Overburn is gone, but SHOULD it have been eliminated?

[Memtok]

I think not.

From the stand point of reduced game stagnation, prevention of excessive bashing, and in order to somewhat level the playing field of smaller alliance groups vis a vis larger ones, I think the elimination of Overburn was a poor decision.

First off, on defense smaller groups generally need more time to effectively mount defense than do larger groups.

In a typical attack, a person enters their planet and finds they are being hit. Quite often the person under attack does not see the fact until a tick or 2 into the raid, and therefore the ability of ships, and the TYPES of ships available to defend him drops. In a large alliance this is generally not too big a problem- you just call on a Xandathrii or 2 to send defense. In a small alliance though, there may not BE an available Xan to send late defense. The result is a roid loss, not necessarily because the planet under attack is a 'bad' or 'inactive' player, but for the simple reason he chooses, or is FORCED, to play the game in a small group environment. Where is the fairness in this?

A large alliance gains a benefit from OB defense as well, but the overall benefit is not as great for a Large Alliance. It is a simple fact that an aggregate increase in on line time for an ENTIRE GROUP is a very effective substitute for OB. Large Alliances have a large number of people on line at all times to watch for attacks, provide instant defense, etc...they don't NEED overburn to make up for 'holes' in their defensive availability. Small alliance on the other hand, with fewer people working together may very well be incapable of covering their members 24 hours a day, and even when defense IS available, it may not be 'fast enough' to be of help. OB defense ability just gives these small alliances a fighting chance by extending the time they have to gather enough ships to help their members, and it does so without hurting large allainces.

As for OB attacks, in my opinion they are over rated in effectiveness, but they DO increase the tactical options available in the game.

Sure, who wants to spend all round trying for lucky hits on over confident sleeping giants who send all their ships out to greedily gather more roids night after night with impunity? But isn't it a sweet little option to have when you find yourself with a few extra pods?

OB hits are easy enough to defend after news scans are available, and before newsies the real 'hard core' PA player might even go so far as to wake every hour to check his planet (don't laugh, I have seen this done!). The end result of OB attacks is a certain 'spice' added to the game- a danger that in my opinion increases enjoyment rather than spoils it. Don't you top-notch players ever miss the fear you used to get when you had to be away from your planet for 12 or 16 hours? I think OB helps put this tension back into the game again.

Well, there ya have a few reasons why I think OB is a good thing. Now I am seriously interested in why people think OB is so awful that it should be permanently eliminated. All I ask is one simple thing: Please refrain form basing your arguements against OB on anything which 1) assumes you are ENTITLED to 'easy roiding' just for signing up to play or because you belong to a large alliance, and 2) assumes that because you choose not to spend an excess of time on PA, or because you cannot or will not join a large and organized alliance, you are entitled to so much 'protection' by the game rules that you can be competitive for the top place in the universe...

Thanks

[bagg]

u raise some mighty fine points but i think its gonna help ppl kill there enemies easier and help the game move along quicker

also i believe that it helps player work as a team alot more when faced with no overburn

they have to defend better

and they have to attack as a group and not just go off on there own


should help the game - now all the have to do is remove the lower eta times for P and C they brought in

[Sun_Tzu]

overburn defence made attacking bigger alliances a total imposability, look at fang, during one night we defended 51(that's about half our members) attacks, not a single one got roids... Now tell me how making big alliance player immune to attacks(in a private-gal universe they wouldn't just be "nearly" immune, they'd be 100% untouchable) helps the smaller guys?

And for that mather, ob might be a bitch for everyone but it's a double-bitch for everyone not xanda, thus it's a huge imbalance within the stats.

[Silva baby]

o and OB defences causes masses of Xans cause they have the best figther fleets which are most useful in defence at eta 5
i dun want a universe with that many xans again
plz

[Memtok]

SunTzu...

I contend that private gals make defense HARDER, with or without ob, and that your 51 successful defenses in one night(assuming that is still half your member base) would not happen again- even if ob stayed in the game

You could def 51 times in one night last round because your attacks came in one and two planets at a time due to a random universe...would Fang realistically be able to duplicate its fine def record when attacks come clumpped together 5 or 6 planets at a time? Every defense organizer knows that available ships were multiplied 2 or 3 times because of the recalls and resends made possible in a random universe...how much differnat would things have been had an 'enemy' been able to pin down 10 or 12 of Fang's defense fleets at a single galaxy simply by staying until eta 1? Would OB have really mattered if so much was dedicated to a single place?

Strategic defense (on the alliance level) is radically differant in a random vs a private gal universe. It is not simply ob which made defense 'better' last round, but the fact that fewer planets in a given alliance would come under attack at a given time due to them not being gathered in one easy to attack group. With the return of private gals, defense will become harder whether or not OB is in place- it is just that OB would give to smaller and less organized alliances a fighting chance to catch a few of those Big alliance raids that come flying in when none of the small alliance people are on line.

As for your position Silva, that OB 'causes' a preponderence of Xandathrii: well, last round with ob Xans had exactly the SAME speed advantage over every other race that they will enjoy this round...in a universe where you subtract 1 from everyone's speed, the relative speed of the universe remains the same...thus no effect at all. See?

