"Gang Bang Protection"

[Rassputtin]

I"ve played alot of online browser/text based games.
This one, is one of the better ones as far as development goes,particularly in regards to game play mechanics regarding units, and how they interact and the variations.

The units, and the way they interact are pretty top notch. The only glaring "flaw" that I see in regards to this game, is the goliath factor.

Although probably the best at unit interaction mechanics, this game is by far one of the worse in regards to the ability to rape and farm smaller players.

Which is the biggest turn off for players, especially new players trying out the game.

I'm new, and I just played a couple of speed rounds, and although I'm pretty sure I won't be playing this game again due to that very reason stated above. I decided that I would make the suggestion to make it a bit better. Perhaps it would increase the member count, as well as get people like me to stay, or come back once there is a little more balance. So before I depart, my suggestion.

I prefer to call it "Gang Bang Protection" or "GB" for short. Because thats what it feels like when someone just under 3 times your size, attacks you every 21 ticks and there is nothing you can do about it.

They just send thier ships, steal your roids, kill your ships, wait for his fleets to return and do it again, over and over again.

And even if you can create a mismatch with ship types to send something back at him, he has a bunch of gal mates that more than make up for the mismatach you had before 15 fleets are sent to defend him, so you have to recall, so that they can continue farming you.

I mean really whats the point of playing, if bottom feeding is so prevelant and easy to do. The big guys avoid each other and pray on all the smaller planets.

So my suggestion is this. Increase the Score % required to attack someone higher than 30%. Atleast 50%, preferably 75%. Make these big guys grow a pair and fight eachother instead of simply farming all the little guys.

Secondly, lower the max capture %. 25% is ridiculous. I mean really 1/4 of what you got is gone in one attack. Thats really drastic. I think it should be lowered to something to the tune of 10%.

Thirdly after, decreasing max capture % and increasing the % of score difference to be able to attack, institute an internal balance that lowers the amount of roids one can capture, for each time he roids the same planet withing a specified time period. For example.

1:1:1 roids 1:2:1
Initial max roid capture = 25% (which is an insanely high - 10% better).

If 1:1:1 attacks 1:2:1 again say within 150 ticks of the first attack, the max roid capture % decreases, and continues to decrease for each cumulative attack within the specified time frame.

And when the first attack drops off, the 150 tick time frame is then assessed from the second attack, so that planets can not be farmed. So that players are forced to spread the "love" around.

Thats just my two cents. Take it or leave it, but I can't stress enough how big of a turn off it is to have someone 3 times your size attack you, take 1/4 of all your asteroids, kill every single ship you have, and leave you broke with some pennies from salvage.

Or worse yet, they do it smart and only hold or avoid your ships with type mismatches and kill only minimal amounts so your score doesnt drop so that they can do it again as soon as their fleets return home......

[booji]

if you have only played a few speedrounds you should play a real round, while bashing is still a problem it is nothing like on the same scale

and there is a bash limit already - "Please note, you cannot attack planets which are less then 40% of your value AND score."

tho it could potentially be made higher... or else not be able to attack the same target multiple times in a certain time period

you also mention that they kill your ships, one of the core parts of pa is to get your fleet out so you dont loose the ships (this is rather more difficult in speedy than in the main game), and with having problems retaling your attacker again this is less of a problem in the main game so long as you join an alliance of battlegroup who can attack whole galaxys.

[Rassputtin]

Perhaps I will try this upcoming normal round that commences on the 31st. As I've read I see that the speed rounds are not necessarily the "current" real round settings but settings from previous rounds? I could be wrong.

If I wasn't going to lose 1/4 of all my asteroids I may be more inclined to flee my ships from home and not defend myself, however I think that is a very wierd "core part" of PA.

Why would one want to always abandon home and not use thier ships to defend themselves. I suppose its because your always getting bashed by much larger planets hell bent on bottom feeding instead of squaring off with each other.

