While pships protect against the novice and perhaps mid-level attacker, I've found pships almost useless once the attacker knows what he's doing--especially those who can afford to drop down and tiny you.  Such attacks generally wipe out everything.

Don't make destruction the sole result of ship-to-ship combat.  In fleet combat (not when marines come into play), continue using current formula to determine victory (attack >= defense + HP x shielding).    However, if defeated, fleet is taken out of that battle and cannot be used again until repairs have been made.  Extent of damage would be a random % (up to and including destruction) with repairs being represented as a % of ship value (credits) or many other options.

Have fun, boys and girls, but I'm out.

Before dismissing this as the rantings of a single whiner, consider that from Nemesis Proclamation alone, Joe-RO and Ebola are also out and from my alt's alliance a number of less experienced players left rather than growing into worthy adversaries.

I'll probably find out that PvE isn't really my cup of tea either, but I'm tired of SO Main so I'm trying out PvE for now.  I wanted to play a war game and wound up finding my role is "Russian Peasant during WWII".  This becomes just plain dull.  Last round was weird and I don't see anything changing.  A lot of players are using phrases like "highly PvP game".  I thought it was moderately PvP and "highly" was what Wars was for.  Some tweaks could turn this into a true MMORPG.  But what Emi can't seem to fix or PvP-centric players can't seem to grasp is that most people don't want to spend a long time playing a tedious UI just hoping to avoid becoming someone else's fodder.

From my admittedly simmer-skewed POV here's a large part of what's broken.  Some of these I've posted suggestions to fix under, um, Suggestions.  I'll possibly follow up with more.
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Marines.  Awful.  Their only use is to make my ships 1/3 more expensive (WAAAAAYYYYYY moreso once my line is improved) PLUS requiring that I keep a lot of credits in reserve to resupply.  Even then, I can run out of credits if someone is hell-bent on destroying me or if I'm "lucky" I get tinied and only lose ships rather than all my ships AND reserve credits.

DDay.  Awful.  The day itself may be fun, but 2-6 months of a game that requires A LOT of your time comes down to your availability to be online at the last minute.  In a worldwide game, that implies that at least some section of the planet is screwed every round.

Counters.  Jokes.  Either you're wiped out and can't use it within 24 hours or any PvPer worth his salt has long since sold/reserved fleets to make it useless.

Bounties.  See "Counters".  They can rarely be used both because of the limits on bounty hunters and the attackers using the usual tricks (pships / selling or reserving fleets).

UI.  Tedious.  This is what will probably drive me off of the PvE server, too.

Combat.  All or nothing.  Most attacks either have no impact or wipe out everything.

Planets / Mining.  Indefensible.  I've posted formula-based turn cost ideas to attack smaller players' assets, but the only ideas I've seen Emi speak to make no difference in protecting smaller players while making it even harder for somewhat evenly matched players to fight amongst themselves.

PvP.  Overblown.  This is the big one.  I see complaints that PvP is too hard already, but that is a load of something unpleasant.  At the top ranks there isn't a lot largely due to PvPers constantly thinning out players from ever growing and staying to reach those ranks.  Overall, it may not be free, but that's a choice the attacker gets to make and I see a number of PvPers manage to do very well.  The only attack that can be truly defended against is inexperience.  Once the attacker knows the tricks, the defender simply cannot prevent all his fleets from being wiped out. 

The only way to protect oneself is to be in the right alliance.  Otherwise, you have to resort to buddy-nebbing or waste large percentages of your resources just to lower your chances of being raped.  What it comes down to is the game remains a small group focused on PvP and the rest of the players expected to play sheep for their slaughter.  Everything is on the PvPer's terms.  That's not to say I'm against PvP, but I am against PvP being all at the PvPer's discretion and being SOOOO costly to the targets. 

There's simply is no realistic consequence to the aggressor nor realistic way to protect oneself from them beyond self/buddy-nebbing.

Gameplay.  Demanding.  Due mainly to the flaws in PvP, players need to schedule their lives around blocking their turns together then spend back-to-back hours playing them in order to make use of a neb or reduce the time their fleets are exposed.  Or they must hold the majority of their resources in reserve just to be able to continue playing after an attack.  This, in turn, greatly reduces the payouts and impedes making progress.