As for your points Baggy, I agree totally- no OB will help people 'kill' each other more effectively. Unfortunately, I think this will lead to the typical PA tactic of 'attacking down' to smaller worlds, and a preponderence of attacks against targets which have proven their inability to get defense...in other words, bashing.

You are also right that no OB requires greater team work...but again I say, What of those who can;t, or don't want to join more organized 'teams'? Should they be forced out of the game through constant bashing, and the inability to effective respond at all?

Finally, I agree with you totally Baggy, about the need to eliminate c and p travel time bonuses...

There is absolutely NOTHING which leads to bashing faster than giving a speed bonus for attacks within the same small pool of planets. In the days when clusters were the size of the entire PA universe is today, you MIGHT have made a case for this feature, but today all c times and p times encourages is trips to the same short eta targets over and over again for 'easy' roids...I think this is exactly what OB was designed to prevent, and I will tell you the truth, in my opinion ob is 100 times better than a universe full of in cluster or in parelell bashers!

[hyfe]

Originally posted by Silva baby
o and OB defences causes masses of Xans cause they have the best figther fleets which are most useful in defence at eta 5

I think you, as most others are missing a quite important aspect about OB:

OB was never meant to be the 'standard' way of sending defence. Which is why they implented the insane E-costs of overburning. Now; this would have worked out great in any other round, as we would all have been hit by a majorly big e-shortage. However, in their definitily finite wisdom, the creators changed the initiation cost of e-roids, causing everybody to have lots of E. Very very few people actually had E-shortage round; even though total E-cost for all practical purposes almost doubled!

So; In my opinion OB could have worked out great; if the creators hadn't f*cked up the other rules. Sadly, most people seems to overlook this aspect of OB when 'evaluating' it. Because. again 'in my opinion', if limited properly OverBurn could work out great and really really add to the game. Giving small players something extra to use their spare E for instead of PDS certainly is a good endaviour!

[hyfe]

Originally posted by Memtok
There is absolutely NOTHING which leads to bashing faster than giving a speed bonus for attacks within the same small pool of planets. In the days when clusters were the size of the entire PA universe is today, you MIGHT have made a case for this feature, but today all c times and p times encourages is trips to the same short eta targets over and over again for 'easy' roids...I think this is exactly what OB was designed to prevent, and I will tell you the truth, in my opinion ob is 100 times better than a universe full of in cluster or in parelell bashers!

'You've just been added to my all too short list of people who ought to be in charge of pa.'




Disadvantages of OB as i see them:

• Insecurity: PA is a team game. My galaxy ought to be able to look out for me when i'm away. Last round the only way to be sure you were safe were getting yourself scanned *every* time you were going to be away from your computer for more than 8 hours. Now given the amount of time most players spend on nursing their planets; its not very fun getting it partly thrashed while your away. Add to that the only players who really have the organization to get newscans are the members of larger alliance.
  
• Addictiveness: PA is damn addictive already. Having features which even more promotes having to check PA so damn often only leads to people getting 'burned out' faster; and certainly isn't good for PA in the long run. I want to be able to relax and let my galaxy take care of my planet!
  
• Cheating. OB attacks rewarded account sharing to a quite large degere for checking incomings. OB attacks also made having seconday planets for addional fighter support on attacks even more effiecent. (Add to that amps blowing up which promoted scan planets and you have a set of rules that *really* promoted cheating).

[bagg]

i understand if overburn makes u work as a 'loner' to get ur roids then its a bad thing

but i believe they got rid of it cause P and C times would make a hell of alot of planets able to get to you with eta -1 defence cause of the OB and then another eta -1 cause of the P or C

imagine a lucky couple or make a few private galaxys that land within the same P or C....

if they were VoM for instance it would be very hard to cull them as they would have access to 20 other planets with eta -2 defence which is insane

i dont think that any of the polls on the portal meant jackcrap cause as soon as they re-introduced P and C times they had no option but remove it for that very reason

[hyfe]

Originally posted by bagg
i understand if overburn makes u work as a 'loner' to get ur roids then its a bad thing

so its a bad thing if a good player can have access to roids without joining attacks which often are arranged at uncomfortable things? Its a bad thing if a good player actually gets a chance to do well without joining a major alliance? I thought 'skill' was something we *wanted* to introduce to this game?!

but i believe they got rid of it cause P and C times would make a hell of alot of planets able to get to you with eta -1 defence cause of the OB and then another eta -1 cause of the P or C

Well; read my post concerning E and OB-defence. It never was, and never will, be meant as the 'standard' way to defend.

imagine a lucky couple or make a few private galaxys that land within the same P or C....

