Lets talk about the PVP Scanner (aka match-making) in the new 1.4.0 update for Plundernauts! There have been lots of questions about how this works and there’s a lot to cover so lets get started and here are some screen shots to help! The first screen shot is a very simple example. RIght away youll notice that there are 3 enemies shown in the window however the list is scrollable so you have up to 10 potential battles to choose from. The skull and crossbones graphic gets replaced with the players Game Center icon, and next to it youll see the players multiplayer name and player level. Underneath that player info, youll see an icon for the starship in the players fleet that you can attack along with the MAX gold, Command Rank, and XP that you can earn by defeating that starship. Notice that the amount of gold varies from starship to starship. This is due to a variety of game-balance and player protection factors, as well as how much gold the player has stored on that particular starship. RIght under the gold amount, youll see a single platinum diamond -- thats the Command Rank increase youll earn if you win. In this example, they all display a single point which is hardly much at all, Captain! This is because, in this example, the player already has a Command Rank of 41(check the upper left corner of the screen by the level bar) so hes not really proving much by defeating starships below him. Speaking of below, right below the Command Ranking is the XP. The amount experience points you can earn is driven by a variety of factors as well, but generally speaking, the more challenging the battle will be, the higher this XP will be. If you think you’ve found a good target but want to know a bit more before you attack, you can always tap the ship icon to look at its loot-card. Now we don’t give ALL the details away, but the loot-card will show you level, HP and you’ll be able to see if any of the starships stats are modified (the blue sparks). This is usually a good indicator that the starship has some good equipment. The second screen shot shows the loot-card for Bashtronaut’s level 11 Spear of Polaris and you can see none of his stats are modified. And, you can see that starship’s individual Fleet Rank is only 10 so even though it’s a starship that’s a few levels above, it might be a winnable fight! And of course, if you want to attack that starship, all you gotta do is press the big shiny red “Attack!” button. If you are not happy with any of the targets the PVP Scanner has shown you, then just press the “Rescan” button to get an entirely new set of targets! And Captain, one more thing... Here’s a third screen shot that shows you a few battles that involve two different players! Lastly, one of the big questions that people have is how the PVP Scanner selects starships from enemy player fleets. The short answer is... a lot of code. The exact process is quite involved, but basically the PVP Scanner looks at all the player fleets and makes a variety of selections based on starship, equipment, level, etc. The PVP Scanner doesn’t just try to find “perfect” matches for you, it picks some easy, some well-matched, and some battles that are gonna to be tough -- and then the choice of battle is up to you! We hope this helps answer a few questions, and we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as the 1.4.0 update is approved. Stay tuned, Captain!
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:48:10 +0000