Planetarion Forums

Allfather · 31 Jul 2007, 09:37

Howdy

I went into vacmode last night cause a few of my gal members were doing the same cause of their travels home from vacation, and to be honest, i have to much work to do to monitor my planet much the upcoming days.

So, a few hours ago a nice and friendly galaxy member of mine (hello Athena \o) smsed me saying i had incoming eta 6 or so, and asked if i needed defense and if i could do a FA (im a scanner cba to do anything bar that and defend galaxy members), or send away my fleet. I can do neither, cause i went into vacmode some 10 hours ago.

Then someone told me that (adds i think he nick was) that prelaunched ships still count. Mkays, fair enough, if i knew about this i would have not went into vacmode, again whats the point if my ships would get ****ed.

So, is this deliberate or is it a "feature" , cause if so we can use it next round when we know a certain someone is going away on holidays, birthdays, funerals, hospital etc we can just prelaunch +11 and **** his fleet while he/she cant do anything about it.

Discuss
(and no,im not whining my fleet willl die in a few ticks, but doesn't really matter to other people then my galmates as they are the only people i launch on (in defense),i mostly only scan for #transcendancy and other people who ask.

Kargool · 31 Jul 2007, 09:43

Clearly this needs to be ratified in the manual as it does not say there that vac mode does not count for prelaunched incs.

Tietäjä · 31 Jul 2007, 10:10

Wasn't someone of the twenty-man support team about to redo and improve the manual a few rounds back? I think Kal once listed the manual as one of the three priorities of the support team. They must be awfully busy, not having been able to improve it yet.

Allfather · 31 Jul 2007, 10:16

Apparently this is a feature according to support.
and its "clearly described in the manual".... :roll:

Jester · 31 Jul 2007, 10:24

Yeah, this came up a few rounds ago, and it's your responsibility to check for prelaunch before you go into vacation mode. A bit shit, but the alternative wouldn't be that much better.

The least worst option as I see it is that any fleet prelaunched on a vacation mode planet is automatically changed to a fake mission and some sort of alert sent to the sending planets.

JonnyBGood · 31 Jul 2007, 10:31

Not having ever used vacation mode I'm not entirely sure how it works. Is there potential for abuse by simply cancelling the missions of any fleets prelaunched on a planet when that planet goes into vacation mode?

Jester · 31 Jul 2007, 10:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Not having ever used vacation mode I'm not entirely sure how it works. Is there potential for abuse by simply cancelling the missions of any fleets prelaunched on a planet when that planet goes into vacation mode?

Aside from the obvious?

If a prelaunched attack will cause more damage than 72 ticks without resource income and attack benefits*, then go into vacation mode.

Rationally, this won't often be the case. However, when it is, it will cause an outcry (cowards hiding/abusing game features), and many players aren't rational in their decision making on this due to loss aversion biases.

So basically, yes, it would be possible to abuse it.

* Which might be zero, if you have sufficient amounts of incoming.

JonnyBGood · 31 Jul 2007, 10:43

Quote:

If a prelaunched attack will cause more damage than 72 ticks without resource income and attack benefits

Can't happen. Vac mode is disabled last week of the round anyways and there's no way that avoiding been roided is worth 72 ticks of no resource income.

I guess there's probably a scenario I can't see but I really can't see it

Allfather · 31 Jul 2007, 10:53

If i knew fleet would land i wouldnt have gone in vacmode, just set prelauch plus 11 hours and check fleet every night...

But fair enough, i can still scan as im a scanplanet, just annoying for my galmates.

Jester · 31 Jul 2007, 11:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Can't happen. Vac mode is disabled last week of the round anyways and there's no way that avoiding been roided is worth 72 ticks of no resource income.

I guess there's probably a scenario I can't see but I really can't see it

Assume 10 days left, the minimum that you can get a full vacation into.

Furthermore, assume that multiple waves are being lined up, let's say that predictions yield at least 4 of these waves likely to get through. This means one loses 67% of the original roid count.

The final assumption is that if you go into vacation mode, you won't lose the roids. On the surface this assumption is unreasonable, why wouldn't the same people just relaunch the attack when you get out of vacation mode? The problem is that this argument goes counter all my experience. When high profile planets come out of vacation mode they're almost always left alone, or at least focused on much less than when they went in. This is often down to political changes, subsided anger, new target brackets, etc, etc.

