Make covert fun
Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 4:03 pm
I originally posted this in the covert turns thread, however, seeing as it discusses far more than just the amount of covert turns, and no one replied to it, I feel it's worthy of it's own thread.
I will copy and paste the post here in it's entirety as the quotes help to clarify what I'm babbling on about.
I feel that some of the above points could be addressed in the following ways. Having played KoC (This game is based on the KoC game code and is about 80% the same apart from a few extra options in SGW.) a LOT back in Age 3 and 4 (for TSH if any of you have played it), I know what its like when you have unlimited sabs and recons in this kind of game, and have seen many different setups for the calculations for reconning and sabbing. (I certainly don't claim to be any kind of expert, this is a different game after all, but seeing how people have reacted to similar situations (psychologically) does give some insight as to how they will react to changes made to the sabbing system in SGW, IMO anyway..
)
Firstly, if sabbing is unlimited (I don’t really think it should be though TBH), I don't think you'll find high level covert players selling info on high level players defences, because instead of those high level players not bothering much with covert (just increasing it for rank) because its underpowered, they know that they have to put just as many resources into it as anything else, possibly more so, due to the risk of sabbing. This means that their CA level is similar to their other levels (unless they are a specialist in one stat, in which case they can't really be classed as a "high level" player IMO), and because of this, other players who are interested in their DA stat, will also have a decent CA level themselves, and will likely be able to glean it for themselves, or they will have someone in their alliance do it for them (obviously there's no charge for that…)
Secondly, I do not think CA is balanced, it is underpowered, and it would be difficult at best for any alliance to significantly do any damage through sabbing to another alliance due to the limitations. On an individual basis they may be able to cause damage, but not much, and this currently seems to be making the game a bit stale....
I think the following changes to CA would be well worth pursuing:
1. Change the maximum amount of damage done on a sab mission. I think 20% is quite reasonable.
If you read the other suggestions, you will (hopefully) see why I suggest this.
2. Change the damage done to the sabber on a failed mission to 20%.
50% is a huge loss if you have a lot of covert agents, 20% is still high enough to discourage sabbers unless they are fairly sure of themselves. At 50% one mistake is an enormous blow to someone with a high CA level, we’re potentially talking 5% of someone’s total power for a totally balanced player (note 1, see bottom of post), and if sabbing is to become useful, it will need to be a little forgiving so as not to discourage it’s use by newer players with lower level accounts who cannot afford the losses. Bear in mind that the loss of 20% of your covert agents is still a loss of 2% of your total power, this is far, far more than if you attack someone way out of your league with a normal attack. (And no one’s complaining about the balance of the normal attacks.)
3. The damage done to a sabber on a failed recon should be lower, much more like 2-3%.
This is still a significant amount. At the moment I would say people are too cautious of recconing someone who’s Naq and troop count they can’t see, if they are to fail at a recon, then its very, very difficult for them to do much damage to that player through sabbing so I don’t to see the reason why it needs to be 5%. If people didn’t potentially suffer such a heavy loss for recconing someone, then smaller alliances would have a better chance of finding out the stats of a high level player in a another alliance and seeing if they could attack them successfully by banding together. This is fairly realistic, 3 medium level players should be able to take down one high level player, to certain extent anyway.
4. Change the maximum number of times that a person can be successfully sabbed by one other person to 2.
i.e As soon as player A has successfully sabbed player B twice, they can no longer attempt to sab player B for another 24hrs. They can attempt it as many times as they like though (and suffer the huge losses). At 20% maximum damage (taking into account they still have to have the CA to be able to sab the target after a failed sab mission), this means that 3 players have to band together to do one player any real damage. IMO this is what sabbing should be about, where a group of players (and that’s got to be more than two) have to work together to cause significant damage. That damage shouldn’t be limited, as the number of players that can sabb one person effectively will not be that huge (see below).
5. Bring in a fairness system (similar to the Raiding rank limit), that stops massively powerful players destroying weak players, and forces powerful players to put some resources into CA.
If the above points were to be implemented, then a fairness system would need to be introduced to make sure CA is balanced and not abused. I would propose putting a rank limit on who you can sab (or be sabbed by). An intial figure which sounds ok (but would possibly need to be tweaked after introduction) would be anyone ranked +/- 1000 in relation to your rank. (i.e if your rank is 2,500, anyone ranked at 1,500 – 3,500 could sab you or be sabbed by you.) This does not mean that someone ranked 500 couldn’t sab you by dropping rank, but they would have to be extremely determined, and it would cost them time, money and power. (Which means that if you were sabbed by someone who dropped places to sab you, you can at least take satisfaction in knowing that it’s cost them, and if they had to drop a lot of ranks to do it, it may have actually cost them more than it cost you. Also you know that they had to spend at least half an hour to do it, and couldn’t just do it on a whim.)
6. Bring in a small element of chance to the success of the sab mission, which can help or hinder the sabber, but primarily make success or failure less predictable.
This should not be large, I’d say about 10% of your CA, so if you could wipe the floor with them you are not going to fail a sab, but if it’s going to be very close, then you may have to think twice… Or at least prepare a bit more for it. This should contribute towards stopping people sabbing for the hell of it.
