Universe ranking and score

[Spinner]

In Rnd 10, we tried to put more emphasis on Score rather than Value when we ranked planets.
We have reason to belive this has more bad sides than good, and would like your opinion on how planets should be ranked.
"Score" in the poll-answers mean action points gained by covert opping, killing ships, stolen roids etc.

[Grim]

I liked the idea with getting score for deffending in r10, I think that should stay, however roids and ships should ofcourse take part of the calculation

[Chika]

Originally Posted by Grim

I liked the idea with getting score for deffending in r10, I think that should stay, however roids and ships should ofcourse take part of the calculation

I agree with this totally. Last round sort of down played ships and roids. Roids are a very important part of the game, as are ships. How you defend and attack with those ships, and how you protect and take those roids is also equally important. I think it should be balanced in a way, and if anything had to be the heavy aspect, it should be ships-roids-score-resources.

thanks

[turbulentk]

imo, round 10 is very good but need to improve something like Roid Limitation and big time Bugs...

[wakey]

Ships and roids imho are not a measure of your playing ability and thus using them does make the rankings a little 'pointless' for many.

You see the key of a good ranking when ships and roids make up alot of the "rating value" is that theres no benifit of playing smart. If you spend the round keeping your roids low to keep yourself off peoples radars you sacrifice your round because you have less roid score which also means less income per tick so fewer ships. The problem then (and its the same if you go for broke as a smaller player to try and acheive a good ranking) is that a single attack which decemimates your ships wipes your score out and resigns you to a very low rank, no matter how many battles you may have won in the past, how much damage you unflicted on your attacker or how smart you played. Basically under these circumstances the game becomes about being in the best alliance possible to allow you to dominate via brute force and not skill.

I personaly thought the ranking system in the early PAX betas was the best, after all WHY should ships and roids be worth score immediatly. Immidiate score increases from ships and roids just makes very little sense to me because really these items arent items of any immediate value but rather are items of potential value and how well you use them should decide how much value they bring to your planet. I certainly see no reason why I should be able to be bashed and have thousands of my ships killed resulting in losing hundreds of ranking places even though these lost ships may have been used over and over again in successful defence and attacks, killing 3 times their own numbers in the progress. Its these successful missions that show how good a player I might be not the fact that I've ended the round with more roids and ships because i've used my alliance to help me bully all the small players into acting as 'farms'.

Such a system is also alot more lowbie/niewbie friendly, most of these people quit because they lose pretty much all their score when bashed and while being bashed would still be a huge knock for these people a system where ships and roids hold vert little immediate value still leaves them with a base to rebuild from as you cant take away any previous successes they have had.

[Kal]

I agree with wakey

[Ultimate Newbie]

well, i'm going to be somewhat ambitious and say go for Roids Roids and Roids . Roids are really the key to success in PA, as you need roids to build ships to steal roids and so on.

However, there is another reason behind my madness. I find the most fun from PA in building a fleet and using it successfully (ie getting roids). If score was based entirely on roids, then there is very little incentive for people to actively hunt down and kill people's fleets, ruining their round (as per wakey's Concerns for the Damned). This has happened to me a few times in my playing career, and it's absolutely heartbreaking when it occurs, because you know there is no return.

Thus, using the Roid score system; you reward succesful attacks, you encourage offensive activity (stalemate = no score gain), you discourage people to obliterate fleets (and/or encourage people to run, ie activity and so on) and you are rewarding players for having the core unit of success in the game.

I dont see what's really wrong with it.

At least it'll be different

[Sonny]

I have brought up a point with Kloopy near the beginning of Round 10 that the scoring system was going to really annoy people, and it did.
The reason being, is that the "Score" was a useless, intangible number. I mean, it wasn't purely your value, so it didn't rank people based on their size, and it wasn't a true honour system, so at the end of the day, it really didn't allow people to put a finger on where they were actually performing in the universe.

You have two options. You go old school and have it as a pure size based rank, or you flip it around and go for a pure honour based rank.

