StarGateWars Forums

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:19 pm**

I would applaud if The Oneil was a current active player (main and ascended) taking part in the debate. As it stands, he's one of those operating from a flawed POV and while his ascended account is still active, I don't believe he has come to grips with the last few changes in ascended.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:59 pm**

The O-Neill wrote:So many things to say, not enough time. So here's a 'little' take on it.

There are some misconceptions about ascended server that need to be cleared up. The first is the complete lack of understanding of the nature of logarithmic (or something resembling that...so lack of a better word) caps and increasing costs per level. But I'll get to that a little later. Anyone that says 'you can't catch up', is telling you they don't understand ascension. It's entirely made TO catch up.

1. You can become undescendable from the get go. It's all about your max life force. Keep it low enough relative to others, you are not descendable....PERIOD (but it also greatly retards your ability to descend). So you give up being undescendable, IF you decide you want to descend (for the most part). You can actually have your cake and eat it too a little bit, but again, only if you are within 5x. Thus it's up to you, and if you 'hit buttons', then sorry, you screwed up. Forum even tells you to wait a while and see which things to hit. So you were warned. A smarter player would hedge things a bit to give them protection like say 24 hours protection from descension, while at the same time having the ability to descend a wide swath of people.

Size has NOTHING to do with being undescendable. A person could literally do it on the 1st day without ending his ascension ppt. Also size doesn't mean you are an uber descender. Max energy level...think about it. I figured it out 1st day descending was announced with the stats it was going to use to determine it. Undoubtedly many more did as well. (and you can't descend people that are outside the cap as well)

If you screwed up, it depends how far along did you? There is a point where you can raise it and keep under it, but again, with the changes, that target moved. If you go over by a lot, it could take months, years, or never. You could also be at the point where you were catching up, but it moved, and now have to 'catch' up again. I saw this coming, but still went ahead with some increases a couple of years ago, but not too far given that I knew it would eventually be relaxed like it recently has.

Yes it is possible to dramatically raise the Energy Flow Ability stat whilst keeping your max energy level rock bottom, but the price is you basically have no TOC.

As for catching up then you are utterly wrong on that, assuming equal activity levels and farming hits someone with a 6 month advantage will always have a 6 month advantage, now yes the person catching up will be closer in stats, and yes the effective difference will be slowly decreasing, but it will never flatten out and the one with the advantage will always have an advantage, it's just the bonus from the advantage will be gradually decreasing (never hitting zero)

You are also absolutely wrong about the 5x rule preventing descension, 5x rule merely stops military, spy and assassin actions, it DOES NOT stop personal assaults. I myself have just descended a guy with Sphere Of Influence: 764,910 Planets and i have Your Physical Expanse 17,198,613,665 Planets

The O-Neill wrote:2. The 5x rule is there to protect the smaller people. It adds layers to the game, so that big people, or big alliances can't just have their top dogs lose 1 million planets (or 10 as in ten) a hit taking them down. This is fair as otherwise, a big dog could literally run through a small alliance of 50 young players in a few turns. (and not be going for speed) [and the really nefarious ones could use such 'godly' tactics to recruit the best players out of said alliance]. Of course being a sniper and hovering around the 2 bill mark (or 4 or 6) has it's advantages as well, as it doesn't matter WHAT you lose, as you'll make it back 10-100 times quicker than someone up high. So in a sense both ends give you the same thing. If you are too big, you can easily destroy players, if you keep yourself small, you can easily destroy players, and with the cap, everybody will be within x5 soon enough.

Umm no the entire player base will never all be within 5x of each other for the simple reason new accounts are ascending and having to catch up all the time, plus numerous account are either not played, poorly played or played in such a way as to result in the constant loss of planets, others at the top end of the scale are playing specifically to maintain their planets and not lose many due to their actions.

Also a big player can never run through an alliance in just a few turns decimating them because the losses on ascended are all based on percentages, it takes exactly the same number of turns to destroy 50% of the trained units using destroy military on an account with 30 billion planets as it does on an account with 30 planets. The cost to attack, use covert or assassin mission is always the same regardless of the size of attacker or defender, the 5x rule merely forces an early termination of attacks in some cases

The O-Neill wrote:3. Actually catching up is quite easy in ascended (as well as being pretty much assured over time). Farming can do it, knowing what to pick, when, helps too. You won't catch up to the top dogs without playing, but with the 5x rule...why do you HAVE to? As you get bigger, you can attack more. I'm 36 billl planets, which means someone only needs to be ~7 billion to hit me (not necessarily successful, but entirely possible). But if someone with 2-3 bill planets wanted to, how the hell could they anyways? So the x5 rule is a separator that works, because it prevents people that are either a) too small from being crushed from above b)sniper to the extreme from below...at least it limits the number of times they can given time. If you're within 5x you have a shot, if not, there's no way you could do anything anyways, and forum shouldn't change the server to appease snipers. I'm not saying it's a bad tactic, just saying forum shouldn't switch the rules on that to benefit a group that risks losing no income. So really, catching up is a matter of being within 5x, not being bigger. Then you use 'other' methods, if they deserve it.

