jaguar Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 So are you gonnna reduce the 10% infra destroyed when war is lost? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hooves Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 (edited) My circumstances are a little unique. I've never joined an alliance and rely on raiding for money. If all resources are looted then my defensive wars are going to hurt me a whole lot. That's why I ask, it might be time to settle down and join an alliance and become a semi-inactive player. I stand with this argument. Having all resources able to be looted is really rough. Edited December 5, 2016 by Hooves 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mageofpie Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 I stand with this argument. Having all resources able to be looted is really rough. Thinking more about it, the change could hurt alliances even more than they'd hurt me. It's nice that alliances have that safety net as an option, it kind of disappears if the change goes through. I like the % of resources looted and 20-25% of money is fine though, just makes rebuilding even more expensive which is gonna suck since wars might hurt like hell with the proposed system. Is that 20% of money stolen before the piracy perk? So 28% with? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auctor Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 (edited) After further review of espionage numbers, I've reduced the amounts to 1-5%, from 2-15%. This means it would take 20 turns to spy you down to half of a given unit, assuming you were at your max to begin with and every espionage operation you were hit with was targeting that particular unit.numbers don't work like that. They wouldn't be able to spy half, assuming they spied the maximum amount each time it would be 5%, then 5%, then 5%, then 5%. You would end up with an asymptote rather than killing 50% after 20 spy runs. If this isn't your intention, having the spy op remove a certain percentage of a total potential unit cap would be better. Also to add to the whether raw resources should be able to be looted thing, I think it's perfectly reasonable to keep them unlootable if the old nation caps are restored to specifically raw resources. I'm fine with it being a way to hide stuff but up to 9,999,999.99 worth of each raw is a bit extreme. Edited December 5, 2016 by Auctor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spooner Posted December 5, 2016 Share Posted December 5, 2016 Just to offer a counterbalance against the vocal minority -- the damage to infrastructure and resource looting seem like fair changes. Being able to "stash" resources in non-lootable form was always a silly mechanic, imo. With the new system, does the "Pirate" perk increase the amount looted, or no? Quote ☾☆ High Priest of Dio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Alex Posted December 5, 2016 Author Administrators Share Posted December 5, 2016 numbers don't work like that. They wouldn't be able to spy half, assuming they spied the maximum amount each time it would be 5%, then 5%, then 5%, then 5%. You would end up with an asymptote rather than killing 50% after 20 spy runs. If this isn't your intention, having the spy op remove a certain percentage of a total potential unit cap would be better. Also to add to the whether raw resources should be able to be looted thing, I think it's perfectly reasonable to keep them unlootable if the old nation caps are restored to specifically raw resources. I'm fine with it being a way to hide stuff but up to 9,999,999.99 worth of each raw is a bit extreme. Yes, they do work like that. If the range is 1-5%, on average, we would expect 3% each time. I had a typo, where I said turns, I meant days. You can look at the numbers for aircraft in particular here: Just to offer a counterbalance against the vocal minority -- the damage to infrastructure and resource looting seem like fair changes. Being able to "stash" resources in non-lootable form was always a silly mechanic, imo. With the new system, does the "Pirate" perk increase the amount looted, or no? Yes it does, and the other war policies like Moneybags reduce loot as well. 1 Quote Is there a bug? Report It | Not understanding game mechanics? Ask About It | Got a good idea? Suggest ItForums Rules | Game Link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fronin Posted December 6, 2016 Share Posted December 6, 2016 (edited) Excellent, Alex is using excel to proofread the next update's math. Being able to loot raw materials makes it more difficult to save money. At least make rebuilding infrastructure cheaper, otherwise build tall strategies won't work and the world economy would be stressed from it. Just look at the return of investment from infrastructure. Building 100 infra increases income by $15,000 per day. To make back the money from it within 60 days requires the infrastructure not to be destroyed, which would limit one to 1400 infrastructure roughly. Of course there's a bit more to it since one can build highly profitable factories, but the problem remains. Also: an asymptote will result if the enemy is building aircraft after it gets spied away. Edited December 6, 2016 by Fronin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beachrat Posted December 6, 2016 Share Posted December 6, 2016 As a note to everyone else who's posted and I didn't directly respond to - I read your responses and there are some legitimate criticisms. In my opinion, there are also a few concerns which I believe are misplaced or have already been addressed no, there is no tool that auto spies stuff away - that is against the rules i can guarantee that the people making these tools have told sheepy about them and he says theyre ok. Hi, Alex, this concern seems to be one you missed (unless I missed where you addressed it!). We have multiple people multiple times who have had a nuke miraculously spied away in the time it takes to click to the war screen, select nuclear missile, then click to launch the weapon. In other words, it was not possible, over and over and over again, to buy and launch a nuke before it was spied away. Within approximately 1 - 1.5 seconds or less. This fellow says that cheat, er, I mean, "tool", has been discussed and approved by you. Could you kindly either confirm, or correct the record? Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post seabasstion Posted December 6, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted December 6, 2016 it does seem rather silly to leave spy ops which is an integral component to the war mechanic of this game wide open to botting with the only policing being 'we promise we wont script it to hit the button' while simultaneously having captcha bot prevention on something as benign as training baseball players. it doesn't take a high level of coding knowledge to even build a nuke spy bot like this because of the error checks in the game. If i was fearful of getting hit by a nuke from a particular target and i felt like cheating all i would need to do is download a macro recorder like this: http://journal-macro.findmysoft.com/ https://www.jitbit.com/macro-recorder-lite/ step 1) refresh the spy ops page step 2) click on operation type dropdown box step 3) click on sabotage nuclear weapons step 4) click on attempt espionage you could do this because in the event they do not have nuclear weapons, you get this error returned "Error Your target doesn't have any nuclear weapons to sabotage." and your spy op is preserved. just loop this over and over limited by only the speed of my browser. i haven't been on the receiving end of these alleged 2 second spy ops but if nukes are consistently being spied away within second spy ops, and i mean consistently not just once or twice which is realistic to happen, i find it highly unlikely that the following could occur within 2 seconds 1) nation x builds a nuke 2) automated script monitors api of nation x. detects it being built 3) sends notification to group of users 4) user notices the notification 5a) users switch to tab/window of spy op ready to go (settings inputted already, pending click) 5b) window is launched of the correct spy target with the correct settings selected 6) user clicks launch attack there are two deficiencies in this system. there is a bottleneck at step 2. how often is this script checking the api? again if the reports are accurate that these are being spied away within 2 seconds than it has to be quicker than two seconds. every second? every half second? every 50ms? this level of frequency could easily be done through scripting and the deficiency alleviated; i guess the question is to alex is do you want these number of hits on your server continuously? the second deficiency, which is the largest in my opinion, is the human element at 4 and 5. even imagining the scenario where there are a set of teams each with built in redundancies (lets say 5 per team) that are always 'on call' to this notification. it still doesn't pass the smell test to me that they would ALWAYS (which is what is being reported - again i haven't experienced it) be able to receive the notification and click the espionage button within 2 seconds without fail as purported i actually built a small excel book to test my response time to see how i stacked up against this claim. what i made was a small script that would give me a messagebox and time how long it took for me to hit ok/enter. even when i knew when it was coming (i set it to 60 seconds at first), there were many occasions where i was under 500ms but also several occasions where i was over 1500ms. when i changed the variable time from anywhere between 5 seconds and 20 minutes, even hawking the computer screen the best i could being alert for the prompt, the very first time (which was around 8 minutes) i was just over 2 seconds. it took a lot of mental focus and it was limited to only 20 minutes. imagining the window to be 8 or more hours numbs my mind if anyone wants to try it out, here is the link to this book: https://www.dropbox.com/s/os88uwfvkhzq5mj/SpeedTest.xlsm?dl=0 here is the code for anyone that cares Sub TestResponse() Dim MinBound As Integer Dim MaxBound As Integer Dim RndTime As Integer Dim i As Integer Dim TimeStart As Single Dim TimeResult As Single Dim lRow As Long MinBound = 5 'seconds MaxBound = 1200 'seconds RndTime = Int((MaxBound - MinBound + 1) * Rnd + MinBound) 'number of seconds between 0 and 1200 randomized i = 0 Do While i < RndTime Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("00:00:01")) 'pause 1 second i = i + 1 Loop AppActivate ("Microsoft excel") 'bring window to front TimeStart = Timer 'start timer MsgBox "USER NOTIFICATION CLICK THE BUTTON" TimeResult = Timer - TimeStart 'end timer lRow = Worksheets("Results").Cells(Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row + 1 'last row of results Sheets("Results").Range("A" & lRow).Value = lRow - 1 'run number Sheets("Results").Range("B" & lRow).Value = Now 'current time Sheets("Results").Range("C" & lRow).Value = RndTime 'randomized seconds Sheets("Results").Range("D" & lRow).Value = TimeResult 'user response time End Sub so is it feasible to have a group of people monitor their computer screens and wait for a notification to hit the 'attempt espionage' button and succeed for months straight? yes it is feasible. but man oh man would that take some dedication. that group has my highest respect however, regardless if it is feasible or not, the current protocols, checks, and tools supported by the game natively allow for nuke spy botting to easily happen. it didn't take very long for me to devise a system with a low technical knowledge to be able to do this. relying on the userbase to pinky swear they wont have their script execute the final piece of code and bot the button for them is just plain naive. even if it isn't happening now, it will probably happen at some point in the future 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Alex Posted December 6, 2016 Author Administrators Share Posted December 6, 2016 I'm aware of how scripts could work, and I've already added a captcha field to Espionage operations if you've paid attention to the thread and changelog on the test server. To further address the issue, what I plan to do is make Missile and Nuke counts hidden from public knowledge, and remove them from the API, so you'll need to do a gather intel operation to know whether someone has missiles or nukes before you can spy them away. Hi, Alex, this concern seems to be one you missed (unless I missed where you addressed it!). We have multiple people multiple times who have had a nuke miraculously spied away in the time it takes to click to the war screen, select nuclear missile, then click to launch the weapon. In other words, it was not possible, over and over and over again, to buy and launch a nuke before it was spied away. Within approximately 1 - 1.5 seconds or less. This fellow says that cheat, er, I mean, "tool", has been discussed and approved by you. Could you kindly either confirm, or correct the record? Thanks in advance. Players watching the API and having it generate notifications for themselves is not against the rules. Please read above to see how I plan to address the issue. Quote Is there a bug? Report It | Not understanding game mechanics? Ask About It | Got a good idea? Suggest ItForums Rules | Game Link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hidude45454 Posted December 6, 2016 Share Posted December 6, 2016 If missile and nuke counts are removed from public knowledge, will they still contribute to nation score? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bota Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 (edited) I'm aware of how scripts could work, and I've already added a captcha field to Espionage operations if you've paid attention to the thread and changelog on the test server. To further address the issue, what I plan to do is make Missile and Nuke counts hidden from public knowledge, and remove them from the API, so you'll need to do a gather intel operation to know whether someone has missiles or nukes before you can spy them away. Players watching the API and having it generate notifications for themselves is not against the rules. Please read above to see how I plan to address the issue. Would attempting to spy away a nuke that isn't there result in a spent op? i.e. "Your spies were unable to disable any nuclear weapons" or will the current error message still be given and no loss of spy op? If the former, it would probably be fair to make that apply to Assassinate Spies as well, if the latter, no harm done I suppose. Edited December 7, 2016 by Bota Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fronin Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 (edited) It might be best to have different ground attack types: Attack Military (attacks military, destroys less infrastructure, loots little) Attack Civilian (attacks military, destroys more infrastructure, loots some, less chance of success and higher casualties for attacker) Pillage Nation (attacks military, destroys less infrastructure, loots plenty, less chance of success and greatest casualties for attacker) and not allow for a flat 10% looting victory. Edited December 7, 2016 by Fronin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Alex Posted December 7, 2016 Author Administrators Share Posted December 7, 2016 Would attempting to spy away a nuke that isn't there result in a spent op? i.e. "Your spies were unable to disable any nuclear weapons" or will the current error message still be given and no loss of spy op? If the former, it would probably be fair to make that apply to Assassinate Spies as well, if the latter, no harm done I suppose. Yes, it would. And I will make it apply to Spies as well if it doesn't currently. If missile and nuke counts are removed from public knowledge, will they still contribute to nation score? No Quote Is there a bug? Report It | Not understanding game mechanics? Ask About It | Got a good idea? Suggest ItForums Rules | Game Link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArcKnox Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 So when this doesn't have the intended effect on the game's political landscape, what will your next set of small gameplay changes involve? 3 Quote Praise Dio. Every !