In that case PJ, I would suggest removing the bounty warning from the "send spy to planet" menu. After-all, why should you get a warning on the spy screen but not one on the attack screen. Removing the warning from the spy placement screen would increase the need to scan planets, not to mention add more consistency to the system, wouldn't it?

Did the bounties get changed again. I got attacked today, and I am just wondering as to why? If I had five bounties on sunday, I should be down to 4 by now. I am curious as to why?

spying should get a warning. The whole point is it is stealthy. If I scan first, you know I have been there. Then how do I slip a spy onboard your ship.

PJ will have to verify why you got hit. But players were dropped below 6, that doesn't mean that you would have been dropped to an even 5 on the drop. If you were at 6.5 you would have been dropped to 5.5 if you were exactly at 6 then you would have been dropped to 5. But like I said, we will have to wait till PJ wakes up before we know for sure.

It was my mistake. I accidentally set the level two bounty attack to 2 instead of 5. I have change that and given The Fourth Horseman back the money that was deducted from the attack.

Thanks PJ.

Pj and Tarnus there is one fact your not taking into count. The fact while a player is doing a attack you scan the planet or ship and no bounty then you click attack at the same time the cron resets and then bang your hit with a bounty because the victim in this case has fallen in bounty range in those few seconds for some reason. That being the case the attacker is not at fault for this action and should not be hit with the penalty of a bounty. Once again that is just my opinion for whatever its worth.

When your attacking in that situation, you are attacking a player smaller in score. You made the choice to do that. Besides, if ya get a bounty, pay it, it takes 5 bounties to get a fed hit. You can be careful and patient and even take a few knowing that the bounty count drops by 1 every 4 days. Remember this isn't a static total, its a dynamic total.

I have a couple of question about the bounty countdown.

Do the bounties only go down every 4 days, or do they drop gradually drop over the 4 day period?

I made a mistake a while back, in to much of a hurry and hit attack instead of scan.

as an example. Under the new rules lets say I had 5 bounties. Then it was 2 days since getting my last bounty and when I got the new one would it put me to 5 or 5.5 or 6 bounties?

The other question.

How is the damage that the feds do calculated? If it is on current ship value it doesn't seem fair. All a person needs to do is spend a few days in a cheap stealth and spend very little on repairs. I hope its based on players total value as it seems to be more fair that way.

Technically it drops ever so slightly every 5 mins. And yes if you were at exactly 2 days you would be at 5.5.



Yes this has been the great debate. First off, by the time you pay the fed bounty you will prob get hit once in your good ship. The damage is a random range, PJ will have to give more details if there are any. And yes it is your current ship.

Thing is, if your an attacker can you wait patiently for the bounty count to go down in a little ship? Or are you gonna keep attacking to help pay that bounty ya just had to take a loan to pay off If it looks like a problem, you know we will come up with something evil

Well, I think I am officially done now. Even with the new bounty system big teams of (for lack of a nicer word to use so I use this) jerks just have the smallest guy sell off or destroy all of his planets, put their money into his ship and have him drop score big time so he can still hit smaller players. There is no way to get rid of players like that. They will always find a way around the system to abuse and push away newer players. So hope all of you *old dogs* enjoy the game because that is about all your going to have as this goes on, fewer and fewer new players will even waste time to join because of players like that (and we all know what group of players I am talking about). I guess the fact that the game has not really had any new players (or very many of them) in a while is a good sign that what I am saying my just have a little bit of truth behind it. I hope you are listening PJ, maybe you can still come up with someting to do about. Maybe something like your score does not go down in certain events like trying to purposely drop your score and such. To keep players from doing the big score drop to go after other players then they raise their score again until they need to drop it some other time. Good luck though, if a player(s) want to be jerks they will be and will always try to find ways around what ever systems you put into the game to try to level the playing field.

Hola Darkon,
We are currently working on some ways to prevent it. I am greatly disappointed in players that push the system like this. It doesn't make the game fun for anyone and does drive players away. Then they wonder why no one is playing.

Just know we are working on a solution.

Ok, we have come up with a solution that should stop this exploit.

We are changing the bounty system again. We have found certain teams are exploiting the bounty system to attack low ranked players. Since we are removing the exploit I don't have any problems telling people how it was done.

We had players either leaving a team so teammates could attack and capture their planets then rejoining the team or staying on the team and destroying their planets to lower their score so they could attack lower ranked players. This in itself is not a real problem. The problem comes from teammates funneling cash to the now low ranked player so they can buy a large ship and upgrade the tech levels. The other players on the team would continue to funnel money through Team Cash to this low ranked player so they could repair and buy weapons after each attack. You could end up with a player who had only one planet and one huge ship attacking every low ranked player without taking any damage as long as his teammates funneled money to him through Team Cash. This is definitely an exploit.

One of the things we talked about a long time ago on bounties for teams was to make the attack bounty like the defense bounty. When you join a team if you are a low ranked player and the team you joined has a high ranked player then you can be attacked by any player who can attack the high ranked player on your team. When we made that change we also discussed making it so the low ranked player on the team had the same bounty ATTACK restrictions as the top ranked player on the team. After some heated discussion it was tabled.

Well, after seeing what has been going on in the game we have decided to enable this change. All players on a team will have a floating bounty range for their attacks based upon the TOP RANKED player on their team. This floating range will be based upon the difference between the player on the team doing the attack and the top ranked player on the team. What this means is if you are on a team with a high ranked player and you are low ranked you will no longer be able to attack anyone in the same range as a non-teamed player. The players you can attack will be closer to the players the top ranked player can attack.

If you don't like the change don't blame us, blame the players that caused us to take this action.

Another bounty change we are thinking about adding is a when a player leaves a team. If a player leaves a team they will not be able to attack or be attacked by anyone on the team they left for 2-3 days. There are some possible problems doing this and we are looking into all of the ways it might be exploited before adding it to the game.

We are also adding one last bounty change. If you have more than 5 on your bounty counter your player will be a BOUNTY FREE attack by anyone in the game. You will stay a bounty free attack until you eventually go below 5 on your bounty counter.

Thank you guys, I really do appreciate the effort that PJ and Tarnus have been putting into making this a more fair of a game again, where everyone has a chance of doing something and they don't have to fear the big boys and their teams from trying to take advantages of holes in the game. It is just a shame that it had to come to this in the first place Once again PJ and Tarnus, you are both very cool and work very hard on this game and making it into a game that all can enjoy no matter what some *jerks* (for lack of a nicer word) try to do to get around safe gaurds.

Are we sure we aren't overreacting here? I don't feel like we've seen a lot of players taking extra bounties since the original change. And if a smaller player is attacking a larger player shouldn't you have the option of taking the financial hit to defend yourself without fear of setting off a larger set of events afterwards?

- Shadowspawn