Fleetcatch

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Sovereign is a moderator of these forums and is involved in game development. Not responding to daft suggestions of altering initiative would be irresponsible on his behalf. This entire thread is representative of a dangerous trend towards attempting to balance the amount of fun in the game by penalising some people for doing well instead of attempting to help those who are doing poorly. In terms of game development that's a stone cold killer. And don't use daft lines like "if i want someone's bitch blah blah blah". You're presumably not ten years old, try and act like it.

Your post, like Furball's, is a tedious little affair. I pondered not answering it. The response given (by Sov) WAS AN EFFING SHOUTING RESPONSE NOT WORTHY OF A 5 YEAR OLD. Know what I mean.

I know I'm wasting my time here, The PA team clearly prefer to jump up and down about other people's issue, while ignoring their own. As to your charge, several posts in this thread have posted ideas, not to penalise people doing well, but to defuse a situation when people clearly doing well, en mass wipe out single players.

Not for the first time, either:-
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=188978

The idea, suggestions, and discussion was soon killed of by PA team, and their lame cheerleaders, but frankly what is new? Its now the common theme. The thread has moved away from the discussion, into flamefest, so its all probably moot.

[hook]

And while you're all at it, take these discussions about posting manners to PM, they're derailing the thread.

I don't think that limiting the amount of value incoming to a planet would rock. What about putting limitations (a sort of protection period) perhaps for players once they get kicked from their ally? to prevent kick-fleetcatch strategies? (I'm sorry if this already is in place, I haven't been playing this round for quite a while / haven't been paying THAT much attention).

[ComradeRob]

Agreed with hook - take the moaning to PM.

Perhaps there is some merit in extra protection for allianceless players. But I think it would also take me a matter of seconds to think of ways of abusing it (hide your members out of tag all round, benefiting from the extra protection, then tag up in the last week).

Despite all of the whining, fleet catching is quite easy to avoid:

Firstly, don't send all of your fleet out on an attack. This is, in fact, easier for an unallied player - they can split their attack fleet three ways and attack with all three fleets, whereas allied players generally have only two or even one fleet to attack with, and will thus send proportionally more of their overall fleet out in one fleet.

Second, stagger your ETAs so that you do not have your whole fleet returning on one tick.

Third, set your home ships on prelaunch overnight so they can't be stolen, and then use them to launch a morning attack with.

Following these simple steps, one can easily avoid getting fleetcaught too often. And if you get caught following landing an attack, you really have no right to cry for protection; attacking is a hostile action and you have to consider the consequences as part of your tactical decision-making. All in all, fleetcatches are a valuable part of the game that make it a lot more fun and varied than the 'launch attacks at 3am, NAP everyone to keep your roids' kind of game that we used to have.

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

Agreed with hook - take the moaning to PM.

Perhaps there is some merit in extra protection for allianceless players. But I think it would also take me a matter of seconds to think of ways of abusing it (hide your members out of tag all round, benefiting from the extra protection, then tag up in the last week).

Despite all of the whining, fleet catching is quite easy to avoid:

Firstly, don't send all of your fleet out on an attack. This is, in fact, easier for an unallied player - they can split their attack fleet three ways and attack with all three fleets, whereas allied players generally have only two or even one fleet to attack with, and will thus send proportionally more of their overall fleet out in one fleet.

Second, stagger your ETAs so that you do not have your whole fleet returning on one tick.

Third, set your home ships on prelaunch overnight so they can't be stolen, and then use them to launch a morning attack with.

Following these simple steps, one can easily avoid getting fleetcaught too often. And if you get caught following landing an attack, you really have no right to cry for protection; attacking is a hostile action and you have to consider the consequences as part of your tactical decision-making. All in all, fleetcatches are a valuable part of the game that make it a lot more fun and varied than the 'launch attacks at 3am, NAP everyone to keep your roids' kind of game that we used to have.

I think things have been a bit misunderstood in the thread. No one here has issues with Fleet catches. Not even Gladiator.
And the only real suggestions were only in a case where a none alligned player gets lined up for destruction by an alliance. I also accept your point that whatever fix was considered, it might lead to abuse. The ideas put forward were merely done to try and suggesr offsets to such attacks. Not stop them, just adjust it in some way to make it less attractive.