@#$ing day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fronin Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 So when this doesn't have the intended effect on the game's political landscape, what will your next set of small gameplay changes involve? But on the test server where everyone can get resources just be raiding, it works fine. Safe to say no one will have higher than 4,000 score after this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Alex Posted December 7, 2016 Author Administrators Share Posted December 7, 2016 So when this doesn't have the intended effect on the game's political landscape, what will your next set of small gameplay changes involve? What do you mean, changes to political landscape? This is about improving gameplay and player retention. Quote Is there a bug? Report It | Not understanding game mechanics? Ask About It | Got a good idea? Suggest ItForums Rules | Game Link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Insert Name Here Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 (edited) What do you mean, changes to political landscape? This is about improving gameplay and player retention. By player retention, you mean the ones who are either too stupid or too lazy to to get better at conventional warfare? If so then I understand why you'd lower the war mechanics to their level of mediocrity. - making a system where just using ships/missiles/nukes can easily win wars (Proportion wise, who bets more on those military units? The ones who keep losing); - increasing the amount of loot (Who are the chronical beigers in this game? That's right, the ones who keep losing); - removing nuke beige, which only harms the nuker and is a gift to the nation getting nuked (Who's more nuclear prone in this game again? Yep, you got it - the ones who keep losing). Plus, you say you wanna make war cheaper. Now that ships will actually be useful, you'll be forcing people - at least the ones who want to be as well prepared as possible - to get navies, which are expensive af. My guess is that the increased amount of loot won't help you with that cause either. Improving war mechanics by making it dumb and reducing the impact of coordination and skill involved in conventional warfare, whose intricacy and required amount of effort can be rendered useless by nuke/missile lobbing muppets... Topkek. Edited December 8, 2016 by Insert Name Here 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harrison Richardson Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Yes, it would. And I will make it apply to Spies as well if it doesn't currently. No Admit it, you had never thought about the necessity of answering either of these questions until they were asked because you're just making it up as you go. Which isn't terribly shocking, but still, yowza. 1 Quote ☾☆ And Dio said unto him, "I trust you. Share my word." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spooner Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Not being able to know if someone has any nukes without doing an info-check is ridiculous. If you're concerned about nukes getting spied away too fast (scripting) a decent compromise would be: -A nuke cannot be spied during the turn it is built in (or) -Nukes are only publicly visible if the player with the nuke has less than 25 spies. Also, Sheepy, you should consider the one-free-spy-op-per-day idea from earlier :3 Quote ☾☆ High Priest of Dio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Insert Name Here Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 (edited) Just so that no one thinks I'm crapping on Sheepy's new war system without any alternatives other than maintaining the current one, I'm gonna throw this out there. Imo this new war system wouldn't be absolute crap if a few simple changes were made: - making nukes and missiles not reduce any resistance; - making ships cost 5 MAPs instead of 4 (which makes complete sense, since naval attacks are supposed to reduce more resistance than airstrikes). Just these 2 suggestions wouldn't make the new war mechanics a total punishment to conventional warfare. Plus, the fact that ships would still reduce resistance would provide an interesting challenge to AAs who bet mostly on conventional warfare, since large navies would have a significant impact and would be tough to take down while the enemy still has a considerable amount of planes. I wouldn't even mind that the new war system's nuke beige and loot amount aspects stayed as Sheepy suggests. Edited December 8, 2016 by Insert Name Here 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spaceman Thrax Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 (edited) If the nuke spying is really such an issue, just make nukes spy exempt, as long as the person has exactly one. This would work on the assumption that anyone <could> have built one and immediately launched it. Removing them from the api/nation display changes the entire meta and is, as such, a major change. Edited December 8, 2016 by Manthrax 1 Quote Slaughter the shits of the world. They poison the air you breathe. ~ William S. Burroughs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArcKnox Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 So how long until everything is hidden because people who know things have an unfair advantage? Quote Praise Dio. Every !@#$ing day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spooner Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 It's just a silly change. It makes nukes into a weapon that cannot be countered, whatsoever. Quote ☾☆ High Priest of Dio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArcKnox Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Working as intended Quote Praise Dio. Every !@#$ing day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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