Simple solution to Attack/Defence balance

[Lord Blackhole]

There has been many complaints about Attack is overpowered compared to defence due to facts such as
Attack solders will not die unless you attack someone with a defence.
The ratio of death is less for the person attacking. This is further imbalanced by the 1 turn AT people usually do.
Attackers can only lose weapons during war, compared to defenders lose almost all units and coverts.

So many people that constantly war came up with a strategy of having minimal amount of defence and a huge strike. Something on the ratio of 10 to 1. It became pointless because no one even builds a decent defence.


Suggestion
A player may only attack another empire when they have half the defence of the attack. This forces players to build a decent amount of defence.
Eg: Someone with 100B attack requires minimum 50B defence to be able to attack.
To make planets fair, I would suggest planet bonuses of defence and attack are counted towards the requirements. Mothership should be excluded due to it helps in both defence and attack.
This is also easy to implement in terms of coding, all it requires is a simple ratio check prior to attack (requires lots of computational power when people starts spamming), or a check every turn/few minutes similar to how rank/raid range works.



Please kindly provide some thoughts on this matter.
I have heard arguments against these types of changes due to the reason "people can build however they want, and everyone is free to use the advantage they know." However, I do not believe major imbalances can be justified on these grounds.

[Lord Blackhole]

just to clarify this for some and mainly me...

You wouldn't need to have a def all the time to have a strike.

IE: a 200b strike would not need to be carried around with a 100b def.

But you would need the def IF you are going to attack?

I like it if that's the case, but you'd need some kind of commitment to the def so people won't just buy,attack then sell def off

I have thought about this problem, buying defence then sell off.
The thing is, buying a defence and sell costs a lot of naq.
Say you have 1T attack, you'll need to buy 500B defence. When you sell the defence, you get 250B worth of weapons back, but all the supers will still die. If you choose to let your supers live by building defenders that could be untrained, you need to buy more weapons to get that 500B defence. So either way, you waste heaps just to buy a defence to attack someone then sell off. Might as well keep the defence you bought.

[Lore]

just to clarify this for some and mainly me...

You wouldn't need to have a def all the time to have a strike.

IE: a 200b strike would not need to be carried around with a 100b def.

But you would need the def IF you are going to attack?

I like it if that's the case, but you'd need some kind of commitment to the def so people won't just buy,attack then sell def off

I have thought about this problem, buying defence then sell off.
The thing is, buying a defence and sell costs a lot of naq.
Say you have 1T attack, you'll need to buy 500B defence. When you sell the defence, you get 250B worth of weapons back, but all the supers will still die. If you choose to let your supers live by building defenders that could be untrained, you need to buy more weapons to get that 500B defence. So either way, you waste heaps just to buy a defence to attack someone then sell off. Might as well keep the defence you bought.

Your above paragraph kinna explains the exploitability of this idea. It will bolster larger accounts who can easily afford to buy a 500 bill def. Smaller accounts will suffer far more severly due to lack of funds.

Secondly, it plays into the hands of the sniper/vulture accounts. Log in once a day to build up, go farming everyone they can and leaves the def men to die at the hands of ONLY the first to retaliate. Most Planet boosted UP can easily overcome the losses this play style will cause. So you will see a pattern of every 2 or 3 days this will happen.

Basicly its not much different then now, yes it will cost a bit more, but it changes nothing and hurts smaller/lonewolf accounts more then the average account in an alliance.

JMO

[Lord Blackhole]

[spoiler]

just to clarify this for some and mainly me...

You wouldn't need to have a def all the time to have a strike.

IE: a 200b strike would not need to be carried around with a 100b def.

But you would need the def IF you are going to attack?

I like it if that's the case, but you'd need some kind of commitment to the def so people won't just buy,attack then sell def off

I have thought about this problem, buying defence then sell off.
The thing is, buying a defence and sell costs a lot of naq.
Say you have 1T attack, you'll need to buy 500B defence. When you sell the defence, you get 250B worth of weapons back, but all the supers will still die. If you choose to let your supers live by building defenders that could be untrained, you need to buy more weapons to get that 500B defence. So either way, you waste heaps just to buy a defence to attack someone then sell off. Might as well keep the defence you bought.

Your above paragraph kinna explains the exploitability of this idea. It will bolster larger accounts who can easily afford to buy a 500 bill def. Smaller accounts will suffer far more severly due to lack of funds.

