Post-NSF Op Rehash: Discussion

[jouldax]

Let me start off by saying that I welcome any and all feedback, and that flaming in this thread will not be tolerated. This game has gone through a lot of changes over the past several months, many of which I've spearheaded in an effort to increase activity and participation. With that said, today's op went against the spirit of what I've been trying to accomplish, and while I understand the reasons for it and some of the benefits of it (we did have over half the active vets on cpl at once), I don't believe that this is the way the game should be played going forward. Let me lay out a few points and thoughts, and then open the floor for discussion.

In my opinion, tag-team alliances are no good and defeat the spirit of the rules. The alliance cap was created to make the game more competitive, not to be circumvented. The dilemma, of course, is how many active players each alliance can actually expect to bring during ops. JJ, who usually leads the most active crew, was only able to muster 7 for the past few ops. So that leads us to 2 questions:

A. Do we raise the alliance cap and keep planet levels the same?
B. Do we keep the alliance cap the same and shrink the planets?

If A., how many in each alliance, how many alliances (can't be more than 3 and 2 hasn't worked out well in the past), and will it unbalance teams again?
If B., how do I keep planets deadly and do I set ops so that they can be achievable by 7 players, which seems to be the norm?

I'm inclined to leave alliance sizes the same and swap out some gens for turrets (maybe 10 gens tops, turrets to 15, hangars to 80). I'm aware we'd all like to change game mechanics, but we don't have the coding power to do so yet, so we have to work with what we've got. I'd also like to consider shrinking the map size further and implementing a turn penalty of 50% for swapping alliances. I think raising the alliance cap will unbalance the vets again, and we'll end up with another 1v1 type scenario with a 3rd alliance left out in the cold. I'd also like to lower initial route yields so trading is a harder part of the game earlier on and people don't just run from fed to planets in the first couple weeks. I have a few more thoughts, but I'll reserve them for now until I get feedback from you all on how to proceed going forward. I've spent a lot of time trying to revive this game and would really appreciate those of you that still care helping me to continue to maximize the game based on what we've got now.

[Holti]

As we discussed in vent, Jouldax, I think the turn penalty for switching alliances would better than a cooldown period for a couple of reasons - one, it would allow smaller alliances with inactive members to remain active by getting "mercenaries", but the turn penalty would prevent a lot of the unbalance. For example, if you left your alliance to join an alliance (turn penalty), left it after the op and then rejoined your regular alliance (another turn penalty), you would be mostly out of turns by the time you rejoined. Knowing this, a player and his normal alliance would have to think it through carefully before switching alliances temporarily.

My personal view is that the alliance cap is fine as it is now, and planets can be reconfigured for ops consisting of 7 - 9 players (depending on how strong the alliance is). I found that round with more than two alliances to be more active and more interesting than those with just two alliances.

[RCK]

Problem with making planets smaller is then they are not worth building as they will provide very little protection and we will see a major return to 'fed' based alliances.

[JettJackson]

As we discussed in vent, Jouldax, I think the turn penalty for switching alliances would better than a cooldown period for a couple of reasons - one, it would allow smaller alliances with inactive members to remain active by getting "mercenaries", but the turn penalty would prevent a lot of the unbalance. For example, if you left your alliance to join an alliance (turn penalty), left it after the op and then rejoined your regular alliance (another turn penalty), you would be mostly out of turns by the time you rejoined. Knowing this, a player and his normal alliance would have to think it through carefully before switching alliances temporarily.

My personal view is that the alliance cap is fine as it is now, and planets can be reconfigured for ops consisting of 7 - 9 players (depending on how strong the alliance is). I found that round with more than two alliances to be more active and more interesting than those with just two alliances.

A turn penalty for rejoining their original alliance is irrelevant, most people who would be rejoining would have no turns or little turns anyways. A cooldown period makes more sense.

[JettJackson]

Problem with making planets smaller is then they are not worth building as they will provide very little protection and we will see a major return to 'fed' based alliances.

Agree, honestly I think the planets are barely deadly right now. Weakening them any would make it pretty much pointless to land on them. Furthermore even though the turrets are 100% or technically over 100% they still miss which to me is a huge issue because some people are living even though they are hit with a turret that misses, this greatly weakens an already weak planet.

