Bring back 2nd and 3rd target classes

[GrandAdm Thrawn]

A lot of people on the forums and when talking on IRC complain about how simple and straightforward attack and defence strategies in PA have become and how this makes PA dull. When talking on IRC to another player we talked about that and what to do, and we remembered about the early PA rounds, where ships had a second and third target class and you sent different classes of ships for attack and defence where you hid ships of certain classes behind other ships - like the almost indestructable frigs (back in round 4 or 5 that must have been). We agreed it would be a good idea to make battle strategies somewhat more complex by bringing back those 2nd (and maybe 3rd) target classes.

Does that sounds useful for you?

[HellKicker]

I personally would love it! Most people seem to hate it though. An idea might be to make most ships have 1 target, then perhaps 2 ships in each race, that targets 2 or 3 classes. It would off course have to be carefully evaluated, as such a thing would easily give big advantage :/

[Makhil]

That would be great. True PA battles are dull, because either the target has no def and it runs, or there is def and the attacker recalls. It has become more a chicken game than a wargame. Make the system so there can't be battles without casualties, no 0 loss attack, no 0 loss def.

[Kileman]

And a target all as 3rd class...
________
Inner ear disorders advice

[Monroe]

Well to do this right we would really need to abandon the entire current targeting system and rebuild the combat engine from scratch. While i agree more interesting targeting would definitely help the game I don't see a total recode fo the combat engine happening any time soon unfortunately.

[XelNaga]

I think the stats would really need a 2nd and 3rd init, too, else the low init ships will become too powerful. An efficiency multiplicator for 2nd or 3rd target damage would do good, too, imho. And last but not least, not everyone should have access to all ships, then, so there still remain holes in one's defense. So there'd have to be a branched tech tree. But all in all, multiple targetting is probably way to go.

[furball]

I disagree. The implementation of 1-ship-targetting was one of the best changes of PAX because it made the game a lot more accessible for new players. Plenty of stats geeks, like myself, mourned the loss for a while - but it's not difficult to make the stats interesting and complex with just 1-ship-targetting. Jester's Round 13 matrix, for example, where every race could attack every other race, was one of the best ways of doing things that I've seen for quite some time.

One of the problems at the moment is the decision to create ships that provide zero-loss defence. This is a bad idea because it means that it's essentially impossible for players to create fleets that can cover almost all of the ships that target their class.

[robban1]

aparently there is to schools in pa stats makeing, one in favor of 0 loss def ships and one against it, the first one is boring little defwhores galore, the other one is more attack oriented ppl

generally i like the second one means if you send def you have to calc the if the losses is worth it to land and if there is not enough def they have to recall etc

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by furball

One of the problems at the moment is the decision to create ships that provide zero-loss defence. This is a bad idea because it means that it's essentially impossible for players to create fleets that can cover almost all of the ships that target their class.

You're balancing on thin ice there. On limited types, zero-loss ships are "good" (in my opinion) because they encourage defences. Like we saw last round, there was really no incentive to defend, and this wasn't because of the XP formulae alone.

[XelNaga]

Originally Posted by furball

I disagree. The implementation of 1-ship-targetting was one of the best changes of PAX because it made the game a lot more accessible for new players. Plenty of stats geeks, like myself, mourned the loss for a while - but it's not difficult to make the stats interesting and complex with just 1-ship-targetting. Jester's Round 13 matrix, for example, where every race could attack every other race, was one of the best ways of doing things that I've seen for quite some time.

One of the problems at the moment is the decision to create ships that provide zero-loss defence. This is a bad idea because it means that it's essentially impossible for players to create fleets that can cover almost all of the ships that target their class.

Well basically, I think it should be possible to just build any ships and fight anything, so new players don't even need to look at the stats. But at the same time it should also be possible to completely annhilate a same-sized fleet through meticulous fleet composition. That's where the real difficulty lies: finding a way to do both. Multi-targetting with different levels of efficiency would come close, but it's still not newb-friendly enough. Maybe real-time strategy games could serve as role-model.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Tietäjä

You're balancing on thin ice there. On limited types, zero-loss ships are "good" (in my opinion) because they encourage defences. Like we saw last round, there was really no incentive to defend, and this wasn't because of the XP formulae alone.

