Round stagnation
 

Right so we are sitting in a round where to be quite frank the winners will hardly be proud. Having won one war two weeks ago they have just continued to bash and yet we still sit here with 300 ticks to go. So what can we do??

1) I ask that all hc think about the game as a whole and how to have fun? So app players (I'm asking you in particular) really want to spend he next two weeks and your rank being decided purely on how many roids you initiated over the last two weeks? Can the hc of all allies not have this discussion together on how to make something happen rather than just ult vs Norse and peng vs app with smaller allies thrown in? At the moment top ally planet and gal will clearly be app , and to be frank no one will really say any individual player did well - just sandvold got "good" deals with everyone.

2) for next round can all major allies consider having a maximum nap of 200 ticks in the future to help avoid stagnation in future rounds?

what else can we do? The playerbase is small so this sort of stagnation just drives players away - I'm tempted myself. Please add your thoughts on what could be done to help in the future? Other considerations: ally size, maximum war time with one ally (I.e if war declared a cooldown of 48 hour where you can't hit same ally), abandon XP scoring...

Re: Round stagnation
 

Most NAPs are decided out of the game anyway and that will unfoortunately continue.

Reduce alliance size to 30/40 etc and make every planet count towards score. This could help smaller tags such as HR, VGN etc compete a bit more. Every planet in tag counting toward score reduces the number of 'def planets' which are purely there to be launched from ally fleet (remove this too).

I'm sure there are many more things that could be done to make the game experience a lot better.

Re: Round stagnation
 

RainbowS has been practised 2 weeks maximum deals, and only 1 week extentions after that for ages.
At some point during every round most tags has decided who they will stick out the round with.
It just happened out of random circumstances, luck, or short sightedness that the three top allies decided this the first week, more or less.

Re: Round stagnation
 

And btw while we are on none sense stuff we wont agree on, increase tag size to 80.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Started playing again about a year ago, realised quite quickly politics between allies ruin the overall gameplay. Ever since joining back still had same feelings. Allies are great, new people who you meet in galaxies ever round is a lot of fun but something isn't right in the game. I can't comment much more as I am no HC but the game certainly needs some changes and people need different mentality.

If I was Ally with 30 people, I'd attack first ally for the lols because that's fun. The round resets and you go again. Maybe not as extreme as that way of thinking but curve balls here and there and random actions would make the game a lot more fun and unpredictable. We're all friends in this small community, kiss and make up and hit somebody else.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Care to elaborate on why smaller tags make no sense?

Re: Round stagnation
 

Winning by politics is a perfectly acceptable way of winning. I have never understood the idea that it is somehow less worthwhile. If an alliance has managed to put itself in a position where it wins without fighting then that is the best play you can manage! Keep everyone underneath fighting and ensure you have no one who wants to hit you more than the person they are currently at war with. It seems to have worked brilliantly. Of course I am not wild about the way this round has stagnated at p3n's expense but you cant really blame app for wanting to do the best they can politically.

Indeed we are in a situation where everyone's actions have been nicely rational and that has lead to the stagnation.

1, as mentioned above it is rational for app to want to reduce incs. Their way of doing it has been to avoid annoying anyone by ensuring they only hit one alliance and stick to the plan.

2, Ult and Norse fought each other for first as you would expect. Unfortunately neither won so in a three way race neither could afford to take on app. 2 vs 1 that alliance would never win.

3, the smaller alliances all put the onus on the challengers to take on app. Why should they do those two alliances work for them when it would replace app with someone else? They dont like what happens to p3nguins but wont risk it happening to them by hitting app.

4, people below that? no longer enough of them im afraid. Gather up all the small alliances and they would have no chance of challenging app.

Back onto your post and questions. Will p3n agree to keeping deals less than 200 ticks? Probably not, but we would not go for a round long agreement without exceptional circumstances... but then I guess norse and Ult thought it was exceptional circumstances!

