472 replies to this topic

[BlakeAteIt]

Eh, we'll outlast FRR.

[Max Liao]

I don't mind ghost drops, as long as there's no way for players to manufacture them. If it's simply a matter of player logistics, I'm for it. When I want fair fights I get into PUG matches, when I'm looking for more of a war simulator (HA!), I CW.

Let's be honest, the FedRats pretty much did this to the Confederation in the 4th Succession war, so it's not like there isn't precedence here.

With that said, if we're going to use the whole 'it's tactics,' 'it's strategy,' 'it's war!' motif, then there should be one glaring change that would probably cause more QQ than ghost drops: increase the defenders capability. That's a purposely generalized statement, but consider that in traditional war, when forces are relatively balanced in tech and capability, you need 3 to 1 numerical superiority (preferably 6 to 1) in order to attack and hope to win. Defenders know the terrain better, they are dug in, and they (typically) have better cover.

So, let's play turret warrior online. A hundred turrets on all Capellan planets -- along with one player 'Mech, to make it fair. We'll call it "Militia."

This is also in line with canon, as it's well documented that the more worlds that were taken from the Capellan Confederation the stiffer the resistance; communication was quicker and easier, and troop transports were easier to manage since they didn't have to spend months on JumpShips, etc.

Unless PGI player caps factions, which I hope they DO NOT even consider, or they limit the number of worlds one faction way attack at any given time -- (which would do nothing more than delay the inevitable), there is no way to balance CW. Since this is all based on math and code, not human nature or the intangibles (psyops, partisans, fatigue, etc) that make up 90% of warfare, there's simply little that can be done. Nor should it.

I accept and relish the fact that I play for the underdog. If those tools want to fight for the perceived good guy -- (which, if they learned Davion canon, they would know is far from true), or if they want to zerg with the biggest faction simply because all the other 'cool kids are doing it,' let them. It just proves the Davion faction's junior high level psyche.

[Paramemetic]

I'm pretty convinced the issue isn't "ghost drops," as much as it is the fact that the numerically superior people always get attack. The way it's built, once a planet is stacked with more people one one side or another, that side gets 'attack' or 'counter-attack' drops, the side that fills in afterwards always gets 'defense' or 'hold territory' drops. The reason this is a problem is that we can hold 100% on a place from ghost dropping or whatever during the day, and then peak Dav time, the minute they get 37 dudes to our 36, we will always be reacting.

Liao cannot take planets back once Davion flips them unless Davion stops playing on them, which doesn't happen because there are so many Davions that they have nothing better to do. Liao cannot hold planets that it attacks once Davion puts defenders on it, because those Davion defenders actually get "counter-attack" which allows Davion to take pips, but Liao cannot take pips in response.

So the thing isn't so much "ghost drops" as the fact that Liao, when they win matches, breaks even. Davion, when they win matches (I think this must happen based on the blustering but I've only personally seen it a few times from ACES and MS), gets to win a pip. This is always the case because attack or defense is chosen based on who filled in last, and the numerically superior group will always be filled in first.

Fact is, Liao isn't likely to flip planets until Liao is allowed to attack what it wants to attack when it wants to attack it, rather than following the PGI script. Liao, being the smaller faction that needs to think sneaky and play unconventionally, doesn't have a chance when the decisions are made via PGI algorithm and there's no way to sneak attack things or whatever else.

I don't know if there's an answer to the problem, though, and I don't care - I am playing stompy robot simulator, and winning, reliably, against bad Dav players. Occasionally, I even get to be on offense with them, usually around 5PM before they've aimed the juggernaut at us. But flipping pixel planets does nothing for gameplay at the moment, and I get to shoot robots regardless of whether the pixels are turning yellow at the end. It's unfortunate for people who care about pixels that there's literally no way for Liao to "win" in this sense, but **** it, shoot robots.

PGI will eventually fix it, or they won't, they'll reset it, or they won't, and things will carry on. The only problem would be if PGI added rewards to owning planets while _not_ fixing these problems, because that would basically be a **** you to FRR, Liao, and so on.

[Maxwell Albritten]

Paramemetic, on 03 January 2015 - 10:16 AM, said:

I'm pretty convinced the issue isn't "ghost drops," as much as it is the fact that the numerically superior people always get attack.

I agree. More than once we've been stuck "holding" 3 territory and winning every fight, but since we are never allowed to attack we can't actually win the planet. This is more problematic than ghost drops.

[Thorn Hallis]

Alexander Steel, on 03 January 2015 - 05:04 AM, said:

If you are going via lore, Liao often battled 3 to 1 odds when the Davions invaded them in the 4th succession war.

