Turning a single planet into a dual

[Sarevok]

I think that a flood of duals would be less of a problem, if they couldn't be invulnerable all the time.

Currently, whilst planets degrade, they can be permanently protected(merlins), so there is no risk of losing those which you have. If this was not the case, I think there would be less of a chance of flooding, and duals that do exist would be taken more often, resulting in their degradation to singles.

My thought would be something along the lines of, when you spy someone, you have some chance, with each planet, of seeing it, even merlined. Say it is 5% per planet. Then, perhaps from the log that showed a merlined planet, you can engage the planet, as you now know which dimension it currently exists in, for a period of say an hour. To compensate for the planets now being target-able, adjust the engage threshold for merlined planet seen in spy logs, from a minimum 15% planet defenses, to 25%. That way merlins still maintain a fair amount of power, but they don't provide impenetrable protection.

I imagine I'll get alot of objection from those with stats in the quadrillions, but didn't Jason say upon their introduction, that they weren't meant to be permanent?

The concept is that planets are powerful, but are also hard and expensive to keep. The more time that goes on, the better the planets able to be taken will get. But the better they are, the more people will want to take them from you so do not expect to hold onto planets forever!

And again here

Remember, planets are not meant to be kept forever.

[Neimenljivi]

Sarevok - it takes a lot of resources to protect them, to keep them on merlin all the time. Besides, seeing how you can easily buy a dual from BM with $, those who can afford to have them merlined all the time, usually already bought as many duals as possible.

Almost every active player has a couple of duals already, so it's not like they are as valuable as they used to be. This would, like Lu Bu said, help those who have decent planets and want to turn them in duals. But, as previously mentioned, it shouldn't be too cheap to do it.

~N

[Sarevok]

I know they are expensive to keep. From what I can work out, you'd need to spend $10/week on merlins to hide 10 duals. At your naq->$ rate, that would be ~250T/week people would have to sell to protect them.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to convert single planets to duals. Currently I have none, so why not.

My problem is that planets themselves weren't initially designed to be kept forever, as mentioned in the quotes I put. I think having duals so common place takes away from the game a little more. Actual loss-able stats are becoming so small that to build an attack or defence without planets is a bad idea. You have people going around with 5m attack supers and 5m mercs, hitting with 14T strike power, where only 3T comes from actual units. It means when people get massed, they can rebuild in minutes.

If this idea goes through, I'll probably be happy, but I feel it'll increase the divide between new and old. We had NewGrounds designed to allow new players to catch up ascending and size wise faster than spending the better part of a year ascending. Allowing duals to be constructed will mean established account will have 10, and at 60 merlins/planet to build a dual, and only getting 18/week from the market, will take 30 weeks or 7 months, and we're back to square one with new accounts being the better part of a year behind.

[Neimenljivi]

I disagree it would put a bigger gap between the old and the new. The old usually have at least a couple planets they want to keep merlined and protected. Even having 3 planets you constantly want to have protected would mean 21 merlins spent per week or more than the number of merlins you can get per week without buying with $. They therefore don't have hundreds of merlins to spend as soon as the feature would be added. Those that do have hundreds of merlins in most cases don't have any good planets (so it would most likely be cheaper for them to buy a dual off the forums market) or are $ players and they already have as many duals as possible.

This would just give the option to get closer to those players, but at a cost. And yes it should take time.
If you are worried that the old players have so many merlins stocked, you could still limit the single into a dual conversion to, say, once per month. That way everyone would take the same amount of time to reach the desired number of duals. It would also limit or slow down an increase of duals (game-wise), even though there are a lot of duals out there already so it's not like it would flood the game.

But, like I said, those players who have good planets and can afford to keep them merlined all the time already have a lot of duals so almost nothing would change for them. The new accounts who don't have any planets will still be able to also steal a dual or buy a dual so they could still have 10 duals in less than 7 months. If anything it would help the new players who have invested a bit into single planets before realizing duals are the way to go. Besides, you can get anything in game that's available to buy with $ via market, the only thing that you can't get are duals/tripples (ok, yes, you have the option to create a planet but the possibility to get a dual is very, very slim-to-none). With this, non-$ players would be able to get a dual but still at a high enough cost so that it wouldn't suddenly be free.
If they want to protect their duals all the time, they will likely have to spend some money on merlins (depending on how many merlins they have and how many duals they wish to have) so it will benefit the game as well. Those that don't want to spend to buy merlins also don't have to. So it's a win/win for everyone.

~N

[Sarevok]

But you don’t deny this adds a delay again before accounts are competitive? Like I said, before, ascension would take 34+ weeks to get to Unknown, now it is doable as fast as you can ascend on NewGrounds. So from 8 months to as short as 1. Now if all the active players have 10 dual planets, and it costs 60 merlins to create one, once a new account ascends from NewGrounds, they need to save 540 merlins, as well as acquire the planets to merge/upgrade. At 3x6 merlins/week, that’s 30 weeks. So we are back at 7 months before they’d be competitive. This is where I am talking about the gap being. I understand that it would take for people like myself the same amount of time, which I think is what you are getting at, but eventually it will be status quo, just as having an UnKnown ascended account is. And when a new player signs up, and ascends from NewGrouns, they are going to find they need to spend 7 months, spending all market turns on merlins, to be competitive. Now, I assume you’re thinking “We all had to put effort in, so why shouldn’t they?” but my point is, they can’t put it more effort to catch up faster. Just like it didn’t matter how much time you put into ascending, there was a minimum two week wait before ascending again. Doing this will mean it doesn’t matter how much time they put in to catch up, it will STILL take a minimum of 7 months.
Also, I don’t think your calculation is correct. If you PPT for 4 days of the week (say Monday-Thursday, and you play Friday-Sunday) as I imagine the majority of people with large numbers of duals do, you only need 30 days of merlins. If you use your last 4 MTs for merlins, that leaves you with 18 merlins to buy. And that only costs $10 from the black market. At your selling rate, that is about 250T.

