I'm a swirver, returning to newEarth early this year. I've been playing more regularly this summer and want to put an idea forward for discussion. I'm not certain that i'm for the idea, but i've enjoyed thinking about its possibilities and implications and i want the bonus points for posting.

Defensive Oil

by allocating oil to defense, you improve your basic defense in a manner identical with the bonus from weapons tech, the varous government bonuses or the defensive bonus from bonus points

if you have no oil, there is no bonus

the defensive oil bonus would apply when defending against SS, PS, AB, BR and GS attacks

only the player's units participating in the defense will use oil

to begin this discussion, consider the defensive oil bonus ranging from 0% to 40%

defensive oil % bonus = oil barrels allocated per unit * 1000

i.e. if using oil at the same rate as the attacker, 25 mil units / barrel = 0.04 barrels / mil unit, then the defensive oil bonus would be 40% = 0.04 * 1000

the player can choose a lower defensive oil bonus to stretch oil supplies when anticipating a sustained attack

the desired defensive oil bonus would be entered on the management page in a manner similar to the tax rate

i don't want to speculate on the work needed to code this idea beyond saying that “it feels doable to me”

as for the implications, i've thought of many, but that will be my next post

thanks for your attention

(and no, if there was a DancingBear in the past, it isn't me)

oil used in defending has been suggested before.

there has been 2 dancing bears and 1 dancing beer.

welcome back anyways.

Hmm. Interesting idea.

things defensive oil might do:

1) it should generally increase demand for oil:

there would be demand for defensive prepardness, which would be on going and last until the end of the set; and there would be additional consumption of oil by defenders on every hit they take;

2) by increasing the absolute demand for oil, it should help to invigorate the oiler strat on all servers;

3) i think oil will become relatively more strategic, command a higher price and be more subject to “market manipulation” attempts to gain (temporary) control of the public oil supply, especially during periods of hostilities;

3) it will make attacking more expensive by requiring greater numbers of mil units and weapons tech to overcome the defensive oil bonus; i hope this would tilt the game toward skillful, efficient grabbing; i'm not sure about what it will do for killing ...

4) it may increase the value of spies; it should make blind hitting more unpredictable, and the “raid oil reserves” spy op may become more tactically valuable

5) it would “complicate” many attacking and defending situations - think about walling

6) on servers with fa, a timely block of oil deliverd to an ally under sustained attack could be a save


-- thanks for the welcome back Marshal- is there anything available from the past for me to read concerning defensive oil?

possible, we've thought about stuff like this before -- the exact mechanism is always a tricky bit, and whether or not it's something active that you have to do, or something passive....

Maybe there's just a button and you can turn oil defense on or off.

On/Off button, along with a % effectiveness you can set. Spyops will have to show the on/off status with the % effectiveness.

@DancingBear While it does make attacking more expensive, it also does makes defending more expensive (if oil is used), though this is optional for the defender.

the way i was seeing it, selecting 0% defensive oil bonus is "OFF" with all other settings being "ON" to the specified degree

the point of making it a selectable percentage is about what you are defneding against

if you are anticipating being grabbed, the you set it high for maximum defense; and if someone chooses to make a few small failing attacks to burn off your oil, that will also push you into diminishing returns and make the grab not pay off

but if you are worried about being killed, then you set it lower, to make your oil last and/or force the killers to make more attacks burning off your oil ...

is it more expensive defending - YES! but how much more will depend only on the cost of oil for the defender, but the additional cost to the attacker, i think will be in extra mil units AND the extra oil to feed the extra mil units; that is why i think that the oil market will become more critical and attempting to control it will become more of a strategic objective

and, YES, the spy spyop would need to report the defensive oil settings like it does the defensive bonus from bonus points

again, thanks for everyone's attention
:)

Suppose if something like this happens, build a few rigs early on and keep them.