With the former, we all know how it works, but by the latter I refer to something like wakey's reply, although that can be added to.
Your score, based on an honour system needs to be where you can't lose it unless you purposefully choose to do so. If you attack someone decently smaller than you, or similar "un-honourable" offences, then you drop your score. It stills allows good players to achieve the higher ranks they deserve, since to earn score you do so by being active. But it means that you will increase people's "bottom line", by this term, I am meaning that if a player decides to have a night out for his/her birthday, that he won't return to see his planet score sent back to protection. He will have changed no score at all, although the attackers would have gained plenty of score (assuming they didn't attack unhonourably).
This way, the score of the universe essentially will always be in a positive, rather than fluctuating with negatives.

========

I would like to bring up an idea, on a different topic (although does have some reference to the point I just made about score), and that is salvage. Since before the introduction of salvage I have felt that a lot of PA's noob unfriendliness could have been fixed by having the home fleet being salvaged. My original thoughts were that salvage of home vessels (not necessarily external defenders) should have a regain of a high %, somewhere like 80%. The point being that the attackers still get the roids they came for, they still can do the damage, clearing the ships to avoid losses, but it means that people don't get sledged back to protection if they are away for a night. Because this is the single biggest factor that people leave this game.
Now, the instant reply is that "Oh, but then we can't destroy our enemies", but this isn't a real problem, since the more skilled (or politically dominant more likely) players/alliances will outgrow the others and take victory.

The upsides of such a system outdo all negatives, it keeps the universe active, constantly.
It encourages more attacks, and effectively more roid swapping activity. And it doesn't systematically kick people out of the game each night as more people hit the Top5 losing list.
Also, the fear of reprisal from a war is offset by the fact that counters performed by the original losing alliance (their new fleets built from 80% salvage) aren't in a position to do damage due to the same rules that saved them.
Of course the true skill of killing an enemy then lies in defence, since failed attacks will still bear the end result of 0 fleet.

Based on the above adjustment of salvage, you could do away with an honour based system, since the biggest factor of choosing a "non-roid/ship" scoring system is to help the less active players, but if the problem is solved with the above adjustment, it doesn't need to be re-solved with an ammended scoring system.

Cordially,
Sonny.

[Blazde]

Originally Posted by Chika

Last round sort of down played ships and roids.

In the end after all the changes it was score that was downplayed. In the top250 or so the planets ranked by value (instead of value & score combined as they were) would have been exactly the same, almost without exception. The only difference came further down where 2 players who'd been totally bashed might have found themselves at rank2000 and rank1800, with the latter having more score.

My view has always been, if you want extra score stats, that's all good. We have the launches and covert-ops pages now. Add some kind of roiding effeciency / killing effeciency / score / etc... stats rankings. That way people that don't make it onto the main rankings can still be proud of their achievments.

But the main ranking should be by fleet and roids, heavily balanced towards roids to encourage offensive activity. A purely roids based ranking would introduce some interesting tactics (suicide your massive fleet at the end of the round if it means picking up more roids) but I don't think it's the way to go.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

well, i'm going to be somewhat ambitious and say go for Roids Roids and Roids . Roids are really the key to success in PA, as you need roids to build ships to steal roids and so on.

However, there is another reason behind my madness. I find the most fun from PA in building a fleet and using it successfully (ie getting roids). If score was based entirely on roids, then there is very little incentive for people to actively hunt down and kill people's fleets, ruining their round (as per wakey's Concerns for the Damned). This has happened to me a few times in my playing career, and it's absolutely heartbreaking when it occurs, because you know there is no return.

Thus, using the Roid score system; you reward succesful attacks, you encourage offensive activity (stalemate = no score gain), you discourage people to obliterate fleets (and/or encourage people to run, ie activity and so on) and you are rewarding players for having the core unit of success in the game.

I dont see what's really wrong with it.

At least it'll be different

Well I have to say before reading this I had totally dismissed the Roids, Roids, Roids option but you have made me think it is perhaps an option. However I have to wonder where the incentive to defend others would come from in this system. Being able to defend others well is just as much a key skill as being able to attack well but a roids only system seems to make sending defence less appealing to me while making attacking more appealing. After all its this reason that the original salvage system was so popular because now defending friends wasnt sacrificing score gaining opertunities as you could gain score from defending, without such incentives you always have to weigh up the pros and cons of sending defence and if your playing for a ranking then more often than not the cons win out.

