Energy, Manpower & Alliances: Proposed Changes

[Mike]

There are a number of problems right now, that are adding up to "stalemate" situations where nations can deploy massive arrays of temporary defenses whenever another nation threatens to attack, and so it becomes impossible to dislodge nations from whatever area they defend in this way. Below are some changes I propose, to address this and several other problems. Questions and comments are welcome. I'd like to get these problems fixed before open beta begins later this months.

Issues to address:

• Nations are able to use stored energy, as well as energy shared by allies, to temporarily deploy enormous arrays of defenses that are insurmountable to any attacking nation. Once the threat is gone, they salvage these extra defenses and return to their normal energy burn rate.
  Because nations can typically store some 10 hours worth of energy (at their energy generation rate), a nation can create defenses that burn double their energy generation rate, and maintain them for 10 hours before running out of stored energy. And, that's not counting the energy available from allies, which can extend this much further (or indefinitely) given a few allies of high enough level.
  • One approach to solving this would be to decrease the amount of energy that a nation can store. It could be decreased from say 10 hours worth to just 1 or 2 hours worth. But, that would get rid of one of the main reasons for having stored energy in the first place, which is so that a nation can log off and still have their defenses be functional for 10 hours or so, after having been brutally checkered.
• Nations share their entire pool of energy with their allies. So, nations can be created and leveled up just to act as energy sources to their allies. These nations then don't have to have any presence on the map, or do anything at all, to continue providing near limitless energy (given a few of them) to their allies.
• Without the above tricks, nations don't generate enough energy to defend any more than a very few orbs or resources.
• Energy and manpower storage structures currently just increase the maximum amount of manpower and energy that a nation can store if it saves them up, and so are not very useful and are rarely built.
• It would be nice to allow nations with larger teams to have some extra manpower since they burn through it more quickly, but to do so in a way that doesn't add overwhelmingly to the advantages that are already enjoyed by larger teams.

Proposal:

Overburn

• When a nation has more defenses than their energy generation rate can support, it costs extra energy to maintain energy use beyond that generation rate. So, for example:
  • If a nation has defenses that total 1.1x their energy generation rate, it would actually burn energy at say 1.4x their energy generation rate.
  • If a nation has defenses that total 1.5x their energy generation rate, it would actually burn energy at say 3x their energy generation rate.
  • If a nation has defenses that total 2x their energy generation rate, it would actually burn energy at say 10x their energy generation rate.
• This means it gets increasingly inefficient to support defenses above and beyond the nation's energy generation rate, and burns through stored energy at an increasingly fast rate.
• This would still allow nations to create more defenses than their energy generation rate can support, but only on a short term basis that could more easily be waited out by enemies.
• This would still allow logged off nations that get checkered to support defenses that use less than their full energy generation rate for many hours using stored energy.

Energy storage structures

• Energy storage structures can each hold a certain amount of energy and fill up over the course of 24 hours.
• The energy stored in these structures is available to the nation's allies, and is used by allies if/when they run out of their own energy.
• ONLY the energy stored in these structures is made available to a nation's allies. So, in order for a nation to share energy with its allies, it needs to build (and defend from being captured) energy storage structures.
  • This means that nations can't just be leveled up and then used as an inexhaustible source of energy to its allies. It will need to build and defend energy storage structures to make energy available to its allies, and these structures can run out of energy if the energy is taken from them faster than they fill back up.
• A nation is limited in how many energy storage structures it can build (or how much total energy it can share with allies).

More available energy

• Increase the energy generation rate available to nations through a combination of increasing the energy generation rate bonuses available with advances, and creating more energy resources.

Manpower storage structures

• Manpower storage structures could work in a similar way to energy storage structures, and allow limited sharing of manpower between allies.
• The new way storage structures will work will make it much easier to limit how much energy and manpower can be shared between nations. It makes sense for alliances to enable nations to gain a limited amount of extra manpower, especially for nations with the larger teams that it will take to pull this off successfully.

[Sphinx]

I have a question about this:

Overburn

• This would still allow logged off nations that get checkered to support defenses that use less than their full energy generation rate for many hours using stored energy.

If a player is at their energy limit and they get checkered when logged off. Does the overburn start, because lower geo would lower the energy generation rate?

[Napoleon]

After reading all this I see where you are coming from.