No, zero-loss ships encourge the building of fleets that cover a couple of ship classes really well, but are useless against classes X, Y and Z. This in turn causes a growth in XP whoring because so many fleets have gaping holes in.

Zero-loss ships further mean that some roiding classes can become useless, e.g. Xan FR last round (from what I'm told). You can also look at the Corsair, a FI, targetting CR in Round 13, which made Cath cruisers terrible - Ziks bought so many of them that you were almost always covered by Corsair defence, no matter how many Tarantulas you had.

[GrandAdm Thrawn]

Kileman:

I think a target "all" would make things too easy for big planets

furball:

If the stats stay as they are now zero loss defense ships are not bad, as its far to easy to attack. But if attacking becomes harder to do, like with multi-targeting, 0-loss ships would be a bad thing obv.

And for making ships useless, well against zik-de that I attacked with last round, there are even 2 zero-loss defense ships (thieves, banshees) but in the 3 weeks that I played I never had real defense there. So zik-de attack fleets were far from beeing useless.

[Elevator]

I would start playing PA again if they took back 2nd and 3rd target like it was in the early days of PA.

[isildurx]

IF 2nd\3rd targetting was ever introduced against the number of ships would have to be lowered with 30-40%.

Im personally a big fan of single target ships, i find the current system nicely balanced in the way that its hardto build enough ships to fend of all classes.

[LordBlackheart2000]

But with multiple targetting ships makes the game that little more interesting as well you have to think about what your sending against your opponent, where at the moment its get to your standard roiding fleet and off you send again & again, where is the fun, Not to mention it will keep the field a little even as your probably going to have to take some damage if you want roids, yes there would be still easy roids out there, but there would alot more ships lost while grabbing those all important roids. Add to this a version of my possible solution to scoring here then i think it might improve the game somewhat. Add in a decent player guide for new players. Then when the new round comes around the ship stats wont need changing (as they should offer a variety of ways to build a fleet) which means PATEAM can spend more time adding new features rather than messing around sorting ship stats each round.

I'm currently working on some stats based on current ships while adopting the style from r6 with multiple targetting. Once i have a basic set of stats i can tweak them into a working set, then get them reviewed by the community experts & if they are liked then they could be properly tested, It will probably take me a few weeks to get them up to a basic level before testing by myself to ensure theres no wonder ships or super race.

I've been involved with this game since r1, played in the first ever PA World Cup, not to mention the first set of 4 I-series events. and numerous beta tests during the first 10 rounds.

Cupelix

[isildurx]

The problem with ships with more targetting is that is makes it possible to only build 2-3 ships and still cover your arse against everything. I remember TU back in r7, he had a zillion Corsairs and a myriad of Cutters(?), this made hi virtually immune to every fi\co\fr\de\cr fleet. This is just boring, each ship targetting only one class should STAY.

[Clunge]

One of the main reasons I enjoy PA now over other similar games is the single ship targetting.

Keep it as it is .

[Cannon_Fodder]

Originally Posted by furball

You can also look at the Corsair, a FI, targetting CR in Round 13, which made Cath cruisers terrible - Ziks bought so many of them that you were almost always covered by Corsair defence, no matter how many Tarantulas you had.

lies

[Proxi]

Not lies.




Although I disagree with furball in that single ship targetting was more simplistic for newbies, when I first came into the game at round three, it didn't take that long to puzzle out the targetting system, although the weapon speed and agility variables made it difficult for me to tell which ships were most efficient.