Well..it means their ships will get home faster; but thats all. For most players in good alliances spotting the incoming seldom is a problem; its more a game of actually getting the defence. Its a long time since attacks revolved around cathincg players offline; the points nowadays is more to make it so that the defending players is unable to defend.

if they were VoM for instance it would be very hard to cull them as they would have access to 20 other planets with eta -2 defence which is insane

How many planets did you have in your cluster last round? .. How did that work out? If it had been as 'insane' as you proclaim surely you ought to have worked out your differences and owned the rest of pa?! no?

i dont think that any of the polls on the portal meant jackcrap cause as soon as they re-introduced P and C times they had no option but remove it for that very reason

I agree; a feature can never be evaluated by itself. Its the total that counts (fx e-shortage and OB). Which is why any poll by nature will be biased; however the problem whats the alternative? This is 'Democrazy in a nutshell'

[bagg]

Originally posted by hyfe
Well; read my post concerning E and OB-defence. It never was, and never will, be meant as the 'standard' way to defend.

that doesnt change that every defence i sent last round was OB.
it doesnt change the fact that ppl use OB alot and it gives alliances one more tick to gain defence does it?! pretending that OB defence wasnt the standerd and so wasnt used that much is childish as anyone in a 'above standerd' alliance would have seen how much it was used

Originally posted by hyfe
Well..it means their ships will get home faster; but thats all.

does it? have u ever played PA?! one tick quicker to get home MEANS one tick quicker to get defence to your in-cluster friends. Its why C alliances were so important rnd 7 and previous rnds. Rnd 8 there were no eta -1 in cluster times

Originally posted by hyfe
How many planets did you have in your cluster last round? .. How did that work out? If it had been as 'insane' as you proclaim surely you ought to have worked out your differences and owned the rest of pa?! no?

there was no lower in cluster travel time last round so there was no point in being friendly with ur cluster mates. i had 100 planets in my cluster although i think a few dissapeared through the round. the only galaxy i was freindly towards (slightly) was 26:9 but they never defended me



as for the rest of your post - some good points but like my previous post is flawed in many ways (as PA will always be)

OB was crap as it meant you had to be online every 3 or 4 hours when there were no newsies bout. To play and get top 100 or 250 at least you had to be amazingly active then have freinds who would newsie u every 3 ticks

that sucked it - always will

its a point u cannot argue against


as for making player more skilfull in getting roids on there own with OB well i guess i never saw it like that. but i also saw uncovered planets in galaxys attack groups were hitting with ppl using 'im OB attacking' as an excuse (they didnt last long)

its just counter-productive to team work

[Cochese]

The roid initiation change back to r2 style was a great move, though a few rounds too late.

It is good in the sense that there is an abundance of E roids, but as mentioned, it dilutes the uniqueness of the OB feature...more people have more E, meaning they can use OB more often, defeating the purpose of OB entirely.

I think OB, or something like it, will reappear in r10...but for round 9, removing it was the right thing to do. Let the alliance players have their round, one last time, because r10 surely won't be such a "free reign" for them

With (hopefully) more new players, and restrictions on alliances in r10, something like OB will be a useful tool. In the current state of "old" PA style however, it just doesn't appeal to the masses.

[Colt]

Originally posted by Memtok

With the return of private gals, defense will become harder whether or not OB is in place- it is just that OB would give to smaller and less organized alliances a fighting chance to catch a few of those Big alliance raids that come flying in when none of the small alliance people are on line.

how u thought of this i can not tell. the smaller alliances/players are usually the ones that arent active enuff to get a big score, and since OB ment having to check in on ur planet evry 2/3hours (esp b4 newsies) then how it would help them i dont know.

answer to question:

yes it was right to remove OB for r9, and if u wanted it to stay then you should have voted on the portal

[Tactitus]

Originally posted by hyfe
I think you, as most others are missing a quite important aspect about OB:

OB was never meant to be the 'standard' way of sending defence. Which is why they implented the insane E-costs of overburning. Now; this would have worked out great in any other round, as we would all have been hit by a majorly big e-shortage. However, in their definitily finite wisdom, the creators changed the initiation cost of e-roids, causing everybody to have lots of E. Very very few people actually had E-shortage round; even though total E-cost for all practical purposes almost doubled!

That's a good point; and one which we've seen before (I call it 'Spinner's Left Hand/Right Hand Problem'): two (or more) different changes are introduced that--separately--may be good, but they interact in ways to either magnify or negate each other. In this case, the cheaper E roids removed the only real obstacle to routine use of OB defense.

But even without the cheaper E roids I thought that OB defense was just too useful. ETA is just so important in defense that it's worth almost any cost. It also didn't help that the units with the lowest ETA--Fighters--also had the cheapest launch costs and were fairly efficient overall.

So; In my opinion OB could have worked out great; if the creators hadn't f*cked up the other rules. Sadly, most people seems to overlook this aspect of OB when 'evaluating' it. Because. again 'in my opinion', if limited properly OverBurn could work out great and really really add to the game. Giving small players something extra to use their spare E for instead of PDS certainly is a good endaviour!

I agree. And another variable that gets overlooked is the random/private galaxy issue. I think OB attacks in a universe with private galaxies would have been a very different proposition than OB attacks in a universe with all-random galaxies. In a private galaxy, you have people who know when you're offline and can/will scan you for incoming, and are also able to send low-eta defense. I can't imagine that any well-organized galaxy would have let many lone OB attacks through (once they had News scans, of course).

