Round 11 - What's going on

[wakey]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

Your wrong wakey.
Why? Becouse this is a war game. Not only that, but those who put in the most effort, should win.
The solo player should always loose. If a not, why should people use irc, form alliances and so on?

so wakey, Ive said it before, and I will say it again untill you stop complaining about the non-existing n00bs who hang around here, go play sims.

You really are a bit retarded arent you, i've said it once and I'll say it again as hopefully this time it will go into your thick skull. I AM NOT ASKING FOR SMALL PLAYERS WHO ARENT VERY ACTIVE OR VERY SKILLFUL TO WIN. I'm simply asking for small players to be given a chance to grow and have some fun which isnt too much to ask for now is it.

You will actually notice alot of what I post does actually revolve around the belief that people should be rewarded for being active and for using skill. For example I've posted a few times on my ideas for the scoring system (one closer to the original beta of PAX one) which would reward you soley on your acheivements and not how many ships you have and would encourage people to use their skill to take on better sized people as they would get better rewards. Being bashed now wouldnt be the end of the world because you would lose everthing you had built up over time, all you would lose would be your potential score (ie ships) and the resources from the lost roids meaning you could produce less potential score. With such a system the active and skillful would come out on top, they would simply be the people who could unlock the most potential score from their ships but it allows all players to better their ranking by being skillfull and it discourages bashing thus giving the small some 'fun' back and a reason to continue playing.

Small players simply dont want the game turned around so much that they go from being last to being first , they know they arent as good or maybe not as active as others and arent going to win the round but they want the chance to have some fun which is why their concerns need listened to. Give the small players something to play for and you have a way of attracting a great more players than if the game continues to specialise towards the big

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Blazde

You better not turn em off! Wakey's talking a load of rubbish. A low ETA is one of the most important things for succesful attack/defence. If you can lower it using engineering, I predict any sensible player will be using their "first priority" for that most of the round. And alliances will use any ingame ETA advantage they can get their hands on, they'd be crazy not to.

Yes ETA bonuses are always good BUT their advantage can be reduced significantly. .

If we look at the current situation, Most people are royghly around the same eta time in the universe, this currently being the final eta level giving etas of 8. This gives you just a single tick to get defence due to the fact you dont know about the attack till it ticks to eta 7. Who can now defend you, only your galaxy and alliance which makes this eta bonus vital for defence.

If we revert to the old system etas will generally become 6-10 ticks, this immediatly opens up the chance of defence because now the only attacks really undefendable outside of the alliance will be fighter attacks which lets be honest isnt really something the big players really have to bother too much about . If we then figure in the extended attack ticks you simply increase the defence window by another two ticks. Now your probally go "but the ships we can get as defence wont neccesarly be that big" but the simple fact is you get enough of any kind of ships in defence it will either spook the attacker so he pulls and with multiple targets no matter what ships you send enough of them are going to do significant damage.

Now while everyone gets this advantage the benifit is dependant on who you are, a big alliance player simply gets more benifit because their alliance gives them more contacts to call upon, also these contats due to their nature are more likly to have ships as they wont have been bashed themselves or be trying to defend an attack on them. The game just has everything the wrong way round, its harder for the small players and easier for the big when it should be the otherway around, small players should have the easier time while the big players with their greater skill levels should have a much harder and challenging time

Originally Posted by Blazde

Wakey, you seem to have a very distorted view of what it's really like in the bigger alliances. People don't sit around all day long making friends with all the other vaguely threatening alliances, laughing at the occasional stray hostile incoming, and scouring the universe for noobies to bash, (not since the middle of round 5 or so). We are locked into constant bitter wars with opposing block(s). We don't have an infinite supply of defence to call upon, and I've rarely seen allies willing or able to share defence with each other. As for the ingame alliance member limits, I see very few alliances hindered by them (one of these being NOD Heads - not exactly an alliance which falls in with your views of top alliances). As I'm sure you've noticed, the diminishing PA playerbase provides a perfectly adequate limit on alliance size. Most of the bigger alliances are at (or way past) the critical point where they have enough players to continue to function and a lower artificial limit which actually meant anything would probably destroy them.

Infact your ideas about small players getting bashed are fairly far off the mark too. Small players with a lot of roids get bashed. Small players in really tiny galaxies get bashed. But I've seen enough skilled Elysium players wind up in crappy galaxies to know this isn't a product of the player's 'smallness' (by that I mean skill/activity - they become small after a while of course) or of their alliancelessness. Fact is, because nice targets in small galaxies are so drastically outnumbered by active players nowadays, they are bound to get constant incoming (until they're no longer nice targets). A small player can get along fine if they want to, it's only when they try to initiate roids that they get bashed.

Perhaps getting rid of galaxies altogether is the answer... (it surely solves the random/private dilemna that plagues so many threads on these forums!), and I'd welcome a move like that once clusters come back.

There seems to be this myth amongst the top alliance members that roid fat planets get bashed cos they deserve too and smart smaller players dont get touched, tbh this is just bull.

Roid fat players dont get bashed, they get roided. Roid fat planets simply dont require kill fleets sent at them because their very nature leaves them open for big gains from a small, well balance fleet. The players who get bashed are those who play smarter, they are the people who get kill fleets sent at them in such numbers that the attacker doesnt have a hope in hell of getting a resonable roid haul from it. The only reason for these attacks is that destroy the persons fleet either for 'fun' or to open them up for roiding by the attacker or his mates later. I dont think your find any small player who really minds loosing roids to an attacker who uses skill and not brute force to get roids because skill doesnt instantly kill the defenders round, brute force does. For example recently by galaxy got a number of attackers incoming all at once from 2 differnt groups, the first group were from a galaxy, they sent small well structure fleets that would get them roids but wouldnt needlessly wipe out our fleets, this is good skillful playing and it would have allowed them good roid gains if it hadnt been for attacking group #2. Attacking group number 2 was clearly an alliance attack, and included the #1 planet. They werent out for roids as they sent ridiculous amounts of ships, ships aimed to take out every single ship the galaxy had, where on earth is the skill here, all they were clearly trying to do was ruin our rounds complely and this is the type of thing that makes bashing a problem, low quality players who are only doing well because of their alliance and whom are only in that alliance because they know someone and not on any kind of skill reason.

As for the comment of "People don't sit around all day long making friends with all the other vaguely threatening alliances", yes your right you dont make friends with everyone but you do organise yourselves into blocks which leads to pretty much a cold war situation until theres nothing else to do and you go to full out war by which time most of the lower end of the playerbase have already had their round destroyed. The game would be alot better for all if there were a number of alliances all at each others throats from the start rather than sitting off each other taking out small players instead.

And alliances do send each other defence, maybe not on an official basis but I know enough big alliance players to know they get defence drom members of their block because they either have friendships already with people in the other alliances or make them and so they are always willing to help out and get other friends to help out

As for saying alliances are generally at a critical limit on size now and would die if realistic limits were impossed thats not true, many alliances are now only considering themselves at a critical size because of the size difference between them and the likes of FAnG. IF people like FAnG were limited to lets say 50 members those alliances who are at 30-80 members now would feel alot less like they were at a critical level than they do now as they would feel alot less vunrelable. Some of those prevented from playing with their current alliance due to it might quit but hey most alliances would simply split so we would have double the number of competing alliances and many of the other smaller alliances would also start to come into play again and such a situation which increases compitition is good for the game

[Brimstone]

I have been around in PA for far too long, and when i first started, I was in Fury for the Fury/legion wars. This was what i enjoyed the most. WHY: cos i was a member of a big alliance, i had some big friends, and if need be i had all the defense i could need, unless it was a legion strike.

