Encourage Landing on Defense
 

One of the things I think is lame about the game is teaming up three to four times the number of ships you need to land on a planet, and then landing on no def. So, I came up with this idea to encourage solos and landing on def.

First, roids recently capped should have a temporary bonus to help you recover from losses on a land. The bonus should be tied to the amount of xp you earned. So, if you land on a planet and earn 200xp, you get a 20% bonus on those roids for 24 ticks (or whatever a good percent and length would need to be to make it worth crashing a few ships). It may also be best if xp no longer counted toward score. Earn your xp bonus through a temporary resource bonus.

Then, salvage may need to be raised. No point in leaving ships there to bash your opponent if you're not going to earn anything from it.

It is occasionally worth crashing a few ships to cap a large amount of roids under the current system. It's just not that often where the calculus works out so that both the defender and the attacker gain by leaving ships in the battle. This is unfortunate, because good battles with interesting reports are one of the more fun parts of the game.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

I'm not adverse to battles being more rewarded somehow. That said I do object to rewarding people for crashing for xp. If you think about it what actually makes those battles interesting is people dying on both sides right? So you need to reward attackers for killing defensive ships. People used to say this rewards bashing but I think the run and hide option mitigates this sufficiently. What I'd do is modify the xp gained in the attack so that if you kill 50% of the defending ships you double your xp, 25% 1.5 times etc (double being the cap).

And allowed xp to be converted back into resources!

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

Ship losses on both sides are indeed what I'm after. I also want to encourage risk taking. So I want to create a system where there is incentive for both sides to accept losses, but some risk of not reaping the rewards. Under the current system, if the defense doesn't win outright, they just run and hide and it's very dull. A kill based xp bonus system that provides resources could create incentive to land and to defend despite losses.

In order to get good battles, it is important that there be an incentive to def yourself, even without help. Although it should always be better to get your allies to def you and force a recall, I want to increase the frequency of battles where both the attacker and defender fight even if there are losses. We should use xp as a better incentive to solo defend at the same time we encourage the solo attack.

That reward of xp is more meaningful if xp is able to be converted into resources. As it is now, xp doesn't really help smaller planets catch up since their value remains crap. Allowing xp to be converted into resources that contribute to value would instantly increase the incentive to defend, and the incentive to land.

One of the things that I like about having xp create a temporary % bonus to your roids is, it retains, but mitigates, the element of risk in taking losses. The attacker can crash some ships for roids and the xp % bonus, and, although you're not guaranteed to regain all the value you lost, it's more likely that you will. If I did the math right, (I probably didn't) losing 100k fleet for 100 roids currently takes about 320 ticks for those roids to pay back the resources - less, depending on government and finance centers. With an xp % bonus, it could be shorter and you would be less averse to landing, so you're likely to take the risk more often, or to land or more losses.

Similarly, if a defender earned the xp bonus, it would create an incentive to take losses. A defender could take losses and earn a % bonus sufficient to recover his own ships and more, provided he doesn't lose more roids before the bonus is finished paying out.

Finally, for this to be fun, the xp bonus needs to be at lease partially based on killing ships, especially for defense since they don't cap roids. The problem is, the current main beneficiaries of xp are cath, and cath doesn't kill much. Ziks don't necessarily kill either, but stealing often already provides its own incentive to stay. So, although using a kill based xp bonus system could make battle more profitable, and therefore more frequent, we need a way to make it work for caths.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

First of all, I want to say I find the thoughts expressed in this thread pretty interesting. There´s nothing better than huge combat reports with lots of dead ships.

I´d like to ask how you´d count suiciding zik ships. I am aware you most likely didn´t think this suggestion through in every detail, so don´t worry if you can´t answer instantly.
I think ziks stealing should pretty much be counted like any other race killing. Not counting stealing into the calculations you suggested would heavily favour other races. Same goes for EMP, although I think taking emped value could be over the top as well.
I´m unsure about how to count suiciding steal ships. If you take them into account when calculating the reward for the other side, it might actually make zik life alot easier when people are encouraged to land on stealers.
Just some quick thoughts I wanted to throw into the discussion.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

That's easy. Just take net value change.

This is much harder, to the point that the only answer I can think of is getting rid of Cathaar (which is something I've been in favour of anyway). Note that this is not the same as getting rid of EMP. EMP is a very important factor in PA and its removal would seriously harm the depth of PA strategy.


However, I dislike the idea in general. It is much more complicated than it needs to be and as a consequence, like all complicated ideas, has about 3 unintended side effects for every intended one.

I'm (as always) in favour of the KISS solution, which I think Heartless came up with: spent resources / 100 = value. This makes value non-removablem which in turn reduces the harm suffered by losing fleet and encourages going to war with an opponent with a larger growth rate. Crashing is still bad for your planet in that it reduces the ability to gain roids.

There is no pressing need to remove XP from this sort of system, though personally I feel XP has failed to achieve the aims set out for it and currently adds nothing positive to the game.