Technically the smaller account cannot be crushed unless they cause the crushing themselves by training up excessive amounts of planets, one cannot kill more than is trained up, all except super military planets can be untrained or made into income planets which can not be touched.

if anything the 5x rule stops people catching up so fast because they are not allowed to farm the decent income accounts and must struggle to steal small quantities of DMU from accounts that they will probably race past in mere days.

The O-Neill wrote:But the #4 is the big one.

4. The curves are still changing. Just wait a few more months, things will STILL be changing. This is a long train ride, and one that still hasn't reached its destination. The amounts to increase levels is insane. Just wait as like covert levels in main, ascended is hitting the wall too (except when you get that extra level, it isn't a 50 percent increase), and you can't use $$$$. This will make things much more interesting. (and make it 'catch' up time, for many people). Just wait as everyone closes in within 200 levels of each other. That time still hasn't come yet, but it will. Now if I wanted to farm these past 3 years instead of recycling my own income....2 million fleets would be an afterthought, but oh well, I guess zerohedge and the economic collapse that is still ongoing (which I've been telling people has been coming since about 2004, give or take) is only going to get worse, unless we invoke Glass-Steagall, has been a tad bit more important for me, and with my father's aneurysm I've just had a lot on my plate, between the two, than to try to completely outpace everyone. But I also haven't needed to...until I needed to, which by that time comes, it'll be too late, and it already has been for years. But it doesn't matter, at least not until the 'end game' of this monetary iteration of ascension when all the people are within 200 levels of each other. (any of this could of been seen years ago, I saw it). I had enough escape velocity to overcome that, perhaps, but oh well, I decided against it. It's been a while,and still be awhile, before this tree bares fruit, but we're far closer to being there than being away from it. A few months, maybe a year. The people at the bottom shouldn't be complaining, the people at the top should be. Me, ultimately it doesn't matter, it's just a game. A great game, but it doesn't solve Glass-Steagall from being implemented in rl, and that's my #2 goal, and my fathers care #1. (10 years of college for a fast food job? no thanks Big Ben Bernanke)

But again, the updates in ascended, still haven't played out. Forum instituted something that still hasn't turned over all its cards. In the end, if one has tried, they will be able to hit anyone, farm anyone, etc. It's just a matter of time. Logarithmic caps with increasing costs (that give little in terms of benefits) assure this. It just doesn't look that way, until it is assuredly that way. People need to separate the forest from the trees on this one.

But of course, all of these things will only happen to those who play the game. Not those that don't, and not those that want to use $$$$. All of these problems, aren't rl money based, and thus you know someone had to work for it regardless of strategy.

Well 200 levels is still a very large gap in power, so tbh you are kinda shooting down your own argument there.

The simple reason the updates have not achieved what Admin Jason seems to want is that he is converting our levels into a percentage. Percentages are not allowing people at the top end to realistically do anything to each other, because the power levels are effectively working against each other.

If i have a 2 billion TOC and i hit someone with 2 billion LF i do not end up doing 33% of their LF (due to the cap), that is modified by the defensive skills converting into percentages my own power, the more TOC i have the more they deflect, absorb and rebound. If the scores were hard coded to be based off my OWN power totals instead of the enemies then having a few hundred extra levels would actually result in making a dramatically easier descension.

As for money then you do realize people buy DMU don't you? lmao

The O-Neill wrote:5. Switching it up won't change anything. The big reason why it was reset before was because of the 'steal planets' rule that when in place and ganged up on gave one side the server. There also was no x5 rule. Aww people forget. WIthout the 'steal planet rule', there has been little reason to gang up (unless someone really deserved it) or war related. Even then, it would be something that 'cost' stats, not 'boosted'. Without the 'steal planet' rule, the server would not of been like how it was, and because it was directly based on that, in combination with active players that would have trended to be up top anyways, was all that was needed to consolidate entire alliances up top while also pushing others down. The situation between now and then are completely different. Those up top now, got there by playing and overcoming the caps, and really could have done a much better job overcoming the caps, but in the end it doesn't really matter, since the game eventually takes the separation away. Hell my income is 2/3 what it was 2 or 3 years ago. The old way was complete exponential growth, with no caps, with stealing planets, with a huge weapon used nefariously....all of which completely destroyed the server. This way is EVER lower growth, with caps, no planet stealing, no super weapon, and in the end, everyone is within 5x your size and can do whatever to you. (and people want more than this??? or do they just not see it???? or have they just not played long enough and want things easy????) In the end, IT might destroy the server. Or maybe it'll just be considered fair? Hell if I know.

This reset that occurred years ago now, still hasn't played out, and there will come a time soon, when every account will be farmable by many, with nothing, anyone can do to stop it. (so I guess I don't understand the whole....people will never be able to catch up....what?????) The fact is no one can stay ahead.

It is 1000x more easy to 'catch' up in ascended than main. Just wait and see. It's not linear, it's asymmetrical, like the real life markets. When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall. Or hyperinflate. But since there are caps in place, the cradle will metaphorically fall.

