Covert ops

[MegaNova]

This round i started a planet with the idea of just having some fun with some mates, and i was just going to login and do some attacks from time to time.
Then i got invited by my dear friend zzhou to join his covert op/scan gal.
The idea was just to piss off some scanners and some ppl that might attack us.
But afther a while my rank went down and down becouse i spent like 400k of each resource type on covert ops every day and i didnt get any/almost no XP for it.

Its not like i play PA for the ranking, but i would want to see a little more back in score for all the covert ops i do.

[JC]

Gerbie pretty much won r10 with cov ops, then they decided to change the system when they realised he had got to #1 in an unconventional manner.

[MegaNova]

Yes i remember, but now i get NO score for it.
I have destroyed about 65 buildings/amps/distorters and i get nothing back in return except for some laughs in some irc channels

[Jester]

Gerbie didn't even come close to actually winning did he? If I recall correctly they changed the formula mid-round reasoning that it was unbalanced.

[JC]

I was in his gal. He jumped from nowhere to #1 approximately mid way through the round. Admittedly he might not have won the round, but he was the reason PA team decided to change the balance of cov ops.

I was against the change because all he did was use a different tactic that very few other people had thought off, and it payed off for him. He did the exact same thing in the beta and nobody cared then even though i think he was top 10 in that.

[Jester]

Yeah, I found it pretty silly and annoying. Not just because he managed to do well, but because it was obviously not broken; He was one of very few covoppers in the top100. Something is only broken when it's done en masse. Like Xan last round or Zik this round.

[Kal]

ot wans;t actually the covert ops that gave him the score - it was due to the xp from combat formulae

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Kal

ot wans;t actually the covert ops that gave him the score - it was due to the xp from combat formulae

My point still stands.

[DukePaul]

How Gerbie got #1: He cov'opped alot, which pissed certian people off, so his gal got big incs. As no one could target him (he had 3 roids), he sent his 9 ships to a galmate. Those 9 ships killed 3 enemy fi (or something like that), and as the enemy was 115x bigger than him, he got the scoregain from the kill multiplied with 115. Easily put him at #1, with 20% more score than 2nd. Even Spinner had no idea what had happened, Gerbie showed me a msg from Spinner, where he asked how the hell Gerbie had managed to get to #1 with just 3 roids.

So, it was in fact not the covop that got him into top1, but the fact that there was no roof on the scoregain caused by big attackers.

On a side note, he stole shitloads of res, and put it all in the fund, and he was the MoD himself - once in a while he donated everything to himself, and climbed up to #1, and then sent all back to fund after the tick. Was the big laugh in Vengeance :-) However, he got disinterested in the round, so after a while he stopped (atleast that's how I remember it). I wonder if he'd have won if he had just kept going with that res-strat through the entire round...

[Rc mayhem]

i think you should get a reasonable amount of exp for cov-oping, but not disproportional to the amount you would get from destroying things in battle, although it does cos more to destroy ships than attacking does so maybe it should be more than attack.....

[mist]

covert ops, or at least what i've seen of them, require less input than attacking with ships tho. imo they're too simplistic to be rewarded to the same degree as attacking

-mist

[Jester]

Originally Posted by mist

covert ops, or at least what i've seen of them, require less input than attacking with ships tho. imo they're too simplistic to be rewarded to the same degree as attacking

No one said they should though. But if someone cba to get up every other hour to launch covert operations, I think a reward more substantial than 1-2 XP should be considered.

[Helix]

wow, the xp is only 1-2 lol that is stupid.

The real imbalance with covert ops from pax was the fact that there was no limit on the gal fund. I forget who it was but someone finished like rank 13 from resource hacking the entire round. Had like 130 asteroids and a fleet bigger than most people at the end of the round. I dont believe that the XP from covert ops was ever really too high (like it was with scans in 10.5) and it should certainly be worth more points than 1-2.

For example, for every asteroid you destroy you should get the same xp as if you had stolen it. Kill a structure? same xp as if you had killed it in battle.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Helix

For example, for every asteroid you destroy you should get the same xp as if you had stolen it. Kill a structure? same xp as if you had killed it in battle.