I have been a member of IPC now for 4 rounds, and i have seen something of a difference. This round i have recently taken 3 back to back waves of kill fleets, taking out each ship class, one tick after the other, taking a high roid cap each time. I was dead, with no ships, no roids. The previous time i took 2 waves of roiding, one wave of ship killers.

I have had, and seen similar problems for the last 4 rounds. Once your hit, your hit over, and over again, If not by the same person, then by someone else who see's a good opportunity.

Another problem at the moment is structure killers. They are the worst thing to ever be brought into PA. Someone sends a large amount of structure killers at someone, they loose not only their ships, and their roids, they loose the ability to rebuild it all.

The smaller players cannot afford to build them, as they need ship killers for defense, it is generally the bigger players who have them, and can afford them.

I have been in PA since it very first began, and have friends young and old, experienced and absolute beginners to the game. I have friends, and have had friends in all manner of positions in alliances of many sizes. I have seen and heard all the differences, and all i can see with the current game is the death of planetarion.

I will not pass judgement on R11, as i do not believe in writing something off before it has started, but i see some promising aspects to it, and others i see as several steps in the wrong direction.

I am being vague, but i prefer to stay, at least slightly neutral.

I am not backing anyone's side, simply putting in what i have seen, and heard for myself.

Oh, and i thought i'd compete give wakey a run for his money on long posts. :P

Jack Brimstone

[wakey]

Structure killers certainly seem to have become more of an issue than in PAX, probally due to the fact that its no longer an option you can choose but something everyone can do while also going after ships and roids. I do however like the idea of structure killing but it does perhaps need tweaked. For example something like we would see in c&c where structures have alot of armour but take perm damage to them so while an attack may not destroy anything a second one might be able to finsih the job off. Ofc structures armour could be repaired at a cost. That way its unlikly to go overboard like we have seen in our galaxy Brimstone (I lost two of my factories and a couple other structures and you lost all three didnt you) but its another tactic people can employ still

[Kal]

a little bird tells me structure killing will be different in round 11 - more balenced and more fun

[Kileman]

So its going to be like round 7 right?
________
Bmw 802 History

[Brimstone]

Erm, to my knowledge (unless i slept through most of it) R7 never included structures, except for PDS which has already been mentioned here.

And yes, your right Wakey. In one tick, i lost half my fleet, and all of my ship factories, while the previous 2 ticks had stolen half my roids. To have this sort of destruction within the first 2 weeks or so of the game is quite frankly ridiculous, and is nothing but a method of bashing people in a much nastier way.

I will take their word that "things will be different" next round. In the end, it cant be much worse than whats been happening to the game for the last few rounds, and from what i can see it will be an improvement in some respects, and others we will have to see how they work out.

Brimstone

[Kestra]

Originally Posted by [BaD]Knoddy

i'm not a big player anyway, but i'm glad multiple attack ticks are coming back anyway

if you suck at the game, poo on you but don't bring down any changes as 'encourages bashing' or 'here come the big ones' or some other bs

Its a little hard to be *good* at a game when power blocks make that impossible.
It doesn't matter how good you are, how much you understand the game, how little you sleep, if you aren't in one of the big power blocks you can forget being able to get anywhere past a few mil in score and a few hundred roids.
Yet the larger alliances wont take you in unless you already have a huge score, how can you gain that score if they continue bashing you?

SMALLER player doesnt always = player who doesn't know how to play the game.
SMALLER player doesn't always = player who doesn't put the time into the game.
SMALLER player can often = someone who has been constantly bashed EVERY round by large alliances in effect making it impossible for them to ever join a larger alliance.

Without smaller players along side the larger players there would be no PA at all. Each and every one of the players *should* be listened to, not just the bigger players.

Having said that, single tick attacks = much better for "smaller" players.

What surprises me is the fact that ONE thing comes up every round of PA - the fact that power blocks stagnates the game. You'd think all of the large alliances as well as the players in them would have learned by now instead of just whinging about it every round and then turning around and recreating the same problem over again for the following one.

Best PA would = every person for themselves. Then it could be safely said that the "best" player has won not the player with the most allies.

[Recluse]

Well no game can ever be "Every man for himself" as friends will always play together, and then groups of friends will play together, and finally groups of groups will join hands and thus we have an alliance.

Now, I can be called neither big nor small. I am mostly active, and usually end up with a pretty decent ranking in the end. I like things as they are now, not becuase I'm in a big alliance, but becuase I spent the first 300+ ticks solo roiding, and it worked great. I think cluster/para/dynamic ETA's would ruin things. It was fun, yes, but this current system is so much better. Forget "small peeps can't organize in 1 hour" becuase thats bs. Big alliances work, becuase they have intellegient people organizing things. Small alliances can do the same, to protect the small amounts they have.

I think the current alliance ETA bonus helps alot for keeping alliances seperated as much as possible. There is not alot you can do to keep blocks from attacking together/ not attacking each other.

Random galaxies have problems.
Private galaxies have problems
Random/private galaxies have problems.

Private packs seem like a good idea, but no doubt there will be probs there too. All else fails, just assign everyone a number, and we're all listed in groups of (insert individual player chosen number here) on their screens. No grouping, no para/cluster/galaxies, just every planet for itself. Add in alliance ETA and we're set.

Multiple ship targetting = not good idea :/ Just make it so each race has 2 ships which target each class (much like now, just a few more need adding) and we're set.

research/constructions = good. Only thing I would change would be to make a "Labor charge" instead of "It takes 27k of each resource to build the next construction" as it gets annoying to haveto wait a tick or 2 to start stuff.

Lets say you want to build a C mine. No engineering is set, so you pay, 1k of each resource per hour until the construction is completed. Now lets say construction is #1 priority. It will get completed in 1/2 the time, so instead of 10 ticks it takes 5. But you need 2x as much labor, so now you pay 2k of each resource per hour till complete. Every, say, 10 constructions, your workers get a raise, meaning it'll now cost 1100 of each resource per tick to build stuff, etc and so on.

Research works kinda the same, except the higher the level of research on a certain item, the more education your scientists need to get, and thus you pay more for each research. However once, say, mining is done, and they start on ETA's, you again only pay the minimum amount. Again, priorities will change costs, so whereas no priorities might require 1500 of each resource per tick, priority 1 would require 3k of each resource.


Everything else I think should stay the same. Covert ops are fun, I've been on both ends heh.

Well thats my $.02 Take what ya like and gimme teh change :P

[[BaD]Knoddy]

we can all close this discussion fairly easy as follows:

1. there will always be super active players as well as n00bs and peeps who don't dedicate their life to PA
2. there will always be alliances as well as power blocks because players team up to win
3. when you're in a smal gal or inactive gal you get your arse kicked, there will always be bashing.
4. wakey is a doofus
5. PAcrew is only trying to please us, as players of the game with a product as good as they can make it
we all have the right to put up our views here.
6. he who never changes his views is dumber than he who takes on the challenge
7. i'm sick of reading post with more than 1500 words in it (a bit exagerated, but you know what i mean)

[wakey]

Originally Posted by [BaD]Knoddy

4. wakey is a doofus
5. PAcrew is only trying to please us, as players of the game with a product as good as they can make it
we all have the right to put up our views here.

