Service Ribbons

Hope you don't mind but put together a basic template with all of the ribbons. My thought was that if there were some sort of patch/achievement page or section on the profile page it would look something like this. When you earn a specific ribbon you would then see it change from black and white to the color scheme of the ribbons you have made.

Here's a bronze oak leaf cluster for those who need it.  I may one day get around to making silver oak leafs and so forth.

Or do we want something more "spacey"?

Use the oak leaf clusters to denote multiple awards.  So, for instance star would have his lizard victory ribbon with two oak leaf clusters to denote his three 1st place finishes.

With the race Icon in the center, you could increase it to 4 stars and place two star slots on either side of the center logo.

Possibly another badge to consider is a survival patch, (completed but not a winner, nor apart of the winning circle.)

Joshua needs to include this into the profile system!

Here's some examples of ribbons

For DM when he inevitably decides to enter another Championship.

 

theDuke's 3 Federation Victories

Dines 4 Lizard Victories

DM's 5 Borg Victories

Vepr's 8 Privateer Victories

Tom

EDIT, deleted the picture as it breaks the lines on the thread. It can still be found here: template.bmp

Normally the stars are delegated as Vepr stated. But, how many games you have played in a race as for campaign service ribbon/medal. The max amount to be earned would be 16 awards. Which would be denoted by the ribbon/medal and 3 silver stars. I myself have completed 11-12 bird games. And I'm in 3 right now. So here by summer of next year at my current rate I would be maxed out. Not to say I'm greedy and want to be recognized for my awesome use of free time. But if the award was for making 1st place. There could be equal stress from people due to a more significant award unable to be presented. This is why I mentioned non-conformity with Bronze value of one, Silver value of five, and Gold value of 10. We could also note a platinum star for 30 awards lifting the maximum viewable award value of 91. Which would take someone practically a decade to accomplish in campaign medals alone. And that's assuming they are moving at my pace of around 10 completed games per year. 

Other things to note is regulations on awards for replacement players. I should not be able to earn an award for joining into a game with less than 20 turns remaining and perhaps having little to no impact on the outcome of the game. Especially if the player ended up first. As then good players could sell better stats by simply selling the seat prior to completion. 

Pins should be standardized for all races. All of them are different cultures. As annoying and time consuming it is to likely produce these ribbons. Each race set should have their own awards look eventually. 

There should also be medals for personal awards. Such as destroying a certain amount of tonnage in a single game. Or the capture of so many tons of vessel by the end (excluding or inflated for priv/crystal). Perhaps even "best in spirit" awards like those voted on for championship matches to give reason to be sociable and somewhat enjoyable to the character you desire to emulate.

There should be a large variety of things to be exemplified. The larger the variety, the more it can actually change the game. By adding a award system for specific combat models people may occasionally abandon certain methods at certain times in order to qualify for certain medals. Which adds to the game as a person adapting their gameplay not for the sake of winning but for the decorations. Giving more satisfaction then just winning.

I do think ribbons would be kind of dry if it was limited to 12 possible ribbons. Yes their value would be very significant. However, with minor ribbons for participation gives more motivation to the junior after they play for a year and have something rather than possibly nothing. Any addition should be met with reasonable goals that can be met with all levels of skill and ability. 

To be honest I have only really won one game. All the rest I get fairly close but not quite. Or dead. Again, I don't want to scream and cry that I am not getting anything. But to limit awards for the cream of the site will likely cause others to get disappointed with their history. 

However to cause an award to be given for extraordinary economical or whatever focus would be difficult. As someone would have to observe every move to look for genius skills in play. That would be a nightmare to dig through games like that without end. But opening them up to participation awards. Time spent as a premium member. Achieving X amounts of tonnage sunk a game. Or planets maintained at the end. Or games survived even.

I  basically stating that this is a difficult and complex game. There are hundreds of minor mistakes and errors that can easily change the entire outcome of things. Miscommunication, ally error, dropping players, failure to save input to client, etc etc. I just see that it is important to have a variety of medals so those that do play and rarely end up winning don't gain a reason to avoid playing or just quit. Just as DM has won the first championship match, he could pick the race he considers himself worst at and still imbue a certain level of awe just because he is in the game to newer players. 

The medals could look different, I would suggest for the profile all the awards be like looking at the chest devices of any military service member. And then having a awards page that goes more in depth for each award. Where you can see a small excerpt about the creteria needed to be awarded as well as the match the player earned the award. The ribbons could there be seperates into medals rather than ribbons. And the medals are truly what set military devices appart. A Navy Cross looks much more aweful than a Good Conduct Medal. And you could even dress it up as some members do for certain dress uniforms where the average ribbons are worn as ribbons. And the higher value ones are worn on the other side of the chest as medals to bring more attention to them. A similar thing could be done on our profiles with medals to the right of our profile picture and ribbons to the left. With the profile picture being centered and to the top. And one could choose to dress down their medals and just show ribbons. For some people it's about the awards for some it's about getting things done.

It would also be kind of neat to have a forum section for awards for players who achieve moderate to higher value awards. As well as nominations for certain players to earn awards for various acts of handiness. Like freelance programmers, tutoring and being generally awesome. 

Jk lol

It would look good within each of the officers or even as a summary of a player profile.