lets remove recall goods while we're at it as well cause if this doesnt benefit netgains i dont know what does

so remove that and in with automatic stonewalling

I haven't read much of this thread....

but I just want to state that reducing FS strength shouldn't be considered a pro-netting or anti-fighting thing; it would just change the equilibrium point and -- in my opinion -- make it more fun for everyone.

If less countries are killed in the FS, that means more players get to play with their original country, which I think we can all agree is a positive thing for a player's playing experience.

This isn't to protect a certain type of players, it's simply to allow for less reliance on getting an FS in to have a fun war for your alliance.

Don't war alliances want to have wars that are competitive for longer than 4 days? :p


I've played as a netter in some of the best more hardcore netting alliances (LaF, Genesis, NA) and the most hardcore fighting alliances (IX, SoL, SoF) and regardless of what alliance I was in, the most fun wars were always the ones on the old 1a server, where FS's were less powerful. :)

If you reduce the power of the FSes you also make it imposible for a smaller tag to be able to beat a larger tag

And the fses arent really that big these days, no where near the sizes they were in 1a i really dont see the problem

warring as its sucks for most alliances, especially those sitting on around 30 members which it seems like most alliances are doing

***Edit, I realize in hindsight that I've actually reversed QZ's concept. He envisioned a defensive bonus, I envision a defensive malus which works much like readiness currently does... except in how you get rid of it. I hope no one is confused by this mistake on my part.

You know, the more I think about it... the more I actually like the basic premise of QZ's solution... I think his numbers are off, but I like the idea.

Right now in wars, the beginning of them is fun, but they get boring later on because (with the size of the current player base) it's hard to get enough countries together to get kills. It just becomes a grind with few kills that no one enjoys.

The main reason I've abhorred most FS limiting suggestions is because they almost always have the secondary side-effect of making this grind worse. Making it harder to get kills... QZ's suggestion doesn't do that... it actually makes late-war kills more common.

However, let's be clear, QZ's suggestion *does not* weaken the FS. It stengthens the CS.

Now, as for his numbers... I think that they're too extreme. With the way he's set it up, every active country in a war will spend the entire reset at the maximum "war weariness"... I think it would be much more interesting if it fluctuated more.

Here's how I'd set it up:
Maximum war weariness: 30%
War weariness rate: 0.5% per attack
War weariness recovery rate: 0.625% per hour (half of the maximum war weariness per day)

I think that 30% drop in defensive effectiveness is more than enough. It gives an obvious advantage, but doesn't go so far as to negate all the defences of the player.

With a 0.5% weariness rate, the most any government except tyr can do during an FS is just barely reach the maximum. This will encourage players to balance how far they want to go and there won't be any "well, I'm at the maximum and have only used a quarter of my turns, so I may as well keep hitting". In general, I like things that force players to make choices.

With a recovery rate equal to 1/2 the maximum weariness rate, this adds a new strategic element to the game. Some alliances may choose to only have countries attack every other day and keep their average war weariness effects lower... while others may choose to attack every day but stagger their members half each day... and still others will just go balls to the wall and attack every day no matter what. I think this is interesting. Much more so than QZ's numbers which had you fluctuating from -60% effectiveness to -55% every day and never getting any higher. Again, choices are good.

There's a couple other changes I'd like to suggest too: First, I think Bobby's concern about making all-x strats stronger is valid. To combat this, I'd suggest that "war weariness" doesn't lower your defences against LGs. This also has the benefit of preventing warring alliances from looking even more like free land to anyone still netting.

Second, I want to see a major war weariness effect from sending FA. I think 15% would be appropriate (You're sacrificing *our* livelihoods to help fight *their* war?). This is to make the strategy of just sitting with large countries, never attacking and just FAing, less appealing. It's still a valid strategy, but this gives the opposing alliance an opportunity to have an easier kill of these countries too.

Third, I'd like to see a bonus to the number of civs lost in countries with war weariness. I don't know how much this will be... an increase equal to the war weariness % seems excessive, making it way too easy to kill a country. So maybe 25% of war weariness would be appropriate. My preference, however, would be for these civilians to "defect" and be captured by the attacking country (Please don't kill us, we'll help you!). In most cases, this would provide a very temporary bonus to the attacking country... but it also could add a new and interesting element to stone walling.

Fourth, I think readiness should be changed to only affecting offensive attacks. I don't think we should have both readiness and war weariness making it more difficult to defend.

Fifth is a thought I've had for a long time about how to weaken an FS. However, I've never suggested it because it would ruin the late game wars. However, I think that war weariness will balance out this change if it allows us to increase the total civs lost. The suggestion is to make readiness have a larger effect. I want the current formula of "AttackingStrength * ((readiness + gov't bonus + weapons)/3)" to be changed to "AttackingStrength * ((gov't bonus + weapons)/2) * Readiness".

Obviously, with this set-up, it will be more important to keep readiness high. This means more turns will have to be used to do so. Late in the war, when everyone has serious war weariness this will be balanced out by the extra civ losses that causes. However, during the FS when the target doesn't have war weariness, it will mean fewer kills.

In other words, a weaker FS that doesn't make the later portions of the war entirely pointless.

To summarize that, I like QZ's war weariness with the following numbers and modifications:
- Maximum war weariness: 30%
- War weariness rate: 0.5% per attack
- War weariness recovery rate: 0.625% per hour
- War weariness does not effect SSs, PSs or missiles
- Sending FA causes a significant increase in war weariness (15%)
- Increase number of civs lost (by "war weariness/4 * normal civ loss") with a preference towards capturing those civs.
- Change Readiness to only effect offensive attacks.
- Change influence of readiness in attack formula to "AttackingStrength * ((gov't bonus + weapons)/2) * Readiness".