You are a complete and utter idiot, in fact i'll go as far as saying you obviously dont have a single brain cell in that head of yours. Otherwise you wouldnt have first slagged me off for stating valid concerns and then posted that we all have a right to put our views over.

Your point 5 also highlights exactly whats wrong with PA development. If you just simply try and please the current playerbase (well the more vocal part of the playerbase) your commiting one of the biggest crimes that a games developer can. You see trying to please a group just sees you making the game more and more specialised and which isnt accessable to a wider audience. They should be listening to concerns but they shouldnt be thinking "we have to have this as people on the forums want it", they should be thinking "does this fit in with the overall plan, will it upset the balance, does it have any side effects". Simply the first rule of game design is "Design a game for yourself not an intended audience, if you like it there will be others out there that will also but if you design it for an audience you will almost always fall short in all areas and not please anyone"

Originally Posted by Strider2k

Private packs seem like a good idea, but no doubt there will be probs there too. All else fails, just assign everyone a number, and we're all listed in groups of (insert individual player chosen number here) on their screens. No grouping, no para/cluster/galaxies, just every planet for itself. Add in alliance ETA and we're set.

There are problems with private packs, mostly reduced versions of the current problems such as inactive randoms and fortress galaxies (using the 2 packs and 4 randoms that PATeam seem to perfer it only takes two packs from an alliance/block to land in the same galaxy to have majority control and basically a private galaxy, even taking my stance of 15 member galaxies with 4 packs and 3 randoms leaves it open for some fortress galaxies as you still only need 3 packs to obtain it) but many of them are reduced to a stage where they should be able to be handled by other small fixes for example inactives can be dealt with by adopting some of Tactitus's ideas on handling inactives. Theres simply no galaxy structure which is perfect, its a case of finding the one where the problems are at a more manageable size.

As for your idea, without alliance eta It would probally be fine but with alliance eta I think it would see the big alliances pretty much always able to beat attacks while the smaller arent able to.

Originally Posted by Strider2k

Multiple ship targetting = not good idea :/ Just make it so each race has 2 ships which target each class (much like now, just a few more need adding) and we're set.

I do like the single target also, it forces players to be more careful with their fleets and leaves most planets with a weakness somewhere. If anything id personally just take the feature a step further by adding a couple more classes and hence a handful more ships to each race. Keep people having to think about there fleets and to take risks, afterall as we have it now we can either go for a weaker fleet in all departments but which has them all covered leaving us more open to a focused attack while better suited for a varied attack or we focus on key ships leaving ourselves open for varied attacks or better suited for focused attacks and the more classes there are the more peopl;e are forced to think about this

Originally Posted by Strider2k

research/constructions = good. Only thing I would change would be to make a "Labor charge" instead of "It takes 27k of each resource to build the next construction" as it gets annoying to haveto wait a tick or 2 to start stuff.

Thats actually an intresting idea, although I would personally still have a lump sum paid at the start. After all things normally require a lump sum stumped up at the start before they can get underway so perhaps have it so x% of the cost has to be stumped up to start it (if we think about this as a rl situation this would be the cost to buy the equipment we need to start the con/res) and then the rest of it being paid as you have suggested.

The one problem I have is the priorities increasing the cost, you justify it as your needing double the workers but thats not true, the fact the priority is set just means that everyones more focused on this sector so they work more efficiently and get priority on things (ie if con is set as priority 1 it gets first option on things like metal ect over the ships so it gets completed quicker). If you start penilaising people for setting the priority on these things then whats the point in setting it as your be better off in the long run setting it to something that doesnt have apenalty

[Brimstone]

damn wakey, i cant compete against a post THAT long!

I agree on the "no" to multiple ship-targeting. That is one of the very positive ideas to come into play, and gives smaller players a chance to attack someone bigger by exploiting weaknesses. Bringing back multiple targeting just makes it easier to wipe out fleets, and waters down people's skills.

Imagine a well-sized BS fleet that targets Fi/Fr against a large Fi/Fr based fleet. There would be a small massacre of the smaller ships, with neglible, or no losses to the BS.

Whereas as it stands now, you have a pile of BS's that can handle say the frigates, and you have to bring in other ships, eg frigates, which gives the target person a fighting chance of doing something.


The idea of "staggered construction" costs are an interesting idea, but i see little effect it would have on the majority of people. Also, what would happen if, late in the game, say you were paying 10k /tick for constructions, and you were bashed, really heavily, loosing a large amount of your roids, to the point that you dont make 10k of the given resource.

Unless you have a large store of resources, you could not pay for the construction, and could in theory go into negative resources, which is not something nice to deal with, having played games with similar bugs in, and resulted in having an inexhaustable source of resources, and many a time people exploited it to ill effects, you can guess how.


The idea of staggered eta's for cluster/para is something that i believe can work if done properly. One of the best eta systems i've seen is a distance effected-idea, which means the further away you travel, the longer it takes.

Say you were at 3:3:3, and you want to attack someone in 10:3, it would take 7+speed/tech-mod to get there. If you wanted to get to 3:5 it would take 2+speed\tech-mod, plus you could add another modifier for close distances, in saying that you cant use a high-tech engine due to distance required to reach required speeds (ie, you get there, but at a slower speed for safety reasons).

Part of this would need a capping limit, as say if your in 2:1:1, and wanted to attack 24:10, it would otherwise take 33 hours to reach there, plus a modifier for tech. This could be done via the explanation of the use of wormholes which could be built into the tech structure, which would also limit distances you could realistically travel in the beginning, or with the explanation above with required distances to reach specific speeds.

gal travel times can use the speed/distance rule still, and alliance eta's could be kept using the idea that you can build a jumpgate, that accelerates your ships, but can only be used by agreements between both parties.

With this, you could tie in different alliancing techniques, say you CAN block with some alliances, but the larger the alliances, the less effect the alliance-jumpgate has on speed (time for negotiation periods etc. also, could be built in the idea of simple NAP's, defense pacts, war pacts, and covert ops into hacking other alliance jumpgates to sabotage it, or use it to your own advantage.

Ok, thats enough for now, having come up with enough to make an entire new game structure!

Argue over these ideas...

Brimstone

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Brimstone

The idea of staggered eta's for cluster/para is something that i believe can work if done properly. One of the best eta systems i've seen is a distance effected-idea, which means the further away you travel, the longer it takes.

Say you were at 3:3:3, and you want to attack someone in 10:3, it would take 7+speed/tech-mod to get there. If you wanted to get to 3:5 it would take 2+speed\tech-mod, plus you could add another modifier for close distances, in saying that you cant use a high-tech engine due to distance required to reach required speeds (ie, you get there, but at a slower speed for safety reasons).

Theres a major problem with this that is so often forgotten and thats the fact some people always have fewer targets to hit. than others.

Say your in C1 and travel time increases by a tick per cluster, giving us the following travel times

C2 +1
C3 +2
C4 +3
C5 +4
C6 +5
C7 +6

Anything above this you might deem too far away

C2 on other hand has

C1 +1
C3 +1
C4 +2
C5 +3
C6 +4
C7 +5
C8 +6

They immediatly have one more traget at what they consider in range

Now C10's would look like

C4 +6
C5 +5
C6 +4
C7 +3
C8 +2
C9 +1
C11 +1
C12 +2
C13 +3
C14 +4
C15 +5
C16 +6

They have many more tragets.

Only solution is to 'wrap' the universe. but this in itself causes problem. It now brings any new clusters into the range of the older clusters either leaving any planet that gets biggish to be bashed or leaving 1:1 still with fewer targets as they are all under the limit

[Brimstone]

This is why i suggested a wormhole theory claus, and a speed limiting factor. long distances means you can get up to faster speeds, and cut time in the long run. short distances you dont have the room to get up to the required speeds, so slower speeds are required.