That happened in EVERY war since the invention of weapons. Only a 12 year old would believe that Hanse Davion was the only one to realize that a numeric advantage brings the win.

[Paramemetic]

I also know that a lot of you guys are really into BT lore and whatnot but "because in lore Liao lost when there were more Davs" is not a good reason for a game to make it literally impossible for a faction to win.

Again, this is not an issue at all so long as the CW map is a pixel flipper simulator - we're still making mad spacebucks - but if planets ever actually mean something and this isn't addressed, that would be a problem.

Edited by Paramemetic, 03 January 2015 - 11:12 AM.

[Gorgo7]

StillRadioactive, on 02 January 2015 - 09:52 PM, said:

Is this the thread where I post screencaps of planets racked up to 93-100% against us with nobody on them when I sign on during the day?

Seems like this is the thread for it.

This is a House Liao thread. Why are you trolling here?

[Uthael]

BlakeAteIt, on 03 January 2015 - 06:14 AM, said:

The trouble is, other than increasing rewards again, what do you want PGI to do?
(...)
The way the board is set up, the more northerly IS factions NEED more people. They have more fronts. The fact that we don't have enough to man our one front is more an issue of the game still having a small playerbase than anything else. It also doesn't help that a lot of our players are on the other side of the clock, functionally useless for CW.
(...)

Uthael, on 03 January 2015 - 03:20 AM, said:

(...)
when a "ghost drop" happens... How about buffing the defenses of invasion maps to the point where 30 minutes of game time would actually be a challenge? I mean; put long-range weaponry (maybe even Clan) on exposed turrets so they can retaliate from being sniped, increase their health and put streaks and medium lasers on turrets protected with terrain. Also, make sure there aren't "optimal paths with minimum turrets".
There should be equal amount of challenge and reward in both; normal and ghost drops.

Many posts between my last post and this one, yet nobody reflected on it. It's easy to code (I guess) and provides at least a temporary solution. Now, why would it be better to leave the state as it is?

Edited by Uthael, 03 January 2015 - 11:23 AM.

[Maxwell Albritten]

Gorgo7, on 03 January 2015 - 11:21 AM, said:

This is a House Liao thread. Why are you trolling here?

Because Davion's think they have a right to everything. They have the attitude of a spoiled toddler. Davion baby gets what he wants or he throws a fit!

[Alexander Steel]

Thorn Hallis, on 03 January 2015 - 10:47 AM, said:

That happened in EVERY war since the invention of weapons. Only a 12 year old would believe that Hanse Davion was the only one to realize that a numeric advantage brings the win.

But it takes a Liao to cry foul over it.

Paramemetic, on 03 January 2015 - 11:11 AM, said:

I also know that a lot of you guys are really into BT lore and whatnot but "because in lore Liao lost when there were more Davs" is not a good reason for a game to make it literally impossible for a faction to win.

The game didn't make your faction into a loser, the fact that hardly anybody wants to play on your side did that. If any other faction was as unpopular to play they'd be getting stomped as well.

[_____]

Let me explain something very simply for you Davions

1. You are sometimes losing planets on other fronts
2. When your groups drop you have a choice of whether to drop on the fronts that need help or keep on dropping on the Liao border
3. Then you still see 3 Davs to 1 Liao on the CC/FS front

You can only draw a few conclusions about this. Some of your groups are either too afraid of a real fight or really really enjoy waiting 15 minutes for a turret killing match.

[Mordale]

[Helsbane]

I'm a little confused as to how the very ancient military tactic of taking undefended ground is somehow a bad thing. Armies have been doing that since armies existed. It's one of the oldest tactics there is, and one of the few that costs only time and effort. Minimal outlay of resources for maximum gains.

Don't like it?

Then guard your **** or lose it. If you aren't willing to defend it, or don't have the manpower to cover all your toys, then maybe you have a few too many to care for anyway. It's okay. We'll take good care of them.

[MischiefSC]

Liao is getting hammered for the same sort of reasons the FRR does -

when you are down, all your matches are 'defend', ergo you don't have much opportunity to move the pendulum back the other way. When there are 36 attackers and 24 defenders in queue and the planet is over 53% in favor of attackers, you're going to end up with 3 drops - the defender will defend all 3 times, the attacker will attack 3 times. If the defender wins twice and the attacker wins 1 time the planet moves to 60% in favor of attackers.

Add to this the difference in timezones. In primetime you've got several Davion orgs with solid experience dropping on Liao worlds and most the defenders are pugs. Last week we dropped on the world Liao was attacking, it was Boreal and we were defending. I was up on the middle mountain scouting enemy troop comp and watched 4 of the Liao pugs shooting the gate itself.