Secondly, it plays into the hands of the sniper/vulture accounts. Log in once a day to build up, go farming everyone they can and leaves the def men to die at the hands of ONLY the first to retaliate. Most Planet boosted UP can easily overcome the losses this play style will cause. So you will see a pattern of every 2 or 3 days this will happen.

Basicly its not much different then now, yes it will cost a bit more, but it changes nothing and hurts smaller/lonewolf accounts more then the average account in an alliance.

JMO

[/spoiler]
The point of this suggestion is to make defence more compulsory and useful.

You could always try something like this to stopping above abuses

Make a limit how often you can sell defence
or
No selling of defence because you recently attacked, like vacation mode. The msg could be something like "The empire has recently attacked, we are expecting retaliations. For the good will of our citizens, we must defend the empire at all costs." The time of able to sell a defence has to be at least 24 hours excluding all PPT. Eg: I attacked at 1:00 of 8th May, I go on PPT straight away. When I come off ppt 2 days later 1:00 10th May, I still cannot sell my defence until 1:00 11th May.

[Lore]

The point of this suggestion is to make defence more compulsory and useful.

You could always try something like this to stopping above abuses

Make a limit how often you can sell defence
or
No selling of defence because you recently attacked, like vacation mode. The msg could be something like "The empire has recently attacked, we are expecting retaliations. For the good will of our citizens, we must defend the empire at all costs." The time of able to sell a defence has to be at least 24 hours excluding all PPT. Eg: I attacked at 1:00 of 8th May, I go on PPT straight away. When I come off ppt 2 days later 1:00 10th May, I still cannot sell my defence until 1:00 11th May.

Now that is an intresting idea. I personally think weapons should not be allowed to be sold unless the men using them are gone. No living soilder will give up his weapon. As for the PPT thing, I dont think that will fly personally.


But, lets look at the suggestion on another level.
Player A has 100 mill men
Player B has 10 mill men

It would be possible for player A to build a def that player B could not breach that they could have breached before.

example
player A has 10 mill def men, player B could put all of his men in strike and attack him. After this rule player B would have to dedicate 5 mill men to defense just to be able to build a strike big enough to strike, therefore making any attack impossible until he gained another 5 mill men.

This will lead to some serious abuse unless there is a 2 way stop where bigger can't attack down when smaller cant attack up.

[Lord Blackhole]

Add a rule that as army size increases, the ratio increases.

eg:
0 - 10 mil, the rule does not exist
10 - 50, 10% defence required
50 - 100, 20% defence required
100 - 150, 30% defence required
150 - 200, 40% defence required
200+, 50% defence required

Another bandaid, problem solved.

[Sarevok]

@ Lore
But that's just it atm. PlayerB could still mass PlayerA's defense, remember, you only need 20% of their defense to do damage. 60m super attack, and 30m super defense, vs 6m super attack, and 3m super defense. The 6m can still damage the 30m.

While I'm glad to see some people are concerned about the imbalance blackhole, there's probably easier solutions, like increasing the minimum % needed to do damage to defense. Or a more dynamic ratio of losses depending on what % the attacker has of the defenders defense

[Lord Blackhole]

While I'm glad to see some people are concerned about the imbalance blackhole, there's probably easier solutions, like increasing the minimum % needed to do damage to defense. Or a more dynamic ratio of losses depending on what % the attacker has of the defenders defense

Changing the ratio of damage loss does not prevent people building minimal defence.
The point of this topic is to make large defence compulsory for big strikers, so massers have something to lose other than weapons.

[schuesseled]

The easiest, simplest, Best solution....

All these "If you dont build a defence X will happen" Idea's are not what is needed to fix the attack versus defence inbalances, they are simply an improved update of a faulty system, which will still be faulty after said update in one manner or another.

What is needed is to get to the root as many weed killing pesticides will tell you. Take away everything we have now and create a New Balanced and fair system, now many things in the game are unbalanced but this perticular att/def problems can be solved as followed.

So, Remove att/def, Instead implement armies, which both attack and defend. (Inc. Weapons? Sure but this has inbalances too, which need to be solved similar to this process..) To stop "snipers" simply make these armies like supers
"Once A Man Becomes A Soldier And See's The Attrocities Of Combat, He Is Changed Forever And Can Never Go Back To Normal Society"
This way no one can simply build them , attack, then sell them to avoid losses. And If you annoy someone you can loose not just a defence or an attack but this whole army.

