I think some people have forgotten some of the things related to attacking a planet or they have become used to how certain people play and get surprised when a new player does something unexpected.

Many of the old, regular players grab a small ship like a stealth to land on a planet before they log out of the game. They do this just in-case their planet is attacked.

Why?

Because, if the planet is defeated then their ship is attacked and it either escapes or is destroyed. The ship is ALWAYS destroyed if the Emergency Warp fails or the ship can't outmaneuver the attack. They do not want to lose a BIG ship if the attack on the planet succeeds so they sleep in a small one with an escape pod installed.

What these old time players have forgotten is if you sleep in a BIG ship and the planet is attacked then the shields, fighters and torps from the ship are added to the shields, fighters and torps the planet uses to defend itself. That can be a HUGE amount of defense.

If you have a ship with 20's on all tech levels and attack a planet with 15's on all tech levels and there is a ship with 20's for all of it's tech levels the attacker is going to LOSE. The shields, fighters and torps that are used for a level 20 ship are added to the shields, fighters and torps used by a level 15 planet.

We have had a couple of players mention they have attacked a lower level planet only to have the planet respond with a lot higher than it should values. After looking at the game logs every time that has happened they have attacked a planet with a large ship landed on the planet. It's a very NASTY way to sucker someone in so they lose one of their attacking ships but it is risky because if they succeed you could lose a big ship. Some of the old time players will not even chance landing on a planet with a big ship because of that risk. Newer players are taking that risk and it is biting the old guard in the butt.

Oh, and another thing I don't think some of the old guard remember. If you nova damage a planet it does NOT damage any ships landed on the planet. So if there is a level 30 ship landed there and you nova a planet down to 10 your level 20-25 ship is probably going to become space debris when you do your normal attack.

So if you attack a planet and it responds with an overwhelming amount of shields, fighters and torps then you were tagged by a big ship on the planet.

Oh, and if there are more than one enemy ship landed on a planet ALL of the ships landed add their shields, fighters and torps to the return attack.

And before anyone asks... Stored ships on a planet are not counted. The ship has to be manned by a player.

I posted this in my post bellow, but since this is a sticky, I will add it here too.
When you say added, do you mean a level 15 planet with a level 15 pioneer attacks as a level 30 planet, or as a level 16 planet?
Basically do you add to the planets levels, or are you just adding like above?

Lucky Starr's Crazy IDEAS:

In this game: .30 you can have mulitiple ships.

Crazy Idea: Own only One Ship (go the opposite way), Sleep on your Attack Planet. and when destroyed you get to spend your vulnerable time in Fed Space.

I have entertained doing this but have only partially implemented it... I am waiting for an excel...

Levels of the planet makes no difference with a landed ship. A level 0 planet will act like alevel 30 planet if the ship is landed on it. But it will only use what f/t and energy is available on the planet (PJ verify this for me) if you deplete the energy and torps off the planet the ship cannot help in the planetary defence other than fighters, and fighter really only go against incoming fighters and torps so thats not near as valuable as the evergy and tops on the planet.

so let me get this straight. No matter what my planet levels are, and regardless of the ship type, or ship levels, If I am on planet with a ship, I get a level 30 planet?

If the planet has torps/fighters and energy, and the ship your landed in is a level 30 ship, then yes. But don't think you are completely safe as someone can s till nova the planet direcly and blow it up.

This has been the way its been for a very long time as PJ said... whats changed is now people are more scared of losing thier big ships so they are no longer sleeping in stealths, they are sleeping in thier good ships to try and prevent someone from taking thier planet that probably had 2 or 3 of thier ships stored on it.

It's like attacking two level 15's.

If you have a ship attack a planet with level 15 torps and a ship with level 15 torps is landed on the planet then this is what you will have in torps returning your attack.



Remember that the planets get a base level boost of 2 factors so the level 15 torps on the planet are really level 17. The levels are not added together to make a level 32 torp for 4,314,399 torps as that would be a little insane.

But if you had a planet you pounded down to level 5 torps and there was a ship with level 30 torps landed on it then you would have to worry about 1,917,682 torps returning your attack.

Now here is the kicker for the person landed on the planet...

The return attack will use the torps from both the ship and the planet. But if the planet is empty of torps then only the torps on the ship are used and that means only the ships torp tech level is used.

Use the above example but have the number of torps left on the planet are only 100.



This is another reason some of the older players will not land a big ship on a planet. They are afraid sofa bombing and nova attacks will drop a planets reserve energy, fighters and torps enough so the planet doesn't have anything but the ship to defend itself. And there is no ship to ship combat if the planet is defeated in that instance. The landed ship either flees or is destroyed.

