Round 38 Changes
 

There's a variety of changes for Round 38. I thought I'd explain a few of them!

Two of the more major ones are as follows:

Alliance Points System (APS)

For this round, we're going to trial a secondary system as a second way of scoring alliances. This will in no way influence the official ranking, but will be more a reflection of an alliance's comparitive influence. When an alliance does something to gain points, the points are calculated as follows:

Earnt points = base_points*target_alliance_counted_score/your_alliance_counted_score

This means that smaller alliances get a bigger bonus for attacking

Currently, there are 4 ways for an alliance to gain points:

1) Landing an attack
If an alliance lands an attack on another alliance, they get 10 points. If several alliance members land in the same tick on the same planet, they still only get 10 points.

2) Stealing asteroids
Related to 1), if an alliance steals asteroids, then they get 1 point per asteroid.

3) Getting an attacker to recall
If an attacker recalls, any alliances defending against that attack fleet that are allied with the target planet's alliance get 10 points. This means the target planet's alliance and any alliances allied to it. This is counted once per defending alliance.

4) Defending against an attacker
If an attacker lands an attack, all defenders present that are a member of the defending planet's alliance or any of its allies get 30 points. Again, this is only counted once per defending alliance.

The data is stored to make it possible to give alliances a breakdown on how they get their points and this will be available at the end of the round. During the round, it may be displayed in the alliance.

Alliance points will be dumped to the alliance_listing.txt file


Wave Amplifiers and Wave Distorters

Wave amplifiers and wave distorters have been reduced in price from 2000 of each resource to 1300 of each resource and 1200 of each resource respectively. Also, wave distorters now only cost 900 construction units to build.

There is also now information to be gained from having distorters.

If you don't block the scan, then the following applies:

Chance to discover you've been scanned = ( your distorters / (their amplifiers * 10) * 100 ) %

In other words, if you have almost as many distorters as they have amplifiers, you have a 1 in 10 chance of seeing you've been scanned.


If you do block a scan, the following applies:

Chance to discover the type of scan = ( your distorters / (their amplifiers * 3) * 100 ) %

Chance to discover their co-ordinates = ( your distorters / (their amplifiers * 20) * 100 ) %

These are calculated independently. This means that you have at least a 1 in 3 chance of seeing the scan type, and at least a 1 in 20 chance of seeing their co-ordinates.



Other changes include:


-Merged fleets / Missions pages
-Factories more expensive to build
-Alliance limit set to 80
-Constructions now worth 200 value not 1500 value each
-Galaxy status now shows eta reported
-NAPs renamed "Allied" as it better-reflects the relationship between the alliances.
-Login question now not asked every time you login (approximately 1 in 3 times)
-Alliance defence now able to specify classes for each incoming
-Waves page adjusted to remove "search" tab.
-Last active details now shown on alliance members page
-Signup now displays more user-friendly URLs
-Credits cheaper
-#bootcamp created
-new T&C / etc.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Some good changes here. Good to see the new alliance scoring system being trialed first as well. I can see some potential problems with 3) and 4) but I'm unsure precisely how much score they'll actually add.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

I was uncertain about 3 and 4 as well, but I think you have to take into consideration that nicking roids will likely dwarf other score components. Giving points for def is a decent way to keep an alliance that has to ground fleets for 3 days from losing out, even if they manage to def every incoming.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

1 ship def fleets ftw yo!

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

I like the idea of defending with 1 ship giving my alliance some points :banana:

MfG, MEX

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

1 ship def fleets always gave you 300 xp... do you launch many of them?

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Just out of curiosity, is the alliance point system always counting or only when you have declared a proper war on someone?

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

always counting

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Good stuff, well done. I especially appreciate that you're testing the alliance point system before going live with it so to speak, and that it's being tested transparently. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

i think the alliance points system is an awesome idea, but, in its current form, seems massively open to abuse.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Some very nice changes in there.

The alliance point system will definitely be something to watch - hope it turns out for the best, looks like it could make things a little interesting.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Nicely done

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Some solid long term changes. We used to see blocked scans in the early days of planetarion and it's a welcome return.

