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12/24/2016 - Uncounterable Espionage


Alex
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Recently, with new war declarations being frozen, some players have taken advantage of the situation to execute espionage operations with effectively no consequences. Whereas the usual channels would be to respond via war, with war disabled, many nations were left defenseless and without recourse will come into the new war system seriously crippled, especially with the buff to espionage unit damages.

 

While originally when approached about this I denied rumors of any intended action (which was correct at the time - I had not stated to anyone that I intended to take any action nor was I even truly aware of what had happened) I am now making this statement publicly to say that I am considering some sort of reparative action to rectify the situation. I have not officially decided on any particular action, or any action at all, but would like everyone to know that I do see the actions as the result of an exploitable situation which I unintentionally created, and do not believe that players should be punished for.

 

As stated previously, the new war updates are fair game to go live anytime after all active wars have ended, and everyone will have at least 12 turns of beige to prepare after that period.

 

Also, to those who observe, Merry Christmas!

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They can just respond with war when the new update is opened. I dont see how this changes anything.

 

As I pointed out, if you go into the new war system with little to no spies, you're at a large disadvantage as someone with a lot of spies can now destroy a lot more of your units (between 6-30% in an update double-attack) compared to the old war system where unit espionage damage was very limited.

 

If that were not the case, it would be less concerning to me.

 

I can imagine starting the war with 0 spies and 82% of your max aircraft will be a very significant disadvantage.

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And now suddenly, completely out of the blue, the whole spy effort is getting...undone, somehow? Can you give us any details on how we're about to get screwed?

 

Did you read my post? I only stated that I was considering the possibility of taking action, not that I would.

 

And if you have 50 spies, and get sabotaged by 3 opponents with 50 spies each, you'll quickly be taken down to about 15 Spies remaining. 15 against 50 is only a 56% chance of success at the safest level, and your average spies killed per success is 1.

 

This is something that's also being addressed in the coming update, spy kills are being reduced by 30%. But in the current system, spy kills are very potent.

 

And as for leaving espionage operations enabled, yes I did, but I didn't expect this to happen. Again, did you even read my original post? I acknowledged this was the result of my mistake.

Then why do they not espionage back? It's a two way street.

 

See my response above where I did the math.

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First, you never think anything through to it's logical conclusion then you fold to whom ever whines the most. Also do you have plans to keep the server from crashing when you turn war declarations back on?

 

You state that you want wars to cost less but you did nothing to decrease the single most expensive cost of wars, In fact you just made it worse. Aircraft are way OP against tanks and ships and you did nothing to change that. All you did was make people want to build more ships that planes kill with ease so just that much more steel to throw away. You really should play the game for real and not just in the abstract. You would understand it much better that way.

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I think we paid dearly for killing all those spies. I was against doing it, because revealing hostility to those alliances and losing all surprise wasn't worth 7% of their planes per day or whatever we'd get.

 

You can give them back their spies, but you can't give us back what we spent. The ship has sailed. Any "reparative action" can only be completely one-sided.

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First, you never think anything through to it's logical conclusion then you fold to whom ever whines the most. Also do you have plans to keep the server from crashing when you turn war declarations back on?

 

You state that you want wars to cost less but you did nothing to decrease the single most expensive cost of wars, In fact you just made it worse. Aircraft are way OP against tanks and ships and you did nothing to change that. All you did was make people want to build more ships that planes kill with ease so just that much more steel to throw away. You really should play the game for real and not just in the abstract. You would understand it much better that way.

 

I'm sorry I'm not as perfect as you  :rolleyes:

 

I stated that I wanted wars to be more visual, and make more sense logically. This war update accomplishes both of those primary goals - resistance offers a visual metric with which wars can be measured, and now winning wars is 'a good thing.'

 

Soldiers, Tanks, Ships, Missiles, and Nuclear Weapons, and Spies were all buffed considerably with the war update. Comparatively, Aircraft have been nerfed, and while certainly still an important war component, they are now less-so.

 

What if I told you that I did play the game 'for real' for several months, and was even in your alliance?

 

EDIT: Not to mention, most of this is not related to the topic at hand here.

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I think we paid dearly for killing all those spies. I was against doing it, because revealing hostility to those alliances and losing all surprise wasn't worth 7% of their planes per day or whatever we'd get.

 

You can give them back their spies, but you can't give us back what we spent. The ship has sailed. Any "reparative action" can only be completely one-sided.

 

I agree, it's tough to fix anything here, which is why I've brought this up. I was hoping someone would come up with a unique solution I hadn't thought of that would minimize damages.

 

But it's 9% on average, or 18% on average in an update attack. Don't sell your advantage short in an attempt to protect it.

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Guest Curufinwe

As Woot and others have said, people who were spied have the exactly same options as those who have spied on them in the first place - they can spy back or, failing that, rally their friends to do so on their behalf. Mass spying is a legitimate tactic that is open to any properly organized alliance, regardless of whether a moratorium is imposed on new wars or not. Penalizing a more organized alliance for making use of a mechanic that is effectively open to everyone (which is what these unspecified remedial measures would do) during this period imposes an unfair disadvantage on those that were acting within the rules of the game when the war ban was in effect. I'd ask that you refrain from moving the goalposts on spying without considering the effect this would have on those that expended time, effort and money on making use of a mechanic that was not supposed to be impacted by the war update.

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But it's 9% on average, or 18% on average in an update attack. Don't sell your advantage short in an attempt to protect it.

My mistake, I was doing my math like it was 0-5% instead of 1-5%

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Sheepy, I respect you and really think you do try when you update your game but I'm gonna say I hope you don't take action because honestly this isn't something to take action against.

