#11 Golden Skull Level

[daniel48090]

We should take advantage of this upcoming content update for the classification system and the golden skulls, which will be used to unlock new technologies and features, to add the following:

The Clan's golden skulls should be used and integrated into the Clan's own system. For example: Address the issue related to the Conquest ships, which have been obsolete since their inception, and with the new skull system, they could be used to develop tactical improvements for the clan ship. Here are some examples of improvements:

• Control Conquest Ship: Stun Charge, Stun Dome, Magnetic Trap, Aggressive Beacon. Flight Speed: +30% Armor: -10%
• Defensive Conquest Ship: Shield, Aim Scramblers, Repair Turret (this should be of a size, range, and proportion similar to Imperial Repair Turrets), Allies Covers. Flight Speed: -15% Armor: +50%
• Combat Conquest Ship: Aim Computer, Aggro Bomb, Sticky Bomb, Chain Lightning. Flight Speed: +10% Armor: +15%
  
  The speed and armor are suggested based on the basic Conquest Ship stats.

If this is "impossible" for this Dev Shack, then it should be taken into account for the future. Thanks!


PD: I've read all the messages and it seems there are quite a few pilots who only complain that the Golden Skulls will be "exclusive" to PvP. I'd like to remind everyone that this is called "PIRATE GALAXY" not "BARBIE GALAXY" or "FARM GALAXY," and for those who don't like PvP, I recommend you go install The Sims and live your life peacefully.

 

[Rey Brujo/Sauronx36]

I really like this update. The adjustments to the Golden Skull system will feel much fairer and more dynamic – there will now more ways to earn Warscore, and players with fewer Skulls get meaningful boosts to catch up. The Pirate Mode changes also make sense.

My questions:
1. do we get a special planet in Draconis or Oort? Because there was not mentioned where we can get the new ancient stuff.

2. Since we are now allies with the ancients, how can we collect the tau ceti ancient stuff without harming them?

3. If there is a small chance that this all will start in sirius and we may have the 6th ring, is it possible to get new ancient ships stayed as "prototype" with an item in the 9 slot that only the ancients ships have?

4. "Global warscore boost" is a fine idea. But adding an extra purchaseable warscore booster would be to op. What about a warscore drone then to motivate the Players even more?

5. Is the storyline about the ancients fake, because we harm them again to regain their technology AGAIN? I think its important that this will fill up and fit with the open ending from the erebos storyline to close it because they "left" the knowing starsystem.

Overall, a strong update that motivates both veterans and newer players to dive back
in.

Dear Kingsub,
1. The hidden special units will be throughout all systems; there is no need to create any additional planets.
2-3-5. There was no mention of ancient stuff or a 6th ring
4. Its better to be able to earn the same warscore as everybody else

We should take advantage of this upcoming content update for the classification system and the golden skulls, which will be used to unlock new technologies and features, to add the following:

The Clan's golden skulls should be used and integrated into the Clan's own system. For example: Address the issue related to the Conquest ships, which have been obsolete since their inception, and with the new skull system, they could be used to develop tactical improvements for the clan ship. Here are some examples of improvements:

• Control Conquest Ship: Stun Charge, Stun Dome, Magnetic Trap, Aggressive Beacon. Flight Speed: +30% Armor: -10%
• Defensive Conquest Ship: Shield, Aim Scramblers, Repair Turret (this should be of a size, range, and proportion similar to Imperial Repair Turrets), Allies Covers. Flight Speed: -15% Armor: +50%
• Combat Conquest Ship: Aim Computer, Aggro Bomb, Sticky Bomb, Chain Lightning. Flight Speed: +10% Armor: +15%
  
  The speed and armor are suggested based on the basic Conquest Ship stats.

If this is "impossible" for this Dev Shack, then it should be taken into account for the future. Thanks!


PD: I've read all the messages and it seems there are quite a few pilots who only complain that the Golden Skulls will be "exclusive" to PvP. I'd like to remind everyone that this is called "PIRATE GALAXY" not "BARBIE GALAXY" or "FARM GALAXY," and for those who don't like PvP, I recommend you go install The Sims and live your life peacefully.

Do you realize that what you are saying is not related to this Dev Shack?. Let's stay on topic

 

[NinjaFlow]

4. "Global warscore boost" is a fine idea. But adding an extra purchaseable warscore booster would be to op. What about a warscore drone then to motivate the Players even more?

This is really a bad idea, will make this almost a Pay to Win game

 

[Sebasti0n]

Structure will be adjusted as noted in the devshack. Most likely less divisions and more gold skull slots on division 1
Currently collected skulls will remain and not turned into the leagacy skulls.

How do you Envisage the structure change of the ladder system.... Will all players be starting at the entry lvl ladder ?

