[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Kargool

I've seen players leave because of the invoking of the defence rules, I've seen players leave because of not upholding the defence rule.
I've seen players leave because of the game developers have lost their contact with the players, and stuff, we have all seen players leave the game..

And you tell me off for not being specific! I can't comment on the support planet cases like that, but the rule was introduced to stop support planets, not to stop people defending their friends two times in a round. If people are going to get upset because players have friends outside their alliance that have sent defence before, then I'm not sure there's much we can do.
I've seen players leave the game, but the most common reason is generally RL issues.
You're welcome to throw rocks at me especially for "game development" and "loosing contact with the game" if you wish, as it's my department. I can't see how you can get upset with us for not changing the game and trying to change the game. Most people are very willing to see the game "improve", yet neglect to mention how to improve it, or mention general ideas like "get more players". The remaining ideas are generally, if anything, more unrealistic than most of my ideas, or are only minor clarifications and improvements on the existing game (e.g. timestamping jumpgate probes). Most of you are here and like playing the game because you're used to it. At most there's one or two changes and ship stats changes in each round, and people can cope with that more than majorly changing the game. While we're sitting on a couple of ideas that have been big discussion topics, there's not much support for specific suggestions in improving the game.

Originally Posted by Kargool

And you still havent answered the question I asked : Why the change??

I've tried to explain; perhaps you've not read what I've written.

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

I don't see how new players will suffer, as they'll have one system to learn instead of two.

"Makes two systems into one. Benefit to new players as less to learn"

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

Is is right to give an advantage to big organised alliances? I'd prefer to try and level the playing field a bit more. While changing it, I thought it'd be interesting to merge the two as they're quite related. I've given my opinion on how scans aren't that realistic anyway

This literally negates the idea of "wave amplifier wh0res". It means that it's more up to the target planet to stop the scan than the planet who's scanning to have a good scanning ability.
Probably more contraversal

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

Secondly, all this "concept stuff".
Waves is meant to send scans out to count things. If you want to debate realism, I fail to see how waves can do most of the specified scans, and even if they can somehow detect which researches you've done, I don't quite see how amplifiers work properly (even if they were to boost accuracy the more you had). Surely if anything, amplifiers should let you scan yourself, your galaxy, your cluster then your universe? (as an aisde, that'd be a far better way to limit free planets). If anything it makes more sense for a guy to go to the planet and have a look around. While he's there, he might as well attempt to stick plastique on likely targets (although that's slightly more difficult and reflected in the fine details, should we ever get that far in the espionage discussion).

"Probably more realistic"

The scan and covert ops branches are related by them both being operations on a hostile planet, currently performed instantaneously. I think Covert Ops could be made stronger in terms of what they can do and in some cases the general damage (if people destroy one of my roids I usually laugh more than anything else; same with ships). A time delay might be more helpful though.

Originally Posted by Kargool

Ur argument about one guy leaving isnt valid tbh...

Why not? It's an example to show that people stay here for the community more than anything else. If we had new features or things that progressed over the round it might make it more interesting.



What about if there were no time delay for scans, only covert ops? Basically the only difference would be that amplifiers wouldn't be necessary, and in general scans would be slightly easier to do (especially at the beginning of the round), but random