Negative score for bashing

[Andy_r]

I raised this with Spinner in Beta, but since he's gone off to RL (that's the big cold place that the Pizza delivery guy comes from) I'll post it here.

The score system in early betas for PA X rewarded attacks on big planets and penalised attacks on small ones, but this was open to abuse (small planets could score highly by suiciding on big ones).

Spinner therfore took out the relative value part of the equation, but i think it could easily be resurrected with some limits in place.

Here's what I propose:

Attacking people from 50% of your value to 100% of your value gives you score exactly as it does now
Attacking people below 50% of your value gives you no score at all
Attacking people below 40% of your value gives you negative score instead of positive
Attacking people over 100% of your value gives you double score
Attacking people over 200% of your value gives triple score.

This would encourage small planets to organise themselves and hit big ones, and give a strong incentive not to bash.

[Deviant]

Good idea. The ammount of times i have been noob bashed It would encourage people to attack people bigger than them, making the game a hell of a lot more interesting and competeing, we wont know the winner directly after 2 weeks, but maybe 2 months

Deviant / Sequel

[Tactitus]

I don't like honor scoring in general, but if we're stuck with it this is probably a reasonable approach. A few questions/comments however:

I don't see how you haven't reopened the get-lots-of-score-by-suiciding-on-big-planets abuse.

If there's negative score for bashing then can/should the attack limits be removed?

I don't like step functions in scoring formulas as the steps tend to be too large and hard to place. I prefer continuous functions (with reasonable limits, ofc).

[Andy_r]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

I don't like honor scoring in general, but if we're stuck with it this is probably a reasonable approach. A few questions/comments however:

I don't see how you haven't reopened the get-lots-of-score-by-suiciding-on-big-planets abuse.

Well, I'm capping it to a 3-fold boost. When you take into account that the score gain for roid capping exceeds that for ship-killing at the moment (for a reasonably successful attack) I think the big guy can't be passed by suiciders, but can be passed by successful small raiders, which is the way I would want the game to work. The only abuse I can think of for this rule set is to have a planet with no roids, funded by galaxy donations that escorts the conventional planets, piggybacking for score, and frankly, if you can pull that off for a while round, you deserve to win!

If there's negative score for bashing then can/should the attack limits be removed?

It would be nice to be able to remove them, but I think there is a potential for abuse, with 2 planets acting as good cop/bad cop, one bashing, the other beating up the basher for beng so bad. Technically this would be coverd by the farming rules, but there is no way to tell apart the legitimate kicking and roidding of someone for 'evilness' and cynical farming/

I don't like step functions in scoring formulas as the steps tend to be too large and hard to place. I prefer continuous functions (with reasonable limits, ofc).

I definitely agree with your intentions, but I think the functions need to be clearly understandable to the wider playerbase. Continuous functions are harder to grasp, and therefore probably less effective at changing behaviours.

[Killerbij]

Originally Posted by Andy_r

Here's what I propose:

Attacking people from 50% of your value to 100% of your value gives you score exactly as it does now
Attacking people below 50% of your value gives you no score at all
Attacking people below 40% of your value gives you negative score instead of positive
Attacking people over 100% of your value gives you double score
Attacking people over 200% of your value gives triple score.

This would encourage small planets to organise themselves and hit big ones, and give a strong incentive not to bash.

Problem is that very little score comes from attacks in the end. (At least currently) All the top players get most of their score from roids and ships. And a score drop is quite acceptable to most if they get 200 almost free roids in return. It will pay itself back in no time. The only drops that would really discourage is drops of 50k score or more. And then you get troubles with players just suiciding before a player that was equal in size a tick earlier hits them.

In my opinion its not the score system that should be changed but the rewards that can be obtained from a smaller player. You should cap less roids, have a higher eta and lose more ships. Its the only way bashing will stop without making a really weird score system.

[Andy_r]

Yes, I agree that fleet/roid size is currently making up far too high a portion of score, but I was going to wait for this thread to mature before starting another one about that!

[pablissimo]

Since I've not played Round 10 I'm curious: what tangible benefit does getting a score increase have? Or indeed what disadvantages are there to losing score on an attack? Since under your system attacking a low-scored player would reduce your score, allowing you to attack a player of that size again but with less of a penalty since there would be a lower percentage difference and with no difference of 'strength' of the attacking force.

[Killerbij]

Originally Posted by pablissimo

Since I've not played Round 10 I'm curious: what tangible benefit does getting a score increase have? Or indeed what disadvantages are there to losing score on an attack? Since under your system attacking a low-scored player would reduce your score, allowing you to attack a player of that size again but with less of a penalty since there would be a lower percentage difference and with no difference of 'strength' of the attacking force.

In PAX there is a difference between value and score. Value is made up from ships and roids and is what the attack limit is based on. Score is a result of actions and also based (for a huge part) on value. You are right in saying that score loss wont be a major issue to most players. However it wont allow them to hit an even smaller sized planet again since that limit is value based.

[Andy_r]

The benefit of score is quite simple - it determines your ranking, nothing more, nothing less.

Whoever has the most score wins :-)

Ranking is now displayed on every page, so everyone can see how well they are doing.