When I came back in round 11, I couldn't figure out why on earth ships would sit there and do nothing while being attacked! (bearing in mind I left when the third target class for some/all ships was all)

[LordBlackheart2000]

While i agree that having an 3rd target of ALL is a very bad idea, i do think PA could benefit from maybe introducing a 2nd target again for a few ships of each race to help fill those gaps in their races defence ships, as they are 2nd targets they would be less effective but still proving useful not to mention the attackers would have to put a bit more thought into their attack fleets based on the victims ships rather than victims race as it was for r20, not sure if the new stats will have helped with this or not

Cupelix

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by isildurx

The problem with ships with more targetting is that is makes it possible to only build 2-3 ships and still cover your arse against everything. I remember TU back in r7, he had a zillion Corsairs and a myriad of Cutters(?), this made hi virtually immune to every fi\co\fr\de\cr fleet. This is just boring, each ship targetting only one class should STAY.

That depends on how you use the values. Taking old weaponspeed / agility in account, you can make the armour and/or agility difference between classes huge. This would make ships designed for taking out FI useless against (far) bigger class ships. That way allowing ships to target all wouldn't help much, but at least do something rather then sitting there waiting to die.

You'd see more losses, changing the game, but making it (imo) more interesting as you won't see one-sided battles anymore (where one side does all the damage without the other side firing back). The game would shift towards efficiency calcing (losing ships to gain/protect roids) instead of the recall/relaunch game we have atm.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by LordBlackheart2000

not to mention the attackers would have to put a bit more thought into their attack fleets based on the victims ships rather than victims race

This depends entirely on the ship stats at the time; eg if the stats were such that a "FI Xan"'s fleet was vastly different to that of a "FR Xan", then attack fleets would have to depend on what sub-type of fleet each individual Xan player was using, or some combination thereof. Eg, if you hvae FI backed up by CO, your fleet could be fundamentally different to that of a FR fleet backed up by DE; eg, your personal and universal def ships are DE which may target CR and BA, whereas a CO def fleet might target FI and FR, and thus you would be useful in different situations - meaning that you are vulnerable to other attacking combinations.


I reckon if people want 2 targets per ship, then in order to maintain some degree of fluidity in the universe then there will have to be at least 8 classes of ships, maybe 10. Why has there been so little stagnation in this game since PAX? because it is relatively more easy to attack with this system, which rewards activity, encourages risk taking and the like, which i think is a good thing. Whilst it sounds like a major change, it isnt really. i've done quite a few batches of stats with large amounts of classes, its acutally quite interesting.

I like the single targeting system, it provides more strategic strategy than tactical strategy; ie, you need to be far more careful about your fleet composition and target selection, even though the battle itself is "less complex".

Better areas to change with the Combat engine are how EMP and Stealing are handeled; they really need an "EMP Armour" and "Steal Armour" along with their (conventional) "Armour" attributes; that way you have have a high armoured ship that doesnt die much, which is very vulnerable to EMP weapons and is more vulnerable to being stolen than killed, but not as vulnerable to EMP, for example. THAT would bring some good complexity to the battlefield, and with more classes/types of ship, you could have two ships that are good anti FI (for example), one with high armour and low EMP, the other with low armour and high EMP res, and then you would have a trade-off to being better at stopping Cath or (eg, Xan) incoming. Or whatever.

[furball]

Originally Posted by isildurx

The problem with ships with more targetting is that is makes it possible to only build 2-3 ships and still cover your arse against everything. I remember TU back in r7, he had a zillion Corsairs and a myriad of Cutters(?), this made hi virtually immune to every fi\co\fr\de\cr fleet. This is just boring, each ship targetting only one class should STAY.

I think a lot of people haven't taken notice of isildurx's excellent point. If big planets can easily cover themselves with just a few different ships then they are essentially unattackable. That leads to stagnation since there are fewer roids available to the rest of the universe. Bashing inevitably results. You could never have taken down a player like Caj in r20 with these sorts of stats.

Originally Posted by Wandows

That depends on how you use the values. Taking old weaponspeed / agility in account, you can make the armour and/or agility difference between classes huge. This would make ships designed for taking out FI useless against (far) bigger class ships. That way allowing ships to target all wouldn't help much, but at least do something rather then sitting there waiting to die.