In the end, we'll all be snipers. Or a group of people that are all snipers.

I'm surprised no one else sees it. Because all of the above has been glaringly obvious since the day it was implemented. (I think that is why some decided to quit playing ascension THEN, but they stopped doing it that long ago, which means that bullet has already been taken) Now once we get to that point, perhaps we should take another direction, but to what? A general reset won't fix it. The same thing as last time, would bring about the same results, probably quicker. There is NOTHING inherently stable about a 'monetary system', which is what this entire game is (as to do with economics) in both main and ascended. So maybe the answer is some sort of one that can last a couple of years, or maybe not. I tend to think we shouldn't just retry something that might fail, though. Is it fair that someone who plays hard for 5 years is on the same level as someone for 2? Hard to say, if both played equally hard, but someone else did for an extra 3 years. But 'time' was given the initial advantage on the reset, and now people are having issues with it (as could of been expected), but again, it's going to even out so......people just need to be patient.

We all play federal reserve here. Or Queen of England. Or Roman Empire. Or Aristotle. It's also why after playing this game, it's so much easier to see the futility of our real life 'monetarism'. Because really it's the same game, just different rules. But the more things change, the more things remain the same. But unlike rl, it's okay for this game we play for fun to be based off of bs. We accept that. We just want it to be the best set up bs that produces a quality game. As for rl, I wholly reject it. Glass-Steagall and American (Hamiltonian) Credit System or we will have a new dark age. *try listening to someone who saw the whole thing coming instead of the ones who never did*

Once again I digress, so for ascended, you have to understand the futility of some of this, and that changing things up for change, doesn't mean the change is good (look at bankster obummer). What you change into, might be the same or worse. Without the planet stealing, 5x rule and with the caps, I think forum did a good job, considering the flaws inherent in monetary systems (far better than the federal reserve and central banks I'll tell ya). There is a time value now, and one that can be lost, and is over time being lost. I still don't believe people don't understand this. When a huge block are within 200 levels of each other, ascension will be completely different, for those that got to that point. Which will be a number that is always increasing, and including more into it. People that sat back and didn't do squat, will be able to jump back in and eventually get to this point quicker than others did, especially when the top accounts are decreasing in planet totals, not increasing. I am 100 percent certain of that, no matter who the player is. A sniper will be able to pick off the top accounts, and down they'll ALL go. With time value of planets, I could see a situation ahead where nobody in this game has 30 billion planets a year from now, unless they are all either producing (hella good farm), or just sitting idle. (and think about it, 1 year from now, much more people will be within striking distances of anyone 20-30 billion...if they're not already, definitely with greater levels, within a couple hundred levels). It's pretty obvious to me anyways and has been for years.

The only unfair thing I guess, is that main doesn't have a similar equalizer in store. So in the end, the money people DO win. As their server will have separation, but ascended will not. Of course it takes more rl money, but some still have it, at least for now. I hope forum looks into that. Because I believe that is the biggest issue, separation through rl money. Because that separation isn't benign like in ascended, it's a used advantage over others directly in battles. In the end, that will be the only separation there will be in this game. Not through playing, but only $$$$. So I guess I already went into....#

6. $$$ aspect has become huge in main. It's a bit sickening for my tastes, but ok, I understand this is a business, and if ascended is free from the 'federal reserve bailout' mentality, then I'm perfectly fine with the other server being trashed because of it. (and it has, in a way). With ms naq, and merlins, you can't have planets nor the 'biggest' ms without lots of $$$. No amount of playing will ever overcome that, and that's a shame. It's MUCH more pressing than 'can't catch up to the logarithmic screwed players who haven't been farming in 3 years, who I can't hit because I'm 7x smaller than them'. Yes you have to build up more than your attack, but only enough to get within 5x. Which is actually rather easy. It's funny how everyone says we need to make things easier in ascension, when that's what is happening everyday anyways. If anything forum should be looking to keep the separation going. Otherwise you'll have everyone in the same pot, beating each other senseless, sniper style. While now, you have bigger players and smaller players, and people in between, and none of the bigger players can really prey on the smaller ones. Only if you blew the bell curve would you have a chance at being safe....for a little while longer. In main, people with $$$ will rule the roost, and I just feel that is sub-optimal.

I say ascended for now is fine. Perhaps even define the separations a bit better and clear, and sharper. Yet allow people to at least move up a bit. (that said, someone that is determined can always make the leap)

So I hope everything is well with people. Read your zerohedge.com and your larouchepac.com. Always use your head, but those places will give you the best info, and have for years, about what is really going on. (if you couldn't notice it when crap.com was 200 a share with 0 earnings and with a bigger market cap than IBM)

Two words Glass-Steagall
...and remember, this game runs a monetary system like real life too. But this, is a FUN one. Enjoy it, before the rl one crushes you.