I myself am not too fond of not having enough energy to defend most if not all of my stuff. I do understand nations will need to make choices of importance.

With that being said, I don't have any other issues with what you are proposing.

However, to take this a step further... I think all structures should have a limit, that potentially increases with level. The higher the level. the more of one structure you can have. This doesn't just include energy and manpower structures, this goes for rockets as well.

It will prevent people from massing rockets, and force them to use some defensive strategy with defense combinations.

[Loki]

Not bad Ideas but I have a proposal of my own that fixes a lot. One thing before i type out my proposal is I Severely Disagree with sharing manpower. that will just get abused by the teams with enough people to abuse it... the WHOLE point of manpower is to limit 1 nations presence on the map. If you go and start giving them more ways to be unlimited you may as well just get rid of manpower alltogether.. I myself do not think manpower sharing is a good thing.

That said, I have A proposal that fixes all the issues of overbuilding and stalemates.

First thing to mention is Expanding Demand

Have you ever considered raising the initial cost of a defence structure based on how many the nation has purchased??
Example: A rocket launcher costs 20 energy and 20 manpower to build (just random numbers) Si the first RL would only costs 20/20... but have an expanding demand making it so each one purchased after that costs more initially... so say rl 2 is 30/30... then 40-40 ..... Numbers can be worked out betetr but I think you get the idea. What this would do is at the point when you have say 30 rocket launchers built it is going to cost you 5-6000 manpower/energy to build a single rocket.... thjis would discourage the overbuying as you mention.

A second way to fix this is to take a cue from Geo Eficiency and apply that principal to energy usage (i think manpower is fine it's doing tis job, dont get bullied by the 20 man team because they will try and twist the game to bennefit them not others.)

Supportable defences

(a lot of people will hate this idea or hate me for proposing it that is because they dont care about helping you develope the game, just making it working their favor, me however I am truly here for the game)

Same way Geo has a supportable land I feel liek this issue can be solved with a supportable defences.. heres how it COULD work

-Walls Excluded to encourage the use of walls - Means walls would noit add to the count of supportable defences
- A nation is limited to 20 supportable defences at level 1
-Each level a nation is granted 1 supportable defence ( to play on naps feeling of levelling up to have a purpose) This would make it so a level 100 nation can build 120 defences (excluding walls) before the penalties set in.
-possibly some towers could be worth more than 1 defence slot.. say a roocket launcher is used the most yes? make those worth 2 tower slots so people really have to startegize using these overused towers, or use advance points on more weaponry.

penalties

When over supportable defences defences will randomely crumble ( go shadowed out with the 10 hour timer to reclaim) this would happen to 1 random tower rather than any specific tower.
Example - I am at my supportable towers... I build 1 cannon.... 1 random tower I have built somewhere in the map becomes shadowed ( sort of how a random structure goes red and inert when out of energy) and must be resettled before ir crumbles. The nation can NEVER have more han the supportable towers.. the excess will just get shadowed out.... this would allow you to still build all of those extra towers but none would be in use outside of the amount supported.
You would really have to be careful because an iportanttower somewhere in the world may dissapear if your building wrecklessly.

A lot of people will oppose this because they will want to keep abusing the game mechanics rather than help you develope the game as I have done.

[Mike]

Thanks for the feedback.

I have a question about this:

Overburn

• This would still allow logged off nations that get checkered to support defenses that use less than their full energy generation rate for many hours using stored energy.

If a player is at their energy limit and they get checkered when logged off. Does the overburn start, because lower geo would lower the energy generation rate?

Overburn would only kick in if a nation is burning more energy on defenses than their full energy generation rate allows (regardless of what their current energy generation rate is, due to lowered geo efficiency). So if a nation's full energy generation rate is 1000/hr, and they have defenses that burn 1000/hr, but their current geo makes it so that they're only generating 500/hr right now, overburn will not kick in and they will only be using up 500 stored energy per hour, as normal. Only if they're burning over 1000/hr would overburn kick in.

I think all structures should have a limit, that potentially increases with level. The higher the level. the more of one structure you can have. This doesn't just include energy and manpower structures, this goes for rockets as well.

Have you ever considered raising the initial cost of a defence structure based on how many the nation has purchased??

Same way Geo has a supportable land I feel liek this issue can be solved with a supportable defences..