The roids only system to me is just too focused on the attacking side of the game and not the other areas and while I can see it making for an enjoyable round on the battle front it just doesnt seem to challenge the player as much (although I do think this kind of ranking would be fantastic in speed rounds which are already more attack orientated)

[suave]

the score for resources must be adjusted. if you build ships from resources, the score for the ships should be higher then the score u get from the resources itself

in pax, we had a closed planet for several weeks in our gal. only by his gathered resources he was still ranked #4 in the gal. this can't be right imho

[Blazde]

The score equality for ships/resources was introduced after round 4 when the top players didn't spend resources so they could stay small and roid inactives. Result was a rankings farce, you had no idea who was really big and who wasn't.

Closed planets might be reopened, and hence (might) deserve the score they get. But you know they're closed so just ignore em if it troubles you.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by suave

the score for resources must be adjusted. if you build ships from resources, the score for the ships should be higher then the score u get from the resources itself

in pax, we had a closed planet for several weeks in our gal. only by his gathered resources he was still ranked #4 in the gal. this can't be right imho

The point of the resources being worth more than the ships you built with them is simply due to the fact that ships had stored potential score in them so as an instant asset were not worth the full amount you paid for them, however if used right they could exceed the score amount that you paid for them. The effect was much greater in the early betas and imho was much better than the hybrid system we ended up with

[Andy_r]

'Score' as it worked in early PAX betas was a wonderful system, but it suffered from exploitability (I should know, I finished one beta in first place with more score than half the top 10 galaxies put together!), however, I still think it was an excellent idea to reward audacious attacks and give lower score for bashng. The problem was that the player base didn't understand how score worked, and the multipliers for score were not capped (as shown by covert ops planets leading PAX and winning SG3).

I believe the score system could be fixed, and with proper documentation (public formulas!) would be a great addition to the game, encouraging attacking and discouraging bashing (can we try negative score for bashing please?).

Having said that, a strong roid elelment to ranking would help solve the perennial end of round stagnation issue, where everyone stops attacking in the last 2 weeks because it's not worth it.

A system that rewarded roidcount and attack audacity and ignored 'value' entirely could be very exciting to play, since at the end of the round people would be encouraged to lose their fleets in an attempt to get score gain.

[Karmulian]

can i have a ship+roids option please

[CrazySpoon]

Lets see if im still regged and I can remember the info.

Lo peeps, I agree with Wakey. I stopped playing but still checking what status is etc. If it pleases me I might get my ass back

[Chika]

Originally Posted by wakey

Ships and roids imho are not a measure of your playing ability and thus using them does make the rankings a little 'pointless' for many.

You see the key of a good ranking when ships and roids make up alot of the "rating value" is that theres no benifit of playing smart. If you spend the round keeping your roids low to keep yourself off peoples radars you sacrifice your round because you have less roid score which also means less income per tick so fewer ships. The problem then (and its the same if you go for broke as a smaller player to try and acheive a good ranking) is that a single attack which decemimates your ships wipes your score out and resigns you to a very low rank, no matter how many battles you may have won in the past, how much damage you unflicted on your attacker or how smart you played. Basically under these circumstances the game becomes about being in the best alliance possible to allow you to dominate via brute force and not skill.

I personaly thought the ranking system in the early PAX betas was the best, after all WHY should ships and roids be worth score immediatly. Immidiate score increases from ships and roids just makes very little sense to me because really these items arent items of any immediate value but rather are items of potential value and how well you use them should decide how much value they bring to your planet. I certainly see no reason why I should be able to be bashed and have thousands of my ships killed resulting in losing hundreds of ranking places even though these lost ships may have been used over and over again in successful defence and attacks, killing 3 times their own numbers in the progress. Its these successful missions that show how good a player I might be not the fact that I've ended the round with more roids and ships because i've used my alliance to help me bully all the small players into acting as 'farms'.

Such a system is also alot more lowbie/niewbie friendly, most of these people quit because they lose pretty much all their score when bashed and while being bashed would still be a huge knock for these people a system where ships and roids hold vert little immediate value still leaves them with a base to rebuild from as you cant take away any previous successes they have had.