Following these suggestions will make FS's less definitive (while hopefully still offering some advantage to the FSer) without hurting the late war game (and maybe improving it). It also introduces several changes that will add new dimension to warfare and require players to make more choices about how they're running their country during war time.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I don't think it's impossible... you can't hit someone double your size, but should you be able to anyways? Bring a friend to the fight! :p



They may be numerically smaller, but their relative strength has increased.


I don't quite get this comment....
if 2 alliances that are the same size fight eachother, it shouldn't be a completely 1-sided contest within the first 3-4 days.

I don't see the problem with changing things, so long as it's the same for everyone across the board. It's just scaling a factor back.

foog how exactly is it hard for restarts to get into the fight when almost any target the last 100+ hits are under 10k to break. I stopped reading your long post after that claim...

I apologize BobbyATA, I worded that extremely poorly and I can see how your interpretation is the obvious one. It was (at least, in my head) a reference to the phenomenon which occurs when each alliances only has a couple breakers left and restarts frequently end up with no targets... or just targeting other restarts with no impact on the overall war.

In the end though, it's a superfluous comment which isn't terribly relevant to my post as a whole. I've now deleted it so it won't play on your mind anymore... so hopefully you'll be able to continue reading (unless the memory of my error is so terrible for you...). You should at least read as far as the bit where I said you have a valid point.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

not often this happens, but i agree with ivan...

FS isn't really that overpowered. sure, add things in to make warfare more interesting, especiallt restarts. But to start with the only pretense of weakening the FS is a bad idea.

Sure, SOL hammered LAF last set, but i still count that to very good planning on SOL's part and LAF's failure to see the obvious signs that war was coming. i also dont see that war as blind siding a netting clan.

A good example that FS wasn't all that powerful was imag/pdm/sof/eevil vs collab/icn (well different variations of that) where shear numbers in the pdm/imag/sof FS on collab should have proved the theory of overpowered FS right within a matter of days, but with collabs great organisation and activity, it was a very close war until nearly the very end of the round and could have gone either way.

I dont see how FSes on 1a were less powerful when people had 200 people to hit with compared to todays maximum of 65 how the fluff is the FSes these days more powerful

per person sure, per tag definately not which is what matters

Also the FS power is pretty much 0 compared to the CS power if a tag is well prepared for it, this entire conversation is about silly things then i can make a statement well I wanna start netting now a month into the set lets reduce the netting capabilities of all other countries so I still have a chance at winning even tho im a really poor planer

fluff

And lets not forget that you can hold less missiles per acre now which also nerfs the FS

Anyway yer right lets put the turns and turns stored to 50 and no one will be able to kill anyone anymore

long live the netting tags

Ivan, the comparison is this:
Right now, if a pair of 30 member alliances go to war, the FSing alliance is likely to kill 6 countries... or 20% of the membership of their enemy.

Back on 1A, a pair of 100 member alliances go to war, the FSing alliance is likely to kill 13 countries... or (obviously) 13% of the membership of their enemy.

In raw numbers, you're right, the FS is less powerful now. But the complaint isn't "so many countries die that I can't count that high", the complaint is "so many countries die that the attacking alliance is left with an insurmountable advantage". Per person (or, more accurately "per country") is exactly what matters. Per tag is a useless measurement.

There certainly are arguments you could put forward to support the notion that FSes are not "over-powered" today. However, to argue that no change is needed because the gross numbers of attacks and kills used to be higher is the epitome of ignorance and will only serve to discredit any further contributions that you make to this discussion.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Foog: This is the sort of discussion i wanted! :)

I like your ideas, they're basically the same idea as mine in reverse yea... i also like that; and yea making it only affect special attacks would probably work


Also Ivan, for the record, people from warring clans are the ones who kept bringing up the FS overpoweredness to me; as a netgainer, the effectiveness of the FS is somewhat irrellevant, because once we're in war, our netting is over anyway...

I do like the idea of making the game more interesting for warmongers though, and thats why I think aboiut these things...

The thing is foogle its always going to be that way

a 60 member alliance hitting a 60 member alliance iwth an FS and 99% of the cases will win unless they kill 1 person in their FS and i doubt they'll reduce it to that

if people want challenging wars they need to pick targets thats a challenge, like laf vs sol last set

if I take SoF now and FS a 30-40 member alliance how long would that war last? not very long even if they reduce the turns to 50/50) does that mean that we should implement so you can only hit alliances bigger then you in the fs?

to rephrase a former statement. I agree with ivan in that the FS isn't really overpowered, just sometimes catches some clans unprepared.

Will also state that since the move to EE, not many warring clans have hit netting clans just for the sake of warring... Most have been over policy dispute. sure, some wars are baited when there are disputes, like retalling after 48 hours on a clan that tries to force everyone else to only retal them within 48 hrs. thats the point of politics... Challenge the stupid. defend the honorable.

Wars for the sake of it barely ever happen now.

See, that's a decent argument Ivan... and it doesn't require you to make a ridiculous claim that FSes "used to be more powerful". I still disagree with you though, because you're over simplifying.

For example, making turns 80/120 would mean that fewer countries die in the FS... but have no effect on kill runs later in the war. 50/50 is certainly going too far, but let's not pretend that any fewer turns than are available now would result in complete impotence.

Of course, I don't actually favour the turn reduction solution at all. I've outlined my solution and I think it's far more eloquent and has the potential of improving wars overall, not just making FSes smaller.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

elegant foog, elegant ;) hehe

Theres a lot more to count in then just saying 120 is more then 80 when you calculate an FS being stronger or weaker then they used to be

activity rates are lower
SMS bots

etc etc etc etc all makes FSes weaker

True enough... though my expression of it was rather eloquent, wasn't it?

=)

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

it was brilliant even :)