The O-Neill (and this was a quick message and most likely my only one..I don't have the time to really get in-depth or provide solutions at the moment, as I have to get busy readying the house for my dad's return from extended care, where he'll still be needing extended care, but I'll be the one mostly doing it, when a nurse isn't here, for free, until at least i get 'certified' through a 1 day 8 hour course, TBD by the people that will take over from the current blood suckers charging way too much for far too little care, 25,000 a month? for crap? [oh I'm sure they have a MERS mortgage they don't have to pay off....but are because they're stupid] 24k paid by the state, the rest sucking up his SS, and no 'all his needs are NOT met' as they LOVE to state is somehow true, even though it's completely false [pure sophistry and back slapping bs].) Great Health Care fascist bankster **Filtered** Obummer....sure doesn't look like single payer to me. [hint his health care is a freaking joke...wall street statistical bs, you can bank on that, as it truly is the same slight of hand tactics used by wall street to screw us all over in every other way, done with a twist...and yes I'm a dem so nobody give me crap about knowing the truth, because even the fascist tea party, doesn't get it, they're fools, just like Obummer, and forget the repubs, they've been clueless since Eisenhower left, and only because he CHOSE to be one to I even state that...otherwise you'd have to say clueless since Lincoln...which funny enough, they are all against what he did...amazing]

So you make a wall of text to say percentages are the problem and have a dig at $$ spending? Tell you what how about you fund the server costs then you can maybe have the right to complain about what other players want to do with their own money.

Oh, and you are still wrong about people being able to catch up, they can close the gap, that is not the same thing though. Simple maths proves this.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 3:35 pm**

Borek im sure anyone can catch up the top one in less time now

i did it , went from scrap to top account playing 1 year , im sure smone will do that in 6 months now just because now u base farm hit is higher and activity tends to go down in that server.
if users were to be active enough then catching up wont be easy at all.

now we players at their peek activity in that server that likes this update and others not much active that dont. lucky the actual actives that can benefit of this overpowering TOC.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:02 pm**

Lithium wrote:Borek im sure anyone can catch up the top one in less time now

i did it , went from scrap to top account playing 1 year , im sure smone will do that in 6 months now just because now u base farm hit is higher and activity tends to go down in that server.
if users were to be active enough then catching up wont be easy at all.

now we players at their peek activity in that server that likes this update and others not much active that dont. lucky the actual actives that can benefit of this overpowering TOC.

Well no offense Lith, but i just spied you and you are MILES off the top accounts. Half the problem is the people throwing around the "easy to catch up" claims actually have no idea just how ludicrous the top accounts actually are.

When you are rocking around with 1600 military stats and 950+ personals and 2 mill fleets then feel free to come back and i will admit i am wrong. You would need 2 more years to get to that, by which time the people who have it now will be at least 100 in everything ahead of you.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:10 pm**

And remember people the cost is not LINEAR to catch up, it's EXPONENTIAL.

The difference between main and ascension is that once you get lv 38 covert for example it operates in the exact same ways as everyone else’s lv 38 covert. In ascension you have to get to the same ‘boost’ so the same personal/physical boost stats to catch up so that even someone who is 5 levels a head of you does still have the advantage – once rank modifiers are removed.

I’ve been told my TOC is in the top 10% but I’m still looking at about a year or MORE of solid farming to get it to the current top TOC. And by then… well who knows what that one will be

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 6:33 pm**

I dont know where the 2m fleets came from because as far as I know no one has that yet. The highest I know of is only 1.6m ish with a 1070ish charisma giving the guy close to 2.6b raw cer. but the rest of the realm is crap. I've seen realms with 1600 - 1700 military levels but the cer and personal levels are crap. Mines built on Descension and the others are mediocre to crap. You see realms specializing in one maybe two but so far I haven't seen a well rounded great account.

I've said its easy to catch up but I never said it was easy to build a great realm. Great realms you got to work for. They don't come by easily. They require lots of effort, work, and above all else patience.

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

By the way, the new toc appears in the introspection page now.

Mines only 7th from the top at 3,667,500,374

Currently undescendable levels are 950 but will probably only last about a year.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:06 pm**

The O-Neill wrote:There are some misconceptions about ascended server that need to be cleared up. The first is the complete lack of understanding of the nature of logarithmic (or something resembling that...so lack of a better word) caps and increasing costs per level. But I'll get to that a little later. Anyone that says 'you can't catch up', is telling you they don't understand ascension. It's entirely made TO catch up.

Exactly right. Most players agree that ascended is the Ultimate Catch Up Server

1. There is a finite amount of DMU and Turns.

2. You can’t broker DMU, AT or untrained planets to other players.

3. There are heavy Caps limiting growth on Cosmic Expansion Rates that were set years ago.

Natural Cosmic Expansion Rate 1,000,677,969 planet / day
Capped Cosmic Expansion Rate 74,609,280 planet / day

When your total realm size exceeds 2 billion planets, your rate of growth slows...
You are currently growing at 7.46 percent of full capacity.

