You make a few good points. I am not advocating for the ability to just go and attack a little guy or noob. I think there should be more done to protect the noob. Its more intended towards the people that are closer to you in score. Its not about making the bigger players happy, its about eliminating the need the need for to use tactics/exploits. Its the Big players that do these type of things and they in turn teach it to other players. Eliminating the need for players to use these tactics/exploits rather than restricting even more what players can or can't do will achieve more in the long run. Its all about keeping the community strong and growing. I see a potential problem with the changes put forth, and one that will hurt players rather than help. You can't hurt the big players well helping the small. Things need to be done at both ends of the spectrum to keep all involved happy. As i said earlier it not a perfect plan, there are things I don't like about it. But with community input we could develop something that works along those lines. As Tarnus and Pj have both said, they watch what happens very carefully. I honestly believe that their plan/idea won't work and that many problems will show themselves after a period of time. As it is their game, they need to do what they feel best. I have no expectation that my idea will ever get used, but to have a plan B in place and ready to go will be far better than going through this entire deliberation process again.

That is not going to happen. We already have ways to take care of situations where you are losing planets. If we were to implement your suggestion smaller players would NEVER attack a larger players planet for fear of getting wiped out in retaliation. If a larger player doesn't want to spend the money on their planets and sector defenses then they DESERVE to lose those planets to a much smaller player.

PJ go back to my post just before yours. If you really make it like a RTS, then you shouldn't limit them after they have been hit.
If you have played star trek armada 2, you will have hit a mission where you have nothing but a building depot and a star base. You can sell the star base to build more ships. The only "upgrade" in a rts compairable to this game.

Here is an idea for a variation: Instead of going by, say, the worth of a player's biggest ship, it could go by the worth of the ship that the player is in. If they're in a really small ship, a top player could get down and play with the little guys. This may seem unfair, but in a small ship, how is it? The problem, of course, is that this would allow them to nova bomb little guys in a small ship, and that would have to be changed.<<<<<<<<<

The First Horseman here. This would be unbalanced, in that a larger player in a small ship would have the resources to repeatedly repair that ship where the smaller player would not. In ship-to-ship contest, this would work. In sector conquest, it would favor the larger (richer) player.

I did read and understand what you posted but YOU continue to work on some really FAILED assumptions. It is not my fault that you cannot comprehend what I am talking about.



Let's see when have you ever seen a level 500 ship owned by someone in our game? I would say NEVER because the amount of money just to get the tech levels to 500 across the board just isn't going to happen in a normally running game. PERIOD. For a person to get enough money to buy tech levels of that magnitude they would been to have thousands of planets in the mid-200 range or have hundreds with around 400 tech levels and producing credits like a big dog. So to even be able to AFFORD a level 500 across the board ship you are going to need a huge infrastructure just to buy the tech level in the first place. This is why I discounted your example. You didn't think it through logically and went on an emotional quickie response.

That had to be quoted and highlighted.

We really can't do that here because a player can get a ship is bigger than they can afford to buy by attacking a planet with such a ship stored on it. We would either have to cause the ship to blow up or let the person who lost the planet always keep it. I like the idea of a player being able to get that bigger ship as a nice prise for a successful attack but they shouldn't be able to use it at 100% efficiency if they don't have the planetary infrastructure to support it.

Hmm... A Federation Tax on Tech Levels... the Higher the Tech Levels the Higher the Upkeep Taxes... Hmmm You cant pay your taxes: you get locked out of the ports... You buy the Tech level from the Feds anyway and they need their tax money... Sure you can have an Excel, but look at your daily tax obligation compared to a Razor... Great you just upgraded that planet to level 400; Can you afford the Upkeep tax on it? OR dont have a score based Bounty system have a Tech Level Bounty system..... Sure my score is triple yours but for me to attack you I have to downgrade my planets, my ships to get down to your tech level sort of a Star Trek Prime Directive... (Please ignore stupid ideas)

ICK!!! ICK!!!

PJ, again based on your RTS example, smaller players in some games get to steal or take over tech of the other larger players all the time.
This allows them to use it to full advantage. They just can't build more of them, nor can the upgrade them.

Perhapes the tech level you can purchase can be tied to your planet tech levels. Such as x times the highest tech of all your planets.
That way if you cannot afford a high level planet, you cannot afford to buy that tech level.

Although, this seems to be a tangent discussion, not really solving the giving of high level ships to low level players.
If you want them to be able to capture them as a prize from some higher player, then I have to say you can't have your cake and eat it too.

By limiting the effectiveness of the ship they just captured, all you did was boost their score so others could attack them, and they have not built up enough to fight back or defend.

Wasn't there some code that made high level ship attacks against smaller ships less effective? Could you not implement similar code for ship to planet attacks? But only make it work for close score players, and under. That way if I am a 10k score player attacking a 10k score player, my ship should be pretty equal to that players planets. If I suddenly show up in an excel, I don't do as much damage as if I was in an endevor.
But if I attack a higher player in that same excel, I get the benifit of its greater fire power.
IT does hurt the higher players attacking back, but it goes again to they should have defended better.

Hola Ash,
Yes the code is still in existence and working. I remember the first time I took the fed ship out and tried to attack an endeavor with it. I couldn't hardly touch it. I do like this idea as well. One of the biggest problem is defending against a larger player. He can attack your planets while his score is up there a ways, makes it a bit harder to defend so maybe an efficiency drop the closer to the bounty edge they get. I wouldn't want to make it too crazy but if something like that was in place it could level the playing field for the defender against an attacker. Of course this would all depend on if your teamed with a group of large players or not, I think the team range should still remain in effect.

