Hyper, your perspective on balancing might be off by a little bit. I'll try to explain.
In most closed systems, finding balance is a very difficult task involving fine-tuning features. Anything outside of that tends to spiral out of control. A good example, for instance, is an MMO. As soon as someone discovers a flaw, exploit, or glitch that suddenly gives you an advantage, all players will begin using this flaw/exploit/glitch. Keep in mind, most MMOs are meticulously balanced. Terribly balanced ones hardly exist - and why? Because they aren't interesting enough to play, and those who do play and say "It's easy, just go to the witch's house after 5 PM, sleep, repeat until you're god level" scare everyone else off.
In other words, unless systems are in place to prevent a faction from becoming overpowered, a faction will become overpowered.
An alliance system is a good example of a system that prevents a faction from becoming overpowered. If there is an enemy nobody can defeat, different factions can ally to defeat it. Of course, there has to be a system in place to prevent alliances from becoming overpowered as well, in that case, or else you'll end up with A. an alliance that spans everyone in the galaxy and nobody ever fights again, or B. a massive alliance that kills all their enemies and gets rid of any galactic diversity.
In short: everything is unbalanced by nature, and only through well-placed restrictions and/or careful fine-tuning can you achieve balance. (Unless you're some kind of balancing god that manages to balance a game on your first pass, which is practically unheard of)
But you were right, at least, about the pirate snowball death ring being a rare occurrence. It would happen once, and then never again, because nothing would be left.
Post
Thu Sep 14, 2017 2:05 pm
#16
Re: uncontrolled piracy (you should really open these maybe very good questions)
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