[Silva baby]

Several people feel that ob doesn't foster masses of Xans
has anyone looked at xan fleet compositions? at al?
suppose a big alliance half of them had xans who could all comfortably get away with full figther covertee fleet where as other races terran cath and zik need destroyers and frigates which all have eta +1. With ob defence and attack it would comfortably state that any big alliance would have a half xan and cath
overall they can attack ob at eta -1 and defend quite easily with eta -1 defend twice
i kno thsi last round when iwas BC xans were the ebst choice defenders at low etas they were the onli ones that could stop pegasus and stuff at eta 5
noone else could

[at0mic.c0w]

Originally posted by hyfe
OB was never meant to be the 'standard' way of sending defence. Which is why they implented the insane E-costs of overburning. Now; this would have worked out great in any other round, as we would all have been hit by a majorly big e-shortage. However, in their definitily finite wisdom, the creators changed the initiation cost of e-roids, causing everybody to have lots of E. Very very few people actually had E-shortage round; even though total E-cost for all practical purposes almost doubled!

Session Start: Fri Sep 06 15:56:03 2002
Session Ident: #betatesters
...
[22:15] <atOmic_cOw> the overbrun def will be the usual way of defending
[22:16] <atOmic_cOw> with r2 initiating Eonium wont be a problem

it's not like i (and some others) haven't told them eh ?

the ongoing discussion about OB has shown one thing: u can't please all of the PA community. some liked OB, some didn't and both sides have their pros and cons simply because they value all the up and downsides of OB differently.
the best way to handle this is imo a poll, which is what they did...

[hyfe]

Originally posted by bagg

there was no lower in cluster travel time last round so there was no point in being friendly with ur cluster mates.

I have a distinct feeling you didn't send many defence fleets in-cluster last round .. there was reduced travel time for defence fleets only. As for the fact that you used overburn for defending is quite irrelevant imo; you should never have been able to afford that in the first place!

Originally posted by Cochese
The roid initiation change back to r2 style was a great move, though a few rounds too late.

It is good in the sense that there is an abundance of E roids, ...

Is an abundance of E-roids really good? It may be convienent for us; however having them completly removes the point of having E in the first place. IMO they should either eliminate Eonium from the game completly, or create a system where people actually get e-shortage. An abundance of e-roids like last round just becomes plain silly as I see it.

Originally posted by at0mic.c0w
the best way to handle this is imo a poll, which is what they did...

They should have listened to you about ob

The problem with superficial polls like that is that the feature is judged in the context it *was* used. Not the context its going to be used. Democrazy has limitations; its fine for larger decisions defining the general direction 'we' should take; however in general I prefer leaving econimics for the econimic people .. I really think the same principle should apply here.

Originally posted by Silva baby

i kno thsi last round when iwas BC xans were the ebst choice defenders at low etas they were the onli ones that could stop pegasus and stuff at eta 5
noone else could

And making xans the only ones who can defend effiecently eta 6 against pegasi is going to change what exactly? Subtracting 1 from all traveltimes really doesn't change anything! In fact: i'd say the other races came out better than xans from the ob defence. If it hadn't been for overburn: CO would have had to be sent first hour against FR/DE incomings and wouldn't have made Co incomings at all! The increase from 1 to two hours, and 0 to 1 hours was much more significant than the 2 to 3 and 1 to 2 changes fighters had. However: I think a very large part of the reason you feel xands were overpowered last round is just plainly because the were But that wasn't because of overburn.

[General disclaimer: i've been drinking]
[Edit: i've been removing typos]

[Chax]

Originally posted by Memtok
...I ask is one simple thing: Please refrain form basing your arguements against OB on anything which... ...2) assumes that because you choose not to spend an excess of time on PA, or because you cannot or will not join a large and organized alliance, you are entitled to so much 'protection' by the game rules that you can be competitive for the top place in the universe...

Originally posted by Memtok
...I say, What of those who can;t, or don't want to join more organized 'teams'? Should they be forced out of the game through constant bashing, and the inability to effective respond at all?...

Or are people that like OB allowed to use any arguments while only those against it are restricted? What kind of debator are you that requires a handicap such as this?

[Memtok]

Not really Chax...tons of people so far have answered this question without resorting to some kind of dogmatic statment which equals 'take ob away because it makes getting roids too hard' or 'take ob away because people can attack me too fast and i cant get defense in time'...


I find it a very good compromise to say OB is worthwhile, but OB def under round 8 rules was TOO easy. The point brought up about OB costing too little in relation to available eonium is spot on imho: raising eo cost for ob would accomplish BOTH tasks- keeping the option for smaller groups (with sufficent planning of course) to meet attacks they cannot 'see' until a tick or so after their LT due to RL concerns, AND effectively curtailing some of the extreme advantages Xans have in an OB environment.

It gratifies me to hear that OB is not dead and gone, that there IS an awareness of the inherent problems with c and p travel time bonuses, AND that a serious look will be given to truncating the overwhelming power of large alliances.

Judging by some comments in here though, I do hope the rules don't go TOO far toward totally cnutting those of us in big alliances!

[Memtok]

Oh, to more directly answer you Chax...

I think 'the middle way' is the best thing not only for the game, but for the community. I am sure I am not alone in this...

The statements you took from my post may seem to conflict on the face of it, but what I meant was this...

NEITHER SIDE, big alliance members, nor small group/'fun' players, should expect the game rules to be tailored exclusively to their style of play. To do so would cause an imbalnce in the game which would adversely effect the enjopyment level of one side or the other- depending on which way the scale tips.

Should a large alliance player, with a high activity level, good political contacts he worked to grow and maintain, AND a sense of fairness in the way he plays the game prosper and be reasonably assured of his skills being fairly measured against others willing to put in as much work as he has put in.

