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Pardus (browser game)
Encyclopedia
Pardus is an award-winning graphical browser-based MMORPG
written in PHP
and C/C++
and set in a futuristic universe
where players interact and compete in space
. It is a persistent-universe, open-ended game with a player-driven economy
. Players travel through hundreds of "sectors" or solar systems while trading
, building
or battling with Non-Player Characters (NPCs) and other players. There are dozens of spacecraft
models in Pardus, which can be customized with different weapons, armor and other equipment. Pardus characters do not have a defined 'class'.
Partially inspired by classic computer games
such as Elite and Master of Orion II
, Pardus was developed and published by the Austria
n company Bayer&Szell OG. Alpha testing of the game began September 2004 and the core feature set was finished by October 1, 2006
.
Pardus is set in a technologically advanced but war-torn universe. Players begin the game with a low-end spacecraft and attempt to increase their wealth, rank, skills and otherwise advance their characters. Players may optionally join factions
and syndicate
s for rank-based rewards, or they may choose to build their wealth by developing trade routes or constructing buildings or starbases that produce commodities. Some players make a living smuggling
contraband goods or pirating and raiding other players and their buildings, or bounty hunting. In the Pardus Cluster a NPC faction, the Lucidi, rule supreme.
There are three different servers, or "universes", on which a player may create characters, one character per universe. One of these servers is reserved for Premium subscribers. Using more than one account by a player is forbidden, a rule which is strictly enforced.
Each faction controls clusters and a smaller Pardus contingent cluster. There are also many neutral (officially) clusters throughout the universe, many of which serve as buffer areas between faction clusters. However, a starbase build by a player belonging to a faction exerts a certain amount of influence both economically and militarily.
Players interactions are key to factions and is promoted by the game. Often on developed servers, cooperation within factions are highly organized. Decisions are often made by players of the biggest and/or most influential faction-affiliated alliances. The level of cooperation is such that on certain servers, the borders of some faction-controlled territory are sealed by military outposts (controlled by players) that prevent foes or unwanted guests from passing. This requires coordination of dozens of players, as the number of buildings each player can build is severely limited.
All players must complete a tutorial
before beginning the game. Though the main game is in English
and using languages other than English for communication in open channels is forbidden, the tutorial is also available in Dutch
, German
, Hungarian
, Indonesian
, Italian
, Polish
, Portuguese
, Finnish
, and Spanish
. For the duration of the tutorial and a period of time after, a player has access to "Help Chat", in which experienced players make themselves available to assist newer players with problems or questions about the game.
A critically important aspect of the game is the Action Point system. Any interaction with the game world requires Action Points (or APs) to be spent, which regenerate at a rate of 24 APs every 6 minutes throughout the day, up to a maximum of 5000 stored APs. This prevents players who stay in the game all day from gaining a significant advantage over people who only log in once or twice a day for a short time. There are certain skills and in-game items which grant a limited number of extra APs, and players with a Premium Account may accumulate up to 5500 APS instead of 5000.
There are several ways to directly improve a player's character in the game. One of the most common ways is trading, which involves buying commodities and transporting them to another area where they can be sold for a higher price, often benefiting the area as a whole. Fighting NPCs improves a character's various combat attributes. Collecting raw resources improves collecting skills, and practicing hacking or cloaking enables a player to better perform those actions in the future.
The economy in Pardus is dynamic and relies mostly on player actions. Several times each day all planets, at fixed intervals, starbases and buildings in the game consume and produce a variety of commodities, provided certain upkeep needs are met. There are dozens of types of commodities available, ranging from low-tech raw materials such as Food, Water, Energy, Ore, and Metal, to high-end finished products such as Droids and Hand Weapons. Several illegal commodities, such as slaves, drugs, and body parts also exist.
Buildings are classified as "Low-level" (including asteroid mines and fuel collectors), "Mid-level" (including Electronics Facilities and Breweries), and "High-level" (including Hand Weapons Factories and Military Outposts.) Each have their own initial start-up costs and their unique necessary upkeep, some high-end buildings require a certain amount of experience or APs played before construction is allowed.
