Troop Ships

[KatoZee]

I made this suggestion initially in a wrong thread as a part answer to something else, though after being refocused and redirected by isildurx I will endeavour to refine my suggestion here.


AIM

To open up the underused game play mechanic of covert operations and allow all members of an alliance the opportunity to make a greater impact into the progress of their own standings.

Concept

The replacement/tweaking of the anti structure class ships which like covert ops seem to be largely underused (still yet to see any used in my calcs or those of the alliance I reside in). The implementation of a “Troop Ship” designed to T1 Security Guards T2 Resources.

Leaving the “Troop Ships” outside of the roiding class like the existing anti structure class is still advisable to balance up the risk vs reward option to the attack wave. At the moment finding covop targets is largely a headache and a portion of the game largely shut out since most just hire ample guards to take care of potential covop threats. A shame since it’s restricting the game with a hire and forget option really.

For the Role play nutters

The troop ships like most alien invasions hell bent on stealing stuff (roids + resources) land and take out planet security at possibly the same rate as the covop steal guards option. Though instead of making checks vs the alert level etc, the ships need to make checks vs the defence fleet. So it is entirely possible to wipe out all security guards on a planet. With any left over Troop Ship numbers, resources are stolen at again the same rate as the bank transfer. The current structure defence buildings could be renamed to barracks or something, with tag line of each barracks increases the value of guards by (insert formula here) to make them more resilient.

Possible new alliance strategies

An attack fleet is organised to target a high valued player and is sent with Troop Ships included, lovely big battle with ships lost either side with enough troop ships getting through to take the security level down to lets say 80%. Then a low member in the alliance that has been part of the plan launches a covop mission and nets some nice values from a ship steal.

Risk vs Reward

I envisage this making covert ops a more aggressive stance and a means to allow people in the lower ranks of an alliance to join in on high value targets to create the biggest impacts. Because the ships are outside of the roiding class it still creates that problem of due you dual fleet or just tag them onto another fleet.

It can still be easily stopped by A having a suitable defence fleet or B hiring more guards before the land or shortly after. Hiring before could then turn into a waste of resources whilst trying to out speed an enemy covop plan by hiring shortly after tick would make for some interesting news reports.

Rebalance of Covop

The existing terms of 5x value could possibly be redefined into different brackets, like 3x – 5x – 10x dependant on the value. With every alliance utilising scanners that appear to universally have low scores, this could allow them to make a bigger impact into the game, even by stealing resources to allow for the next few scans being technically for free.

Summary

Stealing is fun (^^,) plus sorry if parts don’t make much sense, English not my first language.

[Blue_Esper]

they sound a little overpowered, and hiring guards is not a hire n forget option, as each time you cap roids your alert drops and you need to hire more guards.

I am for removal of covops entirely as i believe that it is abused by many. So by association i am against this ship/idea also.

[KatoZee]

Originally Posted by Blue_Esper

they sound a little overpowered, and hiring guards is not a hire n forget option, as each time you cap roids your alert drops and you need to hire more guards.

I am for removal of covops entirely as i believe that it is abused by many. So by association i am against this ship/idea also.

Sorry don't quite follow, covop is abused? How so...

[Fruntxas]

CovOpp doesn't create such a big impact in my opinion.

Should be changed to impact more!

[Kaiba]

Originally Posted by KatoZee

Sorry don't quite follow, covop is abused? How so...

In my opinion 'abused' is the wrong word.

If you are genuinely unaware then a player can start as a 'covop planet' basically meaning they have 0 roids and just concentrate on getting covop research and core research. They then will use bank hack covop to 'farm' inactive/prearranged planets for resources and make in excess per tick of what the average player is making. All this time they cannot be attacked and there lack of roids makes them immune to covops themselves.

All the resources they obtain are placed into their galaxy funds so the value of the resources doesnt increase their planet score. Most people i have seen do this for around 300 ticks then arrange an escort land and init some roids and instantly appear in the t20-50 (or higher, i think SantaCruz jumped to 3rd once) they have stacks of value, a good income and are hard to roid, in the meantime they have essentially avoided taking part in the round by keeping their score artifically low and have preyed on the n00bs or have cheated with organised farm planets.

Some others take it to more extremes and feed galaxies via the gal fund for a whole round (Shaz did this most recently of note) feeding her galaxy 50 mill at a time for about 1000 ticks. Now i dont want to take away from the amount of dedication to her role that it took because it required hyper activity to do that but this is an extreme example. Creating 10 super value heavy planets at the cost of having one smaller one in the galaxy (although it does mean they had one target less on gal raids on themselves as she was way below the average bash limit but enough of that)

I personally dont like covops, i dont think they bring anything to the game in their current form except for a way to manipulate the game to your advantage and attempt to avoid play the core game of attacking and defending.

Bank hacking is way way too OP a covop and frankly no matter how much you nerf it it will always be OP whilst the game has inactive planets and slack MH's.

