Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Suggestion

Delay XP gained from having a defence fleet flying towards a combat.

Description

Defence fleets flying towards combat yield 15 XP per tick within galaxy and 10 XP per tick outside galaxy.

The XP gain can be easily monitored using an external tool (Eg. Sandmans). This diminishes the value of Landing Scan, News Scan and Jump Gate Probe but before all the Fake Defence mission. My information may be outdated but Fake Defence mission doesn't give any XP.

The delay should be 13 ticks because maximum fleet ETA is 14.

At the end of the round all still delayed XP is counted towards the final rankings.

Goal

It will be no longer possible to monitor target galaxy's outgoing defence fleets using external tools.

It becomes harder to tell fake defence from real defence.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Implementation Tips

Create a circular buffer large enough to hold 13 elements of small integer type. In database CHAR(13) type column in the planets table is enough to hold all the information.

On each tick defence XP is gained is placed in the buffer at index. You get the index from current tick modulo 13. Planet gains any XP present in the buffer at the new index: (tick+1) mod 13.

Or in pseudo code:

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Disagree with this. A lot of the skill in this game is making use of all the information you can get in order to make landing safer. I don't really see why we would want to remove another chance for people to demonstrate this.

On the subject of the fake defence, I've never used it, but if it doesn't give XP then it should. You're still using your fleet slot, after all.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

I think you don't see or don't want to reveal the full potential of defence XP.

Let's say it is possible to have a report showing list of all alliances. And with some error margin displaying the following information:

• percentage of their fleets out on defence missions
• percentage of potential value of top half of the alliance on defence missions
• then the same values for galaxies where the members reside

Or to build pseudo galaxy status browser displaying outgoing and returning defence fleets.

All this before any scans launched and before your alliance members copy-pasting galaxy statuses to your alliance database.

How is using such reports a demonstration skill over an alliance without the reports?

I don't see problem using Sandmans since its publicly available to all players. There just should be a link to it in the manual or PA portal or even on game menu.

Right on.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

I am also disagreeing with delaying XP gained from defense.

For starters, we end up with a special case handling on the implementation: The current tick modulo 13 rule does not work for the end of the round (granted, by then your concerns are void anyway, but it still required extra handling). This, however, is the weakest argument against your suggestion, and you can feel free to ignore it.

You did already mention the error margin, which in all fairness is quite a big one - big enough to not make me want to rely upon it (and, to my knowledge, nobody in Ascendancy ever did rely upon).
Things that cause the margin are that - as you already stated - in-gal and out-gal defense missions give different amounts of XP (15 respectively 10). This means it is impossible to judge whether you just launched 3 out-gal or 2 in-gal defense fleets (unless you can have scans - but then again your initial claim was that you wouldn't need scans anymore).
The next mistake in your judgement is that you cannot judge how many fleets of a given galaxy or alliance are used from defense xp. At a best you can know how many fleet slots (small, but important difference) are used. So things like fake defense (not the mission, but fake def fleets) still have to be tracked down via scans.
Same goes for the value of alliance fleets bound on defense missions. Your whole value argument is actually pretty hilarious because XP is only tied to value for calculating score, but does absolutely not tell you anything about the value within a fleet that has been sent upon defense.

Building a browser of fleet interactions from XP gains is also fairly impossible. Mainly because you do not know where a fleet is heading, just that a fleet is heading somewhere.

So, to summarize:

• You can see that a planet has sent defense, but not necessarily whether it is in-gal or out-gal
• Without scans it is impossible to judge how much value is actually flying because the XP gained from def mission eta is not related to the value inside that fleet
• Fleet interactions between planets can not be tracked this way because XP for defense is only handed out to planets which launched a defense fleet, not to planets which are receiving defense

So, all in all, why should defense xp be delayed again?

If maths and analytical thinking ain't skills, what is then to be considered as a skill? Apart from that, as already pointed out, if you manage to rebuild the complete defense behaviour of a galaxy just from the xp gains: hats off.

It should be on the wiki once it appears. I agree on that. Has nothing to do ingame though, as ingame should only contain game-relevant elements.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

There is no need for scans for statistical precision. For seeing that say [Ascendancy] has probably used upto 35% of it total fleets in defence and 25% of it's top planets' fleets. Alliance is struggling, so go hit it planets or galaxies.

True. That is assuming the planet launches the 2 or 3 fleets on the same tick. That goes into the error margin.

Also if planet launched a defence fleet on one tick and recalls and sends another next, you cant tell whether the planet has 1 or 2 fleets busy.

