@Rhohan - A funny thing happened on the way to the forum...3 w- B3 A% G) A. z% M' h
9 A, n$ I& O$ l/ r" f" q" just believe that other players could be that external threat (evony)" , z! ?: ^, |, B- C9 E. k, ]
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At the early stages of player technology development the same type of beliefs were common on evony as have occured on SS i.e. that you could kill and be killed, that you could profit as a raider and to a certain degree it is true but only early on in the game.
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" k6 U0 R4 @9 H3 r( \And even then it's only a matter of perception based upon the ratio of how long it takes you to gather any particular resource and the amount of resource held e.g. 10k of ore that takes 3 hours to acquire is automatically valued higher by the brain than the same amount of ore when it takes 1 hour to acrue., [5 y% h7 ^ r* b+ U$ W) G; b
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This is why it's so hard for someone with lower tech, smaller fleets, lower rank and fewer resources to understand why more advanced players have so little interest in their "valuables".1 \1 [2 x V5 y7 [7 t1 _# m) n
. g# h5 ?' a# M9 \0 p' ?4 Z* aBut back to the point of using other players as a "threat" mechanism, the reason why this won't work (beyond the natural sociability of players) is that even the worst player will hit upon a min/max strategy i.e. one that minimizes loss while maximizing gain.2 v8 _, H1 E7 u: C( Q, Z6 j6 S
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This effectually means that for raiders, although gain is initially high it diminishes quickly as colonies withina short radius of them are emptied and stop producing. As they range ever further away to find a fresh kill their cost in time increases along with the risk of loss.
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8 G8 L2 D+ O; y5 c! r4 I, r+ _Furthermore, because the brain registers loss more strongly than gain, it further shifts the decision tree towards risk avoidance exept for approximately 10% of the population that get more of a charge from adrenaline than dopamine but I digress.2 E; o1 Z+ g: y$ s9 e6 E
6 m3 \( P3 {' VThe effect is most easily explained with the analogy of a predator in a closed environment i.e. on an island, any limited range. Overly active predators quickly starve themselves out and once weakened become prey themselves.- d& _/ q5 S! c9 x6 P
& P! u) Y) M/ W. J) `/ G E5 cThe compensating mechanism in nature is aging, in mmos it tends to be boredom. Effectively, it get's old.0 X9 s( O6 c- h
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In evony a lot of these effects are masked and prolonged from notice by the sheer size of the maps and the time expense of travelling from one place to another. The same is simply not true of SS. I can be anywhere in the known supremacy universe in under an hour without speed ups and within 10 seconds with.
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Now while this might seem a panacea to any raider, they'd be failing to account time they'd have to spend with the simple management of the number of leaders required to make this possible, not to mention return times and the fact that it's still a closed system and overfeeding still an issue.
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But then we can produce our own resources with maximal gain, minimal losses, minimal risk, with the least effort. It's the natural conclusion to any and all linear economic systems to choose not to be a raider.- [4 {* @ D) A
8 G' ~1 @. d' t9 ?5 qIn the real world the problem is that the raiders have been able to successfully change the rules of the game so that they starve everyone else first and themselves last. The danger of inverting the system in such a way is the same for the games economics if raiding receives favored treatment.9 P! ~- w, Q# S- E4 L6 w* T6 D
% N; m0 r/ @7 h9 j! C% FPower always concentrates. The choice is, do you want it concentrating in those that subscribe to the predator ethos or those of a more egalitarian bend? |
was proven back in LP. 