[JettJackson]

Let me start off by saying that I welcome any and all feedback, and that flaming in this thread will not be tolerated. This game has gone through a lot of changes over the past several months, many of which I've spearheaded in an effort to increase activity and participation. With that said, today's op went against the spirit of what I've been trying to accomplish, and while I understand the reasons for it and some of the benefits of it (we did have over half the active vets on cpl at once), I don't believe that this is the way the game should be played going forward. Let me lay out a few points and thoughts, and then open the floor for discussion.

In my opinion, tag-team alliances are no good and defeat the spirit of the rules. The alliance cap was created to make the game more competitive, not to be circumvented. The dilemma, of course, is how many active players each alliance can actually expect to bring during ops. JJ, who usually leads the most active crew, was only able to muster 7 for the past few ops. So that leads us to 2 questions:

A. Do we raise the alliance cap and keep planet levels the same?
B. Do we keep the alliance cap the same and shrink the planets?

If A., how many in each alliance, how many alliances (can't be more than 3 and 2 hasn't worked out well in the past), and will it unbalance teams again?
If B., how do I keep planets deadly and do I set ops so that they can be achievable by 7 players, which seems to be the norm?

I'm inclined to leave alliance sizes the same and swap out some gens for turrets (maybe 10 gens tops, turrets to 15, hangars to 80). I'm aware we'd all like to change game mechanics, but we don't have the coding power to do so yet, so we have to work with what we've got. I'd also like to consider shrinking the map size further and implementing a turn penalty of 50% for swapping alliances. I think raising the alliance cap will unbalance the vets again, and we'll end up with another 1v1 type scenario with a 3rd alliance left out in the cold. I'd also like to lower initial route yields so trading is a harder part of the game earlier on and people don't just run from fed to planets in the first couple weeks. I have a few more thoughts, but I'll reserve them for now until I get feedback from you all on how to proceed going forward. I've spent a lot of time trying to revive this game and would really appreciate those of you that still care helping me to continue to maximize the game based on what we've got now.

I'd rather the cap be raised and a cooldown time be added. Weakening the planets as stated above would not work.

[JettJackson]

Honestly looking back on last night, I would say that the planets are too small. The objective was to make it equivalent to taking a 70 in an op which is not easy. You guys took a 40 and a 38 last night which is pretty much like taking a 70 and a 60 in one night. That shouldn't happen, it should be difficult to take a rock just like it was with a 70. Furthermore the planets aren't deadly enough because you took a grand total of 2 pods per planet. 100 more drones and/or turrets that follow their accuracy correctly would have made a huge difference.

[Incognito]

Personally, I'd rather see a turn penalty for joining another alliance after the first time you have joined one. Most other actions in the game cost turns, so I think this should as well.

As for planets, I think taking the hangers to 90 would improve things. Along with a minefield, I think that should be enough to keep a single alliance from taking more than one planet (if that is in fact what you are trying to prevent with these changes).

Finally, I say leave the vet cap as it is and raise the newbie cap to 5.

[jouldax]

Personally, I'd rather see a turn penalty for joining another alliance after the first time you have joined one. Most other actions in the game cost turns, so I think this should as well.

As for planets, I think taking the hangers to 90 would improve things. Along with a minefield, I think that should be enough to keep a single alliance from taking more than one planet (if that is in fact what you are trying to prevent with these changes).

Finally, I say leave the vet cap as it is and raise the newbie cap to 5.

These are all good thoughts, but the problem we have now is that no alliance has really been able to get more than 7 for an op. I don't want planets to be invincible, and newbies lost italics quickly and don't op very much anyway. Here are some other solutions I have:

1. Raise the turn cap to 700 and shrink arming routes
2. Raise hangars per your suggestion but lower gens
3. Shrink distance between pgals and fed

[Grey Death]

Let me ask a couple of questions:
1. Why do you think that you should only be able to pop one top level planet in a night?
2. How many planets do you think should be bustable in a full turn team?

I do agree that only 2 deaths is a bit low though.