 

[Highway]

Just to get it right, we still need to reach enough points per week to gain a skull? Did you make sure its doable with a 9-5 Job and the weekends are taken by family? ^^ It would be nice if you could elaborate (maybe with made up numbers) what it would look like. I'm kinda worried you change it for the better, but someone like me who can maybe play a max of 3h a day if nothing happens can somehow do it.

Basically you will have multiple channels where you can gather warscore. We try to balance it that not a single channel dominates the others and instead its best to try to play things where you can combine them. For example play missons where you can rank up pve as well as warscore for the quest completion itself. Same for Reactor challenge where you can also play safer without the risk of getting into PVP. You will get points here for PVE kills as well for the final ranking position. But here is more skill required to be at a top position with your squad. And thats only for the Player Ladder. You can also play conquest each day ~1h to get many skulls through you clan if you like the PVP competition. Hopefully that gives everyone a good way to earn skulls.

Quick question about this part. Will this weakness be known ahead of time? Like for example will we know if the 9th tech X will have 20% less active time ahead of time or is this part of the experimentation players have to figure out?

I don't know how "expensive" will be to replace a more or less "botched" 9th tech install after figuring out it's not that great and having to replace it with something else.

Yes it is planned that all items installed in slot 9 have a general weakness that will affect all the item in the same way. There will be a info in the game about that for sure.

How it be WS looks like on Sirius? Any additional benefit for make clan missions or WS in ring 5 ? Or any random new enemy's in rings 1 to 3 to make them worth jump there again?

As Sirius quests give good cryonite they also should give nice warscore based on it. You need to try out to find the best actions to do to maximize Warscore.

Regarding the TC variants, will these be the same as Sirius on down? Normal/Rapid/Long/Strong? And where will these variants be found? Erebos, a new ring on Sirius, completely new mechanics?

Jup they follow the same structure like the Ancient variants. You get them from differnt type of Skull Item Carriers you need to search for on all the story planets. There is not a fixed farm spot for them and you can find the same skull item in vega and the next time it is in tau ceti.

What are legacy skulls?

Highway


A big doubt among my friends is: will the skulls that players already have become just “symbolic”?
Note: They would still appear in the account but wouldn’t be usable for crafting the new items.
So, will players need to go after new skulls because the ones they already have won’t count for this update?

The old golden skulls where converted into "leagacy skulls" in the time the ladder was still beta and buggy. Players got them added into their player profile so we could reset the ladder with the fixed ladder system. This time though there will be no reset and the golden skulls are kept for all players. We only might every player back to the entry division though as the warscore values will change.

Question or request: It would be nice if you could enhance or promote PvP outside of CQ, like the wars used to be in the past. On Gaia nowadays, a lot of this has to do with the change in the CQ system. People no longer fight massive battles like before, and many players on the server only played for those big wars, myself included. I think the changes are fine, but it would be great to go back to those times of holding ground on planets with so many pilots fighting.

With the planned changes we hope there will be alot more movement towards enabling the pirate mode and also by this get a few pvp battles going on. Risk reward mechanic that hopefully works and is fun for most people.

Otherwise as others have stated the 9th slot could be sort of an issue in terms of balance and PvP and CQ cus it could then lead to situation where the clan with more 9th item players has the upper hand/advantage.

Players that are able to unlock the 9th slot items will have a lower warscore boost as they already have a high skill level. That mechanic should help players to catch up easier. Sure on direct PVP competition for CQ it can make a difference. Still the 9th skill use will also come with downsides that should help to balance it out a bit.

So to hunt skull bps you have to be in pirate mode , are you guys planning to implement some kind of way to prevent players from gatekeeping skull items intentionally? for example a bigger "alliance" of players could all agree to target a smaller "alliance" of players to essentially deny them the opportunity to collect skull blueprints

I like the idea of skull item carriers being raid bosses that require a squad and all requiring different strategies but im unsure if pirate mode is going to be fair

Not directly but as you need to search these carrier ships first and they are spread around all story planets on all systems it will be difficult for clans to claim them all for their own. We surly will look on how things evolve once it goes live for sure.

1. do we get a special planet in Draconis or Oort? Because there was not mentioned where we can get the new ancient stuff.

2. Since we are now allies with the ancients, how can we collect the tau ceti ancient stuff without harming them?

3. If there is a small chance that this all will start in sirius and we may have the 6th ring, is it possible to get new ancient ships stayed as "prototype" with an item in the 9 slot that only the ancients ships have?

4. "Global warscore boost" is a fine idea. But adding an extra purchaseable warscore booster would be to op. What about a warscore drone then to motivate the Players even more?

5. Is the storyline about the ancients fake, because we harm them again to regain their technology AGAIN? I think its important that this will fill up and fit with the open ending from the erebos storyline to close it because they "left" the knowing starsystem.