And given all that it's quite easy to see that 33% * roidcount * 10 < 100% * roidcount * 7, regardless of what your roidcount is. In fact, unless you're only being roided for one tick, vacation mode is still worth it, assuming no other sources of score.

JonnyBGood · 31 Jul 2007, 11:37

Quote:

When high profile planets come out of vacation mode they're almost always left alone, or at least focused on much less than when they went in. This is often down to political changes, subsided anger, new target brackets, etc, etc.

I find this rather strange. And to be honest I think experience contradicts you. People know when they're going to get hit in PA these days even before fleets are prelaunched and they don't go into vacation mode then.

Edit: mz, I presume you realised the answer to your own post?

Mzyxptlk · 31 Jul 2007, 11:38

Yep!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Preferences page

Please note that you cannot enter vacation mode if any of your fleets are away from base or set for pre-launch.

Tietäjä · 31 Jul 2007, 12:18

The definate strange bit of the system is the unpredictable risk related: if you don't have jump gate probes available to you, there's little way (in theory) of finding out whether there are prelaunches to you or not. So basically, this involves the risk of being bashed fleet home without being able to do anything about it. Which sort of contradicts the purpose of vacation mode as a "vacation" when your planet remains unchanged/untouched.

Jester · 31 Jul 2007, 12:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

I find this rather strange. And to be honest I think experience contradicts you. People know when they're going to get hit in PA these days even before fleets are prelaunched and they don't go into vacation mode then.

They* do. Really, I'm just trying to say that there will be whining either way, so it's a pointless discussion.

*The idiots.

Appocomaster · 31 Jul 2007, 12:56

I believe the original idea was that if you went into vacation mode and had incomings launching NEXT tick, they'd still launch (so if you had a lot of incs about to launch you couldn't run into vacation mode to escape them). Anything not launching the tick after shouldn't launch at all.

The ticker log suggests that on average 2 or so prelaunched fleets are recalled each day from planets in vacation mode, so it still seems to be working.

I know it's been the case for several rounds as no one has touched that part of the ticker since.. well, I've been a PA Team member, I believe.

I think part of it is a linguistic argument, though the statement on the preferences page is:

"Note: Going into vacation-mode will protect your planet from new attacks or covert-ops"

which, no matter which way you look at it, isn't quite correct (though it certainly supports the idea of prelaunched fleets launching).

Tietäjä · 31 Jul 2007, 13:28

Oh.

That explains.

Given, would it be reasonable that whilst in vacation mode your fleet will not participate in combat? (This would approve that you can't avoid losing roids by going on to vacation mode, but given that you'll need your fleets home when hitting vacation you couldn't lose them either.)

Allfather · 31 Jul 2007, 13:42

In regards to my planet, things went well it seems, as he died

In 60ish ticks or so ill share battlereport

But in regards to prelaunch and vacmode (If i read this right) it was made so that if you went into vacmode the tick before, they were still launched.

This was however not the thing here, as it came several hours later, so was it a bug?

Appocomaster · 31 Jul 2007, 13:43

I'll have a look.

Edit: there appears to be a minor ambiguity issue which I've now resolved. This should remove any problems.

Allfather · 1 Aug 2007, 00:52

Fancy word for bug

Jester · 1 Aug 2007, 07:30

Speaking of bugs, how come there isn't a way to report them anymore? There used to be a bugs forum for this...

Allfather · 1 Aug 2007, 07:43

I think you just use the same link as reporting abuse ingame.
Either that or pm Appoco

Appocomaster · 1 Aug 2007, 10:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jester

Speaking of bugs, how come there isn't a way to report them anymore? There used to be a bugs forum for this...

http://game.planetarion.com/support.pl

There's a bug report section there.
I wasn't around when there was a bug reporting section, afair.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Allfather

Either that or pm Appoco

This is what usually happens

However, we're starting to get a bugzilla setup working and hopefully will soon be able to make it public to everyone

Jester · 1 Aug 2007, 13:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

http://game.planetarion.com/support.pl

There's a bug report section there.
I wasn't around when there was a bug reporting section, afair.

That page doesn't tell me what bugs have been reported previously...

Quote:

However, we're starting to get a bugzilla setup working and hopefully will soon be able to make it public to everyone

Much, much better