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Sorry Gerak... I think I grabbed the wrong sticky and didn't notice. My apologies...
       
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Thanks Gerraken. If the maso honor roll includes those who have won at maso then add Blue Steel and me. That makes at least 20 total so the numbers playing maso are higher than ever (in my 3 months here) and growing quite rapidly - or as you desribe it, "maso madness"  .
Rick
      
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Gerakken looks at average difficulty over last 3 games so at least 2 Maso and 1 Crippling for example.
    
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Gerraken has been giving weekly updates so all is cool but I was just trying to figure out how many were playing maso. When Ray asked over the last few months, it always seemed less than 10 active maso players. Now there are over 20 and maybe closer to 30?Interesting . . .
Rick
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Ger did his last review on 24 Sep. You have 1 Maso game on 24 Sep and 2 on 25 Sep.
He could very well have missed them all.
You'll be on the next honor roll. 
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| Gerraken has been giving weekly updates so all is cool but I was just trying to figure out how many were playing maso. When Ray asked over the last few months, it always seemed less than 10 active maso players. Now there are over 20 and maybe closer to 30?Interesting . . . |
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According to one of Ger's old review, there were only 8 Maso players 20 days ago.
I think the numbers have tripled now.
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#62
by Veteran Gerakken - 10/6/2003 2:37:15 PM
Here is a current top 50 report.
Top 10 Players
Cakewalk : 0
Easy : 0
Simple : 0
Beginner : 0
Normal : 0
Challenging: 0
Tough : 0
Painful : 0
Crippling : 0
Masochistic: 10
Toughness : 10.00 A perfect ten. Here be the Masoverse.
Top 25 Players
Cakewalk : 0
Easy : 0
Simple : 0
Beginner : 1
Normal : 2
Challenging: 1
Tough : 0
Painful : 1
Crippling : 3
Masochistic:17
Toughness : 9.00 The air is getting a little thin up here.
Top 50 Players
Cakewalk : 0
Easy : 0
Simple : 0
Beginner : 2
Normal : 5
Challenging: 2
Tough : 2
Painful : 2
Crippling : 9
Masochistic:28
Toughness : 8.76
Maso Player Honor Roll:
Aldar
Base Delta Zero
Black_Shade
Cotal
Essex99
established
Jaws the Wayfarer
Jeff Desilva
Jimmy Chung
JordanVmp
Killa Koala
kryofx
latino holiday
Lord Orpon
Lothmorg the Red
Matthew Downie
Mauler28
Maxtipherous
PontiusBruinPilot
Qui-Gon Jinn
Ray the Wanderer
ricbayer
Solitair
Stydracos
TheoLeo
vincible
Wild Wombat
wirtzs
Orphans: 8 of 50.
Gerakken's Editorial Corner: Methinks the Maso Honor Roll has outlived its usefulness in today's Masoverse. It used to be like a badge of honor, a hard-earned war medal. Now it seems more like a mere formality, such as awarding a diploma for graduation. The outlook for the near future is quite evident. Soon, the Maso Honor Roll will be as simple as looking at the first page (or even first two pages) of the top players list.
The "impossible level" and any mystique around it is no more. Maso advice can be readily found and unless the AI can be somehow beefed up, the only way to make things tougher would seem to be to pad the maso level aliens with even more bonuses.
From my observations of the various posts and player records, it looks like the best analogy to use is that of a magic show. We all know that the illusionists use a variety of special effects and optical tricks to give the appearance of doing the impossible, but, in order to be entertained, we need to supress reason and flow with the show, having a belief in something other than what we "know" is possible and impossible. It looks like the magic show that is maso level has an audience full of scientists dissecting every inch of the act, trying to rationally explain every little detail. None of the magic is left, for no one is there to appreciate the show for its entertainment value.
 