I'm only going to say an additional 2 things here.
1. Gladiator, from what I saw was a good PA player.
2. Losing players like him, and watching alliance based people crow about it, merely confirms that PA, assuming this were to continue, ceases to be a game that can be played as a single player at all. If that really is the direction the game goes in, then perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps the answer is to have a framework where everyone has to have an alliance, and like Galaxies, alliances have slots that are filled, exiled, and refilled. That solves people being out of tag and some other issues. Thats going to no doubt be another can of worms, probably been suggested before.

[hook]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

Agreed with hook - take the moaning to PM.

Perhaps there is some merit in extra protection for allianceless players. But I think it would also take me a matter of seconds to think of ways of abusing it (hide your members out of tag all round, benefiting from the extra protection, then tag up in the last week).

I'm curious, Rob.

My suggestion was to add a little protection to people being kicked from their alliance (for a short period of time). Do you see flaws there / ways for it to be abused?

In my opinion, it's a person's choice whether or not they join an alliance. Especially if you're a fairly big planet, joining an alliance would be easy. What always bothered me however, is that if an alliance kicks their member, he can be fleetcaught / raided / whatever, without any decent way to protect himself (I haven't been corrected so far indicating a system to avoid this is already in place, so I'm still assuming the scenario I describe is in place).

As for getting rid of fleetcatches, that's just plain silly. They're a good way to beat the alliance above you, if they've outgrown you too much.

[ComradeRob]

It seems fair enough that planets from an alliance should be prevented from attacking a recently kicked member, at least until that member has had a chance to join another alliance (plus an additional 24-72 hours?). In fact, that seems eminently sensible, since alliance membership is a two-way obligation.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

It seems fair enough that planets from an alliance should be prevented from attacking a recently kicked member, at least until that member has had a chance to join another alliance (plus an additional 24-72 hours?). In fact, that seems eminently sensible, since alliance membership is a two-way obligation.

I actually take the opposite view to this (and hook's original post) - the point of the 72 hour waiting period was, iirc, for two reasons; 1) to make former alliance players vulnerable to attack for a specific and well-known time and thus able to be actively attacked (by whomever, but i think the point was revenge attacks) without direct defence from their former or new alliance, and 2) to discourage "shipjumping" by players on alliances as players are not able to move from one alliance's bonus defence to another's immediately; there is a period when they are under reduced protection and thus potential loss, and that potential loss was designed to discourage shipjumping.

Now, depending on what you are talking about "protection", it could mean different things - if the protection is only from their former alliance, then i personally dont have much of a problem with it as i've never been a massive fan of vengeance for a long time (Edit: R12, perhaps - <3 Furbeh ). But if you mean protection from any alliance attacking them for lets say 24 of those 72 ticks, then wouldnt the solution be to just reduce the time required from 72 to 48? Furthermore, players who quit should have already organised a new alliance before leaving, so in that regard they dont actually need any more time in 'protection' - however players who are kicked may need that time, depending on why they were kicked etc.

In the end, the 72 tick thing was actively encouraged by alliances themselves so they could have a better hold of their members. I find that mildly amusing.

[hook]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I actually take the opposite view to this (and hook's original post) - the point of the 72 hour waiting period was, iirc, for two reasons; 1) to make former alliance players vulnerable to attack for a specific and well-known time and thus able to be actively attacked (by whomever, but i think the point was revenge attacks) without direct defence from their former or new alliance, and 2) to discourage "shipjumping" by players on alliances as players are not able to move from one alliance's bonus defence to another's immediately; there is a period when they are under reduced protection and thus potential loss, and that potential loss was designed to discourage shipjumping.

Now, depending on what you are talking about "protection", it could mean different things - if the protection is only from their former alliance, then i personally dont have much of a problem with it as i've never been a massive fan of vengeance for a long time (Edit: R12, perhaps - <3 Furbeh ). But if you mean protection from any alliance attacking them for lets say 24 of those 72 ticks, then wouldnt the solution be to just reduce the time required from 72 to 48? Furthermore, players who quit should have already organised a new alliance before leaving, so in that regard they dont actually need any more time in 'protection' - however players who are kicked may need that time, depending on why they were kicked etc.

I'm not sure how you're disagreeing with me.

I never said anything about players shipjumping, they should receive no protection as far as I'm concerned. What I was on about, (and so was Rob when he mentioned 'former alliance' I recon) was that once a player gets kicked from an alliance, he should have a form of protection for atleast some ticks so he could join a new alliance / have a fair shot to defend himself. This, to prevent the kick / roid scenario.

If someone leaves the alliance, it's a whole different story in my book. Also, I don't think that if you implemented a system, you could make a distinction between why people were kicked. Hardcoding reasons wouldn't be possible as they're too easy to evade.