1. See answers above or initial post closely
2. & 3. & 5.Who said that the variants are ancient items?
4. Nahh no need to have such thing. Indirectly the current boosters already help to get WS quicker.

How do you Envisage the structure change of the ladder system.... Will all players be starting at the entry lvl ladder ?

Yes most likely all go back to entry division as we change the structe of divisions and also the warscore values. Golden skulls are kept though.

 

[NGSpeed]

As Sirius quests give good cryonite they also should give nice warscore based on it. You need to try out to find the best actions to do to maximize Warscore.

Sirius Missions are the only ones of the type "Clan Missions". Since they are for the clan could they also possibly generate Clan Warscore instead of Player Warscore? Participating conquests should still generate more WS

 

[Z0ckt]

So, 1. Collect war points, 2. Get gold skulls, 3. Destroy special PVE units for new blueprints, 4. Then decrypt these new blueprints with gold skulls... I can only collect war points in pirate mode on PVE planets (solo and squadron) or in the reactor (squadron) or on conquests (squadron). Enemy PVE spaceships have these blueprints, but I can only see them in Pirate Mode... And I must have already completed the Draconis story...

Why only Tau Ceti items? Why not add some for the lower star systems as well? You want to create incentives for war score and for pirate mode. Then add energy, cryonite and gravitons as additional rewards for war score.

My game progress is at the beginning of Venar, and I am still missing a few Sirius Ring 5 blueprints so that I can eventually install certain Venar blueprints that I have long since acquired and worked for myself. Thanks to the encryption you added to the game later, these are currently useless to me. These new items, which require Tau Ceti gold blueprints that are still locked for me on Tau Ceti planets or elsewhere, are honestly not very relevant to me.
At most, I could imagine earning Warscore for energy, cryonite and gravitons.

And why only after completing the Draconis story? Why not items for lower systems as well? If the rewards are good, I would collect them myself. You could add optional items that are there to complete a set, which then, once you have everything together and complete, distributes energy, kryonite, or gravitons. This could be offered from Vega to Draconis, either per star system or even per planet, if desired. Perhaps the sets could be nicely displayed in the pilot's profile. One more reason to revisit the lower systems.

Successfully completing story missions and white missions should generate Warscore even without pirate mode. Reward players who have already completed the missions and are playing them again with other players with more warscore This will create incentives, so that perhaps more players will be helped with missions again, and maybe then help will finally be given beyond clans.

You talk about making Pirate Mode fairer. Then block landing with ancient technology from Vega to Draconis when Pirate Mode is activated. Unless you want to disadvantage players without Sirius access. (PVP). Well, I wouldn't necessarily want to end up as cannon fodder in space.

Ultimately, you want Pirate Mode to be used more again, not the players themselves. So the incentives should be right. Until then, I still have plenty of time to keep Pirate Mode disabled.

 

[Fra_592]

Draconis story

oh, the innocence

Then block landing with ancient technology from Vega to Draconis when Pirate Mode is activated

As much as i would love such a thing, i'm pretty damn sure most other endgame players would hate it.

As for the pirate mode, my understanding is that missions and unit kills do not need pirate mode on to generate warscore.

 

[Jackal]

I really like this update specially the pirate mode changes, but with this new 9th component I have a question.

I know you want to balance it with some drawbacks or disadvantages and the initial blueprint would be the normal one not the strong variant or anything like that, so that's fine if done correctly... but how can I identify which 9th module has any ship installed at a given time?

For example in the middle of a conquest in Gaia there will be 25 enemies with an unknown item installed (although weaker would be important to know still), even if you can find it after you scan the enemy, it would be impossible to remember all 25 players.

Will there be an external icon or something to avoid this problem?

 

[ZelD]

Nice update, but the best thing would be to merge all the servers into one... The problem remains the same: the lack of players...

 

[Redthorne]

And I must have already completed the Draconis story...

See:

Items can only be gathered after finishing the last story mission

Then add energy, cryonite and gravitons as additional rewards for war score.

Those are already byproducts of mantis killing.

My game progress is at the beginning of Venar

Then this "endgame" update is not about you, you still have plenty of content to go through

Well, I wouldn't necessarily want to end up as cannon fodder in space.

That is the harsh reality of progression, of course higher levels will have an advantage over you. That being said, you have little to no incentive to turn PM on at that point.

Reward players who have already completed the missions and are playing them again with other players with more warscore This will create incentives, so that perhaps more players will be helped with missions again

Fair point actually, that does sound good.

As for the pirate mode, my understanding is that missions and unit kills do not need pirate mode on to generate warscore.

My understanding is that any activity other than CQ/Reactor will need PM on to generate WS.

The problem remains the same: the lack of players.

 

[Dreadnouhgt]

Nobody can know this game still exists without telling them.