A few buildings, such as Drug Stations and Dark Domes, though lucrative, will cause the player reputation loss if built, with additional reputation losses if they are built in faction space. This reputation loss is often used by pirates to easily gain acceptance into The Shadow Syndicate and enjoy relevant benefits.
Buildings can be raided by other players, which prompts owners to install building defenses to secure their business. These defense modules need to be destroyed before commodities can be stolen and allows the owner and his allies time to react to the attack. Undefended buildings can be damaged and eventually destroyed with subsequent attacks. Damaged buildings can be repaired by their owner.
Starbases are important trade centers in areas where no planets are to be found and are a very important part of the economy in Pardus. Player-owned starbases, though generally more difficult to maintain than other buildings, can make their owners a considerable amount of money if well placed. Some successful bases tend to have private web pages with extended customer services, marketing, RP elements and/or investor programs.
An important function of starbases is providing players with a place to repair their vessels, provided the starbase owner builds a repair facility onto it. Starbases may also produce spacecrafts and equipment, which the owner may then sell to other players. This is a very popular function, as player-built ships and equipment is usually considerably cheaper then their regular price offered by NPC starbases and planets. Unlike other buildings, starbases may be transferred to another player or conquered by force. Starbases also play a key role in faction wars, especially in the Pardus Contigents.
Planets and starbases hold randomly generated missions that replenish as soon as they are completed by players. The bulletin boards offering these missions refresh two times a day. There is a variety of missions; for instance killing non-player character
s (NPCs), delivering packages, or transporting VIP
s. When a mission is completed successfully, the player receives a reward of credits (the in-game money); if the mission was a faction mission, the player will receive an amount of rank increase, or if the mission was a neutral (non-faction) mission, the player will receive an amount of "competency" instead. As competency level or faction rank increases, more difficult and rewarding missions will become available. There are also special faction missions available only during times of war. EPS members have 67% more neutral missions available to them than other pilots.
Smuggling is a risky but often very profitable venture. Illegal commodities may be sold to other players or to the black market available on any planet or a starbase with a population over 30,000. There is a chance a player will be detected by the authorities when selling to a black market, however, which might result in a faction bounty. EPS pilots may have equipment that can detect illegal contraband on ships and will turn you over to authorities.
(PvP) combat is frequent in Pardus. Like combat with an NPC, PvP combat is turn-based. Players may also set ambushes that are triggered by other players, even if the ambusher is offline. PvP combat is particularly intense during faction wars. Alliances can also declare a Private Conflict on each other. PvP killing not associated with faction war, private conflict, or bounty hunting is always considered piracy.
Alliances come in two versions, Veiled and Disclosed.
As of October 1, 2006, Pardus implemented premium subscriptions which give players access to new features and areas unavailable to non-paying players, plus a premium-only server. Available Premium periods are 30, 90, 180, and 360 days. A 10-day Premium trial is also offered to players free of charge once their character uses their 1 millionth AP.
Premium subscriptions give access to three Pardus contingent clusters, with a total of 20 sectors, each owned by one of the factions, and the unique central Pardus sector. Contingent cluster sectors are providing benefits to players belonging to the owning faction. Unlike regular faction territory their ownership can change based on player activities. Only the central Pardus cluster, offering unique NPC opponents and additional rules, remains neutral at all times.
Players may also get a free Premium subscription with the Pardus "referral program".
Though certainly not unique in collecting electronic user data, Pardus is particularly useful for studying social interactions
and complex network
s due to the unusual depth of the social networking information collected in the game. Because Pardus is player-driven and open-ended, it acts similarly to agent-based models, with the important distinction of the "agents" being real people instead of programmed. By tracking how relationships, positive or negative, evolve and impact the Pardus society on micro and macro scales, researchers have been able to validate a long-standing social psychology
theory known as social balance theory
.
Funding for the research includes the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
and the Austrian Science Fund
.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
written in PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and C/C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
and set in a futuristic universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
where players interact and compete in space
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
. It is a persistent-universe, open-ended game with a player-driven economy
Economy
An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...