Some players do that but they don't have to own only one ship. If your ship is destroyed while you are offline you will respawn in Sol in a Pioneer but you will NOT be kicked out unless you log back in. Most seasoned players look at the countdown timer and wait for it to change over from 0 before logging in. That gives them almost 5 minutes to figure out what to do if they find themselves in a pioneer in Sol sector before they are kicked out.

Thanks for the details guys, I always wondered what the schemantics were behind planetary attacks with a based ship.

Onto the next thing...

I have an indie I have been trying to knock down and there is some very odd behavior (if it is a bug I will write it up).

Using hypothetical numbers here....

When I go to the planetary attack screen, it says something like:

You Ship Beams: 9,000,000
Planet Ship Beams: 3,000,000
Your Ship Shields: 9,000,000
Planet Shields: 3,000,000
Etc...

However, when I attack this little bugger, I can never put more than about 3,000,000 worth of my potential 9,000,000 beam destruction down on the planet. Even when I get the prompt about tech degradation I get about 2,500,000 beams down out of my possible 9,000,000.

So at the very bottom of the screen I still have 4-5,000,000 Beams left, 15,000,000 energy and tons of other resources.


My beams should be melting that planets shields like butter as I easily have 3 times the amount of power needed to blast through it. However, I can never seem to unload my total arsenal onto this one indy.

This is because all attacks work similar to the way arrack and run does for sector defense. If you ship is too large compared to what it is attacking it has a higher failure rate.

You usually never notice this when attacking players within your bounty range. Indy planets can always be attacked. So trying to attack a low indy planet with a huge ship will take forever to accomplish. You need to switch to a smaller ship and attack that planet.

Can there be some language in the attack screen noting what is occuring. Because my solution so far was, "Geez, I better upgrade my tech level!".

I looked at the attack logs, and your not that much bigger than the planet, however you can get some failure. You have to bust the shields to do any armor damage and this means you need beams and torps. The planet had leftover shields that prevented you from damaging the armor. Remember everything is not a constant and your attack at one time may be a good attack where the next one may not. But my bet is the planet has a huge supply of torps, energy and fighters. I got a planet where I'm in exactly the same boat... PJ has programmed the indy planets to upgrade to defend themselves and with the cheaper planet upgrades they can upgrade faster that what we can afford to upgrade our ships, so you get to do what I do and that is nova your planet down a level and hope for the best

As a defensive builder, I have yet to see where the planet is taking offensive action when I am attacked while offline Is this going to show in the logs?


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Planet captured! April 08 2006 00:48
Your planet Grimm in sector * was defeated and captured by the wretched Devil.
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Planet defeated! April 08 2006 00:48
Your planet Grimm in sector * was defeated in battle by the wretched Devil. The people of the planet welcome their new ruler. You hear a testimony on FNN : "We're glad to be rid of that old fart! We don't want no stinking loser who can't protect us!". You swear to make them pay for their arrogance.
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Planet scan April 08 2006 00:48
Devil has scanned your planet Grimm in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3106 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3091 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3048 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3211 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3177 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3123 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3174 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil destroyed 3208 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil hit 106598 mines in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:48
Devil hit 8933 mines in sector *.
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Planet bombed! April 08 2006 00:47
Your planet Planet Grimm in sector * was bombed by Devil. You used 11016 energy and 400 torpedoes in your defense. You lost 25037 fighters.
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Planet bombed! April 08 2006 00:47
Your planet Planet Grimm in sector * was bombed by Devil. You used 16715 energy and 11588 torpedoes in your defense. You lost 18280 fighters.
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Planet scan April 08 2006 00:47
Devil has scanned your planet Grimm in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:47
Devil destroyed 25,706 sector defence fighters in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:46
Devil destroyed 0 sector defence fighters in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:45
Devil destroyed 123,241 sector defence fighters in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:45
Devil destroyed 25,909 sector defence fighters in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:45
Devil destroyed 25,811 sector defence fighters in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:45
Devil destroyed 26,046 sector defence fighters in sector *.
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Notice April 08 2006 00:44
Devil destroyed 25,801 sector defence fighters in sector *.

The planet always takes offensive action when attacked directly. A planet can not however take offensive action when SD is attacked. That's the SD's job

Actually it did take defensive action and attacked Grim but you will never know how much damage you did to him if any. You are only told the result of your loses if any, If your planet had destroyed him then you would get a notice about that. Grim had to take out all of your sector defenses, except for mines before he attacked your planet and he had losses doing that. He then SOFA Bombed your planet to reduce the energy, fighters and torps enough so he could do a direrect attack. Sofa Bombing can be just as dangerous and sometimes more dangerous thatn a direct attack.

He basically used tactics that some people forgot and haven't used in a while because most people have relied on using Sector Novas and Planet Novas to pound down a planet before they do a normal attack on it. The SOFA Bomb attack kind of fell to the way side because of the Nova.