With what you said about one per month. That just means the delay, in a year’s time, will be pushed out to 10 months, instead of 7, and most/all active accounts will have their planets built.

New accounts stealing a dual? Good luck. I imagine any dual that isn’t permanently merlined, would have minimum 500k defences. They need almost 400k fleets to consider doing damage to the planet, which costs almost 800T in hanger costs alone. Then they have to consider retribution and reclamation from the account they took the planet from when that account realises.

[Neimenljivi]

How can new players get duals now? They can either steal them, buy them off of forums black market (about 100-200T per dual), or they can buy them from ingame $ market. Will any of these options change? Nope, they won't. They will still be able to get duals via this way if they want to.
What this feature would do is add a way to get a dual. Why would this mean a longer delay before catching active players? I don't see why it would. Active players either have good planets, usually duals already. So it wouldn't change much for those, would it? If they have very good planets that they want to turn into a dual, they will still want to have those planets merlined all the time, so it's not like they've been stacking on merlin all this time. If they don't have good planets, why would they change a single planet into a dual when it's cheaper to buy a dual off of forums market and build it up, the same way as you would otherwise have to build up that single + 2nd 'bought' stat planet?

For example, if I had 10 single income planets with 500b income on each of them, why would I use hard-earned merlins to turn them into duals? Yes, I would risk and not merlin them before because they are worthless as a single planet, but 50 merlins are harder to come-by than 100T it would take to buy a tiny dual and build it up. If I, on the other hand, had 10 single income planets with 5T income on each of them, don't you think I'd already have them merlined all the time and thus sacrificing 50 merlins wouldn't be as easy or cheap?

I would understand your point of it meaning a gap for new players to catch up if it meant that this was the only way to get a dual, but it wouldn't be the only way to get a dual. And most active, big accounts that new players want to catch up already have 10 duals so nothing would change for these accounts. I really fail to see your hesitation. If anything, this update would help those that have been here for about half a year, got a firm grasp of how the game works, have a couple decent planets that would benefit from being upgraded into a dual, etc. It wouldn't change a thing for top accounts.

~N

[Sarevok]

Why would this mean a longer delay before catching active players? I don't see why it would.

Ok, let us assume this is implemented at the start of June. Let us also assume that most active players have 0 merlins, otherwise, they are probably using what they have to protect planets. So, starting from June, accounts like yours and mine, can acquire 18 merlins/week. To convert 9 planets (since you’d need 11 to convert the last to a dual, leaving you with 10) comes to a merlin cost of 9x60 = 540. 540/18 = 30weeks or ~7months. That takes us to the start of January next year. Let’s say someone signs up end of January to the NewGrounds server. They are able to pour heaps of time into that server, and ascend to main in just 1 month. Once they get here, they discover almost every active account on this server has planets with two attributes. They take/create a planet, and discover theirs only has 1 attribute. They investigate, and discover they can create “dual planets” with two stats. They figure to be competitive they’ll need most/all of their planets to be dual planets also. From before, that will take them 7 months to achieve.

Now let’s consider the current environment. There are accounts with 9-10 duals, but the more common account will have 10 single stat planets. For this new account, they could create 2 planets/week, or wait 30 days, and take 10 planets in 10 days.

This is the delay I am speaking of. The difference between the average account having 10 single stat planets, which would take 1-1.5 months, and the average having 9 dual planets, taking 7 months. This is not a time period that can be reduced with hard work, but a hard and fast limit. The same as 23 ascensions used to take 2-4 months minimum, before NewGrounds; getting 10 duals will take 7 months minimum.

I would understand your point of it meaning a gap for new players to catch up if it meant that this was the only way to get a dual, but it wouldn't be the only way to get a dual.

From what I've seen, there has been like 1 dual for sale for over a month, hardly the fastest way. Even using the black market, it will still take them 5 months, as you can only buy/take 2/month. And this is already available, so why add another method? Yes, the proposed method is free, at least in terms of cash investment, but if duals are the new standard, it would be a compulsory buy either way, same as ascending 20-23 times is compulsory.

[Neimenljivi]

The amount of duals for sale decreased greatly when duals started losing attributes due to being conquered too many times as that lead to less duals. Likewise with an increased flow of duals into the game, they will become easier to come-by. With a bigger availability comes a bigger offer on the market. So you have to take that into account as well.
Alternatively you could still say it costs 100T to build a 2nd slot on the planet or whatever. This would increase the chance of newer players catching up with the top accounts. It would change little to none for everyone else. Duals would become slightly less valuable, perhaps (so if you think I am suggesting this for my own reasons, you might want to check how I play the game and how many duals I have and you'll see it's not like that)

~N

[Sarevok]

Neimenljivi, I'm not accusing you of anything. Just figured you didn't have any/many duals either, so that was two accounts I could use as examples.

Like I said, I don't have a problem with the concept. The problems I see with it are:
1) It forcing a delay if a resource as limited as merlins are used for the creation/conversion. Otherwise, I don't think it's as much of a problem, as new account would be able to put extra effort in to catch up.
2) Further reducing the need for ACTUAL stats. Like I said, we've moved so far from units and weapons giving us stats, to utilizing motherships/planets/ascended blessings to do the majority of the heavy lifting. But I guess that has less to do with this topic, and more a general game mechanic I have an issue with.