prefered incomming times

[mist]

before someone has a good shout, infact before someone reads the rest of this and gets ready to have a good shout, please bear in mind i don't particularly think it would be a good idea. you can probably tell what i think of it from the fact that it's getting a preamble like this. anyway, on to the main event:

one of the arguable problems with pa has always been that it requires you to be at a computer at some very odd hours. joe soap isn't going to play a game where one of the requirements to do well is that you be up at 3am to check your planet for incommings. people, however, are going to attack at 3am (particularly with prelaunch in), as they know that joe's happily tucked up in bed sleeping, and they'll get easy roids.

so, how about implimentinga feature whereby planets can choose when they'd prefer to be attacked. something like a 24 hour cycle, with a 'peak time' at which the planet looses more roids than normal, but during the downtime of the cycle they loose less roids. this would be shown either by scan, or just put on the galaxy page. therefore, joe knows that they need to be online at 8pm - which is perfectly reasonable for their schedule - to play the game, but that they can sleep at night knowing that they're not going to come back to a desolate wasteland where their planet was.

time could either be set wrt landing, or launches - i'd go with launches at it makes it simpler.

obviously, suitable checks and balances would have to be put in place to enable movement of the time, or canceling of it all together (would t10 players want a time when they can loose more roids when they'll tend to have pretty good around the clock protection anyway?)

one problem with this, to get people started, is that it'd make waves more difficult to run at a planet, as either those at the vanguard or the tail end may suffer on the cap %age.

anyway. i'm fairly sure this is a bad idea, but other than the 'activity should win' argument, why?

[noah02]

I think it would be a good idea to lower cap rate during certain hours coz might force there hand to attack at different times rather than the boring 1am - 5am times that everyone does nowadays coz mostly UK play.

[The Real Arfy]

More defence = less roid swapping = boring. Its simple really, if Joe Soap can prelaunch at 3am to get easy roids, then he almost deserves to have roids taken from him, easily.

To look at it from another angle, if he's getting roided, he can roid back with the same amount of ease.

[noah02]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

More defence = less roid swapping = boring. Its simple really, if Joe Soap can prelaunch at 3am to get easy roids, then he almost deserves to have roids taken from him, easily.

To look at it from another angle, if he's getting roided, he can roid back with the same amount of ease.

But the game is boring now tbh.

Ppl all attack at the same times now and its making the game very very boring and repetitive, there is just nothing changing except the amount of ppl playing nowadays and ppl are always saying "dont change it will ruin the boring same routine everyday" its not an answer and nor is reward the most active coz then thats all we will have left 4 alliances playing versus each other in a game with less than 400 ppl playing coz the active ppl are only in it for themselves.

p.s ppl can still launch at same times just less roids at peak times.

[The Real Arfy]

Make it better by all means, but decreasing the amount of lands people get is gonna be worse. What would you rather, get attacked at 3am every day and also cap roids yourself, or initiate to 300 roids and sit there all round?

[noah02]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

Make it better by all means, but decreasing the amount of lands people get is gonna be worse. What would you rather, get attacked at 3am every day and also cap roids yourself, or initiate to 300 roids and sit there all round?

I go for roids during the day and always land atm and I only initiate to 200 roids not 300 and only do that once during a round when i first start out.

[Appocomaster]

I think the problem is that people now expect to get defence. In some ways the XP idea hasn't hit home.
What if asteroids gave no/less value contribution? Their only bonus was to give resources over time. You'd be penalised less for loosing roids, but XP for roids would be more important. To counter this, I'd set token XP for defence (amount of time your fleet was out defending + landing defence when there was a hostile planet there).

I think some people are liking the fact that the game is becoming more attacking in nature, and taking advantage of it, while others aren't too keen.

[The_Fish]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

I think the problem is that people now expect to get defence. In some ways the XP idea hasn't hit home.
What if asteroids gave no/less value contribution? Their only bonus was to give resources over time. You'd be penalised less for loosing roids, but XP for roids would be more important. To counter this, I'd set token XP for defence (amount of time your fleet was out defending + landing defence when there was a hostile planet there).

I think some people are liking the fact that the game is becoming more attacking in nature, and taking advantage of it, while others aren't too keen.

