Make every galaxy a small fortress

[Cowch]

Bring back private galaxies, and/or reduce the size of galaxies to 5 or 8. A lot of people propose smaller buddy packs or limits on exiling as a way to stop the fortresses, but, if every galaxy was a fortress, the fortresses wouldn't be safe.

There would quickly become a separation between galaxies full of inactives and mediocre players, and the good galaxies. Fortress galaxies would be forced to attack one another to find targets that meet the minimum value requirements.

I am tired of building a top 100 planet and then being forced to roid a bunch of noobs for 5 weeks until the block wars start. I want to start hitting top alliances/galaxies after one week, and I want to make them cry.

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Cowch

There would quickly become a separation between galaxies full of inactives and mediocre players, and the good galaxies.:

Exactly what's wrong with this suggestion.

[Cowch]

Why? As it is now, there is still a separation between the top 20 or so galaxies and the rest. Those top galaxies never get incs, or only get them during block wars.

Let the mediocre galaxies fill up with low value players who can play amongst themselves. Then the big galaxies will have to target big galaxies, instead of ganging on the medium sized players in galaxies full of noobs or inactives.

Right now I am having a lot of fun playing the game because we are attacking big galaxies. But I was pretty bored for a few weeks when we were pounding noob galaxies waiting for someone else to make the first move on alliances.

[Buly]

Make a bashlimit on what type of gal you can hit. That stops fencegals from roiding nubs.

[Cowch]

I'm not trying to protect small planets or small galaxies. I'm trying to promote warfare amongst the big guys. I want galaxies to fill up with big planets, and I want those large galaxies to have no choice but to battle other large galaxies. The goal is to increase competition and make the game more challenging.

I don't care how it's done, but limiting what size galaxy you can attack would allow big planets to hide inside of inactive galaxies. I want to force the big planets out of small galaxies and into big galaxies.

[rUl3r]

Originally Posted by Cowch

I am tired of building a top 100 planet and then being forced to roid a bunch of noobs for 5 weeks until the block wars start. I want to start hitting top alliances/galaxies after one week, and I want to make them cry.

Actually, that´s pretty easy to do. Just become military HC of an alliance and put t10 size gals on the target list every day. This also cuts down the "running away" of single galaxies a fair bit.
It´s no rocket science, really. It has been done before. Stop crying about the way most allies chose to play this game and do something about it, but DO NOT ask for rule changes because YOU don´t want to actually change something yourself.

If you can´t come up with more thought through suggestions please just don´t post here. It´s pretty dumb to suggest rule changes because the majority of players don´t have the balls to hit large targets except if they come with a horrible overkill. That´s a matter of playing style, not of rules.

[Gerbie2]

One of the main problems is that the smaller galaxies get solo attackers incomming all day every day. This game is really no fun if you're a new player and end up in a shitty galaxy. This is one of the main problems when trying to attrackt new players. This problem has led to many game modifications, which so far have failed to solve the problem.

When people exile, they now do it to try to end up in a top galaxy. Some people even delete their accounts and start again as late starter just so they can end up in a top galaxy.

I propose a more radical change. At this moment when people (self)exile, they end up in a galaxy based on the amount of players in each galaxy. Imo we should change it so when people exile, they end up in one of the bottom 20% of galaxies based on score. Late starters should only be able to join galaxies that are eligible for exiles. I'd even consider removing C200 as it's sometimes abused by fat active players who let their galmates exile them when they go on vacation. Also it might be wise to not activate exiling till later (e.g. tick 100) or even remove exiling altogether.

That means:
- top galaxies have no reason to exile inactives since they won't get replaced
- weaker galaxies will be harder to raid, because of the amount of planets they contain
- less need to breakup buddypacks if the galaxy isn't as good as you hoped it would be
- fortress galaxies will be harder (impossible) to create

[rUl3r]