. Players travel through hundreds of "sectors" or solar systems while trading
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
, building
Building
In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...
or battling with Non-Player Characters (NPCs) and other players. There are dozens of spacecraft
Spacecraft
A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....
models in Pardus, which can be customized with different weapons, armor and other equipment. Pardus characters do not have a defined 'class'.
Partially inspired by classic computer games
Computer Games
"Computer Games" is a single by New Zealand group, Mi-Sex released in 1979 in Australia and New Zealand and in 1981 throughout Europe. It was the single that launched the band, and was hugely popular, particularly in Australia and New Zealand...
such as Elite and Master of Orion II
Master of Orion II
Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares is a 4X turn-based strategy game set in space, designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Simtex, who developed its predecessor Master of Orion. The PC version of the game was published by Microprose in 1996, while the Apple Macintosh version was...
, Pardus was developed and published by the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n company Bayer&Szell OG. Alpha testing of the game began September 2004 and the core feature set was finished by October 1, 2006
October 2006
October 2006 was a month that began on a Sunday.The month was marked by a nuclear test by North Korea that prompted that passing of Resolution 1718 by the United Nations Security Council....
.
Background
Political faction
A political faction is a grouping of individuals, such as a political party, a trade union, or other group with a political purpose. A faction or political party may include fragmented sub-factions, “parties within a party," which may be referred to as power blocs, or voting blocs. The individuals...
and syndicate
Syndicate
A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies or entities formed to transact some specific business, or to promote a common interest or in the case of criminals, to engage in organized crime...
s for rank-based rewards, or they may choose to build their wealth by developing trade routes or constructing buildings or starbases that produce commodities. Some players make a living smuggling
Smuggling
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...
contraband goods or pirating and raiding other players and their buildings, or bounty hunting. In the Pardus Cluster a NPC faction, the Lucidi, rule supreme.
There are three different servers, or "universes", on which a player may create characters, one character per universe. One of these servers is reserved for Premium subscribers. Using more than one account by a player is forbidden, a rule which is strictly enforced.
Races
Upon completion of the tutorial a player must choose from one of four races: Humans, Rashkir, Ska'ari or Keldon. Each race has a specialization bonus of skills, ship and/or equipment, as well as a starting location appropriate to their species.Factions
Factions are an important part of the game. There are three factions in the Pardus universe: the Empire, the Federation, and the Union. Each faction has a certain set of specializations, which gives member pilots access to unique ships and equipment. The two original factions and their ranks are heavily influenced by the Elite video game.- Empire
- The Empire is one of the two ancestral factions consisting of mostly Ska'ari and Keldon. The first faction to exist, the Empire is wealthy and powerful. The Empire specializes in gun and missile based weapon systems. Its guns are more advanced than other conventional weapon types, and its missiles outshoot and outthink all others in the universe. The Empire controls the southern part of the Pardus universe, as well has six sectors in the Pardus Cluster. The Empire's rank structure has the feel of a feudal monarchy.
- Federation
- The Federation is the other of the two ancestral factions consisting largely of Humans and Rashkir. The second faction to come into existence, the Federation slowly formed as pilots looked to fight the Empire. The Federation specializes in ship construction and ship drives. Most Federation ships and drives have some design advantages over their neutral and other-faction counterparts. The Federation also has a faction specialist, the missile technician, who boosts the intelligence of its captain's missiles. The federation controls the region of space in the north-west part of the Pardus universe, as well as seven sectors in the Pardus Cluster. The Federation's rank structure has the feel of a regimented military system.
- Union
- The Union is the newest faction. During its initial development, many former Empire and Federation pilots left to tap this new territory. The Union was formed by "Mad" Max Sheppard who was a trader - selling arms to both the Federation and the Empire during the Second Great War. The Union's original aim was to extend the fighting between the Federation and the Empire in order to profit by selling arms to both factions. The Union is now well established as an independent faction. The Union specializes in shields, armor and special equipment such as advanced countermeasureCountermeasureA countermeasure is a measure or action taken to counter or offset another one. As a general concept it implies precision, and is any technological or tactical solution or system designed to prevent an undesirable outcome in the process...
s. The Union controls the north-eastern part of the Pardus universe, including seven sectors in the Pardus Cluster. The Union rank structure has the feel of an organized crime family.
