Vacation Mode

[Seither]

except for if they go on vacation before D-Day, and you only countered one of my points. It just can't be properly balanced.

[ars68]

Vacationer automatically forfieted round. Since they don't grow, even a week in this game is detrimental, but most people go on vacation for at least a week, sometimes two, or even a month! So for them not to grow at all ends their chances of being able to win.

1: it is better then the alternative, being getting your account kicked 24/7 for that whole week.  and it is sorta the point to put him at a disadvantage for leaving.  he will be at a disadvantage for leaving no matter what.

Antoher point, though not needed, if you can't log in until either d-day happens or your vacation timer runs out, what happens if you end up coming home way earlier then expected? now you CAN play time wise, but due to your vacation setting, you CAN'T get on, which hurts your account.

2: that is also sort of the point.  he must then be ready to use vacation mode ONLY when he has to, and not for a second longer then necessary.  If he is planning on a vacation, 9/10 once it gets time to leave, he is leaving for the whole time.  however, there can be a set minimum wait time though, like 3-4 days, then after that you CAN leave, but again, this allows people to abuse it somewhat.  also, compared with current system of turns and such, you could probably safely end the vacation 1-2 days earlier then you plan on coming back.


I countered both of them...  basically, what you were saying was 'counter-points' is really actually the whole point TO a vacation mode.  you are saying that they will basically be forfeiting the round pretty much, well, in a way, they did that the second they planned a vacation, then.  nothing to do with vacation mode.  vacation mode will just be there to help minimize damage.  and your other one, while valid, is still why you should only use vacation mode when you must, being you have no other alternative. 

and you have to remember, this is because people have a real life to, this is just trying to minimize the damage due to that small fact.

[charmuska]

The nice thing about vacation mode would be that people wouldn't completely forfeit a round and stop playing for a few months, just because they decided to go on vacation, and have their base and segments all taken away.

No vacation mode could -> people leaving forever.  Vacation mode could -> people leaving then coming back.

[Seither]

I'd rather get hit a ton then not grow at all. at least while you are getting hit, you are still growing, while you aren't in vacation mode, which hurts you MORE.

Either way, people would quit. Heck, they quit now because they dont get amazingly high easily.

Vacation mode just can't be properly balanced, if it could, I'd be all for it, but it can't without setting so many different variables that would allow for major abuse on both ends. What is fair is you know you are leaving, you set up lots of pships, have someone (alliance member, friend, ect.) watch over your account, and then leave. When you come back, you aren't hurt that bad, because they had to deal with all your powerships.

[charmuska]

Monkey, if you get raided until you get nebbed (starting with 0 ships out), you lose over 20% of your workers and stash (due to having segments, which counts for some power anyway).  You can gain up to 10% of your workers and stash, if you have gold.

If someone takes out segments, it's a different story, but even if people only take out your stash 1/2 days, you end up losing.

For lower players, much of the power is in the segments.  There, again, not being present more than a few days can seriously knock you back.

And who says going on vacation makes you forfeit the round?  I have been growing very rapidly in power and am enjoying the game (enjoying it much more since I figured out how to mark my place in the rankings).  I did not start until well into the game, and did not fully grasp the concept of the game until much later.  And yet, I am beginning to feel important in this game (even if I'm not yet)...I'm already in the news when my power fleets are destroyed .

Lastly, just because you would rather not use vacation mode, doesn't mean others wouldn't.

[Seither]

It jsut can't be balanced to be fair. That's what you guys don't get. Sir emi won't add it if it isn't fair to everyone, and it isn't.

[Scruffy]

Something that might work would be able to select what ships you want your workers to make. Even if the number of ships is zero they will produce them. That way if everything gets wiped out you just start rebuilding those fleets. Doing this will maintain your interest and growth.

[charmuska]

How isn't it fair though, Monkey?

It wouldn't really help the person doing it (except that they don't lose everything they have, which would occur if they didn't leave anyway), and it wouldn't really help the other players (except that their competition isn't growing, which is barely a leg-up).

All players could enable it.  It wouldn't help you grow, per se.  So what's not fair about it?  I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, I just don't see what you're saying isn't fair.

The coding doesn't even seem (to me, I was only in computer science for a year or two, never really liked html) too difficult to change.  Just make them unattackable (either grayed out or in a nebula), set the growth of stash and workers to 0, and disable log-in for the entered number of days.  The hard part of that is setting the growth.  Of course, there'd probably be a check to make sure nobody has a counter on the person, and that they have nothing in the market (stuff on the ship is probably OK).  Still probably not terribly difficult to write up.  But then, html sucks, and I couldn't make those changes anymore...my last coding class was a full year ago now.
And Scruffy, that's an interesting suggestion.  It seems good, but thinking about it, wouldn't it use up all of your stash on the ship?  It would suck to be poking around in your base, click that, and find that you just spent all of your money on powerfleets (and instantly!).  Maybe if there could be a delay, or if it spends up to 20% of your stash resupplying/hour (pulling figures out of thin air, here).  Interesting thought, though...

[Seither]

Scruffy, your idea is as closed to balanced as it can get, and *might* work.

and it's harder then you think to do that. Here's the closest to actually fair to all that I can get it, using Scruffy's idea.

