There seems to be a view around that there is a distorter whore 'problem'.
For those who don't know, a distorter whore is a person who builds lots of wave distorters, possibly building nothing else. This tactic is most effective for Terrans because of their low construction time, Xans for their low construction time and for blocking Mil Scans, and Ziks because their stealing ability gives them good faking potential.
Distorter whores are unscannable by the majority of the universe. This has the effect of creating a need for a class of uber-scanners, who build almost nothing but wave amps, in order to be able to scan the dist whores. This has the further effect of causing most ordinary players to not bother with amps or scan research at all, instead relying on their alliance's designated scanners, or friends who go heavily for scans and amps. Galaxy buddypacks might also have one member who does scan research. Scanners are generally funded through donations, either to the Alliance Fund or Galaxy Fund.
Why is this bad? I'll come to this issue in a moment. Firstly, let's consider what's good about it.
Distorters are good because they stop the game being a game of perfect information. They create scenarios where there is genuine doubt about what ships an attacker (or defender) has sent. Instead of simply scanning everything and putting it into a battle calc, players have to use skill and judgement to decide how to defend or attack against certain opponents. I think this is a good thing.
Distorters also represent a genuine strategic choice. A person building lots of distorters is forgoing the extra income they could gain by building finance centers instead. A wide variety of strategic choices is also a good thing and the game would be boring without them.
So, with this in mind, what are the objections to distorters?
The first objection is that, whilst they make the game interesting for experienced players, newbies lack the experience necessary to make good judgements about how to handle an incoming fleet which they can't scan. New players are also much less likely to have access to a dedicated scanner. By the time a new player realises how important distorters and wave amps are, it's too late for them to build enough of them to take real advantage of them.
Secondly, distorters create an 'all or nothing' situation, where a planet with 101 distorters is unscannable by a planet with 100 amps. Effectively, the 100-amp planet might as well have no amps at all. This gives an advantage to players who a) can log in very frequently to build new distorters, b) can always get defence against structure killers, c) are lucky enough to avoid covops and d) have enough roids to afford 24/7 construction. All of these advantages work in favour of the kinds of players likely to do well already, and against those who tend to do badly from the current setup. Missing just one wave amp construction, or losing one amp to a covop or structure killer, can make the difference between being able to scan a planet or not.
Thirdly, whilst specialised strategies are a good thing, distorters have some extreme effects with regard to scanning strategy. We now have a situation where some people build
lots of amps, and sacrifice any idea of playing a 'normal' round, and other players don't build any amps at all. This division of labour does have some positive benefits - people who don't want to play actively can play as a scanner - but it hurts new players who don't know any scanners. I think scanners should stay as part of the game, but have we become a bit too dependent on them?
Does this add up to a case for removing distorters? In my opinion, no. I think there are other solutions. In
this thread I suggested some changes to how constructions worked, including changes to their price. I think it would be fair for distorters to cost twice as much as amps.
I don't really have any other suggestions at this point. What does everyone else think? I think we especially need the opinions of people who strongly believe that distorters are either good or bad.