7. Give a small chance that someone reconning a target can find out the realm alert level.
I see no reason why a spy who overhears a conversation between two guards could not report this information. Obviously, the chance (small to start with) should go down as the alert levels go up, representing how alert the covert agents in the targets realm are. As a suggestion: For the following alert percentages 0/10/20/40/70% the chance of finding out the alert level should be as follows: 0/20/15/10/3%.
8. Leave the Covert Action as it is.
This means that if someone is successful on all their sabbing missions, the most they could do in 25hrs is 40% damage to 25 people (or 20% to 50), but this is pretty limited in reality, because they are unlikely to be successful on *all* their missions, and they can only attack people ranked within 1,000 of themselves. (never mind the consequences of sabbing 50 people if you get caught so much as once…).
9. If any/all of these suggestions were to be implemented, ensure that all players have adequate time to prepare and understand them.
Send a message to all players giving them two weeks notice to make sure that everyone is aware of the changes so that high level players don’t lose vast amounts because they are not prepared. Prepare a summary of the changes and what they will mean in the real world for those players, with some advice on what they should do to protect themselves (pretty simple really, buy CA, lots of it, until its about equal with your other stats).
I appreciate that’s a lot of changes to make, but surely if this game is to progress then changes will be made to it sooner or later, not all of the changes would have to brought in together either. And I don’t think (obviously I don’t know for certain), that any of the changes would require major coding, mainly just a few additions and a few changes to calculations in existing code.
I hope this lengthy post gets some more discussion going on this
Note 1:
To clarify what I mean by a balanced player:
SA 10,000
DA 10,000
CA 20,000 (Anti 10,000 Infiltration 10,000)
MS 10,000
Total power = 50,000
So Infiltration at 10,000 – 50% = 5,000 (or 10% of 50,000)
(I use these low numbers for ease of reading)
I will copy and paste the post here in it's entirety as the quotes help to clarify what I'm babbling on about.
Wolf359 wrote:ZS Agent281 wrote:Wolf359 wrote:Should stay as they are - otherwise you could sab as many times as your are fast enough to click per turn! Your spies need some recovery time!!!
And your attack troops don't why?
I tend to agree - but limits have also been imposed as to the number of atatck turns you can amass - I believe the maximum is now 4000? Additionally, there is a defence against attack (defence), whereas the only defence against covert IS covert.
Covert was a big issue in the past, in that it was way to powerful and meant that the highest covert players had too much of an advantage. Through various changes Forum has managed to get it pretty well balanced. A change like this would definately upset that balance:
Example: 2 alliances go to war - one alliance previously decided to invest all their resources into building up one player's spy level and covert resources. Now this already occurs, but if this change was to be implemented it would make it possible for one person (given the resources of an alliance behind them, to effectively destroy the defence and attack of the entire opposing alliance.
That is why we do not have unlimited sabs.
We do not have unlimited recons for a similar reason - a powerful covert player could use this to sell intelligence on any other player in the game. Again, this already happens, but it is limited due to the limit on the number of covert turns. Additionally, it would give the powerful covert players an advantage in that it would make it easier for them to find players whose defences they could break - again, making the already powerful relatively more powerful!
The covert turn/recons/sabs system isn't broken - so why fix it? Besides, I have yet to see a good enough reason for a change like this to be implemented, other than the odd 'because I want it'!
I feel that some of the above points could be addressed in the following ways. Having played KoC (This game is based on the KoC game code and is about 80% the same apart from a few extra options in SGW.) a LOT back in Age 3 and 4 (for TSH if any of you have played it), I know what its like when you have unlimited sabs and recons in this kind of game, and have seen many different setups for the calculations for reconning and sabbing. (I certainly don't claim to be any kind of expert, this is a different game after all, but seeing how people have reacted to similar situations (psychologically) does give some insight as to how they will react to changes made to the sabbing system in SGW, IMO anyway..
)
Firstly, if sabbing is unlimited (I don’t really think it should be though TBH), I don't think you'll find high level covert players selling info on high level players defences, because instead of those high level players not bothering much with covert (just increasing it for rank) because its underpowered, they know that they have to put just as many resources into it as anything else, possibly more so, due to the risk of sabbing. This means that their CA level is similar to their other levels (unless they are a specialist in one stat, in which case they can't really be classed as a "high level" player IMO), and because of this, other players who are interested in their DA stat, will also have a decent CA level themselves, and will likely be able to glean it for themselves, or they will have someone in their alliance do it for them (obviously there's no charge for that…)
Secondly, I do not think CA is balanced, it is underpowered, and it would be difficult at best for any alliance to significantly do any damage through sabbing to another alliance due to the limitations. On an individual basis they may be able to cause damage, but not much, and this currently seems to be making the game a bit stale....
I think the following changes to CA would be well worth pursuing:
1. Change the maximum amount of damage done on a sab mission. I think 20% is quite reasonable.
If you read the other suggestions, you will (hopefully) see why I suggest this.
