729 replies to this topic

[Abivard]

Apostal Sinclair, on 17 January 2015 - 09:23 PM, said:

Remember CGB keeps getting Western targets also, so whilst you go east they go West... since Wolf lost so many planets CGB will probably be eating up worlds for awhile to come.

PGI also keeps shutting off clan Wolf and Ghost bear worlds from attack by the FRR, more often we lose our wolf attack corridor, but it always lets the FRR attack CSJ and CGB worlds.

How can something so essential to CW and so basic and straight forward as the planets chosen for competition between factions be implemented so terribly?

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Prussian Havoc, on 17 January 2015 - 04:23 PM, said:

^^....I hope it means they wil be Servants of the Dragon next...^^

Which Dragon? Because there's the Kuritan Dragon (ew...) and the Viking Dragon (yay!).

Also, all this RP and political gaming makes my head hurt. I just wanna shoost robutt...

[KuroNyra]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 18 January 2015 - 12:20 AM, said:

Which Dragon? Because there's the Kuritan Dragon (ew...) and the Viking Dragon (yay!).

Also, all this RP and political gaming makes my head hurt. I just wanna shoost robutt...

Just assume they will go IS and that way you will be able to kick there Spheroid butt Luna.

[Himmelganger]

I have been trying to come up with a good player based mechanic to augment the rather poor algoritem used for determining CW targets, while at the same time helping in player based faction diplomacy/politicing. I propose that permanent units, should get a vote on which faction they wish to attack and which not to attack. The vote would be once a week, say on a day suiteble for PGI to input the result and post the upcomming shifts in attack vectors, so that merc units can adjust and sign contracts with faction they wish to join for what upcomming offensive.

Permanent units in faction would be given a voting share based on their active member count, active in this case could be active in dropping within the previous assault period. This is needed for the vote to be democratic, and at the same time fair in that units cannot just bloat their roster with ghost or dorment members. The vote would be cast by the unit leader to simplify the voting system. This mechanic sets the stage for some interesting unit dynamics/politics outside the game, but which will impact the game even so.

The vote would be a simple ranking of which faction one wish to attack, where a unit rank which faction you wish the to attack first, second, third etc etc. If you do not assign a rank to a faction on the list it counts as a vote for ceasefire/peace. This allows for behind the scenes faction diplomacy/politicing between permanent faction units. After the votes have been tallied PGI can then implement the results for the comming week of gameplay.

Each faction should get a fixed set of operations it can mount, today it is 2x with x being the number of factions you border with. The typical number of operations a faction can do on average is 8, while the edge cases are 6 and 12. With the upcomming 3 ceasefire times per day I think 8 operation are more then enough for most factions.

If a faction is attacked by another faction, PGI automaticly allocate an operation as an defensive operation. If a faction has operations to spare after PGI has matched all the incomming attacking operations against it, the left over operations will be allocated as offensive operations by PGI, using the ranking from the voting within the faction as a guide line. In the case a faction is not able to match every attack against it it will not be allowed to mount offensive operations of its own, but will be allowed to field extra defensive operations to match all incomming attacks.

To further polish this system I would like to see that players belonging to Faction A, who is attacking Faction B, cannot for this assault period, defend Faction B against attacks from Faction C, but could help defend Faction C from attacks launched from Faction B if both Faction A and C have a ceasefire.

With this system, the permanent faction units will be able to shape the goals/direction of their faction better. Also it will give any merc units less say so on the political scene, and be relegated more towards being a tool in the wages of war. As is more in line with reality, mercs for the most part are tools of statecraft, they have a limited use for a specifc goal. They very seldom if ever set said goals of a state.

Merc units will of course be allowed to sign up with whichever faction they desire. In short, they get to jump around and garner the most cbills and use which ever tech is OP at the moment, while the permanent units get to play politics have a direct say in the direction of their faction.


TLR: Permanent units get to set the agenda of CW and Merc units get to have all the fun tech and lots of extra cbills.

Edited by Himmelganger, 18 January 2015 - 05:10 AM.

[CyclonerM]

Himmelganger, on 18 January 2015 - 04:50 AM, said:

TLR: Permanent units get to set the agenda of CW and Merc units get to have all the fun tech and lots of extra cbills.

There must be heavy penalties for breaking a permanent contract , or every merc unit will take a permanent contract and then break it switching to another faction.

[Dracol]

Himmelganger, on 18 January 2015 - 04:50 AM, said:

I have been trying to come up with a good player based mechanic to augment the rather poor algoritem used for determining CW targets,

Just in case it is not known, there were bugs in the algorithm that Karl has identified and fix. The bug fixes go live on the 20th.