Very ferociously, don't get me wrong.

They never damaged an ogen though. We get a lot of that (or did when I was dropping against Capellans, now it's all Marik ALL THE TIME) in the last hour or two before ceasefire. Poor FRR, their borders are defended by pugs and people who just don't care. They can have units who win 80% of their matches against the Clanners but the other 4 matches going on are all pugs losing 90% of theirs. It's reached the point where Kurita simply doesn't defend against its Clan borders because the people defending them alongside the Kurita units just throw the matches away.

A 20 hour cycle seems ideal for the timer. Also attack/defend/counter-attack should simply alternate; the only time it's set is when the world is at 0% or 100%. Otherwise your odds are 50/50 for attack/defend. This prevents a numerically superior force from simply always being on the offense, which statistically ensures they keep their primacy.

Finally, Liao is in a bad situation by only having 1 active border. Not a lot of action there, not a lot of draw for people. Even if you were winning regularly against Davion (which might go that way now that Marik and Kurita are pounding us all day all the time and populations have shifted away from us) you're not going to draw a lot of people.

The Romeros thread is awesome and I have no doubt it's drawn people to Liao. I absolutely get not wanting to open a border with Marik. Given the unique position of Liao though maybe an allowance can be made to let Liao join Kurita attacks against the Clans and while the worlds would belong to Kurita they would get the Liao unit tags? I dunno. Something - the Liao front is too small to attract a lot of folks. Many units went to Steiner because, well, there's a **** ton of fighting to do for Steiner, a lot of opportunities. Liao gets to slug it out with Davion, that's it.

Edited by MischiefSC, 03 January 2015 - 02:02 PM.

[Grynos]

For all those Liao units. DO NOT DEFEND OR ATTACK Davions planets. Go help Kurita with the clan front. Let the Davions not have a fight, only ghost drops so that they can massage their " Lore " egos that they obviously have. Wins on the other front will still net you the increased bucks. Let the take the planets so they can feel what little pride they need to make them feel superior because after all this game has to be driven by the lore.

MischiefSC, on 03 January 2015 - 02:00 PM, said:

Liao is getting hammered for the same sort of reasons the FRR does -

when you are down, all your matches are 'defend', ergo you don't have much opportunity to move the pendulum back the other way. When there are 36 attackers and 24 defenders in queue and the planet is over 53% in favor of attackers, you're going to end up with 3 drops - the defender will defend all 3 times, the attacker will attack 3 times. If the defender wins twice and the attacker wins 1 time the planet moves to 60% in favor of attackers.

Add to this the difference in timezones. In primetime you've got several Davion orgs with solid experience dropping on Liao worlds and most the defenders are pugs. Last week we dropped on the world Liao was attacking, it was Boreal and we were defending. I was up on the middle mountain scouting enemy troop comp and watched 4 of the Liao pugs shooting the gate itself.

Very ferociously, don't get me wrong.

They never damaged an ogen though. We get a lot of that (or did when I was dropping against Capellans, now it's all Marik ALL THE TIME) in the last hour or two before ceasefire. Poor FRR, their borders are defended by pugs and people who just don't care. They can have units who win 80% of their matches against the Clanners but the other 4 matches going on are all pugs losing 90% of theirs. It's reached the point where Kurita simply doesn't defend against its Clan borders because the people defending them alongside the Kurita units just throw the matches away.

A 20 hour cycle seems ideal for the timer. Also attack/defend/counter-attack should simply alternate; the only time it's set is when the world is at 0% or 100%. Otherwise your odds are 50/50 for attack/defend. This prevents a numerically superior force from simply always being on the offense, which statistically ensures they keep their primacy.

Finally, Liao is in a bad situation by only having 1 active border. Not a lot of action there, not a lot of draw for people. Even if you were winning regularly against Davion (which might go that way now that Marik and Kurita are pounding us all day all the time and populations have shifted away from us) you're not going to draw a lot of people.

The Romeros thread is awesome and I have no doubt it's drawn people to Liao. I absolutely get not wanting to open a border with Marik. Given the unique position of Liao though maybe an allowance can be made to let Liao join Kurita attacks against the Clans and while the worlds would belong to Kurita they would get the Liao unit tags? I dunno. Something - the Liao front is too small to attract a lot of folks. Many units went to Steiner because, well, there's a **** ton of fighting to do for Steiner, a lot of opportunities. Liao gets to slug it out with Davion, that's it.

And Davion does not have to worry about the clans.