I would say yes.

Should this same player be allowed, or even worse, encouraged, by the rules of PA to rape, pillage, and destroy the same small group of less active, or less skilled, or less organized players night after night?

Of course not.

Should a small alliance player, or a player who is new to PA and playing with just a few friends, be allowed to maintain a decent sized planet, with at least some measure of assurance that as soon as he leaves his computer to go to school he will not return to find his planet a 6 roid smouldering ruin, AND have the assurance that after a few damaging attacks that he will not be constantly pummeled until his planet is absolutely unplayable just because he does not choose to spend 16 hours a day on line?

Of course.

Should a player who professes to play 'for fun', and spends only enough time on line to launch an attack with his mates, and never bothers to check back at all until right before his attack lands be 'protected' by the rules to such an extent that he can maintain a score at, or near, that of a player who spends twice or three times the effort to maintain his planet?

Certainly not.

Balance is the key Chax, and I had hoped that the tenor of my original posting showed that. since it did not do that for you, I hope this explaination serves to clarify my statements at the beginning of this thread.

[Memtok]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Memtok

With the return of private gals, defense will become harder whether or not OB is in place- it is just that OB would give to smaller and less organized alliances a fighting chance to catch a few of those Big alliance raids that come flying in when none of the small alliance people are on line.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



how u thought of this i can not tell. the smaller alliances/players are usually the ones that arent active enuff to get a big score, and since OB ment having to check in on ur planet evry 2/3hours (esp b4 newsies) then how it would help them i dont know.

-Colt



In answer to you Colt, I came up with my thoughts thusly:

Private gals are, by nature, harder to defense than random ones because of a greater co-location of targets drawing from the same defense pool.

Since PA has always been a game where attacks on an entire galaxy occur at once, when a galaxy comes under attack, the more planets belonging to the same alliance IN that galaxy, the more stress there is on an alliance's available defense resources.
It becomes MUCH harder to defend a place which may have 5 planets requiring aid, instead of one or 2. This holds true whether a gal is peopled by 5 members of an elite alliance, or whether it contains the only 3 or 4 members of a fledgling group of brand new players- it becomes harder to gather defense assets, and harder to allocate them where needed, with every increase in the number of targets being hit at the same time.

As for the second point I made in that sentence you posted:

In general, smaller alliances tend to be more spread out than larger ones in a private gal universe- unless the large alliance takes special pains to specifically spread themselves out of course...we all know how difficult THAT is though!

Because smaller alliances tend to continue recruitment after the beginning of the round, they are therefore are more likely to contain players in 'random' galaxies despite the availability of private gals. this leads to attacks upon their members generally coming in proportionally less often than attacks on allainces with 'clumpped' members. Given a condition such as this, small alliances can make exteremely good use of OB defense to accelerate their response to the more wide flung members in their alliance- despite generally lower on line activity. For alliances that are spread out, OB defense increases their ability to respond in time, where before they would have no hope of defending.

And Finally, the last point- OB attacks are only a worry to planets with a significant portion of thier fleets away from home. Less active players tend to have fleets which stay at home more often ;-).

This means less active players will not generally fall prey to OB attacks- unless such attacks are guarenteed success for minimal losses that a single tick of roiding is worth hitting an occupied, but unaware, planet. This is only feasible if a planet is attacking so far down that it is a blatant case of bashing (or in very special cases, a planet is found with such a poorly configured fleet as to be especially vulneralbe...but such a case if rare indeed by mid round).

Because of these reasons, less active players have little to fear from OB attacks, but the extra ticks they receive from the ability to OB defend grants them a huge measure of additional security in their inactivity...

Does this clear my reasoning up a bit?

[Colt]

Originally posted by Memtok
[B

Given a condition such as this, small alliances can make exteremely good use of OB defense to accelerate their response to the more wide flung members in their alliance- despite generally lower on line activity. [/b]

i understand ur reasoning bout the rest that u said, but this is wot im trying to say^_^

Unless u have m8s to scan u evry 2/3 hrs then you need to be active, and *generally*, from my experience the ppl in the 'lesser' alliances arnt as activ and so with ob bein hidden then it is harder fro them to be defended as they NEED to b online. Tho i agree it can be handy, tho only aslong as u can get online to spot it.

[Sun_Tzu]

ok, let's set a few things straight.

Overburn last round has to be judged in the context it was used.

The theory of overburn and the implementation you claim it should have had(with-out the rnd2 initiation formula) would have still resulted in a advantage for the xandathri, they hold their forces in fighters that are the cheapest to launch in this game, thus giving them an eta AND cost advantage for the use of overburn defense. Also when attacking if not noticed right away they are a dangerous tool, something the overburn attacks only helped to promote. Further more if without the abundance of e roids overburn would have been used only when truly in need, often called for only when big planets and important gals would be under attack, thus making taking out a big player ever harder and efectivly limitingthe use a common player would see from it.

Also, memtoks statement about private gals meaning harder defence must be the most idiotic I've seen in a while, no-one in their right mind would will a gal with 5 players of their own alliance when a full gal is only 10 players! More so, this promotes powerblocking as they have the advantage of having less planets to cover in each gal and with overburn around this would have been a very easy task indeed. Also, even if retaining last rounds cluster policy you'd have cluster alliances with full galaxys on the same side having overburn defence available to them. Powerblocks(and in effect major alliances) having more galaxys in a cluster would fight off attacks at such an ease it wouldn't even be funny. They would be untouchable.

