Different approach to Experience?

[Wandows]

Note, i posted this in another thread but it was somewhat off-topic there, hence a different thread for it

I know alot of people got used to XP being either a big or small part of a planet/alliance its ranking. I'm sure there are alot of people who like it, just as there are other who don't. I am one of those who doesn't really see the benefits of having XP for score, apart from not losing all your score when you crash your fleet.

The problem with current XP is that it makes alliance wars rather dull in the game, this because regardless of the roids you lose, your alliance can still gain XP by landing their attacks and thus increasing their score. This means that in the current game it is really hard to actually catch up on a competing alliance, cuz as long as they keep landing attacks, they will get more score making a catch-up process very hard.

I still believe alliances and planets should be ranked on what they actually have in the end instead of what they might have done in the past. By that i mean that value should be the only thing that determines the winner in the end (both for alliances and players).

This however, doesn't mean i see no use for experience. I think it should, and can be used in a more strategical way, by having experience actually influence the efficiency of your ships. As common sense would say that your pilots should learn a thing or too from fighting battles.

Assuming XP will be gained in the same way it currently is, you can have the option to invest XP in skills for your pilots. Say every 1000 experience points can be used to either improve the damage your ships do by 0.2%, the armour they have by 0.2% or both the armour and damage by 0.1%. Numbers are ofc only to get an idea, as it's a very delicate feature that has to be very well balanced before being used. The end result of this would be that planets can specialize (offensive/defensive/both) and improve their fleet effectiveness adding by either giving their ships more damage, armour or both.

The upgrading could be done on all your ships (1000 XP to improve armour on all your ships by 0.2%), or for each shipclass (1000 XP to improve armour on your DE by 0.2%), or only a specific ship (1000 XP to improve armour on your Pegasus by 0.2%), depending on the way it balances out best.

It would add a extra level to the stats, while at the same time making experience far more interesting to gain in combat as it can have a big influence on battles if you have a high level of bonus on your ships.

If XP would be dropped from the score because of that, it would mean that Zik needs a change aswell as they have a big value advantage due to them stealing without losing any ships for it.

[Monroe]

While this is a very cool idea there are several key flaws that I feel will keep this from being implimented. Firstly implimenting this would require a reworking of the combat engine in non trival ways, highly unlikely to happen imo. Secondly this is going to make battle calculators significantly more complicated and make it much more difficult to calculate actual battle losses which will drive MOs nuts. Thirdly this will give the most active players a potentially HUGE advantage as there ships will eventually become WAY more powerful then less active players. In addition there is a bizzare possibility here that someone could go the XP route early in the game, keeping their fleet small and racking up the XP. Then late in the game build a bunch of ships with saved resources and suddenly have an extremely powerful fleet.
I'm sure if I sit and think I can think of some other major issues, but personally I like the idea, I just don't think it's practical with the way the game is played today.

[Rc mayhem]

Problem #4, we have balance problems with stats as it is. As xp whore could now have a ship which is as standard overpowered and with this boost unbeatable. Nice idea (even though I don't like it) but faitally flawed imo.

[Furyous]

Why not simply have separate value and XP rankings for players and alliances? Then they can compete on the terms of their choice. i.e. 1up won value and Ascendancy won XP in round 16. The community can then decide which ranking carries the most weight, but at least alliances have a clear choice of how they want to play and have an official ranking to show for their efforts.

[Rc mayhem]

and we can have a roid ranking and a number of successful attacks ranking and a number of ships ranking and a res saved up ranking and a......

Score is always the real ranking. You can use sandmans if you want a player value ranking. This would not add to the game, only cause more arguements and grief