Wanted: a better victory condition

[Jinsai]

Originally Posted by aReclusiveMind

...the issue you describe would be fixed by forcing alliances to be all inclusive. Since you were allied with the Dryad, you should have been automatically allied with the humans and the sector should have ended. I'm struggling to see a downside to making this change right now.

The only problem I see here is that you could potentially "win" a level and get a loot drop by just sitting there and letting the other races wipe each other out.

You'd get a loot drop, but presumably no experience, etc. I can't imagine anyone actually doing this, but perhaps that is the concern.

I'd note this is the same fundamental problem - the player is not the primary agent for victory/end conditions - but presented in a different way.

One possible solution?
There should be a "completion quest", or set of quests.
One can be given by an "Alliance" race
One can be given by the game (find the "exit gate" or "item") and only be available after certain triggers have elapsed (player has completed X quests, 1 race remains/1 alliance remains, etc.).

[meriton]

Originally Posted by aReclusiveMind

Just as the enemy of your ally is your enemy, The ally of your ally should be your ally automatically. Alliances are very strong commitments, and all sides should be forced to honor the decisions made.

I think that would resolve most of the problem quite nicely - the player still has to work to gain sufficient standing with a race in the alliance, but only one race (not every race, and definitely not the junior partner that has a single planet and hardly gives any quests).

It does leave the problem of the game not ending if some minor faction has not to be encountered (but not having seen this in gameplay so far, I am not sure whether that matters).

Long story short: Like aReclusiveMind, I don't see a downside to this change.

[Bluddy]

How's this idea:

Victory conditions:
- More than 90% of the sector should be colonized (otherwise, whoever is strong now could turn out to be weak once more planets are colonized).
- Your combined allies should have a total of more than 70% of the power (ie planets) in the sector. This means that once you have the strongest factions as your friends, the game becomes predictable and there's no reason to sit through the rest.
- To offset the incentive to always befriend the biggest races, the dominant races should be VERY hard to befriend. They simply think they don't need you. Small races are very easy to befriend. So you could try to win by just cozying up to the leading power(s), but that'll mean a lot of faction grind.
- Instead, the rules encourage you to find the little race with potential and support them from when they're relatively small all the way to their conquest of the sector.
- Similar to the concept in DoP, you get a big reward (and possibly a high score?) if you helped a lot of little races do big things along the way and did some impressive questing, and only a small reward if you just befriended the big races and did the easy quests.

[Brian Rubin]

The thing that bugs me most about the sole victory condition in this game is its narrowness. Typically, 4X games -- upon which this is somewhat based, of course -- have multiple victory conditions that one can select before beginning a game, and these can be military, expansionist, scientific, economic, espionage and so on.

Why Drox doesn't offer a similar set of victory conditions, honestly, is beyond me. I mean, sure, we're not playing as an empire but as a mercenary helping those empires, but still, there are usually multiple ways to win any kind of conflict, and only have one very narrow victory condition really limits, in my opinion, enjoyment and replayability.

I mean, I would love to set a scientific victory condition and just help races mostly with research, for example. It would add variety and focus, which are always bonuses.

Anyway, that's my $.02. Still loving the game, but the...narrowing of ways to win the game is really bugging me.

[Nori]

I agree that more victory conditions would be nice. One option that really needs more victory options is the bigger sectors. Even playing on normal sized can take a long long time for a race to finish a war and be the last one standing.

[PixelLord]

Originally Posted by Nori

I agree that more victory conditions would be nice. One option that really needs more victory options is the bigger sectors. Even playing on normal sized can take a long long time for a race to finish a war and be the last one standing.

Just before beta I convinced Shadow to set the default sector size to small (I actually wanted it to be tiny). The default had previously been set as random. Can you imagine being a first time player and getting a huge sector as your first sector? You'd definitely wonder what you had got yourself into.

[Nori]

Originally Posted by PixelLord

Just before beta I convinced Shadow to set the default sector size to small (I actually wanted it to be tiny). The default had previously been set as random. Can you imagine being a first time player and getting a huge sector as your first sector? You'd definitely wonder what you had got yourself into.

Small as default would be best, or even tiny. I believe I did normal for my first one and that is way to big to learn the game on. So yeah I would agree smaller is better for default.