That sounds reasonable. It's not possible to destroy a whole lot of roids, plus you don't get to keep them so miss out on value (both direct and indirect).

[MegaNova]

Helix that idd sounds very reasonable. Unless you only get 1-2 xp for that aswell.

[mist]

Originally Posted by MegaNova

Helix that idd sounds very reasonable. Unless you only get 1-2 xp for that aswell.

why would it then be unreasonable?

-mist

[Cayl]

Originally Posted by Jester

Yeah, I found it pretty silly and annoying. Not just because he managed to do well, but because it was obviously not broken; He was one of very few covoppers in the top100. Something is only broken when it's done en masse. Like Xan last round or Zik this round.

Clearly roiding is broken. Everyone's doing it.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Cayl

Clearly roiding is broken. Everyone's doing it.

You should know what I mean. If the entire top100 is made of people using the exact same strategy, something might be wrong. Note the 'might' bit. If everyone in the top100 is Zikonian, Cutlasses may be broken. We'll see by the end of the round if this holds.

Since no one could improve upon, or even closely match Gerbie's efficiency, it wasn't really broken to the extent that it needed to be fixed immediately. It definitely was unbalanced though.

Roiding has been unbalanced in some rounds as well. Except it's usually been so in the other direction, making the game progress in slow motion.

[MegaNova]

I just think its silly that in PAX the pa crew added new things for the more inactive players. They downgrade it when somebody found a way to get loads of XP for it, and then its so useless score wise that you could better stock the resources you would use for it, becouse that would give you more score.
So if you are playing a round where you only want to login, not getting loads of roids becouse that would give you incoming from big alliances but activity wise still want to end top1000, it clearly isnt possible. When i only did covert ops every 2 ticks and killed 1-2 amps i was ranked 1600th, when i went away for 2 days i went up 200 ranks for the resources i got in that time.

[zzhou]

I think that for each building, amp, distorter, ship, roid you destroy using a covert op you should receive similar XP you would get if they were killed in combat.

Now you are saying, what if a tiny little planet does a covert op on a huge top 100 planet, and recieves massive XP and wins the round..

Most top 100 planets have quite a high % of security centres, so the actual chance of succeeding a covert op on them is quite small, similar to the chance of a smallish planet roiding a bigger planet

Resource hacking is fine the way it is, if done correctly the resources stolen more than compensate for the resources used, or XP not gained.

At the moment most of the other covert ops are disturbing for the target planet (losing buildings, amps, resources, or minor losses of ships and roids), but the covert opper gains little in terms of XP, except the satisfaction of killing stuff. Maybe more score/XP compensation in the next rounds.

Sure anybody can covert op, but then again anyone can attack, face it neither of them are difficult to do.

Covert opping/scanning actively can be as time wasting as real attacking and defending, and should be rewarded more adequately.

As far as I know the effectiveness of a covert op squad within an alliance situation has yet to be explored, and I think a squad would be quite effective in shutting down galaxies/planets in early parts of the round when planets have low security.

[Little Timmy]

zzhou in serious post without the use of the "f" word shocker.

But that aside, perhaps this should be something that should be explored more for round 13. It will give an extra dimension to the game. Whilst it is amusing having the Covert Team target and kill other alliances scanners. The covert operators should get some sort of reward. it adds a further dimension to the game.

[mist]

if covert opers should get a decent reward, suggest how covert ops could be come more involving, so that they're worth rewarding.

attacking you have to construct a fleet, get a target, hope there's no defence
covert ops you click and hope

one's more involved than the other

however you argue it, people play covert ops because they can do it while they're 'inactive'. therefore, it must be easier and less reward worthy
-mist

[MegaNova]

And i bet that searching for scanners coordinates and searching for planets to resource hack arent time consuming?
-----
attacking you have to construct a fleet <-- we need to get proper stealth and it takes loads of research time to get to the destroying buildings covert op
get a target, hope there's no defence <-- finding a scanner is hard aswell, its not like there are 5k planets that you can just look at and pick the easiest one to covert op
covert ops you click and hope <-- attacking is the same, only you have to dwait 7-9 ticks for the outcome


sorry jester i aint good in the quote thingy

[x-dANGEr]

Don't forget that covert operations are unlike battles, they are harder to get as if you want to get a good result from the operation, you need to have more covert ops in it, but when you increse the number of covert ops, it gets easier to the other planet to catch your operatares, from my view on the subject, i think that you should put an XP reward to both, scanners and cover oppers.