Same applies to XP gained by other means, which can hide the actual launch time or the whole mission.

Looking at galaxy xp gains few ticks back show that no planet started to gain 15 XP when my fleet reached ETA 4 indicating no in-galaxy defence. Looking at the defender of my current target I see a sequece of 0, 0, 0, 10, 10, 10. I got the defender's coords from an JGP rather than monitoring XP gains of the target's alliance mates, though.

They evaded the error margin.

Alliance has max 70*3 fleets, seeing 100 on defence means there is nothing much left.

It does not tell the value of the ships on a fleet. It's always 10 or 15 per fleet slot. But one can assume big planets send big defence fleets taking away larger part of alliances defence resources. Smaller planet contribute less in value and often in activity, too.

It was just an example of how to extract even more meaningful numbers from the information available.

True. The pseudo galaxy browser could be like the following. Lacking planet coords of defence target, ship count, real fleet names and ETAs to target except for in-galaxy defence.

Incoming fleets [Hide]
Target Origin Fleet Race Ships Mission ETA
1:1:1 0:0:0 Beta Cat 0 Return 8
1:1:10 0:0:0 Alpha Xan 0 Return 2
1:1:7 0:0:0 Alpha Zik 0 Return 4

Outgoing fleets [Hide]
Target Origin Fleet Ships Mission ETA*
0:0:0 1:1:1 Alpha 0 Defend -3
0:0:0 1:1:4 Alpha 0 Defend -2
0:0:0 1:1:4 Beta 0 Defend -1
0:0:0 1:1:10 Beta 0 Defend -9
1:1:0 1:1:13 Alpha 0 Defend 4
1:1:0 1:1:13 Beta 0 Defend 3

*) negative ETA means how many ticks back the fleet was launched.

To deny the possibility of aforementioned tools. To make the fighting ground more level for new and old players.

My consern is the disparity in available tools for established alliance members and new players. It's no skill if you push a button on a tool coded by someone else.

I am just awestruck by the amount of development gone into various alliance tools. Really: Hats off. If there is an exploit (or a way to gain advantage), I'd assume it is used already - just not publicly shared.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Ur making a mountain out of a molehill :(

I have never seen anyone consistently add up the amount of def fleets an ally has out from sandmans if someone was to do it I expect it would be because they are already at war and want to time their raid well rather than a matter of choosing which alliance you will hit tonight.

In fairness its only in a war situation that any alliances launch late enough to watch all the def of other alliances going out anyway.

This is only the sort of thing alliance commands are likely to do, and every alliance command knows how to use sandmans even the not so amazing alliances ones so i dont see the disparity issue either.

Really I dont want pa crew time taken up on an issue no-one has really encountered as a problem, there are bigger issues out there.

Edit: to do this adding up surely requires perfect intel too and so the disparity surely comes from the less effective intel of the smaller alliances, not because they cant use the external tools that are freely available

Edit2: the vast majority of ppl send 2 attack fleets that dont show up and one def fleet, how will u ever know if they sent all fleets out without scanning to check attacks, if 2/3 of activity dosent show up it all becomes rather useless.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

For one, if you want to be effective, there is need for precision - and effectivity distinguishes between success and failure.
Apart from that, if you want to be able to know what alliance used fleet slots on def missions, you will need a list of the alliance members. Which in turn is either compiled by news scans (-> there, scans still required, no need to delay xp) or by a spy (-> spy can hand out defense info anyway via irc relay / alliance defense page / etc - again, no need to delay xp for that).

So, you still needed the JGP, which (I feel like repeating myself here) nullifies large parts for your reasoning for delaying defense xp.

It wasn't an example of how to extract more meaningful numbers, you have just shown the road to ruin there. As already mentioned, you first need a list of people in the alliance etc (elaborated on this in the first part of this reply). Then you are following that road to ruin into the land of ****-ups ruled by mother assumption: for a start the relative amount of defense ships is not equally distributed between planets of an alliance/galaxy, neither is the amount of fleet slots dedicated to defense - which in turn means that it is after all impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions apart from 'hey, that alliance has dedicated x percent of its fleet slots into defense'. And even then it is still discounting the recall-relaunch scenario you described. Alas, nothing that makes defense xp damaging in terms of information it gives out, and especially not superior or even equal when compared with the information provided by scans.