I'm not sure if it'd be good or not but it might revolutionize the oiler strategy.

more examples of gameplay wrinkles

generally, i don't think most players would run with high def-oil bonuses - maybe in the early game, i think it would be more like “available one-shot weapons tech”, to boost defense while carrying fewer mil units during the build out. But as the absolute size of your military grows, the cost of using the oil grows - a 10M turret defense implies 400k oil consumption on each defense -- that's big bucks to most strats.

this also creates a new act of war - the “oil bump” - in the above example, you BR with 1 jet and it costs the guy a fortune ... should this “pathology” be allowed - i think yes ... it will complicate many aspects of attacking and defending, and full def oil bonus will not be the default setting for many players ...

consider an oiler holding big oil - his nw and his future can be crushed for the cost of the turns - now that for sure would be an act of war - so perhaps the oiler only uses def-oil while actively walling, he'll certainly want to manage his market sales and market returns carefully

think of the arguments over the location of the line between an oil bump and a badly conceived ss

on the other hand, on a server like tourney, where play is solo and war is less common, many players might run with a maximum def-oil bonus all set, holding only enough oil to cover 1 or 2 hits


:)

i think it the def oil cost would be best calculated based on the offense sent by the opponent. so def oil maximum cost is

minimum (total modified defense, opponent offense sent*weap sci*attack bonuses etc)

being able to burn up all someone's defensive oil with 1 unit attacks would be silly

You can't do 1 unit attacks most of the time anyway because of the "Your army will be slaughtered" rule.

And formula for the cap on def military loss can readily be borrowed for this - defender only lose so much when attacker sends a relatively small force to lemming. In the oil-defense scenario, only the corresponding defense force should cost oil.

Heck, to make it really simple, just do this:
def-oil cost = def military loss * SOME_PERCENTAGE

thanks for the input and corrections -

it's true about the slaughter cutoff - and would perhaps only add a variation of lemminging (what is the proper verb form for "to lemming"?)

i suppose i was attempting to illustrate that def-oil could be a double edged-sword for the defenders using it and might open new tactics for aggression - my intuition is that double edged swords are generally preferable

and i've been away so long that my memories are jumbled, i mentioned earlier about using fa to send oil under a def-oil scenario, and at least on the team server, you can't send oil ... maybe this is another wrinkle to consider as well ...

overall, i would expect the def-oil proposal to reinvigorate the oiler strat and tilt the game toward more skillful grabbing; i don't have the experience to predict its impact on war scenarios.

maybe someone with deeper experience can speculate about war implications?

Other than the "oil demand is going to go up a lot", and "this can make oiler an actual playable strat", there isn't really much I can say about it.

IMO, for landgrabbing, the change will:

1a. Make little difference to bottomfeeding cost - the smaller defenders get hit into deep DR daily and are unlikely to have the resources to buy extra oil. Many wouldn't even know how to utilize this defense bonus.

1b. Reduce bottomfeeding risk - oil contributes very little to networth, thus holding a lot of it and turn the defensive oil bonus on will vast improve the bottomfeeder's defensive capacity without hurting the range of target selection.

2. Benefit landtrading - both parties can simply turn off oil defense while they trade, turn it back on after hits are done to give extra defense for warding off top/mid-feeders.

3a. Increase topfeeding cost - higher ranked countries (the one with more acres), value their land very highly, because each hit cost at least hundreds of millions of cash as well as close to a day worth of turns to gain back those acres (through retal or hitting someone else). These high-NW targets don't get hit often, have great production, and are hence expected to leave oil defense dialed up to max at all times.

3b. Possible reduced acre loss from being retaled after topfeeding - Topfeeders, expecting to be retaled, will also have their defense bonus from oil turned on, making it more difficult and expensive to NW-match and retal them for good acres.

For war, this will make KRs more difficult, especially on hitting the winning side - as it will have more resources for buying/stocking the oil.