Wakey, I normally agree with you because you tend to put so much thought into your replies but this time no. Protecting your ships and roids is the entire point of game in a sense. I mean, what is the game without ships and roids? If you can't defend them properly, then you lose them. If someone who is ranked top 100 can't defend themselves and attack well loses all of their ships, I surely don't want them to remain ranked higher than me. In essense rank should be on who is the strongest. So what is you defended more times than me, or you capped some good roids a few times. If you can't beat me 1 on 1 I am ranked higher than you.

POSTED BY WAKEY
"Such a system is also alot more lowbie/niewbie friendly, most of these people quit because they lose pretty much all their score when bashed and while being bashed would still be a huge knock for these people a system where ships and roids hold vert little immediate value still leaves them with a base to rebuild from as you cant take away any previous successes they have had."

Thats really crap, you lose your ships you are nothing in the game. You can't defend one of your M8's properly, you can't cover targets in attacks. You are of no use until you build back up. So what you attacked successfully a couple of times. If you were a boxer and you won 50 times in a row, and were ranked number 1, if you fought one dude and he beat you and broke both of your arms, you think you will be ranked number 2? or 10 for that matter? If noone understood anything I said, I am saying that roids and ships should be PRIMARY means of rank. I thought this was the obvious choice.

[god113]

I think that just basing rankings on just roids would make an interesting twist, as it might make the end of a round fun instead of boring stagnation. As in the end there is all to play for as everybody has their whole fleet to sacrifise.

Also, if you are hit bad and you can't defend yourself, then if rankings are done on roids only, you loose your rank, which you deserve to do. So there would be far less running away, and it might make for some interesting battles.

[Spinner]

I also have to say I like the "Rank the roids" more and more, it gives a clear incentive, a very definate ranking list, and something that is easy to relate to.
I also dont see possible suicide attacks in the end a problem, on the countrary, it would be a nice change from stagnation. It also means that the middle-to-bottom part of the list, where most players are, will be much more even, and where being bashed will throw you down for a while as you cant get more roids, but you can initiaite your way up a few nothces if you want.
I think this deserves a try at least.
I wish I could change my vote here in the poll though (:

[Tactitus]

A roids-only ranking could generate some "interesting" endgame behavior--not all of it necessarily positive.

I can see some alliances engaging in "friendly" roiding, cannibalizing some of their members to boost the rankings of their top planets/galaxies. Of course, this behavior will be justified by the highest possible motives ("authorized retals" etc).

[Andy_r]

Farming has always been an issue, and I'm not convinced that going to a heavily roid-biased scoring system would make it any worse than it already is.

The roid option does seem to deny covert-ops planets the chance to do well - is this a good thing?

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Andy_r

Farming has always been an issue, and I'm not convinced that going to a heavily roid-biased scoring system would make it any worse than it already is.

Farming has never been much of an issue in the endgame though, except to the extent that roids yield score/ranking.

The roid option does seem to deny covert-ops planets the chance to do well - is this a good thing?

Yeah, it pretty much drives a stake through the heart of covert-ops.

[Chika]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

Yeah, it pretty much drives a stake through the heart of covert-ops.

And this is a GOOD thing.

[Spinner]

Covert Ops were never meant as an alternative to war. It is a tool to use in war, before war, and after a war, but imho it should not be possible to win the game just from covert-oping.

[Spinner]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

Farming has never been much of an issue in the endgame though, except to the extent that roids yield score/ranking.

Yeah, it pretty much drives a stake through the heart of covert-ops.

No, it does not.
If roids is the goal, then resource-stealing is still as beneficial as it was, as you can use resources to build more ships and hence grow. What we might have to do is make covert ops more beneficial for big planets as well, as the smaller planets have the advantage in stealing as it is now.

[Chika]

Originally Posted by Spinner

No, it does not.
If roids is the goal, then resource-stealing is still as beneficial as it was, as you can use resources to build more ships and hence grow. What we might have to do is make covert ops more beneficial for big planets as well, as the smaller planets have the advantage in stealing as it is now.

