Just a idea which may be stupid but how about some kind of top secret research facility which is playing with time distortion which commanders can plow money into to recieve turns... they can do this upto 10 times per day .

Costs maybe something like 10 billion per turn or make it proportional to power in some way, each investment recoups 10-100 turns for the commander per day .

I thought about this as perhaps it will give a money sink for the top commanders, keep them playing longer too with giving them more turns to do the things they want to do. but it will also help the younger commanders, espetially if theres some linkage with cost to power

Yeah armageddon it is a nice system it works, but its very black and white. It also makes it difficult for newer commanders to progress, not every mid to low commanders will ever see a station survive longer than a few days making an aspect of the game defunct to all but the high level commanders, without a cloak... even with a cloak its pretty pointless as its either on or off. Just suggesting something that maybe bring a bit of balance to the system where lower level commanders have a slight chance there station could survive a bit longer instead of higher level commanders jumping around wasting stations just because they can see them.

Another thought that popped in my head is why automatically see what asset are in a system, some kind of scan to detect if theres a cloaked fleet or object there costing a few turns would be alot better in my opinion, station survivability increased further as not everyone will wish to expend turns to see if theres something there.

garrison ability to  attach a fleet to the station directly to protect it and you have to scan the station to know what your getting yourself into.

Final thing i thought about was to perhaps allow the warp bubble to be put on mining facilities so they warp with the station 20-50% chance or something.

Tech for planets also using phase technology, after a raid or failed conquor attempt the planet has a 80% chance of activating its phase technology putting the planet out of phase with the galaxy for a 1-2 hour period where it cannot be selected attacked reinforced or generate anything in the phase period. obviously phasing technology to counter this effect should be available but not to totally remove the chance of a trigger. Reason for this is to make using 10 raid/conqour attempts in a row defunct and allow a chance to reinforce ect the planet.

aka distress signal sent upto you if you come help but gives a window of opertunity to save your asset instead of mails hey this guy attacked your planet 10 times while you were sleeping its his now because you werent around to save it.
.
. obviously the numbers are theoretical but you get the basic idea and it gives a limited protection to the stationary object

SO i thought about cloaking... and i decided it was a bit crap that when you have a cloak it cant be seen at all... so i formulated an idea thus

lvl 1 cloak gives 90% chance station and all assets including planets are cloaked

each lvl of cloaking increases the chance of non detection towards 99%

so scanners would have to work someway right... well with equal scanner technology you eliminate the chance down to the 90% cloaking lvl. But scanners below cloak level would negate 5% of the bonus depending on difference of tech. cloak above scanners reduces cloak effect by 20% towards 10% then 1% effect per lvl towards 1%

lvl 10 cloak 99% base cloaking
vs
lvl 10 scanners. reduces cloaking ability to 90% because they are equal techs

lvl 10 cloak 99% effect
vs
lvl 5 scanners cloak effect 98%
lvl 6 cloak effect 97%
lvl 7cloak effect 96%
lvl 8cloak effect 95 %
lvl 9 cloak effect 94% lowest reduction

so the wider the cloak to scanner the more effective the cloak

lvl 10 cloak 99% effective
vs
lvl 12 scanner would reduce the cloaks effect to 50% effectiveness


what would this mean ... it would mean your cloak could malfunction and you have a slight chance of being spotted, by someone with lower scanner techs.
This would also mean theres a chance for scanners to fail on much lower tech cloaks.
it also puts emphasis on haveing cloaking and scanning, but doesnt make the points invested obsolete by vastly more experienced or powerful commanders.

It would also allow growth of lower level commanders as there cloak may function on there stations to someone much higher tech lvl

also allow much lower commanders to have a slight chance of detecting the station assets of a higher lvl commander.

theres one thing i can think of to make so wars more of a fighting feud for the top level players and ofc allow lower lvls rise in ranks but it would require significant recoding me thinks and calculations.

the losses are ofc linked to your economy people dont want to drop too much and be a free target and really the top dogs from what ive read are a bit scared of this .

so to the idea

SO wars is all about being uncapped in every way mounting up as much as you can, but with this comes the fact that the more you have the more you can lose. Building up an economy is hard in SOwars es[ecially for new players and this is the very reason the top dogs stay on top. I have a few suggestions

1/ add a soft cap on amount of workers/credits allowed in secret base based on commander lvl.