I think it would be more fun to defend myself from equally sized planets than to constantly try to be online and quick enough to make sure I abandon my planet so as not to lose my fleet to a goliath player.

However as you've pointed out, it seems there are/would be some significant factor changes in a slower regular round. So I will try it out once.

But I stand by my suggestions that more should be done to force equally sized planets to square off with eachother to reduce bottom feeding, aka "bashing" i guess you guys call it.

As I imagine the "battlegroups" or "alliances" operate in much the same way. You will have huge ones with an "elite mentality" which will force noobs like me to join smaller ones who in turn will still be bashed by the larger ones which is really only magnifying the "Gang Bang" from a personal planet scale to a larger alliance scale, resulting in the same distaste.

I guess I'll see how the regular round goes, and I welcome more contructive comments like Booji's on my suggestion.

[[B5]Londo]

didnt cap used to decrease if your victim was under a certain size?
that could be introduced for between say 40 and 60% of your value so not reducing the amount of targets as such - which causes trouble for the top - but just making it less good, nothing drastic just dropping to say 15% when U get to your bash limit

[RaZeR]

Rassputin, the normal round really is completely different. You see some bashing, but really not a huge amount, and as for alliances bashing other alliances, that's definitely not the case. Usually the top 6-8 alliances will be all fighting eachother, usually as a couple of blocks, and then the 9-15 allys will be fighting eachother, etc, and if there's a interaction between small and large alliances it's almost always the small alliance hitting the bigger as part of a large block...

Although I agree that the bash limit should be 50%....
As regards roid cap, 25% is actually pretty reasonable, it's actually less than most other games, because you an only attack for 1 tick. Lots of games have a lower cap, but you can choose to attack for 1, 2, 3 or sometimes 4 ticks, each capping 15%... Overall that's a much higher loss, but more options to defend, so it averages out overall.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Rassputtin

....

Firstly decreasing the capture percentage will actually have a negative impact. Its that amount that often makes attacking larger planets worthwhile, otherwise the losses aren't covered by gains. This then forces players to focus more and more on value playing which more often than not means hitting smaller and smaller planets

Increasing the bash limit also isnt that great. The bash limit has never been a good thing, it comes from a good place but you should be able to attack people if you want no matter size. You can have a planet too small for you to hit constantly attack you and you cant touch them. The bigger you make the bash limit the worse this issue becomes and the top players then end up being able to be attacked by everyone but only;y able to attack a small number of players

[booji]

Originally Posted by Rassputtin

If I wasn't going to lose 1/4 of all my asteroids I may be more inclined to flee my ships from home and not defend myself, however I think that is a very wierd "core part" of PA.

Why would one want to always abandon home and not use thier ships to defend themselves.

hehe yeh I tend to agree and I think I fight loosing battles at my base rather more often than most pa players!

anyhow I should have said that saving value is a core part of pa rather than running for the sake of running

Originally Posted by Rassputtin

I think it would be more fun to defend myself from equally sized planets

generally you can fight against equally sized planets... just need to work out the combat pretty well and make sure U get a fair chunk of salvage

taking out being able to hit the same targets multiple times would cause problems in such a small universe, although I do not try to hit the same target multiple times when I at the end of a round look through my history I find that I have his some targets several times during a round, this is due to the way alliance target picking the same gals several times during a round (avoiding gals with their own members), and certain races being better at hitting certain other races.

it would also take away some options for some races sending fakes (mainly xans) as some like to attack the same target several times to make their chances of getting through higher

Originally Posted by [B5

Londo]
didnt cap used to decrease if your victim was under a certain size?
that could be introduced for between say 40 and 60% of your value so not reducing the amount of targets as such

having a flexible cap system could be quite a nice idea, and would probably result in a greater willingness to attack the biggest targets, tho in a game where there is only 6/7 weeks meaning there is less chance of any planets getting too far ahead - as they always seem too in speedies
the way it used to work (someone please correct me if I am misremembering) was a 15% cap that was reduced depending on score, but as it was spread over 3 tick attacks often resulted in a single fleet being able to capture more roids than it can now (though there was not so much problem with multi wave attacks then to compensate)

Originally Posted by Wakey

decreasing the capture percentage will actually have a negative impact.

