The sniper problem

[Neimenljivi]

So we got rid of feeding problems, now it's time we stop cheating in the gut and stop multying snipers

Basically what we don't want (now that it's so easy to catch up) is people having an account only to build one stat high to be able to easily mass/sab others. We don't want to stop wars, but stopping accounts that were created solely to build one stat and destroy (and those accounts are multies in most cases) is necessary.

So stats have to be linked somehow. Basically the idea is to have accounts which have similar ranks and, if one stat is significantly bigger, reduce it's effectiveness. All ranked stats (except GnR) are relevant. Each of the other 5 stats, if balanced, present 20% of your galactic rankings.

So, GnR not being counted in equation, each of the other 5 ranked stats would mean 20% of your rank if they're all balanced. Basically the efficiency would be: efficiency=(5*(top ranked stat))/(sum of all ranked stats except GnR)
That way if you have all #1 stats, or all #10 stats or sum of stats being a 5x multiplier of top ranked stat (meaning stats are perfectly balanced), the top ranked stat will have 100% efficiency. That way if someone had #1 covert, #25 in all other stats, their covert efficiency would be 5% (those accounts are usually sniper accounts), however someone which has balanced stats (like active players do), won't really be affected. If there are multiple stats with the same top rank (say #2 in covert and #2 in defence), both of them are calculated with the efficiency.

Thoughts, suggestions to improve..?

~Jack

[Tetrismonkey]

Sniping is a legitimate way to war. Sure its annoying as **Filtered** to.deal with, but none the less its how some play the game. Why are you going to.force people to.play a specific way?

[Sol]

Tetris that's like saying; Well hey, killing, raping, murdering, stealing etc are all ways to play your life. Why should they be punished?
Because, at the base level, they're are unfair.

Neim, my suggestion would be to make it a bit more realistic...instead of depreciating stats, allow other parts to take damage. I.e if you attack someone, and they have no defence, you wouldn't just walk away leaving all the attack weapons, units, etc, untouched. You would want to cripple them as much as possible. So maybe make the defending players attack units, defend instead (since the attackers aren't as well equipped for defending and haven't been trained bla bla bla, they suffer greater damage, or they aren't as effective, I would go for the first, take more damage/losses).

[Neimenljivi]

Tetris the problem is with people creating multi accounts and, because it's so easy to catch up, they sit there for 10 days, spend all ATs farming for one stat, usually to get covert high, then they use the covert to sab everyone. Then they untrain and put spies elsewhere where they can't be touched.
Even if they didn't do that they'd still be able to raid back everything they lose with ~1,5k ATs, while you'd lose the same amount of ATs by ACing a multi account.

I also agree with what Sol said.
About your suggestion, Sol, it wouldn't work because they have no other stats and what they would lose is minimal and can be recovered with very few ATs, the way Q is set, and, since they are multi accounts in most, they wouldn't really feel any loss.

~Jack

[Juliette]

If you can provide a 'proper' way (i.e. some incentive to play a certain way) to play without infringing too much upon user freedom to play however they want, you will be golden.

[Neimenljivi]

Well this won't change anything for normal users. First off the active users won't feel a difference because active users aren't farmed really, apart from an odd hit here and there, whereas it'll be the same to farm inactive users, even if the efficiency might decrease the potential of strike because differences between inactive users' def and active users strike is huge.

Now if people want to create multies to harm others, like it's very very common now (there are about 3 or 4 such accounts right now that no one can stop because they only build one stat and can easily mass/sab a #1 account), they will have to build all stats to actually sab someone or mass someone. That way it will be much harder for sniping multi accounts to catch up and to mass/sab active players.

Thus far about 15 accounts have been affected by these multies. There's nothing that can be done about them right now. This would change it, making having multi accounts a lot more useless and force accounts, even if they just wish to play to mass, to actually play and build something.
For real, active players, it wouldn't change a thing so the freedom to play however they want is still there

~Jack

[Sol]

About your suggestion, Sol, it wouldn't work because they have no other stats and what they would lose is minimal and can be recovered with very few ATs, the way Q is set, and, since they are multi accounts in most, they wouldn't really feel any loss.

If they're sniping they have at least one stat, and just like main and ascended I take it there is a super version which is untrainable, so there is something to kill (unless we're talking about sabbing, in which case maybe something else to think about...). You could make it kill as fast as you want though, when a def is down you kill at double the % you normally would and the threshold is much greater (i.e the cut off when it jumps from say x units to 0, can be much greater), plus throw on faster killing of atk weps, then boom. It's fairly highly customizable really.