To elaborate; I feel players who get kicked from their alliance should have a set time-window in which their previous alliance cannot attack them, or only in limited force. If you leave your alliance, it totally is your own responsibility.

[Nadar]

But hook, that'll take away the aspect of killing the shit out of someone who turned out to be a spy/traitor/general twat.

[robban1]

salvage for stolen shit solves a lot

[AdmV0rl0n]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

I actually take the opposite view to this (and hook's original post) - the point of the 72 hour waiting period was, iirc, for two reasons; 1) to make former alliance players vulnerable to attack for a specific and well-known time and thus able to be actively attacked (by whomever, but i think the point was revenge attacks) without direct defence from their former or new alliance, and 2) to discourage "shipjumping" by players on alliances as players are not able to move from one alliance's bonus defence to another's immediately; there is a period when they are under reduced protection and thus potential loss, and that potential loss was designed to discourage shipjumping.

Now, depending on what you are talking about "protection", it could mean different things - if the protection is only from their former alliance, then i personally dont have much of a problem with it as i've never been a massive fan of vengeance for a long time (Edit: R12, perhaps - <3 Furbeh ). But if you mean protection from any alliance attacking them for lets say 24 of those 72 ticks, then wouldnt the solution be to just reduce the time required from 72 to 48? Furthermore, players who quit should have already organised a new alliance before leaving, so in that regard they dont actually need any more time in 'protection' - however players who are kicked may need that time, depending on why they were kicked etc.

In the end, the 72 tick thing was actively encouraged by alliances themselves so they could have a better hold of their members. I find that mildly amusing.

In this case, Gladiator left the alliance for more than 72 (rather a lot more..) hours before being assassinated. So to some degree, although interesting from a discussion point, the above doesn't help the original issue of the thread.

[hook]

Originally Posted by Nadar

But hook, that'll take away the aspect of killing the shit out of someone who turned out to be a spy/traitor/general twat.

A fair point. That is basically the only problem I see with it. As UN pointed out it'd depend on the reason of the kick, however, there's no way to check that easily. I'm not sure what should be done to take care of that aspect, I'm tempted to start a topic on it though as I find it a lot more interesting than a fleetcatch discussion.

[qebab]

Originally Posted by hook

If someone leaves the alliance, it's a whole different story in my book. Also, I don't think that if you implemented a system, you could make a distinction between why people were kicked. Hardcoding reasons wouldn't be possible as they're too easy to evade.

And if someone gets kicked for spying? Breaking alliance rules - planetnapping, landing defense against alliance mates after several warnings, posting childporn in the alliance channel?

There are plenty of good reasons to kick and roid a member, and it should not be impossible to make examples of people who, for instance spies.

[Alki]

Originally Posted by AdmV0rl0n

In this case, Gladiator left the alliance for more than 72 (rather a lot more..) hours before being assassinated. So to some degree, although interesting from a discussion point, the above doesn't help the original issue of the thread.

stop using retarded words like assassinated, you could at least you something like 'omg wtf pwnz0red lolz'

Anyway you keep digging up words like that, thinking we actually thought he was a somebody, I actually spotted the oppertunity that he was allianceless, and thought 'hey free ships, better let the other ship hungry fags know' and so i did and so he got caught, simple

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by qebab

And if someone gets kicked for spying? Breaking alliance rules - planetnapping, landing defense against alliance mates after several warnings, posting childporn in the alliance channel?

There are plenty of good reasons to kick and roid a member, and it should not be impossible to make examples of people who, for instance spies.

Look one post ahead

[hook]

Originally Posted by qebab

And if someone gets kicked for spying? Breaking alliance rules - planetnapping, landing defense against alliance mates after several warnings, posting childporn in the alliance channel?

There are plenty of good reasons to kick and roid a member, and it should not be impossible to make examples of people who, for instance spies.

Nadar posed this aswell, and I agree. I do however feel there should also be limitations to just kicking someone to roid him dry, due to internal conflict in example. Right now, once you're out of an alliance, you're between a rock and a hardplace. If you leave it yourself, you can't join a new one for 72 hours (fair enough, to prevent shipjumping). If you get kicked, your old alliance can go all-out on you the second they kick you.

I'm not sure how you could set up 'protection' I mentioned earlier in a fair manner. I may also add it wasn't entirely thought-through, but, as many other topics here, just something that came to mind.