Agreed, far too many players haven't caught up with the idea now. If you get roided you lose a little value, and thats it. You land an attack and you gain plenty more than just roids. Although you can take it too far towards attacking, look at Rob, allianceless, top 50 and only ever attacks.

[Shyne]

I like the idea of not having to play at funny times tho.

make the game 11am-11pm and tell Australians to go get drunk or something

[Squidly]

Arfy basically hit things on the head there.

You're essentially making it easier for alliances to def their members and keep their roids. Imagine if all the europeans in say Lch (example) put their 'max-incoming' times during the day when say 80% of them were guaranteed to be around? As opposed to at night where there needs to be some commitment by various members in the form of waking up for 10 mins to send ships.

Less roids lost = less fluid game = some degree of stagnation imo... I don't mean to bring up the "more activity = win" argument, but it does apply to a fair extent with this idea

I maybe completely missing ze boat though... Tsk

[Monroe]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

I think the problem is that people now expect to get defence. In some ways the XP idea hasn't hit home.
What if asteroids gave no/less value contribution? Their only bonus was to give resources over time. You'd be penalised less for loosing roids, but XP for roids would be more important. To counter this, I'd set token XP for defence (amount of time your fleet was out defending + landing defence when there was a hostile planet there).

I think some people are liking the fact that the game is becoming more attacking in nature, and taking advantage of it, while others aren't too keen.

I also agree with this statement. With the way the game works now it's not about keeping roids at all. The game is about keeping fleet and stealing as many roids as you can. Since you don't ever loose XP when you loose roids, it's not about how many roids you've lost over the course of the round, but how many you've managed to steal.

[Ron7684]

Getting back on topic, its a good general idea but it seems too complicated to work for everyone. As for the non 24/7 game, PA has a financial side too, if the times are limited to europeans, so is the cashflow. There have been many suggestions of this type, sleep mode, breaks, etc. but thats the beauty of PA. Sleepless nights and something-or-other days.
I also must bring back up Arfy's key point, if someone does it to you, you can do it to someone else.

[noah02]

I agree with mist that its a bad idea but tried to put some arguement on to the good points because i know there would be arguements for the bad points.
But we have to look at everything from every angle so we can draw out the best idea out of things if any

[mist]

assuming for a moment that the big alliances have sufficient members online at peak times to mount at least a sembelence of a defence (which used to be the case - no idea if it still is ofc), the argument thus far seems to be that offering this same chance to the more casual player would ruin the game. while this is quite possibly true, i was hoping there'd be a better reason

Getting back on topic, its a good general idea but it seems too complicated to work for everyone. As for the non 24/7 game, PA has a financial side too, if the times are limited to europeans, so is the cashflow. There have been many suggestions of this type, sleep mode, breaks, etc. but thats the beauty of PA. Sleepless nights and something-or-other days.

it's not particularly complicated for everyone. with prelaunch it doesn't really make a difference to you when you're doing your attacking, and everyone would be able to set times that they prefered to defend that suit them.

anyway

hypothetically:
if this were implimented and the balance between attack/defence were rebalanced so that accross the board it was no easier or harder to attack than before (ie, attacking at the top end would probably get easier, relative to the bottom end) what reasons would people have for objecting?

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by mist

assuming for a moment that the big alliances have sufficient members online at peak times to mount at least a sembelence of a defence (which used to be the case - no idea if it still is ofc), the argument thus far seems to be that offering this same chance to the more casual player would ruin the game. while this is quite possibly true, i was hoping there'd be a better reason

It is basically this - the top alliances have a better coverage due to higher activity, so no matter how the game changes they'll always get the best rate of defence.
Trying to force the game to other times due to peak attack times being when the majority are sleeping just leads to stagnation, as no attacks can get through.
At the end of the day, the top are at the top due to better organisation, ability and activity. Trying to overprotect the smaller players tends to clog up the game too much.

it's not particularly complicated for everyone. with prelaunch it doesn't really make a difference to you when you're doing your attacking, and everyone would be able to set times that they prefered to defend that suit them.

Many alliances still require you to be up at launch time to stop spys finding out the targets and to force you to be around so you can send defence anyway. In fact, only the smaller alliances don't do this.

anyway

hypothetically:
if this were implimented and the balance between attack/defence were rebalanced so that accross the board it was no easier or harder to attack than before (ie, attacking at the top end would probably get easier, relative to the bottom end) what reasons would people have for objecting?