The real big change we need is an 8 to 10 week round to encourage more risk taking in attacks, more fakes and generally less of this low risk low reward softly softly approach to collecting roids.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Looks ok but i'd prefer if 1 accounted for the planet rank as well, so if you land on the #1 planet you'd get more points than landing on a #370 rank planet. Otherwise you're just saying that noob bashing is on par with hitting the top planets. Alternatively, you could make it account for alliance rank instead, so landing on the #1 alliance nets you alot more points than landing on the #10 alliance.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

It already accounts for that, because the planet itself gets much more (alliance) score for that.

This feature is strictly for alliance vs alliance.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

As if roid cap reduction and experience points would not be enough incentive, right?

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

I'm sure there are already people looking at the best way to exploit the new system... bad news is it seems pretty easy to do.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Just thought id point out that points 3 and 4 in the ally scoring system can be massivly abused by alliances that are working together but are not napped in game. Id hate to see an ally win by abusing it. I think thats what JBG is hinting at

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

edit. although it does in theory give more ponts to allies at war since they are defending/attacking more than those just raiding.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

I only just noticed that part, and can now with certainty say that Light has not read (or understood) the original post. :(


Earnt points = base_points*target_alliance_counted_score/your_alliance_counted_score

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Yes and no. I am currently contemplating whether it is worth cheating on this system or not. Obviously you could play launch-recall games with some alliances you know to gain artificial points that are not really related to warfare but rather for farming the points.

A suggestion would be to only attribute points then if there is an official declaration of war between the alliances (that would also give even more insight into political ties to non-involved parties).

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Forgive my ignorance, maybe I missed something along the way, but when did being able to defend out of tag/alliance come back into play (regarding points 3 & 4 of APS) ?

Also, just eye balling your system here, need some clarity on definition of an "ally attack," would that be an in-game attack with designated waves and players must claim the wave for lands, or would any random solo attack by alliance member on any player (unallied) count towards APS?

While the system takes into account the raw score difference of allies, it does account for ally member size differences. An ally with 80 members is going to have more opportunity and "point events" to generate APS scoring than a 20 member ally.

Taking into consideration also the varying degree of the attacking planet and the target planet as the base points (aka "XP" as currently calculated for a land) then multiplied by the difference of ratio to ally score (defending_ally_score/attacking_ally_score) addtionally multiplied by the difference of ratio in member size (defending_ally_size/attacking_ally_size).

Thus:
(suggested)
Earnt points =
[calculated attack xp gain to player(s)]*[defending_ally_counted_score/attacking_ally_counted_score]*[defending_ally_member_size/attacking_ally_member_size]

Rather than:
(original)
Earnt points = base_points*target_alliance_counted_score/your_alliance_counted_score

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

whats the policy for late sign ups this round? the manual is still showing them with regards to the private galaxy system.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Two at tick 336.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Manual fixed !

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

What exactly have you fixed? I read two random pages today, and both had multiple errors, one of them was the Introduction page...

Other than that, there are still separate pages for fleets and missions, despite those being merged. I mean.. fixed? Really?

In case you were just refering to late sign ups being adjusted to two in it, whoop-di-****ing-hoo.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Maybe you should pm him some suggested changes. Make sure to include your signature.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Hire someone to do it.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

Then what happens if you do a random attack? Your alliance won't get any APS just because your alliance isn't officially at war with the alliance the planet you're attacking belongs to?

As I'd assume that especially early round, most attacks are based on opportunities (e.g. roid fat galaxies) rather then alliance warfare, no?

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

You got it right, you won't get points if you are not at war (and out-of-ally defense fleets won't get def points either unless they are officially allied with your alliance). The reasons for this are that firstly if the alliance relationships are made officially available, everyone gets a change of how the meta-game is currently looking, and secondly alliances may want to start wars very early instead of waiting to sit it out - thus rewarding taking initiative.

Re: Round 38 Changes
 

It'd be a good thing is that contributes to taking initiative earlier yes, and it also helps against fencesitting I'd assume, as that wouldn't gain you anything in this formula (assuming the alliance will not wager war with anyone).

The risk however is that everyone declares war with everyone (but their naps, allies) just for the sake of it. Like, your alliance can declare war on everyone and then just perform random raids (at the start). Kind of like bypassing the APS system, no?