Tarnus and I were discussing the
exploit that Big posted about in his blog.
So we have decided to make a few changes that will probably make the attackers happy and the builders unhappy but it should resolve this issue and balance things out again. Most of these changes will be phased in over the next couple of days.
Planets dropping SD after being Nova Bombed
When you nova bomb a planet it will toss up some sector defenses to try and protect itself from future incursions into the sector. Normally you cannot place sector defenses into a sector if an enemy player has placed the SD in there first, even if you OWN the sector. You have to clean out the enemy SD before you can drop in your own SD. When you nova a planet the planet currently tosses up SD ignoring any enemy SD that might be there.
What we have decided to do is have the planet still throw up SD after it is nova bombed. The change is the planets SD will immediately ATTACK the enemy SD if there is any. The attack will operate similar to an A&R attack with the planet SD getting the surprise attack advantage and no attacking of the enemy ship. After the attack has been resolve the side that has the MOST fighters left will be the victor. All of the losers fighters and torps will be wiped out. Whatever is left of the winners fighters and torps will stay as SD.
I will not explain how to effectively attack with this change but most people should easily be able to figure out how to be successful as there IS a way.
Sector Defense and War Zones
This next change may or may not stay. We will be watching how it is used to determine if it should stick around.
If an enemy player wipes out all friendly SD in a sector and they drop in their own SD without taking control of any of the planets in the sector then the sector will change into a
War Zone.
Accessing planets in War Zones
If a sector has been designated as a
War Zone you will no longer be able to consolidate credits from them using the IGB or change planet production percentages remotely. If the planet is in a
War Zone you will have to take a ship to the planet and remove any credits or change any production values.
This means players can create Blockades of planets they may not be able to take to prevent the enemy from removing cash easily. They can also create an ambush by blockading a planet and then attacking the player when they come to remove cash from the planet or remove the enemy SD.
Accessing planets in SG Sectors behind War Zones and small enemy players
This change is to address the exploit that Big mentioned in the blog I linked to at the beginning of the post. I think this addresses the Deluxe version he hinted at but I could be wrong.
1. Find a sector with independent planets.
2. Create an SG sector from that sector.
3. Nova Bomb the planet with the most fighters and torps on it or every planet in the sector so it dumps a ton of SD.
4. Move to your SG sector and start creating planets and SG's behind the gateway sector that is full of SD.
You now have your own pocket universe that is protected by an independent owned gateway sector. You can now hide in there and build a nice network of planets and avoid being attacked.
Here is the big change.
There is a field call "sg_sector" for every sector in the universe table. This is normally set to 1 if the sector in the table was created using an SG Device. We are going to change this so it is set to the sector id of the GATEWAY sector. Even if you create a series of SG sectors that are 10, 20, etc levels deep each of those SG sectors will reference the original GATEWAY sector. If you create a back-door into your SG pocket universe all newly created SG's will still reference the original GATEWAY sector.
As long as your GATEWAY sector is owned by you or one of your teammates then everything is fine.
If your GATEWAY sector is owned by an enemy player like the Independent mentioned above or it turns into a
War Zone then you cannot consolidate ANY money from any planets in the SG sectors behind the GATEWAY sector using the IGB. You will also be prevented from changing any of the planet production percentages. You will be required to take a ship to each planet to remove cash or change production percentages.
If another player owns your GATEWAY sector or the GATEWAY sector turns into a
War Zone then your entire pocket universe is blockaded. It will not matter how many back-doors you have into the pocket universe. You will have to clear and OWN your GATEWAY to get at the cash and change production values easily.
Sure you can still hide behind an indy owned GATEWAY sector but you will be spending a lot of time running around to your planets collecting credits manually. If you create back-doors you will still be vulnerable through the back-doors.