Thread: COVERT OPs fix
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Unread 10 Jan 2019, 11:45   #7
budious
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Re: COVERT OPs fix

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pit View Post
This changes the scan dynamic a lot. I'm unconvinced, but I'm listening...
I figured it was a good way to address immunity by making a larger financial impact to have full immunity against the scan, while also incurring high expense on those who wish to utilize it. To me, scanning and cov ops go together, so making a complimentary system makes sense. You have a covop for reducing amps/dist so have a wave for reducing alert.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Pit View Post
Fixed cost or initial cost? Currently scan costs go down if a scanner has more amps.
My initial thought was putting it after AU at a base cost of 9K ea, but since the intended effect is to overpower distorters with propaganda broadcasts, then having more amps should require more power (cost to produce energy) to break target's distorters; so in the case of this scan, perhaps reversing the discount formula to increase scan cost at higher amp count would be preferable. You could also factor in scanner amps / target distorter ratio to the strength of the effect or the cost of the effect.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Pit View Post
I think that's way too much information if you're also doing damage. Particularly the "1/15" but even that it's actually gone down tells you that it hasn't hit the limit.
Aside: Revealing alert might be useful in a scan on its own
You could omit the message portion specifying the total effect, and indicate solely whether the alert was further dropped or was unchanged (indicating maximum reduction already in effect). Alert level scan might be useful but too direct, alliance tools and bots can process scans and produce fairly accurate prediction ranges so provide a scan that reveals population slider levels, this would further increase accuracy of potential cov op success calculated by alliance tools, without flatly giving away the alert level.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Pit View Post
This would still need to be charged as a scan I think...
That was my intention, you would be charged for the scanned but informed it had no further effect. "maximum subversion has been reached."


Quote:
Originally Posted by Pit View Post
I'd suggest using the existing mechanism for restoring alert here rather than confusing matters.
"The maximum alertness is the number your alertness will DECREASE TOWARDS every tick if it is higher, and raise towards if it is lower.
It lowers by the following if your alertness is too high:

floor(6-min(security_guards/(total_roids+1),2)*(1+(pop_security+gov_bonus)/100 ))

The above is a number between 2 and 6.

or raises by the following if your alertness is too low:
floor((4+min(security_guards/(total_roids+1),5))*(1+(pop_security+gov_bonus)/1 00))

The above is a number between 4 and 16."
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