I agree with making covert ops more beneficial to the bigger players too. But it should not be as heavy as last round. Covert op planets should not rendor the power that they did before. In addition, I think covert oping should be equal amoung all planets.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Chika

Wakey, I normally agree with you because you tend to put so much thought into your replies but this time no. Protecting your ships and roids is the entire point of game in a sense. I mean, what is the game without ships and roids? If you can't defend them properly, then you lose them. If someone who is ranked top 100 can't defend themselves and attack well loses all of their ships, I surely don't want them to remain ranked higher than me. In essense rank should be on who is the strongest. So what is you defended more times than me, or you capped some good roids a few times. If you can't beat me 1 on 1 I am ranked higher than you.

POSTED BY WAKEY
"Such a system is also alot more lowbie/niewbie friendly, most of these people quit because they lose pretty much all their score when bashed and while being bashed would still be a huge knock for these people a system where ships and roids hold vert little immediate value still leaves them with a base to rebuild from as you cant take away any previous successes they have had."

Thats really crap, you lose your ships you are nothing in the game. You can't defend one of your M8's properly, you can't cover targets in attacks. You are of no use until you build back up. So what you attacked successfully a couple of times. If you were a boxer and you won 50 times in a row, and were ranked number 1, if you fought one dude and he beat you and broke both of your arms, you think you will be ranked number 2? or 10 for that matter? If noone understood anything I said, I am saying that roids and ships should be PRIMARY means of rank. I thought this was the obvious choice.

A score based system DOESNT remove the need for protecting your ships and being smart when attacking all it does is remove some of the impact that being bashed or an attack going wrong immediatly has. If you lose all your ships you are still going to suffer and you will fall down the rankings if those below you continue to use their resources to the best possible effect because quite simply the more ships you have, the more potential score you have . If you are constantly battling against good sized planets, using good tactics so you come away from battles successful you will overtake those who make slip ups because you have successfully unlocked the ships potential and have show a level of skill that deserves rewarding BUT if you play like many do now and hide behind your alliance tag, keeping out of any battle which involves a half decent sized planet just so you keep your ships safe then you wont acheive a thing.

The score system rewards skill and one of the key skills is keeping the ships safe and if you dont do this you will be hindered but not in the instant way it is now where as every action you have carried out during the round can just be wiped out .

As for your sporting analogy to the situation there is NO sport i know of where an injury to the competitor results in an immediate drop in their ranking. The drop is a gradual one that is totally dependant on your competitors performance. If a tennis player is injured for example they wont drop down the rankings if those closest to them all go out in the first round, it requires these players to take advantage of the injury and collected enough points to overtake them. The longer the injured player takes to recover the the more people who are likly to have overtaken them so the key is for the player to recover from the injury, get playing again and get back to the level they were at before to halt to drop and start regaining ground by winning matches and hoping the compitition perform worse than you, if both of these conditions dont happen you wont get your ranking back. Its the same with PA using a score system, you lose your ships you cant take part in attacks and defence, the others however can and have plenty of ships to gain score from and if they take the oppertunity they can overtake you. The quicker you can get a foothold and get your ships back to where they were the quicker you can stop the rot and set about regaining your spot . if you dont regain a foothold allowing you to outperform those above you simply wont regain your spot and potentially slip further down if those below you outperfrom you.

[mist]

i thought covert ops were about right in the last few speed games.

once the larger players can adequatly protect themselves from them, they'll be a lot less powerful

-mist

[LordBrem]

Gaining score should be the #1 goal, by far. Giving points for defending is a good idea, but should not be more important than actually getting ships. It is much better imo to have 2x as many roids and lose half the ships you build than to have half as many roids and lose none - sure, you have skill, but what does it matter if you don't use that skill to get roids?