CyclonerM, on 18 January 2015 - 05:14 AM, said:

There must be heavy penalties for breaking a permanent contract , or every merc unit will take a permanent contract and then break it switching to another faction.

They could also have alt accounts with permanent tags so they can vote and still play merc on a main account.

Edited by Dracol, 18 January 2015 - 05:21 AM.

[Himmelganger]

CyclonerM, on 18 January 2015 - 05:14 AM, said:

There must be heavy penalties for breaking a permanent contract , or every merc unit will take a permanent contract and then break it switching to another faction.

Yes, that or my favorit, everyone in the unit looses all the LP from the faction they break with, and loose the ability to join as a permanent faction of the same faction.

[Himmelganger]

Dracol, on 18 January 2015 - 05:21 AM, said:

Just in case it is not known, there were bugs in the algorithm that Karl has identified and fix. The bug fixes go live on the 20th.


They could also have alt accounts with permanent tags so they can vote and still play merc on a main account.

Even with the fixes the system is rather silly in that it will still insist on having attack and defense operations against factions where there have been established ceasefires by the permanent units. With voting you will have the players be able to better direct their faction's operations against factions they wish to fight, more attack lanes, more action, less vasted operations, more players get drops less time spent in quees, the RPers get to play diplomacy/politics, etc etc, everyone wins.

I wouldn't be too worried in regards to alt accounts, I said permanent units, a single player is not a unit he is a merc, so no vote. If they make a whole alt unit, well then that can be combatted with weighting the votes in regards to activity percentage, the more active a unit is the more it votes count.

Edited by Himmelganger, 18 January 2015 - 05:46 AM.

[Thanatos31]

Seyla Himmel.

I think more participation and ability to influence the course of action would be great for everyone who agreed to permanently support a faction.

[Abivard]

Phil Ambush, on 18 January 2015 - 06:28 AM, said:

Seyla Himmel.

I think more participation and ability to influence the course of action would be great for everyone who agreed to permanently support a faction.

To chime in on all the prior posts touching this matter:

Faction rank as well as active participation in CW for your faction should have a major impact on a player's ablity to make choices for the Faction.

This would help prevent alt accounts from being used to influence decisions as well as show that a player has some 'skin in the game'.

[Dracol]

Abivard, on 18 January 2015 - 07:35 AM, said:

To chime in on all the prior posts touching this matter:

Faction rank as well as active participation in CW for your faction should have a major impact on a player's ablity to make choices for the Faction.

This would help prevent alt accounts from being used to influence decisions as well as show that a player has some 'skin in the game'.

To pose a counter argument: If the attacks are determined by large loyal units and such, and they decide only 1 planet should be attacked, what happens if the faction has more than 180 members that want to do CW drops at the same time? (180 is the max that can be participating in a CW match on a single planet at the same time)

Should the ability to force all of one faction's members to wait in a single queue be available to the players?

There are numerous complaints about long queue times. Some of them are based upon low activity, but there are others based upon the single queue issue that can arise when an entire faction is focused on 1 planet with 0 planets needing defense.

Edited by Dracol, 18 January 2015 - 08:18 AM.

[Abivard]

Dracol, on 18 January 2015 - 08:17 AM, said:

To pose a counter argument: If the attacks are determined by large loyal units and such, and they decide only 1 planet should be attacked, what happens if the faction has more than 180 members that want to do CW drops at the same time? (180 is the max that can be participating in a CW match on a single planet at the same time)

Should the ability to force all of one faction's members to wait in a single queue be available to the players?

There are numerous complaints about long queue times. Some of them are based upon low activity, but there are others based upon the single queue issue that can arise when an entire faction is focused on 1 planet with 0 planets needing defense.

I must have missed that suggestion, a Faction should have to choose a world to attack for each faction that it has available as an opponent. If no one votes, then PGI could have a default planet selected for that faction.

if populations increase PGI could make more than one world per target faction available to be attacked.

Edited by Abivard, 18 January 2015 - 08:25 AM.

[Dracol]

Abivard, on 18 January 2015 - 08:25 AM, said:

I must have missed that suggestion, a Faction should have to choose a world to attack for each faction that it has available as an opponent. If no one votes, then PGI could have a default planet selected for that faction.

if populations increase PGI could make more than one world per target faction available to be attacked.

To be honest, I am not sure that was or was not part of the initial suggestion. That being said, one aspect of the general discussion includes the player made ceasefires and whether or not the game should enforce them. The proposed system without your addition would allow that to happen.

Edited by Dracol, 18 January 2015 - 08:36 AM.

