The different ships available in your shipyard.
As I also stated in my previous blog post, Expeditions in OGame have a lot of potential, but fall short on a number of fronts. Gameforge, the developers of OGame, really didn't take into consideration the pros and cons for a player that was wondering if they should partake in an Expedition mission. Expeditions require researching the appropriate Astrophysics technology, which really isn't such a negative anymore because of how Astrophysics has recently changed so as to allow players to colonize more planets. They also require a fleet of ships that the player wouldn't be using elsewhere, and the fuel to keep them on their often lengthy journey. Expeditions grant players an incentive in partaking them in the the form of finding resources, collecting Dark Matter, acquiring new ships, and even obtaining a contract with a Merchant.
However, the real problem falls down to that the very basics; the risks outweigh the benefits. Players risk frequent attacks from pirates and advanced aliens, having their fleets take longer (and even shorter) amount of time to return from their Expedition mission which puts their fleet at risk indirectly because it changes their fleet times and allow other players to exploit it and even hunt down these fleets while the player is offline, and even a chance of completely losing your entire fleet to a black hole or other mishap. If the rewards for partaking in expeditions were high, it might be worth the risk, including the chance of losing your entire fleet, but as it is now, it really isn't worth it. The amount of resources you typically obtain barely pays off the fuel cost if you take into consideration all of the missions that your fleet obtains nothing of value. Acquiring small amounts of new ships doesn't even come close to replacing entire fleets lost by mishaps, or even the damages done by fighting off pirates and ever dangerous aliens. The only real reason most players partake in Expedition missions is for the chance of obtaining Dark Matter and contracts with Merchants, which could only otherwise be obtained from purchasing with real money, and even then, you obtain such small amounts that it really isn't worth it unless you really can't afford to buy it.
So how can Expeditions become more interesting and useful? As I said before, Expeditions have a lot of potential and could really become a very fun part of the game with a few changes. Here are a couple of suggestions I have to improve the Expeditions game mechanic in OGame:
Recycling Expedition Debris
Recyclers that are sent with an Expedition fleet to collect the debris from ships that were destroyed in battles with pirates and aliens. As of right now, obtaining a pirate or alien encounter can only be summed up as one thing: bad. Even if the player is luckily enough to not lose any ships from the battle, the player still losses out on time and fuel. If they did take losses, that must also be factored in the price paid in partaking that Expedition mission and obtaining that event. Allowing players to obtain profitable parts from the debris of destroyed ships may make Expedition missions a little more worthwhile for some players, and at the very least, cuts down on one of the disadvantages that keep players from partaking in them.
Expedition Related Tasks
Unlike most other online browser games, OGame completely lacks quests and tasks outside of the tutorial. Expeditions can remedy that. Being tasked with hunting down pirates, exploring certain parts of space, finding a missing merchant fleet, discovering alien planets, etc. with appropriate rewards for finishing those tasks, such as payment in bonus Dark Matter, would give many players a larger incentive in partaking in Expedition missions. Also adding task specific encounters, like hunting down a pirate boss, or helping a planet evacuate from an alien armada would add a lot more story to OGame as well.
Multiple Encounters
This one is a rather simple change. What if a fleet could mine resources from an asteroid belt and also make a faster than normal return trip back? Or what if a fleet could find a "deserted" pirate base and steal the ships docked there, but on the return trip, get attacked by the pirates looking for revenge? Allowing fleets to partake in multiple encounters on a single mission could make things very interesting if done correctly. If done incorrectly, it could become a huge problem, with chains of negative encounters being the norm. Who would want to have their fleet attacked by pirates and then aliens? Also, if multiple encounters were ever implemented, reducing the chance of obtaining a complete fleet loss would be needed to keep it balanced. No player would want to see their fleet find something useful and then get swallowed up by a black hole because they took a wrong turn returning back home.
I'm sure that there are plenty of other interesting and creative changes that can be implemented to make OGame even better, but I'll leave that for you to think about. Hope you enjoyed my chain of blog posts about OGame. My next post with be about a different game, so stay tuned.
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