[Approved] Wave Distorters...

[Cochese]

...clearly should have no effect against allied planets' scans.

They're meant to stop hostile scans, after all.

[Kal]

but then the hostiel scanner woudl just adjust his scanners to the frequency your alliance uses

[Cochese]

You'd think planets in an alliance would have a coded frequency to communicate with.

*cough*

[mist]

Originally Posted by Cochese

You'd think planets in an alliance would have a coded frequency to communicate with.

private irc?

-mist

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Cochese

...clearly should have no effect against allied planets' scans.

They're meant to stop hostile scans, after all.

What if you're being attacked by an allied planet?* Or what if your alliance has sold you out and is feeding scan info to your attackers? Wouldn't the scans then, in fact, be hostile?

I'm not sure why alliances need any more advantages. Also, having distorters block both friendly and hostile scans is a disincentive to building them (in addition to the cost, ofc). If that disincentive is removed then it's very likely that more distorters will be built, making scanning of hostile targets generally harder for everyone and/or forcing more resources to be diverted to builiding amplifiers--neither of which strikes me as an especially desirable outcome.

In general, I think the whole amplifier/distorter paradigm is flawed--but that's for another thread.





*Since I'm not playing, I don't know if attacks on alliance members are allowed and the Alliance page in the manual doesn't mention it. :/

[mist]

as most alliances have scan planets, is there any point building distorters?

-mist

[Spymine]

isnt the flaw in the current system the following:

-) scan planets build amplifiers in big numbers and therebey defeating the attempt to hide behind distorters
-) big planets only build distorters to prevent fleet scans on them when attacking

so you would find noone building both

couldnt you solve this problem by only allowing jgp by eta 5 fleets - doing this you would require scan planets either to send an attacking fleet with the main attacker (and thereby helping multi hunters to find cheats) or forcing bigger planets also to invest into amplifiers

with this feature you even out this discrepancy of having scanners who scan all they want

[Cochese]

Originally Posted by mist

private irc?

Doesn't do much good when they're not on irc, does it.

Originally Posted by Tactitus

*Since I'm not playing, I don't know if attacks on alliance members are allowed and the Alliance page in the manual doesn't mention it. :/

You cannot attack a member of your own alliance, nor do covert ops on them.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Cochese

Doesn't do much good when they're not on irc, does it.

that was rather my point about communicating on coded frequencies...

-mist

[Linkie]

Originally Posted by mist

as most alliances have scan planets, is there any point building distorters?

As most scanners these days are quite sucky, yes.

[Gerbie]

Originally Posted by Spymine

couldnt you solve this problem by only allowing jgp by eta 5 fleets - doing this you would require scan planets either to send an attacking fleet with the main attacker (and thereby helping multi hunters to find cheats) or forcing bigger planets also to invest into amplifiers

Or how about giving all ships at the same eta on the jumpgate scan.

And remove amps and distorters. It only leads to scanplanets (an advantage for the big alliances). Building distorters as a strategy is not the way people should play. This is a war game, not a who-can-build-most-distorters game.

[Eol]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

I'm not sure why alliances need any more advantages.

In general, I think the whole amplifier/distorter paradigm is flawed--but that's for another thread.

Originally Posted by Gerbie

And remove amps and distorters. It only leads to scanplanets (an advantage for the big alliances).

What they say.

The scanning system has always worked blatantly to the advantage of alliances and against new and single players. It's a lot better in PAX than in PA, but it's still giving big alliances an advantage over small ones, or unallied players, that in at least my opinion is not justified. Big alliances have enough advantages as it is, the game does not need to be rigged in their favour.

So I'd be for removing amps and distorters entirely.

[Banned]

I'm inclined to agree with Eol. With the following reasoning:

In old PA scans gave pretty complete information, to the extent where the game could (and generally would) be completely predictable if you had the right scans. Jammers vs amps helped alleviate this problem slightly. Of course, making amps cheaper than jammers might not have been the most brilliant of ideas, especially not when you could blow up the former but not the latter.

Anyway, the new set of scans are a lot better. They make PA itself (and not just the alliance metagame) a partial information game. It keeps the early round fun going a lot stronger in the later periods. And gone are the days of 'calc, launch, scan, calc, land/recall' ad nauseum.

Distorters are directly contested between an attacking and defending planet in one case and one case only: for fleet scans.

So removing distorters and amps would change the partial information game in terms of scanning only for faking fleets on planets with fleet scans. It would mean a little less incentive to play a half-assed, semi-active, paid planet. Though I guess that can be counter-acted by improving covert-operations a bit.

I'm not entirely sure it's a definitive 'right thing' to do, but without delving further into it my initial opinion is for removing amps and distorters.

[TheBerk]

id vote against removing amps and distorters myself, yes it is a war game, but wheres the war without the intel? 'can i actually overcome that planets ships? does he have the resources, research, factories to build defence? (early game) does he have defence?' without this info people would be more reluctant to attack leading to a slower game. if people want to build lots of distorters, let them, it just means i have to take longer to find someone with more amps than me.

well, that is my humble opinion anyway.

[noah02]

Its not broken so don't fix it ok.
You dont have to buy distorters ITS A CHOICE and it costs aswell so if someone wants to waste loadsa money on them for them to get cov oped etc.. then let them just like if you want to scan planets and not bum of everyone else then build amps.

Its a useful tool and ppl use it so leave it the way it is.

Just give us Military scans aswell though coz they was awesom hehe

[mist]

if they were to add a ship with 0 eta and the ability to kill any enemy ships at any planets it attacked, you'd have a choice as to whether you built it or not. however, it'd still be a stupid thing to do

-mist

[Kal]

I am approving this becuase it will make people more inclined to buidl distortoers meaning they will have a use, there are some potential secuity issues which may need tobe addressed but this should not be a problem.

[Gerbie]

Originally Posted by Kal

I am approving this becuase it will make people more inclined to buidl distortoers meaning they will have a use, there are some potential secuity issues which may need tobe addressed but this should not be a problem.

What do you refer to with 'this' exactly?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Gerbie

What do you refer to with 'this' exactly?

the original post