If you want to pop next door to speak to your neigbour, you cant jump in the car and do 120mph there (unless you live in the middle of nowhere, and your nearest neighbour is 25+ miles away...), you have to go at a slower speed, walking speed.

Whereas if you want to get to the other side of the country, you jump in your car, get on a motorway, and drive there at whatever speed you deem your able to do, and you get there, in relative terms quicker.

To start with, yes there could/would be a limiting factor to available targets, but at that stage, it is not likely to make much of a difference. When given the choice of 800 targets or 1,000 targets, and you barely have 200 ships, it is not gonna make that much of a difference, and with a random shuffling of some description that is likely to happen, you have as much of a chance anywhere.

[Neferti]

oh come on. single ship targetting a great idea?! the idea is one of the most retarded in the game, as it makes no sense. sure, theoretically a ship with big guns would have trouble hitting fighters (for examples) but in reality would they just sit there and wait to die?! Bring back multiple targetting - just make it so that T2 is relatively ineffective! is there really such a huge difference between battleships and cruisers that one can be hit and the other can't?

[Kal]

hows about each ship fires twice - first time it fires with its initaitve at its primary target. 2nd time it firs with 1/4 power at all ships - the initative for the second fireing would be after even roid capping. This would basically result in more ships dying and limit growth....

[Neferti]

to be honest that seems just as nonsensical as single ship targeting... though it could make sense, if you set T2 to one class rather that T2= All

[Recluse]

Originally Posted by wakey

The one problem I have is the priorities increasing the cost, you justify it as your needing double the workers but thats not true, the fact the priority is set just means that everyones more focused on this sector so they work more efficiently and get priority on things (ie if con is set as priority 1 it gets first option on things like metal ect over the ships so it gets completed quicker). If you start penilaising people for setting the priority on these things then whats the point in setting it as your be better off in the long run setting it to something that doesnt have apenalty

They wouldn't really be penelized per se. Things would get done quicker, and still cost the same. Like with my C mine example. The C mine would get done in half the time, but still cost the same amount. It makes sense that your workers would haveto work harder/ have more equipment quicker to get the job done quicker. Also, engineers are extra people. Although it doesn't say so, your planet pretty much has a set amount of engineers. Priority 1 assigns, say, 50% of them to a certain task. Thus, in essance they need to be paid :P So when you set engineers to work on something, you add them to the workforce. So with the C mine, it takes 5 ticks to complete, your regular workers get payed 1k/tick and the engineers also get payed 1k/tick, so it costs you 2k/tick for 5 ticks, instead of 1k/tick for 10 ticks. The initial "beginning funding" sounds good too, maybe 10% of total costs to get things running. All I was suggesting was spreading costs out over relevant ticks, everything else was useless background info. I did however consider a "engineering cost" for priority settings on Security, but I didn't think that'd be to popular :P Although it does make sense.

Originally Posted by Neferti

oh come on. single ship targetting a great idea?! the idea is one of the most retarded in the game, as it makes no sense. sure, theoretically a ship with big guns would have trouble hitting fighters (for examples) but in reality would they just sit there and wait to die?!

Whens the last time you've seen a tank used to take out a mobile sniper? Imagine an M-1 chasing a motorcycle and ya get the picture. 99% of our weapons today are designed for single purposes. And since all combat takes place in a constantly mobile enviornment, the idea of using a missle launcher to kill a person, when applied to ships (Large photons used to hit fighters) is pretty much moot. The only reason people can have for multi ship targetting is to make fleets smaller and more easily massed. Why have 6 ships when 3 will do? No, they won't be as efficient in 3 classes as the others, but you'll have 2-3 times as many so it'll all even out.

Take my cathaar fleet for instance. T1 = FR, and T2 = CR. I would have alot less advocates and alot more templars atm. I would be able to attack easier as well. T1 = FR and T2 = FI. Well I don't build any banishers anyways, and I would still build stals, so it is pretty much pointless, but with my current amount it would make Xan hunting a bit more fun. T1 = FR and T2 = BS. I'd have massed them already and would have vanguards only as secondary.

Basically depending on each scenario I'd have 1 less ship class in my fleet. I'd be more focused on CR now then I already am. Sure emp is good for early stopping, but killing makes more people run 1 class targetting keeps people on their feet. Adding 2-3 more classes would throw a new bone to us players and make it just a bit more confusing, but still fun

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Neferti

oh come on. single ship targetting a great idea?! the idea is one of the most retarded in the game, as it makes no sense. sure, theoretically a ship with big guns would have trouble hitting fighters (for examples) but in reality would they just sit there and wait to die?! Bring back multiple targetting - just make it so that T2 is relatively ineffective! is there really such a huge difference between battleships and cruisers that one can be hit and the other can't?

It might be nonsensical but it does lead for a better game, as Brimstone says with multiple targetting its possible to have a solid fleet with fewer ships, this just isnt good on a game play basis. Single targetting simply means that theres always going to be a weak spot in a persons defence, perhaps they are lacking cover for one type of ships or maybe they arent very well suited for a varied attack which makes the game more tactical and a little less about sheer numbers.

[Neferti]

strider your post is a little silly... a person hit with a missile launcher is just as dead as someone hit with a machine gun. just because it makes little sense to do it doesnt mean it can't be done. what if a soldier found himself unarmed apart from a rocket launcher, and no way to get past a couple of enemy soldiers. would he just walk out there and let himself be shot because rocker launchers shouldnt be used on infantry??

meanwhile, wakey didnt even bother reading my suggestion about making T2 drastically underpowered, i think.

[Neferti]

oh, before i forget, will xandrathii still be obscenely powerful and immune to ship-based scans in round 11?

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Neferti

strider your post is a little silly... a person hit with a missile launcher is just as dead as someone hit with a machine gun. just because it makes little sense to do it doesnt mean it can't be done. what if a soldier found himself unarmed apart from a rocket launcher, and no way to get past a couple of enemy soldiers. would he just walk out there and let himself be shot because rocker launchers shouldnt be used on infantry??

meanwhile, wakey didnt even bother reading my suggestion about making T2 drastically underpowered, i think.

I did read it but didnt really see the point of the suggestion, you make them underpowered then why bother with secondary targeting because it will be pretty useless, only thing it will do is take a simple system and complicate it a little (both on a player understanding it and the calculation level)

And you just know that a relativly ineffective t2 targeting system wont make it through the beta stages. The testers will start commenting that the T2 is too underpowered and it will be tweaked and tweaked again until it at a stage where it might notbe full power but enough for it to have an impact

[Troll]

Originally Posted by wakey

Only solution is to 'wrap' the universe. but this in itself causes problem. It now brings any new clusters into the range of the older clusters either leaving any planet that gets biggish to be bashed or leaving 1:1 still with fewer targets as they are all under the limit

Right, so you wrap the parallels not the clusters.

If P10 wraps around to P1 there’s no longer a problem.

[Leshy]

Realistically speaking, single targetting does not make sense. An F-22, a Boeing 747-400, a hot air balloon and an Apache are all vastly different aircraft, yet an F-16 would be able to take all of them down, although some with more ease than others.