So you're now advocating the return of WPSP/agility? God no, half the playerbase didn't even understand it at the time. Ultimate Newbie is correct here in that resistences to EMP/stealing would be much better modifiers than WPSP/agility.

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

Better areas to change with the Combat engine are how EMP and Stealing are handeled; they really need an "EMP Armour" and "Steal Armour" along with their (conventional) "Armour" attributes; that way you have have a high armoured ship that doesnt die much, which is very vulnerable to EMP weapons and is more vulnerable to being stolen than killed, but not as vulnerable to EMP, for example. THAT would bring some good complexity to the battlefield, and with more classes/types of ship, you could have two ships that are good anti FI (for example), one with high armour and low EMP, the other with low armour and high EMP res, and then you would have a trade-off to being better at stopping Cath or (eg, Xan) incoming. Or whatever.

Originally Posted by Wandows

You'd see more losses, changing the game, but making it (imo) more interesting as you won't see one-sided battles anymore (where one side does all the damage without the other side firing back). The game would shift towards efficiency calcing (losing ships to gain/protect roids) instead of the recall/relaunch game we have atm.

Again as my personal hero says:

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I like the single targeting system, it provides more strategic strategy than tactical strategy; ie, you need to be far more careful about your fleet composition and target selection, even though the battle itself is "less complex".

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by furball

So you're now advocating the return of WPSP/agility? God no, half the playerbase didn't even understand it at the time. Ultimate Newbie is correct here in that resistences to EMP/stealing would be much better modifiers than WPSP/agility.

A.. so just because ppl understand the values better, it makes them automatically better to use? Also, i don't see why EMP and Stealing resistance has to be brought in, that is totatally irrelavant to any wpsd/agility system. You might remember the old combat system had EMP / res aswell, and i personally would be interested in the game getting some form of stealing resistance.

Just to compare, fixed value as we have it now, is something you can't do much about. A ship does 40 damage and that is it. If you compare it to old rounds you had weaponspeed versus the targets agility deciding if the gunshot would actually hit the target, then a power of the gun that decided how much damage the ship took from the shot. This means that you have two ways of making ships stronger or weaker when firing or being fired at. You could increase the armour, which doesn't change anything about the number of shots hitting the ship but simply makes it resist them more, or you could increase its agility, making it harder to hit, resulting in the firing ship missing more shots and thus wasting more firepower. This allows for more dynamic combat as ships are all targetted, hit and damaged in different levels, rather than having the fixed armour and damage simply being added.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Wandows

A.. so just because ppl understand the values better, it makes them automatically better to use? Also, i don't see why EMP and Stealing resistance has to be brought in, that is totatally irrelavant to any wpsd/agility system. You might remember the old combat system had EMP / res aswell, and i personally would be interested in the game getting some form of stealing resistance.

Just to compare, fixed value as we have it now, is something you can't do much about. A ship does 40 damage and that is it. If you compare it to old rounds you had weaponspeed versus the targets agility deciding if the gunshot would actually hit the target, then a power of the gun that decided how much damage the ship took from the shot. This means that you have two ways of making ships stronger or weaker when firing or being fired at. You could increase the armour, which doesn't change anything about the number of shots hitting the ship but simply makes it resist them more, or you could increase its agility, making it harder to hit, resulting in the firing ship missing more shots and thus wasting more firepower. This allows for more dynamic combat as ships are all targetted, hit and damaged in different levels, rather than having the fixed armour and damage simply being added.

I'll explain again.

The most basic ship has two values: Armour and Damage. You can then affect how these values are increased/decreased by 'modifiers'. Examples of modifiers are EMP resistance, stealing resistance, WPSP and agility, all of which modify armour.

Now, what I'm saying is that I prefer to change the ship's armour itself (resistance to certain types of attack) than changing how it 'reacts' to other ships attacking (the combination of WPSP/agility). It's much neater and understandable.