Edit: things to avoid stagnation. Smaller tags would; more allies and it gets more difficult to nap them all. The reasons for bigger tags or against smaller ones are mostly nothing to do with politics - they are things like a lack of officers.
The war button could have more effect when hitting an alliance above you to provide an incentive to take a risk to go for first. The war button could potentially only be used on tags of similar size or bigger (whether that should be in numbers, or score, or roids I dont know!) a bit like the bash limit, again to encourage fighting upwards.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Not enough HCs to run more tags.
Politics more important because all tags will potential be stronger.
More NAPs, personal agenda, HC gals, etc will create a hugher gap between average joe and the power elite.
Grudges will be more deciding on who wins/lose.
BowS/ND/HR wont be able to train newbies.


PA was never a game where there would be 10 potential winners, trying to make it something it never was suppose to be would be stupid imho.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Could stop initing at 1000 roids ingame for future rounds

Re: Round stagnation
 

Yes this is geting boring. round after round of napping and allying up. Make max 30 man allys and no nap or alli. just war and 1 ally can only enter like 3-5 wars around but if ally do well in war they will gain alot on it but will have like a war downtime. And take away exiling and start deleting inactives erlyer. Get fingers out of ass and make somthing happen to bring back some fun.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Pathetic round. Quite frankly disgusted with the HCs this round.

Whoever did politic in the major alliances this round should retire from politic. You are killing the game

Re: Round stagnation
 

1 - how many hc does a 30 man tag need? Norse has about 6 HC + maybe another 6 officer.

2 - Random gals only or smaller BPs?

3 - Cant do much about grudges

4 - There arent many newbies to train

Re: Round stagnation
 

I like idea of initing limit. Could even be lower than 1k. Maybe 800 ?

Re: Round stagnation
 

As long as no wars are profitable, ppl are gonna play naptarion.

With these defensive stats and allyfleets, its hard to win 1vs1. You need to be massivly stronger than your opponent, but then again that would be bashing?
So block will rise, and you'll need friends/allies.

This is the current state of the game. Atm this game is won by politics, and App did it best this round.

Make warring ppl more profitable. More offensive stats. (I like those on beta atm)
Init limit might be good, need to attack then.
Mining roids for x ticks?

Re: Round stagnation
 

I think the init limitis a reasonable suggestion, though I don't expect it'll have that much impact.



As for tag sizes, I've historically been against lowering them, for most of the reasons Butcher listed. However, the increased political flexibility that would result from splitting up the player base into more and smaller pieces may be worth the downsides. Proceed with extreme caution, but I think a gradual reduction in tag size might be worth investigating. (And no, I'm not interested in rehashing that discussion for the umpteenth time.)



Another option might be to move away from fixed round lengths. Right now, if you want to win at tick 1177, the best way to do that is to be winning at tick 1000, and the best way to do that is to be winning at tick 800, and the best way to do that is to be winning at tick 600. This (along with a host of other factors that are not relevant here) encourages alliances to forge round-long blocks against their opponents for quick easy victories, and then honouring those deals even when the political landscape changes. Make no mistake, despite what AD posters would have you believe (when it suits them, anyway), honour is a bad thing in PA politics. The inevitable aftermath of inflexible politics is early stagnation, and that's a loss/loss situation for everyone involved. 2 weeks of sitting on your hands is boring even if you're winning. In such a scenario, ending the round early would be preferable.

And on the other side of the coin, a round that's still undecided at tick 1150 might well be fun for another week, or even two. Though right now we don't feel the pain of a fun round ending too early as viscerally as we do that a bad one ending too late, I think it's just as big a problem. Variable round lengths would fix both in one fell swoop.

There are 2 big caveats that have to be addressed.

One, the decision when any individual round ends must be taken by algorithm, not by a human. The last thing we need is for wins to be questioned (rather than the methods of achieving wins) and for PA Team's impartiality to be cast in doubt. It must be clear in advance what the conditions for ending the round are, and players must be informed of the progress of the round ending as it goes on ("alliance X is Y score/ticks/votes away from winning!"). A approach might be that the round ends when #1 alliance is X% ahead of its nearest competitor (possibly not counting alliances it's napped to?), or when a majority of alliances (weighed by size?) chooses a victor (regardless of the victor's score), or when an alliance has spent a certain number of ticks at #1 (consecutively? or not?), or whatever crazy scheme(s) you come up with. As long as the win conditions (there could be multiple, 4X-style) are determined pre-round, they're viable.