Overall, it's a cool game that can't seem to keep traction in attracting and keeping players.  After a few years of playing it, I'm pretty comfortable in stating that the above issues are a big part of why.

I like the general idea, but as you pointed out with tinies and the current state of marines, you simply cannot protect your ships.  But you have a point simmers "abuse" ship resale because it's the most viable way to protect your ships.  That goes both ways as PvPers attack with impunity then sell off so they can't be hit back.  I don't know what the answer is, honestly, but the resale adds a loophole that gets taken advantage of.

I've been pulpiting like crazy (not surprising as I am a little nuts) it seems lately on the topic of PvP.  Even the grinders/simmers aren't saying to get rid of PvP.  The brand that many PvPers seem to want though is a brand where it's jr. high kids bullying third graders.  It's not a competetive combat where you really need to calculate who you hit and what they might do.  It's more get 7 orders of magnitude more powerful then take out every single non-allied resource you can find. 

This mindset continues to kill the game.  In my alt's alliance another pretty eager player said goodbye this morning because he's sick of being nothing but fodder.  It's like signing up to play a WWII game then finding out that one player has dictated you get to play the role of Ukrainian peasant.  May be cool to that one player, but everyone else gets tired and either finds their own way around the problem or (more commonly) quits before there's a large enough base of skilled players to have decent PvP.

I know there can be neb abuse, but this doesn't work.  No PvE attacks means newer players who were probably wiped out when nebbed just lost their chance to rebuild.

Buddy nebbing is annoying--but nowhere near so much as spending your way to an untouchable situation and attacking anything and everything in one's path.  This eventually brought out the worst in everyone else and this is how it was manifested.  Sometimes you reap what you sow.

Congratulations, Joe.  You beat the bully at his own game--just in a different way.

I knew you'd be first, Spayed ;)  You actually agreed more than I thought.



Exactly!  Again, not trying to find a way to disallow PvP.  As to the marines it's just a little troublesome that a players reserve creds are at the discretion of others.  Perhaps having an option to only remarine through X credits would be nice as an alternative to counting towards nebbing.



Compared to what the defender is being cost, in most cases it's very little.  If you spend 10% to power down just so you can go kick a smaller kid, that 10% is nothing compared to the 95% the defender who didn't know what to do loses and it's a choice that you got to make in the first place.

I know it gets lonely at the top, but if the whole goal is to be fighting other players all the time, perhaps realigning your goals from trying to make the top 10 or moving to the Wars server are better options.  At the lower ranks halves of entire alliances are wiped out day after day because a few people want to purely PvP and it's killing off most chances of getting more active and experienced players.  That, as much as anything, is what's making it lonely at the top.  No one sticks around to grow the potential top tenners pool beyond about 15-20 players.

Boredom and frustration are two main reasons players leave.  But lucky you, I've solved all our problems in one post (referencing others)!  Now Emi just needs time, so please donate some turn items to him...

As to boredom, some just don't get hooked, but UI changes could go a long way.  Even some pretty simple changes could take a lot of the tedium out of the game.  For suggestions, please see "some suggestions" post here:  http://forum.spaceo.net/index.php/topic,5365.0.html

As to frustration, it largely boils down to PvP driving out players.

For planets, base the # of turns to attack a planet on power difference between attacker and defender.  There may be coefficients added, etc. to tweak the ranges but something like:

   Turns = Base * MAX( Attacker Power / Defender Power, 1). 

This has no ill effects on PvP between players that are in each other's league but protects the newer / weaker players from bully attacks.  See:  http://forum.spaceo.net/index.php/topic,5386.0.html

The same principle should be applied to space stations.  What we wind up with are top players crushing stations just on the off chance there might be resources / credits or simply because they can.  While disparity protection drops the number of third-graders you get to kick, it keeps more players interested to grow into worthy adversaries.

PvP needs consequences.  There is no way for a player to definitely keep from getting wiped out.  That is part of PvP.  What's missing is any real consequences for aggressors.  A handful of players are using the rest as their personal playgrounds.  They destroy others' fleets then sell off / reserve their own before the victim logs back in or can rebuild.  This drives a lot of players out of the game.