2. Change the damage done to the sabber on a failed mission to 20%.
50% is a huge loss if you have a lot of covert agents, 20% is still high enough to discourage sabbers unless they are fairly sure of themselves. At 50% one mistake is an enormous blow to someone with a high CA level, we’re potentially talking 5% of someone’s total power for a totally balanced player (note 1, see bottom of post), and if sabbing is to become useful, it will need to be a little forgiving so as not to discourage it’s use by newer players with lower level accounts who cannot afford the losses. Bear in mind that the loss of 20% of your covert agents is still a loss of 2% of your total power, this is far, far more than if you attack someone way out of your league with a normal attack. (And no one’s complaining about the balance of the normal attacks.)
3. The damage done to a sabber on a failed recon should be lower, much more like 2-3%.
This is still a significant amount. At the moment I would say people are too cautious of recconing someone who’s Naq and troop count they can’t see, if they are to fail at a recon, then its very, very difficult for them to do much damage to that player through sabbing so I don’t to see the reason why it needs to be 5%. If people didn’t potentially suffer such a heavy loss for recconing someone, then smaller alliances would have a better chance of finding out the stats of a high level player in a another alliance and seeing if they could attack them successfully by banding together. This is fairly realistic, 3 medium level players should be able to take down one high level player, to certain extent anyway.
4. Change the maximum number of times that a person can be successfully sabbed by one other person to 2.
i.e As soon as player A has successfully sabbed player B twice, they can no longer attempt to sab player B for another 24hrs. They can attempt it as many times as they like though (and suffer the huge losses). At 20% maximum damage (taking into account they still have to have the CA to be able to sab the target after a failed sab mission), this means that 3 players have to band together to do one player any real damage. IMO this is what sabbing should be about, where a group of players (and that’s got to be more than two) have to work together to cause significant damage. That damage shouldn’t be limited, as the number of players that can sabb one person effectively will not be that huge (see below).
5. Bring in a fairness system (similar to the Raiding rank limit), that stops massively powerful players destroying weak players, and forces powerful players to put some resources into CA.
If the above points were to be implemented, then a fairness system would need to be introduced to make sure CA is balanced and not abused. I would propose putting a rank limit on who you can sab (or be sabbed by). An intial figure which sounds ok (but would possibly need to be tweaked after introduction) would be anyone ranked +/- 1000 in relation to your rank. (i.e if your rank is 2,500, anyone ranked at 1,500 – 3,500 could sab you or be sabbed by you.) This does not mean that someone ranked 500 couldn’t sab you by dropping rank, but they would have to be extremely determined, and it would cost them time, money and power. (Which means that if you were sabbed by someone who dropped places to sab you, you can at least take satisfaction in knowing that it’s cost them, and if they had to drop a lot of ranks to do it, it may have actually cost them more than it cost you. Also you know that they had to spend at least half an hour to do it, and couldn’t just do it on a whim.)
6. Bring in a small element of chance to the success of the sab mission, which can help or hinder the sabber, but primarily make success or failure less predictable.
This should not be large, I’d say about 10% of your CA, so if you could wipe the floor with them you are not going to fail a sab, but if it’s going to be very close, then you may have to think twice… Or at least prepare a bit more for it. This should contribute towards stopping people sabbing for the hell of it.
7. Give a small chance that someone reconning a target can find out the realm alert level.
I see no reason why a spy who overhears a conversation between two guards could not report this information. Obviously, the chance (small to start with) should go down as the alert levels go up, representing how alert the covert agents in the targets realm are. As a suggestion: For the following alert percentages 0/10/20/40/70% the chance of finding out the alert level should be as follows: 0/20/15/10/3%.
8. Leave the Covert Action as it is.
This means that if someone is successful on all their sabbing missions, the most they could do in 25hrs is 40% damage to 25 people (or 20% to 50), but this is pretty limited in reality, because they are unlikely to be successful on *all* their missions, and they can only attack people ranked within 1,000 of themselves. (never mind the consequences of sabbing 50 people if you get caught so much as once…).
9. If any/all of these suggestions were to be implemented, ensure that all players have adequate time to prepare and understand them.
Send a message to all players giving them two weeks notice to make sure that everyone is aware of the changes so that high level players don’t lose vast amounts because they are not prepared. Prepare a summary of the changes and what they will mean in the real world for those players, with some advice on what they should do to protect themselves (pretty simple really, buy CA, lots of it, until its about equal with your other stats).
I appreciate that’s a lot of changes to make, but surely if this game is to progress then changes will be made to it sooner or later, not all of the changes would have to brought in together either. And I don’t think (obviously I don’t know for certain), that any of the changes would require major coding, mainly just a few additions and a few changes to calculations in existing code.
I hope this lengthy post gets some more discussion going on this
Note 1:
To clarify what I mean by a balanced player:
SA 10,000
DA 10,000
CA 20,000 (Anti 10,000 Infiltration 10,000)
MS 10,000
Total power = 50,000
So Infiltration at 10,000 – 50% = 5,000 (or 10% of 50,000)
(I use these low numbers for ease of reading)
