Some further observations
To continue my series of threads I'd like to discuss what its like for the semi active once attacking is going properly.
To do this I need to add some more background and risk give away details about my planet, but what the hell. I'm in a top 20 alliance, as is most of my galaxy, only one member is in a top 10 alliance. Until my galaxy was attacked we were top 10, and normally top 5. We were all active attackers, I myself was a top 10 planet at times. Things were good considering we wern't active. Then we got attacked - 3-4 waves. None of us got any defence form our alliances and very little from each other. This is where the semi-actives loose - they don't get defence. If it wasn't for my experience in the game (running fleet etc.) then I now would have no ships and would have given up playing the game. This I think is a huge problem, multi wave attacks have a real possibility of making new players quit the game just as they were starting to get interested and do well. Given the importance of XP, loosing roids isn't that big an issue right now - but loosing ships is. We need a way to protect thoose ships so that new players don't loose them and quit. (not wanting to suggest, but perhaps allowing ships in base fleet to be immune from combat or something). The other issue here is that its distinctly depressing to see a galaxy status with 3+ waves of incs and no defence. I remember in the olden days an alliance would attack multiple galaxies with a single wave rather than multi-waving a target. In my mind multi-waving is hugely bad for morale. It has just occured to me that the prevalence of multiwaving occured after we moved from 3 tick attacks to single tick attacks - perhaps a return to multi-tick attacks would remove the need for multi-waves? Now enough about the depression that is defence - what about attacks? On many of my attacks I've been annoyed to find other alliances hitting the same targets, while probably less annoying for the new player, its very annoying for me. To solve this I would very much like to see more advanced war/combat features where unless attacking fleets are on the same "side" they will attack each other. The interesting thing here, is that as I've got back into the game more the user interface issues have annoyed me less and I've now switched my annoyance to game mechanics, and the way existing players and alliances interact with them (note I'm also annoyed that my own alliance uses the very tactics I think put new players off). So in simple terms, I think the following needs to be done to grow the game: -fix the interface -fix the mechanics - make it harder for people to be wiped out, more friendly, but without reducing the complexity that current players love. I will reiterate that a lot is right about the game, things like quests, population, government, races, etc. are all interesting and the current practise of tweaking will largly work for theese areas. |
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I enjoy these :)
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Thanks for another one of these posts, they're very interesting reads. You're confirming several things I've suspected for a while now.
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In my opinion, fighting should be a conscious decision, not something that happens automatically. It is reasonable to assume that not sending ships out keeps them safe. Even the name of the home fleet, "base", suggests that the ships are inactive. I have recently suggested in several places that ships at the home planet should no longer automatically participate in battles. This prevents planets from losing ships due to inactivity and hopefully make sure that people don't leave because they keep getting killed. As you said, losing roids isn't such a big deal; losing ships is. Quote:
Let's say I am an average player in xVx. If I get 3 waves of incoming, my alliance will be able to 2 of those, no problem. The attackers will cap 1 wave. On the other hand, if I get 6 waves of incoming, my alliance will still only be able to cover 2 waves, allowing 4 waves of capping. In this particular case, a 100% increase in waves yields a 273% increase in roid cap. Multi tick attacks will not prevent waving, because the basic premise stays the same: more waves equals better cap. Multi tick defence might help a bit, because the same defence fleet can be used to defend two attacking fleets. You'd be forced to send same-class attacks several ticks apart. On the other hand, it'd be easy to send a cr/bs fleet for tick X and a fi/co fleet for tick X+1. The defence for the cr/bs fleet has already launched by the time the fi/co show up, and the defence sent could easily die. I am certain there are several unexpected side effects to this as well. Another way to reduce the number of waves per planet would be by making attacking easier. When people no longer have to worry about defence so much, it will pay off to launch on more targets, simply because the last wave on a target doesn't cap as much as the first wave on another target could. On the other hand, the loss per attack would stay roughly the same, plus the bonds that hold alliances together (defending, not attacking) would be weakened, which might be a very bad thing for the community. Here too, lots of side effects. Quote:
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Re: Some further observations
Mzyxptlk,
thanks for an interesting reply. I agree with you that multi wave attacks are needed to hit the decent alliances. however they absolutely kill the less decent alliances (ironically the less decent alliances also use multi-wave attacks). There are ways the advantages of multi wave attacks could be reduced through game mechanics (I'd still suggest multi-tick attacks might be one way, as fleets are held up for longer so players might not be able to launch fleets every night). However, if the advantages of multi-wave attacks were reduced, would this lead to more stagnation among the top alliances and therefore less interesting rounds for the active players? On the piggying front, perhaps the solution here is to have huge numbers of bot planets of various "skill" levels to reduce the probability of alliances picking the same targets. As an interesting connection to the point on multi-waves - I'm wondering what impact an end to multi-wave attacks would have on piggying. |
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I still like the idea...... |
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How the fudge it would be implemented i have no idea! However on the side of being "noob friendly" i have to say the thought of calcing the defense AND the other attacking ships as well could make things even more complicated when deciding whether to land... |
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Whilst I do think that it should be easier for newer players/more casual players to run their ships, having to make the decision to make your ships participate in defence at base is yet another disadvantage to those who aren't online when they're attacked and means that people who are unable to be on PA for ~10 hours are so much harder to cover than they already are.