Appocomaster has made some nice changes to the covop tree but none of these actually have a bearing on the game and covop will always be primarily for bank hacking, i dont think any sane person can say they have a covop round just to do research setbacks or info blackouts!! :P

[KatoZee]

Hmm now that its been explained like that I can see the distaste for the covop branch, though it would seem that it could easily be remidied by either the removal of of the bank transfer option and increasing the value of which troop ships steal resources or by changing the dynamics of how the gal fund works but implementing an auto fund option perhaps? For instance gal fund would be capped at 5 mil with amounts donated beyond that automatically transferred to the weakest player and add in some form of code that the weakest member of a galaxy is forbidden from donating to a galaxy. Setup a 1% gal tax option to opt in/out of as well.

Or you could keep the bank transfer and just make the tweaks to the gal fund option since it would force the hand of the covop planets being that A, they can't donate and B, they would be forced to receive charitable donations making them bigger and bring them into the game.

The tweak to gal funds may also he welcomed by others since if playing fort style its a quick an automated means of getting everyone in the gal to build up to help with cross defense. If your in a gal you don't like, then you opt out of the tax and would probably end up being exiled for it...

Would this be a suitable resolution?

[Kaiba]

Originally Posted by KatoZee

Hmm now that its been explained like that I can see the distaste for the covop branch, though it would seem that it could easily be remidied by either the removal of of the bank transfer option and increasing the value of which troop ships steal resources or by changing the dynamics of how the gal fund works but implementing an auto fund option perhaps? For instance gal fund would be capped at 5 mil with amounts donated beyond that automatically transferred to the weakest player and add in some form of code that the weakest member of a galaxy is forbidden from donating to a galaxy. Setup a 1% gal tax option to opt in/out of as well.

Or you could keep the bank transfer and just make the tweaks to the gal fund option since it would force the hand of the covop planets being that A, they can't donate and B, they would be forced to receive charitable donations making them bigger and bring them into the game.

The tweak to gal funds may also he welcomed by others since if playing fort style its a quick an automated means of getting everyone in the gal to build up to help with cross defense. If your in a gal you don't like, then you opt out of the tax and would probably end up being exiled for it...

Would this be a suitable resolution?

Basically then you are just going over what numerous suggestions have been saying before. Realistically removing bank hack makes Covoping almost pointless as the other covops have no bearing on a round and cant be used to benefit a planet so really if you remove bank hack you might aswell remove them all, as Blue_Esper is in favour of.

Limiting the galaxy fund is another suggestion is has been batting around multiple times without any action from the PA team. I personally think this is a better option than removing bank hack because really bank hacking on its own is not the root cause of dislike for covops. The hate comes from a players ability to hide resources and artifically lower score. Which is achieved via the funds. The alliance fund is very limited with its donations, both in and out and whilst it can still be used it is quite an undertaking to do so. The galaxy fund on the other hand has no incomming donation limits of note and just the 50 mill cap to donations (though im under the understanding that you can achieve a higher amount by trading with the galaxy fund (the fund always gains from a trade)) and there is only a 200 tick restriction on outgoing donations to one player, there is no monetary cap except the vastly excessive 50 mill. As most players only use the fund to pay out themselves once this 200 tick limit is easily negogiated and the amount paid out is ridiculously high.

I think the core solution to Covops and in turn latestarting lies in the galaxy fund. By limiting it say 20 mill total whilst adding the restrictions of the alliance fund (2 ticks of income donated per 24 hr period) and only allowing a pay out that is based on the recieptents score compared to the galaxy average score. This would make hiding resources a harder undertaking whilst still allowing for a whole galaxy to create a fund to help a fallen comrade. It would also stop latestarters from getting stupidly high roid counts whilst having almost no score and being able to avoid playing for 500 ticks (+ the 336 they didnt take part in to start). Im sure someone somewhere would still find a way around this but it wouldnt be rife like it is atm and would take a vastly large amount of time and dedication to achieve.

If that is done then really there is no need for your idea, sorry.

In turn then if SK's didnt target Refs and FC's (which is everyones main gripe) and just targetted Factories/Amps/Distorters/Sec Centres and Res labs (along with lowering a players research and production for a certain amount of ticks maybe and possibly stealing resources) you could rename them Troops ships and people would start using them again. The fact they are taboo within the game is retarded anyway.

[KatoZee]

Perhaps the reluctance to address the issue from the PA team is akin to asking them to remove one of their arms. Covops is something that they wished to be part of the game and something my original intention was to bring it into the game more. I will yield to the floor that for now my proposal does not serve to benefit since the current covop methods are like the actual intention rather sneaky and underhanded.

The removal of such options is possibly against their interest and the current line of suggestions has not highlighted a win/win option for the PA team to implement as of yet. I will ponder it for a while and who knows I may get lucky and figure out a soloution. (^^,)

From what I can discern they do not wish to change the covop mechanics and neither the gal fund, so a third option must be sought to bring balance to the universe.

