Ok - because Im bored and not going to go grind missions - here's some ideas.

Sentient Comet - wandering in the viod for millenia, this colony of sentient stones has no compassion for any life but their own.  Destruction of this encounter yields resources - ship holds gain 5% of material released, the other 95% is dispersed into the current system.  Something like 100k to 200k of each ore type.

White Hole - an advanced alien race are preparing to invade our galaxy through a white hole gate.  Destruction of the alien fleets allows access to the past, lose 100 turns, but also you become "out of time" - enter the nebula for the next X hours (dont know how long is appropriate - depends on the spawn rate of this encounter type - maybe 2 to 6 hrs).

Warped Base - a warped base has become home to a degenerate race of vicious pirates.  Destruction of the accompanying fleets yields one Base in Bubble warp - place it where you like, or if you cant place it due to tech - dismantle it for 50% resources (not sure how bubble warp works actually - never owned a warped base).

Precursor Artifacts - some artifacts from a long extinct civilization now float eternally in the freezing night of space, the automated defenses flicker to life as your fleet approaches.  Gain 3 to 6 items from an encryption level 125% of your current encryption level.

Intercepted Data Stream - the Intel Data pod is flashing through space under heavy guard.  Destroy the pod, and unlock a set of 5 random Intel Contracts.

Well - theres a few ideas for a start.

I have a suggestion here also - I think that some mechanism is needed to not only push up the bottom, but to slow the top as well (dont throw a fit here ok lol - Im top 10 also).  The more we can compress the players power, the more competitive it will become.

I suggest a simple way is to have 3 bands of encryption rewards.  Low, medium and high.  At the low end, segs reward is doubled, in the middle its normal, at the top halved. 

So for example if you have an encryption level of less than 100, then you get 100 segs per mission (of any level).  Then if your encryption level lies between 100 and 200, then you get 50 segs per mission - agin its not the mission level itself that dictates the reward - but the players encryption level.  After level 200 encryption reward is 25 segs.

Every month the encryption caps can be reviewed and if needed they can be adjusted.

This will tend to allow starting players to quickly become competive, it will also compress the top of the ladder as well, which in my view is a good thing - more viable PvP targets are available.

I should also draw reference to the other suggestion I made about increasing turns costs of missions and increasing segs reward - this will also tend to attract and benefit starting players.

As an aside - new players simply shouldnt be trying to build bases - they should be investing in cloaking and getting their segs up.  Scanning is so much more costly than cloaking, so much so that even new players will be able to get cloaking over the highest scanning tech available within a reasonable time period - we have seen this is the case several times within our own alliance.  Members have joined - built segs - got the cloaking they need, then installed bases successfully.

And .. mining facilities are great sources of income - but they arent the only source of income. 

I agree with Tz - I dont think anyone needs a free lunch, but a broad mechanic designed to compress players into a similar band of power I think is a good thing for the PvP game.

I think this looks like a winner Zing - looks very easy to implement.  So when you put a check mark into a fleet box, then it stays selected until you unselect it - so if your doing missions, you dont have to click until you do something different - good suggestion, sounds real easy to get it done.

I didnt post it earlier - but yeah, I meant the change to improve the rate your encryption level increased as well.

For me any increase is good, suggestions are;

10 Turns, 500 Segs
50 Turns, 2,500 segs
100 Turns, 5,000 segs

It would actually open the game up for a lot more people as well - Im sure theres a lot of people who started and then realised how time demanding the mission grind was and just quit - without grinding missions, you cant be competitive.

If you could effectively PvP for segs it wouldnt be so bad - but its hard to find a target, then all I get is "warps away" ... and even when you hit someone, you dont really get a huge amount of segs, I think the best Ive got was about 12,000.

They could remove the "destroy's xxx segments" and just have the attacker pick those up as well - its expensive to PvP, but not much reward for doing it apart from bragging rights ><

On SO WARS - it can be fairly hard to find a PvP target to attack, the best way is when someone appears on the Intel Terminal - but that can be fairly rare.

A suggestion is to have a percentage chance that each player is going to be posted on the Intel Terminal automatically.  For example - every day there is a 5% chance you will get posted on the Intel automatically.

5% is not much for each player - but it should help keep a steady flow of names popping up for some PvP action.

Mission grinding is a fairly boring part of the game, but its fairly crucial to keep up seg's.  Personally I hate it - Id rather PvP but its hard to find targets.

My suggestion is to reduce the number of missions available, increase the turns cost to do a mission, and also increase the number of segs reward.

At the moment, you can grind out missions for hours a day - those people with a lot of time have quite an advantage over people who cant commit the time, and the people with the time - would probably rather be doing something else.

Id suggest something like this;

Turns required - 100
Segments reward - 5,000
Other rewards - increase by 5 to 10 times.

