noble slagpit has stated that gov type rule changes are off the table, so let us not waste our efforts there
in february the one year anniversary of the super H arrives and that is natural point for discussion of gov types

what is currently on the table and under discussion is the future of spy ops that acquire goods.

in the past these have always been called harmful spy ops because of the netter based language of the site

when i am acquiring 100k bushels a turn i see nothing harmful about that. the netter thinks it is very harmful but from my perspective it is merely acquisitive.

i am glad to see that others besides myself are starting to bomb banks and raid foodstores. maybe soon we will see the rise of a whole group of techers who acquire their tech through espionage.

the formulae for acquisitive ops are, according to slagpit's post, open for discussion.

in my view, the formulae ought to allow the spier to acquire more value than they currently do but ought not needlessly burn food oil or currency.

i think that bomb banks, raid food stores, raid oil reserves, and commit espionage should all have the same base formula for yield in the case of a successful spy op.

that yield should be 0.6% in any case where the spier has at least 25% of the target's commodity. if the spier has less than 25% then the yield is diminished

so for example if a target has $1B and the spier has $250M then the yield is $6M and no money is removed from the game which is better than the current result for the spier, the target and the game as a whole.
there is another benefit for the game. if acquisitive spy ops become more common then stockers will have to take precaustions against loss. a player who currently just holds his $1.9B and sits in fortieth place will have to protect that cash by spending on the market which is good for the entire game.

as always thoughtful responses are welcome

how is stealing food not harmful?

ok I reread your post and I think I understand what you are saying. You mean harmful as in destroying rather than acquiring. I disagree with increasing the % though as spy ops are already powerful enough.

This tactic is no different than farming a country endlessly, and calling it "merely acquisitive".

Disagree completely. Leave it alone, the current system works just fine.

ok synoder
since you seem to be able to admit a mistake let me make it as clear as i possibly can

my proposal would actually decrease the amount the target country loses

the netter is less harmed under my proposal than he is under the current system
the spier receives more, the netter loses less, the game has more value left than under the current system

It still encourages a practice that has an overall negative effect on game play

i actually agree with gregg in the idea that bomb banks/raid food should not destroy money/food. after seeing JJ post his ingame news where the attacker was taking roughly 4 mil a hit at the start but destroying something like 18mil in the process is just stupid. he actually has a good idea with the percentage based off of what you have on hand like CDing a country when you have less troops nets you less troops killed and vice versa.

not that i think its nice to spend 100 turns stealing someones money/tech/food it is a dirty but great strategy (although i might be temtped to do it to a 0 spy country with lots of money/food/tech :P). it would force people to own spys or deal with the consequences. if i have to spend 100k turn expense to protect myself with spies so should you or else tough fluff for you when someone steals your fluff. lol

and JJ you are totally right in the fact that any good netter can make more then 6m a turn HOWEVER, if im a teched commie or farmer etc and i spend 50 turns stealing 6m a turn from someone PLUS what im making in food and/or military then im making FAR more then what a well built cahser only country makes.

yeah I understand that the netter would lose less on each hit but the guy doing the ops would get more and thus like now3p said it would encourage more ops. I normally run a good spal so I have never had an issue with it but I don't think netters would like having to keep a high spal to protect their stock. At some point netting becomes pointless if you are forced to have high D and high spal.

synoder its just the same as people who keep little to no defense on hand, you run the risk of losing stuff. the point of netting is to keep a balanced country that still make the most profit possible.

its not like you can steal that much anyways. after about 25 ops even a country with 10% of your spies you will start bouncing ops every other turn due to DR (which i think is retarded)

edit: edit fail lol

yeah but with ops you aren't protected from GDI like with regular hits. plus, you can't buy spies like other units so if someone has a really spal they can just keep raping you since it will take a while to build your spies up.

in express there is no networth protection for GDI. anyone any size can hit you even if youre GDI. the only thing express GDI does is prevents random countries from doing special attacks on you unless youve done 2 or more grabs on them.

oh I gotcha. I thought that if you were in GDI someone could only hit you twice with SS or PS. I was thinking that if you had low D, someone couldn't farm you.

nope. it basically allows you to single grab people without fear of being missled/ABed to death.

i suppose it also stop people from being able to do kill runs on countries who have never hit them.