Perhaps even lifting the the value protection on a target that has achieved 100 successful covops or perhaps 50 dependant on how much you can raise from bank hacks? Or even set it that once you've stollen 5 mil of each resource you lose protective marking once more. This way people would know that in order to covop they need to be prepared to defend themselves. It could even highlight on a gal screen like it does, yellow indicates to low whilst red indicates planets attacks now sanctioned under Universal Law due to labelled as a crinimal planet regardless of value. That line of thought based on a mythical Universal Law that says don't attack chaps coloured yellow.

This is kinda a third option that doesn't interfere with the covop options nor the gal fund. It allows people to remain sneaky but leaves them open to attack plus seeing targets coloured red people could send in troop ships to take out guards - ooh brain storm mid sentence the troop ships if successfully landing to wipe guards, then impliment sort of martial law preventing further covop for x amount of ticks and at the end of the martial law period they lose the red colouring from their planet until the next 5 mil has been stolen... something similar to the anarchy covop. This way it means I get my troop ships idea, people can start self policing these gal fund chaps themselves and the chaps covop chaps that do the gal fund thing can carry on but now have to take the gamble like the rest of us cause if they don't build a fleet to defend or get defence their covert operations can be stopped for x amount of ticks. But as I mentioned I will try and devise a solution for an alternative that resolves things.

[Kaiba]

Originally Posted by KatoZee

Perhaps the reluctance to address the issue from the PA team is akin to asking them to remove one of their arms. Covops is something that they wished to be part of the game and something my original intention was to bring it into the game more. I will yield to the floor that for now my proposal does not serve to benefit since the current covop methods are like the actual intention rather sneaky and underhanded.

The removal of such options is possibly against their interest and the current line of suggestions has not highlighted a win/win option for the PA team to implement as of yet. I will ponder it for a while and who knows I may get lucky and figure out a soloution. (^^,)

From what I can discern they do not wish to change the covop mechanics and neither the gal fund, so a third option must be sought to bring balance to the universe.

Perhaps even lifting the the value protection on a target that has achieved 100 successful covops or perhaps 50 dependant on how much you can raise from bank hacks? Or even set it that once you've stollen 5 mil of each resource you lose protective marking once more. This way people would know that in order to covop they need to be prepared to defend themselves. It could even highlight on a gal screen like it does, yellow indicates to low whilst red indicates planets attacks now sanctioned under Universal Law due to labelled as a crinimal planet regardless of value. That line of thought based on a mythical Universal Law that says don't attack chaps coloured yellow.

This is kinda a third option that doesn't interfere with the covop options nor the gal fund. It allows people to remain sneaky but leaves them open to attack plus seeing targets coloured red people could send in troop ships to take out guards - ooh brain storm mid sentence the troop ships if successfully landing to wipe guards, then impliment sort of martial law preventing further covop for x amount of ticks and at the end of the martial law period they lose the red colouring from their planet until the next 5 mil has been stolen... something similar to the anarchy covop. This way it means I get my troop ships idea, people can start self policing these gal fund chaps themselves and the chaps covop chaps that do the gal fund thing can carry on but now have to take the gamble like the rest of us cause if they don't build a fleet to defend or get defence their covert operations can be stopped for x amount of ticks. But as I mentioned I will try and devise a solution for an alternative that resolves things.

I think the PA team is not recultant and probably just preoccupied with bigger ideas from Lunar_Lamp in trying to steer the good ship PA out of stormy waters.

I dont see the point in removing a covopers bash limit after they do a certain amount of covops or aqquire a certain amount of funds as they still have no roids and are immune to covops and have no ships so its completely pointless.

As i said in my last post Covops as a whole is not the root cause of peoples anger towards them. Its how people are using them in conjuction with the galaxy fund to avoid playing the game. If you change the galaxy fund to stop people being allowed to store away vast amounts of value whilst still leaviing it to be used as originally intended (see my last post) then in turn you solve a lot of the issues associated with Covops.

I personally have no issue with the idea of Covopping, i like that it brings an extra element to the game and makes a player think about protecting their planet aswell as their fleet, the powers that be just need to curb the wrong intention and avoidance tactics that it is used primarily for and then we could all get on with things.

I think that Troop Ships/SK's are still needed in the game and that you just need to remove the elements that make them taboo (killing refs and fc's) then alliances wouldnt throw such a paddy fit when someone uses them in combat.

If you are looking for an element of realism to the game then you have to have these ships as no aggressor would attack you at your homeworld and win the battle and then not land and do something to your planet!!!! Disabling your communication arrays (Amps/Dists), neutralising your ground troops (Sec Centres/Guards) and halting your growth (Res Labs/Factories/Research/Production) whilst also benefiting from the attack (Stealing resources/maybe stealing structures??!!). In the spirit of you i will brainstorm mid sentence and suggest a Troop research branch (different people doing different things to a planet) which you could load onto these Troop Ships and send to the planet you are attacking.