Needless to say, thank you both for your feedback.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by hook

I never said anything about players shipjumping,

Ah, i see. Well, my comments were more or less with the (pretty sure) knowledge that the game treats players who have been kicked exactly the same as those who voluntarily left; there is not lingering distinction as to whom terminated the agreement. As such, at present, the game would not be able to distinguish between players who have been kicked and those who left on their own accord. Thus, any suggested system would need to implement that.

Also, Nadar brings up a valid point; the only solutions i can think of is to have a two-way reasoning for quitting in a pulldown menu (ie, alliance says spy, player says n00b HC), and when both of them match then you have a solid reason. BUt i cant think why a player would select themselves to be a spy when that would reduce their own protection from their former mates. The other solution is to get another alliance to roid the player, then roid that alliance, however that's cheating via farming. Finally, you could just provide the planet with immediate protection (ie, 12 ticks), but less than that for a new alliance (72) thus leaving a wide window for farm.. err, retaliation.

Originally Posted by AdmVorlon

In this case, Gladiator left the alliance for more than 72 (rather a lot more..) hours before being assassinated.

This isnt really relevent to the discussion, nor the part of the post that i quoted and thus replied to. I think, anyway. What was your point again?

So to some degree, although interesting from a discussion point, the above doesn't help the original issue of the thread.

The way i see it, the "original issue" of the thread was how to determine a new approach in the relationship between alliances and allianceless planets, with particular regard to fleetcatching. However, in the broader sense, kicking former members in order to steal roids/ships fits, and fleetcatching could be one method from going there. So, my "discussion point" was actually relevent in my opinion.

[DarkHeart]

fleetcatching is vital to this game without it, it becomes set prelaunch, get roids / recall....rinse repeat till end of round.

Very boring, idd i struggle to understand why anybody would want to be any race other than Zik, unless ofc you can only play the game for like 30 mins a day. But mad props to all the non zik players, you guys make good hunting for us Ziks.

Looking at the total launches page makes me very dissapointed. I mean looking at it deeper, what are ppl doing with their ships for half a day? absolutely nothing. With Zik there is allways something to be doing! and FC is one of the main things! Ofc i blame alliances strict allways keep 1 fleet open for defence rules, but the alliances total and utter command and resposibiltiy for wasting a good percentage of the available fighting ticks per round should be reserved for another thread.

This is a war game, and though a lot of ppl will play for fun, and yes I agree fun is and should allways be a priority, you have to understand that it is also a race. Whether its a race to be #1 planet in the universe, #1 at covert ops, #1 alliance, race to beat your friends score, or that person who allways seems to be close to you in w/e rankings page you give a damna bout... or w/e, there will and should allways be be casualties that fall by the wayside in the race.

A bud in my alliance got FC, lost almost all his fi/co, just under4 weeks ago....presently he has rebuilt and capped a hooooge fi/co fleet. IT is pretty ez to rebuild as long as you have the time/enery/ commitment/ knowledge about you.

I love the FC mechanics of the game EXACTLY as they are right now. At some point this round ( i wish we could use cords ) i saw a friend get FC. we then FC two of the attackers, who then FC 3 of us.....fun fun fun....xpwhores u go get your roids u waste of fun and space

The people who do not agree with FC's are the bitter, or the righteous protectors of noobs. Give it up, you don't help noobs by making it ezier to understand a simple game of maths (which lets face it, planetarion at noob level is just simple maths). You help them by devloping them in training alliance blah blah blah.


All that said, there have been some very good points raised in this thread about making it ezier to rebuild from FC's.... a couple of thoughts....

1) XP for getting your ships stolen? Are you insane! why should you get XP for getting noobed. Man walks in front of bus without looking, goes to heaven, do you think St Peter gives him an escort of 400000000000 beautiful women through the pearly gates coz the way he died sux? No St. Peter hears the account of his death, and noobslapz him about the face some.

2) Salvage for stolen ships? Again insane - Private News Tick 456 - Your whole fleet was stolen, but Brigadier General commander of the Fighter Flagship Bealzabob, dropped his last ticks paypacket on his way out of our system. You receive 4354366 reosurces.

No.