What do you mean by "no easier or harder to attack than before" on average? Dropping the cap rate of planets at their "worst" times wouldn't make it easier to attack at the top compared to the bottom, no matter what. I can't see how you can alter the balance for top / bottom areas of the game without severely breaking other things.

The attack / defence nature of the game (along with any other features we add) has to be so that people can land fleets some proportion of the time, because stealing roids is FUN and people like doing that more than anything apart from fleetcatching mortal enemies, while at the same time not being so easy to land that people disappear into the sunset and get bored. It has to be a challange, but not so much of a challange people get bored.

[mist]

i thought that the main argument against sleep mode was that you couldn't impliment a time when it suited everyone?

Originally Posted by appoco

The only way to counter the new stagnation is to increase the attacking nature of the game.

is this a bad thing?

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by mist

i thought that the main argument against sleep mode was that you couldn't impliment a time when it suited everyone?

No, because you can just make a 6 hour thing that stops incomings from being launched against you whenever you want, like in other clones

is this a bad thing?

It'll probably move the advantage even more in the way of activity. There's no real way to link the effects of the two.

[mist]

firstly, reposting while i'm reply is rude, damnit! there shall be punishments later.

that asside:

Originally Posted by appoco

Trying to force the game to other times due to peak attack times being when the majority are sleeping just leads to stagnation, as no attacks can get through.

not neccesarily. if, for example, you make it so that you need more ships to defend with but that people attack more at peak time then with tweaking you'll have similar success rates, but more people will be able to participate - imo, bringing the game's experience to all the players can only help attract newbies. when people look back they usually say that the game was better with loads of players. why is that? i think one of the reasons is that you could interact more.

Originally Posted by appoco

At the end of the day, the top are at the top due to better organisation, ability and activity. Trying to overprotect the smaller players tends to clog up the game too much.

this used to be because the way to win was to roid people as small as possible as often as possible as they were the softest targets, so gave more growth. how much has this changed, and how related is this to what you're saying?

Originally Posted by appoco

Many alliances still require you to be up at launch time to stop spys finding out the targets and to force you to be around so you can send defence anyway. In fact, only the smaller alliances don't do this.

again, going on personal experience, this was largely pointless. anyone who cared knew what the target was beforehand, as you could just search the DB dumps for galaxies with approximatly equal roid/score patterns. even if you round the roids/scores and rearrange the planet orders they're still not that hard to find. that said, if attacks are moved from the middle of the night to mid evening and alliances continue this practice do you think it'll be a good or bad thing for joe? tbh, your point seems like an argument for, rather than against.

i agree with you that people have to be able to cap roids in order for the game to be interesting. i also think that people have to get defence sometimes for the game to be interesting. landing an attack is great, but so is seeing off someone who's attacking you. landing an attack is largely a solo effort - there'll often be others attacking the same gal, but you're often alone on a target whereas defence is a team effort, and i think it helps build bonds and those are one of the things that pa needs in order to keep people.

however, with pretty much anything you change you're going to have to rebalance to keep the landing rate about right. at the end of doing everything you want, you have the stats to balance things. if you're unable to find a point at which enough people land under this system then i'm surprised and fairly disapointed.

[Ali]

PA has to keep its 24/7 nature and the fluidity that it has atm atleast. People should be rewarded for activity while making the game playable for the newbies and non-hardcores.

I would recommend disabling prelaunch or making it only 1 or 2 ticks but maintaining prelaunch for defence since it would be needed ingal or even sometimes in ally has the need for up to 4 ticks prelaunch.