[Neimenljivi]

The problem is that new accounts can catch up too fast due to fast growth of farms. People therefore create multi accounts to mass or sab with. Right now to mass a top defence approx 3-4k ATs are needed. ~500 of these are for massing, half of them for weps and half for techs.
Inactive accounts generate these ATs in 8 days (480 ATs per day) by doing nothing. In 8 days farms will have grown so much that, albeit defences constantly being increased, they will need same or even less ATs.
If you sab their attack weapons away and, if there's a way to kill their strike units, kill their strike units, they will get everything back with ~500 ATs next time around. That's 1 day of doing nothing.

Besides amount of units compared to amount of naq is absurd, naq is much more valuable. To get top army right now an inactive account has to spend about 4k ATs. However, a strike that would be able to mass top defs would require ~50k strike supers. They can raid these 50k supers back with 30 ATs, as you currently get about ~25k UUs per 15 ATs.

So a way to kill their strike wouldn't help at all.

Bigger problem is sabbing. It takes about 2-3k ATs right now to build top covert from scratch and have enough units to be able to sab anyone, even if they have def con on. They can untrain the units, put them into non killable units, or just let them be ACd, in 10 days they will have used 30-40% less ATs to get the same amount of units anyway.
Because they're multi accounts in most cases, they won't really care, while active accounts lose ATs on them.

~Jack

[Ned Stark]

i totally disagree i don't believe you should stop sniping as it is a form of guerrilla war fare if they have one account this is fair...... but if their illegal multies i agree they should be stopped

[Neimenljivi]

Well accounts are being created for the sole reason to snipe big accounts. That's wrong and that has to be stopped.

~Jack

[Tetrismonkey]

Well accounts are being created for the sole reason to snipe big accounts. That's wrong and that has to be stopped.

~Jack

Then fix the root of the problem. Stop the multis.

[Juliette]

Well accounts are being created for the sole reason to snipe big accounts. That's wrong and that has to be stopped.

~Jack

Then fix the root of the problem. Stop the multis.

Heh, exactly.

[JasonJay]

I think we should state that this is Quantum, and that sniping allows a completely new account to cause considerable damage to even top accounts. These new accounts can be players that are legitimate people and not mulit's.


And it is not a tactic in Quantum, maybe in main

[Mikgamer]

Well accounts are being created for the sole reason to snipe big accounts. That's wrong and that has to be stopped.

~Jack

Then fix the root of the problem. Stop the multis.

Non-multi's used to like to do this back when I played too just for the lulz though lol.

[Neimenljivi]

Tetris if they use proxies, which they do, there is no way to prove with absolute certainty that they are multies.
I could give names of several multies, which I won't to anyone but admin, that exist and I could bet my life on the fact they are multies. However getting to 100% sure and providing proofs that can't be denied is a lot harder and after their multies are banned, all they need to do is set up new multies, learn from last time, and bingo.

Mikgamer - I know. Back then these accounts had to be active throughout the era to be able to inflict any damage to top accounts. Now these accounts only have to spend an hour or two farming/raiding after being inactive for any given time, bam they can wreak havoc throughout the top accounts. I have no objection to it if they work as hard as the top accounts work to get there, but seriously, an hours work compared to 10s of hours being spent farming shouldn't be equal.

JasonJay - you are right, some players are legitimate people. However there is an easy way to determine with high certainty whether or not an account is multi of someone or a real account. I think you are talking here about a mutual friend who messaged me and whom I've already told he is not the cause of this discussion

I'd also like to say that while some accounts are not multies in the term of multiple accounts owned by the same person, some accounts are created solely on request of their friend (supposedly) and were asked to target specific players. This is really no different than feeding, except that it doesn't "give" resources to a certain player but "takes away" resources from all/most other accounts.

As I said, this update wouldn't change much for active players, in fact if someone will want to mass and destroy all it will do is force them to be active and have something of worth for other people to destroy back. Do dwell on that a bit.

If you feel this update is wrong, tell why exactly and what would have to be done to have it right. We all agree, thus far, such accounts being created is wrong and something should be done against it. If you feel efficiency of top stats (bare in mind, top stat or, if there are more stats with the same top rank, top stats only, NOT all stats - if you have #1 covert and #5 MS only your covert when sabbing would be affected, MS wouldn't be affected, nor would defence or AC) is the wrong way to go, give solid reasons as to why it's wrong.

~Jack