[mist]

however you paint it, covert ops are for newbs or a lazy round. why do you think that is?

-mist

[Judge]

Covert ops can have a dramatic affect when used correctly.

For example:

Last round one particularly hostile planet had every structure destroyed prior to a wave of attacks.

Thus he had no opportunity to build ships during that period, and then everytime he got a new construction one of our Cov-opper destroyed it, he was static for days other than resources piling up that he couldnt use.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by mist

however you paint it, covert ops are for newbs or a lazy round. why do you think that is?

-mist

Covert operations you have to log on every other tick make premium use of. Every missed tick is a missed opportunity. No one's saying one covert operation should gain you the same amount as an attack, but doing something every other tick (8 times a day?) is hardly lazy. It just means they can sleep at any time they want.

Remember also that roidgains scale up as the round progresses, covert operations don't scale as nicely. Giving them some tangible reward is not the same as putting them on equal footing with attackers.

[Rc mayhem]

in attacks you destroy a hell of a lot more ships, steal roids which then give you income and destroy up to 20% of the planets structures, with covert ops you have to be hugely active to do the same amount per day, and even then you lose out on income. Therefore attacks will always get you more. Also from my experience it is very hard to cov-op with the resource hacking as it is hard to find a good target with a lot to steal, if you muck up you normally end up losing res so it is not like it is easy and clicking. Now from what i can see it seems that everyone bar mist likes the idea of giving more for co-ops and, I may be wrong here, mist doesnt like that as they believe that PA should be only for those who can attack at any time of the day and stay up all night, every night to attack. This is a bit of an elitest view and the type which, if carried out, would lead to the game having only the 200-300 or so really hardcore players. We must give those who are active but cant do night time attacks a chance at another strategy where they wont win but they still stand a chance of been top200.

</rant>

Cm

[mist]

'heh'

i'd suggest more research before you decide who i am

i dislike covert ops because of their instantaniou nature. in order to attack etc you need to build up a fleet and stuff. in order to covert op you just need to launch the thing.

also, i dislike the way that you can covert op anyone, yet there's a bash limit. if someone attacks me i want to be able to attack back, otherwise the game's lame.

also, and i don't know if this is still the case, smaller planets used to be intrinically better at covert opping. this just seems wrong

-mist

[Jester]

Originally Posted by mist

also, i dislike the way that you can covert op anyone, yet there's a bash limit. if someone attacks me i want to be able to attack back, otherwise the game's lame.

I agree, the bash limit should work the other way as well.

[x-dANGEr]

SO??? Is tehre any exp. for covert ops or not???

[x-dANGEr]

Is anyone around???

[mist]

do one

if you gain XP yes, otherwise no

-mist

[Kal]

u do get XP for covert ops, not certain how much, from memory the resoruce stealing covert op is the potentially most rewarding.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Kal

u do get XP for covert ops, not certain how much, from memory the resoruce stealing covert op is the potentially most rewarding.

I was wrong it seems - u get more XP the more u invest in a covert op - e.g. a more difficult one and by using more agents

[x-dANGEr]

I noticed tha the rewarding of covert ops is really low, i sent 50 agents to sabotage, all waht they did is destroying 16 ships,12 corsairs, 3 cutlass and 1 bucaneer, it makes, 50k for nothing, and you can't put more agents, so you'll keep doing that losing in a percent of, 300%+, you should do sth. to covert ops, eitehr increase the exp. or even making cover ops a little bit stronger.

[MegaNova]

oki mist here is another thing to think about.
there is this inactive planet he has 200 roids (40000score)
he has 5buildings(7500score) and loads of stocked res(40000score)
and ofc some ships(20000score)

now those kinda planets were bigger then me when i had done about 30 covert ops between tick 200 and 300, and i bet they were loads of less active then me.