Single ship targetting has not somehow created some solution to a problem in pre-PaX combat. In fact a large portion of people complained that the old combat system was much better, which is why PaX brought back some of these features. The idea that multi-ship targetting somehow makes a defender invulnerable is fairly moot, as it doesn't take into account that the attacker will also come with ships targetting multiple ship classes and be able to inflict more damage. Decent players with ship class vulnerabilities pretty much always get defense from their alliance anyway - neither in PaX nor now have I suddenly seen small players striking at big galaxies, taking advantage of deficiencies in fleet compositions.

What is needed, in my opinion, is a much larger amount of ships - at least fourteen per race, including two pods of different classes, and possibly two resource-stealing ships akin to the R3 cargo ship. Accompanied with the return of the Corvette and Destroyer class, this would allow for much greater fleet flexibility. Terran A might have a large Frigate fleet, while Terran B has created a deadly Cr/De fleet. Xandrathii A may have thousands of Fighters and Corvettes, while Xandrathii B has built up a surprising and effective Cr/Fr combination.

[Neferti]

i think i pretty much agree with everything leshy said just now. not that it'll ever happen

[Kestra]

I definatly prefered the older ship targeting system and the fact that their used to be more ship types to choose from rather the 1 target per ship thing.
Overall what PA really needs is a good combination of both new style and old style, which I think is what they are working towards, but anyways heres my personal opinion on what should be more "old style" and what should stay "new style"

1. Ships with multi targets. I also like Leshy's idea of multi-class pods as well as bringing back Corvets and having more ships in general.
2. I think the classes should have their orginal special abilities back (IE: Cat - EMP, Zik - Stealer, Xan - Cloak, Terran - Norm).
3. Research/construction times for ALL races should remain the same, allow the ship differences to be the race differences not research and construction. Decrease research times, especially the last "branch" research times on asteroid mining and planetary mining, they take way too long considering you even have to research them in the first place. We should be able to in the long run research EVERYTHING way before the end of the round of PA it makes it more interesting to eventually have access to all features.
4. Leave Covert Ops in, however I can see a few small problems with it, perhaps if you are covert opping a planet much larger then your own (one who cant attack you back because you are too small for them) maybe you should only be able to steal resources from them and not use the other means of covert ops against them? (such as research hampering, blowing up buildings and/or roids?)
5. Take out the "disturbance" factor, i just find this annoying I rather the old system for capturing roids.

In addition to all of this, newbie bashing always appears to keep coming up and being considered a problem seen as this seems to be a thread now for ideas and such my ideas on this are as follows: (not that I think they'll be implimented, but hey they are only ideas)
1. Perhaps it could be made that planets under a certain score can only be attacked once in a period of 24hrs in effect giving the smaller planets at least a chance to build something resembling a fleet because as it stands now most of the time they build a few ships then someone tripple their score comes along and takes them out.
2. Increase the "protection" barrier of planet from larger planets. In all honesty a planet that is 15 million in score should not be able to attack a planet that is 7 million in score (using the old score system here as I still havent managed to get a hang of the new system though i havent played this round only the first version of r10). A 15 million planet if the attack is carefully planned really should be able to attack a 10 million planet or more and still get through. A planet that is 20 million in score should not be able to attack a planet that is 10 million in score (hell he has twice the fleet! How is that exactly fair?) Force planets to attack planets that are closer to their own score instead of taking the easy way out and maybe this will also force higher end players to team up with others on the larger planets instead of picking on the smaller ones. The protection barrier could start higher for smaller planets and slowly decrease as a planet gains in size.. for example: a planet with 500.000 score should be able to attack a planet with approximatly 500.000 in score and still get through, it certainly shouldnt be attacking anything less then 400.000 in score. A planet that is 1.000.000 in score should easily able to attack a planet that is 700.000 in score and no lower. A planet that is 2.000.000 in score should easily abe able to attack a planet that is 1.600.000 in score and so on. Of course people would have to plan attacks more carefully, do their scans and make sure they have the right fleet against that planet, but hey this is PA they should be doing that anyways.

There are probably features ive even forgotten to mention but these are the ones that come to mind first hand.

[bmwoody]

Originally Posted by Kestra

SMALLER player can often = someone who has been constantly bashed EVERY round by large alliances in effect making it impossible for them to ever join a larger alliance.

In my experience, some of the top alliances will still recognize a "small" player by his activity, not necessarily his size. Show how active you are, and how willing to participate and help in the alliance... Skill and activity CAN be rewarded, even by the big alliances.

[Kestra]

In my experience larger alliances pay next to no attention to their planetarion channels because they are too busy on thier private IRC servers and dont even blink an eye at you unless you can show them a decent score along with your request to join, unless by some off chance you already have a friend within that alliance. But then it actually requires the chance to be able to chat with those alliance members to become friends with them.
Maybe it USED to work that way, people used to be more active on the planetarion IRC server and more willing to chat to strangers, it doesnt work that way so much anymore. In a way, killing cluster alliances and things like that killed activity on the planetarion irc, no one whos already happy and settled in an alliance has any real need to pay much attention to PA IRC channels. You can sit in any number of IRC channels on netgamers now and what do you see? Maybe an odd hello here and there - a small reunion between an old friend or two, and a crap load of joins/parts/quits covering the whole rest of the chat screen which wouldnt look so much if there was actually chat between them.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Leshy

Realistically speaking, single targetting does not make sense. An F-22, a Boeing 747-400, a hot air balloon and an Apache are all vastly different aircraft, yet an F-16 would be able to take all of them down, although some with more ease than others.

Single ship targetting has not somehow created some solution to a problem in pre-PaX combat. In fact a large portion of people complained that the old combat system was much better, which is why PaX brought back some of these features. The idea that multi-ship targetting somehow makes a defender invulnerable is fairly moot, as it doesn't take into account that the attacker will also come with ships targetting multiple ship classes and be able to inflict more damage. Decent players with ship class vulnerabilities pretty much always get defense from their alliance anyway - neither in PaX nor now have I suddenly seen small players striking at big galaxies, taking advantage of deficiencies in fleet compositions.

What is needed, in my opinion, is a much larger amount of ships - at least fourteen per race, including two pods of different classes, and possibly two resource-stealing ships akin to the R3 cargo ship. Accompanied with the return of the Corvette and Destroyer class, this would allow for much greater fleet flexibility. Terran A might have a large Frigate fleet, while Terran B has created a deadly Cr/De fleet. Xandrathii A may have thousands of Fighters and Corvettes, while Xandrathii B has built up a surprising and effective Cr/Fr combination.

While I'll agree it hasnt resulted in small players hitting big players, it has resulted in the better players hitting more suitable targets with reaasonable ship numbers and combinations. While Kill fleets still are a problem as is bashing players significantly smaller than you by having a system where its quite easy to leave a weakness you give players the oppertunity to consider bigger targets than before and to go in and out without the need of a kill fleet that destroys the planet they are attackings round. It may not be realistic but it allows players to play smarter and play with the people they are roiding more in mind. If you have multiple targets for ships you simply dont have that option, every single ship will target everyone of your ships and you cant take the risk of sending anything other than a fleet that will handle everything the planet has which is exactly why we get so many kill fleets heading at small planets.