Thats basically cuts down a huge amount of time in grinding missions - while keeping the balance between turns and segments the same. 

A spin off bonus is that this also makes it cheaper (turns wise)to navigate to a higher level mission - rather than grinding the one star down to level 1 missions just to get the segs.

I was about to post the same idea   but thought Id have a good read first. 

My idea was the same - but I was going to call it "Armada Formation".  Make a formation for PvP, one for missions - yeah its a d**n hassle having to select your mission ships all the time to do missions.

The Morph button I hadnt thought of - but a good idea also - I like to switch out weapons and special to change the ratio between attack and hit points, so would be handy to be able to do it with one click.

I have a couple of base suggestions also. 

I would like to see bases automatically fire on unfriendly targets as they enter the system - a free attack with no return fire.  I think you would need to add a warning on the nav computer - something like "WARNING: You are about to warp into hostile territory, and you will be fired upon - do you wish to continue?"

In addition to that I would like to see the ability to make like mini-bases - call them "Armed Satellites" or something.  Maybe allow the building of about 8, and +2 per tech level or some such.  A star could either have a base or Armed Satellite, not both - and they wouldnt allow the building of a mining facility.

The Armed Satellites would automatically fire at each unfriendly fleet entering the system, so they would fire up to 10 times if the unfriendly had 10 fleets.  The idea of multiple firing is to make them a real deterrent, if they fired once - people would just have their main ship take the hit and bounce it.  Multiple firing gives them a higher threat value - and might mean some losses of swarmers etc.

I would say cloaking modules would not be a good option for them, rather make them cheap to replace.

Design wise, they should be cheap to build, fairly easy to kill - but have large attack values.  They would be to mark out your alliances territory, and provide a deterrent for unfriendly targets wanting to navigate through your controlled space.

For game purposes they would allow alliances to create an ownership zone, and control some parts of the map.

I would attack more people FTP, but they are hard to find - and warp away too much.  I attacked Broken with 1/3 his fleet power, and he warped .. thats just lame.

For me - I think the mission grind component is too much, so attacking is what I want to do to get segs - but I cant find people.

The reason its bad is because its a disincentive to engage in PvP.  This is a PvP server - but attacking someone with PShips will just get them neb'd with minimal damage.  They then gain an attack sig, whcih they can use to mash your fleet to dust.

The only thing you gain is segs - and unless your just starting they really arent worth much.

It will effect victory conditions as well - it will just be about making money and having a big fleet - so you can wave around your fleet power and say wow - etc.  Yawn ...

I want to attack and destroy my opponents - not try to build a bigger sand castle than them.

Can we make some changes to get rid of PShips influence on fleet combat please?

Id suggest one of two things; either change the way fleet combat resolves, or change the fleet power calculation to accurately reflect fleet power.

At the moment fleet power is unrepresentative of actual fleet power - so its kind of a misnomer.  Its really easily fudged because it doent take into account defense, absorb or accuracy.

Due to the way PShips exploit this calc, successful fleet combat almost always relies on the use of them.  Personally I dont see how this adds anything to the game.  It just becomes an expense you have to pay so people with crappy fleets cant deal unneccessary damage to your superior fleet.

PShips themselves exploit the energy calc for weapons.  Theres a range of interacting equations here, that, in my view, end up detracting from the game.

Theres a number of ways it could be resolved.

Fleet power calcs could be revised to reflect actual fleet power like this;

Fleet Power = (Effective Attack Power + Effective Hit Points) / Some Number

Some Number is just a way of reducing the value to a manageble size that can easily be displayed - so make it 1,000 or 1,000,000 for example.

Where;
Effective Attack = Number of Ships x Sum((Weapon1 Attack Power x Accuracy%)+(Weapon 2 .. n))

And;
Effective Hit Points = Number of Ships x [(Hit Points/(1-Absorb)) + (5x(Defense x (1+Def%))/(1-Absorb)]

Or - the best solution in my view is to change the way combat resolves - conserving damage.

So if two fleets are lined up against each other and the top fleet fires on the opponents top fleet and destroys it, then any remaining attack power is then applied to the next fleet. 

You would have to preserve the original proportion of attack power, as the next fleet will likely have a different absorb rating.  However, it seems fairly simple to do - that way PShips would rightly get annihilated by the opening salvo's and further damage would go onto the first real fleet position as it should.

One more thing - the accuracy eqn for weapons, or more correctly eqn's plural, are pretty rough - they could easily be replaced by a single smooth equation, rather than chopping it into two weird sections with different equations.

Anyhow - those are my suggestions.

Very good idea.  There a few things in the game have been annoying me, this is one of them.  Yes please!  Withdraw all at one press will make life a lot easier.