Re: Round 51 scan change.
Yes. This is a terrible idea. Don't do it.
The setup Having disted before, back in round 24 I figured I knew roughly what I was signing up for: I'd be unscannable and get no incs. I'd have tons of roids, but no FCs, therefore crap income and low value. I'd end bottom half top 100, at best. I'd post on these here forums as I'm doing now and I'd be vindicated at last. People would faint hysterically at the sight of me and beg to win my favour and to kiss my fee... uhm, I appear to have gone a little off-topic. The round started off as you'd expect: I signed up as Ter/Tot, saved most of my startup bonus, built a few reslabs, an amp (dumb), a few factories (2 too many) and some dists. I used most of my startup bonus at tick 26, only saving some CU to fit my cons around my sleeping rhythm. (208 CU per tick gives you a dist every 4.33 ticks. If you want to sleep for 8 hours a night right when a dist is about to finish, that means you will be wasting 3 ticks of construction time. Unacceptable. So you hold onto some of your startup bonus and use it to finish a dist right before you go to bed. I did this religiously and I only missed a single tick in the first 300 ticks or so.) Attacking When protection ended I blind launched 3 De fleets at 3 ters in the same gal. All 3 landed. I capped 269 roids and found myself at #7. Neat. On the down side, I was not yet unscannable, so I got roided 3 ticks later. Bummer. I stuck with it, and landed another 4 attacks the next 3 nights and popped my upgrade bonus at tick 120. Earlier that round, I had scanned most Terrans in the universe and found all the scanners. I was unscannable by all of them, with a grand total of 4 CU to spare. My next dist would tick 121, as would the best scanner's next amp. And it got even better: 15 minutes after popping the bonus, I blocked a bunch of scans: my gal would be getting hit that very night. My timing was a ****ing work of art. It was so beautiful, I almost cried. Alas. I got roided twice, despite heroic efforts by Rock to defend me. It was so tragic, I almost cried. I was out of the top 100 by this point. I landed 3 attacks on the 5th and 6th nights and got roided twice on the 7th night and another 3 times on the 8th night. I was barely top 300 now. Getting scanned This was a pattern that'd repeat itself. For 2 or 3 nights, I'd land way more than I had a right to, but then I'd get roided several times. I'd expected to be unscannable, and I was. But I still got incs. Why? Because in some awesome display of brilliance, long ago, PA Team decided that landing scans should ignore dists. I'd actually argued against that at the time, but my pleas were ignored. This is how landing scans change disting: People who can't scan you won't attack you. But landing scans mean they can always scan you at least somewhat. Just launch and do a landing scan at eta 1. Defense is limited as much by the number of ships as it is by the number of fleets, so in a galraid, you've got pretty good odds of seeing 0 defense fleets. Nails in the coffin: 1. Still getting scanned Add to landing scans the fact that the stats were pretty static this round (this was totally my fault). For many fleets, you don't need to know what kind of ships your target has. Ter can be roided by Ter Bs, Cat Co, Xan Fi, Xan De. Those fleets are unstoppable as Ter, almost regardless of what you build. This is also where the upcoming r51 change will have its impact. Even with ship stats that are more variable than the ones we had this round, if you can be unit scanned then you will still get attacked. Nails in the coffin: 2. (Not) defending So landing scans + static stats = you get incs. What do you need if you get incs? That's right. You need defense. Disting involves spending all your construction time on dists. In order to build a dist every 4.33 ticks, you need Infra 50 before tick 80, and Infra 100 before tick 180. In addition, because you have no FCs and no refineries, and because you spend a quarter of your income on dists (this is not an exaggeration), you need more roids than most people. About 50% more, in fact (also not an exaggeration, I'll get back to it). More roids = more HCT. So in addition to spending all your CU on dists, you spend all your RP on Infra and HCT, leaving nothing to spare for TT. I didn't get Warpgate until tick 237 and Hypergate until tick 394. No TT means you can't defend. (It also means you land less, but that's less important) It doesn't matter if you have an informal Ascendancy/Apprime-like system of defense or a more CT/Rock-like system: if you don't defend, you don't get defended. Invariably, when the list of people who defended least was mailed around, I would feature on it prominently, only outdone by idlers. Nails in the coffin: 3. Getting roided What happens if you don't get defense? You get roided. You get roided a lot. (I actually did get quite a bit of defense, certainly more than I deserved. Despite that, I still got roided quite frequently.) A few paragraphs ago, I said that you need 50% more roids to make disting worth it, but I didn't explain why. Let me do that here. Below, I've listed the values of the planets who were 17th through 23rd on tick-roids, around tick 200, ignoring the value of roids: 511k, 513k, 480k, 307k, 484k, 496k, 476k Spot the distwhore. Go on. I'll give you a hint: IT'S THE ONE WITH THE SHIT FLEET. The average value of the 6 planets who were nearest to mine on tick-roids was 493k. I'd crashed maybe 15k value total, which puts me at 322k fleet value. 35% less than other planets. 1 / 0.65 = 1.53. I would've needed 53% more roids to be able to keep up with them. And that ignores that disters have a disproportional amount of value in their structures. Nails in the coffin: 4. Summary