[TheSilken]

To all Ghost Bears and Smoke Jaguars: I am hosting a fun tournament for our Clans that starts tomorrow at 12 pm EST and ends whenever. Create a team of 12 and then go to my Thread "Clan Footbal" and post it. Don't forget to name your teams!

[Midori No Ryuu]

Bottom line up front, there needs to be a very real “cost” (not talking about MC here) to jumping between factions, ad nuaseam, especially as a unit.

The primary complaining about all of the different OP mechs and tactics on both sides is a function of well organized, and in many cases, high level comp teams practicing their normal craft of min/maxing in the name of efficiency (minimum time/maximum results). This, as has been mentioned repeatedly, is a return to the 12 man PUG stomp days of the past which really doesn’t do a whole lot of good for player retention/game growth, and has also resulted in the nerfing/balancing of many historically great (and expensive, I might add) mechs because of supposed OPedness (will be a word soon, I promise).

Most of the complaints about the current Beta iteration can be traced back to these “Merc” units on whichever side of the boarder they are present simply doing what they do as they jump around between factions. I am not against Mercs, in fact they are needed and a vital part of the game, it’s just that a few groups think it’s more fun to grief everyone instead of working toward any perceived goals and these tend to be treaty defying ghost droppers and PUG massacre specialists wherever they go.

My primary problem with the current CW functionality (other than the apparent slow death of the mode), is that it flies in the face of logic. Mercs need to live somewhere, they need supplies and support, they normally have families and loved ones, someone and somewhere to spend all that money. Where are they supposedly receiving this from as they bounce from faction to faction? They literally have nothing to lose or indeed fight for.

If Faction A and Faction B are fighting and you as a Merc unit jump from Faction A to Faction B, Faction A is going to be pretty pissed and quite possibly want to end you, your unit, and everyone you are associated with. You will most certainly not be welcomed back 7 or 14 or even 28 days later to wreak more havoc within the faction’s boarders unless it is for the singular purpose of having you all in one place for easier elimination/disposal.

On the other hand, those Merc units that work with their factions and maintain a unity of effort need to be rewarded better as they are much more valuable to their faction and that is not being done at all in my opinion (something to lose/fight for).

Treachery and turncoats are part of lore, those who embraced those techniques normally did not live to do it again and again, and again…..

[Dracol]

IMHO, the biggest issue at the moment is the inability for none unit members to group together. Thankfully this gets fixed tuesday.

The reason I say this is the biggest handicap at the moment is my guess there is a large segment of those small groups and solos who will be grouping up in TS channels like NGNG and the Comstar NA. This will increase the competition 12-mans are facing and hopefully increase the enjoyment level all around.

If the population increases enough, those small skirmish between small units/solos/mercs that are not involving the big units who have a ceasefire will be helpful for making sure more players are playing instead of waiting in a single attack queue.

Edited by Dracol, 18 January 2015 - 09:32 AM.

[Cimarb]

I think it could actually be fixed much easier by making every border open to attack.

You could handle the planet selection in a couple of different ways:
1. Have all planets along the border between the two factions available for attack. You could limit it as follows
a. once the first planet is attacked, that is the only planet available along that border during that battle window
b. only the planet with the highest number of wins is controlled at the end of the battle window
2. Choose Your Own Adventure style: one planet is chosen, just like it is now. After that planet is taken, all planets within a jump of that planet are available to attack, with the limits from option 1 possible.

I would be fine with some sort of voting system, like Himmel suggested, but I think it is a lot of extra work both for PGI as well as the community, when it would be much easier to just have the players choose which direction to take the attack.

[Drunk Canuck]

Himmelganger, on 18 January 2015 - 04:50 AM, said:

TLR: Permanent units get to set the agenda of CW and Merc units get to have all the fun tech and lots of extra cbills.

Sorry, but the game should never work like that, and if it does, I can guarantee a lot of units will stop playing CW, and we are already the core of the game. Permanent faction units would be the cancer and end of this game in a heart beat, there would be no ebb and flow of CW and it would be boring as hell to boot.

[Splitpin]

Exactly what I was thinking Cimarb. Have multiple planets (if not all) available for attack. No voting mechanic required, players would vote with their feet. An organised coordinated faction could then choose it's strategic direction, a less organised one would be dissipating it's efforts on multiple fronts.

[Drunk Canuck]

Splitpin, on 18 January 2015 - 12:40 PM, said:

Exactly what I was thinking Cimarb. Have multiple planets (if not all) available for attack. No voting mechanic required, players would vote with their feet. An organised coordinated faction could then choose it's strategic direction, a less organised one would be dissipating it's efforts on multiple fronts.

I would agree with this if the player base was about 3 or 4 times it's current size on a consistent basis. At least then you would be more likely to have real matches going on, then the need for alliances would be moot as well.