Multiple targeting ships are just an excuse for people to be lazy and show less skill in the game

As for your more ships, you seem to be suggesting that we need more ships in each class, tbh i'm not sure thats needed either at least with the current number of classes anyway. However as ive stated and you have also more classes would be useful, the Co and Dr need to return and maybe another one or two on top of that, although this has much greater effect with single targeting than multiple targeting systems

[Wandows]

Originally Posted by wakey

Multiple targeting ships are just an excuse for people to be lazy and show less skill in the game

i tend to disagree here... having multiple targets allows ppl to "create" a fleet combo that they like working with. It will allow alot more different strategies then the current setup does. It should make the game alot more attractive and diverse. Cuz now you already know exactly what you can expect.. Xan = Fi, Zik/Ter = Fr and Cath is Cr. Having multiple targets per ships allows you to build a different fleet around your pods (given a standard pod type is brought back, together with the race special pod). Which will make combat and battles alot more interesting, it should also "spice up" the life of a DC as now there is hardly a brain needed to cover cals (given enough ships are available ofcourse :P)

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Kestra

3. Research/construction times for ALL races should remain the same, allow the ship differences to be the race differences not research and construction. Decrease research times, especially the last "branch" research times on asteroid mining and planetary mining, they take way too long considering you even have to research them in the first place. We should be able to in the long run research EVERYTHING way before the end of the round of PA it makes it more interesting to eventually have access to all features.

Firstly the differences in res and con times per race has to stay. The way each has other skills which effect aspects of the game other than ship types is a great feature as it makes race choice more than just going for the race with the best ships, you have to consider other aspects

While I agree that some of them need to be shorter its not for the same reason. I would like shorter res and con times BUT more steps in them to give us more choice of how far down the branch we go. It should certainly not be shorter to enable everyone to finsih their reseacrh way before the end of the game, in fact i formly believe that this is something we should never be able to do, the total tech tree time should be longer than the round length so we have to either decide to do a bit of each or focus on a few ignoring the others. That way we have people playing differently because some might not have the full ship compliment, some might not have the fastest travel time, others might be lacking scans leaving us all playing the game that little more differently and each having skills to 'trade' with galaxy mates and alliance mates.

Originally Posted by Kestra

4. Leave Covert Ops in, however I can see a few small problems with it, perhaps if you are covert opping a planet much larger then your own (one who cant attack you back because you are too small for them) maybe you should only be able to steal resources from them and not use the other means of covert ops against them? (such as research hampering, blowing up buildings and/or roids?)

I personally dont see why the big players complain about this, after all small players have a simerlar problem. If a Big player bashes them can they go and get revenge on this big player, no they cant as hes too big. Unless ofcourse we apply your idea to them also and if they are a bigger planet have them so they are limited to a small amount of roids and cant kill any ships in an attack. Big players cant have it both ways, they cnat use thefact they are 'protected' to go around destroying a small persons round and then complain when a 'protected' small player does the same to them

Originally Posted by Kestra

In addition to all of this, newbie bashing always appears to keep coming up and being considered a problem seen as this seems to be a thread now for ideas and such my ideas on this are as follows: (not that I think they'll be implimented, but hey they are only ideas)
1. Perhaps it could be made that planets under a certain score can only be attacked once in a period of 24hrs in effect giving the smaller planets at least a chance to build something resembling a fleet because as it stands now most of the time they build a few ships then someone tripple their score comes along and takes them out.
2. Increase the "protection" barrier of planet from larger planets. In all honesty a planet that is 15 million in score should not be able to attack a planet that is 7 million in score (using the old score system here as I still havent managed to get a hang of the new system though i havent played this round only the first version of r10). A 15 million planet if the attack is carefully planned really should be able to attack a 10 million planet or more and still get through. A planet that is 20 million in score should not be able to attack a planet that is 10 million in score (hell he has twice the fleet! How is that exactly fair?) Force planets to attack planets that are closer to their own score instead of taking the easy way out and maybe this will also force higher end players to team up with others on the larger planets instead of picking on the smaller ones. The protection barrier could start higher for smaller planets and slowly decrease as a planet gains in size.. for example: a planet with 500.000 score should be able to attack a planet with approximatly 500.000 in score and still get through, it certainly shouldnt be attacking anything less then 400.000 in score. A planet that is 1.000.000 in score should easily able to attack a planet that is 700.000 in score and no lower. A planet that is 2.000.000 in score should easily abe able to attack a planet that is 1.600.000 in score and so on. Of course people would have to plan attacks more carefully, do their scans and make sure they have the right fleet against that planet, but hey this is PA they should be doing that anyways.

There are probably features ive even forgotten to mention but these are the ones that come to mind first hand.

I dont personally like these kind of artificial limits, they just have never worked in the past. We need to make it not so they are forced to attack larger planets but to do so because they want to. Its exactly why the game shouldnt be about who has the most ships but more about how they use them. The larger the person you attack the more score you should gain and the higher the percentage of roids you should be able to steal and smaller you go the less you gain until you get to a point where attacking will result in losing score. That way people can go out and attack who ever they wish but if they wish to move up the rankings they have to go for better targets and most importantly because score is now not connected to how many ships you have it doesnt matter if you get bashed and lose all your fleet as you lose your score which is one of the most demoralising things for a small player. (and in case i didnt make it clear this idea doesnt make ships worthless, ships are potential score each time you send them out, they go out make some kills youve unlocked that potential score, if they also come back from battle they now have a whole load more potential score tied up in them. And the more ships you have the more potential score you have so the bigger score gains you can have. Ships would also be important for deciding your your honour level when attacking as this would be the figure used when deciding when a target your hitting is much smaller than you and obviously the smaller the planets you are able to attack do to having a lower planet value the less score you can gain as theres less roids and less ships to kill)

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Wandows

i tend to disagree here... having multiple targets allows ppl to "create" a fleet combo that they like working with. It will allow alot more different strategies then the current setup does. It should make the game alot more attractive and diverse. Cuz now you already know exactly what you can expect.. Xan = Fi, Zik/Ter = Fr and Cath is Cr. Having multiple targets per ships allows you to build a different fleet around your pods (given a standard pod type is brought back, together with the race special pod). Which will make combat and battles alot more interesting, it should also "spice up" the life of a DC as now there is hardly a brain needed to cover cals (given enough ships are available ofcourse :P)

How exactly does it create more strategies. In the multiple targeting game I could just build whichever my most powerfuk and most armoured ships are and just build them. While its not the perfect fleet fro dealing with all attacks its one which will be able to deal with any kind of ships sent at them. It then simply makes the game about numbers, my attacker has to overkill me to be safe as my powerful ships will target him even if they arent the main target and then my only hope is to be able to overkill him. Its all about powerplaying and with the game so focused on ships being the core of your score its where the smaller players end up struggling and is why they end up leaving. We can not have a game where its simply about sending the most ships possible when progress in the game is so reliant on having the most ships possible. Change to a system where you gain score for your acheivements and not what ships you have and which being overkilled wont result in you losing all your score (where only score loss will be when you attack someone too small) and we have a system where multiple targeting makes sense but otherwise its a system that only allows the big alliances and their members who have the most ships open to them and are able to overkill targets and defend in vast numbers that gain

[Wandows]

well... then tell me what the difference is in the current game? Isn't i that ppl are looking for targets with as less def against them as possible? isn't that the same that happens withe the multiple target ships?

The major difference between mulitple targets and 1 target is that mulitple target rounds won't be dull. There are alot of ships that can target you making def against you easier and at the same time more complicated (would it be smart to send this ship or not), atm you hardly have a choise in the ships you send to take out a certain target due to the lack of targetting. Which in some cases reduces target dramatically. When you have alot, and i really mean alot, of different ships (say atleast 2 of each kind, Fi, Co, Fr, De, Cr, Bs), 1 normal pod and 1 special pod per race (like the current pods) the game would allow so much diversity in fleet combo's and fleets that flying (combined with initiative and targetting).