- Make ship resells totally safe, at a lower price, through the black market or through CHOAM at normal prices.  However, CHOAM may confiscate rather than pay if the ship is identified as having attacked another player.  Research can lower the CHOAM identification risk or raise the price the Black Market will pay.

- Expand bounties

- Extend counters

- Shorten neb times the higher your bounty OR have an increasing chance of attackers being found

- Count marine losses towards total losses for nebs.


Only one of these makes PvP harder.  The rest make it RISKIER, but that's different.  In the end, few new players stay because being fodder isn't fun for long and the PvPers at the upper ranks are frustrated because every round there are about eight people total you can attack and half of them are in your alliance.

What I'm proposing prevents that, Spayed.  Or are you talking about other posts?

I posted this suggestion in another thread.  It's not perfect, but it does protect the smaller players from the schoolyard bullies while not taking away the PvP from those on a more level playing field.  Base the turn cost of attacking planets on power difference (and for that matter maybe space stations, too).  A very rough example would be that attacks cost 5, 10 and 20 turns base (according to type of attack) multiplied by the attacker's power divided by the defender's power.

Cost = Base * MAX( Att Power / Def Power, 1 )

This way, players who are roughly in each other's realm aren't having to spend three days' turns for some PvP but they ARE having to spend a real cost just because they want to take their frustrations out on someone smaller. 

There are still holes like which power measure do you use and is there some "plot device" that might make it feel more like part of the game than an artificial rule (much like warping small fleets explains why a giant fleet can't just crush anyone).

Emi, you posted a lot of cool ideas, but they still have the same flaws as the uselessness of missiles on stations.  They give you more options, but in the end if someone is thousands (even millions or billions) of times more powerful than you, you simply don't have the resources to prevent them from destroying your asset at any moment at a cost that is nothing but a rounding error to them.  Following the station missiles example, even as a 15ish-ranked player, if I sunk all my future turn items researching better missiles and 1/4 of all credits earned into then buying these better missiles, "The Artist Formerly Known as Fender~Spender" could take the station out using a day's interest on his credits.

Obviously you're right that having planets is not the only way to survive.  But the game is out of balance if one of the major tools for survival exists solely at the discretion of one player.

Well, Ken, your code is too smart for me.  Look like Hex but that's as far as I can go!

Adding to the main idea of the topic, I'd expand it to being able to alter your settings from the structures screen.  The fact that you can warp an armada across the galaxy to assault someone for essentially no turns but can't transmit "replicate iron" to your stations remotely makes no sense.

I'm with Van on this.  I know there's been some call for a new UI in general, but just making the current UI less tedious would go a long way IMHO.

Here's my roughly ranked list:

1.  System View - Add checkbox filters on missions to narrow missions to combinations of types (one for each of segs, creds and workers)
2.  Quadrant scans - do away with need for pinpointers OR have a "Scan until X found or Y pinpointers used" option
3.  Mission Contracts - include "System Only" filter in the Nearest/Quadrant/Galaxy dropdown
4.  Mission Contracts - Show Item payoff for in-system missions
5.  Mission Contracts - add quick attack link / button
6.  Items Terminal allow selling more than 5 items at a time.  At least 20 if not a "sell all in category" really needs to be there.
7.  Rebuilding planets, stations and mining facilities - allow setting number of structures to build rather than two clicks per 1 built
8.  Market - Add "Buy" and "Minimum Bid" buttons and apply to all checked items.
9.  View/Edit fleet - change option buttons to checkboxes and allow selling of more than one fleet at a time.
10.  Rankings - add search by name and by alliance


If these can't be done, many could be at least easier if the "Space Odyssey Announcement" banner was a fixed size.  This would keep the option from moving up or down the page after each page refresh.

It is a bit like fixing the tax code--there'll always be another loophole.  But I think it can make a difference.

I'm not necessarily saying Emi should take everything away, but as it stands currently there is nothing stopping what happened this round.  Allowing players to have viable means of improving their position goes a long way.  And simply not allowing spenders to attack some things gives that.  Might it drive off the Fenders of the galaxy?  Maybe, but I think it's in Emi's best interest to to bore one $200 donater into lower donations or leaving than continuing to allow dozens of new players leave after a round, or part of one--especially when I'm reading posts indicating some of them were getting gold accounts and spending $5-10 a week before giving up and leaving because they were getting hammered every time the logged in.