Now you might say as stated in a previous post this leave "snipers" (which attack all at once then get massed back only Once.) But I disagree this is not "sniper", Sniper'ing term came to be when ascension allowed a "sniper" to put everything in attack then loose it all on retribution only too have their U.P super powered and get it all back by the time turns refilled.
Main is like this because of "Super U.P's" caused by U.P planets and also Officer Bonus's,
Though I agree this is still an inbalance it is not one of att vs def.
As I said before, To cull these other inbalances one must then go to the root of this problem and remove it, the same is true for all other inbalances

...

You could argue then people could just build really small whole armies, yes, but this is not unfair on anyone an account with a very small army is niether threatening or hard to destroy. And if someone chooses to play as such that is their perogative, take their incomes if they annoy you.
The problem of attack or defence being proportionally better than the other is gone. Why?, Because Attack and Defences are gone. With this method of problem solving their is no "slightly better but not perfect solutions, it is total and complete"

[Sarevok]

I'm pretty sure that still leaves the ability for a army 1/5 of your size to wipe you out effectively (except miners/lifers)

@ Blackhole
I got that, however, what's so hard about building your strike, training mercs based on the number of super attackers you have, still doing whatever you want to, and then selling the mercs, or just leave them if it's compulsory, sell all weapons, then you only loose mercs, and no true army

[Lore]

@ schuesseled,,, many have proposed the exact thing.

I'm pretty sure that still leaves the ability for a army 1/5 of your size to wipe you out effectively (except miners/lifers)

And they should be able to. Down side is when they can't untrain those men and you counter and wipe them out.

[muffafuffin]

im not sure i understand.

say someone is massing me. i ahve the 100b attack and the 50b attack.

however they are massing me and my defense drops to about 30b i couldnt strike back at there defense cause its not half? id have to wait til they stopped and let me rebuild a defense?

[Sarevok]

[quote="Lore"]And they should be able to. Down side is when they can't untrain those men and you counter and wipe them out.[/quote]
Untrain the super attackers? If you just use mercs then problem solved, mercs cost effectively nothing

PS: My Quotes NEVER work.

[CABAL]

With the weapons cannot be sold idea...

It can be exploited...

i.e. A person (A) has 5mil def troops armed with the best weapons (expensive? yes)... That person gets into a war with someone (B) who will most likely mass down his def... In an ordinary situation, A will sell off all/most weapons in order to save atleast some naq that has gone into making the def... However with this scenario, they cannot sell off weapons directly, so what will they do? Buy 5mil of the cheapest weapons and sell off the 5mil expensive weapons...

For a full 15 turn attack, 3% of your normal attack units can die (2% of defence units), while 1.5% (1% of defence units) supers can die.

They should make that 5% of attack normals, 3% of attack supers, 1.5% of def normals 0.75% of def supers can die per non-war attack.

If a person 's attack is less than 1/2 of a person's def, they should be able to lose 10% of attack normals, and 5% of attack supers (and get the massive armies... message) While the defender will not take ANY damage... If the attacker is less than 1/3 of defence, still the same kill rates, but NO damage taken by the def (not even MS)

If a person has a massive strike (i.e. >500k attack units) but no def, after a single 15at attack (and a war declaration), the attacker should be able to 'attack' the attackers of the defender...

i.e. a checkbox that says "Our intel shows that massive amounts of enemy attackers have entrenched themselves within their city walls. Prepare to do an attack on those cowards" And when checked, the attacker will attack the defender's attackers, the defender's attackers will fight back, but at a reduced effectiveness (i.e. no AB, 3/4 of normal weapon strength)

And ascended races SHOULD affect main... i.e. ORI - Higher chance of attacking AB, INDU - higher chance of defending AB, AJNA - slightly higher resource productions, TOLAH - Balanced Attack/Def AB

Whilst a defender should have a LOT of a higher chance of AB than the attacked (Hey! If your worshippers were about to be crushed, would you not rush in and help?)

[Lore]

[quote="csp4.0"]With the weapons cannot be sold idea...

It can be exploited...

i.e. A person (A) has 5mil def troops armed with the best weapons (expensive? yes)... That person gets into a war with someone (B) who will most likely mass down his def... In an ordinary situation, A will sell off all/most weapons in order to save atleast some naq that has gone into making the def... However with this scenario, they cannot sell off weapons directly, so what will they do? Buy 5mil of the cheapest weapons and sell off the 5mil expensive weapons...

[quote]
good catch