My analysis of Grady's analysis is that I cannot find anything wrong with his logic. :P

ie, it would only serve to polarize the situation; good points Grady

grady's logic seems sound to me as well -thanks Grady

point 1b - potentially making bottom feeding less risky - is one consequence i missed entirely and seems a move in the wrong direction to me -- and you are right in 1a when you point out that those being truely bottom fed probably won't pick up on how def-oil might work for them.

i also agree on 3a and 3b, it drives up the difficulty and cost of hunting elephants, but i think it also drives up the cost of being an elephant ... i'm not sure that would be a bad move on all the servers ...

But generally, the more experienced players would adapt to the change faster and things might get even more punishing for the less experienced. Since it complicates combat, which is already the most complicated part of the game, those with more game resources and a better understanding of combat will use it to extend their advantage - defensive oil of itself does not support the underdog, rather it would probably support those players who are already dominant and ready to incorporate it.

again, thanks for your attention!

:)

nerf the bonus?

it occured to me that def-oil seems to make sense for improving the oil market, thus making an oiler strat more viable. But by causing a "big" shift in combat dynamics, it will cause some brand new imbalances that will probably favor the few.

lowering the maximum def oil bonus would limit its impact on combat, but might still have a beneficial impact on the oil market

as a player, i'd pay attention to the bonus even if the maximum was as low as 10%. And if we stick to the proposed defensive consumption rate, a 10% bonus implies consuming oil at 1 oil barrel per 100 defending units -- which seems cheap enough to use at 1/4 the raw rate of the attacker.

So if attackers and defenders were of similar size, it would increase overall consumption by roughly 25%, so somewhat less than that since attackers are usually bigger.

but if most players adopted a 10% def-oil bonus, and carried enough oil to take a few hits, then the demand for "prepardness" oil would surely increase several factors over actual defensive consumption

this would also be an easier path of introduction, that is, building the code and play testing it with a small maximum bonus will be easier on the players than trying it first as a big bonus - it can always be increased later if the player community asks for it (and,if needed for balance, the maximum def-oil bonus could vary by server)

Didnt go through everything so I'm not sure if anyone mentioned anything about what happens if you are attacked and you run out of defensive oil?

when you have zero oil, you get zero bonus - and i was assuming that if you had some oil, but not enough to support the full bonus, all your oil would get used and you would get the pro-rated bonus on that hit; i.e you needed 10000 oil to support your full bonus, but only have 2500 oil on hand, then the 2500 gets used and you get 25% of the full bonus on that hit

I'm not entirely sure what the goal here was... I see several potential goals:

1. Increase defensive capability
2. Add more strategy to defense
3. Improve the oil market / oiler strategy
4. Add more strategy to offense (to overcome #2)

#3 can obviously be done in many ways. #1 could be accomplished as well with slight formula tweaks.

That leaves #2 and #4 -- strategy. There is some advantage to adding more options (levers to pull) and new ways to position/configure your country. The added complexity will benefit more involved/committed players and make it easier to exploit casuals. The added complexity also has some implications for the developers (more stuff to code and check with each iteration).

I tend to favor greater simplicity, myself. To me, that would attract MORE players which is the ultimate form of increased strategy/complexity (political dynamics, target selection, alliance configuration).

For example, I'd rather see oil removed entirely (and ghost acres too, btw) and development effort focused on improving alliance management capabilities, forum and in-game communication features, etc. Keep the actual gameplay simple for new players and push the sophistication/complexity up the chain to alliance leaders, socialites, etc.

my goal(s) for defensive oil didn't include making the game more popular ... but your post did get me thinking and perhaps i'll start a new thread along those lines ...

as for defensive oil, from my view, that was about adding a kind of symmetry to the game that would, as you say, increase the levers and knobs available for players while also shifting the oil market and such ... my intuition says that would make a better game, but its just a feeling ...

as a player, i prefer games that require knowledge, experience, creativity and discipline on the part of the individual - an easily mastered game holds no interest for me, regardless of its social aspects.

yet the game must not require a substantial part of my life to be played at a competitive level

and these are precisely the characteristics that brought me back to earth

(all that aside - i also vote for dumping ghost acres)

ok