4. Upgrades become increasingly more expensive.

Case Study 1
Total Offensive Capacity 1,054,550,218
725 Attack Force Level - Cost of next upgrade is 15,656,518,002
725 Attack Skill Level - Cost of next upgrade is 15,656,518,002
776 Maximum Natural Energy Capacity - Cost of next Upgrade is 53,043,360,749

Case Study 2
Total Offensive Capacity 2,092,294,998
900 Attack Force Level - Cost of next upgrade is 260,287,417,867
840 Attack Skill Level - Cost of next upgrade is 106,152,788,782
884 Maximum Natural Energy Capacity - Cost of next Upgrade is 288,607,681,880

Case Study 3
Total Offensive Capacity 4,428,291,229
1008 Attack Force Level - Cost of next upgrade is 1,135,761,905,877
970 Attack Skill Level - Cost of next upgrade is 689,180,495,451
1057 Maximum Natural Energy Capacity - Cost of next Upgrade is 2,947,155,764,492

If you cant improve your ascended account then I doubt you are trying or you want something for nothing.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:25 pm**

Borek wrote:
Lithium wrote:Borek im sure anyone can catch up the top one in less time now

i did it , went from scrap to top account playing 1 year , im sure smone will do that in 6 months now just because now u base farm hit is higher and activity tends to go down in that server.
if users were to be active enough then catching up wont be easy at all.

now we players at their peek activity in that server that likes this update and others not much active that dont. lucky the actual actives that can benefit of this overpowering TOC.

Well no offense Lith, but i just spied you and you are MILES off the top accounts. Half the problem is the people throwing around the "easy to catch up" claims actually have no idea just how ludicrous the top accounts actually are.

When you are rocking around with 1600 military stats and 950+ personals and 2 mill fleets then feel free to come back and i will admit i am wrong. You would need 2 more years to get to that, by which time the people who have it now will be at least 100 in everything ahead of you.

I dont see why everyone is saying you have to be level with the top (most played and most DMU spent by an individual) to define the ability to 'catch up'. So by your logic a new person in main has to ascend 23 times, get a 3 (5 ?) trilll MS, get a few powerhouse duals, get 38-39 covert and 35+ anti covert, have a decent army, laden themselves with a 50 trill defence, AT LEAST, so they are classified as a person who 'caught up' and thus meaning if they couldnt do that in a short period of time the game mechanics are screwed, and so if they dont have that then they cant war, sab, farm, raid, and destroys someones account in general because they just cant? because its seemingly impossible?

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 8:04 pm**

stuff of legends wrote:
Borek wrote:
Lithium wrote:Borek im sure anyone can catch up the top one in less time now

i did it , went from scrap to top account playing 1 year , im sure smone will do that in 6 months now just because now u base farm hit is higher and activity tends to go down in that server.
if users were to be active enough then catching up wont be easy at all.

now we players at their peek activity in that server that likes this update and others not much active that dont. lucky the actual actives that can benefit of this overpowering TOC.

Well no offense Lith, but i just spied you and you are MILES off the top accounts. Half the problem is the people throwing around the "easy to catch up" claims actually have no idea just how ludicrous the top accounts actually are.

When you are rocking around with 1600 military stats and 950+ personals and 2 mill fleets then feel free to come back and i will admit i am wrong. You would need 2 more years to get to that, by which time the people who have it now will be at least 100 in everything ahead of you.

I dont see why everyone is saying you have to be level with the top (most played and most DMU spent by an individual) to define the ability to 'catch up'. So by your logic a new person in main has to ascend 23 times, get a 3 (5 ?) trilll MS, get a few powerhouse duals, get 38-39 covert and 35+ anti covert, have a decent army, laden themselves with a 50 trill defence, AT LEAST, so they are classified as a person who 'caught up' and thus meaning if they couldnt do that in a short period of time the game mechanics are screwed, and so if they dont have that then they cant war, sab, farm, raid, and destroys someones account in general because they just cant? because its seemingly impossible?

The people talk about catching up - as in -properly- catching up, is because to do significant damage to someone with the top levels, you have to be at those levels yourself. If you aren't then you can't damage. Even now, while it's -theoretically- possible to descend some people, in practice it's a goal that's years and years away for most of the server.

In main for example to do damage to the 5t MS that exists, I DO NOT need a 5t MS... a 1t one will suffice, or even a 500b strike would do it in a pinch. Sure another 5t MS would make it easier but it's not necessary. The same as with covert levels, I may not have a lv 38/39 but if I have a lv 35, I can pump a lot more spies into it and get the same results - though the losses I will grant are bigger. In ascension this just isn't possible when talking descension.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:28 pm**

Tekki wrote:The people talk about catching up - as in -properly- catching up, is because to do significant damage to someone with the top levels, you have to be at those levels yourself. If you aren't then you can't damage. Even now, while it's -theoretically- possible to descend some people, in practice it's a goal that's years and years away for most of the server.

I havent farmed on ascended for weeks on end, so my levels are fairly average now (probably below). Yet in ONE turn change I managed to take out 44 billion planets (over a handful of players) hovering around 100 quad defences.

Tekki wrote:If you aren't then you can't damage. Even now, while it's -theoretically- possible to descend some people, in practice it's a goal that's years and years away for most of the server.

You expect one person to take down another person in 12 hours? by himself? because he has no one to help?