Suggestions Now, don't get me wrong: I understand the point of landing scans. But right now, they're simultaneously too weak and too strong. They're useless for general play because they show too little information. They're too strong because they destroy distwhoring. Keep in mind that there are only 4 ways of playing this game: XP whoring, disting, cov opping and standard value play. With disting broken, 3 of those are unviable. You might as well give everyone a 50% mining bonus and full scans, and remove constructions altogether. However, I also get that the only real hope PA has of surviving is by making the learning curve less... shall we say, 'pronounced'. The notion of giving people a scan they themselves can do on their target is a good one. I think we should keep landing scans. However, it should not completely wreck one of the few ways this game can be played. My suggestion, therefore, is the following: vary how strongly each scan is blocked by dists. Landing scans are a fairly basic scan. Therefore, it should be easier (but not trivial!) to penetrate dists. Jumpgate probes are a more advanced scan, so dists should be more effective against them. Say I have 100 dists. My suggestion would be that you'd need the following number of amps to scan me: Code:
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Re: Round 51 scan change.
Unit scans ignoring distorters?!? WTF I don't even...
What mz said. |
Re: Round 51 scan change.
¨Fully agree with mz.
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Re: Round 51 scan change.
Just posting to say that this change isn't a closed discussion and that I will return to it at the weekend or maybe Monday. I fully accept your point and I do like the different approach of the above. It's partially why I announced stuff early, to have this discussion now.
I would like to find a compromise to make it possible for newer planets / alliances to be able to play to some extent without a hardcore scanner. |
Re: Round 51 scan change.
I dont like that everyone gets landscan in quest now, I think I mentioned this before but instead of having everyone building one amp getting lnc scan, make it smth like get 5 amps before tick 100 for free landscan. That way the quest gives some options instead of the boring "everyone do that to get this and that" if you want the 1200 rp l scan for free you have to sacrifice some precious cu :)
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Re: Round 51 scan change.
Building more than 1 amp for the landing scan reward would fit well with my suggestion.
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Re: Round 51 scan change.
making unit scans immune to dists seems like a good idea to me. it doesnt stop faking as an option, and it makes scans more accessible for solo/less active alliances.
also, after a couple of hundred ticks, unit scans are no longer used as Advanced makes them obsolete. |
Re: Round 51 scan change.
also, i think full blocking dist whoring has never been a viable option. hardcore scanners will always be so close that you suck.
dist whoring, in my opinion, is to have enough that noone, barring hardcore scanners, can do an incoming scan on you. therefore meaning, faking is fun for you. any more dists than that is pointless. |
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still, the problem still all comes down to 1 thing; not enough players. more players = more roids = refs less relevant. |
Re: Round 51 scan change.
right so to summarize somebody came up with a god awful idea that removes 1/4 of the playing options within the game , you can build distorters but still be scanned , the sooner they find a cure for stupidity the better
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yeah i wasnt playing those rounds, so i guess i should of said that. played 1 to about 18.
anyways, i really dont think units being unblockable will make that much difference. i think your variable amount of amps required is a good idea, sadly, i dont think it'll happen. |
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Re: Round 51 scan change.
well. if that change is gonna happen in a round or 2, i would suggest not changing unit scans to be unblockable at the moment.
better to just do 1 big overhaul of the entire scanning system. |
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if Units are immune to distorters (why not) then at least the number of distorters should determine how far off the number of ships are.