Taking another look at growth rate, this system also opens the door for the classic RTS concepts of rush and economic builds: do you go for a rush strategy that wins you the round early or an economic strategy for a late round win? I'll leave it at that, because I honestly have no idea how one would go about implementing something like that in PA, though variable round lengths would almost certainly have to be adopted.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

My kiss solution would be to calculate roids gain, xp gain and salvage based on total attacking ships value vs total defending ships value.

-The smallest the ratio the more xp for the attacker (no xp if the ratio is too high... even negative xp if it's utter bashing)
-The smallest the ratio the more roids you cap (with a real difference between the 2 extremes)
-The biggest the ratio the more salvage for the defense

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

If there were any hope for my more complicated system it would probably need both of Mz's recommendations. Calculate xp based on enemy value lost, and eliminate the all emp race.
There have been some rounds where cats had a fair number of kill ships. Smarter people than I could make workable stats for that.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

If this was facebook this would be getting a thumbs up.

Even under this system it would still be worth fleetcatching people just to remove their effectiveness in ongoing wars etc.... I really like this idea because of the amount of ppl who quit / emo quit after they lose some ships coz they value wipe and mess up their rank.

Even worse is when your ally have flagshipped a player all round long and then that planet crashes and messes up every1s hard work. Very demoralising just coz sum1 sleeps in, to see their rank drop hard.

REALLY really like this idea.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

wouldnt it be easier to add attackers a salvage too? then u get some money/ships back from the lost ones.

XP is still the BEST feature of PA, since it ENCOURAGES TO BATTLE BIGGER PEOPLE THAN U ARE, CREATING COMPETITION AND REDUCING BASHING. How the gained XP is "unusable" atm can and should be changed tho.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

thats a tough one Abe, giving attackers salvage *might* encourage noob bashing.

I've always felt (i might be wrong) that PA is meant to reflect some form of realism, so the victor (imo) of any battle... should get the spoils of war, including the salvage. Its inconceivable in a realistic world that the loser would gain the most from the leftovers, since the victor would dominate the battlefield and if the salvage was worth the transport / time spent in gathering, then the victor would hold the battlefield till it was ready to move away.

Soooo.. in terms of realism.. then if you were to give the attackers salvage then you would need to introduce a attack (3 ticks) option, similar to the ancient version of planetarion when u could choose to attack 1, 2 or 3 ticks... the longer u chose to attack for would not mean multiple ticks roiding, it would give u amultiple of the salvage available... anything that u left behind would then be distributed between the defending fleets (since ur fleet has left the defenders could then take what was left without aggro)

..

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

Every time somebody mentions realism in Suggestion,
PA-team kills a kitten

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

They noob roid anyway allready, so whats the big deal? It does instead encourage attacking people on your range, as it is not too expensive anymore. Your alliance and your fleet should NOT only suffer from battles made, it should also give u the gains and make battling out not too expensive. Curently the ones fighting most/losing most also loses over the idle ones with a steady growth. Avoiding battle and avoiding battlereports is the way currently nd that should be changed. Also you need to make it attractive enough with bigger roid gain, xp and features like that to prefer attacking someone else than a noob.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

Everytime somebody mentions a kitten, the rest of us kill the last 4 years in our head to try and raise a lol

Unfortunately dude, a game is about attracting players into a fantasy, fair enough there is a suspension of disbelief to accept the reality presented by the games storyline, but once you are in the stroy there has to be a degree of realism to validate the story and keep the audience intrested.

Theres a reason 24 / Lost et all have ended.

Ave i dont neccasrily disagree with you, aye we all noob bash allready. I just bought it up to highlght that if attackers got salvage then it would be entirely profitable to attack a noob / inactive gal since they will send rubbish defence and get the calc completly wrong, under the current system all u get is roids, under your proposed system u get roids + salvage, so you gain more from noob bashing by what you propose

I suggested what i suggested to impose a time penalty. Lets assume u only land for 1 tick, roid and get 5% of salvage, 2 ticks its 15% and 3 ticks its 30%. Since it s anoob gal with noob defence theres prolly not that many ships killed, so to get a decent salavge from attack u would have to commit your fleet to being there for a longer period of time, which in turn is detrimental to your next attack as there is a longer time period until your ships get home.

However. if you attack a bigger target and kill ships, then your salvage collecing from attack would be greater... so it becomes more profitable to attack bigger targets, and land them, and for longer ticks... which is what this whole thread is about right?

(plus by attacking multiple ticks to collect salvage theres an intresting side devlopment in an ally / gal / hidden prod getting prepared for the after ticks, the salvage collecting ticks, to force you to recall so the defenders can collect more salvage)

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

This was a joke, right?

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

I am suggesting u get money back from lost ships, not on what u kill...

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

Making xp a set formula with a set conversion to resources maintains the easy calculable predictability of the attacks. The same goes for salvage for the attacker. These systems basically leave the status quo where attack and def both calc the battle and the side that loses worse hides or pulls.