My ideas - (for your own mockery flaming and hopefully humerous responses)
And yes, despite the given example of my ally bud who rebuilt no sweat, these ideas are put forth with the fact that PACrew are looking to make subsequent rounds of PA less activity/committment based)

1) We can currently donate resources to funds. Resource from the fund cannot then be donated to any planet above X (where X is a percentage of gals/alllies value/score or w/e

Set it up so ships can be donated in a similar fashion, so allies and gals can help someone who is fleetcaught rebuild. There would obviously need to be limitations to this to avoid abuse, ie sum1 couldn't crash their fi/co fleet losing a hooge value to drop below the barrier of value, then get donated a hooge BS fleet by his ally. But the intricasies of the idea are not for me to delve into. IT's an idea, and yet its flawed, but given enough support and thought it could be viable.

2) Ziks are steal ship focused, yet we also have some, albeit quite naff, kill ships

Vice versa it so non steal orientated races have a couple of naff steal ships. I know from experience that having a lot of stolen ships at home with the ability to freeze and kill incomings goes a long way to help protect yourself against fc's.

For a good example of this in action all plz cast your minds back to how many times this round 300 scorpions have stopped you sending your co roiding fleet at a CATH

3) This is for when people get FC late in the round, just something I was thinking of suggesting....but with a little bit of changing i think it could suit here quite nicely

Make a clear and blatant distinction of 'support' planets. In fact go so far as to code them into the game alsmot as if they were a different race of planet all together. Give them limitations and benefits that lloosely follow these guidelines

1) cheap cheap cheap cheap scans
2) low low low research times for scan tech
3) cheeeeeeeeeap production costs for structure killers
4) a wide variety of strcuture killers, including some only available exclusivly to support planets
5) a couple of new ships ie, a fighter that has the ability to stay out of combat with ships, and targets onlyt structure killers.

Make the option to convert your planet into a supprot planet available to everybody, much in the same way delete/reset is available to all

The idea - if you are FC and dont fancy the rebuild, convert to a support planet (loss of score roids etc, but research times are effected by the tick number said planet became a support planet, so the later on in th round it is, the quicker your research times, so you can get back into the action fast.

Ofc like i said that a general idea ive change a lil bit to suit here, that could also be used to give our poor unrewarded scanner ssoemthing more to do witht heir time


Woot long post, lil offensive at times, I hope you all take it in the banter and good humour it was intended.

[DarkHeart]

some others that play with ideas ive read

4) a new type of 'wave' 'scan' w/e'

Disrupter
Cost 20k of each resources
Does - disrupts (See what i did there - Ed) the tracking and targetting computers of hostile ships aimed at your planet
Effect - x value of ships per 100x value of ships from your target incoming planet

(in laymans terms since we are all in fact just laymen pretending we know all this computer code babble chinese)

for 20k of each resource u can use a scan called a Disrupter. You pick the co-ords of your chosen planet who is about to land on your planet. If this Disrupter wave is successful, for every 100k of value of the incoming fleet you disrupt 10k value of ships of your hostile, so they fire on their own ships, or their co-attackers ships.

You ofc gain salvage for any enemy ships lost to friendly fire

Percentages could also be effected by your wave amp ratio over the enemies wave distorter ratio ofc for added strategy / fun.

This scan could only be used when there is more than 1 fleet landing at the same tick on your planet.

5) Armed Militia

Planetarion runs under the guise of some vain resembalance to what could potentially be perceived as the future reality....

sooo... (now the prequisite cleaver words total for posting on these forums is met)

A space age planet ina vast universe doesnt just have military ships, it has untold amoutns of transports shuttles etc like you see on any sci fi movie....planetarion jsut doesn't reference them since they dont do anything!. When you are fleetcaught you could sacrific......errr......give a patriotic INDEPENDANCE DAY movie style speech to any1 with any flying experience on your planet to take their lil rustbuckets up into the big beyond and do their upmost to see their fighting boys home safely because your planet will not go quietly into the night, they will not go down without a fight, they WILL celebrate their INDEPENDACE DAY RARRRRRR (sry got carried away - Ed)

Basically -

Fleets Page
Lil tick box, armed militia. Set Tick.

They will basically be flak for your ships coming home to try and divert losses. This ofc will impact on your planet in a different way, such as You lose x% of your mining abiliity due to your citizens sacrifciing their populace totals in the skys above your planet. This negative mining lasts for x amount of ticks till your ppls can make like a bunny in spring and repopulate





o and a lil off topic but vastly important

6) have a lil ol tickbox under preferences to disable colours. That skin that makes pa looks like a spreadsheet is awesomeor covertly checking my account while im at work but those damn shiny colours allways give the game away!

[Ultimate Newbie]

Well, you've presented a long list of ideas and discussion points, and i chortled every now and again, so sit back and rest a while whilst i reply .