Each faction controls clusters and a smaller Pardus contingent cluster. There are also many neutral (officially) clusters throughout the universe, many of which serve as buffer areas between faction clusters. However, a starbase build by a player belonging to a faction exerts a certain amount of influence both economically and militarily.
Players interactions are key to factions and is promoted by the game. Often on developed servers, cooperation within factions are highly organized. Decisions are often made by players of the biggest and/or most influential faction-affiliated alliances. The level of cooperation is such that on certain servers, the borders of some faction-controlled territory are sealed by military outposts (controlled by players) that prevent foes or unwanted guests from passing. This requires coordination of dozens of players, as the number of buildings each player can build is severely limited.
Syndicates
There are two Syndicates which generally represent opposed ends of the lawful/lawless spectrum. To join either syndicate, you must meet the reputation requirements of the syndicate. Syndicates are generally smaller than factions and do not claim territories. Each syndicate provides to its members access to unique ships and equipment, as well as daily reputation bonuses (positive or negative).- Esteemed Pilots Syndicate (EPS)
- The Esteemed Pilots Syndicate is the syndicate of order and lawfulness, created as a response to the formation of TSS. Members can also be a member of any one faction, though the effect of reputation may kick the member from EPS during a war in which the pilot's faction is involved. EPS membership is public, with list of members accessible on every planet and EPS members' ships clearly marked. Ex-members may not join TSS while piloting an EPS ship.
- The Shadow Syndicate (TSS)
- The Shadow Syndicate is the syndicate of chaos and lawlessness, formed as the Union became an official and more lawful faction. TSS membership is secret, which means there is no definite way of identifying a TSS pilot and there is no list of members. TSS members may not join a faction, and ex-members may not join a faction or EPS while piloting a TSS ship.
Basic gameplay
Pardus is browser-based and requires no downloads to play. From the main interface Players have a view of the local system they are in, plus various screens detailing the buildings in the area, the contents of their ship, the skills of their character and so forth.All players must complete a tutorial
Tutorial
A tutorial is one method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a book or a lecture; a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete a certain task....
before beginning the game. Though the main game is in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and using languages other than English for communication in open channels is forbidden, the tutorial is also available in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. For the duration of the tutorial and a period of time after, a player has access to "Help Chat", in which experienced players make themselves available to assist newer players with problems or questions about the game.
A critically important aspect of the game is the Action Point system. Any interaction with the game world requires Action Points (or APs) to be spent, which regenerate at a rate of 24 APs every 6 minutes throughout the day, up to a maximum of 5000 stored APs. This prevents players who stay in the game all day from gaining a significant advantage over people who only log in once or twice a day for a short time. There are certain skills and in-game items which grant a limited number of extra APs, and players with a Premium Account may accumulate up to 5500 APS instead of 5000.
There are several ways to directly improve a player's character in the game. One of the most common ways is trading, which involves buying commodities and transporting them to another area where they can be sold for a higher price, often benefiting the area as a whole. Fighting NPCs improves a character's various combat attributes. Collecting raw resources improves collecting skills, and practicing hacking or cloaking enables a player to better perform those actions in the future.