As for the "no defence" thing - disregarding alliance defence, it's not really that hard to cover one or two calls with ingal def, especially if most of you were going to run your fleets anyway. All it takes is a little organisation (I have X free, I have Y free) and not a huge amount of activity. But I guess the fact that you're all being raided and look like you're losing roids is going to make morale. Maybe sorting out ingal def should be made easier/being waved should be a little less demoralising? |
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Kal, what is your current view on the stats?
The way I see them they are just confusing for the new players, especially since they change all the time and the increased roider types. |
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It would probably make a galaxies job much easier if they could actually put relevant comments on the galaxy status screen. Ideally I'd like to be able to quickly add links to any scans, links to bcalc results, the ability to add comments to say things like who covered it. All we've got is one damn report button which sends a message to the alliance. At the moment galaxies are forced to either use the forums (which aren't exactly great) or IRC to organise defence. It's not good enough - the game needs decent functionality which allows galaxies to work as a team more easily. |
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I never understood why, when PA went to 1-tick attacks it didn't keep at least a 2-tick defend. Of course it makes defending easier (although really only against multiple attacks), but by its nature defense has always been harder than attacking--even with 6-tick defend. |
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http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=184840 and your answer for declining the suggestion was: "I think being able to hide is a bad thing" :salute: |
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I think this would be better from an interface point of view as it keeps everything about fleet orders in one place. |
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I'll also pull out something on the report defence button here. every night my gal had incs I looked at gal status and saw it was all reported - I then wandered why we had no defence. its becuase while someone had hit the reported button, no one had messaged the alliance defence channels. This is becuase the person who reported them in game couldn't get on irc, but the people who came online a tick later who could get on irc though the def was already reported.... hence alliances new nothing of the attacks. This is another area where the ability to add notes to galstatus would be hugely useful. |
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Multi-tick defense, as already mentioned, is the correct way to approach this problem. |
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From memory, didn't multi-wave attacks cap the same regardless of how long they were there? i.e. 30% if they were there for one tick, 15% a tick if they were there for 2 ticks and 10% a tick if they were there for 3 ticks? (Using random figures).
My memory isn't known for being the greatest though, so I may be wrong. |
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- Defend (the fleet fight as it is now) - Retreat (the fleet doesn't take part in combat) we could add: - Skirmish (only the ships with init advantage fire and can be fired at) - Patrol (the enemy is spotted at eta1 and gives you the same info as a fleet scan) |
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Good to see that we also know that multi-tick defense does not help. I agree after further considerations and stand corrected. |
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I'm not sure about Kal's point about "in the old days alliances only attacked for 1 wave". I think this was mainly because ships could be sent to attack for 3 ticks in a row, rather than just the 1.