[mist]

voted for the first option because i think it'll make for the most interesting games. while ships give score directly noone will take any risks with them, if there's defence you recall, etc etc. if all you care about is roids then people are going to be more willing to attack. it also means that you can hurt people much more - at the moemnt you steal half their roids and it takes several days at the minimum before they're really noticing the score drop.

as wakey said, ships give score potential, so they're still important, making them give direct score as well just makes them too important

-mist

[Lord_Thunderball]

Originally Posted by mist

i thought covert ops were about right in the last few speed games.

once the larger players can adequatly protect themselves from them, they'll be a lot less powerful

-mist

And that's why I easy won the last speedgame(last day) cov opping To end as #1 player, you only need to be an active cov opper, which isn't to hard.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by mist

voted for the first option because i think it'll make for the most interesting games. while ships give score directly noone will take any risks with them, if there's defence you recall, etc etc. if all you care about is roids then people are going to be more willing to attack. it also means that you can hurt people much more - at the moemnt you steal half their roids and it takes several days at the minimum before they're really noticing the score drop.

as wakey said, ships give score potential, so they're still important, making them give direct score as well just makes them too important

-mist

As much as Ultimate Newbie's post made me reconsider this option the more I think about it the more I see it not working in a real round situation and your line of "it also means that you can hurt people much more" has made me think this idea just isnt workable. While hurting people more when its two players of simerlar size isnt a bad thing it is when the sides are uneven. The whole idea just seems to have very little way of controlling bashing. Under the tradiotional scoring system I've seen alot of attacks come my way from bigger players who will send so many ships you either have to stay and fight where you will lose all your ships allowing the player to return later to take alkl your roids or run thus alllowing most of the attacking ships to be pulled allowing them to steal the max number of roids (and running is dangourous as you set a precident and thus increase use of this tactic on you). A roids only system doesnt remove this ability so doesnt make live at the bottom any more plesant and ok towards the end it will make the situation intresting at the top but only after its done more damage to the games numbers.

The roids only system just seems to me to be a scoring system that only really speed rounds where major losses of roids arent quite as devistating to players moral (While losing a 50 roids at tick 200 in a speed round is the same as losing 50 roids at tick 200 in a proper round the fact that those 200 ticks account for something like 4-6 hours of gameplay while the real game accounts for 200 days makes the losses just that little bit harder in the real game).

If roids are going to make up a great deal of the score there has to be something in place to limit the benifit bashing can do to your ranking (be it by having the roid score on a sliding scale, roids stolen froma big player are more valuable than those from a small or by implementing some kind of honour system which will dicate the amount of roids you will capture - ie if you regulary hit small players your honour will fall and you will be able to capture alot less per tick than if your honour is high) otherwise we have ranking system which doesnt really change anything and doesnt reward the players who play the game well

[mist]

whatever scoring formula you use, people will still bash. i don't see how a roids based system will change things. at the moment scoring is pretty much roids based anyway - as you need the resources from them to build ships. the only difference is that you're worried about loosing your ships as well as worrying about loosing your roids, making people more cautious and the game slower

lord_thunderball: if people didn't protect themselves from cov-ops 'twas their own dumb fault :P

-mist

[wakey]

Yes people will always bash as its an easy way of playing BUT using a proper score system with an honour based system where ships and roids dont account for much score directly does discourage it. You see atm (and with the roid based system) theres very little that makes bashing unprofitable, in fact taking using this cowardly tactic is on the whole more profitable. HOWEVER having a system where score is gained by your actions and the amount and playing with honour gives more incentatve to 'punch your own weight". To go back to the sporting analogy, I play tennis and have a LTA rating of 7.1. To move up ratings I have to gain points and this is done so by beating oppenents.and the point system has an honour system built into it. If i get drawn against some with a rating of 9.1 in the first round and I beat them I will get very few points as they are an oppisition below my level, Now in the second round if i get drawn against someone of a rating of 7.1 and again win I get an average amount of point. Now if in the next round i get drawn against a 5.1er and win I get a massive amount of points as its someone i should lose to. This is how the score system should work on PA, if a big player turns up at my small planet kills all my ships and steals all my roids he shouldnt get a great deal of points for it as its a dishonourable attack BUT any ships i mange to kill of his I should be well rewarded for as the guy is bigger than me and any kills i make are an acheivement

[mist]

true enough, but this would still result in people bashing early on - because the people they attack have more ships but less roids so the score difference isn't that huge, and because it's worth taking a ranking hit in the short term so that you can have a bigger fleet, so attack bigger people and get more score in the long run, plus so you can defend against others who'll be doing the same thing

plus, you need to keep your fleet in order to gain points/roids - so if someone gets defence you still pull, the game is still boring

