Rethinking the colony system

[Anachronism]

I have a suggestion.

Personalizing the colony game

At the moment the colony game is very alliance-orientated. That's generally a good thing, but it comes with some flaws.
Currently all the reinforcements of the colonies of one alliance sum up altogether into one big ri-pool for the whole alliance. The colonies also belong to that alliance as a whole, not to the player who conquered them. When the player leaves the alliance, the colonies are staying with the alliance.
The positive effect is, that this system is very motivating for the alliance to recruit new players. This feature should be kept by all means.

The negative effects are:
- A certain balance issue ... A big alliance is nearly invincible. Also, very inactive players just fly to an important colony, throw all they got into its defense and log in every few days to keep their account without playing anymore. There is nothing too wrong with that, but its just too powerful.
- No achievements for the player. Everything is thrown into one big pot. You conquer for the alliance, not for yourself. Very good for teamplay, but players like to have a personal advantage for their effort.
- The orientation towards big-scale-alliances is not for everyone. A loner can't play the colony game, and also it doesn't make sense to keep alliances small in the colony game. At the end it is always two big factions fighting each other. The occurence of a third faction is highly unlikely.

These problems would be solved, while keeping the positive stuff, by applying a few little changes:

The player owns the colony he has conquered or colonized. His alliance members also take advantage by getting half of the reinforcements he has acquired, but not all of them. In the colony map, your own colonies are shown green, allied colonies blue and enemy colonies red. You have a list of your own colonies and if you view the colony screen, you can see to whom it belongs. You can only build a chronomine (and terraformer and com sat station) on your own colonies. You can still put supporting troops on the colonies of your allies. When you leave the alliance, you keep your own colonies, if other troops of your former allies are still on your colony at this point, they fight against each other (and if they win, of course you lose the colony).

This new system would have a bunch of positive effects, while keeping all whats good about the old system:

- It maximizes the motivation for every single player to conquer as much colonies he can, because he wants to be the most powerful (have the most ri). Still the alliance as a whole gains great advantage of every active player.
- The player has a better feel of achievement and recognition within his alliance.
- It solves the balance issues, at least partially.
- It makes betrayal more interesting.
- It sets the basis for a future economical system besides the chronopods (for example a currency, which could be transferred into strategical or even tactical score).
- It is more logical.

I admit, that I'm quite fond of the idea. What do you think?

[admin]

that sounds very interesting,

we will discuss it tomorrow

[spacetrace]

thx for your detailed suggestion, but i am sorry to veto against it

- there is no motivation problem for conquering colonies - you have the ri and the whole alliance will cheer...

- let's make big alliances for colony play - small alliances for tactical players ... finally this is useful in spacetrace, iam happy for that.

- we can balance out the colony game by 3 things: make the ri dependent on the terraformstatus : this will do most of the deal. the basic ri could be adjusted, the wings of terror could be adjusted ... but i think #1 will do it already.

........
but ... we should make the colony game more individualized on top of this structure. just like the chrono mines which belong to a single player we should install more personal stuff. like buildings, economy system and so on.
also there could be a feature utilizing the personal colony score.

but i have no clear ideas bout that yet.