Result: Very limited attack prelaunch would force some people to either launch before sleeping in that 1-5am time period or afterwards when they wake up and would help the game a lot. The simple answer is making attack prelaunch MAX of +2 and keeping the game rewarding for all parties.. if hardcores don't win the game the game will suck so yes activity > * but this would also force some more fluidity in the game play.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

No, because you can just make a 6 hour thing that stops incomings from being launched against you whenever you want, like in other clones

not tried the aforementioned clones, so dunno how this feature works.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Ali

People should be rewarded for activity while making the game playable for the newbies and non-hardcores.

oxymoron?

that asside, it occoured to me that you can probably go on a 6 hour sleep without any notice being given to the world at large, so for example if you hear you're going to get attacked you can just hide?

the idea of prefered launch times was that you'd only be able to move them by an hour or so a day/few days, so people would still be able to plan around them to a reasonable degree.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by mist

firstly, reposting while i'm reply is rude, damnit! there shall be punishments later.

not neccesarily. if, for example, you make it so that you need more ships to defend with but that people attack more at peak time then with tweaking you'll have similar success rates, but more people will be able to participate - imo, bringing the game's experience to all the players can only help attract newbies. when people look back they usually say that the game was better with loads of players. why is that? i think one of the reasons is that you could interact more.

To the first point: HA!

By "peak time" I'm talking about "peak time of current attacking" - i.e. 2-3am, not 8pm-midnight, when activity is highest.
If you need more ships to defend with (i.e. a greater value of defence ships per attack ship on average), then people will still want to attack at night. If you somehow make it more viable to attack during the day by dodgy variable cap rates / armour / damage ("we're not used to fighting now so we can't aim so well") then you could probably (by graphing activity vs variable rates) work out the new "best" peak time. Part of the problem is that people don't like taking losses and playing XP, so making defending ships do less damage doesn't really help most planets who like to attack without taking much damage, if any.

Originally Posted by misty

this used to be because the way to win was to roid people as small as possible as often as possible as they were the softest targets, so gave more growth. how much has this changed, and how related is this to what you're saying?

People still hit the smaller planets sometimes - for ships as much as anything else. Organisation and activity are still the key - being able to play almost like one "overmind" 24/7 is the way to win as an alliance, and most players put their alliance roughly first. The closer you come to total optimisation of your fleets to get roids and protect them, the more chance you have of winning.
Some players still prefer hitting comparitively defenceless planets for a more certain, but smaller, roid gain.

again, going on personal experience, this was largely pointless. anyone who cared knew what the target was beforehand, as you could just search the DB dumps for galaxies with approximatly equal roid/score patterns. even if you round the roids/scores and rearrange the planet orders they're still not that hard to find. that said, if attacks are moved from the middle of the night to mid evening and alliances continue this practice do you think it'll be a good or bad thing for joe? tbh, your point seems like an argument for, rather than against.

Some alliances are actually very good at hiding them. In my last alliance, they mixed planets between galaxies, and sometimes hit at alliances and sometimes at galaxies, or only partial galaxies. It's not always as easy as it looks to work out the targets.
All of this is all very well and good for european players, but it alienates more and more players from overseas which does have it's bad points.

i agree with you that people have to be able to cap roids in order for the game to be interesting. i also think that people have to get defence sometimes for the game to be interesting. landing an attack is great, but so is seeing off someone who's attacking you. landing an attack is largely a solo effort - there'll often be others attacking the same gal, but you're often alone on a target whereas defence is a team effort, and i think it helps build bonds and those are one of the things that pa needs in order to keep people.

Actually, in recent rounds attacking combos can be pretty powerful.

however, with pretty much anything you change you're going to have to rebalance to keep the landing rate about right. at the end of doing everything you want, you have the stats to balance things. if you're unable to find a point at which enough people land under this system then i'm surprised and fairly disapointed.

Stats should only be there to balance in general ways - i.e. average amount of armour and damage.

Originally Posted by mist

not tried the aforementioned clones, so dunno how this feature works.

Neither have I, but people are apparently happy having a good nights sleep

Originally Posted by Ali

I would recommend disabling prelaunch or making it only 1 or 2 ticks but maintaining prelaunch for defence since it would be needed ingal or even sometimes in ally has the need for up to 4 ticks prelaunch.

Result: Very limited attack prelaunch would force some people to either launch before sleeping in that 1-5am time period or afterwards when they wake up and would help the game a lot. The simple answer is making attack prelaunch MAX of +2 and keeping the game rewarding for all parties.. if hardcores don't win the game the game will suck so yes activity > * but this would also force some more fluidity in the game play.

No. If you've read prelaunched discussions, it'd force new players to launch before they went to bed, meaning they wouldn't be up in time to scan and would have a far higher chance of being defended against, while the active players get up later, launch, get less defence and wake up to jumpgate probe.