it's easier to win a short game if you have a good strategy for playing it.

The long games are much harder to manage. If you play slow to hide that you're Phantom, any good innocents will have just as good a base as you do by 45 minutes in. Even 1 on 1 can be difficult in that scenario. The only option then is to play the innocents against each other or go for a superweapon and try to fend them all off (that rarely works). Playing them against each other can sometimes be done, but it always dependent on who is in the game (i.e. you never know what you're going to get). I've seen some long games go really strange ways. If you can sucessfully get them to attack each other, (and maybe get one or two taken out) it can get easier. That being said, you've still got to play very carefully. If you blow your cover at any point along the way you can still end up dead in a hurry. The other disadvantages of long games are that they take a LONG time and everyone in the game needs to have a good PC (long games always turn into Simcity contests). People aren't always up for playing a 1.5 hour chess match with the sim speed at -2.

With either strategy though, you still have to be able to kill the last player standing. If you don't plan for that, you'll lose almost every time.

new to phantom or fa they don't use the resources to their advantage and can often lead to abuse upset games unsure of what they need to do, this can be partly the fault of innocents for not attacking. This kind of phantom never wins, not sure someway to better define the phantom innocents roles to new players?

You're right. I should probably write a post explaining the basics of Phantom-X.

although reducing the amount of your allies could be considered penalty enough

Yeah. I don't think any further penalties are necessary. You've just killed one of your allies and you probably lost at least a third of your army doing it. That's penalty enough.

Hmm if you get a bonus for killing phantoms or phantom vs phantom bonus, I'd like to see a wild card basically if you do introduce paladins when a phantom kills them they get + bonus, but if an innocent kills a paladin they get some kinda penalty like -resource drain(for a certain amount of time?, 5 minutes?) after all he was their champion ^^, The paladin would also get some bonus if he kills a phantom he gets an increase in his amount of resources, but killing an innocent means he loses his bonus income for a time period like a penalty box...

I don't really see where any of this is necessary. The bonus for killing a Phantom is that he's now dead. The penalty for killing an innocent is (see comment above).

With Duck_42 being the only one I know with the rare combination of time, motivation and experience to actually code any proposed changes, I'd suggest prioritizing what is easy to implement (kill bonus and/or paladin). Changes should be incremental so they can be easily tested for balance implications until consensus is reached.

Motivation...yes , Experience...sort of , Time...uh no, not really. .

The type of changes we're discussing will need to be play tested before they are fielded to FAF. That means some sort of seperate mod file, and some people who want to play test it . I'll probably need to integrate the scripts with a map to make it work right (regular mods can't have lobby options).

[Harpagon]

I have some experience in phantom games and I often see players doing irrational choices (phantoms who kill each other while innos are all alive, the last inno teaming up with the stronger of the phantoms , innos attacking other innos who attack obvious phantoms..) maybe the problem is everybody has not a decent english level. But anyway I think it is very risky to complicate the rules more than they are now.
Phantom X is pretty balanced, phantons wins 50% of time. The only gameplay troubles I see are :

The innos sit back until the reveal : A paladin is maybe a good idea to make the innos attack but I would rather see it like : If an inno kills a phantom BEFORE reveal, he becomes paladin. (Maybe to avoid ruining the game if one of the phantoms is noob, the other phantom could be phantom+paladin if he kills his ally before reveal ?)

The phantom who let his ally do the work have very high chance to win the game by back stabbing him : maybe lower the phantom bonus and make a kind of auto reclaim (like in phantom war but during all the game and not only btween the phantoms). Anyway I dont share your idea of encouraging backstabing.. as I sayed phantoms win 50% of the games (mb less), then it makes only 25% of chance to win as phantom..



Concerning the reveal..
When there is no reveal and the phantoms play sneak , there is absolutely no way to know who is who and it turns to a ffa .. so I dont see the point of promoting this gameplay. (and it sucks for the non (or bad) english speakers like me).

If innos start to kill each other, the game is ruined because the phantoms win without effort.. Innos should have at least a slight indice to know who is phantom or at least not having to play a 1v1 or 2v2 against phantoms if they kill their allies. Then the only way I see to have an interesting game without reveal would be to change the bonus to a malus after a certain time. Then if innos attack other innos, they dont finish killed by a game ender built by a camper phantom.