The amount of piggybacking this round. Are galaxies too small?

[Kargool]

I am slowly starting to reconsider my opinion about having small galaxies is good to avoid piggybacking. In fact Im more or less turning to start believing the opposite. The smaller galaxies has turned every alliance more or less into attacking atleast 3 galaxies pr night, some even up to 5-6 galaxies, and the clear and increasing problem this round has resulted in triple booking, quadruple booking and in one occasion even more. I think that the galaxy size is wrong, and I apologise for being one of the people who campaigned for smaller galaxies.

What are solution to this problem? ofc, some will say more alliance targeting, and that is probably true for this round, but however, alliance targeting is so little beneficial unless you are in direct contact scorewise with the ally you are attacking.

[Monroe]

While pigging is always an issue, and multiple bookings a real pain I don't see how to solve this problem without a hard code of some sort into the game. I really see multiple bookings as a problem more inherent to the small number of players rather then the galaxy sizes. Small galaxies are far more benefficial to the game given the size of the player base in my opinion, even if it results in massive incommings from time to time.

[Kileman]

hard code it so only 1 planet can attack another planet at a time... that'll be fun ;o)
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T Transmission

[Wandows]

There is no solution within the current game mechanics. It is simple logic that attacking the fattest targets would give the most potential gain to your alliance when fighting a war with another alliance is not desired or deemed as profitable. This generally leads to all BC's / target pickers looking around in the top50 for decent sized gals/planets to target for that night. In a small universe like this, it means that most obvious fat gals will be booked by at least 2 alliances.

I don't see anything that PA can directly do to solve the issue, not without coding unwanted restrictions in that is. Larger galaxies will not directly solve the problem, apart from giving players a slightly higher chance of getting in a gal with some other usefull players. In the end it will simply mean there are less galaxies to choose from, shifting the problem rather than fixing it. In that sense smaller galaxies might even be better as the gaps between gals are smaller meaning the chances on getting repeated incoming might even be smaller (as there are more targets to pick from for BC's). Unless we see some radical change in the universe setup (i.e. completely rework how planets are related to eachother in the universe) or a large increase in the playerbase this can't really be fixed that easily, although removing prelaunch attacks as option might make it better managable.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Kileman

hard code it so only 1 planet can attack another planet at a time... that'd be stupid ;o)

Fixed for greater truth and justice.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by furball

Fixed for greater truth and justice.

Allow me to introduce you to my friend Irony...

I agree that this is a problem, but I'm not sure larger galaxies will instantly solve it. I do, however, think that piggied attacks is something that should be taken seriously. It lowers the enjoyment of the game for most attackers and all defenders. The only people who benefit are those who are lucky enough to get a free ride to first and second landing. And if they're being piggied on that landing, it sucks for them too.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Jester

Allow me to introduce you to my friend Irony...

I agree that this is a problem, but I'm not sure larger galaxies will instantly solve it. I do, however, think that piggied attacks is something that should be taken seriously. It lowers the enjoyment of the game for most attackers and all defenders. The only people who benefit are those who are lucky enough to get a free ride to first and second landing. And if they're being piggied on that landing, it sucks for them too.

I don't have time to write a fully-thought-out post


In brief: create larger galaxies of about 20-30 players, with 2/3 buddypacks of 5 each. Alliances will take only 1 or 2 galaxies per night, which in a universe of 70-100 galaxies should mean there isn't too much piggybacking. Piggybacking itself will never disappear, but this might reduce its occurance. Larger galaxies have their own benefits, as shown by the Exit, Voice and Loyalty model - we can allow in-galaxy attacking for example.

[The Real Arfy]

Its prelaunch and one tick attacking. Seriously. Its because pa is now a "game" of pick a target, prelaunch +5, get a good night's sleep. I'm not complaining at all - I really can't be bothered to stay up either.

The fact that anyone can prelaunch on anyone else means that all targets are hit both simultaneously and with more waves than we can handle (due to 1-tick attacking we now have 8 waves of solo targets, rather than 6 from 2 attackers which allows us to force a recall of 3 waves easier).

My solution? Show prelaunched ETAs on jgps (e.g. 10+4) to make it easier to send defence. This would probably help shift the times of attacking to an hour when people are actually around - this may be 7am, midday or 5pm or whenever. Either way, we need to spread out the regular times of attacking.

[The Real Arfy]

Originally Posted by furball

I don't have time to write a fully-thought-out post


In brief: create larger galaxies of about 20-30 players, with 2/3 buddypacks of 5 each. Alliances will take only 1 or 2 galaxies per night, which in a universe of 70-100 galaxies should mean there isn't too much piggybacking. Piggybacking itself will never disappear, but this might reduce its occurance. Larger galaxies have their own benefits, as shown by the Exit, Voice and Loyalty model - we can allow in-galaxy attacking for example.

You can hardly get through solo with 10 man galaxies, how would 20/30 man galaxies help that?

[furball]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

You can hardly get through solo with 10 man galaxies, how would 20/30 man galaxies help that?

Soloing's never been particularly easy. However, with larger galaxies you're more likely to find a player who's happy to attack with you rather than attacking with their alliance.

[Wandows]

And likewise it is alot more likely for others to find galaxy members willing enough and with the fleets available to defend them, making solo attacks alot harder to run even with the potential gain of a few teamups (which is alot less likely than getting more players to defend you).

[furball]

What we've failed to mention so far is the effect of the ship-stats and their attack-defence bias. It's up to the stats maker how many defence fleets are going to be needed to cover an attack fleet - 2, 3, 4?

Further consider that if we create larger galaxies and don't allow exiling, then not everyone in the galaxy is going to be particularly active or able to send a useful defence fleet.

[ComradeRob]

There seems to be (from my sample of one) less piggybacking this round than in the past.

[Makhil]

time to introduce the 'aggressive attack mode', where the attacker ships fire at everybody (except his own alliance ofc) including other attacking fleets.

[GrandAdm Thrawn]

pigging is no problem for me, actually its fun having unplanned attack combinations. Sometimes they help you get through, sometimes they take away some of "your" roids. And sometimes you find yourself teaming up with people whom you attacked just the other day - and if you need to rely on them landing to get through yourself this adds to the excitement

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Makhil

time to introduce the 'aggressive attack mode', where the attacker ships fire at everybody (except his own alliance ofc) including other attacking fleets.

I remember seeing this suggested before and I say yes.

In a similar fashion to the population changes, perhaps you could have a feature to roughly set the focus of your attacks more to defenders or other attackers. Probably you shouldn't be able to 100% focus on other attackers, but maybe as high as 50% defenders - 50% attackers. You'd have to try it to see which is more fun.

It could be for paid only or free planets get to set it for all fleets while paid get to set it for each fleet individually.

There were some objections in this thread about cooperation and red def but there is an opportunity here. By making opposing attack fleets only fire at each other if they are ooc and ooa you could strengthen clusters a bit and make red def slightly harder to find. If that isn't enough to offset problems introduce friendly fire for the fleets that focus on other attackers. For example, with every 10% you focus on other attacks you get a 1% increase of friendly fire.

The concepts are fairly simple so hopefully it would add more fun than confusion.