So I've been thinking and chatting with a few people that likes to do the math while I throw out ideas.

Current DR expires after 24 hours, let's call it DR1.

What if we introduced additional DRs that are SS/PS based, would it help promote less farming, and maybe curve the effectiveness and overpowering power of land trading?

DR1, Current implementation, but with adjustment. All hits apply. 24 hours, auto refresh on new hits.
100-100-100-80-80-50-50-35-35-15-15

DR2, Country : Country based. SS/PS Only. 96 hours, auto refresh on new hits like DR1. 5%? each?

DR3 Country : Country based. SS/PS Only. Resets when server resets. Penalty on this DR would be much smaller then DR1 and DR2, but, would be enough so that it deters players from farming one particular country. Maybe 2% each hit?

Calculations deleted cause they weren't right, scroll down!

Calculations deleted cause they weren't right, scroll down!

Calculations deleted cause they weren't right, scroll down!

also consider the option of a 4th and 5th and 6th one

4th for tag internally, so you could slightly reduce the effectiveness of hitting anyone in the same tag to reduce internal farming and trading

in theory if someone quits and you want to keep their land you can detag then farm if your not happy with the gains, or farm 1 day then wait for dr then detag and farm

dont want to be too aggresive with that because of reps land and farming down retaliators and so on, could make this one only apply to 1a, teams or ffa or whichever one of those its considered the biggest problem

in teams the multiple tags nature of it would seem to render it moot, in ffa there isnt a lot of farming if you wanted to run extra tags and you have enough countries to put retaliators in each, in 1a things revolve around pacts and i assume most alliances wouldnt want to give someone 2 tags in a pact for farming reasons

5th for countries on the same account in FFA, you dont even need to make this one particularly harsh, just a little bit here and a little bit here to change the benefit ratio, since some people will want to move around retal land and people could just trade with eachother anyway

6th for multiple countries from the same tag grabbing the same country in a period, combine that slightly with forgottens 2nd and/or 3rd ones to slightly reduce the incentive for 5 people from one tag to all hit the same target each day, keep it to a small prorportion to start with then see how it goes

potential abuse with tag changes so dont make it too harsh, and perhaps have some disincentive for constant tag changes as well

remember not to reduce DR1's effectiveness too much though, since part of the goal should be too help new players get hit less and damaged less

as well as to make it undersirable to hit the same country 10 times every day

if the additional DR's were heavy enough it would be possible to increase the reduced losses due to networth countries currently have without it benefiting landtraders and self farmers

in alliance i would even suggest having a reduced losses modifier for every country that is untagged, given how much more frequently the untagged get hit than the tagged im sure 10% would be safe to start with and it could even go higher than that

it would not be very abusable since early set the amount of land grabbed isnt very high and late set running untagged even in the top 100 is very risky

also consider a tech equivelant to military strat that reduced % of land you actually lose when you lose land, medical, perhaps at 50% effectiveness would be my suggestion

Could some one please confirm / deny the formula of current DR?

enshula just did some testing in FFA,

Current formula is more like 100-100-100-80-80-50-50-35-35-15~~

Time to rewrite everything up top

Suggestion Beta 1.0, Alphas were all deleted in testing, don't want wall of text spam.

DR1 = 100-100-100-80-80-50-50-35-35-15
DR2 = 5% each
DR3 = 2% each

Working on Excel now, easier then typing for another 2 hours

no html on this forum

Working on it, if you want to see
message me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP8v-PDiQms

http://www.mediafire.com/?nqnnowu4ntm

Try it there for now, it's a complete calculations table for introducing DR2, and then DR3.1 and DR3.2, with various forms of farming, 10 hits in a row, 5 or 4 or 3 hits a day, and 3 hits every DR2 time frame.

Tomorrow I will work on adding a 2nd attacker and see how it would interact with different DRs with the other attacker

Please feel free to add ideas and requests, I'll try and get it done as soon as possible.


I have to thank enshula and torment for a lot of discussions and teaching me about formulas on spreed sheets, else I would still be typing and calculating manually, which I did before for about 3 hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP8v-PDiQms

Some boxes weren't correctly formulated.

Fixed

http://www.mediafire.com/?iogl4mltxrm is new version

should be perfect for the content so far.

I like this idea. I'll post more when I get a chance.

DRs:

1-1-1-.8-.8-.5-.5-.33-.33-.2...

testing showed 10th DR was closer to 15 or 16.66 might need a dev to confirm or most test, but it shouldn't affect it THAT much. lol

Is it possible change it so DR's can apply to different things?