2/ add a soft cap on max capacity a planet can have based on commander level

3/ add exp gain from missions tie it into commander lvl and work the numbers so its not overpowered but enough to allow a commander to progress with missions very slowly this way it allows new commanders to compete on Wars to a small extent. give the exp gained from pvp a 200-300% increase more than missions and increase the exp gains from bounty by 500-1000%

4/ increase the stats on space stations, tie it into commander lvl increasing a % of each stat as you increase lvl

5/ give commander lvl milestones bonuses to some things.

6/ cap fleets by commander level, allowing a static amount of fleet cost and fleet power available per commander lvl aka lvl 100 commander allowed a fleet of upto 1 trillion credits as an example with 10 billion fleet power . this with other advances may bring some fun into pvp.

7/ pvp attacks, on planets and commanders based on fleetcost/fleetpower/commander level 

Say you want to attack our example commander. lvl 100 and a potential 1 trillion of fleet cost you could attack him using 1 trillion fleet cost +or- 50-80% and it has to have a 10 billion max fleet power with an appropriate +or- fleet power. lastly is commander lvl which is more tricky. and should diminish % as commander lvl rises. so like lvl 100+30% lvl 1000 +20% lvl 10000 +10% as a rough example. this way higher lvl commanders still have alot of potential targets and they can send in the smaller cost/power fleets to fight lower lvls but still have risk involved in it. also add in a feature which gives higher warp chances depending on the development of there economy. with having static economics dictated by lvl  you can gauge how developed that commander is aka if there development is only at 60% of there commander lvl they get a slight increase to there warp chances, fully developed they get nothing, overdeveloped they get nothing. all this stuff ofc takes place before bonuses kick in from Skills or modules.

8/ put a soft cap on warp stabalizers ect. so you get diminshing returns as it should be for all the ship modules/commander skills also.

say a 50% limit to all such things 1 point in something gives 1% the more you put in the less return you get towards 50% so like 10 points gives 9% 20 points gives 18% 30 gives 26% and so on towards 50% but work it so you never get to 50% obviously some number crunching requied to find the sweet point. but you get the idea.

9/ Limit number of segments by commander lvl. add some form of trading for slaves/segments ect for any surpluses that can arise from maxing out a colony or secret base of your level.

10/ disallow alts in this enviroment. to build on the competativeness and remove the possibility of alt abuse of any way shape or form.

11/ global positions ranked by comander lvl as well as fleet power.

so overall what would this mean, I think more competition and more fluctuations in positions than total domination. people fighting within brackets dictated by commander lvl meaning they are fighting on a relatively even keel. with your choices of development playing a role in how you advance. the softcaps ofc are basically a cap before bonuses are applied. and i think taking into account economic development of commanders also means that as people advance there economy advances. if they are fighting they are fighting on more even ground and losing a battle is a setback and not total collapse. this would make attacks frequent not as devastating to come back from, but having an overall role in the turn of events

so lots of ideas some potentially useless ofc.... But they are there and they may spark other ideas in others. so constructive feedback plz.

i didnt come here to make set blame or say someone was breaching TOS or anything like that guys. I simply wanted a discussion on alts, Cam only got pointed out as the perpetrator because of his first post i took as arrogant and a flame attempt because he was the one the started my thoughts on the subject.


The points i made about alts are that

They bring an unfair advantage to what is a competative enviroment.

The use of an alt can be abused ( example i make 10 alts i scatter them in the galaxy, I then gain a 10x greater chance of finding a particular commander who may not be on intel, 10x better chance of scouting resources for a main account) Because think about it you cant suddenly forget the knowledge you gained with your alt, saying your not gonna use that knowledge and doing it are 2 different things. This may or may not be against TOS, but does it make it right ?

alts are more fun than a main because you dont worry so much about your losses because you have your main account to play and build up.

