Accumulating turns

[Arnon]

I dislike it very much that I can't really acc.umulate (edit: filter on c.u.m??? jezzz at least add a space before c.u.m in your word filter ) turns or repair points using the current system.

Let's say I can't play for a couple of days (3-4 days), I just loose lots of cash and xp. In the old SM, we could accumulate up to what, 400 or 600 turns in a fairly long period in the slower trade ships (PSF). But it seems to me like there is no way I can keep up with my trading if I don't play every 24 hours.

1) Take Emergency Repairs Gadget for example. Cooldown is too slow to let me play every day at arround the same time. Let's say I use it at 7PM, the next day I won't be able to use it before 7PM, so I use it at 7:30PM, so everyday I must play later than the previous (unless you're REALLY dedicated and wait the good *minute* to play -- I'm not like that)... If one day I play late, it's not worth it to play the next day because my gadget hasn't cooled down. Maybe a 23 hours cooldown could help with this...??

2) It sucks that the cooldown mean you actually lose effiency if you don't maximize it's usage. I mean, there are a lot of casual gamers out there. If I play every other day, I get half as much usage out of my Emergency Repair gadget as someone who plays everyday. Maybe an overcharge could be interesting? I.e., if you haven't played in 48 hours you get (48/24 = 2x) double repairs.

3) Repair bonus: it has been discussed before that as long as you don't do an action that would normally damage ship condition, you should keep your inactivity repair bonus. I think the bonus is way too small though ! It maxes out at 115 repair bonus, in about 3 days (?). That leaves no chance to a player that plays once every 2 or 3 days to compete versus players that pull in 2 hours a day.

4) In my opinion, excavating doesn't get inflicted enough a penalty when your repairs reach -300 or less. That means if I want to 'compete' with other players, I have to excavate until my repairs go down -600 or something. It takes wayyyy too much time to get that low (for me anyways) and I don't want to feel like I NEED to excavate for 1 more hour in order to stay 'competitive'. This point is really minor though and I don't really mind all that much.


Those 4 reasons (well mostly the first 3) are pretty much what keeps me from playing right now: if I don't play each day, I can't really compete with the daily players. I mean, I do a lot of activities and sometimes I don't have time to play more than once or twice a week... So why invest time if I'm only going to get outpaced by everyone?

[Freon22]

Let's say I can't play for a couple of days (3-4 days), I just loose lots of cash and xp. In the old SM, we could :-O up to what, 400 or 600 turns in a fairly long period in the slower trade ships (PSF). But it seems to me like there is no way I can keep up with my trading if I don't play every 24 hours.

This is funny lol, so tell me why do you think that you should be able to compete with the full time players?

So using your thing here if I only play once a week then by rights should not they change the code so I can compete with the players that play everyday? Or for that matter compete with the players that only play everyother day or so. Do you see where this is going?

Players that play in any game full time will almost aways do better then those that don't play full time. Like take a gameboy game, if you play it an hour each day you will finish faster then someone playing it one hour everyother day.

Edit: My bad! all completes are now competes.

[Harry Krishna]

So why invest time if I'm only going to get outpaced by everyone?

It depends on what your goals are for the game.

If you are a solo player and want to be the top trader or the top hunter AND play only a couple days per week, that is unrealistic. The top ranked players are the ones who invest the time to log in every day.

However, someone who plays regularly (2-3 times a week but not every day) would be welcome in most alliances as a support member -- someone who can trade for cash to support the alliance, or mine a home galaxy and keep it maintained, OP when needed, etc.

[Arnon]

By "compete" i meant something more in the likes of "not being totally outclassed".


How much days or hours did it take to get full turns in a PSF in the previous version?

[Harry Krishna]

I think it took about 36 hours for a PSF to go from 0 to 600 turns depending on the speed of the game. But I'm not sure you can make a fair comparison to the old SM(R) because things are so much different now -- the SC and repair system lets people trade longer than 600 turns would ever last , and you can now boost your cargo holds well past the basic 600 tons that a PSF carries.

Plus, when you don't log in for > 24 hours you get a repair credit that reduces the amount of repairs that affect your trading/mining efficiency. In theory that is supposed to give those who log in less often have a small advantage over those that log in every day. I have personally gotten more than 145 points credit after not logging in for several days.

[Infinity]

Plus, when you don't log in for > 24 hours you get a repair credit

Yeah, and he thinks it's not enough.
For one, Freon has a point, for two... what trade ship do you fly? How many holds...?

(at the end... hunt every 3 days, and you'll see how those 115 repair credits have nice effect)

[Kahless_]

I think it took about 36 hours for a PSF to go from 0 to 600 turns depending on the speed of the game.

Try 100 hours (4 and a bit days). And i agree with Arnon. In old smr if you couldnt play every day you had ship choices to help you with that. If you wanted to play every day you had ship choices to help with that. Now ship choices only affect how long you want to play every day. I remember a year or 2 ago a discussion on this very forum where everyone agreed that people who can play every day should have some advantage but time at the computer shouldnt be the be all and end all of success.

This game has gone from a game where quality of play has lost out to quantity. Which is bad.

[Freon22]

yelp was on a 1.0 game PSF got 4 turn per hour with max turns of 400. Most games were 1.5 PSF got 6 turns per hour with 600 max turns and some were 2.0 ...... with even more max turns. People still cryed that they did not get enough game play at 1.5 so now the turn base game is gone.

[Infinity]

A quick fix to this is (for traders) making a huge PSF, with... 1200-1400 holds, everything that needs a trade ship goes faster, trading time goes down to 45 minutes per day, and credits really mean something, cause in PSF regarding it's low CRPH (condition repaired per hour, if anyone doesn't know) one can effectively trade for 200 past repairs, 300 if trading only for money, so 45 repair credits means something when one gets them. As for excavating, advantages of big number of holds are obvious, one thing remaining is the search for higher level asteroids which just can't be faster than it is.

There are ways tom stay competitive with casual play, but those are not obvious.

[Freon22]

One thing to keep in mind is, if you cut down the required playing time to stay competitive with everyone that plays full time. You will also only be exposing the trader to hunters for only a short time. Which imo is not fair to the other traders or the hunters that play full time.

In the old SMR 1.0 I liked the PSF for that very reason. I could drain a route in a very short time, by the time the hunters seen that I was trading I was done for a few days. It was not fair back then and it would not be fair now.

IMO if you only want to play part time then that is cool but the game should not be giving you a handycap just because you don't want or can play more. It just not fair to the others that are putting time into the game.