Examples I can think of would include having different DR categories for regular land and ghost acres or diminishing the DR's a PS would face after AB's or GS's used protect a land fat country from large grabs.

applying DR's to ghost acres is a good idea, you could do that pretty easily to reduce gains between repeated trading

not sure if people would like the other change to AB BR GS though

particularly BR and AB that suceed, failed of those or gs's are more abusable of course

also would be interisting to have fails cause less DR in general

Your first part definitely can be done if the game is coded where land gained and ghost acres are separate, which seems like they are according to boxcar news.

Second part would be great to balance FFA a little bit more, and stop people helping their friends in solo servers as well.

The DR2 and DR3 that we suggest are by no means strict, we can add DRs to infinity. If we were to try and calculate with what you suggested, a separate category for Real Acres and Ghost Acres, then would it not be correct if we split it into three and use Buildings as another? So Empty Acres, Buildings, and Ghost Acres.

Would need more testing to see exactly what the formula is for the returns for each of the three. I know it's estimated at 50%, but the amount of empty acres the target has can have an affect on the returns.

Would be interesting indeed.

It should be able to be implemented where it only affects failed GS, since current DR only affects SS/PS returns anyways, but not GS/BR/AB.

Failed hits causing less DR is an interesting idea, again, same with failed GS, it probably would be coded with argument of true or false on the hit. Might make loading the attack screen a couple miliseconds longer.

lol

it seems like you're looking at such very minute details

making such extremely small changes to the game, are not going to affect the overall fun factor that everyone experiences

llaar, oh it will.

These suggested changes will help out the untags, the small tags, a lot.

the current form of farming till the target hits 10DR, then wait 24 hours. Would be totally destroyed through an additional DR for Country : Country based DR.

Sure, if the country gets hit by 10 different countries, he would lose the same amount as he would now. But, that's only if I don't suggest yet another change, to the current DR. (Which I actually did do calculations for, you see all the empty posts up there? I wanted to redo everything in spreed sheets to allow easier access and viewing, will take some time to write them again @ work ATM)

If we curb the current DR from 100-100-100-80-80-50-50-35-35-15*

to
100-95-90-80-75-50-45-35-30-15*

Then we could really lower the amount of land lost by the untag/small tag, but the ghost acres would still make it 'beneficial' for someone to bottom feed a few hits.

I'm not suggesting / trying to prevent bottom feeding, nor am I trying to 'fix' land trading, I'm just trying to curb it so that it would be easier for those being farmed, and harder for those that try and abuse the current 'loophole'

theres 83 untags right now

only 19 of them are OOP and actually playing

so you're going to advocate throwing all these new formulas into play, hoping that those 19 players will keep playing?

i think the focus needs to be on the current member base of vets, making the game more fun and exciting for them, as far more vets leave per set than new guys trying it out for the first time

since even if every single new player that joined kept playing and had fun, the game would still be in decline

playing speed needs to be increased and warring needs to be made more fun for both those of warring and netting mentality

making countries lose a few less % of land from the attacker, isn't really a game changer

as other players would see the opportunity to grab and take the land

there would be more attackers, raping those untags just as bad. it would just be more spread out among the larger clans, instead of a more limited bunch that watch the times for exact moment to strike

Remember, there will be a Facebook app, there will be a new influx of players, and these new players are what this game needs to grow.

If you want play speed increase, there's express server, maybe they should implement an express alliance / team server? Would be hell of fun to FS with 400 turns and the other side being on to CS and Wall while you get turns pumped into you.

Trust me when I say this llaar, I don't know if you have looked at spreadsheets at all, but every hit past the first will have less returns then what it will be now, and if DR3, which is Country : Country based, and resets with the game reset, was to be implemented, you would see people stop farming a country after 20 - 40 hits on that country, dependent on how often they attack.


And please, if you don't like it, say so, and move on, or help out pointing out errors or ways to manipulate it a bit more. This isn't anything official, it's me and enshula, and various others on IRC and here that wants to do something to see if it can work.