And to all those claiming 'individual skill', this is a game of interaction and as the game stands and in my humble opinion what makes it so fun is the interaction with others. Working together as a team and organising yourselves for a common cause. Politics are a part of the game, whomever knows how to play the game of the houses(WoT reference) should be awarded acordingly, after all, "No man is an island".

I'm sure there were other points out there, but to be quite honest I feel most of the pro-ob comments on this thread are not very though-through. Some are better, surely, but in no way do the pro's out-weight the con's in this issue, and actions have been taken accordingly.

[hyfe]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
The theory of overburn and the implementation you claim it should have had(with-out the rnd2 initiation formula) would have still resulted in a advantage for the xandathri, they hold their forces in fighters that are the cheapest to launch in this game, thus giving them an eta AND cost advantage for the use of overburn defense.

Granted; Fi e-cost are low; however I've had FI swarms every single round I've played; and I've never been Xan . As for the eta-advantage lets leave it at that we *strongly* disagree. I played Cath last round; and i had much more use for ob-def than my xand friends. I invested heavily in fi too; spids&beetles; however where OB really came to its use was when i was using bw's to cover fr incomings. Bloody unfair against the attackers though

no-one in their right mind would will a gal with 5 players of their own alliance when a full gal is only 10 players!

Humm? Then i'm fairly sure we have a *lot* of idiotic alliances around. (disclaimer: I haven't been on irc for ages; so my source of facts is AD, and nothing true is writen there *ever*.)

I'm sure there were other points out there, but to be quite honest I feel most of the pro-ob comments on this thread are not very though-through.

Well; If it helps: I feel the same way about most anti-ob comments. I honestly think you're blinded by the failure last round, and lack the vision to see how good it could have been, and still can be. As for the other comments in your post; any answers would just be repetions of what we've already said; not the most fruitfull thing ever. And in the end we really disagree on a lot more things than just OB

[Sun_Tzu]

yes, aparently we do, and don't go telling me you'd have 50% of the gal from one alliance when you have to choose between 3-4 alliances to pick players from....

[hyfe]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
yes, aparently we do, and don't go telling me you'd have 50% of the gal from one alliance when you have to choose between 3-4 alliances to pick players from....

With private gals we'll have wars again. Alliance will be targetted to a much larger degree than they were last round. Incomings will come in larger portions than the occasional incoming we had last round.

Well...I think i'm going to try and beat the dead horse a little more.

• TRAVEL TIME.
  
  Removing OB defence totally means all defence ETA will be one higher than last round. This means having low eta in the first place will become even more important. Next round FR/DE's will be unusable for defence, and co's not as usable as last round.
  
  Now ask yourself a question: who does this hurt? The people who actually built co/fr/de maybe? With most xans already having invested so damn much in FI they are the ones who are least hurt by removing overburndefence! The decrease from 8 to 7, and 7 to 6, is much more significant than from 6 to 5. Next round xands will still be the masters of eta and masters of fighter swarms; the other races will just have even more trouble sending eta 7/8 stuff in defence.
  
• OVERBURN ATTACKS
  
  To start of; i'm neither against nor for this feature. I'm very unsure about the whole thing. However I really would like to point out again that this feature 'hurts' the active players the most; and as far as i can see it has mainly these who have lobbied to have it removed.
  
  The main uses for Overburn attacks was, atleast to my knowledge:
  
  [1] Catching sleeping people with fleets out. (IE hurts active non-cheating players mostly)
  
  [2] F*cking up defence organizers. Throw in a few ob fleets and hope the suckers just use the gal screen instead of new-scanning. (again; only bigger targets get this much attention)
  
  [3] Nick roids from the amazing targets in a gal you can't arrange an attack on. My experience was that this was mostly done on good small targets in large gals. (IE not the typical lowbie we all want to protect and help out

[Sun Pin]

Originally posted by hyfe


Next round xands will still be the masters of eta and masters of fighter swarms; the other races will just have even more trouble sending eta 7/8 stuff in defence.

and aint that exactly what they are supposed to be?

imo this is like complaining over that the forest will still grow next year

[hyfe]

Originally posted by Sun Pin
and aint that exactly what they are supposed to be?

imo this is like complaining over that the forest will still grow next year

THANK YOU

So: if you agree that the other races gained more advantages from OB than xands did; (and will be nature be hurt more by its removal); do you still fully stand by this statement:

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
The theory of overburn and the implementation you claim it should have had(with-out the rnd2 initiation formula) would have still resulted in a advantage for the xandathri, they hold their forces in fighters that are the cheapest to launch in this game, thus giving them an eta AND cost advantage for the use of overburn defense.

?

[Sun_Tzu]

erm, I'm gonna stick with my statement, and imho it fits in with Sun Pins statement, I didn't say they had the largest gain, I'd have to say that's a hard thing to judge, but what I do know is you could notice an attack 3hours after it was sent and still get defence from your alliance, 4 hours and you still got xanda swarms from the cluster. That's still imho a very powerfull edge, a very distinct benefit for the defenders.