PJ one thing to note, while the current main game would be a good test bed for this, with all the players I would either like to see it set in a separate cloned site of the main for testing purposes or the game needs to be reset so everyone can work with and see how it it works...... Or perhaps both.

[quote=Panama Jack]The attacker is still very much alive and well with this type of change. They will be attacking planets to take them to add to their infrastructure so they can have more and more powerful ships. You have to remember that AAT is closer to an RTS (Real Time Strategy) game and most RTS games use some form of infrastructure system to fund the ability to build attackers and defenders. This adds onto our current system by tying ship size to planetary tech size. It would be like most RTS games where you might need a certain number of resource mines and energy planets to support base defenses and attack vessels. This is really how the game SHOULD work but the simple way was used by just using credits to determine the ships that could be used. Things like sector defenses have limitations similar to this as well.[/quote]

First, I'll say it again, the attacker is not alive, because the attacker cannot buy a ship with their money. As I've already explained, I could be making 30T a day, but I'd only be able to use a total of 200B on a ship. If you don't understand, go back and read my other posts a third time.

Second, there is already an "infrastructure" in place, and it works well. They're called credits. Without credits, you can't get a good ship. Without planets, you can't get credits. That's all it takes. It would not make any sense if a player's ship didn't work as well just because that player didn't have a bunch of planets a galaxy away with high enough techs.

As far as bounties, and guys with small score and big ship attacking guys with small score and small ship, my suggestion takes care of that.

[quote=Panam Jack]I did read and understand what you posted but YOU continue to work on some really FAILED assumptions. It is not my fault that you cannot comprehend what I am talking about.[/quote]

I'm pretty sure I understand excatly what you're saying. I'm even more sure that you don't understand I'm saying. What is it you think I don't understand? And by the way, it may be that it is your fault if you didn't explain it well enough. But I think you did explain it well enough, and I think I do understand it.

[quote=Panama Jack][quote=Valience]That means, If I want a 500T ship, I need 5-10 QD in planetary techs. I use planets at level 255 for production. That costs about 60 billion credits.[/quote]


Let's see when have you ever seen a level 500 ship owned by someone in our game? I would say NEVER because the amount of money just to get the tech levels to 500 across the board just isn't going to happen in a normally running game. PERIOD. For a person to get enough money to buy tech levels of that magnitude they would been to have thousands of planets in the mid-200 range or have hundreds with around 400 tech levels and producing credits like a big dog. So to even be able to AFFORD a level 500 across the board ship you are going to need a huge infrastructure just to buy the tech level in the first place. This is why I discounted your example. You didn't think it through logically and went on an emotional quickie response.[/quote]

I'm sorry you don't understand the jargon of your own game. A 500T ship means a ship worth five hundred trillion credits. That's half a quadrillion, and is not unrealistic at all. Players have gotten ships much bigger than that in the past. On my first game, I got a ship almost twice that size. So go back and look over the math again. You didn't understand it or else you wouldn't bring this up, and you would realize how flawed your proposition is.

[quote=Texas Outlaw]Here is an idea for a variation: Instead of going by, say, the worth of a player's biggest ship, it could go by the worth of the ship that the player is in. If they're in a really small ship, a top player could get down and play with the little guys. This may seem unfair, but in a small ship, how is it? The problem, of course, is that this would allow them to nova bomb little guys in a small ship, and that would have to be changed.<<<<<<<<<

The First Horseman here. This would be unbalanced, in that a larger player in a small ship would have the resources to repeatedly repair that ship where the smaller player would not. In ship-to-ship contest, this would work. In sector conquest, it would favor the larger (richer) player.[/quote]

Yeah, you're right. That was just an idea for a variation. Thinking about it, I think I like the original idea, just going by a player's largest ship, better.

[quote=Panama Jack]If [a player's ship] loses planetary support it can't function as well because the support is limited.[/quote]

Again, just dumb. The player has the ship, therefore, the player earned the ship. The player should be able to use the ship. It is not only needless, but very bad to have any infrastructure beyond just the credit system. That's all you need. You're not solving any problems by adding in more. You're only creating problems.

Anyway, PJ, if you won't take my word and common sense for it, just go ahead and copy the main. If there's a way to copy the players, that'd be great. You'd see within 24 hours the flaws in the system. It would just fall apart. Nothing about the attacking system would work. Heck, you wouldn't be able to use anything about the attacking system anymore. I invite you to try it. But not on the main; that'd really screw it up.

One of the reasons I said on a beta game or on a duplicate main is it needs to be tested. First off Val, smaller ships are excluded ie, pioneer, Columbus, stealth and supercargo classes. At least thats what I remember.

At this point we are not saying you cant buy the ships just that you may not have the infra structure in place to bump the levels high enough. I am going at this with an open mind, its going to take some thinking, planing and experimentation to see how well or if it will work.

Sorry Val but you still do NOT have a clue what you are talking about and I am finished with listening to you rant, rave and call one of the DESIGNERS of the game stupid. So you can continue to rant all you want, I will completely and totally IGNORE you.

People Val is a prime example how not to talk to one of the game designers about their own game.