To be honest, I don´t think solo attackers are a huge issue. I´m in a pretty mediocre (not to say shit) gal this round, roughly rank 50. We get quite some solo incs, hardly any of them are able to land though, mainly due to ingal def. I do think solo incs are rather good for smaller gals overall, as they promote defensive teamwork within the galaxy. Face it, if a gal fails at the most basic def cooperation, it´s not a galaxy I would want to play in at all.
Which leads me to the next point. I´m strongly opposed to removing exiling and self-exiling alltogether. I know for sure I´d rather quit then play in a overall inactive shithole. It´s just no fun. While there may be casual players who consider logging in 3 times a day fun, I certainly got something else in mind when I decide to play a round of planetarion. Those inactives and half-actives tend to ruin peoples rounds, if you´re stuck with a bunch of casuals, you can basically just quit if your goals are set fairly higher.
Changes in PA should be aimed at promoting activity and gameplay overall. While the active vets can try to teach newbies with relative success, they can´t force people into activity who chose not to play active at all. They just can´t. Those people will just make the round less enjoyable for the more active players. If by any chance you get "punished" with half a gal of inactives, your round will be screwed if exiling gets removed.

Also, as I said, it´s a matter of choice the top gals run away every round. Allies chose not to hit them. That leads to value building from being fat, but in the first place, those gals are basically just fat.

[Mzyxptlk]

I have to admit I kind of like Gerbies idea, though I have a nagging feeling there's a giant issue with it that I'm failing to see.

[isildurx]

I'm sure there are ways around what Gerbie proposes that will make fortresses viable, probably requires a lot of coordination and work early round though, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I wouldnt mind having a discussion going on the idea atleast.

[rUl3r]

Originally Posted by isildurx

I'm sure there are ways around what Gerbie proposes that will make fortresses viable, probably requires a lot of coordination and work early round though, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I wouldnt mind having a discussion going on the idea atleast.

If you disable exiling completely, there´s no chance anymore to build a fortress, but you´ll certainly piss of the more active players that get stuck with completely inactive people.
On the other han, when you just introduce more limits, there will be most likely a way to circumvent them - if you base the bracket on score for example the most easy move to do is to put all income from all planets into the gal fund to keep value down and be able to recieve exiles.

[isildurx]

The thing is though that you can exile. Lets say we have a large group of people that keep their value low(there are ways to do this) for the first few days, and the collectively exile. Then they would all end up in the small gals seeing as the gal they end up in will not increase very much in score per new entrant.

[rUl3r]

I was under the impression gerbie put the option of removing exiling and self-exiling on the table. If I got him wrong on that ppoint, you´re of course correct.

[Cowch]

Removing exiling would leave good players in galaxies full of inactives. That leaves one good target standing above a galaxy that can't help him, and he gets roided all day long for xp.

rUI3r, you say become HC and plan raids like I could just do that by signing up. Under the current system, the alliance that goes out and hits t10 gals every night is going to piss someone off and get tons of retal and incs. As JBG said in another thread, part of the strategy of the fortress is so that people won't attack it, lest it be seen as an act of war.

Alliances noob roid for weeks because it's the best strategy under the current system, and any alliance that changed that would probably fail. So yes, I propose changing the system so that the best strategy would change, and the game would be more fun.

[rUl3r]

Originally Posted by Cowch

Removing exiling would leave good players in galaxies full of inactives. That leaves one good target standing above a galaxy that can't help him, and he gets roided all day long for xp.

Guess we agree there.

rUI3r, you say become HC and plan raids like I could just do that by signing up. Under the current system, the alliance that goes out and hits t10 gals every night is going to piss someone off and get tons of retal and incs. As JBG said in another thread, part of the strategy of the fortress is so that people won't attack it, lest it be seen as an act of war.

(You´d be surprised how easy it can be to become HC )

I have to admit I´ve not explained my thoughts well enough there.
There´s a fair bit of psychology involved when fat gals get away with being fat.
It takes some effort to hit large gals from rather early on in a round, as they usually are made of rather active players who also field some skill. This is not restricted to fortress gals though, it can be applied pretty much in general. This has lead to the situation where ~t10 size gals get the chance to avoid incs despite being fat - rather because they are fat. Fortress gals use this psychology to avoid incs for a rather long time. Since hardly any ally attacks top gals, a single ally daring to hit fortress gals might fear to provoke a war that way. If however more allies regularly target large gals, hitting the fortress gals wouldn´t stick out anymore. Declearing wars because of galraids on fortress gals works only as long as you can actually fight those wars.
I am aware we pretty regularly get into the situation where a large group of allies teams up on fortress gals later on, usually starting a war the same moment.
The fortress gal strategy has intimidated alot of allies in PA to the point they only dare to start hitting them when they actually got a large block to directly fight a large war. This developed from the fear of hitting top gals in general.
So basically, I repeat what I said in other posts: People need balls.

