Secondary targetting

[Shiprex]

This game is way to predicatable. The reason for this is that some ship types are redundant. Take for instance Harpy/mandrake and syren. You can have tons of them but they are though they are suposed to target Fr/Fi (XAN fleets) you are as well to run the fleet and you can still have a fleet 100 times bigger left behind but it does nothing? Thats not a battle that is Dumb.

Why not have secondary targetting of inbound fleets with only 20-30% effectiveness on the ships incomming. This could be for only the home or the home/defending fleets to help encourage people to actually defend rather than fake defend. Also it would mean roids will become more difficult to come by as whatever is left behind will make some sort of dent in the attackers fleet before roids are stolen.

Yes maybe Terran would have an advantage to leaving behind their BS and so would everyone else.

This would even out some of the inequalities in the single fleet scenario with no one having an easy time. The timing of attacks would be utmost and finding when someone is out is surely the way battle should be.

[CheeseCakes]

Well making the ships fire at nearby size ships would work far better.

I.e ships that hit fi then hi co for say 25% and vice versa.

Same for the other groups.

Makes everything alot more complicated though

[Monroe]

The game used to have secondary and terterary targeting. It proved to complicated for new players and the ships stats were simplified to make it easier for new players. While I personally miss the challenge this brought overall it has been very benificial for the game. There have been many topics on this subject over the years, and I suspect there will be many more.

[DunkelGraf]

Originally Posted by Monroe

The game used to have secondary and terterary targeting. It proved to complicated for new players and the ships stats were simplified to make it easier for new players.

Lets all blame it on the new players \o/

(and Heartless of course as its his fault!)

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Shiprex

This game is way to predicatable.

Firstly, there have been a huge number of suggestions regarding making the game less predictable. The reason why most of them (with the exception of Unit Scans) have been rejected, is because the majority of players prefer certainty over uncertainty. This, in my opinion, is fair as a planet you take ~10 weeks to build can be annhiliated in just one battle - if the cause of that was "randomness" or due to the game being unpredictable, many people would be outraged that all that hard work was wasted for absolutely nothing.

That aside...

The reason for this is that some ship types are redundant.

In many cases, the usefulness of certain types depends entirely on 1) what the player intends to pursue as a strategy (eg, a CR Zik is going to find their CO ships less useful), and 2) what the player receives as incoming (eg, they get a constant stream of Cath FR and Xan FR incoming and so build more anti FR, making other types [eg anti CO] less useful).

The Statbuilder, before the round, can only imagine or guess as to what players are going to be using to attack or defend with. Sometimes (indeed, often) you get "useless" ships that target nothing important and just get shot at in return. This isnt necessarily bad, however - if you recall Round 4, the Phoenix targetted CR which was not a major defensive ship (Interceptors/Spiders - both fighters - were the primary form of universal defence) - however, Phoenixes were still built en masse because of their higher (per unit of resource) EMP resisitance when compared to Astropods only. As such, it took more Spiders to stun them and made it more difficult to stop the fleet. This "Useless" ship in terms of targeted fulfilled a role of Flak.

and you can still have a fleet 100 times bigger left behind but it does nothing? Thats not a battle that is Dumb.

It might not be the most realistic battle situation. However, Planeration is not a realistic game - there is no interstellar travel (between Galaxies too!!), there are no races that we know of, there are no ships, no PDS etc etc etc.

The point of Combat in Planetarion is to facilitate the exchange of roids and ships between players. To that end, a system which makes it easy to attack is better than one that makes it impossible to attack. Why? because victory is fun. Simple as that. You make it easier to have victory more often, you should result in more fun.

That aside, the reason why the targeting spectrum of ships is so limited, is to facilitate ease of attacking. If your fleet isnt good at defending against (eg) Corvettes, then people who use Corvettes can attack you. Similarly, if your attack fleet is BA, then people who arent good at targeting BA fall victim to you. What goes around comes around. Its the role of the Statbuilder to form some sort of rock-paper-scissors-wok-bag-knife type situation whereby everyone has at least one vulnerability and at least one strength that match up.

Why not have secondary targetting of inbound fleets with only 20-30% effectiveness on the ships incomming.

Because, this would increase the amount of damage done to intelligent players who plan their fleets effectively to take advantage of their strengths and exploit the weaknesses in your fleet. Increasing damage means that the cost of their attack would rise, which means it takes longer for the captured asteroids to pay themselves off, which means that there is less incentive to attack, so there is less battle and fewer victories, leading to less fun.

What is the point of a game with less fun?

Stagnation used to plague planetarion, especially in late pre-PAX rounds - attacking simply wasnt viable anymore, making more ships and resources available to defence which made it even harder to attack. the post-PAX system - whilst simplistic and has a few flaws - addressed this major problem admirably.