I also get the feeling that you think that the more complex things are, the better. This isn't correct: there is a median point where the balance of complexity and comprehensibility is compromised.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Firstly, furbeh, i wub j00.

Originally Posted by furball

So you're now advocating the return of WPSP/agility? God no, half the playerbase didn't even understand it at the time. Ultimate Newbie is correct here in that resistences to EMP/stealing would be much better modifiers than WPSP/agility.

EMP/Steal Armour, and WPSP/Agility are not mutually exclusive. You can introduce one, the other, both or neither to the stats, it doesnt have to be a choice between them.

There is alot to be said about having WPSP/Agility as well; because - as Wandows explained - you have two* different sets of variables, you can alter both to have your desired results. Take, for example, WF firing on Spiders and Interceptors.

Presently, you have a Conventional Ship firing on Conventional armour, so you can assume all the Steal/EMP res stuff away. However, my point is, with the current combat engine you can only play with the Spider's and Interceptor's armour; if you want to Spider to be more resistant, you need to give it more armour - lets say 4 instead of 3. Now, if you also have Pegs firing on both Spiders and Ints, you make it more difficult for Pegs to kill Spiders by the same %age as you did for WF. This might be your intention, but it might not be; to compensate you might need to add more damage to the Peg to match the spider, but then that might throw the balance out of Peg vs Xan FI, for example.

With a WPSP/Agility system as well as armour, you can merely lower the Agility of the Int, which makes them less survivable compared to Spiders, but doesnt alter the whole Peg/Xan dynamic.

So, it gives statbuilders more options in a way.

* Well really, there are three if you have Power and #Guns as well, because if a defending ship's armour is not divisible by power with a full integer, you have "overkill", eg WF (Power 2) firing on Ints (Armour 3) in R4 iirc, as each Int took two shots of WF to kill it, it had an effective armour of 4, even though it was listed as 3. But that's another story.

Originally Posted by Wandows

A.. so just because ppl understand the values better, it makes them automatically better to use?

Yes, usually. But what it definately does do is make it far easier for Statbuilders to actually make stats, and for people to interpret the relative effacy of various ships; presently they can just look at a Cost/Dam column and see which have the most guns per buck, wheras with WPSP the answer would be "well, it depeds" - you would effectively have to make up unit matricies like Tactitus' again just to see how every ship performed against every other ship; and having to do plenty of those in my time you dont actually know how bloody frustrating it is. At least, if you did then you wouldtn be advocating the re-introduction of WPSP and Agility .

In essense; if you think current stats are "bad" and "unbalanced" - just imagine how much worse they'll be if Statbuilders wouldnt be able to tell themselves whether a unit was Over or Under powered without having to do 30 mins of calculations. You would effectively make Statbuilding and Statbuilders part of an elite class of player again, and making it far more difficult for the "normal" player to check their work for obvious errors. I dont think that is a progression (even if i might be one of those few hardcore people, heh) for the game.

This allows for more dynamic combat as ships are all targetted, hit and damaged in different levels, rather than having the fixed armour and damage simply being added.

This might be "better" at a tactical level; eg taking the time to work out exactly how to optimise your attack fleet and so on, but at a stats level overall, it would be hard to describe to players how effective each ship was, as there would be no definative "arm/cost" value. If, otoh, you had T1 and T2, and you said that T2 fired on at 75% of the power of T1 at the same initiave level and so on, you would dodge the worst of both systems; WPSP/Agility's complexity and unpredictability, whilst avoiding simple class dodging with the current system.

Having said that, i still prefer the single class targeting regieme as i described in my above post.

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by furball

I also get the feeling that you think that the more complex things are, the better. This isn't correct: there is a median point where the balance of complexity and comprehensibility is compromised.

