Quote:
Originally Posted by Appocomaster
if stats are changed so it's harder to attack, then no one will attack so much. Then it'll be even more boring
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Its this complete lack of creativity that has put PA right where it is now. This and your post in another thread that "People choose a race based on personal preference, not stats" suggest you really need to spend a round or two immersed in PLAYING instead of doing so much admining, or perhaps you need to find a new project -- you sir sound burned out!
You can change the way attacks go without removing the play imperative of attacking. Just off the top of my head (some will flame these, but if PATeam shoots down all the ideas, PA will continue on course):
1. Change the XP Formula so that solo attacking a large planet can actually be accomplished.
2. Bashing (on fleet value) affects roidcap -- max cap should be for say planets 20% smaller than you and up only - figure some tiered down or prorated down level from there. By giving the defender a chance to pull fleet and kill maxcap that avoids a total bashing. It should also give the attacker a good reason to choose his fleet wisely. Sure, this could be abused, but what can't.
3. Add a "salvage ship" to the game (or have pods cap roids or salvage) -- if attackers can gain salvage they get an incentive to attack a planet with fleet home -- figure salvage cap based on surviving percentage of fleet value in salvage ships (max it at 20%). You could even figure a weighting out so that the attacker somehow only gets a proportion appropriate to their fleet value.
4. Only "home planet" defender should get max salvage -- other defenders get salvage based on their fleet value of salvage ships. This creates an incentive to have salvage ships for attack and def.
5. No more than 3 attack fleets per tick. This could offset some of the folks that cry foul about making it easier to land on large planets.
And how about these wild and crazy game-wide changes to try:
1. Add a "mercenary for hire" element to the game -- perhaps a message board like system where a planet can post a "hit" to settle a score and an individual planet can be hired to settle it. Gives the bashed player a chance to get even. Set it similar to exile pricing, make it cheaper first hire and more expensive as time goes on, and tie it to average value per tick (so that if you get bashed back to the stone age late in the game its not exorbidantly expensive). The merc gets a portion of the hire fee and obviously any roids/salvage (assuming point 3 above is implemented)
2. Try 30 min ticks -- Havoc is a great time because its so much faster -- not so blindingly fast that its hard to play casually (like speedgame) but faster than PA has been until now. Like it or not you are competing against WoW, Call of Duty etc on some level -- all are fast paced!
3. Stop making dumps available and somehow ban IRC bots. Alliances would have a completely even playing field -- no, Munin has never won a round for ASC, however for an alliance thats a small start up of friends to play against that kind of slick coordination just isn't reasonable. Why not force alliances to rely singly on the existing in-game tools that PATeam spent so much time coding?
4. Allow regulated farming. The early rounds were fun for a n00b because they could catch up fast -- most galaxies had a farm, some clusters had entire galaxies worth of farms. Sure, the bots in 1:1 were a kind of condoned farm, but if you were a mid-size planet and got roided to oblivion -- you were probably still too big to farm the bots. If some time is spent actually thinking about it, it can be regulated so that farming works, isn't a total exploit, and multis are kept in check. Within reason, if a player wants to buy a credit for a farm -- wouldn't it behoove the PATeam and zPeti to allow that?
5. Bring back the cluster ETA bonus for attack and def and let ETA bonuses pigy back for cluster and alliance -- FI/CO gets +1 for cluster, +2 for deffing an alliance mate in cluster. This will bring back the cluster play in game without killing alliance play. If you're worried about alliances getting too many planets in same cluster -- have the game shuffle every 90 ticks -- 15 same-alliance planets per cluster, after that they get tossed.
Basically I can see nothing more infuriating to a new player than investing 500 hours playing PA, crashing one nite, then getting roided to 300 again the next nite. We call it emo-quitting, but honestly whats the damn point of continuing when you're trying a game on for size and it becomes evident that the only way to play this game is to be one of the "in-crowd" of seasoned players?