About the powerplay... Its always like that, but in the current game its alot easier to powerplay then it used to be. Its even easier in PaX.5 then it was in the earlier rounds. AS all you have to do is send a large amount of ships flakking your pods and you will get through, unless some def is gathered to make it unattractive. Its so utterly boring the way it is now, there is hardly a need for calcing as its just, "hmm lets see, that target has so many ships targetting mine... k great i'll hit him", as there are only like 2 shiptypes at most that could target your attack fleet. With multiple targets that number increases, which will make it more important to actually think/calc before you attack.

The game has always been and will always be about numbers, there is no way you can or would want to avoid that. The better setup/more active alliances/planets will always outgun the less active players. It would be a shame if you want to change that. The game is playable enough for new ppl, as long as you give them decent options in a free account to play with. Make ship value sent have a impact on roidcap again (as far as i know its not much atm).

I have no problem with changing the score system. All i am saying is that multiple target ships will give alot more strategy to the game then the current stats do, simply cuz of all the possible fleet combinations you get that way.

[ScottishRebel]

PDS???? Plz say i have not been drinking the Varnish again and i actualy see that they are coming back and why do we need Multiple targets per ships and just how many more ship clases can you have apart from readding Corvettes

[Gerbie]

This entire discussion about multiple ship targetting looks a bit pointless to me. It has obviously been already decided. A pity though.

It's more complex (when I started the game I didn't understand anything of the ship stats).
It will be very unbalanced (the first time they completely change the stats it always is).
It might add some extra strategy for those players that know their thingthough. If they do it right. All we can do is pray...

[Kal]

nothing is decided, round 11 code is designed so many options are possible.

for instance hiring pa was mentioned. with that u could hire it for single tick combat for instance regardless of what is in the main round (i think anyway). Anyway regardless of what actually happens at least 50% of the forum users will complain about it.

But you are forgetting that some people do not have the opportunity to be on planetarion 24/7, and therefore cannot be on the irc. these people must act on a solo basis or within their galaxy. If you are unable to win because you cannot play a more active role,[quote] then more than 50%, casual users, are discriminated against. I believed that the idea of having ticks related to real time was to give the casual user a chance to be able to compete with the more dedicated player. Or is being employed, or otherwise engaged, a disadvantage? If so then the game is geared towards a particular section of society, which will obviously influence my decision when i consider participating in future rounds!

[ScottishRebel]

Agreed Barruc i work my ass off for at least 10 hours a day having no access to a computer what so ever this does not make me less dedicated than others its just something i can't change we all still can't live off our parents and skive in college like the dedicated players

[Neferti]

barruc, scottishrebel, this is relevant to the discussion over combat how?

[Splashsun]

Originally Posted by Brimstone

Imagine a well-sized BS fleet that targets Fi/Fr against a large Fi/Fr based fleet. There would be a small massacre of the smaller ships, with neglible, or no losses to the BS.

YES THAT IS 100% CORRECT. Everybody who knows Ogame (www.ogame.de) will agree 10000000000%.

I startet there in universe 10 (all of the universes are endless games!) which was running for some time already (about 6 weeks). All ships target everything in that game. All seemed to go fine and stuff, I developed, built some ships, opened up colonies and stuff and then it happened.

A player 10x my size (there is NO bash-protection if you get over 8k points) came with 200 battleships (not the best ship, but the best from price/performance ratio) and killed all my fleet (I had exactly 3 battleships at that time) and I lost 2k of 9k points.

Well a mate told me not to quit, so I rebuilt the fleet, this time concentrating on the bigger ships, which took me 3 weeks. And then a player of rank 53 (I was rank 2058) with 2431% of my score came with 300 battleships (I had 28) and bashed me down.

After that I quitted all my accounts at that game, seeing that in the new universes only multis make the game (after the start of universe 16, 2 days later the ban-list of multis was already 8 pages long, hence those were just the stupid multis using same names and stuff)

I remember the time when PA was about the same style (except thanks god PA had a very good bash-protection at all times) using just frigates/bs to annihilate the whole enemy fleet...

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Neferti

barruc, scottishrebel, this is relevant to the discussion over combat how?

The threads about r11 so their comments are totally justified

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Wandows

well... then tell me what the difference is in the current game? Isn't i that ppl are looking for targets with as less def against them as possible? isn't that the same that happens withe the multiple target ships?

Yes people are still going and looking for the targets that will offer the least resistance still but its being done on a lot more strategic basis. Its no longer just about who has the fewest ships and least likly to get defence and alot more about finding the target you can hit best no matter of size. Theres simply less call for you to send thousands of ships at a planet to 'take out' every ship the planet owns if you can do the job by sending a handful of ships which you know you wont lose many of to disable a hadnful of his pod killers. The only race where overkilling seems to be neccesary still is Xan because without knowing exactly what they ahev you cant play smartly. From what I have seen theres alot less large fleets flying around the universe in the past two rounds (this one in particular) than there has been in the past under the multiple target system and I'm sure if stats liek that were avaiable they would back me up and people sending small specialised fleets is consdierable better for the game because most people arent just going out now to wipe out the small players fleets and seeing as losing of fleets and the score and ranking connected to this, is one of the key reasons why smaller players quit this game its good for the game

Originally Posted by Wandows

The major difference between mulitple targets and 1 target is that mulitple target rounds won't be dull. There are alot of ships that can target you making def against you easier and at the same time more complicated (would it be smart to send this ship or not), atm you hardly have a choise in the ships you send to take out a certain target due to the lack of targetting. Which in some cases reduces target dramatically. When you have alot, and i really mean alot, of different ships (say atleast 2 of each kind, Fi, Co, Fr, De, Cr, Bs), 1 normal pod and 1 special pod per race (like the current pods) the game would allow so much diversity in fleet combo's and fleets that flying (combined with initiative and targetting).

I really fail to see your theory, HOW does every ship targeting every other ship make things more diverse and add more tactics, It simply doesnt it makes the game more dull because it doesnt really matter one bit what you send, all that matters is HOW much you can send. It simply wont matter if you have just frigates or a diverse fleet because they will still be doing damage. The only thing you really have to worry about in a multiple target game is finding out which ship has the highest combined damage/cost, armour/cost score.

For example with current ships this is basically what each race would only have a need to build
Terran - Hades (Armour+Damage : Cost score of 77)
Cath - Vanquiser, Vanguard Stalwart (A+D : C Score 82)
Xan - Nasicus (A+D : C Score 78)
Zik - Broadsword (A+D : C Score 81)

You could build other things but it simply wouldnt be as effective. Ofc the tech tree does limit you early on from jumping stright into these ship types but iits just a case of going with the best ship open to you each time until you get to the level which unlocks your best ship overall (unless your cath who have 3 equal ships, one of whom is a fighter so they can start building their ideal fleet from the start)

The current system however leaves you with a single ship to focus on for each class, you ignore a class and your leaving yourself opem. With more classes this would be an even greater problem and would make everyones fleets that little bit weaker and more open to being exploited (you might be forced to ignore one class to cover yourself in one area leaving you open elsewhere or you may spread distribution over the classes but leave yourself open for a focused attack)

Single targeting requires more skill, better decision making and more statergy, Multiple targeting requires less skill, very little decision making and less stratergy as theres fewer choices to be made. In a multiple targeting game as long as you have basic maths skilsl to work out your best ship (or someone to do it for you) and enough numbers then your pretty much sorted

Originally Posted by Wandows

About the powerplay... Its always like that, but in the current game its alot easier to powerplay then it used to be. Its even easier in PaX.5 then it was in the earlier rounds. AS all you have to do is send a large amount of ships flakking your pods and you will get through, unless some def is gathered to make it unattractive. Its so utterly boring the way it is now, there is hardly a need for calcing as its just, "hmm lets see, that target has so many ships targetting mine... k great i'll hit him", as there are only like 2 shiptypes at most that could target your attack fleet. With multiple targets that number increases, which will make it more important to actually think/calc before you attack.