Maybe GDI should work like that. Keep the current protection (even better, up it to allow you to do 2 attacks without your opponent being able to retal with special attacks) and add "you can only perform a total of 2 SS or PS unless a country has attacked you twice or done more than 2 unsuccessful harmful spy ops against you"

farmer could use stolen tech just as much as an indy. however stealing tech might not be as beneficial as stealing money and food later in the set when people have significant amount on hand. i know this morning i was spying countries that had lots of money on hand. one had 1.5bil. i was a dict with 365k spies i coulda took a ton of money from those people if that was my intention.

btw the guy who stole all your money for some reason dropped all his turrets and so i farmed him for about 2k acres earlier today just incase it was greggs country. youre welcome :P

idk i forgot to log back in and play my last few turns. it was only in the 5mil range i only played about 1500 turns and i was only building the country to kill gregg if the chance arose so it was a 50/50 indy/farm dict, not exactly a strong netter lol.

I actually did not read most of the other above posts, but I agree with lincoln, I mean,


Example the original bomb banks would do this to you, 400k gets stolen and another 1m gets destroyed, so total of 1.4m lost, why not just make that 800k stolen and none gets destroyed or 1m gets stolen and none gets destroyed, indeed making the damage lesser by 600k-400k on the netter.

Yeah I know its a wrong way in making money, but It helps both sides.

So you'd rather see the guy who just ran 30 ops on you walk away with 2x-3x as much money as he's going to currently get from a system that already encourages him to run those ops?

Somehow I don't see that turning out to be beneficial to game play.

Whatever works though - I know this is the "wild west" server after all.

Well yes, either way, as long as the total amount you will lose is decreased. If I get oped, Id rather lose 1m than 2m cash.

I'd rather lose less if someone tries to run ops on me too - although I wish them luck, I like spies - but I'm even less in favor of a system that gives them MORE for doing it. That is what the above proposal is.

with the number of ops per day slashed in half
and the market turned into the netter's warehouse
the oct10 changes have been a boon to netters
who given the overly powerful spy DR did not need help

because the oct10 changes were made to stop mass spy ops by "suiciders" many of which failed the boon to netters was not a necessary part of the changes

i think the rule should be not a limit on the number of spy ops but a limit on the number of failed spy ops
i propose twenty failed spy ops each 24 hour turn
that way the suiciders are stopped but netters are not given an enormous gift

if you are a farmer tho you can steal the money plus make the food so you would basically be doubling your income to 12mil per turn. Same with casher, say you are making 5mil per turn, cashing 7. It would still be better to steal 6mil and make 5 =11. thats better than cashing 7.

No, the reason more people don't run that strat is because if they were to try, they'd likely be logging into a dead country once a weekend. No one is going to tolerate 20-30 grabs, why on earth would they tolerate 20+ harmful ops?

Okay, so you cashed 9-10mil but got 1bil stolen/destroyed by someone with a few spies because you didn't have adequate D. That brings your effective cash per turn down to what, $7-8mil?

I would have stolen cash from you had it not invalidated my GDI protection. Hell, if you play the same strat again this round, I will steal cash from you and maybe do some other naughty things!

According to this thread http://forums.earthempires.com/...38&z=spal-from-allies , your SPAL would have been (150k+0.25*500)/16k = 17. That's not horrible, but not exactly a tight defense against people stealing your money when you're keeping billions on hand.

if slagpit decides to go aheas with this change

there might actually be less need for strong spies because the losses will be less per op
and with only 100 ops pere day the danger is not great

but i am ok with that because the spy ops will be done to acauire goods rather than just be destructive attacks