Originally Posted by DarkHeart

fleetcatching is vital to this game without it, it becomes set prelaunch, get roids / recall....rinse repeat till end of round.

Most of the people discussing the issues in this thread understand that fleetcatching is an important aspect of this game. However, just because it is important, doesnt mean it has to remain exactly the way it is now. If there is some method by which FC can still occur, whilst not ruining people's round, then that would be a hapy middle place i reckon.

A bud in my alliance got FC, lost almost all his fi/co, just under4 weeks ago....presently he has rebuilt and capped a hooooge fi/co fleet. IT is pretty ez to rebuild as long as you have the time/enery/ commitment/ knowledge about you.

I have a few problems with this comment. Firstly, you didnt say whether the current fleet was bigger than the original fleet plus four weeks worth of growth (ie, no "real" loss). Secondly, you said that he capped at least part of this fleet. Capturing ships is not rebuilding, it is capping. Building ships is through the production screen - now before you note that i'm being pedantic, what i am getting at is that only one race can thus recover from a fleetcatch, and that's Zik. That's hardly fair on the caths who without value become totally ineffective as they cant stun anything useful, or Xans which rely upon their numbers totally in order to discourage any attacks on them - without the value they can be EMPed easily and/or be killed with reduced losses. Terrans just chug along like before . Finally, you mention that it can be done given the skill and time, i would argue that most people know this, and simply cant be bothered taking even more hours of their day just to recover to a position that was probably less than they were before. It would simply be easier to quit, and start again next round - if at all. Being fleetcaught is terribly demoralising, and no fun at all.

Fortunately, the only time that i was 'properly' fleetcaught was R13, where half a dozen ticks left in the round i was knocked out of the top 100 down to rank 248 loosing all my FI (being a xan in R13 meant that 80% of your fleet was FI, rest lancers and arrowheads ). Anyway, i didnt quit only because there wasnt really enough time to do so. But when i saw all that red and knew that i couldnt even come close to being helped, it was terribly demoralising. Perhaps someone needs to be nasty to you for a few times and you'll understand the misery and despair that you inflict upon others . Perhaps then you'll be more supportive of these ideas .

1) XP for getting your ships stolen? Are you insane! why should you get XP for getting noobed.

well, XP is for Experience, and being fleetcaught should give you alot of experience - especially regarding sayings like "too many eggs in one basket", "if you cant beat 'em, join 'em" and the like . Seriously, its more of a practical approach - massive loss in value score compensated to some degree by a rise in XP score, thus not a massive fall in rank, leads to more incentive to fight on and rebuild, etc . thus, potentially, more fun for the players - which i think is important.

2) Salvage for stolen ships? Again insane

It doesnt have to make sense per se; how to ships travel the massive distances between galaxies in a couple of hours? Its not like Stargate or anything, this is the real world where we cant even leave our planet without expending a whole nation's worth of cash. The point of salvage was to provide resources in order to rebuild critical areas of fleet. I have a problem with that insofar as it creates something from nothing, which is why i prefer my War Loans idea. Nevertheless, salvage has some merit to fixing some problems.

1) We can currently donate resources to funds. Resource from the fund cannot then be donated to any planet above X (where X is a percentage of gals/alllies value/score or w/e

Other than the abuses that you've already mentioned, there is no incetives for people to donate their ships to such a fund, with the exception of dropping their value immediately before a major gain in roids for the XP. Unwanted and useless ships may find themselves in the fund, to be donated to players who need 'good' ships with which to use. I admit, a ship fund (especially an alliance one as then there are more people, though a galaxy one would prolly be less abusable) would be handy, i just see a few too many problems atm .

Vice versa it so non steal orientated races have a couple of naff steal ships. I know from experience that having a lot of stolen ships at home with the ability to freeze and kill incomings goes a long way to help protect yourself against fc's.

This was tried in R14?, where all races had steal ships with which to use. Unfortunately, this good idea was ruined when those steal ships ended up totally unbalancing the game (remember when average Caths had more Sentinels than Xans, thus making them totally immune to their major rival?) - that sort of thing didnt help. But it is still a viable (imo) course of action, i doubt seriously that it would change much in the way of altering fleetcatching dynamics.