Ships and equipment
There are dozens of ship models available in Pardus, but only one ship is used by a character at any one time. Each ship may be outfitted with various weapons, shields and other equipment. Ships and equipment available to a player depend on the player's faction or syndicate, faction rank, competency level and experience points. Ship and equipment choice depends on what the player intends to use it for, fighting, trading, or a mix of both.Combat
Combat in Pardus is turn-based; the player chooses how many rounds to battle against an opponent. The number of hits and damage per hit each round is based on the combat skills and equipment of the character. Luck also plays an important role in combat. Some NPCs may hold a player for additional rounds of combat after a player tries to retreat. The chance of being held and the number of additional combat rounds depends on the type of NPC.Economy
Extracting raw materials
Raw materials can be harvested in space. Each tile, or "field", has a raw material associated with it; for example, open space contains hydrogen fuel, and asteroid fields contain ore. Each field holds a maximum of 500 units (tons) of its respective material. However, the more a field is harvested, the slower the field regenerates, and the less can be harvested from the field unless it is given sufficient time to regenerate. This often leads to fields that are "strip-mined", meaning raw materials are very scarce or in insufficient quantities to be harvested. Strip-mined fields are one of the most common difficulties encountered by players in the more populated areas of the universe. Also, players who strip-mine may find themselves an enemy of other pilots.Constructing buildings
Players can construct a variety of buildings, in order to produce commodities associated with that building. Buildings produce and consume commodities every six hours, a process known as "ticking". The commodities consumed and produced in a building depend on the type of building. Improving building's Production Level increases the output, but also the efficiency of production. Players may stock their own buildings, or they may leave their buildings open to trade with other players; likewise, they may collect the produced goods themselves or leave those goods for sale for other players to consider purchasing.Buildings are classified as "Low-level" (including asteroid mines and fuel collectors), "Mid-level" (including Electronics Facilities and Breweries), and "High-level" (including Hand Weapons Factories and Military Outposts.) Each have their own initial start-up costs and their unique necessary upkeep, some high-end buildings require a certain amount of experience or APs played before construction is allowed.
A few buildings, such as Drug Stations and Dark Domes, though lucrative, will cause the player reputation loss if built, with additional reputation losses if they are built in faction space. This reputation loss is often used by pirates to easily gain acceptance into The Shadow Syndicate and enjoy relevant benefits.
Buildings can be raided by other players, which prompts owners to install building defenses to secure their business. These defense modules need to be destroyed before commodities can be stolen and allows the owner and his allies time to react to the attack. Undefended buildings can be damaged and eventually destroyed with subsequent attacks. Damaged buildings can be repaired by their owner.
Starbases
An important function of starbases is providing players with a place to repair their vessels, provided the starbase owner builds a repair facility onto it. Starbases may also produce spacecrafts and equipment, which the owner may then sell to other players. This is a very popular function, as player-built ships and equipment is usually considerably cheaper then their regular price offered by NPC starbases and planets. Unlike other buildings, starbases may be transferred to another player or conquered by force. Starbases also play a key role in faction wars, especially in the Pardus Contigents.
Trading and missions
The basic method of obtaining wealth in Pardus is trading. Players buy goods from a planet, starbase or building, then travel to another to sell it in a "buy low-sell high" fashion. Many players establish trade routes between certain buildings which they maintain regularly. NPC starbases and planets have dynamic pricing which adjusts the commodity price according to the supply.Planets and starbases hold randomly generated missions that replenish as soon as they are completed by players. The bulletin boards offering these missions refresh two times a day. There is a variety of missions; for instance killing non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s (NPCs), delivering packages, or transporting VIP
VIP
VIP and V.I.P. is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:-In general:* Vacuum insulated panel* Values, Influence, and Peers, an anti-crime campaign in Ontario elementary schools* Variable Information Printing, a form of on-demand printing...
s. When a mission is completed successfully, the player receives a reward of credits (the in-game money); if the mission was a faction mission, the player will receive an amount of rank increase, or if the mission was a neutral (non-faction) mission, the player will receive an amount of "competency" instead. As competency level or faction rank increases, more difficult and rewarding missions will become available. There are also special faction missions available only during times of war. EPS members have 67% more neutral missions available to them than other pilots.
Raiding, piracy, bounty hunting and smuggling
A player does not have to be a legal trader, and can earn money through combat or illegal trade. With the proper equipment, a player may raid another player's spacecraft or building, a sometimes quite profitable exercise. Some players take pirating to an extreme and attempt to destroy anyone they can; these pirates often get bountied. A bounty can be placed on any player or building by the system or by other players. If a player kills a bountied player or destroys a bountied building, they will automatically receive the sum of all bounties that were placed on that particular individual or that building.Smuggling is a risky but often very profitable venture. Illegal commodities may be sold to other players or to the black market available on any planet or a starbase with a population over 30,000. There is a chance a player will be detected by the authorities when selling to a black market, however, which might result in a faction bounty. EPS pilots may have equipment that can detect illegal contraband on ships and will turn you over to authorities.