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Cut down maximum cap per tick - i.e. 3 tick attack gets you same number of roids as current 1 tick attack. next point is - if you have a free tick attack your fleet may not be back in time for you to prelaunch the next night. This results in the alliances having less fleets available to attack, meaning multi-waving is harder. (note it probabaly wouldn;t be harder for the hardcore alliances who don;t prelaunch - so this only cuts out the lower tier alliances multiwaving). So say this does cut down multi waving, it also cuts down attacking effectiveness and makes defence easier. That probabaly makes the game boring... as attacking is fun. I'm not actually sure there is a good way of preventing people loosing their fleets and keeping attacking fun. |
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10 ticks there 10 ticks back 3 ticks attacking =23 ticks. So you're ok. If you don't prelaunch. If you do prelaunch, you'll be forced to pick a lower ETA fleet - probably Fi/Co for less active planets - which will save you 4 ticks, and allow you to launch at e.g. 2-4 GMT. I don't see why you want to harm the smaller alliances more than the bigger alliances, who will piggy back the earlier LTs and take advantage of less defence in the window before galaxies 'wake up' though :( Trying to change the 1 attack/day possibility for players is futile, and will only severely irritate already overworked DCs/BCs and possibly drop alliance activity in those alliances that are already struggling. Quote:
I think the most important points are: a) creating more targets (which I believe can only be done by attracting more semi active players or by making more (better) bot planets) b) allowing the option in the missions page to change your fleet to fight / not fight. It obviously makes any sort of fleet catching harder c) increasing salvage more for smaller players (and probably generally a slight increase after this round's drop). |
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I played rounds 1-5 then returned in round 16. Things weren't THAT hard to pick up once you set your mind to it. If people want to play the game they'll learn.
While i'm not criticising your opinions kal, a lot of them seem to be based on how the game used to be. "lets bring that back, that used to be a good idea" sort of thing. I might be misinterpreting what you're saying though. If i am i apologise. Obviously i'm in F-crew and we see a lot of people come and go each round. Many have played previous rounds and a common question is "what happened to PDS?". I suppose the game seems normal to people who never stopped playing it because of the constant change, and people who have taken many rounds out might be intimidated by the large differences. But revisiting old methods and functions seems like taking a step back. I can see your concern regarding planets getting wiped out through multiple waves though and we reiterate to our recruits the prelaunch function and the "ships are more important than roids" philosophy and i agree this isn't made apparent enough in the build up to end of protection. My apologies for waffling but thought i'd share some experiences I've had with people in the same boat as you. |
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I would agree all of thoose points might well have uses. I'm sure there would be some way to allow fleet catches or alternativly change the game in some other way to make them unnecessary. |
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Also my main concern isn't about what happens once a player has got into an alliance - the key thing here is allowing players to stay interested and survive long enough to actually join an alliance. |
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There are many different reasons why PA seems harder to play. 1) Alliance size (yep this one again) Alliance have problems in 2 ways Attack - in the alliances i have been in, most nights we have 2 target galaxies for an attack, if you have 100 player alliance trying to battle it out over a galaxy you end up with 3-4 waves per gal (remember a number of people use 2 fleets to attack). Now most BC's look for the same thing:- fat roids, thin value. This leads to eventualy alliance piggying. Defence - With more players in an alliance you get a bigger chance of getting def (unless getting P targeted of course). 2) I feel these days that "attacking" results in losing everything or the target fleeing and you landing. Doesnt seem to be many situations of a middle ground. Its hard to even attack people your own size with out huge carnage (unless you find a "class" hole). I did think maybe increase armor across the board, so attacking becomes slighty easier, and might make people land even if the target has defence. Crazy Idea #347 How about redoing the cap formula to include total number of same alliance fleets in target galaxy/planet? |
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Some alliances even go as far as to 3, 4 and in extreme cases 5 wave targets which i disagree with. unfortunately our alliance rules, in tandem with PA limits in effect make it impractical for us to do anything other than multi wave. |
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Your mistake is with not hitting galaxies with any alliance members in them. I can totally understand that you don't hit galaxies with a full buddypack in them, especially since you're not ever actually at war with anyone, but surely you realise that this is harming your alliance in the long run.
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We had the same problem with high numbers last round Juice, when they get spread right out you end up with 2-3 decent target gals you cycle through over and over.
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Not posted for while, not even playing but I think we need to think outside the box to solve this problem. OTT waving will happen no matter what.