You select vacation mode, and go to a special screen that has a check list of all your fleets. You select which ones you want resupplied while your gone. Once you do that, you select the vacation button, and you're logged out. The next time you log in, it will exit vacation mode. There is no limit to how long you can be in vacation mode. Now, since you have ships being ressuplied, you can still be attacked, but, you only have to lose 10% of your total power to be put into a nebula (or this could be set to neb you if you have 0 ships), and you still have your workers and credits being produced and growing, o you don't fall far behind.

This is as fair as I can possibly get it, since you can still be attacked, raided, boarded and what not, but it's not so much where you will be destroyed completely. You get to continue your growing like normal, but others can still get stuff from you, so it's like you are still playing, only with slightly different rules.

[charmuska]

I suppose that all's true, Monkey.

Looks like now we just wait to see if Emi wants to try to do it, and if it seems balanced to him.

[ars68]

I get the feeling that is actually even worse then the original vacation idea...

and ya, luffy, HOW is the way I said unfair to ANYONE?  you are thinking vacation mode would hurt more then letting it sit, only most likely because you never let it happen before.  news flash, all they have to do is take out your segments, and you will have NEGATIVE (not positive) growth for however long the vacation is for.  and then you will not only be losing so much in negative growth, but on top of that the extra raid attacks as well.  and in upper ranking accounts, more often then not, their ENTIRE segment power is not even 20% of their power compared to secret base.  which means FIRST DAY ALONE, without their powerfleets, they will IMMEDIATELY be at risk to lose ALL but maybe 5-10 segments, which will leave them, I think, not even 1 billion workers.  then the growth will be so low, they could then be further raided down since griwth won't cover the damage then.  then they come back a month later with an account with 5-10 segments, a couple million workers, and whatever they had in reserve and on hand.  does THAT sound fair to you?

and luffy, ya, OF COURSE we would all like to just let someone we trust take care of our account for us, but more often then not, it is the EXCEPTION, NOT the norm that someone can truly do that without worrying if his account is going to be totally screwed up.  you said YOURSELF, last time you let someone on your account, he ended up making your account badmouth about everyone in the game, found and exploited a bug (which is breaking ToS itself, sometimes grounds for account ban) and what else?  I think you should be about the LAST person openly suggesting that.  especially when there is ALREADY a case of what? 3-4 hacking attempts to ruin other peoples accounts?

what we WERE trying to suggest, was a vacation mode for the average person who cannot trust anyone else to sit his account for him, that will not end up leaving him COMPLETELY dead in the water.

oh, and why do I say the selected fleets idea is bad?  think of it, if we had that, all I would have to do is set it up everyday, and no matter how hard anyone tried, they could NEVER get more then 1-2 actual attacks on me.  and any pships left when you come back, you can just sell for half off, or try to lose them in missions for 80% back.

--edit: couldn't really remember why exactly the specific build option was bad, but now I remember.  would imagine Ricu right now using that vacation mode with powerships?  with the amount of money he would get and such, he would just continue to rise indefinetely WAY out of reach of ANYONE, who could attack him.  and the others around him could make sure no one else started trying to climb up to him either.  it would basically mean whoever got first place the quickest would be the winner, almost no questions asked.

[Seither]

there could be restrictions to it, to prevent ships under a certain size from showing up.

But it wasn't fair because one way, the vacationer had all the advantages, the other way the players had it. You guys never had any sort of balance.

[Finis]

Branching off of Scruffy's and Monkey D. Luffy's suggestions to prevent charmuska's mentioned problem of it spending to much of your stash, you can set a limit to fleet size that they won't be resupplied after that number has been reached. And combined with Monkey D. Luffy's size minimum for the automatic resupply during vacation this should help in preventing the problem mentioned by ars68 as well.

You make a good point Monkey D. Luffy, we were thinking of just one side or the other without thinking of both.

[ars68]

ok, call em dense if you want to, but

But it wasn't fair because one way, the vacationer had all the advantages, the other way the players had it. You guys never had any sort of balance.

does not sound like an answer as to HOW it is unbalanced.  the way I have been saying would not give the vacationer, as he would not grow in power, nor lose any power.  the other players would not have any advantage except that they would then have a chance to severely cripple, and possibly next to destroy, the other person's account which was worked on for months.

personally, I would rather have this so if I went on vacation I didn't have to worry about coming back to find out 4-5 months of work on this game ended up being for absolutely nothing, just because someone thought it might be unfair for the other person that he loses ONE possible target for a couple weeks.  Seither, I don't where you've been, but as far as I can see, the suggestion I put forward IS balanced, as possibly as it possibly can.  and evidently even more balanced then what anyone else thought it could be either.

so I say again, tell me HOW my suggestion is unfair to ANYONE.  you keep on saying that, that it 'can't be balanced' that 'it favors one or the other' so many times like as though YOU HAVEN'T EVEN READ my suggestion, dismissing it before you even gave it a look.

[ShAd0wS]

ok luffy, if u think vacation mode is unfair to the vacationer, it should still be an option... after all yo udont have to use vm, but iof you are in the top 50, go away for a week and you are dead... also it doesnt ruin ur chances of winnign a round, look at some of the numbers in the top 10 even... ive see bigbroni, # i nthe 11000s which means he missed about 2-3 months of this round, and is already up high... also quite a few other people in top 50 with high numbers... hell i have an alt in the billions of power wit ha decent store of cash that started liek 2 1/2 month late w/o donating nything, so being frozen for a week wouldnt hurt som1 as much as being a target would... and it would be a matter of choice, if oyu think vacation mode is abd for you, dont use it, but if you know itll help, then go ahead, not liek yo uwould be forced to use it...