These are all alternative ways for putting a limit on how many defenses a nation can have active at one time. The game does already have a mechanism for limiting how many defenses a nation can support, that is the whole point of energy; the problem is that it's not doing its job well enough right now. The big problem is stored energy; take that away completely and energy generation rate becomes a straightforward limit on how many defenses a nation can support. But I can't do that because, since geo efficiency lowers energy rate, checkering can be used to lower a nation's number of supportable defenses. Stored energy provides a buffer against this, so that there's a grace period between when a nation is checkered and when their defenses actually start going inert. But, stored energy (along with energy from alliances) then also introduces the problem that energy's limit on a nation's supportable defenses is not a hard limit, and so a nation can make an enormous number of temporary defenses, resulting in stalemates.

The idea behind overburn is to make a nation's full energy generation rate a harder limit; if they have defenses that burn more than that rate they will burn through energy much faster, so it can only be very short term. In its most extreme form, overburn would cause any energy use beyond the full generation rate to immediately use up all stored energy, and so the full generation rate would become a hard limit on supportable defenses. I'm proposing not quite that extreme a version, so that there is still some wiggle room to deploy some temporary extra defenses.

[Loki]

That makes a lot more sense explained that way. Try the patch m8. I know you are trying to get feedback before you do a lot of coding and this is an important change to the mechanics of the game... but were also still only in alpha.. try it out in a seperate client.... if it fails horribly... revert back to the old client no harm done. Your using a client system not hotpatches so thats a lot easier to go back to an older client.

try it out and let us see it in effect team perrin, croOne, and team everyone else will be your best feedback for this as i dont have a nation over 100 as I have been testing things in the lower and middle areas. The way I truly feel about stalemates is if both nations are willign to build SO mahy defences around an orb let them. I'll just go take their other orbs while they sit at a stalemate.... or ill come take the orb they are stalemating over and cause a larger fight there and provoke them to fight it out. I feel like if there is a stalemate .. one of the teams has the orb one does not... someone won and has extra defense due to the enemies agression... on both ends this is not a very tactical decision. Remember that a lot of this feedback is coming from a 20 man team trying to bend the game to how they want it to be, not how is efficient and proper. I have tested many low and middle tier nations and it has NOT become an issue in any nation i have made. energy is manageable.. and also killable... if anything we need more defence for the level 4 orb than we do for the fire.... currently no 1 nation could hold the lower orbs.. requires making several defending nations.... however once there is experience coming from orbs that will stop 1 nation from sitting on the low level orbs for too long..... until i just decide to use 1 nation let it sit as long as i can then unite it and do it again.

[Steve]

Loki,

Your an idiot.

For some reason you keep mentioning this "20 man team" thing like its hurting you personally, grow up.

I find it funny because only a few members of our team are actually playing still, and I've not been on for awhile now, I have learned what I needed to and will wait, just like many of us.

If you Slayer, Perrin, or anyone else who wants to spend all your times trying to take down the 3-4 man faction of our team down, go ahead, enjoy, and wait for launch when you guys will keep needing to hide from us, cowards

Now please allow me to explain something in terms YOU might understand..

The private conversations I have been having with Mike from time to time consists of me loading little bullets (proposed changes to help SOLO players) into Mikes gun (The guy creating the game and can make the changes) For him to fire (Actually implementing the changes) towards a target (The playerbase)

Obviously I had to use a gun reference because it seems that's your thing isn't it, using Gun threats, to which happened in game and after being reported to Mike with time stamps of when it happened, decided to respond about 2 weeks later saying he wasn't going to do anything about it, pretty poor on his part but his choice non the less.

So everyone please feel free to threaten anyone with any sort of weapons, threaten to visit their homes and execute them, its all allowed apparently.

Mike you have a long way to go before the game is released to the public, right now it will certainly crash and burn, your problem is your listening to different people saying different things, and trying to find a middle ground, good idea in theory, bad idea in reality, just like most of the new features on this game.

Like i did mention to you in private, log in, spend time in various nations, go log into the lower level nations, and see how clicking your way through to the top works, log into the nations fighting for orbs and see how the battles work at the higher levels, you will see just how bad things are.

Also may i suggest if unity cannot handle sometime small like message logs and mapped flags then you do away with it and get better server hosting capabilities, if we cant handle flags, how is the game going to handle 100s if not thousands of potential customers, the lag will be insane.