Two, PA's monetization scheme needs to be adjusted. The system of using a slowly accruing bonus at a certain point in the round depends entirely on the round being of predetermined length. If round length is no longer fixed, then the bonus needs to be adjusted, probably to a continuous one. This takes away a significant strategic choice, but I feel that's an acceptable loss if that means politics becomes more dynamic. Alternate solutions to the bonus/revenue problem would obviously also be welcome.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Why are there so few tags that manage to survive past the first 1 or 2 rounds?
What ever happend to Future, and eXcessive from last round?
They folded because they didnt have enough people to run it.
I find it funny that so many people wants to have smaller tags, but they arnt interested in starting one for themself.
Seeing Norse has so many HCs/officers im sure we will see them go at next round as a full tag again?

Re: Round stagnation
 

Napping from PT -100 is low and the fact people do it cheats the regular members of an alliance from a fair and fun round.

Re: Round stagnation
 

I cant speak for future but excessive was 20 players puummelled by a 60 man tag. Had the playing field been even I dont think that people would have given up so quickly.

As for norseless doing full tag again, I certainly hope not.

Re: Round stagnation
 

that's because their HC was an idiot though, it's not relevant to anything really.

Re: Round stagnation
 

What he said, i like that idea aswell 1k init max , if you are below 1k roids u can init up to 1000 roids total. If you have 1001 roids u cant init before you get below 1k again.

However for this to work we have to get rid of all the farms/cousins out there aswell.

Seeing so much farming and planets who init right before people land them, and this would be a much bigger problem if init limits would arrive.

Signing up a planet should require a passport id / bank id , or some sort of stuff to make it harder to make more than 1 planets!

Just like shopping on the internett or anything, should not be to hard. And everyone who should be able to provide it.

Pa community would probly drop 50 planets , but it would deffo be a more fair universe and a start!

chees

Re: Round stagnation
 

So basicly you got beaten down the first two weeks, and by the sound of it, you realized that you didnt have enough people to HC/pick the tag up again, and being puumled wasnt what you signed up for?
Guess what, with smaller tags more people will get puumled, if not by 1 big 60 man tag, perhaps by 2 smaller 30 man tags. Its not like the bandwagon effect, or the ganging will become less of a problem with smaller tags, actualy the opposite is more likely imho

Re: Round stagnation
 

Smaller tag would help that problem, not make it worst unless there are blocks forming to bash a tag. In that case, it could potentially make it worse. I don't think it makes much of a difference in either case.

Re: Round stagnation
 

I like this idea. The only possible counter-argument would be on a basis of value-for-money, whereby one credit of fixed value could potentially buy a shorter round than you were expecting to pay for.

It's not something I'm bothered by, but other people at this stage probably spend more of their income on adulting than I do.

Re: Round stagnation
 

On the suggestions so far:
Initiation limits: I think this would have no impact, and certainly not at 1000. There are very few players and alliances who will initiate once at this level anyway. And mostly they will only do so when things are stable. This therefore seems to me to be a symptom of the problem not something that will solve it. If app could not keep initiating beyond 1k would they have gone to war with norse? I doubt it; just send more fleets at p3nguins.

Olav in a throw away part mentions 'war downtime'. This would be one option; app has been to war several times with p3n. What would they do if during a war downtime phase they could not physically hit that ally? Wars I think should be more flexible - the HCs launching it can within limits set its length but then the longer the 'downtime' where they cant attack that alliance. This would help force politics to shift.

Flexible round lengths I like the idea of. It helps add an incentive to chase after #1 though I am not certain that would actually have unstuck this round as part of the problem was both ult and norse preferring an app win to their other main rival.
It is not very relevant to the suggestion but I dont see why it forces the monetary system to change. It just means that it becomes much harder to work out when it is best to spend it which is probably a good thing. Since mz suggests that we would get a warning of how close the top ally is to winning ppl would not lose out on the bonus. The bigger downside for me is that it subordinates planet and gal wins entirely to ally win. Ally win may be locked up but there could still be very interesting other races which would be cut short.