Simply, if you want two targets for your ships (which i do), then you'll need more classes of ship in order to have the same result. This is possible, however atm undesireable.

[Dr_Zaius]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

It might not be the most realistic battle situation. However, Planeration is not a realistic game - there is no interstellar travel (between Galaxies too!!), there are no races that we know of, there are no ships, no PDS etc etc etc.

/me wasn't aware that there was PDS in PA either :P

[JonnyBGood]

Making roiding people more difficult is not a good idea. This round swung too far towards the defensive, going even further would make the game stagnate much faster.

[Ace]

Originally Posted by DunkelGraf

Lets all blame it on the new players \o/

(and Heartless of course as its his fault!)

OFC it's heartless fault

[Shiprex]

The point is that what always end up happening is it should be evened out for the defender who may not be in an alliance and thus gets roided regularly more than he can actually roid. The game may not stagnate if roids were stolen earlier in combat and perhaps combat took place after they had been grabbed and then before being transported the pods that were targetted got killed making it expensive to steal them. Perhaps the reward of getting roids could be increased.

Another suggestion is that the 25% roid cap should come as a result of value ratio ie .25 roids x (defender value/attacker value) since this game decended into being attacked by somone double your value so you searched for someone half your size. Also perhaps defending/home fleets could have some sort of 'home' advantage (eg they fire 1 initiative point earlier they do have lower alliance travel times). This would increase the benefits of defending.

[Shiprex]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Making roiding people more difficult is not a good idea. This round swung too far towards the defensive, going even further would make the game stagnate much faster.

Surely defence is a good thing? Letting everyone get the chance to see success rather than permanently drop is a good thing. Making it harder for the 24/7 players and alliances would be better as gaining int on other alliances resulting in alliance wars is surely better and more entertaining since its not just the casual player/gal who ends up being farmed by every alliance who sees them having some success.

Community spirit and all that. Also for the casual player (majority?) who may not have an active gal/alliance surely keeping them in the game and seeing more green than red will make things more difficult for the serious players which will make them need to evolve from hitting half value targets and picking more risky strategies on bigger targets to get easy roids.

Bit of a tangent here
What about gaining XP for being attacked ?
I say it would be good since you gain knowledge of hostile tactics and fleet composition

[Squidly]

Your mind is in the right place, but unfortunately, xp for being attacked would be fairly easy to abuse... although the benefits are there, as you've shown... The fact that it can be abused, and would probably be a nightmare for the MH to moderate... The idea may need some tweaking

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Shiprex

The point is that what always end up happening is it should be evened out for the defender who may not be in an alliance and thus gets roided regularly more than he can actually roid.

It is the nature of a pyramid type accumulation that those at the bottom have to attack more players to get the same number of roids than those above - as obviously 25% of a small number is less than 25% of a larger number.

"small" players can, however, attack less often by attacking targets with more roids - though this obviously takes more planning and knowledge than just finding someone at 40% and launching your whole fleet at them .

Perhaps the reward of getting roids could be increased.

Then the players who cap the most roids - the top players - will gain the most score from this an accelerate away, unreachable by others.

Another suggestion is that the 25% roid cap should come as a result of value ratio ie .25 roids x (defender value/attacker value) since this game decended into being attacked by somone double your value so you searched for someone half your size.

I am not sure that this is a solution. Indeed, roid cap based on attacker and defender value was the norm in earlier rounds - roid cap plummeted as the target became smaller in comparison to you. However, those at the bottom of the cap were still attacked by really large players because those roids were effectively free, due to the disparity in fleet sizes. Similarly, with your proposal, the cap might only be 10 or 15%, but its still greater than zero and thus still worth attacking - especially if the attacker was a Zik looking for ships more than roids for example.

Also perhaps defending/home fleets could have some sort of 'home' advantage (eg they fire 1 initiative point earlier they do have lower alliance travel times). This would increase the benefits of defending.

DO NOT EVER STUFF WITH INITIATIVE!!! - i despair at how often people suggest that just "small" alterations to inititive wont have any adverse effect with game balance. It will in many situations - where the statbuilder decides to use initiative as a way to balance ships (or combos of ships) - Using Scarabs to EMP Roaches to permit Ghosts to fire in R13 (and later?) was a prime example of where initiative was critical - changing it by even 1 would stop the whole thing.

Surely defence is a good thing? Letting everyone get the chance to see success rather than permanently drop is a good thing. Making it harder for the 24/7 players and alliances would be better as gaining int on other alliances resulting in alliance wars is surely better and more entertaining since its not just the casual player/gal who ends up being farmed by every alliance who sees them having some success.