Make the option to convert your planet into a supprot planet available to everybody, much in the same way delete/reset is available to all

This is actually a very good idea, i think it might warrant its own thread tbh. I like the idea in principle, but still a few things would need to be worked out.

for 20k of each resource u can use a scan called a Disrupter. You pick the co-ords of your chosen planet who is about to land on your planet. If this Disrupter wave is successful, for every 100k of value of the incoming fleet you disrupt 10k value of ships of your hostile, so they fire on their own ships, or their co-attackers ships.

Well, the way i see it, players wont need to bother about hording resources with which to build themselves out of trouble; resource hording will solely be used through disruption in order to kill off other attackers. eg, using resources to convert half of the largest fleet (presumably the largest planets would be the most vulnerable to scans?), and thus creating a large amount of destruction for everyone else, and you could even run your fleet and pick up the salvage. Unless, that fleet recalls at the last moment, and so you've wasted your resources. But that fleet would only recall if they knew that they had been partially converted, which could lead to some amusing games of bluff. This idea has some merit, though i am a bit dubious to your exact implementation right at the moment. Another thread perhaps .

[Wishmaster]

Remove Fleet catches and u will remove perhaps the only fun part left of PA

Nothing like FC a guy eta 5 in C.

Oh..those were the days

[DarkHeart]

hehe im glad you like some of the ideas UN. I played like rounds 1-7 and then maybe the end of round 11, and then not at all till this round, this is my first round back, was going to put a thread in this forum at the end of the round with some observations and thoughts, but this thread seemed quite apt to introduce some.

I agree with most of all you replied with, but to clarify a couple of things...

my friend who rebuilt and capped....yes he did cap a lot of stuff to help his rebuild effort, and he did have the time to commit to doing it. I bought this up to be read in conjuction with some of the ideas put forth by others and myself aimed at making rebuilds easier for everybody.

Also the ship donation thingy ma jiggy yeah it has huge potential holes. Would need a lot of thought and testing to make sure it couldnt be abused, but I made the suggestion as back when i played, the gal fund got abused soemthing rotten. After playing this round ( i may stand to be corrected here) im going to go out on a limb and say the gal / ally funds aint being abused. If you can get the moeny fund to this advanced state, the same hypothetically could be assatained with a ship donation thing. As to will ppl donate ships they could otherwise use, I dont know, but I know ive donated a lot of money to to various funds this round I could of used to better my own planet, and certainly if an ally or gal mate was fleet caught i'd happily send him some shippies to get him back on his feet. Even some kind of ally tax on what zik ally members steal would be intresting Like i said originally, despite the holes, with a lot of thought it could well be a viable game feature

I'll drink a few beers and try asnd create new threads for the support planet thingy and disrupter wave thingy, beer allways helps me talk nonsense

And you didnt respond to the armed milita !!!!

Armed militia FTW

BUT BUT BUT (Allways a damn but.....which if it's atatched to a sexy lady aint allways a problem ofc!)

theres a couple of things you said which made m shiver a lil bit!

At the moment there is far too many xp whores running around atm. I dont consider xp whores to be bad because theres a lot of them in the top 100. Idd, given the wealth of options and fun available to a Zik player, it seems only fair the other races should have something to aim for.

I consider them to be bad because they have teency weency lil fleets. The creators of this game gave us all a platform to build huge ass fleets and get into it with some mega battles. This luxury is being abused by these damn teeny lil xp whores.

They have very little to offer in the way of gal defence, very little to offer in the way of ally defence, and most of the time only 1 half decent roiding fleet, which they either need to get an escort to land, or get lucky to land. To reference another Zik dude in my ally, he covered 8!!!! 8!!!! def calls in a 8 hour period by himself. You know what each and every lil xp whore did in that period of time? Nothing.

Such things as giving XP to sum1 who has jsut had their fleet stolen / killed will only encourage more ppl to become little xp whore rats. and this makes me shiver.

[Paisley]

As for fleetcatches if you are fairly new and are in a small/training ally being fleetcaught is rather nasty. if you are being fleetcaught and are t100 and are in a top ally then it is fair game as at that level it "comes with the territory"

[GladiatorLT]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

And all alliance's arbitors would have been immediately updated with that information? problably not. Was there an expectation that Gladiator would be re-added after the merging process was through, and thus attackers saw an opportunity for a top ranking planet to be attacked whilst not under the immediate protection of his alliance, and thus taking advantage of the situation for which Gladiator's own alliance forced upon him?

Either way, the point is moot.


I presume that by not refuting any of my points that were actually on topic, you now see the light that ship stats are not hte solution to this problem?

