Hi!

We're making a few changes to grabbing returns based on feedback we've been receiving.

We're going to roll this out in a few phases, here's the general breakdown:

1) Grabbing returns for land, buildings, cash, bushels, tech and oil will now be computed to be the minimum the following:
- 10% of the amount the attacker has
- existing returns
For tech, it will be based on the individual techs the attacker has -- so if someone with no SDI attacks someone with high SDI, they will receive no SDI with their returns. This applies to all attack types.

2) After we see how this change works, we'll consider moving to a model where returns are captured based on the forces sent by the attacker. I.e, Troops can capture up to 1 bushel with them, tanks can capture up to one barrel of oil with them, etc. We need to figure out the math on this so it's something we'll look into (but was qz's preferred option).

3) Look into bundling some of these changes into a Clan GDI/clan war declaration mechanic if these changes are negatively impacting war.

I'll be making these changes shortly and should have them in a changeset for the start of the next rounds of each server. I'll make them available on the Alliance server as soon as they hit production.

Thanks for the feedback from folks on other ideas -- they are still very much in flight but this change has the lowest cost to implement in the short term.

Thanks!
Pang

Will be fun to see how this works out.

When you make changes like this could you write how it currently works also?

This will noticeably reduce the damage of a suicider for sure.

Happy you changed your mind to actually do something to curb the griefers.

bushels capture: nice maybe if defs have stocks at home

tech capture: doesn't change much except less useless techs to try to get rid off

oil capture: meh, unless it's oiler bot (hybrid or pure) no oil

overall nice steps to right direction.

These minimums will then exist for spy ops (not all of them but the cast majority of them), missiles and landgrabs, so special attacks stand out as the odd bird. That is a 500 acre country can still AB a 300k acre country for 10-15k buildings per hit, while a Nuke takes 60 acres, a chem takes I think 30 buildings and a Bomb structures op takes 8 buildings.

Thanks for giving this a crack Pang. It makes me much more inclined to spend time on a country, last few sets I've hardly bothered!

This is pretty cool. Ty devs!

not bad

will have some effect on some strats early, hurts tyranny more which i guess is ok since tyranny is pretty strong

Yeah but you'll probably see less people gunning to 100+ bpt on 2k acres and then just farting on bots to get fat and win. Imo, the change encourages a bit more strategic building early round, and could have an effect where more than being the most efficient grabber goes into winning sets on 1a, which is very much in the spirit of competitive play. I appreciate what it does that way in addition to being the first real, tangible change that curbs griefing without assaulting gameplay for a select group of legit community assets. Well done.

This change to grab returns cannot exist because people insisted that changes like this were too complicated and could never be rolled out as easily as a broken vision of clan GDI.


Anyways, I don't have a problem with limiting special attacks in the same way, then everyone can stfu about suiciders and admit their real intention is never to be involved in a non-"fun" war again.

Yeah in terms of the early game it will screw me royally. But I'm pretty adaptable, and not like my early game matters.

I know I have written heaps about this before but my suggestion IMO still makes more sense and it is that instead of using 10% land as the max(which reduces the effectiveness of tyr govt, NW matching and MStrat for no reason) it should be that if the target acreage is larger than your own, you grab what you would have grabbed if the country was exactly your acreage (or 80% your acreage or whatever)
This would make a smaller dent against suiciders on alliance servers, but it makes sense to not negate these key concepts (MStrat, govt, NW matching). And I dont think this is enough by itself regardless assuming clan-GDI is going to look like the proposal currently is.

Not sure I get your point this only affects grabbing upwards. If you are a 20k tyr you can grab up to 2k off a bot plenty of overhead for mstrat and tyr bonus to make a difference

I like it, it will change the netting experience for sure, good times coming :-)

I guess for bot grabbing it only matters in the beginning of the set. Im thinking of non-bot servers where NW matching on retals and mid-feeding is a thing most sets, in which the returns can be higher than 10% of your land even if the acreage of the target is lower than your own.

For 1a it mostly don't matter, except the first 4-5 days (when you can actually NW match the bots), because we don't get MStrat til after we are higher NW than the bots and/or they are in enough DR that we dont run into this limitation. But for solo servers I feel that the tyr govt (which isnt strong in bot-free solo servers) and MStrat(which is already a costly investment) would be far weaker from the flat 10% rather than a solution where those actually still matter. I guess both solutions have pros and cons tho.

Ah yes I see, I get it now. I hadn't considered non-bot servers. I'm not sure I would apply it there because this is a solution (in my mind) to a problem that does not really exist outside of 1a - or at least not to the same extremes.

Topfeeds, as annoying as they are, must remain imho - they are the ever present threat that makes people carry defense. They are, as you point out, the well played retal that makes grabbing a human a risk in the first place. A real PvP mechanic that I think works pretty well.

No-one carries defense in 1a because there is no point. As you've explained, you can never have enough. With greifers outsized returns nerfed, maybe there is some merit in carrying enough defense to create a situation where its not even worth it for a griefer to bother, because they cant cover their losses. Not a lot of defense but a bit more than now. It's a slightly different risk/reward mechanic.