Defence is a good thing - but everyone knows that you can have too much of a good thing. I dont know that this round was too defensively oriented (i've not been attacking much from 1:1 ), however i know the results of too much defending - a boring game.

Players under attack can still have 'success' - however often the best thing to do is to go and attack someone. At least with the current system of limited targeting for ships, much of the defender's fleet wont be destroyed as its not targeted by a single class - unlike the past when your whole fleet could die from someone sending mass Interceptors (for example).

Community spirit and all that. Also for the casual player (majority?) who may not have an active gal/alliance surely keeping them in the game and seeing more green than red will make things more difficult for the serious players which will make them need to evolve from hitting half value targets and picking more risky strategies on bigger targets to get easy roids.

Community spirit indeed - the only way for players to get more green incoming fleets is for other players to actually launch them. Whilst the bottom player might get one or two defensive fleets every now and again, if there are large defensive incentives then the people who would benefit the most would - again - be those in the top alliances. Thus i dont see any more defence being sent unless you implemented something like a Galaxy defence (4th) slot, which imo would help new players at an in-gal level. However, there are problems with this suggestion which is outlined in great detail in another thread. In the end, new players must be more willing to defend other new players before they will see any increase in defensive fleets inbound - doing so without making the players in the top alliances too powerful or stagnated is difficult i think.

Additionally, i dont think the last half of your statement is correct - the more easier it is to defend, the weaker the target must become in order to get the same chance of success. As a result, players at the bottom will get hit more often by even more overwhelming fleets than before - i dont think that's a move in the right direction. Especially combined with incentives for defence, attacking top players would be nigh on impossible.

At least with the current system, many players in top alliances grow so fast that after the first week or two, they are unable to attack the lower players due to the bash limit - this is prolly the best thing.

What about gaining XP for being attacked ?

You get that already - 100 XP for a battle

[Shiprex]

I'm landing for the xp to boost my score, if your def lands then you'll lose 500 of your dragons, i lose quite a bit less but it's worth it for roids and score.

A mail I received from an attacker into my gal now Why should I bother defending when he will benefit a whole lot more than I ?
Give defenders a reason to defend then people will bother and then perhaps catching these runaway attacking strategists would be a bit easier.

[bwtmc]

Is the benefit not that cooperative benefit thing people keep on talking about..?

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Shiprex

A mail I received from an attacker into my gal now Why should I bother defending when he will benefit a whole lot more than I ?
Give defenders a reason to defend then people will bother and then perhaps catching these runaway attacking strategists would be a bit easier.

You should bother defending him because 1) he might report your incoming, 2) he might defend you when your alliance cant help you, 3) he might be able to organise a retal or three on your attacker(s), 4) making friends with him makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, 5) you might get some very long-term friends out of it (a random landed in my gal in R12, i buddied with him from R13-R16 when i stopped playing actively however i still help him when i can with scans and the like - more than that, we have become good mates (even if he is a pom!). and through him i met another chap who is great fun to talk to on IRC and the like, and even though he is french he's in the carribean and that makes him cool ). See, you never know who'll you'll meet if you just make the little effort it takes to invest in your galaxymates.

Granted, both were reletively IRC active. Still, you defend your friends and galaxymates as they will tend to return the favour whenever they can - in the interests of fairness. There is quite alot of research based on group behaviour and dynamics, have a look around for it (its fascinating!).

Anyway, my point is that you might not "win" from that particular battle. Add that battle + your galaxymate saving a wave against you, then in most cases it then becomes viable.

[Shiprex]

Another thought about XP perhaps the XP of an attack is set by the launcher and that XP be divided out amongst the successors so that if it is repelled the defenders gain some by getting a share in the spoils. Not a paltry 100 XP. Make only the fleets NOT faking gain this as they have committed to actually defending.

[Saphi]

going back to the multi targetting issue heres my 10 cents worth

1) to complicated for new players
2) get boring after a while (i#ve jsut started playing a game so similar to the early rds where u just build up your fleets and basically crash just to get roids)
3) the KIS factor is lost with multi targetting its better to have a game which all lvls of players can play rather than just the older pa players can play

I've trained many a person in this game with the newer stats. and its made our job a lot more easier. as we dont have to explain mutli targetting

I also play PIA wich has multi targetting, which i dont mind it but i prefer single class targetting since it was changed in PA.

And the simplicty makes me always come back to PA rather than PIA...

but one thing that still stands out is the Xp debate in PA but thats for a different old come new thread

but other than that Keep it Simple (KiS) is the easiest way to draw in newer players so they can pick up the game and then if they want to move on to multi targetting games they can :P