The galaxy fund as a bank

[Clogg]

The reason why I'm starting this thread is because I'm annoyed with the current way the fund is working. As it is now the MoD can only donate to the smallest players value wise in a galaxy.
This becomes a problem for the bigger players (valuewise) ingal. When they lost a fleet and need to rebuild ships and have virtually no roids left, it can take days to build up a decent roidfleet again. They aren't able to lend resources from the galfund, since they have to much value. And with new players filling the empty slots in a galaxy, you will always have to much value.

So what I propose, is the possiblity of getting a loan from the galaxy fund, just like what is possible with a bank. For example you loan 5 million metal resources to build like 20 lynxes. From the moment you have lended the resources an counter starts ticking, let's say you have 100 ticks to repay the resources you have lend and some imterest.

And if you have failed to pay back the resources within the specified amount of time the galfund will take the amount worth from your ships. For expample 30 lynxes ( the resources you lended + a penalty amount).

This could help the bigger planets in a galaxy to build up their fleet faster and thus be more helpfull to the galaxy and game aswell.

[The Real Arfy]

I can't offer much of a reply just yet, but I do think too much emphasis is being put on penalising players for doing well. However, I've rarely seen a player lose their fleet AND keep their high value. After all, chances are they won't lost all their pods and nothing else.

As with all suggestions we must look at the exploitations and abusions of it, and the main one I can see is that people will borrow resources early on to get a nice advantage.

Even so, you're in control of your own fleet and its up to you to protect it. Being fleetcaught or pulling off stupid attacks is just a lesson we all have to learn from.

[Clogg]

Well losing a fleet ofcourse means you'll be losing value. The problem is that due to the new galaxy set up, you will always have new and thus even lower value planets will always be ingal. Making it impossible to receive an donation from the fund. The setup I propose here works around that problem and also has an penalty measure to prevent abuse.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

As with all suggestions we must look at the exploitations and abusions of it, and the main one I can see is that people will borrow resources early on to get a nice advantage.

Well actually, the proposal put forward and this past of the reply in particular reminds me of a suggestion i put on the forums back in May of 2003 and that i have had for longer since, which you can see here , which was about what i called War Loans.

The idea was, if you have lost a fleet or ships from a fleet, you are able to get a percentage lump sum from the Intergalactic Council. The Council demands that the loan is repaid in full quickly, so a percentage of your income is devoted to repaying the loan. a lump sum of 25% of your losses is repaid at 10% of your income. A 50% loan is repaid at 20% and a 75% loan is repaid at 50%. This will allow planets to be able to bounce back after being bashed/lost their fleet to sleep or downtime etc, however it is totally unabuseable. It would also let the Fund be used for its current function - to kickstart new and underprivelidged players instead of being used to assist large players who should be able to fend for themselves as Arfy mentioned in the final part of his post.

EDIT: just to make it clear, you can only collect a War Loan after you have lost your fleet or ships from your fleet. This constrasts strongly with being able to borrow before you loose your fleet as that is obviously stupid. But apparently, i didnt make that clear enough for some people (/me waves @ Kal).

Thoughts?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Clogg

Well losing a fleet ofcourse means you'll be losing value. The problem is that due to the new galaxy set up, you will always have new and thus even lower value planets will always be ingal. Making it impossible to receive an donation from the fund. The setup I propose here works around that problem and also has an penalty measure to prevent abuse.

the values of free and paid planets are weighted differently when calculating the minimum value that can be donated to to help counter that problem

[furball]

With any sort of loan, I'd be getting it at ETA 5 and ordering some fluffy ships to smash my attacker. Planet scan for saved resources? No problem.

[furball]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

EDIT: just to make it clear, you can only collect a War Loan after you have lost your fleet or ships from your fleet. This constrasts strongly with being able to borrow before you loose your fleet as that is obviously stupid. But apparently, i didnt make that clear enough for some people (/me waves @ Kal).

Thoughts?

Well, it's better than the original idea.


You need far more detail on the implementation otherwise it'll be way too abusable. How many ships do you need to qualify? 100% replacement? 50% replacement? (i.e. if you lose x resources in ships, how many resources can you loan back?). What's to stop me crashing a few ships, then taking out a huge loan 10 ticks from the end (knowing I can never repay it - but won't have to), and building a shitload of shippies?


EDIT: Dynamic salvage still remains superior to every suggestion on the front page of the Suggestions Forum. Give this dynamic salvage to defenders and finally def-whores (hi phthia) can keep their rightful place in the game. I can't find the thread on XP for defenders, but I'm convinced we need it as well.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by furball

You need far more detail on the implementation otherwise it'll be way too abusable. How many ships do you need to qualify?

Well, i thought that any ships lost in combat would be able to be re-purchased - whether it was 5 ships or 5 million. Though this can obviously be up for review.

100% replacement? 50% replacement? (i.e. if you lose x resources in ships, how many resources can you loan back?).

If you actually read the proposal (), you would see that you would be able to choose three levels of replacements - 25% of the resources of your lost ships returned at 10% of your income, 50% at 20% and 75% losses returned at 50% of your income. That was pretty clear to me, but maybe its not just Kal with reading difficulty today - is there something in the air over in pommy land today?

Anyway, the maximum level was 75% returned - that could have been more clear.