I'm with you, leave the solo servers alone.

so with 10%

for absolute full max gains you will require a lot more land than the person you are grabbing

requiring them to have a much higher nlg if that was the case, since suiciders never tend to have very low nlg it kind of puts a hard cap on damage per hit, though of course in this case instead of a bigger hammer the counter is of course more nails

would be interesting if the landtrading meta was still a thing, tyranny i think would become useless, unless you really wanted to save having to buy up to about 110% mstrat

with ps you wouldnt even have to match nw perfectly for max gains if hitting someone at your land, and the more mstrat you had the less you would have to match nw, ironically this would make balancing trades harder since youd have a lot of hits between about 100-120% of cap so youd have to move nw a lot to drop returns if you were trying to make a hit small

as to plain suiciders it wont mean a whole lot but its something, and will have a much more pronounced effect on second and third countries, could even be useful to nuke suiciders again, since the meta might shift from them wanting to drop more land than they are allowed to for tech/spal/stoppeoplegettinglandback to reducing damage they can do

please don't nerf my retals on solo servers, it's one of the only reasons I play this game :(

i.e

as an all-x

I'm doing an early tech phase on 6500-7500 acres and some idiot who has been grabbing 0 def bots
with 12K acres grabs me for 280 acres -- then my best returns on a retal = 650-750 acres???

no no no

I want to hurt them, teach em a lesson, and take my 1200 - 1400 acres on the retal -- it's the reason why I'm tech weapons and mil strat early on to 130+%

as for suiciders / griefers -- if you happen to double tap a country with low land and teching what stops them from just churning out missiles --- 4.8% warfare tech is not hard to get when under 9500 acres. We are going to be seeing a lot more missiles in the air. better have SDI before double tapping a human player.

I would not mind if there was a clause in their stating -- on 1:1 retals then max returns = 10% of land owned by the country being retaled on. i.e you have 12K acxres hitting a country with 6500 acre then they can retal for 1200 acres with a SS/PS. Unless offending country being retaled on has lower land in which case it reverts back to 10% of personal land.

otherwise your lower acre theos techers and early tech phase players are going to get hurt bad by this.

it definitely helps tactical players but nerfs the hell out of strategic players.

think of it this way we both start out with 10K acres and I farm the living daylights out of you and you are now at 4K acre your max hit on me is for 400 acres ... muwahahahaha
10,000 1,000 10000 --- 1000
9,000 900 9000 --- 900
8,100 810 8100 --- 810
7,290 729 7290 --- 729
6,561 656 6561 --- 656
5,905 590 5904 --- 590
5,314 531 5314 --- 531
4,783 478 4782 --- 478
4,305 430 4304 --- 430
3,874 3874
6,126 total acres taken

would it not be in my best interest to go ahead and hit you ten times to minimize the damage you can do in your retals???

I took over 6K acres from you and your max hit on me is for 387 acres while i'm sitting at 16K plus acres????

I hear you and I think that every solution has negatives and positives. The one I was proposing(a potent clan-GDI) wouldn't have affected any server but 1a and it would have solved the issue alltogether. But instead 2 very complex changes are added, one which does nothing(current clan-GDI proposal) and one which certainly helps in 1a but kinda creates other issues elsewhere.

I think its worth tho. If this is actually put in place and its strong enough that with some pest control all a griefer can do really is to AB his targets it will perhaps be possible to netgain again on 1a again, which can bring ~50 old players back eventually.

From the perspective of someone it is intended to stop.

Gains based on total land still leaves the balance in favour of the lone wolf who plays a half-assed country. See below.

Save full turns.

Starting at 20k it would take less than 2 dozen grabs to reach 100k. The focus would be going from mid-sized countries upwards. That would leave 60+ turns to go at the fattest countries. Plenty of turns to do damage.

If gains were based on built land as opposed to total land it would make the above situation far more difficult, or require far larger land-base to start with. This would mean less stocking and more attraction from other players who dont exclusively hit bots.

It would also mean BR/CM kills would nerf the restart's ability to continue to farm due to having no buildings.

Yeah built land makes a lot of sense to base it on. Someone already suggested it should be based on some historical acrage say 24 hours ago, but I think built land makes more sense since there are times at the start (on most servers) that its normal to gain massive amounts of land in a short time.

To base it on built land would screw my start so hard in 1a, tho I think I will be able to adapt.

I still would like to see something rolled out for war where using GS and BR is more efficient then just GS or just BR. As well as Tanks killing civilians. The tanks does not have to be much, but if a building falls chances are there was 1 person in the 500 that got hit or something.

Just rambling is all =p

I like the idea of making land gained based on built acres, not all land. Made that change as part of this changeset -- I'll write something up more fully before releasing it. Just trying to get qz to review it before I put it in production.

#3. If u implement some kind of declare war thing. Can make it so warring sides won't have to worry about the last 24hrs and the nw shrinking?

the last change where built was required was the nwghost landtrading, so i guess thats precedence for making grabbing require built

one potential problem with that is someone who is ab'd wont be able to grab much land back, but being ab'd can be a bit less bad than losing huge amounts of land to begin with

one of the previous suggestions is always to reduce restrictions based on being hit by a country

either 1 hit eliminates restriction, or 2 like express or a 48/72h retal period

but one im not sure has been mentioned would be a negative DR

so usually dr reduces gains starting from 2 hits up to 14 hits
what about inverting the formula

since currently its got a 10% min, and your proposing capped to 10% of what you have, it would work out to 100% of what you had after 12 or 14 hits were done to you buy a country

feels like an a fun solution to me from an elegance perspective

Will DRs apply to the 10% cap? For example first two hits get 10% and then DRs from there?

if its just a hard limit to your grabbing returns then DR will still apply normally for all hits.



Imo something like this should be done rather than a 10% cap.

If Pang goes with what Trumpoz suggested, to base it on built land then you get

Attackers_Resource=Built_buildings_attacker
Targets_Resource=Total_Acres_defender

And the returns are based on the lowest of those two numbers, but all other multipliers are still active.

I kinda liked limiting it on some combination of what you sent and such. But this seems like a good start.

Thanks