Right now if i was playing to enjoy playing the game, i would of uninstalled and gone to play something else, but i have a goal to see to it that Spitfire remains the best nation of old woc and then new, and to make sure Slayer and his little band of merry butt kissers remain hidden and never achieve anything.

Well thats if i dont get banned for this post. Peace.

[Perrin]

Steve,

I'm just going to respond because I was mentioned.

I agree. Loki is an idiot and there are only a few of you playing right now. But I'm not hiding and I'm not a coward. I never hid and last I checked I'm the only one hitting your orbs and holding onto them. When the game launches, you'll still see me competing for your orbs and not hiding.

Despite of who I'm being accused of playing with, I brought up barbs by myself and helped orbholders so terror can compete also. I'm not saying that because I think highly of myself because there are far better players than me. I'm saying it because I'm right in the open im not hiding. The rumors that I have other people, like slayer and Loki, hitting you from different nations was created by your team's paranoid imagination.

[Mike]

Obviously I had to use a gun reference because it seems that's your thing isn't it, using Gun threats, to which happened in game and after being reported to Mike with time stamps of when it happened, decided to respond about 2 weeks later saying he wasn't going to do anything about it, pretty poor on his part but his choice non the less.

So everyone please feel free to threaten anyone with any sort of weapons, threaten to visit their homes and execute them, its all allowed apparently.

I asked you if the threat had taken place in-game, and you said that it was on Facebook. Like I told you in private, I can't start banning people from the game for alleged bad behavior that takes place on platforms that I don't control. That would be open to an enormous amount of abuse -- "proof" in the form of screenshots could easily be faked, and it would be impossible to confirm that an identity on some other platform is the same as a particular WoC player. That said, threatening to kill someone is obviously very serious and (as I also told you in private) should be reported to law enforcement. If that were done, and there were a verifiable police report or restraining order involved, then I could consider banning the player from the game. And no, threats like that will not be tolerated in the game or on the forum.

Like i did mention to you in private, log in, spend time in various nations, go log into the lower level nations, and see how clicking your way through to the top works, log into the nations fighting for orbs and see how the battles work at the higher levels, you will see just how bad things are.

I do plan to do a run during beta. As you know that takes a lot of time, and right now I need all of that time to work on the game. So for now I'm relying on you guys to let me know where the trouble spots are.

Also may i suggest if unity cannot handle sometime small like message logs and mapped flags then you do away with it and get better server hosting capabilities, if we cant handle flags, how is the game going to handle 100s if not thousands of potential customers, the lag will be insane.

Unity is the game engine used for the client, so it has nothing to do with the server. It has trouble dealing with thousands of messages / map flags / etc. at the same time. I fixed this with messages by having them only load in small batches as needed. Eventually I'll work on something similar for map flags.

Right now if i was playing to enjoy playing the game, i would of uninstalled and gone to play something else,

That's the whole point of testing, to fix all the issues that keep the game from being fun.

[Napoleon]

Mike, my comment on defense limits had nothing to do with energy really.

It had more to do with another means of limiting structures.

So what you limit energy further. Nations will still just mass the best defenses on the couple of important targets they want to keep.

Then what do you do? Limit that defense more? Reduce fire rate, decrease damage?

That seems like a long drawn out process that isn't necessary. Considering all you'd be doing is effectively nerfing defenses until their effectivity is rendered useless.

Rockets are good for a reason, and you've changed how they operate how many times? And.... how many more times to come?

Why not limit the amount of the best defenses they can build? So they have to place their best defenses to defend their important property. Then that means the remaining energy they can use to plac crappier defenses so they can still protect their stuff. Just not as effective.

Nations should have to make choice yup, but there is no reason why they can't defend most of their stuff. Limiting how many of the good defenses they have is easier than nerfing energy entirely.

I support this, others may not. I feel this is best because then at the end of the day if energy is so limiting then defense is pointless. I won't even waste techs on it other than walls to force my way onto peoples well defended stuff.

Rather go offense than defense at that point.

At least with the other way, i could go for rockets then say okay... i need to get this psi defense structure because its a good low energy weak structure that gets the most bang for my buck. Since i cant make more rockets it gives me incentive to get that tech now for the cheap, semi effective weak defense.

Just saying.

Do as you want, i just feel your solution doesn't solve nations from massing one of the best defense structures on one target they want to keep.