What's to stop me crashing a few ships, then taking out a huge loan 10 ticks from the end (knowing I can never repay it - but won't have to), and building a shitload of shippies?

Well, obviously, if you crash your fleet, you will only get up to 3/4 of the resources back to re-build it. Say you crashed 10k Roaches into some Dragons and lost them all, you'd only then be able to build back AT MOST 7500 - a loss of 2500 Roaches. So it wouldnt be overly clever. At no point is the value that you would receive greater than the value that you have lost - so doing anything like that is pretty silly. The only instances that i can think of where it could be beneficial is if you crashed your 10000 Roaches into, say, a Zik who then stole them - and then you were able to gain back 7500 and the Zik would have 10k additional roaches - however this is farming and ideally would be detected by the MH team and have both planets deleted. The other instance would be where you destroy your 'old' roiding fleet and use the resources to purchase ships of your 'new' roiding fleet. This is potentially a problem, but this is why the maximum amount is 75% which you still have to repay over time directly from your roid (total) income. Though it does give you the chance to use those ships were normally you would have to save up for them :\.

Any more details needed mate?

[furball]

Nope, that's about everything. The idea just needed fleshing out a bit.


I'm not especially bothered about people changing roid fleets, it'll only happen if people are desperate to do so anyway - otherwise the drop in income is too harsh.


Overall the idea gets a B+ from me I still hunger for dynamic salvage and defender XP.

[The Real Arfy]

Originally Posted by furball

EDIT: Dynamic salvage still remains superior to every suggestion on the front page of the Suggestions Forum. Give this dynamic salvage to defenders and finally def-whores (hi phthia) can keep their rightful place in the game. I can't find the thread on XP for defenders, but I'm convinced we need it as well.

Yes fs!

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

idea

This idea looks pretty sound, but as I said earlier, its really the player's choice on how much protection they give their fleet - for example I've seen players stick to three classes of ship (i.e. CO/DE/CR for a cathaar) so that no fleet is ever left home to be caught.

As a player who is usually quite highly ranked, especially in value, this idea would benefit me. However, part of the game is about taking risks and planning your missions, and preventing your ships from dying, and as such it is my responsibility if my ships are killed - it can only ever be my own fault, nobody else has access to my account.

[furball]

Cool, I just gave Arfy an extra blob. FEEL THE POWER OF MY BLOB PENIS!!

[The Real Arfy]

I've gotten over 200 rep points from 4 people in about 36 hours. Boy oh boy, I feel special.

[Monroe]

I really don't see what this idea really adds to the game. It allows players who loose their fleet to rebuild quickly, but at a long term cost in total resources, which I personally don't see as an advantage. The only real advantage I can see is that a peticularly cleaver player can probably find a way to exploit it leading to abuses. So while the idea is interesting, and I'm all for making the gal fund more useful, I can't see how this particular idea adds significantly to the game play, and there is potentially a lot of work needing to be done to prevent abuses.

[furball]

Soveh, before you explode, he's talking about the original idea, not your wonderful War Loans one.



<3

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by furball

Soveh, before you explode, he's talking about the original idea, not your wonderful War Loans one.

Thankyou kindly for pointing that out to me - although i already had exploded i hadnt got around to firing off a broadside on the forum yet .

/me waves at Monroe - fear me naught .

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by furball

Soveh, before you explode, he's talking about the original idea, not your wonderful War Loans one.



<3

Actually I think I was refering to both ideas. I don't see the inherant advantage in allowing people to recover quickly from their mistakes at the cost of their long term growth. Ok, sure there may be a phsycological advantage in seeing your ships reapear quickly after a big loss, but your sacficing long term growth to do this. One abuse I could think of is, what if I have a large fleet and lots of roids and get roided down to the point where my total income is well under 30k of each resource. I then go and scuicide my large fleet, get 70% of it back, how do I pay off that HUGE loan? If it just takes a percentage of my total resources it could take months to pay it off, if it takes a fixed amount of my resources per tick, then what happens if that amount is more then I make a tick?

I guess my real problem is I don't see how this adds significantly to PA, for either small or big players, but maybe (and probably) I'm just dense.

[Clogg]

Ok just looked up the thread again to see if something was still hapenning here, but apperently it went a bit death.

I have to say I like the proposal made by Sovereign better then my own proposal. And about being stupid to have your fleet suicided. Well unfortunately this game goes on 24/7 if all goes well with the ticker. But you can't be online 24/7. Last round I had 2 fleets dying because of some ISP trouble. I also lost alot of ships in incommings while I was at work without any acces from there, so no possibility to ship out. Also people can get fleetcaught.

Allthough the last is another thing, but these things can be the cause for people to quit playing. How many active players are left? 500 or something? So in my opinion we should put a little more effort in keeping people stick with the game. This could be one of those measures.

[furball]

Last round I lost most of my fleet on multiple occasions. It seems that I became afflicted with a need for 'sleep', I can't quite put my finger on why but I think that it's connected to the imbuement of alcomohol. I seem unable to time the end of this 'sleep' correctly to coincide with the recalling of my attack fleets. This seems to be the reason why my planet does badly .


Down with 'sleep'! Power to the people!

[Shyne]

The current gal fund is poor, and suffers a catastrophic fate in an inactive / GC/MoD-less galaxy.

Bank is a good idea Clogg.