Londo's suggestion would presumably keep the cap at the same level for attacking targets that are bigger than you are... and presumably would also help with the bash limit problem, afterall why have a bash limit rather than letting ppl attack small planets and get a very low cap (could cause a problem with ziks ship farming)

would there be problems working out the overall cap when there are teamups?

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Rassputtin

If I wasn't going to lose 1/4 of all my asteroids I may be more inclined to flee my ships from home and not defend myself, however I think that is a very wierd "core part" of PA.

So you lose 1/4 of your roids, you can also steal 1/4 of someone elses. As its the same amount for everyone the amount really doesnt matter from that pov. The issue is more how what percentage gives fairly good amount of roid gains to make the score gains worth the losses of attacking bigger planets. Which 25% is a good value for that.

Why would one want to always abandon home and not use thier ships to defend themselves. I suppose its because your always getting bashed by much larger planets hell bent on bottom feeding instead of squaring off with each other.

I think it would be more fun to defend myself from equally sized planets than to constantly try to be online and quick enough to make sure I abandon my planet so as not to lose my fleet to a goliath player.

You don't always abandon home. But its about judging where your ships are better off. Is it worth them staying at base, losing most of your ships and becoming an easier target or is it better to run them for another day or send them to attack.

If you are attacking someone smaller than you, the same size as you or bigger than you then your fleet will almost always be designed to do some damage and keep their gains high even with extra ships being built. So unless the planet being attacked can get some defence why try and fight. You won't save the roids and your fleet becomes weaker making you a viable target for more planets and reducing your own potential targets

[[B5]Londo]

Originally Posted by booji

would there be problems working out the overall cap when there are teamups?

dunno. but it seems to me that each gets their own portion these days, by that i mean that last round I was hit by a zik a xan and an etd, I destroyed or froze all the etd's pods and so cut him out of the cap, the roids that would have been his did not go to the others, who had pods to spare, I kept them, so presumably if one person was a bit on the big side the same would happen and the defender keeps a few more

[Makhil]

The problem you point out is not that you're attacked by bigger planets, it's that you're attacked over and over by the same one. This is typical of speed rounds.
In a real round, your alliance and your galaxy will help. There is also more targets available.
Cov ops could hurt your target.
You can also communicate on IRC to different channels (public alliances) and give the coords of your attacker, if you can't counter him, surely someone will, and if he gets hammered everytime he targets you... he will get the message.
In real round you shouldn't lose your fleet, ticks are 1 hour long.
If you want to defend you have to make sure that:
- your def will lower the roid loss
- you will kill a good amount of enemy ships
- the salvage is correct
if not, you better run.
Going heavy on distorters if you play alone is a good idea, and protect your distorters with security centers, population priority and guards.

[Rassputtin]

Well you would have to cap both ways to be fair. You can't prevent big guys from hitting little guys but let the little guys run rampant on the big guys. It would have to work both ways to be fair.

The reason I say 1/4 is a bit much is because, a huge planet hits me and takes my 1/4th and kills a good amount of my ships.

Which leaves me with few options...

1. send the rest of my ships to die in a fruitless retal attack or

2. attack someone else to get my roids back.

Obviously #2 is the wiser option, but since my score and fleets have dropped, unless I attack someone bigger than me, i will not get back the equivalent of the roids i just lost.

Which leaves me behind the 8 ball, so i have to hit two targets slightly smaller than me to get my roids back.

But then lo and behold, the same exact person comes back to hit me again, its a losing uphill battle for the little guy.

Which forces me in order to try to maintain to do exactly what he's doing to me, continually bash a player smaller than me to make up for the bashing i'm getting. Vicious cycle. lol.


Wakey, you think that decreasing cap percentage will have negative impact.

I think it would remain the same, save that the gains would be less in either case.

