Lord_Zeus wrote:Sorry mate, I am not with you on this one, because Many people including myself have 1 or 2 very high ratings in something, and virtually nothing in another. For example someone might have rank 100 strike, rank 300 covert, and rank 4000 defence, which keeps him at about overall rank 1000. A person who has insane defence shouldnt be able to hide down lower in the ranks where others cant touch him simply because he has neglected attack or covert.
Do you understand the concept of "plus or minus"? +/-1000 means you have 2000 targets available to you, if you're mid-ranked. +/-1500 means you have 3000 targets available to you, if your mid-ranked. That last is more than 1/2 of the current field of 7000 or so. The only place it becomes restrictive is when you're at the very top or very bottom, when your rank is less than the spread or higher than (total_players minus spread). I'm sure that would still give you, Lord_Zeus, a decent selection of targets you could profitably hit.
IMAO, If you neglect one of the trinity of offense, defense, or covert, well, you're just leaving yourself vulnerable. Why shouldn't somebody be able to drive the point home?
One can "hide" behind high defense in theory, but I don't see that happening. Compare the number of top weapons it takes to get rank in offense vs. defense, you'll see it just doesn't happen. People overwhelmingly concentrate on offense, and/or covert. That's fine, it gives a well-deserved edge to players who at least consider defense.
The only way to get ahead without offense would be to raise UP through the roof and go pure defense. What exactly would be wrong with trying to get ahead in this way?
No one can "hide" behind high defense for long anyway. If you're successful in any way whatsoever, your rank will go up. Which would then change who you could attack, and who could attack you. You have to spend your Naq on something, more defense weapons or covert levels or whatever, which raises your rank. If you sit still in a moving universe, you will be passed by.
Enough of that.
As far as coming to the defense of your officers go, well, I said that if you know the name of your target, you should be able to attack. You just wouldn't be able to look it up in your own attack screen. If you couldn't Search for the name, then as a Commander, you'd be able to link to the intended target through your officer's report screen, and launch your counterattack that way. That would require NO additional changes to the existing system.
Of course, this may require certain well-known players to change their name.
And it could lead to abuses where a person attacks, then changes their name to avoid counter-attack. Wait, maybe not! The game program tracks players by account#, but displays the name associated with that number. So if a person changes their name after attacking, it would show up in the Attack Log Details as the new name, the same way that changing your sig file in this forum affects every post you've ever made. Sorry, thinking out loud here.
But maybe some sort of restriction on name changing would be in order (as has been suggested elsewhere for other reasons), maybe only allowing it once every day or every two days.
