Quote:
Originally Posted by Colt
More likely they realise you already have 2/3 players that the rest are a support squad for  |
I'm never too sure quite how this actually works in reality compared to how we think it works. There are a couple of different areas that really make it quite interesting. Firstly you have the actual score gain factor. Objectively speaking it's more cost effective to save 500 roids on a 2k roid planet than 100 on a 500 roid one and everyone knows that. But beyond that there are other secondary factors that you only realise when you start to think about it. A seven mil value planet is a lot harder to roid than a three mil roid planet. It's harder to get the fleets together and co-ordinate them to roid the big guy, the big planet is more likely to be in a bigger galaxy etc etc. So even with 2 planets of the same size it makes more sense to defend the higher score one.
As well as this you have the fleet utility factor. Is one of those planets a notorious crasher? Is one a top ten launcher who will use all those resources to launch/recall on enemy planets? Equally though with this one you have the converse as well! Is the notorious crasher more likely to crash if you let him get roided for example. That's part of the trick when you cross over from effectively pure maths to something involving human reactions, it's really hard to judge what the impact of your decisions is likely to be (this is why sociology is such an interesting/bullshit subject).
I think that, regardless of the actual situation, it's perfectly possible to play in a way that looks like def-whoring but is actually a good idea. I'm sure you remember yourself the amount of def that shazna, cardi and hude got in r30 at points. It was ****ing mental and half of everyone I talked to thought we were defwhoring them. I'm sure most people were just going off the idea that hopefully I hadn't gone insane and had a clue what I was doing. But in the end their planets together were basically unattackable. And just as importantly it was demoralising for others to put together what they thought was a huge wave, launch and end up trying to recall 15 fleets.
Now that said it doesn't appear to be the situation here given what people are saying on AD. But there's no reason it can't be the situation if they work on other things like recalling fleets off waves which are over-covered after some recalls, intelligent DCing in terms of allocation of resources and so on and so forth. That said that stuff requires quite a bit of work and I imagine it's even harder now to find people willing to put in the time and effort for this (I only just noticed that this round we didn't break 1k planets, is this the first time this has happened?)
I'd honestly say that the most important thing is the sense of being a proper team on the inside of the alliance. Every since, probably, the demise of exilition all alliances have been fully of players of widely varying quality and dedication. And yes some of these are more important than others. But being part of a team is knowing that passing to messi more often than passing to carlos puyol is a good idea because he's a ****ing demigod.
The key is that people should think that if places were reversed the guy you're helping out so much would do the same for you. Fostering that belief is quite difficult and without some sort of objective measurement, such as a round win, it's basically impossible. People want to feel like their contribution meant something. And consistently seeing some dude get high planet ranks is useless because you don't get any recognition for your efforts there. If your alliance wins the round though it's a lot easier to believe all that work you put in for your planet to end 374th was worth it. Because you were a member of the winning alliance and **** the guy who attacked Hidden Agenda planets and ended 11th but got roided by you and your mates on the last day knocking him out of the top ten when your alliance was 40 mil clear of second place.
Seriously
**** that guy.
Anyways this was a bit of a ramble but the gist of my post is this "if it looks like defwhoring and smells like defwhoring maybe you should grope it a bit more and see if it definitely is just defwhoring". Because there's nothing quite like groping a whore after you've sniffed around her am I rite?