For example, say max cap is 10 instead of 25.

State A = Huge
State B = Huge
State C = Tiny

Presumably state A & B are comprable as far as military strength, and actual roid count. So if A attacked B, he would suffer greater ship losses than if he attacked C.

But he would also gain more roids. I think the focus might shift towards squaring off with someone yoru own size if the max roid capture makes hitting very small planets barely worth the amount of ticks it takes.

A shifting cap would probably be the perfect solution. I've seen this in other games. The more "land" or "Roids" or "resources" in comparison to you that the target has the greater your gains, and vice versa, if you hit little guys its rarely and barely worth it.

But, I'm arguing from a speedgame only and real game theoritcally perspective as I've been playing the speed games.

So I apologize if I sound ignorant in regards to the slow rounds and how they play out.

[Monroe]

Rassputtin you have some good points with regard to the speed round. They don't really apply in the regular game, which I think you understand now, but the problem is the speed game is not a separate game, it is just old regular game code with basically no modifications. The speed rounds are run not as a serious part of PA but as a diversion for folks who either can't stand the slow pace of the regular game, or are bored with it. So "planetarion" is the slow game, the speed game is just a side show for kicks mostly cause the PA Team has a server with nothing better to do I guess.... This being said your ideas are not necessarily bad, and I will suggest to the speed game admins that they should potentially look into making some bash tweaks.

[Mzyxptlk]

I skimmed over the thread and I'll say a few things that others probably already said, but bear repeating.

1) The normal round realy is quite different from the speed round, if only because the normal round is much slower, giving you much more time to send your fleet away if you can't cover the incoming fleet(s).

2) Get an alliance. This is important. It typically gives you the option to join buddy packs with others from the same alliance, increasing the strength of your galaxy and thus the chance for defence. Further, all "real" alliances defend their members as often as possible, so you won't always lose roids when someone is hitting you. If I were to make a recommendation, I'd suggest ROCK, though that stems partly from the fact that I play there.

3) 25% is not that unreasonable. Keep in mind, while it means you can lose 25% of your roids every time you get attacked, you can also gain 25% of someone else's roids every time you attack (alliances set up mass attacks on galaxies, increasing the chance you gain roids). I think the balance is quite good.

PM me if you have any questions (or just post them here), I'll be glad to help out.

[booji]

Originally Posted by Rassputtin

1. send the rest of my ships to die in a fruitless retal attack...

It does not have to be fruitless even if you are smaller than he is, planetarion is a team game so the best way is to go find some others who will help you and then attack him together. Once you have this help and he tries to attack back then when he launches his fleet to attack you they can launch to attack him at the same time and hopefully force him to recall to cover himself.

[Ave]

But I stand by my suggestions that more should be done to force equally sized planets to square off with eachother to reduce bottom feeding, aka "bashing" i guess you guys call it.

You are right about this.

The game is really built for group playing, mostly the ones attacking you arent coverable by yourself, hence you send your fleet to defend your budies where it is more use and they try to help you out. The game is more about roid swapping, aslong as your fleet lives, you can cap the roids back and grow from elsewhere.

There are a few aspects that support attacking higher planets. Such as receiving XP, free score from landing versus bigger players. Getting higher cap from the fatter lands.

How ever these could be increased a lot. We should create a fleet moral, which obviously decrease attacking lower scored people and increase/doesnt drop from attacking targets on your range. We could suffle the universe so top - medium and low ranked would be on their own clusters. And suffle again after while to get the grown and dead ones on their equal playing fields again. Add salvage for attackers, so u can afford to take some losses attacking targets whom can get defence and whom can damage u some, aka the decent sized targets. Those are quick ones that could be helpfull.

[booji]

Originally Posted by Ave

How ever these could be increased a lot. We should create a fleet moral, which obviously decrease attacking lower scored people and increase/doesnt drop from attacking targets on your range.