What if you could disrupt incoming fleets for example, like alter their landing tick, or send half their fleet home, etc Something that the newbie has access to while not necessarily being part of an alliance. Or what an option that your planet can be put into protection, bit like vacation for 24hrs triggered by 2 waves landing so that would lower waving a bit Dunno im just rambling hah |
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The other thing I think is needed to combat piggying is if capping is signficantly reduced if there are multiple fleets involved in an attack - this will encourage allianccs to look for the slightly less attractive targets as they stand more chance of not being piggyed. |
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That would mean only 2 fully capping waves could land per night |
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Seriously Kal, how is this going to improve anything? So alliance X and Y go to war, but the most they can hope for is 2 waves off any of the planets they target? Please tell me you are joking... |
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its a random idea that occured as a result of kargool's idea. as it happens your issue with the idea could easily be solved through the ideas currently being discussed on the suggestions forum about alliance wars. it would be quite reaosnable in my view to have restrictions in the game to protect less active players that are removed when alliances are formally at war. But i'll reiterate I didn't say it was a good idea, it was a "howabout this" random thought. |
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That's the issue I have with many of the suggestions on PS. There's a lot of interesting ideas, but few people think through what their idea does to the game. In PA, lots of examples can be found, especially the rebounding issues: new feature is introduced (xp, cov ops, wintraides, salvage), new feature is deemed overpowered, new feature is nerfed to useless.
So Game is right (nor is his post overly aggressive). Combatting excessive bashing is commendable, but tif you cannot think through what your ideas will do to the game as a whole instead of just the small problem you're trying to solve then you should not be surprised nor offended if it gets shot down by someone who can. Game design is not a democratic process. Here's an example of one of those bad ideas that sound pretty good if you don't think about it. Another way to handle newbie bashing is to recall fleets once the targets drops below the attacker's bash. This sounds pretty good, it'd stop big planets attacking near their bash, because it's very well possible they lose some score or value, causing the fleet to recall. But what about teamups between a small planet and a bigger planet? If the target drops below the bash of the bigger planet (say, at eta1), the smaller planet would land alone. If there's defence present, the smaller planet would lose the fleet through no fault of his own. |
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I think that a suggestion like a autorecall if a planet goes below 200 roids (plus higher than 100) should be a good option. However, I'm not claiming to be an expert on the matter, and since this is a debate about suggestions, i claim the right to point out my view. |
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I fully agree that ideas need to be thought through as well as their knock on ideas to other aspects of the game. What we need is a cohesive set of ideas that when combined form a decent whole that address all the issues with the game (though this would probabaly require an end to the current piece-meal development).
I don't object to people pointing out flaws in ideas, as thats exactly what should be happening on the forums and precisly why ideas should be posted. Say for example I was still a member of PATeam - wouldn't it have been a good idea that the bad idea was posted for comment, rather than just being implemented? I think everyone would agree it would be. Now maybe I mininterpreted the game's post, but I got the genuine impression he thought that if I was in PATeam the idea would simply have been implemented without any thought - I'd like to think that I'm not quite that stupid... Ideas should be freely discussed and debated - what is then needed is for someone to pick them all up and join together then ones that will work together. |
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Game, I agree with the points you;ve made in reply to myself and kargool.
However, in the absense of vision, wouldn't PATeam sugesting their own ideas to the community be useful? At least then the community have the opportunity to point out the flaws in them. Its certainly better than PATeam wasteing time coding something only to have to remove it in the beta. What I want, like you, is for PATeam/Pete to have a vision for the game. However, in addition to that I want the community to be able to contribute ideas, for them to be discussed, etc. There is no reason why we can't have "democratic" discussions - as long as someone is there to make a final decision on whether the ideas fit with the vision for the game and the rest of the game mechanics. From playing the game again, its remarkable how much my understanding of what its like to in a struggling galaxy/alliance has improved. I didn't set out with my threads to suggest solutions, merely to point out my experiences of the game so that some of theese issues get some attention. Sometimes during the debate in theese threads ideas come up, some of theese will be good and some bad, all I ask is that they are debated in a constructive and friendly way. |
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Do the PATeam play enough of this game to be able to have any say in the game's design and future? Feedback from the round is not the same as playing a round. having a planet in 1:1 is hardly the best experience of a round.
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