Player interaction
An important aspect of Pardus is interaction between players. Most players join a faction and one of the many player-made alliances, which range from just a few members to dozens. Chat channels and forums are available for trading, alliance discussions, and other topics. Players often plan economies together in order to produce maximum profits, build Military Outpost "walls", and can attack or ambush targets together that they would not be able to defeat alone.PvP combat
Player versus playerPlayer versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
(PvP) combat is frequent in Pardus. Like combat with an NPC, PvP combat is turn-based. Players may also set ambushes that are triggered by other players, even if the ambusher is offline. PvP combat is particularly intense during faction wars. Alliances can also declare a Private Conflict on each other. PvP killing not associated with faction war, private conflict, or bounty hunting is always considered piracy.
Alliances
There are also player-made alliances in Pardus; many alliances claim a section of space by building a blockade of military outposts (which are able to be equipped with defenses not available to other buildings). The players and their buildings behind the outposts are then safe from all but the most determined attackers.Alliances come in two versions, Veiled and Disclosed.
- Disclosed
- Disclosed alliances cannot accept TSS members. EPS members are only able to join alliances that are disclosed. Disclosed alliances may have a faction alignment, and if so, all members must be of that faction.
- Veiled
- Veiled alliances cannot accept EPS members. TSS members are only able to join alliances that are veiled. Veiled alliances may not have a faction alignment, in the same way that TSS members cannot be a member of a faction.
Premium subscriptions
Premium subscriptions give access to three Pardus contingent clusters, with a total of 20 sectors, each owned by one of the factions, and the unique central Pardus sector. Contingent cluster sectors are providing benefits to players belonging to the owning faction. Unlike regular faction territory their ownership can change based on player activities. Only the central Pardus cluster, offering unique NPC opponents and additional rules, remains neutral at all times.
Players may also get a free Premium subscription with the Pardus "referral program".
Awards
Pardus won the Best Free Online RPG award in the 2005 Online Game Awards held by GameOgre.Social networking research
By collecting anonymous data from users Pardus has been used in social networking research, with particular attention to positive versus negative relationships with other players and how those relationships impact behavior and other interactions.Though certainly not unique in collecting electronic user data, Pardus is particularly useful for studying social interactions
Social relation
In social science, a social relation or social interaction refers to a relationship between two , three or more individuals . Social relations, derived from individual agency, form the basis of the social structure. To this extent social relations are always the basic object of analysis for social...
and complex network
Complex network
In the context of network theory, a complex network is a graph with non-trivial topological features—features that do not occur in simple networks such as lattices or random graphs but often occur in real graphs...
s due to the unusual depth of the social networking information collected in the game. Because Pardus is player-driven and open-ended, it acts similarly to agent-based models, with the important distinction of the "agents" being real people instead of programmed. By tracking how relationships, positive or negative, evolve and impact the Pardus society on micro and macro scales, researchers have been able to validate a long-standing social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
theory known as social balance theory
Social balance theory
Social balance theory is a class of theories within social network theory which attempts to describe how individual desires to reduce affective cognitive dissonance influence in a gtant component among social agents is "sentiment". These sentiments can result in the emergence of two groups...
.
Funding for the research includes the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences , mainly to universities in the United Kingdom...
and the Austrian Science Fund
Austrian Science Fund
The Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung is the most important Austrian funding organization for basic research. The FWF supports research in science, engineering, and the humanities through a large variety of grant programmes, prizes and by funding infrastructure...
.
External links
- Official Pardus website
- Kornecke's player made tools repository
- Multirelational Organization of Large-Scale Social Networks in an Online World, a research article by the United States National Academy of SciencesUnited States National Academy of SciencesThe National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
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