This doesn't count for everything, but imo stats wise, yes. If any idiot can understand the stats, how does that help making a interesting game where you can be surprised? I for one think it is nice if it requires at least some effort to truly get the strength and weakness. I can see that fixed values are easier to understand and in that sense better to use, but i find them boring as you basicly have "what you see is what you get" without offering any form of "but if you look a little bit closer/deeper you'll find this and that be an option aswell".

With the efficiency bots and bcalcs i doubt it really matters how complex the stats are, as alot of players simply use a bcalc or bot to determine what ships/fleets should be used. Next to that alot simply build what person X tells them is best to build. As long as they can read that ship X can target ship Y and does Z damage to it they already get a long way. The game can offer a page, much like the statsanalysis page (and actually make it reachable through a link somewhere instead of having it in "secret"), that tells you how effective each ship is at taking out it's target ships, you really don't need the dam/cost or arm/cost ratio for that. If you know your ship is very good at taking out ship X, does it matter how that value is cooked up? no, as long as you know its that good at killing it. I just see more benefit in having more values influencing how much damage done in combar, as it allows for other technologies to influence those values without causing major unbalance.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Wandows

With the efficiency bots and bcalcs i doubt it really matters how complex the stats are, as alot of players simply use a bcalc or bot to determine what ships/fleets should be used. Next to that alot simply build what person X tells them is best to build.

YOu see, having a system like this just empowers those "in the know", those who understand the nuances in the stats that you enjoy discovering and so on. Such information will flow to (top) alliance players and regular forum users and not so much to the "average" or even casual player, as they dont have the time to memorise that the Peg is great anti FI except against Corsairs and against Merchants when there is no Phantom flak. That might have been the case back in R3 and R4 when there were a very limited number of available ships (ie, 20-30), but now there are like 55?, which is what, 3000? different possible combat results, at least some of which will be "exceptions" (if there werent any exceptions, what was the point of WPSP and Agility anyway?) - and all of this for a silly database game that they log into once a day or every two days? Players like this wont have the time or the patience ot look up these values, whilst those "in the know" will have access to this information more regularly.

By having it all "simple" and "out there", i think it would be much easier on this group of players who i imagine form the bulk of the playerbase.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by furball

Now, what I'm saying is that I prefer to change the ship's armour itself (resistance to certain types of attack) than changing how it 'reacts' to other ships attacking (the combination of WPSP/agility). It's much neater and understandable.

I think you're confusing mathematical understanding with intuitive understanding. Yes, it's much easier to do the sums with just armour and damage, but that doesn't make understanding the stats any easier; it just turns everything into a simple game of numbers. And most people don't even really count the numbers themselves, they use battle calcs and IRC bots to do it for them.

An intuitive system would have something like round 3 destroyers. Destroyers were tough, powerful ships capable of doing a lot of damage. They had (if I remember correctly) a small number of very powerful, slow-moving guns. Against slow-moving targets, destroyers were deadly. Against battleships and cruisers, destroyers were the best available ships.

But against fighters, they were literally useless. They could not hit fighters at all; I forget the precise details of the targetting formula, but it involved subtracting weaponspeed from target's agility and in the case of destroyers vs. fighters, the result was 0 or less. To me, this makes a lot of sense. I can imagine intuitively this big, bulky ship with giant gun turrets, blasting heavy missiles towards enemy battleships. I can easily understand why these heavy missiles would be easily dodged by a nimble fighter. The result makes perfect sense. In fact, it makes a lot more sense than the current situation, where we are invited to believe that a ship capable of massacring Harpies (arm 23, total cost 360 res) is utterly incapable of making even the tiniest scratch on Wraiths (arm 10, total cost 210 res).

I also get the feeling that you think that the more complex things are, the better. This isn't correct: there is a median point where the balance of complexity and comprehensibility is compromised.

Or perhaps he simply thinks that the median point is in a different place?

[Facebeard]

Ok, i havent been around here for quite a while, so have no experience of the stats and the way it plays in the last 15ish rounds, but i don't really like the current way based on a few simple ideas.