This one seems sensible enough though as it would be adding a whole new aspect to the combat then it would probably not be something that is possible in the short term.
I assume that this would either take the form of fleets of a particularly low moral would not fight as well as fleets on a higher moral? or possibly easier your fleet would mutiny (EXCITING!) or else simply refuse to launch on certain targets (BORING!)

Originally Posted by Ave

We could suffle the universe so top - medium and low ranked would be on their own clusters. And suffle again after while to get the grown and dead ones on their equal playing fields again.

I suspect you have not explained yourself very well here. but it looks like you are simply moving people into areas where the smaller targets can all be found in particular clusters... simply depriving them of the bigger players ingal is detrimental as this deprives them of this potential source of defence as well as of experience to help a new player. This would also not have much impact on attacks unless you are planning to say that cluster x cant hit cluster y? I think that the universe is all ready too small to allow something like that to occur
as it stands it looks to me like you want what occured by accident in round 3, with a group of fortress clusters up to about cluster 50, medium gals c50-100 and tiny gals c100+
moving ppl around multiple times would ruin buddy packs, playing for gal rank etc... need I go on?

Originally Posted by Ave

Add salvage for attackers, so u can afford to take some losses attacking targets whom can get defence and whom can damage u some, aka the decent sized targets.

slightly more helpful... but why encourage ppl to suicide rather than working things out properly, if they are getting salvage they are still loosing ships. bigger ppl will benefit too, it would no longer be possible to mount a defence on equal losses and assume a large player will pull to save score (not the best defence anyway but it occurs).
basically salvage is gained by the defenders because they are there after the battle to pick up the pieces, get some of the badly damaged ships working again etc... this in reality would be difficult to do during a combat, and in planetarion the attacker always retreats... unless you want a conquest system too!!

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Rassputtin

Wakey, you think that decreasing cap percentage will have negative impact.

I think it would remain the same, save that the gains would be less in either case.

I don't think, I know it will. Your inexperience means you really don't have an understanding of how the game works which is causing a major flaw in you thinking.

Your score gains in an attack are made up of a fixed amount for every roids stolen plus a variable XP score based on the score/value of the planet you are attacking. The fewer roids you steal the less XP score overall you receive and as such to have a profitable attack the lower the threshold of ship losses you can take.

So for example you the following is true
You 500k value 1m score
Target 1.5mill value 2mill score 400 roids

You will get 3.4k XP per roid or 205k XP in total

Reduce the cap to 10% and your XP gains are down to 82k

Now 82k is a fairly good gain, however to get 82k you would have to take no losses. The window for acceptable losses is very small and even a zero loss at the start quickly becomes unprofitable with some extra ships being built or a small amount of defence.

It forces everyone to hit an even lower level than they currently do to give a good chance of landing and for it to be profitable.

And that's the important thing, not all roids are equal. Even if you lose roids you only lose the base score of 200 points, roids you steal are worth the base score and the XP score that you cant lose so even if you cant even steal back the same amount you lost hitting a decent sized planet can be immensly more profitable even for fewer roids

[booji]

you assume that if it was made that max cap was 10% that the xp you gain would not be increased at the same time, if such a radical step was made I am sure there would be steps taken to compensate to prevent stagnation.

[HaNzI]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

I skimmed over the thread and I'll say a few things that others probably already said, but bear repeating.

1) The normal round realy is quite different from the speed round, if only because the normal round is much slower, giving you much more time to send your fleet away if you can't cover the incoming fleet(s).

2) Get an alliance. This is important. It typically gives you the option to join buddy packs with others from the same alliance, increasing the strength of your galaxy and thus the chance for defence. Further, all "real" alliances defend their members as often as possible, so you won't always lose roids when someone is hitting you. If I were to make a recommendation, I'd suggest ROCK, though that stems partly from the fact that I play there.

3) 25% is not that unreasonable. Keep in mind, while it means you can lose 25% of your roids every time you get attacked, you can also gain 25% of someone else's roids every time you attack (alliances set up mass attacks on galaxies, increasing the chance you gain roids). I think the balance is quite good.

