Hunting has become too difficult

[Edgecrusher]

I'll answer my own question: I assumed that invisible scouts would be invisible to the owner as well. That means you can't refresh them, add mines to them or pick them up: they're purely a hunter's tool. It makes hunting not only easier, but also more dynamic if hunters can use both normal and invisible scouts.

So the trick of dropping invisible scouts in a hunter, then switch to a trader to safely trade your routes does not hold.

Hunters can still see scouts in their force list, so they can still keep track of where they have invisible scouts.

[milly22]

i say hide cpl

or that u can only click it once per hour

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I am getting the impression that generally people agree with the concept of invisible scouts.

I'd love to see the reaction if you brought this up in the suggestions forum :P

[Infinity]

Edge and I talked about this in #smr-beta after my last post, so what ever I said, skip it when reading, I have obviously missed some things.

After the discussion, with all the details, I'm all in for this. If anyone wants logs of today's convo I will paste them here.

[Freon22]

Freon, could you be more specific as to why you think it is not a good idea?

Ok nothing different then what I have been saying in this thread. But now these invisible scouts has moved from traders being able to use them also as a tool to only hunters having them. "Good balanced move"

1. I was seeing if these invisible scouts could be adjusted so they would not make it a slaughter for the traders.
2. SMR will lose more new players with this. They will die left and right and will stop playing.
3. It would be nice to be able to say that hunters would leave newbie alone if they had these invisible scouts but that will not happen.
4. You will not be able to sell this to the player base when they find out crap will hit the fan.
5. Like always we are talking about putting something in the game that is completey unbalanced.

The carapace holds 50 scouts that is going to be 50 invisible scouts. Big deal you have to go to the CA for them once every three days, most hunters have easy access to the CA anyway. When I brought this thread back up again it was to see if invisible scouts can be balanced, and what happens we try to see now unbalanced we can make them. These invisible scouts will be a fine start for 1.6.

[Infinity]

1. I was seeing if these invisible scouts could be adjusted so they would not make it a slaughter for the traders

You're failing to realize that that's exactly what we're trying to achieve here A little joke.

Trader need to learn to trade. We go back to the other active thread on these boards these days, and that's how to help newbies - they will have to be taken into alliances, there would have to be a good manual, with a special part on "pods are not important". It won't be any worse, or any better for traders with this addition. Balance is achieved with the fact that a hunter will have to lay scouts over and over again, instead of refreshing or having his alliance mates that trade in the same area refresh forces for him.

2. SMR will lose more new players with this. They will die left and right and will stop playing.

They die anyway. Don't wanna sound like I don't give a damn about them dying - but I don't. I was a newbie quite recently, there was no mercy after I was out of italics. New players don't know what scouts are anyway, being or not being able to see them, and ofc this again brings us back to what I already said replying to #1. This is a game of life or death, it's not meant to be easy and we should build the game to be interesting for vets and build different mechanisms to help newbies out (which is off topic here).

5. Like always we are talking about putting something in the game that is completely unbalanced.

How exactly is unbalanced? It is not in the hunters interest not to be able to refresh your own scouts. Actually, it's pretty complicated. Plus, the suggestion was (and I liked it) that expiry time is two thirds of max scout expiry time (so.. 32hrs instead of 48), making it even tougher. Trading is easy, lack of newbie help mechanisms is what brings us into trouble (but that's... guess... on the other thread )

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I would like to point out that 1 scout does not equal 3 days, I posted current 1.6 expiry times in the mines solutions thread, each scout = 1 day, so it takes more of them if you want them to last.

[Freon22]

1 scout = 1 day does help a little.

So to get 3 days its 3 scouts = 3 days. That means a carapace can cover 16 ports for 3 days with one load of scouts.

Is there a max expire time? Like if a hunter set 5 scouts do they have 5 days? Also just to be sure these invisible scouts can not be refreshed, right?

[Infinity]

Max expiry time is set for each galaxy separately on creating the universe map. So, 5 scouts would equal to what ever is set as max for a max stack (which is 51 forces as in classic).

And yes, the idea is that invisible scouts are invisible to their owners as well, so no refreshing, only laying them again. It's a nice twist that doesn't overpower the feature.

[Freon22]

And yes, the idea is that invisible scouts are invisible to their owners as well, so no refreshing, only laying them again. It's a nice twist that doesn't overpower the feature.

Well the feature itself is overpowered, not being able to refresh them does help some. But the question about expire time was not answered. If a hunter sets 5 invisible scouts in a sector within a racial galaxy now long will they last? You also brought up another question with the admin being able to increase expire time of forces within each galaxy. Does the increase expire time also increase the expire time of these invisible scouts?