The game has always been and will always be about numbers, there is no way you can or would want to avoid that. The better setup/more active alliances/planets will always outgun the less active players. It would be a shame if you want to change that. The game is playable enough for new ppl, as long as you give them decent options in a free account to play with. Make ship value sent have a impact on roidcap again (as far as i know its not much atm).

The games less about powerplay this round, the small planets simply arent getting the same number of stupid overkill attacks this round as they did in the past. The attacks are more calaculated and focused and everyones coming out of these attacks in a position thats ok, the attackers are getting theor roids for low cost and most importantly the planet being attacked comes away without losing all their ships which would have been the case in the past. They may lose all of a ship type but they dont lose all their ships and they are hence still in a position where they can carry on and have fun.

As for your comment of "he game is playable enough for new ppl, as long as you give them decent options in a free account to play with." you are talking about PA right and not some other game because thats doesnt sound like the same game as the one I'm playing especially in the a multiple target universe, with dynamic eta's, larger attack windows ect. Its a game where all it takes is a 3 or 4 of the many stupid or lazy players this game has who simply cant be arsed to put together a good attack and instead just send so many ships that the planet gets wiped out if they dont send away. Its why many of the changes which seem like they are going to be reverted were good because it made attacking in these ways less needed and have less of an impact (sending overkill fleets for a single tick for example may be damaging but not half as damaging as a 3 tick attack)

[Gerbie]

I agree with you again Wakey. I've been roided alot this round (I play in some random gal). Didn't lose too much, so I play on with the same energy. I don't think I killed a single ship in an attack myself either. Hmm yes I did so against someone who was bigger then me

I've played a clone where you could just bash around with T2 all, no attack limits. A while ago I quit playing both PA and that other game. A few weeks back I decided to return playing to 1 game only. I chose this game even though there's still a lot to improve.

[Neferti]

yes wakey but barruc started with 'yes but you are forgetting' which implies some connection with a previous post, i can't see any...

[Colt]

Originally Posted by Brimstone

Say you were at 3:3:3, and you want to attack someone in 10:3, it would take 7+speed/tech-mod to get there. If you wanted to get to 3:5 it would take 2+speed\tech-mod, plus you could add another modifier for close distances, in saying that you cant use a high-tech engine due to distance required to reach required speeds (ie, you get there, but at a slower speed for safety reasons).

Part of this would need a capping limit, as say if your in 2:1:1, and wanted to attack 24:10, it would otherwise take 33 hours to reach there, plus a modifier for tech. This could be done via the explanation of the use of wormholes which could be built into the tech structure, which would also limit distances you could realistically travel in the beginning, or with the explanation above with required distances to reach specific speeds.
Brimstone

hmm, maybe im mistaken, but 33 hours to travel to a target??!!?!?!?!? I dont think many ppl will wait 33 hours to hit someone, thats nearly 3 days!! just to do 1 attack...there and back

[Jonas]

I dont like cov ops Make a race immune to it?

[Gerbie]

Jonas, all races can choose to be immune to it now already. Just invest in it with engineers and priority. That's similar to having an immune race that's bad on construction and has 1 engineer less...

[Althalus]

Originally Posted by Neferti

oh come on. single ship targetting a great idea?! the idea is one of the most retarded in the game, as it makes no sense. sure, theoretically a ship with big guns would have trouble hitting fighters (for examples) but in reality would they just sit there and wait to die?! Bring back multiple targetting - just make it so that T2 is relatively ineffective! is there really such a huge difference between battleships and cruisers that one can be hit and the other can't?

Why not have it so smaller ships T2/T3 is more effective than the big ship's T2/T3 or even have it so the bigger the ship the less it can target, a Fighter should be able to attack everything, because lets face it, if you was in a fighter would u sit there and get shot at by a battleship or would u at least go out fighting? However a battleship could have it so it can only shoot 2 classes of ships but have the T2 weaker than T1.

Look at games like Homeworld 2, all ships can shoot the other ships, but each class is aimed to attack another one, so in theory you could send loads of fighters to attack the mothership, but lots of bombers would do better, and bombers can shoot fighters, but would come out of it with more losses.

You could even have the T2 = All but with the risk of shooting ur own ships and have it able to be chosen by the attacker, basically have it so the captains of the ships just say "fire at will" and the ships open random fire, and could hit anything, even each other. Might even be an idea to add kamikazi into the mix, make it a random battle event, but it would certainly bring an eliment of realisim to the game.

Oh, and wakey, there are some anti-blocking idea's being made in the private alliance forums, some of which i agree with, but i also agree with the smaller players/alliances need to be consulted as well. Could also have an in-game poll so that all players can have their say rather than only the people who pay attention to the forums.

[Copie]

Things i'de like to see for R11:

more fleet classes. Bring back at least Co, Dr and pod as a seperate ship.

single tick attacks, this was one of the good things in pax

I'de like a high level scan that reviels alliance membership at the end of the scan tech tree

PDS should never be brought back ever, it was a silly idea in the first place unless you tweak the cost to be CHEAPER than ships. And then you just get fortress planets building PDS and pods. The whole idea of NOT having pds is so that you can catch large planets with there guard down. PDS takes that away, as large planets can afford it, and small ones cant. Dont do it.

Roid types need to be addressed. At the moment there is little balance between the 3 types, you might as well just have one type and make ships 3 times as expensive. It adds nothing to the game. In previous games, E was used as fuel and i liked that. C was for scans, M was for ships. This has changed and everything needs every type now, including scans. Whats the point then of having 3 roid types? Scrap it or re-address it.

Im unsure as to multiple ship targeting, logically i think that all ships should beable to target all ships, but this needs to be beta tested i think before we can make any conclusions. It might upset things too much.

Dynamic ETA's i also like, as it means that the large alliances have to co-ordinate better. I think that smaller ticks would help in this matter, make the system smoother, rather than 1 big tick every hour, how about 3 smaller ticks, this would speed up combat and make things more fun imo. You would still have the same resources each hour, but the combat would be split up, as would the eta's. This matters little for the smaller player but would be harder to organise for the alliances. And imo make things more realistic. This way also a 20 tick eta would not be 20 hours, only 6 hours. etc. It's only an idea and needs some work hehe

Also what ever happened to the quest system? I think that added a lot to the game as it gave people something to do when bored. It also guided n00bs in the right direction. Please reintroduce it. Maybe on an alliance level, under the control (or guidance) of the HC's? e.g. Members of alliance X have to steal Y amount of roids from alliance Z to gain score etc. Or something more involved.

I'de also like to see inter-alliance trading, of some sort, or at least some sort of out of galaxy trading between players. PA can be about more than just war, the opertunities of the market place are a lot more lucrative than the battlefield imo, and this type of gameplay would appeal to more players i feel.

Im sure i can think of lots of other things, but thats enough for now, discuss please.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Copie

I'de like a high level scan that reviels alliance membership at the end of the scan tech tree

why? that'd ruin politics

-mist