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I think that really the best solution is just to stick an amp threshold on the availability of scans, maybe instead of being able to research them. ie. 1 amp - Planet Scan AND Incomming Scan 5 amp - Landing Scan 6 amp - Development Scan 8 amp - News Scan 10 amp - Jumpgate Scan 15 amp - Advanced Unit Scan Bear in mind that this is required just to use the scan, distorters are still relevant, a 16 dist planet will not be able to be AU scanned by a 15 amp planet. I think the added extra of this is the covops then become a little more useful early game, you could remove the ability to make oneself 'immune' to covops and install a randomiser, obviously the more guards and sec centres you have the lower the probability of getting covoped successfully but you are never 100% immune. This would mean that a scan planet is not a lazy planet anymore and there is a need early on to look after yourself as there will be planet out there looking to kill amps and prevent you being able to required scans (obviously as the round wears on the amp count gets so high that it becomes irrelevant but it could make for a hectic few days. Imagine if your ally J scan rusher gets covoped to under 10 amps when your first attacks are at eta 4!!) * Maybe also a final reward should be in place too for those planets that are purely scan planets for their alliances, The AI scan. Reached at 100 amps it allows the use of a scan that can 'incomming scan' any fleet attacking an alliance member. To negate the OPness of this scan, the amp requirement is reset so to say... so to AI scan a 1 dist planet the scanner would need 101 amps and so on... Just a thought, im very much into making covops and scans more dynamic part of PA as atm they can be 'lazy options' |
Re: Round 51 scan change.
I'm presuming the unit scan not blocked by dists would still only show pods for xan therefore I think it's a good idea as some people don't wanna be in alliance as don't wanna be woke up at stupid o'clock so for them to be at least able to scan with units to roughly guess what they got incoming is handy so they can still have a decent planet
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The game is basically an alliance game now, especially in this smaller universe so using unallied planets as the the pro basis for the change is wrong... simple. |
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Even without this change, Disting was only really viable for Xan's and with this change? its basically the same as you'll be able to build whatever ships your trying to fake due to the ETA you need to send at. To play this game at all, you need access to Landing Scans and Unit Scans at a bare minimum. Alliances got round this problem by simply having dedicated scanners but casual players and new players will not have access to these scans and therefore cannot play the game; Thats hardly a good design choice. Im pro Landing Scans and Unit Scans available at tick 0 and being unblockable for this reason. People will still want scanners, as JGP's are far easier to use as it gives you a 4 minute window and actually allows you to calc while people will still want AU's for cloaked ships. Im not adverse to changing the unit scan to make it less effective but i cant think of a way to do that while still allowing planets without access to dedicated scanner to actually play the game. Unless unit scan now only gives you the total amount of ships (excluding cloaked) and what ships the player has built for example: 20k ships, X, Y, Z. Required dedicated scanner planets in order to play the game, is outdated and harmful to the overall game. It must change and to argue that its extremly bad as it will ruin one of 4 viable ways of playing the game? i cant help but laugh. The last time anyone even played via all out disting and did well was over 20 rounds ago. Now dists are used to block incoming scans and that wont change with unit scans being unblockable. |
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Second, distwhoring has nothing to do with attacking. You can defend against a distwhore by just covering the fleet they could've sent. You don't need to know if they sent 10k Wyvern and 20k Dragon or 20k Wyvern and 10k Dragon to organize defense. Just assume they sent 20k Wyvern and 20k Dragon. That's harder, yes, but it's not impossible. The actual goal of distwhoring is to make it impossible for attackers to land on you, because they can't know if you got defense. This is why landing scans ruined distwhoring. Moving along. Quote:
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The vast majority of the active playerbase only builds dists mid-end game to prevent there targets from using incoming scans on them when they want to fake. Quote:
and with the limit amount of people currently disting, you can simply unit scan them with your high-amp scanners every so often. Before, when defending, you would simply be working off a unit or au scan afew days old at maximum, only change now is it'll be a more recent one. Quote:
on the other hand, we have people moaning about the change cuz one planet did that strat last round and it wasnt that effective. The only example we have of this 'dist' strat which apparently the majority use all the time and so we cant weaken it being used by a lot of people is round 25 when Asc went dist heavy. In that round, they didnt even get top 4 with organised ST attacks on alliance scanners and recruiting any high level amp player they could find. Lets be honest here, when were talking about the minority, its dist whores which are the minority with only 2-3 people doing it per round and usually failing using the strat before this change has even happend. |
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As i said, no-one does it anymore really. Its just Xans who do it to block incoming scans so they can fake. Quote:
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horrifically, i agree with light a fair bit here. mostly about the fact the only people that really dist these days are xan, and maybe zik/etd stealers.
i, also, conceed that just because only X people doing something is not a reasonable argument. what a conundrum..... |
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