-mist

[Chika]

Originally Posted by wakey

As for your sporting analogy to the situation there is NO sport i know of where an injury to the competitor results in an immediate drop in their ranking. The drop is a gradual one that is totally dependant on your competitors performance. If a tennis player is injured for example they wont drop down the rankings if those closest to them all go out in the first round, it requires these players to take advantage of the injury and collected enough points to overtake them. The longer the injured player takes to recover the the more people who are likly to have overtaken them so the key is for the player to recover from the injury, get playing again and get back to the level they were at before to halt to drop and start regaining ground by winning matches and hoping the compitition perform worse than you, if both of these conditions dont happen you wont get your ranking back. Its the same with PA using a score system, you lose your ships you cant take part in attacks and defence, the others however can and have plenty of ships to gain score from and if they take the oppertunity they can overtake you. The quicker you can get a foothold and get your ships back to where they were the quicker you can stop the rot and set about regaining your spot . if you dont regain a foothold allowing you to outperform those above you simply wont regain your spot and potentially slip further down if those below you outperfrom you.

Lol. Yea I agree. There goes my break through sport analogy down the drain. Every ranking aspect really has its benifits. Some people are good at capping roids. Some people are great at attacking with methods of losing the least fleet possible. And some people, are great at defending there roids and ships. And some people are great with defending their m8's and alliance m8's. It is fairly simple I think. All aspects should be factored into your rank, with the CENTER game aspects worth more than others, such as roids and ships.

[wakey]

Originally Posted by mist

true enough, but this would still result in people bashing early on - because the people they attack have more ships but less roids so the score difference isn't that huge, and because it's worth taking a ranking hit in the short term so that you can have a bigger fleet, so attack bigger people and get more score in the long run, plus so you can defend against others who'll be doing the same thing

plus, you need to keep your fleet in order to gain points/roids - so if someone gets defence you still pull, the game is still boring

-mist

Theres no need to point out that it doesnt stop bashing early on, after all this is the argument I myself posted to your comment of "changing formula will stop bashing" elsewhere on these forums. I know it doesnt solve the problems of bashing early on and I'm not claiming it does. Very little of the things I've suggested work completly on their own, in fact when you look at the bigger picture most of the ideas only make a small inroad to the problems on their own, however throw them together and your making fairly major inroads into the problems.

As for the problems you highlighted of limiting roids to allow for more ships so you can attack bigger targets, i'm not actually sure this is that much of a problem, its called playing smart and while you may be able to use this tactic to start with its not going to last long as the more you attack the more ranking points you get and hence the higher you climb so using this tactic will soon see you in a position where you cant use it anymore but those below you can use it on you. Also again the way I view the score system is that roids also wouldnt give a great deal of score anyway, like ships roids are potential score (ie they let you build buildings which gain score, they give you resources which give score and they let you build ships which are a small amount of score and huge potential score). The time when roids would turn into true score would be when you capture them as this is where the skill is.

Also all along I was thinking more of the honour system to work using a combination of your score and the ship value as the ability for someone with very little score but lots of ships going in and destroying someones round is something I did identify. This way when attacking you cant abuse the system (and you cant gang up in the same way as you can now and still expect score gains, it also will make defence more of a skill as the same will apply to defence, overkill wont be useful on a score basis)

As for your final line, dont you think the roid system and the tradiotional system have this problem just as much, if not more. If your ranking is based on roids you cant afford to lose your ships as you will then be roided and if your ranking is based on the tradional value then you cant afford to lose ships else you will lose ranking as your worth less. The score system simply isnt affected quite as much here, yes if you lose ships you will lose potential score and fall slowly but its a ranking loss that can be controlled and rectified unlike losing ships in a roid or value system

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Chika

Lol. Yea I agree. There goes my break through sport analogy down the drain. Every ranking aspect really has its benifits. Some people are good at capping roids. Some people are great at attacking with methods of losing the least fleet possible. And some people, are great at defending there roids and ships. And some people are great with defending their m8's and alliance m8's. It is fairly simple I think. All aspects should be factored into your rank, with the CENTER game aspects worth more than others, such as roids and ships.