PM me if you have any questions (or just post them here), I'll be glad to help out.

I had some clear oppinions on what to write when i started to read the thread. But im sorry to say i miss direct, quility answers. i read a lot of "bladibladiblala"
So im borrowing your post MZ, since i think its a good reply, and close to what i wanted to say myself. ill just add something to ur numbers.

1) The problem with the speedgame is, as pointed out, that its run on goodwill by the PA-team. What often happends is that 1 galaxy "win" the whole thing, and they bash everyone who comes close to their range. easily! Only solution to this is that they reset the rounds earlier, so that it will be as close to Planetarion as possible in gameplay. But please try signing up from tick 0 on the next speedgame and join #speedgame on the netgamers server to communicate with your galaxy, or make a private galaxy with some people in that room. The speedie is much more fun if you fight equally, and not trying to fight an established winning gal by starting later. Ofcourse you should also get an alliance to play Planetarion the real game.

2) When it comes to an alliance i want you to decide what kind of game you want to play before applying. If you want to play for fun and just slowly play the game for fun and learning, do like Mz says and apply for #rock. they play for fun but also have a good experienced community.
Then there are even less serious alliances, that still plays for fun but with a lower activity, and those who are very active and playing to win!

you should check out the alliance-recruitment thread located at:
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=197069

find the alliances on irc.netgamers.org and apply for the ones you find attractive. once you are in a community like an alliance you will learn much faster!

3) I was thinking the same but id also like to add what i think Mz means by balance. When you attack, or even defend, you will sometimes take losses. By capping 25% of someones roids you can land more expensive attacks (sacrificing ships). If the limit was 10%, the roids would be very easy to defend, as it would be very easy to deal enough damage to the attacker to make him recall. So i think its well balanced with 25%.

[Zaejii]

Monroe, would it be possible to remove the bash limit completely (in theory) but make it so that roid cap deteriorates depending on value/score ratio to the attacker and the person he's hitting? in other words, if the attacker was 4x bigger - he'd be limited to 20% max cap instead of 25% etc. just wondering, not trying to come up with a miracle factor. i understand why the bash limit is there, and why its where it is, but maybe theres a way to make it less profitable roid wise when its already not profitable at all exp wise to hit people terribly smaller than you are.

[Makhil]

would you base the capping on the target + attacker scores/values or on the fleets values actually fighting (including def/piggy/teamup). Atm it's just about sending all you can both in def and in attack. Basing the capping on fleets values would force both sides to try and maximize the efficiency... more difficult but more interesting.

If you over defend the capping is higher.
If you bash (lowbie bashing or huge teamups) the capping goes down.

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Makhil

would you base the capping on the target + attacker scores/values or on the fleets values actually fighting (including def/piggy/teamup). Atm it's just about sending all you can both in def and in attack. Basing the capping on fleets values would force both sides to try and maximize the efficiency... more difficult but more interesting.

If you over defend the capping is higher.
If you bash (lowbie bashing or huge teamups) the capping goes down.

No, this is actually retarded. Top planets would become immune to roidloss, while small planets would still get roided.

[Alki]

Which round was it when your roid cap was dependent on fleet value, i remember it leading to pod fleets and a kill fleet

[Mzyxptlk]

All of the rounds in that other game.

[MrLobster]

Originally Posted by Round 6 Manual

Capresult = (homeplanet-networth / virtual-hostile-fleet networth) / 10

If the cap-result is higher than 0.15 (15%) it is brought down to 0.15, so the maximum amount of asteroids you can lose per tick is 15%.

Thats for round 6, it would need to be change to 25% max, as now attacks only last 1 tick.

[mathematician]

Originally Posted by Alki

Which round was it when your roid cap was dependent on fleet value, i remember it leading to pod fleets and a kill fleet

which led to the question whether the defender ran his fleet in the last second before landing, or the attacker recalled his kill fleet, also in the last second. It was a matter of guessing the right time when the target planet ticked.