And for that mather, when did you last see a cath go only fr and above? plz...
When did you last see a *GOOD* terran player without harpys? really...
and zikos...do I even have to mention it?

All races have fi, it's needed for defence, in the case of the xandas it's also needed for attacks so they have more of it, nothing more to it than that(though o/c a terran can be out attacking and just leave his harpys home and send them as defence, the alliance might very easily demand all of the xandas fleet for defence purposes and thus rendering him unable to go out and get those roids. There's a downside to every upside...)

[Chax]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
erm, I'm gonna stick with my statement, and imho it fits in with Sun Pins statement, I didn't say they had the largest gain, I'd have to say that's a hard thing to judge, but what I do know is you could notice an attack 3hours after it was sent and still get defence from your alliance, 4 hours and you still got xanda swarms from the cluster. That's still imho a very powerfull edge, a very distinct benefit for the defenders.

And for that mather, when did you last see a cath go only fr and above? plz...
When did you last see a *GOOD* terran player without harpys? really...
and zikos...do I even have to mention it?

All races have fi, it's needed for defence, in the case of the xandas it's also needed for attacks so they have more of it, nothing more to it than that(though o/c a terran can be out attacking and just leave his harpys home and send them as defence, the alliance might very easily demand all of the xandas fleet for defence purposes and thus rendering him unable to go out and get those roids. There's a downside to every upside...)

I didn't have any FI/CO/FR worth mentionin in r8 as a ziko. Most of my fleet was DE. I did send lots of OB DE to defend though. I like the OB defense, It might make attacking harder, but it doesn't ruin anyones round. I didn't like the OB attack one bit though, since it was really bad for people that have to be at work/school/sleep 8h that they could die unnoticed. Also OB attacks kinda made wave jammers even worse than usual.

[Sun_Tzu]

in a normal round your alliance wouldn't have much liked you, besides, I base my perception on the races on good players, like for instance the two top20 zikos I knew last round who both used fi for fast eta defence...

[hyfe]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
in a normal round your alliance wouldn't have much liked you, besides, I base my perception on the races on good players, like for instance the two top20 zikos I knew last round who both used fi for fast eta defence...

Chax is a good a player.

[Iceaxe]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
in a normal round your alliance wouldn't have much liked you, besides, I base my perception on the races on good players, like for instance the two top20 zikos I knew last round who both used fi for fast eta defence...

Additionally one of them was closed.

[Chax]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
in a normal round your alliance wouldn't have much liked you, besides, I base my perception on the races on good players, like for instance the two top20 zikos I knew last round who both used fi for fast eta defence...

Your definition on what a good player is seems to me to be about as accurate as using the billboard top 100 to define what good music is.

On a different note I might well have been on the special Zikonian top 20 chart last round.

[Telest]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
yes, aparently we do, and don't go telling me you'd have 50% of the gal from one alliance when you have to choose between 3-4 alliances to pick players from....

3-5 from the same alliance in a galaxy isn't all that uncommon, in fact to me it seems alliances are taking a bit firmer stand against fence sitting than last round (hence gathering members from many different alliances isn't necessarily beneficial to a galaxy). Still, I do think that mostly it's 2-3 from the same alliance per galaxy.

However, without going deep into proof, last round most planets in large alliances were almost invulnerable up until when news scans had gathered enough information on who was in which alliance and the score differences between planets had grown large enough so that one planet from ingalaxy couldn't def an attack. In the beginning, when planets were about of size, picking out an alliance was extremely difficult, since their members could rely on a galactic defence in case of an attempt to pick them out without covering the entire galaxy.

In such universe, only galaxies could be targeted and inflicting heavy damage on a particular alliance was very difficult. During the previous private rounds, this has not been the case, since force could be directed more efficiently against certain alliances(powerblocks), especially via the means of incluster attacking (usually taking place in each and every cluster).

On the question of overburn defence, I think one of the major reasons it failed was xandathrii fake defence, which allowed people to totally neglect the eonium cost, while still placing a threat on the attacker.

Another reason for it's dislike is the illusion that it any attack which gained defence ETA 5 + 5 minutes would have gone through without overburn. I think many people who check their planets now and then, allowed themselves the extra hour of sleep knowing that OB could still protect them at ETA 5. Of course, there are genuine cases OB defence saving people, but some of the "OB saves" from the attacker's perspective were somewhat of an illusion. Without OB def, targets would have guarded their planet even more, resulting in similar outcome.

OB attack was not in my opinion a good solution, since it supported the type of play which required either extreme activity(check every hour), good connections(news scans) or cheating(account sharing). None of these is really anything that needs any more support (wonder when they change scans so that scan planets aren't the way to go, sigh).

Anyway, they should have made OB def 1 hour max, and preferably increased the time it takes to return from defence by 1-2. That would have made it a bit more reasonable. Another good way (in my opinion) would have been giving attacker a way to "delay" their attack's landing. For example a three-tick attack launched at ETA 8, once you are at ETA 1, being able to trade it to a 1 tick attack at ETA 3 would have balanced OB def greatly, since it would have bought extra defence time by forcing the attack to land later.