Before both updates my TOC was only 700m. Its now over 2 bill. So you think catching up to descend wont be easy now? Admin just handed you Descension on a platter and you are still saying you can't do it?

A 1b TOC can descend a great number of players. If there is a tank in ascended then i WOULDNT EXPECT to be able to descend them with a few weeks of farming, thats simply ludicrous. You have to work to be the best.

So if they are going to take 'years and years' to reach this goal of being able to descend this person, since they seemingly wont have any friends to help chip away at his life force reserves (because getting the TOC necessary is "insanely impossible"), Then they should pack their bags and leave GateWars.

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:42 pm**

stuff of legends wrote: So if they are going to take 'years and years' to reach this goal of being able to descend this person, since they seemingly wont have any friends to help chip away at his life force reserves (because getting the TOC necessary is "insanely impossible"), Then they should pack their bags and leave GateWars.

Pot, kettle, black. Given that your bags are packed and you are awaiting a ticket to be issued. Besides which, changes and alterations are meant to encourage more game play, not drive people away. If you won’t even discuss ideas that would encourage more game play, and want to stagnate in what is believed by many to be a bad server, then there is little hope to improve the situation.

Though I do believe I stated up somewhere in the thread that the current update would change things a bit. I wasn't expecting a TOC approximate doubling, I don't think anyone was and to be honest that's the easy way out. Once people build up their levels again the problem exists again. Didn't Angelis calculate that the undescendable personal levels just moved to 950? Which are very very very high I admit, but it's still not impossible. And for someone with 800 levels, I need to do the calculations but I doubt they are descendable by the average player.

What would you say the Average TOC is now?

Posted: **Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:29 pm**

Tekki wrote:
stuff of legends wrote: So if they are going to take 'years and years' to reach this goal of being able to descend this person, since they seemingly wont have any friends to help chip away at his life force reserves (because getting the TOC necessary is "insanely impossible"), Then they should pack their bags and leave GateWars.

Pot, kettle, black. Given that your bags are packed and you are awaiting a ticket to be issued. Besides which, changes and alterations are meant to encourage more game play, not drive people away. If you won’t even discuss ideas that would encourage more game play, and want to stagnate in what is believed by many to be a bad server, then there is little hope to improve the situation.

Though I do believe I stated up somewhere in the thread that the current update would change things a bit. I wasn't expecting a TOC approximate doubling, I don't think anyone was and to be honest that's the easy way out. Once people build up their levels again the problem exists again. Didn't Angelis calculate that the undescendable personal levels just moved to 950? Which are very very very high I admit, but it's still not impossible. And for someone with 800 levels, I need to do the calculations but I doubt they are descendable by the average player.

What would you say the Average TOC is now?

Ironically those moaning about the ascended server have only made it worse for themselves. Everytime Admin is forced into an update, you're going to get a group of users that feel they need to hardcore farm on ascended. So much so, the other night farming I noticed there were 107 other people on the ascended server at the same time. (Which trust me is a huge increase). If this activity remains, there is obviously going to be a LOT less DMU to farm...thus catching up is going to be slowed down.

At it's peak my farm list was returning anything from 40-50 Quad a run - I can tell you now it nets me nothing like that!

I don't see the levels as ever being the problem, I think someone mentioned earlier, the issue is, when everyone can dump all their planets into undeveloped, it means the DMU available is a so small. How about a % of your CER is auto trained into Income? or simply adding a multiplier so undeveloped planets yield a decent income themselves?

For all the people that keep telling us what top account are.

No one ingame has a 2bil CER, AND a 2bil+ TOC(now 4bil+), AND 1500+ physicals

Going back to Tekki's question about current average TOC - quite obviously this is small because 1000's of people have never even bothered logging onto ascended. There are so many accounts with actual 0 stats.

Average from active players? after the updates I'd put that average over 2bil

Posted: **Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:03 am**

I’ll start with the assumptions that I’ve made and to be honest if you disagree with the first 4 or 5, you will probably disagree with the entire idea. But then go to the end and read why I’ve proposed this, or open this spoiler box. [spoiler]Why am I proposing something radical like this?

Because so far while there seems to be some agreement that the server is not that good to play – except for the devotees, there hasn’t been much discussion and what can really, really make the server fun for the most part.

The continued increase in TOC is easy but to me, it doesn’t address the underlying problem since all it is doing is making the stats bigger, not doing anything to make them more useful. All increasing TOC does it make the level to be practically undescendable a bit higher. It does not encourage anyone to play. The above I believe would. It would encourage team work and encourage people to work on their stats so they can do more by themselves and thus cover themselves in glory, yet at the same time it does not detract from the work anyone has done.

I expect people to go up in flames at the above suggestion but while they self-combusting I would hope that they are also trying to think of reasonable alternatives that would be able to be implemented or suggested to Admin J that can bring the attraction back to the ascended server for those who see it as a worthless server.[/spoiler]

Assumptions

General Discussion

Based off the votes so far it seems that the majority of people are happy with it taking about 12 hours to descend someone. That gives people enough time to sleep and work a normal shift and allows that someone logging in ‘just to check’ can save themselves from being descended. So that’s 5 hits if you allow 3 hours between each hit or 4 hits if you allow 4 hours between each hit where each hit is at max damage and there is not so much life force regeneration as to require another hit.