As much as I would love to fire away on the tags size question I will refrain as we have been over it before.

Re: Round stagnation
 

The solution could be to help CT recruit to 60 again, so politics go back to normality with CT vs Ult, and "exciting" rounds

Re: Round stagnation
 

I'd like to see some changes to the relations system aswell as many of the other posted ideas.
As in auto update on hostile and war relation on all planets with set intel ingame.
Triggered by something like: 20 Hostile launched fleets in a spand of 6 ticks from alliance A to B will auto set alliance A's relation to B as hostile.
50 Launched fleets in a spand of 12 ticks triggers War, this fleet and tick count should be accumulative. Wars could be set for 24 - 96 ticks, depending on what playerbase wants. Personally I would like to see short war timer, and win / loss counter for each tag. And maybe determine winner based on that. Winner of a war is based on which tag accumulate most score, score growth or other chosen factors. This with smaller tags would bring me back for several more rounds.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Im in favour of having alliance golden roids that each alliance gives a 5% mining bonus for the person who holds the roid and 5% mining bonus for their own alliance members and a 1% mining bonus for each golden roid captured for each member and a 3% personal bonus.

each alliance has 1-3 golden roids... this should enduce war more frequently

Re: Round stagnation
 

After tick 500: When #1 Alliance is 10% bigger than #2 round last one more week. All stock counts to score. If #2 catches up it gets extended one day each 1% they catch up. Why should 620 players care much about #1 gal or 647 players about #1 Planet?

Xp should be a bigger part. So that alliance or gal that is fencing can be catched up. Big lands with value loss for both sides should give more xp. A forced recal of a big fleet l should get more xp than from a small. Fakes? Right now value is a lot more important than actually playing the game.

Battle reports is the fun thing, but that it ends the round sucks. We have so few players so the longer we can make it competitive for everyone the more interesting round.
Maybe offensive Salvage?

Re: Round stagnation
 

That would of course be another option. Ally win based not on score as now but on number of wars won, or some new alliance points system, or number of golden roids captured. Things that would require offensive action to succeed.

I don't like xp, but I have never understood this determination on the part of the game to nerf it whenever someone works out how to get a lot of it. It should be a viable way of playing.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Never bring xp back without introducing a way to reduce score gained from xp. This is the entire issue with xp: it's either to powerful or to weak. A few rounds ago we had an xp round and a planet that played half the round and had 300k value in ships won the round. There's nothing anybody could do about this either. That isn't fun.

Re: Round stagnation
 

The boost of XP and and a way so people can lose it will be always a suggestion. Things like not moving fleets daily could punish with xp loss. Xp could vary from +infinite to -infinite.

Besides that, the main problem is that no one likes to handle incs and making defense easier unbalances the game.

Re: Round stagnation
 

all of this would be fixed with 10x the player base, or pulling the plug sadly.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Ridiculous thing to say lol


To be honest the round has been awesome ! So many wars. Lots of fighting. A few chosen people made some mistakes with their politics. That is all it is....

Good round though!

Re: Round stagnation
 

Another suggestion could be to change out SK's for XP stealers,
that steals upto x% of target on cap.

Re: Round stagnation
 

its the def culture :(

Re: Round stagnation
 

XP should be based on ally rank of the target instead of based on the planet.
Rank #5 allie should get more XP for hitting #1 tag, than #1 tag hitting #5 tag.

Re: Round stagnation
 

So we get more alliances trying to stay out of first place?



:salute:

Re: Round stagnation
 

I quite like this idea. Do you take it further and say no xp at all for hitting below say 10th placed tag and untagged planets?

Lots of decent ideas so far. Just need someone to take notice.

Re: Round stagnation
 

So far this round its only one alliance that has not NAPed any of the top3 tags, not because they are aspiring to get there any time soon, but to make the gap between the top and bottom smaller.
If p3ng/ND/infidels were closer to #1 maybe it could been more interesting.

If Ult choose to hit VGN, the gain should be lower than if they choose to hit App

Re: Round stagnation
 

how about
all HC retire and go **** yourselves

Re: Round stagnation
 

The gain is already lower for Ult hitting Vgn compared to if they hit App.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Totally agree with the suggestion. Best one so far.

