That is to say, The Game Allows you to deal horroundous amounts of damage without having anything destroyable yourself. A large damage output without a required Damage Imput. This means that having Statistics is essentially and tactically a burden and that the game naturaly favours those with nothing to lose.
This Solo Masser class goes against any notion of skill or teamwork as being an individual with no connections, is able to level entire alliances without any fear of retailation and a near limitless amount of Attacks to do so with.
The Scenario is as Follows:
- 1 tril or so Trainable Strike
- 30k spies
- 0 defense
This account can Essentially Build Strike Weapons, Aquire Turns and reduce an entire alliance to rubble before Selling and banking the Weapons. Alliance wakes up and realises that they can't do any damage in return. They *Literally* have to be online the second he masses in order to try and sab it away which is highly improbable. They can Try and Sit on his account which requires an enourmous amount of effort and can be counted by simple safe brokering straight to his/her bank avoiding any need to turn bank. With that brokered Naq, they Can simply rebuild weapons, go massing sell off, rinse and repeat over and over. Sure there is some naq loss in the process of selling the weapons but realistically it is negliable and can be farmed back with only a few weapons built up.
Personally I did not bring up the issue and I am aware others have brought it up before me or others still who don't agree with it at all and enjoy this style of play. I merely offered my services in constructing a post during the admin meeting to:
- Stir up debate and conversation about this style of play and the core mechanics of the game which allow it; both for and against the zero stat strikers so that we can come to some sort of understanding or conclusion.
- Offer up All of the Viewpoints I heard during the Admin Meet instead of having my own Agenda and neglecting to mention the other potential options or dismissing them.
- Having everything written down so its not forgotten about in the hope of actually getting a responce or this issue settled either one way or the other or a comprimise somewhere inbetween
There where Eight or so different solutions offered by various parties and discussed to some extent or another during the meet and are as follows:
1) Unarmed Strike Supers are Killable
Many People Have a massive reserve of Strike Supers and are able to build up a Strike to whatever size they require, mass and sell off in the knowledge that their supers are safe. The concept of Unarmed Soldiers being invincible does not sit well and encourages people to not have a permenant Strike Stat which could be sabbed away.
By Making Unarmoured Strike Supers Killable, it Encourages people to Keep Weapons Built to avoid it, makes SAB a more flexible and useful ability and makes it a risk to have these instant 2 min noodle tril+ Stikes that mass and sell out without retailation, meaning you train only what you need in order to remain safe.
How Unarmoured Strike Supers can Be killed is up for debate, either part of Assassinations or sabs or merely Strike going through the defences (either beating or a 0 one) and killing the unarmoured Strike Supers waiting behind the failing def supers.
2) Strike Supers are Killable if Undefended
This Idea Built up upon the previous one and touches another Core Game issue.
Essentially Defences are seen as a *Burden* instead as what the name implies, A defence. This is because people can keep Strike Supers unarmoured and few spies trained when not required so as to have no fear of losing a defence - as they simply won't lose anything else.
However what this suggestion implies is that if someone has a zero defence (3 dam returned), then when it is hit, there is no Defences protecting the Barracks and the Invaders are Free to go about and slay the defenceless supers in their sleep. Whether this is just Unarmed ones or Armed ones is still up for debate. What it does try to do is give *relivence* and *purpose* to keeping a Defence up at all times as well as maintaining a safe amount of supers.
3) Stike vs Defence Ratio Change
This deals with the simple Fact that massing has become so easy that any Joe Bloke from down the road can down a large defence without needing to co-ordinate with a full team with a much inferior strike, making defence again a Liability and not a positive. This suggestion is broad and can range from:
- Improving the min ratio 1/5 - 1/4 or 1/3 or 1/2 - whatever works best.
- Requiring 50% or 100% to be able to deal damage to a defence. Anything less will still kill supers but won't destroy the defence. This means literally having to wear down defences before they're ripe for destroying making defences a little more formidable.
- Improving the Kill Ratio as it is Very Bloody work trying to destroy or Assault a Fortress.
4) Weapon Selling Changes
The Buy, Mass, Sell has become so common because it is so useful and easy with very little Drawbacks. You lose only a fraction of the price in selling which is more then made up for the fact you just massed the hell out of someone costing him everything and sold off yourself making anything you made a net gain. Any little offset and you can train up just a few weapons and do a hit or two of farming.