Now what saves you from being descended is your repulsion, your constitution and your ability to recharge. Using myself as an example, I regenerate the following amounts of life force per spacing of hits:

So let’s be generous here and say that someone recovers 15% of their life force (that’s life force and reserves added together) so LONG as the hit timing is between 2.5 to 4 hours. This calculation would need to be redone otherwise.

So for example, someone with 1billion LF reserves and 100million LF with a recovery rate of 15% takes 5 hits to descend, IF MAXIMUM damage done to them each time. This is relatively easy since maximum damage is approximately 367million life force.

For 2billion reserves, max damage is approximately 717m, 3billion max damage is 1067m and for 4billion max damage is 1417m.

It gets harder. So let's look at a couple of TOC levels that may be deemed average.

Average TOC of 1billion.

Now let's say you want to descend someone with lv 700's. According to the nifty difty calculator provided by Hungarian Unity, it will take you 32 hits. So that's between 80 hours to 128 hours depending on what spacing ascension hits are.

Average TOC let's say is 2billion well now it takes 6 hits. Though let's up the stats to 750, that's going to take 12 hits. Now let's up them to 800 and it goes up to 38 hits. That's a lotta hits.

Why am I saying this? Because the upping of TOC just forces people to farm or invest up to the point where they feel comfortable again. It isn't encouraging game play and there are a lot of accounts that just invest to that point or near it and consider it good enough and only log in in a war.

But what the above establishes is that the average guy can't do much damage to accounts around him or like him.

Given that our average guy can’t do damage and won’t be able to do damage for the foreseeable future (to the top accounts) – aka even if they farm and farm they can’t boost themselves enough in the short term to damage this one, they are likely to give up on the server entirely. Why play something where you can’t compensate such as you can in main – eg higher covert is annulled by more spies. Even with the update there are people it’s going to take umpteen million hours to descend and that’s only if you get lucky.

The thing that will make people Self Combust

So if we take it that a reasonable amount of time to descend someone is 12 hours and that the average player doesn’t have a hope of descending anyone with greater abilities than them while they are vulnerable themselves and even if they farmed for a good while, they still probably won’t have a hope, where is the enjoyment or challenge? It’s NOT a challenge if you can’t reach the goal, it’s a pointless exercise and we’ve already had people come and say this while others have all been ‘it’s easy to catch up’ Well it’s easy to get an average account but even in that, you can’t hurt the one who can hurt you. In main this is not the case. If you have an average account you CAN do damage to the person with lv 38 covert simply because you can mass them. Unless that individual becomes a sniper then the average account can damage it. The 5 t MS can be massed by one that has 500b strike, etc. This is just not possible in ascension.

Now if I can’t descend someone by myself, I’d go ask for help, but chances are against the bigger accounts I can’t find anyone willing to take the risk or who has comparable stats. There is therefore no real incentive for anyone in ascension to even try but that’s just defeatist. (The update has helped here though.) I would propose therefore that descension hits be stackable – within a certain time frame and within allowable damage ratios. Therefore when the person with average TOC of 1billion takes on the person with 4billion reserves, they also go and recruit their friends to say there are 2-3 people with the average TOC of 1billion. I would propose that the maximum allowable damage NOT BE changed, but that multiple people can hit the target – within a time frame.

So the first person comes along and does a hit, then within 5 mins and BEFORE the turn, the second person does a hit and the third person. This then ups the damage done to the target to the maximum amount. EVERY hit needs to be within 5 mins of the first hit and BEFORE a turn. And no more than 1/3 (or the 2/5) of the LF should be destroyable. This then reduces the number of hits to 4 to descend this person (and actually if there is no repulsion in consideration you only need 2 people to do it.) So if the hits were then spaced out to be a 12 hour total on the descenion time that makes all accounts equal, though still gives advantage to those who worked on their accounts.

At NO point can you or the combined group do MORE than max damage. So that even if 50 people hit you, only the 1/3 (2/5 LF can be destroyed) and you can't hit again after the turn. The timing of descension hit would still remain the 2.5 hours it does now (plus or minus the 5 mins that the rest of the gang can hit in). So the minimum time to descend someone remains unchanged. All it means though is that everyone can be descended. I WOULD though be advocating an extension to the minimum time to descend someone to increase it to 12 hours or something similar.

What are the advantages of this?

Smaller guys can gang up to attack others – as they can in main. Bigger guys can gang up to descend bigger guys too. It would mean that everyone, big or small needs to be active and to log in to avoid being descended either in war or not.

It means that it would be no longer possible to build X levels and then never log in again.

It takes your stats from being either attack or defence stats and makes them into just levels. It is still better to have higher levels because then it takes more people to do maximum damage to you and you can do more with less turns but it means that regardless of your stats you are no longer untouchable.