Are roids and ships really central to this game, I dont think so. What exactly do these features actually tell you about the players skill? To me very little, all you get from such figures are that a) they are in a big alliance and hence have protection and b) They havent taken any 'risk' they have stuck to attacks on people that with their resources even a newbie could take out.

Now this view is one which is probally unfair on alot of the players who have excelled in such areas as they may very well have not used their alliance to help them out that much and may not have bashed but this really is where the score ranking excels. Those people who use their skill will have a ranking that shows that, with the better players at the top and worse player at the bottom. It allows for the smaller players to gain a marginly better score that highlights their skill level more than the current system WHILE forcing the bigger players to stop relying so much on others and to start upping their game and really work for their ranking. This makes the game easier to get into and much more rewarding for all when they do well as its now something you have earnt rather than being handed it on a silver plater

[mist]

an honour based system is a nice idea, however there are only a few areas you can get points from:

defence - ships killed
this involves the attacker landing, which once news scans come about isn't very likely if there's enough defence to stop them capping. if there isn't enough you get some defence score, but loose a lot of ships so loose a lot of potential score

defence - ships sent
the logical progression, as this gives you points if you defend and then the attacker pulls. however, even if you set things up so that people only get score based on how long their ships were on the way there/back, this is hugely exploitable. people would send their ships on random defence missions just to get points.

so, giving points for defence is tricky...

attack - ships killed
same problems as with defence, if you get clean through, great, you kill a load of stuff, get some points. however if you're attacking someone your own size odds are they'll get defence, you rarely get any points, the game is boring.

attack - ships sent
again, same problem as defence - massivly open to exploits

so, how would you actually run an honour based system? roids/ships based systems might not be perfect, but at least they work

-mist

[god113]

Why give out points for defending that adds to score? The game needs to be more attacking and for people to take more risks. I can see how alliances may want people to be rewarded for defence, as it benefits them as it encourages their members to defend, but I don't think it's nessercarily good for the game.

If roids were to be used to count as score, it might encourage more attacking style of play instead of laying around defending.

[Chika]

wow, option 3 really is the majority.

[Legator]

Originally Posted by wakey

Ships and roids imho are not a measure of your playing ability and thus using them does make the rankings a little 'pointless' for many.

You see the key of a good ranking when ships and roids make up alot of the "rating value" is that theres no benifit of playing smart. If you spend the round keeping your roids low to keep yourself off peoples radars you sacrifice your round because you have less roid score which also means less income per tick so fewer ships. The problem then (and its the same if you go for broke as a smaller player to try and acheive a good ranking) is that a single attack which decemimates your ships wipes your score out and resigns you to a very low rank, no matter how many battles you may have won in the past, how much damage you unflicted on your attacker or how smart you played. Basically under these circumstances the game becomes about being in the best alliance possible to allow you to dominate via brute force and not skill.

I personaly thought the ranking system in the early PAX betas was the best, after all WHY should ships and roids be worth score immediatly. Immidiate score increases from ships and roids just makes very little sense to me because really these items arent items of any immediate value but rather are items of potential value and how well you use them should decide how much value they bring to your planet. I certainly see no reason why I should be able to be bashed and have thousands of my ships killed resulting in losing hundreds of ranking places even though these lost ships may have been used over and over again in successful defence and attacks, killing 3 times their own numbers in the progress. Its these successful missions that show how good a player I might be not the fact that I've ended the round with more roids and ships because i've used my alliance to help me bully all the small players into acting as 'farms'.

Such a system is also alot more lowbie/niewbie friendly, most of these people quit because they lose pretty much all their score when bashed and while being bashed would still be a huge knock for these people a system where ships and roids hold vert little immediate value still leaves them with a base to rebuild from as you cant take away any previous successes they have had.

i agree with this

[Makhil]

Score (honour) and roids should be the right thing.
No ships : it is the fights and the roids you get with them that should be rewarded, not stocking them.
Same goes for resource : stocking res shouldn't bring any benefit in ranking, but using it for covert ops, succesful scanning ? donations ? ships building (that would stay even when the ships are destroyed).

If impossible, then only Roids (but please not ships and res)

[Spinner]

Thanks for the input!!