Alliances noob roid for weeks because it's the best strategy under the current system, and any alliance that changed that would probably fail. So yes, I propose changing the system so that the best strategy would change, and the game would be more fun.

I´ve put top gals up as targets almost all the time on galraids when I´ve been mil HC, yielded good roids and put my ally among top size average back then.
It´s misleading to think the large gals would be impenetrable from start on. They aren´t. They just grow sick amounts of value when you leave them alone, becoming pretty much unbeatable except with huge teamups/gangbangs/blocks.

[Cowch]

rUl3r,

I agree with everything you wrote in your last post. But, I can't single handedly affect the sort of change where all of the non-fortress alliances start hitting big galaxies after a week.

The idea behind the smaller private galaxies (with maybe 2 randoms) is that everyone gets to be in a fortress if they bother to put together a good BP. We won't be dragged down by inactives and we won't have to exile 7 or 8 times to land in a good galaxy. Also, with smaller galaxies, there might be three or even four times as many galaxies out there filled with active, skilled players. Imagine if the top 100 planets were spread out across 85 or 100 different galaxies.

As it is now, there is clearly a dominant strategy. Looking toward the future, we can either have two alliances dominate every round from here out, or every alliance can adopt the same strategy and we have a pretty bland universe. It's time for a radical change, and I think smaller private galaxies is at least 1 good idea.

[Shev]

Originally Posted by Gerbie2

- fortress galaxies will be harder (impossible) to create

While I quite like the overall idea, in it's current form it wouldn't stop fortress gals. Most of them tend to form fairly early, when a few exiles would easily leave the gal within the bottom 20% anyway.

I agree completely with removing or limiting the effect late starters can have.

[Knight Theamion]

Just a random thought. Maybe you can 'select' the size of your gal. For instance, you can sign up for a 6 man BP and you would only get 2 randoms

Or you sign up a 2 man BP, automatically get another 2 man BP paired and 4 randoms or 5.

The numbers here are still to be discussed. But this way you can select a fair number of friends with a very small galaxy. Or you can select some less friends, be combined with other players who 'take the chance' (or want to fence) and get some more randoms to increase the luck of new players and increase the available def pool for that galaxy.

[Nightwolf]

I definately think something need to be done. Personally I quite like Cowch's idea.

[Gerbie2]

Originally Posted by Knight Theamion

Just a random thought. Maybe you can 'select' the size of your gal. For instance, you can sign up for a 6 man BP and you would only get 2 randoms

We had a somewhat similar system before PaX, where there were 15 ppl private galaxies and 25 ppl random galaxies iirc. That system had to be abandoned with the introduction of the new exile system.
Your 'random tought' doesn't solve the underlying problems either. Once such galaxies start exiling inactives (or actives start leaving), this leads to stronger galaxies (fortresses) and weaker galaxies.
We need a solution that insures that strong galaxies are not strengthened further by exiles and/or late starters and protects the weaker galaxies from weakening further.

[Buddah]

Make exile system score and value based instead.
then mediocre gals would get more planets and make them harder to hit, while topgals would get less exiles fewer planets.

problem with this is if a gal decides to stay small and get more players then start playing active. but ppl playing for rank prolly wouldnt gamble on that.

[Cowch]

I guess I'm less concerned with stopping fortresses as I am with making sure we all get to play in one. It's kind of fun to be in a fortress, but it's fun to attack them too.

[MrLobster]

Perhaps the problem is the idea of the galaxy and alliance?

#1. Galaxy fleets are the last line of defense. If your in a crappy galaxy your last line will be crappy

#2. This game is all about alliances, you need one to survive.

#3. The stronger prey on the weak. Its a fact that most people will attack smaller players for less loss.

If galaxies are going to stay then you need to stop hugely bigger galaxies from attacking smaller galaxies.

We all want to see massive battles between the big alliances, but individually we like to hit small targets.