We do actually have a fleet movement tracking in the Ascendancy tools (the froglet part, and it is - like munin - publically available) but only compile it from the information provided by scans and gal statuses, simply because everything else is not precise enough. Apart from that it hasn't helped us except for verifying suggested intel information and to see who hit whom most in order to sketch up political scenarios, obviously. Both of these things are aspects of the game a new player does not experience up to the point where he starts interacting with people, where some will certainly be using Sandmans et al.

Of course you can still start gambling upon results from defense xp gains, but that is also not a reason to delay the accounting of xp gained from defense missions (since there is quite a lot of trade-off / risk involved when gambling with that information).

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Come to think of it. Since those tools are essential for any alliance and the source code is tested and available under some reasonable license. Why can't PA host those tools for all alliances?

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

essential? how?

heartless went so far as to say it hardly helps asc.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Oh, I misunderstood the scope of the publicly available tools. I assumed they included all the tools at Ascendancy's disposal:
contact info list
available defence resources database
defence allocator
automatic contacting fleet owners in IRC or via SMS
attack organizer
and whatnot...

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Once again, you're vastly overestimating the automation of tools in the alliance and making incorrect assumptions. All these things are assisted by the tools, but carried out with human input. All of this is available in the tools that are Heartless linked earlier. You're starting to look like you're being deliberatly obtuse.

We - Ascendancy - do not use the fleet tracking part of Froglet very often, because it doesn't really gain us very much information without dedicated input of scans. It draws absolutely nothing from the XP gained from defence, as there are no facts that can be gleaned from this publically available information.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

If the tools are next to worthless, would Ascendancy take up the challenge and play the rest of the round completely without them?

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Our tools help us tremendously. Heartless knows this as well, and I'm not sure why Londo thinks otherwise. What barely helps us however, is the fleet tracking functionality in Froglet. It's a neat function, but the information it gives us is next to useless in a practical "should I land this attack" fashion.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Thank you, Mzyxptlk. This discussion was getting derailed towards Alliance Discussions kind of farce.

So the earlier question stands. Why can't PA host the tools for all alliances? Surely someone has brought it up before.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

The only reason it's been derailed anywhere is you deliberately misinterpreting posts. I'm not sure what your goal is by doing so, your initial point remains hugely flawed and no amount of posturing is going to help the fact that you really need to read and understand Heartless' replies. These tools are not essential, they simply make life easier - you have been told this by 3 different people.

As for your latest question - it's pretty simple. Storage and cost. PA could not charge for these tools under the current licence, and they don't have the infrastructure to offer them for free to every alliance. Once again, they are not neccessary to run an alliance, but are a huge help. Could we run a round in Ascendancy without them? Yes. Would we want to? No.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Nothing is essential, but I wouldn't start an alliance without at least an arbiter and some way for members to claim targets.

Wrong. Munin is licenced under GPL, which does not forbid you to charge for services involving the software it applies to. Fubra couldn't get an exclusive right to Munin, but they could offer hosting packages for alliances that use these tools. And while you're right that the infrastructure does not currently exist, charging for alliance tools would allow them to create it.

[edit]After rechecking the repository, I noticed Froglet does not appear to have a licence associated with it.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Aha, I stand corrected. It could be another useful bolt on then at some stage should that be something the owners are still looking for.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Thank you. Now, that wasn't even difficult.

The last part of your answer troubles me.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Why?

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

If I intepreted it right,

Shev is saying Ascendancy wouldnt want to play the game without access to the tools. If that is a veterans opinion how should Nigel the newbie feel about playing the game using only tools available from PA?

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Ah, I see. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons Munin is FOSS.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

My apologies all my responses to this thread thus far have been within the narrow confines of the initial enquiry about tracking defence xp.... which is what we hardly use... on the general issue of tools yes they are very useful but i have been continually pointing out that pa has now got all the essentials in terms of alliance tools, which is a great leap forward in terms what was available only a few rounds ago.

There is surely something to be said for diversity in some tools areas, it is theoretically a way to attract ppl to your alliance. In particular this might apply to DC tools, as i might be attracted to DC for some1 again if they gave me a very nifty set of tools.

The virtues of equality only go so far; particularly given this is an alliance issue and if ppl are at the point of joining alliances they are active enough to ask about the various freely available external tools out there. Its the ppl who dont join alliances im more worried about :(

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

Nail -> Head. Well said. And, speaking of which, I shall prod Hude so we can put some license onto froglet or something.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

just for the record, fake def gets the same xp as "real" def.

Re: Delay Defence Mission XP
 

They wouldn't have the capacity, either in manhours or servers.