OMG u all write alot i was away for a bit. Yes. i was omen.. like 10 days to the fc. anyways, its still not the point im tryin to make. I have been personaly fleetcatching lesser planets for like.. 15 rounds now.. mayb more.. 20-30 ppl per round. thats.. 300-450..Im "proud" to say 100-150 of them quit that round and i would presume atleast 50 of them never came back. so i single handedly caused 50 ppl to quit pa for good... ill keep on fleetcatching ppl. i got cought as nice as this for the first time
since im in these shoes now im tryin to see if anything can be done. as for myself ill be back next round and will keep on killin ppl's fleets if its not prevented. I think it should be. And im not sayin, that its exi's fault they didnt know i have no ally. Its not about playing solo. 1-2 allies max could have stopped that.. at best... likely none. So even if u r in ally, u cant do anything about it. Any random player can be killed by anyone who organise it well.
I think it should be prevented, so people can have fun instead of losing 1 months 10 hours a day-300 hours work in an instant.
And changing ship stats IS THE PERFECT WAY. I dont know how you dont see it. Its not going to change anything for anyone in any other situation, just if u FC someone, you will suffer. What it would do, would only eliminate fleetcatches. Pa has done some out of ordinary things that worked horribly before, outbalanced races and bein forced to change stats in mid round, many things havent worked as planned, some did. I think this could be one more thing that could make the game better.
Big allies might not agree,cause thats a way for them to get rid of biggest plenets in their enemy alliances, but if someone is doing good, does he have to be bashed?..
Food for thoughts!. Stop being nagative assholes and listen to it. It only changes battles for fleetcatch. Doesnt change any other aspect of game.

[GladiatorLT]

FC is important part of game? Love FC? sure.. i love bein on the attacking part, dont mind being defender. not when im fleetcought
There is more to the game than fleetcatching and roiding. Well.. im losing my hopes to get anywhere with this thread.
Ill just repeat myself... for the 4th time i think. At present situation any stronger alliance can kill any planet in any weaker alliance or planet playing solo. My own fault... i should have had more scorpions.. noone would have dared to touch me.. alot more... i used to always get that.. alot of fi/co and some BS or CR that targets fi or co and noone dares to FC or they would need like fi/co/fr/de/cr/bs in their fleet and raise eta.. not like it would have helped me now being allianceless... but theoreticly its worse for attackers

FC is the worst part of game imo cause 80-90% of planets in da universe can be killed and they cant do shit about it. Nomatter how active or good you are.

[Red-]

Sure they can they can recall in time.

Anyways all defence systems etc. are based on alliances anyways so the game at current is tweaked to an alliance game.

FCing is the most fun in PA - the silly roiding game night after night aint even fun compared to doing FCs.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by GladiatorLT

FC is the worst part of game imo cause 80-90% of planets in da universe can be killed and they cant do shit about it. Nomatter how active or good you are.

Launch a fleet the previous tick, recall it during the tick when you're supposed to land at the end of it, open up two windows, one with the mission screen in it and the other with the overview in it, four seconds before the tick jgp yourself on the overview, if you see a bunch of fleets prelaunched click up the other screen and click issue orders (you should have recall fleet clicked in here already).

[robban1]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Launch a fleet the previous tick, recall it during the tick when you're supposed to land at the end of it, open up two windows, one with the mission screen in it and the other with the overview in it, four seconds before the tick jgp yourself on the overview, if you see a bunch of fleets prelaunched click up the other screen and click issue orders (you should have recall fleet clicked in here already).

higher salvage for stolen ships solves a lot and abort an attack cos of fc is lame and noobish, thats why we have allie def but ofc there is always a risk it doesnt work as planned hehe

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by robban1

higher salvage for stolen ships solves a lot and abort an attack cos of fc is lame and noobish, thats why we have allie def but ofc there is always a risk it doesnt work as planned hehe

Sure but if you're in a much worse alliance or as a solo planet that might be your only choice.

[evil n00b]

Originally Posted by GladiatorLT

FC is the worst part of game imo cause 80-90% of planets in da universe can be killed and they cant do shit about it. Nomatter how active or good you are.

ones dead, others bread

You are wrong. There is always something you can do. As long there is one tick left, you can still pull from the target. Meaning you would avoid the fleetcatch.
Or if you have alliance ask for defence before the enemy fleets is launched.

Its up to you to find out wheter there will be a fleetcatch or not. If you get fleetcaught and lose your ships its because you are not good enought or not active enought. Its always your own fault.