What this suggests is to make the selling price more steep so the loss of naq is greater. This makes constant buying/selling taxxing and burning a hole in the pocket as it should be, not a simple thing that's a given choice 10/10 times. This should make people think twice about selling weapons or taking the risk and leaving them there in the hope they don't get destroyed.
5) Min Def/Strike Ratio
Most Massers have very little losable themselves and this gives them the courage to hit a lot of people they normally wouldn't as they are in the firm knowledge that they can cause damage without being required to take any. That is people will have built things to damage while having nothing to lose themselves.
This unique Idea is to thinly Link Strike to be somewhat dependant on Defences in a high (or is that low) ratio such as 1:7 or 1:10 (Defence: Strike or whatever numbers work). This is an attempt to try and force people with large strikes to maintain a defence and therefore have something destroyable themselves.
This could be impliment either like Mercs where you cannot purchase without having a certain ratio or it could work by making anything beyond that ratio negliable. I.E Even with a larger strike then the ratio says, I will only do the damage allowed by the Ratio, all excess being wasted.
6) Improve Sab %
Not much Really needs to be said about this one. Sabbing has always been the most unloved attack in regards to its ability to damage and by increasing its % somewhat, makes it a more viable tactic by throwing your spies away to hit someone's strike. Quick solution that doesn't affect the rest of the gameplay by much at all, merely making another attack seem more attractive then it is at the moment.
7) Improve Sab amounts
This one is linked to the one above. Noxed out/critted or just spied too much, having to wait turn after turn to be able to sab someone where each turn gives them another 30mins to repair, throw up a defence or just sell out and bank or PPT. So not only is Sab not as efficient as it could be, it is also hard to pull off quickly. This again is a simple solution which doesn't affect the rest and allows for a larger Sab cap meaning you can get more in and do more damage making it a more viable solution.
8)Pairing
The concept of pairing Mercs to Supers was transferred to Supers to Strike weapons. However the issue came up of buying as a pair and then just simply selling. The suggestion that followed was they are bought as a pair and you cannot part them with the weapon. That is to say either Supers automatically have an inbuilt weapon so you can't sell it or somehow coding it so that you can't sell the weapons until said super is dead.
9) No Changes
The game has a large variety of players on a bell curve and larger players can hit smaller players with very little fear of retailiation. By having Strike almost untouchable it evens things up and allows even small players to in turn strike fear into larger players by actually having the capacity to hit and hurt them back. This is a natural feature of the game which keeps the balance of power and stops larger players from being untouchable.
Those are the arguments for and against from the top of my head although I apologise if I missed any. However personally the things I will openly state as my opinion to watch out for is as follows:
- Giving Defence a Meaning and more of a purpose as for the most part it is a liability and a huge risk investment just to stop farming. Considering how easy it is to build a bigger strike, it even limits that.
- Making Sab a more effective Tactic as at the moment it is under powered. Variety is the spice of life and by having different options of similiar tactical value makes the game more interesting.
- Making both Supers and Mercs and Troopers having equal individual purposes. If Supers were killable then standard troopers would be a safer option and so would have more purpose and actually be a viable alternative to supers which are a given. It doesn't have to be a supers killable case, just any case which makes choice important instead of a given. Things need to have a purpose and not just be a jumping step for beginners, they need to retain purpose somehow and not become obsolete.
- Limiting What the Solo player can do without making Larger players untouchable. The important thing is striking a balance as you don't want things to swing the complete opposite way.
- Ensuring that all play styles can still function including the Solo to some degree. This is about balancing playstyles and having many alternatives as at the moment this particular one is absolute king.
Now the Floors open for discussion.
Remember this isn't for Ragging ideas or putting things down just because you don't like the way it'll change things. If you have something negative to say, provide reasons and justifications why. Critisism in itself is usless and does nothing for the community.
Constructive Critisism however is very useful so please if you see a fault or flaw in your eyes, provide alternatives, clarifications, tweaks and other suggestions if you do have something to say. The ideas above are just starting grounds. They have not been discussed to death and this is not their final state. This is just throwing ideas on the field so we can develop some sort of conclusion to this idea.