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Wow. Thanks Gerraken. I was wondering when the top 10 would be the masoverse and it looks like it took about 3 weeks since the release of 1.1. It is not only the scoring that drives the pursuit of maso but also a natural progression for players who have played for months and some concern that if we play lower levels we will now trip a "money-flag" and get anomalous scores. I find maso very fun on 1.1 - much more fun than sub-maso levels - so there is still some magic there for many of us. As long as it is fun I will keep playing. Thanks for your report.
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However, it's still worth noting that regular games at lower levels can keep you high up the charts at the moment - provided you submit them regularly, say three or four times a week or more. A huge normal or challenging can yield the same sort of scores as a small maso game!
Alex
  
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#66
by Citizen Timlagor - 10/9/2003 7:12:57 PM
Did you look at the size of the Universe at all? Distributino of planets?
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Well,
It's not complete and there are still a ton of things I want to add to it, but here is a metaverse stat thingy I wrote. Much credit to the MWC's own Kasualkid for writing the perl scripts to suck data from the metaverse and lotsa lotsa credit to GreenReeper and Kjartan on irc.stardock.com for helping me with sooper noob PHP/mYSQL questions 
 Link
Like I said, lots to do yet, but still pretty cool, I think you stat geeks will appreciate it
idle
   
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#69
by Citizen Timlagor - 10/11/2003 4:01:56 PM
Any chance of somehing correlating size with difficulty? Ie. are the maso games on smaller maps?
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#70
by Veteran Gerakken - 10/12/2003 4:09:19 AM
| Did you look at the size of the Universe at all? Distributino of planets? |
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Well, bluntly put, I find that of little relavence. The reason is that a map can be manipulated according to certain play styles. For example, if one wishes to assure dominance over the AI's by having more systems, then going tiny/rare and getting lucky with cntl-n will leave the player with a system advantage that will basically guarantee a victory from the early game barring any bad disasters. The enemies are at the mercy of a small alpha strike later on. On the other hand, going abundant on larger maps and then taking a speed advantage can lead to a mass culture flip scenario later on (the alpha strike option is still available; it would take a lot more ships, but this is nothing that cannot be fixed by turning off cultural victory and letting the flips happen for those cheesers out there). The point being is that map size and system density are more like frosting on the cake to determine the critical mass of systems to control. The tiny/rare player may end up controlling only two systems most of the game, but his AI opponents are also likely only controlling one or two. Easy pickings. A gigantic abundant player can end up controlling several dozen systems at the end of the colonization phase, facing opponents who may also have a lot of systems themselves. It just takes longer to wear the aliens down.
My take on the situation comes down to this: difficulty and map size do not have to have a definite correlation. Not all maso players keep cranking tiny or small maps in order to keep the critical system mass small, and not all lower difficulty players go for large maps to boost scores. While some people may choose smaller map sizes for better control (as in system domination), it is my belief that players are more likely to choose map size to determine how long of a game is desired.
Domination of the Meta is a never ending battle between how fast a game can be played vs. how much score in the end, tempered by the 30 day block system adjustment. I have seen players try to dominate both ways, with score bombs of slow gigantic games on tougher difficulty levels and a rapid flurry of smaller maps on easier levels, and everything in between. Because of this lack of obvious pattern, I regard system density as irrelevant and map size is more of a score vs. time factor. There does not seem to be a situtation where players all say that maso/tiny/rare is the way to go, for example.
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quote from Gerakken
| Maso advice can be readily found and unless the AI can be somehow beefed up, the only way to make things tougher would seem to be to pad the maso level aliens with even more bonuses. |
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Hope not, there are many exploits that can be address in the game as a whole hopefully befor SD start just tacking on more bonuses to social production, millitary production, influence, diplomcy and research. That does nothing for the dynamic AI reputation of this stratergy game . . .
I made a resonable attempt at listing at least some of these somewhere or rather . . . 80% I'd say could be fixed and would make Maso a whole lot harder and imho more fun too . . .
[Message Edited]
  
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