It would encourage balanced building of accounts (I liked Angelis’ idea earlier to reverse the AT generation for accounts of a particular size but I’d do it for account of a particular age but the concept has merit). While it would be possible to still be a ‘descender’ account, to avoid being descended yourself, it would be easiest avoided by building a defence, and that would mean you’d need the physical levels as well as the personal ones.

The value of your account is still dependent on the work you do. Bigger stat levels are always still going to be bigger stat levels and will be more advantageous.

What are the disadvantages of this?

Well no one really ever gets a break in ascended any more, that’s why as one of the extra’s I’ve listed the idea of needing something like PPT in ascended.

“It rewards those who have done nothing for 3 years”. Counter argument to that is that it depends on your POV. For those with the larger abilities, they can do more with less. To do the maximum damage they aren’t going to need to gang up with others, they can do it themselves, and to be damaged themselves, it will most likely take more people. Another counter argument would be that we have already had one fundamental change to allow the server to be playable by ‘more’ people (aka those who weren’t in GA or DD and thus didn’t have all the protections that entailed) this is just another suggestion that would make the server more playable for all people.

It makes ascension a team server, that wasn’t meant to be the case. Ascension was meant to be a one to one server, but if we are honest, it hasn’t been that way ever. There have always been alliances on ascension. If anything this gives the advantage to the best organised alliance but it also means that protection against being descended is the same for each individual.

It gives the advantage to empires or bigger alliances. Again only to a point. An empire or alliance can have 5 people hit the one person but at the 10 hour mark (if a 12 hour descended time is adopted) the target can log in and refill life force, that that would mean that 5 people just used 297 ATs EACH on a venture that failed. That’s a lot of farming, DMing or other things that was not able to be done. The protection against being descended is the SAME for each individual.

Extra considerations or possible alterations

Things to do BEFORE this was considered

Why am I proposing something radical like this?

Because so far while there seems to be some agreement that the server is not that good to play – except for the devotees, there hasn’t been much discussion and what can really, really make the server fun for the most part.

The continued increase in TOC is easy but to me, it doesn’t address the underlying problem since all it is doing is making the stats bigger, not doing anything to make them more useful. All increasing TOC does it make the level to be practically undescendable a bit higher. It does not encourage anyone to play. The above I believe would. It would encourage team work and encourage people to work on their stats so they can do more by themselves and thus cover themselves in glory, yet at the same time it does not detract from the work anyone has done.

I expect people to go up in flames at the above suggestion but while they are busy self-combusting I would hope that they are also trying to think of reasonable alternatives that would be able to be implemented or suggested to Admin J that can bring the attraction back to the ascended server for those who see it as a worthless server.

Posted: **Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:30 am**

Not much could get me to burst into flames.

And who would, at a well written story like that?
A lengthy, but interesting take on how to solve 'the ascended issue', curious to other reactions.
*goes to think*

Posted: **Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:42 am**

I have no problem with the "ganging up" part, but the issue still revolves around the way our stats are converting into percentages and, for personal defense related skills, they actually work off what the enemy attacker has, so the stronger the enemy, the more effective your defenses are on them.

What should happen is your defense skills work off YOUR scores, not the enemies. This rewards anyone who is actively playing and means anyone who wants to remain difficult or impossible to descend has to play on a regular basis to keep their skills raising, not just hit a pre-defined limit and know they are safe until an update happens to mix things up.

Also the way turn generation and stat modifiers work are completely retarded. It actually punishes you severely for actively building any persistent stats and rewards for untraining for the turn change or after using any stats.

This is nice for farming, but it is the single worst part of the game because it does not give any reward for actually risking your account by building up stats.

The idea of it i am sure was to give newer players a bonus to catch up, but all that has happened is the older, experienced players massively exploit the rules to their own advantage.

On top of that the CER penalties also actively discourage the larger planet total accounts from building anything up, because they cannot regenerate their losses like someone who is nearer the 3 bill total can do.

So what we have ended up with is a "snipers paradise" which, coupled with the 5x rule, actually severely penalizes a new or small player instead of helping them catch up. They are not allowed to farm for decent hits, building any persistent stats causes them to generate less turns, it is little wonder they give up. I mean without an expert to advise and guide them they are just going to get lost in the counter intuitive and contradicting rules.

Any changes made need to encourage people to build stats, i would say the CER penalty only works for your untrained and income planets, any planets tied up as military, covert and assassin planets are at risk and therefore not counted towards the cap. Means if you want to play the low risk, large size, large income route you have garbage for CER, if you want to go and kick some ass and build up some large stats your CER will not be capped anywhere near so heavily.

Stat modifiers should all be removed, every stat should be 95-105% effective values, untraining for a turn change should have zero effect on anything.

Everyone should generate 5 AT's per turn regardless of rank or stats, newer players should receive 2000 turns to start with so they can immediately start farming.

5x rule should be top down, meaning a large player cannot initiate an attack on a smaller player UNLESS the smaller player has attacked them (regardless of success) in the last 24 hrs. This allows a small player to farm ANYONE they want, if they farm someone over 5x their size they can be retaliated upon for 24 hrs.

StarGateWars Forums

Ascended Updates/Suggestions: General Discussion

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?

Re: So what is the problem?