I spend my time however I want, you don't like this, GTFO.

llaar its not an either or choice, nothing implemented has to ruin anything, except maybe stockpile suiciding i guess

make some suggestions to make the game more fun for vets

personally i think turns speeding up causes more problems since the FS alliance gets a larger advantage, but theres a long thread about it on here if you want to contribute

as to the untagged farming, its never going to be better to play untaged than in a tag, but we can make it less bad so that anyone who does join has a better experience, personally i want to see bots or countries that arnt real countries but are grabbable

would be nice if all untagged just lost 10% less than they currently do yet you grab the same amount when you hit them

and if there was some sort of option like GDI that penalised you in some way, be it exploring, and definately reduced attack gains, but reduced non pop loss damage you took so it couldnt be used for walling

seriously? so if i don't agree with you, then i'm supposed to get the fluff out?

dude, we all have opinions, i'm just portraying my point of view

i don't think land grabbing should be made less effective at all

i've liked how land grabbing works the entire time i've played this game.

and i've landgrabbed more land than nearly anyone else in this entire game in my history of playing, and yes that includes FFA, and i have played thousands of countries in my earth career.

i do believe that i should be able to state a respectful opinion without being cursed at

and if you want to be taken seriously with an excel spreadsheet, might want to explain exactly what 'three blind mice' and 'cloak and daggers' has to do with diminishing returns on a country. all i kinda get is that the returns from A hitting B, will go down pretty fast and stay down, even after time elapses.

problem is, what if B is an all jetter, and A is not, and A is more landfat

A will NOT be able to get his land back at all. B can make less hits and continually get more land back, since he has to incur less DR on A. whereas A would be making a futile attempt to grab his land back

There's a level of DR past 0.15.

i only did 4 hits at .15, guess ill try again with more hits

enshula, that is interesting.

Aside from GDI, maybe a BPN, Beginners Protection Network.

Opt'ed in. Locked for Reset, Cannot Leave. No Costs. Would direct you to a Support Team Member (A thing the Devs are brewing) to help you understand basic game concepts.

~ -75% Attack gains on SS/PS (Since All-Explorers are very viable)
~ +100% Defensive Strength Before Allies.
~ Turn Count Modified to 120(Infinite)
~ NM/EM/CM can be created, but not used unless you declare war.
~ BPN Automatically removes you from BPN if you exceed 12,000 Acres or $7 Million NW, or if your total Bushels/Oil Barrels owned, (On hand, and on the market) exceeds 150million bushels or 50million Oil Barrels.
~ You may not send FA Packages to anyone.
~ Defensive and Intelligence allies will be assigned by BPN's representative with other BPN members.
~ Offensive, and Research allies effectiveness will be cut in 50%
~ As a BPN member, you are protected from offensive spy operations through a vastly implemented street watch program. Increasing your spy count to 300 per acre automatically from your civilians!



Take that!

When you say country based in your things above, do you mean that it only applies between two countries?



So here is my suggestion:

land_loss = normal_land_loss*DR1*DR2

DR1 - Successful special attacks, all land grabs in the past 24 hours:
.85^(attacks_in_last_24-1) (or really current system is fine, I just hate piece-wise stuff)

(all these easily exploitable stuff has been taken barring re-planning/people are on high-alert)

DR2 - Successful landgrabs against you all set:
.99^(successful_grabs-1)

(your civilians become more hardened and resistant to invasion)


I dislike the suggestions of having any sort of tag effect. In my opinion tags should only serve as a flag showing your allegiance in this game. It should not serve any benefits or detriments beyond player-generated politics.

Change it to +50% defense maybe =P
And I dunno about having it permanent but you can get it removed by having a big stock... sounds like a great all-ex war machine.
Would there be something denoting a player was in BPN? I assume so... RGB (Rep, GDI, BPN)

I do think it is a decent idea though.

a whole clan could get to 149 mill bushels, 49 mill oil

and then stock tech

and then for an FS, all just buy 1 mill bushels, boom all out of the BPN, and can wack another clan

its a great idea

making it exploit proof would be the real challenge.

and of course active enough developers/mods that would help the new guys

stock tech would raise their NW as well, we could add a tech level limit as well.

which if they do all that and then stock cash and push military $ to the max.

well, that's their thing.

also BPN members would be tagged BPN, basically once they buy out, they'll be untagged, and then forming their own tag.

with that much planning, it would be an organized alliance, and i'm sure everyone would notice if an alliance all of a sudden disappeared.

*shrug*

maybe allow BPN only for members that have recently signed up through Facebook app?

If someone goes through the trouble to make a new account, even if he doesn't use his old again, the moment he logs into the same server with new account, admins would be notified.

only new accounts would help of course

since i doubt people would continually create new accounts for this every set and have an account for every server

and if they really did, well then, let them i guess lol, cause that'd be a pain for not much gain

new players do love attacking, and throwing missiles around though, so that removes the fun aspect away from a lot of new guys who want to blow fluff up

That's why we would have the support team to help teach them, one on one, well, one on many since a support team member can do a lot.

Teaching these people that going nuts can get them killed very fast, surely would let them understand, and if they don't care about dying and just want to cause destruction, we can direct them to iMag

/me must read this later