Some questions about scientific research in future independent game

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1.Will you punish the huge team for scientific research?
If there are multiplayers mode in the game,the game will be more interesting.However,the Minecraft has almost no balance.The bigger the team, the faster the development.I observed some macro strategy games,like Sid Meier’s Civilization 5 and Stellaris.They all punish a big nation.Because they have more resources available.In Minecraft(Also GregTech),the cost of supporting the team is almost linear,and the growth rate is very low.A large farm can easily support a team’s food and even industrial needs.

2.The more times a technology is developed by different players, the lower its cost.Will this mechanism be adopted?
I observed this mechanism in Civilization 5.Its goal is to help backward players to catch up faster.In some Minecraft servers,polarization is very serious.There is only a steam engine on one side, and nuclear fusion is already on the other side.Then the world will be restarted soon after.So some players will never have the chance to get very high technology.It is a little unfair.

3.What is the mechanism for stealing technology?How to ensure that players can’t cheat with this?
Yeah,at least for now, the AI in the game is far worse than the human player.It’s easy to turn AI’s group.Then the AI will have their independent research.So there may have some players that focus on stealing technology.They only need to collect resources.It is unreasonable.(In fact,This is a special tactic in many games, especially in hard mode)So how to “teach” NPCs to effective defense against malicious behavior of players?

4.How to do technology encryption?Also,How to crack them?
Undertake the third question,It seems that this method can prevent a quick crack.But if it is too hard or too easy to crack,Balance will be destroyed.So how the system works?

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Multiplayer just gives you more people who could work together or against each other.

Research itself would be based on either your own Stats, or on the Stats of whatever NPC Town you’re in (since those can do Research too, though I will make them mostly stagnating).

There will be some Mechanic and all I can say is that I will try to balance it for single and multiplayer equally.

Thing is, if someone else Researches ahead of you, you can just go there and try to steal their Science Documents, or the Machines to reverse Engineer them. This would be the main way of catching up.

If the Player that is ahead also has an NPC Town, it will be significantly easier to sneak in and just steal the Science Stuff or Machines, especially since those players usually tell their NPCs how to do the new Tech Stuffs, since the NPCs cant work with what they dont know, meaning the NPCs will have Books containing Info about whatever Tech they are producing.

And since stealing is kindof intended, there will be effective measures for NPCs to defend themselves. Not to mention you cant just grief a House to get inside, that’s way too minecrafty.

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First,thank you for your answer to my question.
Some ways,such as steal the machine for reverse engineering or get blueprints from containers,will be in an awkward position.Because there are likely to be some server plugins(like PlotMe, Residence and so on) or mods(like FTBu) in the future,they will prevent players from entering others’ territory or interacting with the block.On the other hand,it is unrealistic to force the player’s territory to be completely unprotected.So how to balance these two questions?

In addition, human players may be more united than NPCs.In some games,like EVE or H1Z1,the players,especially Chinese players(I am also a Chinese, I have no malicious.), are able to build a huge team.They can easily reach hundreds or even thousands of people.To get all the resources or technology of NPCs, all the players have to do is attack,attack and attack.As long as the equipment gap is not too large, the number is enough to make up for everything.So how to balance this NPCs’ weakness?

Thank you again for your answers to these two questions.:wink:

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Okay do you happen to know ANY game that cant be broken by just letting thousands of players join? XD

Just curious how THEY solve that Issue, if at all. ^^

As for Plugins preventing the breaking of Stuff, that could be complicated indeed, especially since I plan of having such World protection built into the base game. I might let Reverse Engineering happen at a much slower pace if you are at the location of a set up Machine, so you can steal the info without actually breaking Stuff.

Another way would be that you could still copy the Books that NPCs have even when in a protected Area, since NPCs do need to have some sort of Book or Data next to them in order to know the Recipes they are crafting, like a Blacksmith would inevitably need to have a Book on smithing inside either his Workshop or at his place of Living. And NPCs will need actual paths between their Home, their Workplace and wherever they get their Resources from, so a Player could infiltrate those paths in order to break into places (Lock Picks would still work for breaking into houses in protected areas, since they just open and not break the Doors).

What really could pose an Issue is when someone makes an Underground City and nobody knows where the fuck that Base is, but what would be the proper course of Tech Tree for that? Making things cheaper for others wouldn’t be realistic, simply because that Underground place might not even be connected to any other NPC City, so there wouldn’t be any communication between them and the outside World.

I might increase NPC Guard count based on how many Players are closeby, so rushing with a ton of Players would generally be a bad Idea, since that increases the amount of Guards closeby. Though if you attack with an NPC Army the Guard Count would NOT increase, encouraging use of NPCs in general.

The Guards wouldn’t attack unless you commit any sort of crime and are caught, so that might be an issue if you go and attack one by one with an Army. And I presume “Chinese Super Armies” wouldn’t “officially” Team up using Game Mechanics and instead form multiple Teams that just happen to work together, so the NPCs cant easily tell who works together with who.

Though I could make it so that NPCs will be paranoid about new Players and always have a Guard walking alongside brand new Players, especially if there has been attacks recently.

And the World protection kinda thing might automatically protect the Walls of NPC Houses, or at least call the Guards whenever an NPC House Block has been removed by a Player who doesn’t have the authority to be allowed doing that (since it is ofcourse possible to own NPC Towns or parts of NPC Towns).

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Thank you very much.
I think there may have a way,just let a new batch of players attract the guards to track,then let a group of old players who have already gained trust attack.If the guard returns,he will face the front and back attack.But it seems that his stay in the place is even worse…
By the way,the EVE universe is so large that thousands of players need to work together to take advantage of the entire galaxy.:wink:

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