Alts used in alliances or stealth alts used to gather information that player shouldnt have, not a breach of the TOS by any regard but is it right? I get an alt in an alliance, I then begin using said alt to hit people in an alliances resources with another char, with the information ive gathered.

Big brother syndrome.... If you attack my alt Ill get my main and wipe all your hard work out, because i cant play fair i cant engage in a combat with someone around my own power rating and take a bloody nose from time to time. Or said alt has bounty because its been hitting lower lvl players.

I realise the last point has something to do with tinymen type ships which cost alot for low fleet power. I have an idea for such thingswhich ill post elsewhere.

Overall Im just pointing out Alts are an unfair advantage. and become an even more unfair advantage with higher ranked players at the helm.

constructive arguments either way would be nice. or why alts are fiar in a competative enviroment

perhaps it is similar... but its his secondary account which makes it different.

Cameron i dont care take the planet all you want. I came here to discuss something about alts, I named no one I flamed no one at the begining. I only mentioned it was cameron after he posted your shut it ect and i took his  post as arrogance.

But I clearly have proven part of my point with your reply to one of the posts here and i quote

"oh no, i very much have the rights to get his planet cords with my alt then attack it with my main if i choose too, i just cant attack first with alt or scout then attack with main"

alts create an unfair advantage in a competative enviroment like so

yeah mobius I can quite believe it can get boring for you up there, thing is none of you guys are attacking each other ect youve built up and are scared to do anything at all, this is where your boredome stems from, I will attest that yes in some cases alts can be fun and such but if you look at the mechanics of SO it can be abused so easily to create an unfair advantage on others. and turning into the town bully with your top 20 main on lower accounts makes people think wtf is the point. Im never going to make it into the top 20 anyways but I cant have fun at lower level with the threat of people using there main to level me.

ah nice... but expected as much from you. I left everything without names ect, but you come in mouthing off and flaming.

Fine... and as im sure people have worked out the poster above is the commander in question who sent the threatening mail to me. Something i didnt appreciate, I dont play games to be threatened by powermongering bullies. He has as yet not acted upon his threat but its his attitude that maybe pushing players away from the game. I havent played SO for very long I bought a gold account, Ive played and tried to learn the game from my mistakes, I get hit hard i pick myself up and build up again, frustrating but part of the game I know. One aspect of the game i didnt know about when i signed up to play was that alts were okay ( ofc if you keep them seperated which cameron isnt from threatening with another of his MUCH MORE powerful characters).

It may be an idle threat i dont know but Im pretty sure crap like this ruins the game for many people including me ( i may hang around or not havent decided after this recent event) who have just discovered SO, I think its a great game it takes time to learn and you cant learn everything from a FAQ you have to build up discover from your losses ect. Which i have done to some extent.

Its not alts ruining things its people with camerons attitude with an alt.... and lets be serious most people would have the same attitude as him if they have a vastly superior commander to back them up, alts plain and simple ruin gameplay and make it too tempting for people to fall back on there main when things get rough... or they need that little extra cred or anything of the sort. there are 3 SO servers running ... i have another gold account on SO main too... but seriously Alts are a bane to this type of game enviroment.

SO for me is about competetion and when you give people the advantage to have more than one account in operation you begin stacking the odds in there favour.

rant over

Been playing on wars for a bit now.. and to be perfectly honest I dont agree that people should be allowed to run alts on the wars server. It makes things alot harder for people plodding along enjoying the game.

Person B on bounty list gets wasted by Person A, so Person B decides to get revenge and looks out for person A's stations ect and pops them.... which is fair enough, alls fair in love and war. So Person A decides okay I see person B around im going to attack them make them warp or such if they are near my stations. Person B comes back and pops stations again then sends threatening message, If you mess with this character again ill get my main account and pop you again.... aka meaning he will wipe me out with his main account which has been around alot longer... built up ect ect.

Perhaps crap like this is why people are leaving.... because they are being bullied around by people in the top ranks, they cant advance without stepping on someones alts toes and getting retributions beyond what they can fairly handle.