Re: Round stagnation
 

I intend to see out the round. Will put a prop up at the end though so you can decide :up::down:. On the first bit anyway!

Re: Round stagnation
 

That would be fun if all political bosses would be democratic elected, all members could be elected, in every alliance at tick start :banana:
Id be happy to make this a reality in bows if we play more rounds :D

Re: Round stagnation
 

While CT intends to recruit back up and be relevant again, the reality is while CT has historically stood for a balanced game, it has typical been at the loss of any chance CT has of winning the round. Part of the reason that CT is down on members is people got tired of CT being the target of so many wars, even when we tried to stay out. (Yes I know there are other reasons but not relevant to this thread).

Unless other alliances also want to step into that role (even if CT comes back we won't do it by ourselves anymore), or a major shift in the game occurs such that it is no longer rewarding to sit on roids all round, this is the game we're left with.

One other thought would be to have planets slowly lose XP if they aren't attacking or defending regularly, or have initiating roids over say 500 cost XP as well as resources.

Re: Round stagnation
 

No offence however CT has not been any use for a good 5 rounds or so now. You got yourselves locked into some weird ult war for a round and since then have been playing the "someone else step up" card.

Others have stepped up and other alliances have tried to take on the likes of Ult but when they do CT still sit back and say they want to keep out of it all. So as much as you would like to believe everyone else is sitting on their hands doing jack shit, CT haven't been contributing at all.

In fact I would specifically aim the doing jack shit at you monroe. GM has been willing to help but has had his hands tied not wanting to undermine you.

Re: Round stagnation
 

When talking about this we should probably remember that we mostly dislike the opposite of stagnation almost as much as we dislike stagnation! By this I mean the gangbangs that inevitably cause shifts in the top alliances. We particularly dislike them when we are on the receiving end of them – and I am sure we all have been – we want the other side to play fair and us to have a chance of hitting back. And I suspect that some of the ways out of the need for gangbangs would also help prevent stagnation from occurring.

P3n has spent several weeks asking around for allies for a gangbang on app (unsuccessfully but that does not matter for this argument) because we can’t land app on our own with such a large value difference. It seems to me therefore what needs to be done is to ensure that inferior alliances can have some gain from fighting a superior alliance. Conversely this can provide an incentive for alliances to move on to more equal wars.

At the moment, there is a binary situation land/recall. I think there should be a fuzzy area in between. So, I’m going to re-suggest missions which have been suggested in various forms for years, particularly:

• Hit and run attacks: The attacker’s fleets avoid battle instead grabbing small numbers of roids and running. They steal a much smaller number of roids than in a normal attack. (max 5% cap?)
• Commerce raiding: The attacker’s fleets avoid battle instead attacking merchant ships and destroying trade around the target planet. They gain a % of the target planet’s income for a couple of ticks.

In both cases, there is no big fleet battle providing an immense combat report. Instead there are some losses to attrition on both sides. This would be determined by the number of opposition ships in the sector but would never be anything like a full crash for either side.

These could be done either through simply having another mission alongside attack/defend/fake attack/fake defend or it could be done through issuing a mission once you get close enough to the target (I prefer the latter as it requires some activity and also gives you a way to change things). Potentially there could be a counter ‘guard’ mission for defenders to implement which would reduce the loss in roids and income.

I would also like cov-ops to be much more strategic rather than the tactical annoyance they are now. Cov opping someone to make a fleet slower, or to mean it launches a tick late, or to disable inc scans for a couple of ticks could potentially have a much bigger impact on the game and would provide a possible asymmetric way for alliances to fight.

Re: Round stagnation
 

In agreeaance with you booji

Re: Round stagnation
 

I quite like this... Would help keep politics in-game.

Also, at the end of a war, add a period of Truce, whereby you cant attack the same ally for 24-72 ticks or something depending on length of war. Or add a mining/xp penalty for allies that break a truce, unless it's agreed by both parties to go back to war.

Would completely change the game, meaning big alliances have to spread around who they target and if someone wants to play NAPtarion, they suddenly end up with no targets due to Truce.

Re: Round stagnation
 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but no major changes will be made.