1) it's unrealistic. Think about modern (well, WW2) naval combat - the commanding officer of a battleship can certainly order his batteries to open up on the fighters coming towards him. The chances of taking any of them down might be small, lets say about 0.01% or less, but that doesn't stop them attempting, and if they do hit, that little fighter is going to be turned into a few million pieces of scrap metal.

2) it's too predictable, which is also somewhat a matter of realism. There is an element of the random in all warfare. Battle plans and military theory are all well and good, but experience, creativity and luck count for as much or more once you are in the field. How does an actual commander learn? He gets advice from his seniors, he plays wargames, he performs field exercises, and most importantly, he actually has to try things out for real. We should face the same obstactles - though not to the same extent.

I remember back in r3 when i started playing, i had no idea what i was doing, but that didn't stop me having fun. I talked to other players about what ships were best value, what was most useful, and combinations that worked, and I experimented a bit for myself, using the stats as a guide; this process is exactly the same as when i play any other strategy or tactical game. The fact that the combat mechanics seemed at least vaguely realistic and reasonable made it easier to work like this. Yes, the stats and combat mechanic were more complicated, but that made the game seem more reasonable. This reasonability has been gradually erroded from the system, starting with the removal of random firing going into r4, the removal of wpsp and agility, and now with only one target class. It might make the maths of the game easier, but it actually makes it harder to get your head around what is happening, and how to approach combat. It also takes a lot of the fun out of experimenting and trying to surprise your opponents with something slightly wacky.

Another anecdote - when races were first introduced, i played Cathaar, because they reduced combat to a simple mathematical puzzle, something that i'm good at. Result: i was much more successful in attacks, but found i enjoyed it less than i did doing the maths, because it was no longer a creative process. So my enjoyment of the game as a whole started to drop off, and after a couple more rounds, i stopped playing. I'm only back here because the next round is free and i want to see what it's like now that i've got a lifestyle that lets me be as active as i want or need to be.

Look at the biggest selling, and most popular strategy pc games - Total war, Civ, Homeworld, C&C, Age of Empires - they all treat combat as a game of numbers, but one with a random element, and there is a definite benefit from creative tactics and force composition, especially when playing against other humans. And, well, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' as the saying goes - the PA team should take a cue from these guys. It looks to me, like the combat has simply become a very complicated game of chess.

My suggestions? welll...
1. Bring back 2nd target class
2. bring back wpsp and agility, and multiple guns
3. bring back randomly targeting if there are no 1st or 2nd targets
4. throw in a very narrow range random modifier to combat results (by that i mean at maximum about 5% randomness)
5. give us more options that just 'attack/defend/fake', as after all, a real fleet would have some kind of objectives and general plan when going into combat. Missions like 'bombardment', 'assault', 'raid', that kinda thing.

I know there's little chance of these things being implemented, but i feel it has to be said, especially with the player base so small now. After all, how many people are there out there who feel that the reward of winning a chess match is really worth the effort and brain power necessary to win it?

[Mzyxptlk]

In my opinion, realism is inferior to intuitivity.

Or, alternatively:

Keep it simple, stupid!

[wakey]

I have never liked the idea of going back to multiple targeting, especially with a free for all on the tertiary target.

The main reason being it makes hitting above your weight harder, makes any kind of XP play less viable and encourages hitting lower players with fleets designed for little more than to decimate the fleet of the person your attacking so that you don't take a value hit.

Yes single targets do reduce some of the potential strategic possibilities but thats a small price to pay for making the game accessible to more people. PA after all is a game that plays very much like Newtons law of Motion. For every action you undertake there's a positive and negative reaction. If you wipe out a players fleet then yes you get the positive factor of taking no/little value the player you attacked has the negative reaction of losing all their ships, value and rank. And trust me when value alone is almost exclusively how your achievements are measured there's only a finite number of times in a round you can keep motivated to rebuild and only a finite number of rounds you can go through this motion.

So for multiple targets to come back the game would need something in place that didn't make it pointless for the lower planets to keep playing after a few weeks.