[Sun_Tzu]

a lot of the top20 should be closed every round, Bozz was since he quit and handed his account over to ninja, either way he still had a very good fleet composition.

didn't say chax wasn't a good player, just said that I based my opinions on players and fleets I knew of in the top20 overall rankings(not racial rankings for that mather chax). and anyone defy my stance that his alliance wouldn't have much liked him for not building anything with eta's 6-7(normal) if it was a normal(no OB) round, please? didn't think so...(if they'd known you had no fi for def I have a feeling they might have been a tad upset even with the ob as you were unable to make it to the first tick of any xanda attack...)

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by Telest
Anyway, they should have made OB def 1 hour max, and preferably increased the time it takes to return from defence by 1-2. That would have made it a bit more reasonable. Another good way (in my opinion) would have been giving attacker a way to "delay" their attack's landing. For example a three-tick attack launched at ETA 8, once you are at ETA 1, being able to trade it to a 1 tick attack at ETA 3 would have balanced OB def greatly, since it would have bought extra defence time by forcing the attack to land later.

re-think that plz, it might just be a tad too powerfull this way, imho something like this should never be implemented...

[Chax]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
a lot of the top20 should be closed every round, Bozz was since he quit and handed his account over to ninja, either way he still had a very good fleet composition.

didn't say chax wasn't a good player, just said that I based my opinions on players and fleets I knew of in the top20 overall rankings(not racial rankings for that mather chax). and anyone defy my stance that his alliance wouldn't have much liked him for not building anything with eta's 6-7(normal) if it was a normal(no OB) round, please? didn't think so...(if they'd known you had no fi for def I have a feeling they might have been a tad upset even with the ob as you were unable to make it to the first tick of any xanda attack...)

Hehe, defending agaisnt Xandathrii was never a zikonians job, that job is better performed by all three other races. I however did very well defending against big ships and covered as many hostiles as the average member of my alliance.

You are naturally correct that a DE+ fleet would have made me impopular in a non OB round, and naturally in a non OB round I wouldn't have had it. Nor would I have had it if I wasn't able to afford initiating 25% of my roids as E. I had a LOT of fun with my destroyers.

[Telest]

Originally posted by Sun_Tzu
re-think that plz, it might just be a tad too powerfull this way, imho something like this should never be implemented...

Against a normal 6 tick defence, this would in practise have no advantage, since it wouldn't be able to evade the defence.

It would simply be a way to avoid those two ticks of defence OB defence provides, only landing the attack for one tick. Hence overburn could be used to "buy time", or two fleets with OB def 2 hours would need to be sent. Not an unreasonable requirement in my book, considering OB is not meant to be the standard form of defence.

Presently OB defences being only two ticks doesn't usually have any impact on the game, if the first tick costs too much, the attacker is going to miss all three.

[Sun_Tzu]

Originally posted by Chax
Hehe, defending agaisnt Xandathrii was never a zikonians job, that job is better performed by all three other races. I however did very well defending against big ships and covered as many hostiles as the average member of my alliance.

yes, admittedly defending against xandas might be the natural job of the cathaar/xanda and not the zikos, but there are still other attacks wich can reach teh ears of the def. comm. at eta6 or wich you yourself hear about at eta6, those you couldn't make for the first tick with pure de-> fleet.

Telest; sry, didn't think that through quite, might work out, though I prefer no OB at all still...

[hyfe]

Originally posted by Telest

Presently OB defences being only two ticks doesn't usually have any impact on the game, if the first tick costs too much, the attacker is going to miss all three.

Bah. thats what i thought too; until i three waves hit me same night!

Large players used the recall/relaunch strategy a lot. I defended against Ivo twice during a night; that was purely hell! I counted over 300k hostiles at my place that night. And I wasn't *that* large. If the defense from my first defense's had been 6 hours we'd saved alot of defense ships which could have been used for other stuff..

And that night was a single incident. I experienced alot of cases like that BC'ing last round; where we ended up having to spend extra ships because of the damn short OB-def. In fact; those 2 meager hours were damn annoying!

[Telest]

Originally posted by hyfe
Bah. thats what i thought too; until i three waves hit me same night!

Large players used the recall/relaunch strategy a lot. I defended against Ivo twice during a night; that was purely hell! I counted over 300k hostiles at my place that night. And I wasn't *that* large. If the defense from my first defense's had been 6 hours we'd saved alot of defense ships which could have been used for other stuff..

And that night was a single incident. I experienced alot of cases like that BC'ing last round; where we ended up having to spend extra ships because of the damn short OB-def. In fact; those 2 meager hours were damn annoying!

Multi-wave attacks are really a great minority, and the "usually" word in my post mostly refers to those situations. Of course the 2 hour limit at times did have implications, but most of the time one could simply ignore it.

[Memtok]

This was a fun debate

[paolo]

Are you trying to make this forum more active by bumping old threads?

[MAdnRisKy]

this kind of behaviour is NAUGHTY

(but i miss hyfe)

[furball]

Red blob red blob RED BLOB for j00000000000000

[Ultimate Newbie]

Whilst revisiting the past, and laughing at ourselves being so concerned about a feature that no longer exists, the bumping of threads that have absolutely no relevence today is somewhat irksome.

Unfortunately, i cant un-bump the thread, so instead i'll close it (as deleting it would mean there is no reference to overburn should it be re-introduced).

Furball: dont be so pedantic .