 

Those who spied can get spied back or even risk war retaliation if they get caught. Not to mention when the ones who do spy, they do risk loosing those spies and some operations aren't cheap if I remember. As Curu said, it's a legit tatic that was done within the riles of the game so I don't see why its a problem now.

Edited by Amaryllis

Nerd To The Core

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Sheepy if you weren't aware this kind of action you are considering taking is called admin abuse. You are purposely using your almighty powers to help one side over the other because one side thought of doing something first and the other cried and moaned about it (We all know Pre did this why act like he didn't). You also do this all the damn time but I feel like restating it a billion times will eventually help you realize what it is. You can't purposely stay this closely involved in the game and expect your player base to stay. You already pushed so many of us already do you really want to push more of us away? I suggest let Pre !@#$ and moan until he tires himself out. It works very effectively on my 5 year old nephew and Pre is basically acting like a 5 year old.

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☾☆

Priest of Dio


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I understand you don't play the game/know all of the relationships but please consider the massive political disadvantage you'd be putting certain people under if you decided to take action.

Edited by Lordship
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I can't believe how biased this game is against anyone with a brain. It's like using the mechanics is punished every time. Thinking of new ways to get the upper hand is literally the only interesting thing left to do in this game. It'll never grow if you keep on with this garbage, in fact it'll have the opposite effect.

☾☆


Priest of Dio

just because the Nazis did something doesn't mean it's automatically wrong

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I suggest spawning the armies of the losers back, giving back their infra, spawn 1,000,000,000,000 of each resource and send it to the guys you like, remove their spy and army caps so that they can have 999,999,999 of everything and give them a "beloved of the gods" modifier which makes their armies 100 times more effective. I think it would be only fair.

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I'm trying to look at both sides of this situation - so just bear with me. 

 

@Alex - first off, this is a game that many people love and enjoy to play. It is understandable that you're sitting up in your office alone and a lot of times you have the greatest intentions for this game and this community. Don't let the negativity get to you, but I would advise widening the funnel to let in a little more advice from the player base, especially the nerds. 

 

@Community - I can understand both side concerns. Espionage operations should have been shut off with the rest of the war options. Operations were executed, damage is done, identities are clear, and money has been spent. It's true, it is a two way street and we ALL knew this update was going to happen and the wars happened anyway. It's cool either way.

 

So, with that being said - my view on this is to let it be. Don't roll the servers back, don't push anything to anyone's nations to attempt to counter this mistake. In the end, it is a lesson you should learn from Alex and a lesson we all can learn from. 

 

Thats what I got. 

 

Merry Christmas.

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Wait, so you don't want players to be punished for your update - so you punish all the players who spent their time, income and effort organizing mass spy attacks? 

 

The spy don't come with no risk - they waste money, require organizational effort and they expose the person and alliance who spies. Everyone now knows who's fighting who.

 

 

This is aside from your inconsistency - first you deny interfering, then you "only" consider it, then you actually do it. Or maybe you don't. Either way - what the !@#$ is everyone supposed to do right now?

The operation was exposed, the effort put in was wasted and there was absolutely no result. Please explain to me how this what you think is fair and just? 

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Wait, so you don't want players to be punished for your update - so you punish all the players who spent their time, income and effort organizing mass spy attacks? 

 

The spy don't come with no risk - they waste money, require organizational effort and they expose the person and alliance who spies. Everyone now knows who's fighting who.

 

 

This is aside from your inconsistency - first you deny interfering, then you "only" consider it, then you actually do it. Or maybe you don't. Either way - what the !@#$ is everyone supposed to do right now?

The operation was exposed, the effort put in was wasted and there was absolutely no result. Please explain to me how this what you think is fair and just? 

 

Because the operation was only born knowing that the war system was offline and that it could go effectively unpunished until the start of the new war module. Players are using an out of game event to gain an advantage in game. The main reason Sheepy didn't announce when the war module was going to go offline was because some people wanted to use the timer to attack without recourse. This is the same scenario, however just one Sheepy did not foresee. Yes, we could spy back but anyone who's actually organized spy ops knows once you get hit with 5-6 spies ops against your spies you aren't doing anything back on the spy front. Coming into the new war system with 0 spies and all of our spy slots free to be hit (twice at update) gives any alliance a huge advantage, one born simply because the war system was offline. Had the war system been online a war would've already started and while you would have had an advantage, you would not have been able to spy further that day against units giving a chance for a defense to be rallied. This is not an option with the war system being offline, thus making it what Sheepy was trying to prevent, players gaining an large advantage due to the war system being offline -- It only makes sense it would be changed. 

 

You can claim I'm only against spying being in place during this because of what happened to my alliance, and you're damn right I'm going to be more adamant that this is shit, but it would be shit regardless of who it was being done to. I was against players attacking players just before the update, and that wasn't going to happen to me (if it was I didn't know). I was against missiles being OP way back when, when Guardian was full of missiles. I was against Air superiority being so high when my alliance ruled the sky. I was against low infra nations running rampant (before Arrgh did it) when I was running around as a rogue fighting people well under my city count. I'm against the espionage while the war system is offline because it is an exploit. TKR leadership themselves said that the only reason this attack went down is because the war module was offline, intentionally preventing any sort of recourse against them until spies were removed and the new system was rolled out making spies much more potent against units, but not other spies. 

 

--

 

That all being said, the easiest method of remedying this that requires also the least amount of coding work is simply to uncap spy purchases for the remainder of the war module being down. As to not hamper those who spent money doing the spy attacks and give them a reward, you can make spies cost more to buy at the increased rate. Somewhere between 2x-5x the normal cost (would make it at most 15M for 60 spies). Still gains them an advantage for the effort they put in for spy attacks without leaving alliances spy-less at the start of a war system revolving with massively buffed spy attacks. 

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