[BlakeAteIt]

MischiefSC, on 03 January 2015 - 02:00 PM, said:

Liao is getting hammered for the same sort of reasons the FRR does -

when you are down, all your matches are 'defend', ergo you don't have much opportunity to move the pendulum back the other way.

I was up on the middle mountain scouting enemy troop comp and watched 4 of the Liao pugs shooting the gate itself.

A 20 hour cycle seems ideal for the timer.

Finally, Liao is in a bad situation by only having 1 active border.

I agree with most of these. I haven't grouped with Liao pugs as much. Is that really a thing that is happening, or is that trolling?

Uthael, on 03 January 2015 - 11:23 AM, said:

Many posts between my last post and this one, yet nobody reflected on it. It's easy to code (I guess) and provides at least a temporary solution. Now, why would it be better to leave the state as it is?

Sorry, haven't been around today. Shooting turrets is boring, pretty much.

Mordale, on 03 January 2015 - 01:30 PM, said:

I think this image is propaganda.

I guess you would know, being the expert in fighting both? FWIW, though, it goes both ways if it's not certain units in FS.

[Saiphas Cain]

It doesn't help that Davian forces are highly active right before downtime, and consistently flip planets with ghost drops an hour to 30 minutes before downtime. That's when I'm active and we'll do a defense taking 20-30 minutes and succeed only to see 4 other unopposed attacks go through and Davian takes another one.

Personally, I kind of laugh at the one Davian group that gets opposed and imagine the sinking in their hearts when they know they're going to get steamrollered. They generally just try a holding action to delay us as long as possible to prevent us dropping again before ceasefire.

Edited by Saiphas Cain, 03 January 2015 - 03:22 PM.

[StillRadioactive]

Am I the only person who's disturbed by the fact that Goons seem to be the only ones in green who understand that CW is more than just a way to play Invasion?

If you can muster up 3 12-mans, you can lock a planet out from ghost drops for as long as you can keep those players online. The leaders of those 12-mans just have to talk to one another and make it happen. Dropping at random times ain't gonna make it happen.

If you can't muster up 3 12-mans from your entire faction, you should recruit as hard as you can.

Goons get it. They're out there pushing the pavement, creating silly RP threads to make sure everyone knows The Chancellor's exciting message:

Romano Liao said:

Dolla dolla bill y'all. We make it rain up in this *****.

They're even having fun with it by making alts named DEFENSE TURRET ##.

The fact is that the auto-win mechanic is there so that factions can't just choose not to defend in order to never lose territory. It has an impact on every faction in the game, as every faction (Davion included!) has times when their player population is low and their enemies rack up auto-wins against them.

So... Liaos... you've got a unit that's figured out how to fix the problem. Let them take the wheel for a while.

[StillRadioactive]

Gorgo7, on 03 January 2015 - 11:21 AM, said:

This is a House Liao thread. Why are you trolling here?

Because I can't stand when people say "woe is me" when they have the ability to better their own situation.

OP's looking for a handout from PGI when he should be talking to Goons and asking them to work together... you know, actually playing COMMUNITY warfare as a COMMUNITY.

Grynos, on 03 January 2015 - 02:22 PM, said:

For all those Liao units. DO NOT DEFEND OR ATTACK Davions planets. Go help Kurita with the clan front. Let the Davions not have a fight, only ghost drops so that they can massage their " Lore " egos that they obviously have. Wins on the other front will still net you the increased bucks. Let the take the planets so they can feel what little pride they need to make them feel superior because after all this game has to be driven by the lore.

And this right here is why you have a population issue.

[Grynos]

StillRadioactive, on 03 January 2015 - 03:59 PM, said:

OP's looking for a handout from PGI when he should be talking to Goons and asking them to work together... you know, actually playing COMMUNITY warfare as a COMMUNITY.



And this right here is why you have a population issue.

I am in WoL , I do not know if you have noticed the steady decline of drops from WoL over the past week. I wonder why that is... Hmmm. The population issue has nothing to do with the statement I made, we can go fight the clans or other things. The reasoning for my statement is because if we win matches and lose planets , the Davions think it was earned. Which is not a true statement. So the way I look at it , you can fight turrets and be the best Davions you choose to be, I could care less. Anytime a theory come out about how to fix this thing that isn't based solely on lore you are quick to shoot it down. The reason why the population numbers are the way they are , is because most people to be the hero.

Perhaps PGI will realize that there are clear issues with he way CW Beta currently is, maybe they won't . All I know is you are expecting one unit, to try to solve an issue that cannot be solved by the players in the current setup.

You seem to have all the answers on how Liao should fix things, so why don't you and your unit come over to Liao and show us how easy it is.