If xp created a % bonus, like population but temporary, it would add an element of the unknown. Can you keep the roids long enough to pay back your losses? Different people would make different decisions based on their likelihood of incs and tolerance for risk.

Any system that converts xp to value is better than the status quo, but the point of my system was to encourage real battles. Xp was simply a tool to achieve that end.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

Just give me a salvage stealing ship... what steals the salvage from the god damn defenders. If they won the battle I won't land, but if they did some serious under covering what's just marginal I could land and make them pay + steal their salvage.

Or just simply increase attack times 2ticks and defence too, then half the salvage atleast and half the roid cap.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

Maybe its hard to realise for someone like yourself, who has built a pure attackfleet that has little or absolutely no value to your alliance, that people defend eachother and this is just a boundry you need to accept.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

lol Hanzi, weather its attack or defence, we want battlereports, actual battles to take place, not just roid swapping. Only battles atm that take place are when one forgets to check their landings.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

How is that any different from the pre-PAX rounds? Forgetting to check your landings and fleetcatches were the main reason for losing ships. 9/10 attacks I used to land was on a planet ran his fleet to avoid losses.

And the element of bluff back then (with Xan atleast) was also important though.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

dunno what game you played.. but we "crashed" a lot if roids paid themselfs back in a week or two due to round lenght and ended with high ranks and fc:ed a lot as it was possible, these days it isn't due to salvage and too short rounds.

Hanzi, my defence fleet is my bs fleet. It covers any CR incoming thanks to "lovely" salvage rules with another BS fleet or even BS incomings if it's teamed up with mantis defence fleet. FR fleet is best offencive weapon this round, thou don't think I have anymore the biggest etd fr fleet in uni nor can I really use it anyways as my xan team up is apprime and ND has very few xan's.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

if this is actually true you must be getting some hilariously small waves of inc. I would be ashamed to have Etds with fleet like yours in Apprime, though we dont and wont.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

If you got people with 20-40k brokers.. they'r all useless wasted value. Ofc and alliance with low/none cathaars.. has no mantis.. so the etd choices where that investor or broker for anti-bs for etd races wich both are utterly useless after tick500. BS incomings are terran/etd heavy.. and tycoons own in emp flakking.

Why do I even bother lecturing... learn to read the stats and apply it to your race strategies as alliance. The whole round your best anti-bs has been the drake and ghost. ND's best anti-bs = Mantis due to small amount of drakes and ghosts. Learn to play the game, or atleast research something about the others situation before commenting in way what shows you have no clue of the matter.

If you mean the low voyager amount, voyagers are used vs zik's.. we don't have any zik enemies and wasting resources to voyagers when oppositions got phantoms is just waste of time as in the end u have to use 3-5 real voyagers fleets to cover 2 xan incs and if even one the xans crashes your whole defence just went to shit for all the next waves. If someone wants to use their faking slots to hit me, after getting trough my current amp count, they can try.. will just waste their fleet slots and screw the raids whole timetable up. But hey, you guys don't look at the big picture.. damn.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

The exact reason why I choosed to play the multiple "PA copies" instead, where battles actually took place.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

Dunno why LordNieminen tells me "what game I played" as back in those days, most attacks were cancelled if there was adequate defense. And most defenders would run if the calc would result in great losses.

After all, there were enough planets to roid, roids were gained easily but losing your fleet had for more dramatic consequences.

I however don't see how any PA clone could be any different here. Isn't it human nature to avoid risks and losses?

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

It is, But back then u could terran smash trough defences with losses what repaid in a week or 2 especially at round 6. Anyone who didn't do that, either growed slowly or just got picked off by the bigger planets as their fleet value got left behind. Some times you get zero loss lands, sometimes you pay.. in the end it balances out but these days in PA it isn't possible due to short round and the salvage rule what supports crashing your defence in enough high numbers to beat attacker. You can't do "pricy" landings as there isn't any payout, and the dude who's fleet you might get kill.. get's what 40-50% back if he shot before dying at attacker fleet.

We have this round a dude in alliance, who started gathering def vs FC.. he gathered it all right, he send 8mil value's worth of fi's to possible 600k or something xan frigs and god knows how many pegasus. And considered it covered.. even if the calc was good because we killed 1,2mil value when loosing 7mil ourselfs.. thank god the galaxy was awake and filled the spots so it went to even standing after salvage. That is the current retardness of salvage, doesn't matter what u send after defender breaks your strongest anti- defence they can kill you as salvage pays it enough for them on calc even if we all know all that salvage doesn't go to those who lost ships only.

the losses without fi's would have been 200k to defence, 1,2mil to attackers, zero losses just pure salvage run but the current salvage format supports the idiots.

Re: Encourage Landing on Defense
 

The point is, you can afford to make losses to your enemy, here you cannot land for kills, by own cost, as u will be eaten the very next day.

When the attacker gets salvage for example, u can battle it out.