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End off-shore banks for Alliances


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I think offshores are necessary. There's a massive black market for resources unavailable to many, offshore have made it viable to leave it closed. If we ended offshores, you'd see many issues arise, one being lower ppu per resource since there wouldn't be any black market, considering all the trades would be logged and public. 

Not to mention this raise issues, like that alliances such as NPO would only be able to hold 7.5b cash max. That isn't enough for an alliance that size, with an average city like that. Soup Kitchen, to rebuild would cost anywhere from 7-11b. This just wouldn't make any sense, not to mention that looting alliance banks would be easier since a certain nation would have to hold the AA bank.

This would also leave any alliance who loses a major war/dogpile in turmoil. Their bank stashed in a nation, stolen through the dogpile, then their alliance wouldn't be allowed to hold enough in their bank so rebuilding would have to either be done through massive loans, or they'd have to suck it up and do the bare minimums with WC, Infa and MMR to build wealth back. Ultimately this just doesn't seem worth it imo.

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Other issues I see, what if you were say at the cap and then you have a splinter and half the alliance leaves. Does excess get deleted?

If so I could see some pretty big exploits and if it doesn't then the cap is pretty exploitable. I don't think there is much of a fix here that won't be easily worked around or cripple the alliance banks to be basically useless.

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[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

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While I agree, it would be nice to eliminate this weird mechanic, I don't really know how to go about it in a meaningful way.

I mean the simplest answer would be just to eliminate looting of alliance banks altogether. While that's not ideal, and basically makes funds/rss untouchable, that's more or less the de facto status quo anyway. It would eliminate all the extra 1-3 nation alliances clutter, and there's be less of a penalty to some nations/alliances for not being clever enough about hiding their stuff.

The mechanics would more or less be the same as now; you could hide all of your money/rss in a bank (your alliance bank) and if you got Blockaded you'd be screwed. I don't know, I don't like it, but it wouldn't really make anything different than it is now.

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1 hour ago, Alex said:

I mean the simplest answer would be just to eliminate looting of alliance banks altogether. While that's not ideal, and basically makes funds/rss untouchable, that's more or less the de facto status quo anyway. It would eliminate all the extra 1-3 nation alliances clutter, and there's be less of a penalty to some nations/alliances for not being clever enough about hiding their stuff.

Personally don't think this is necessary. Allowing the looting of alliance banks when carelessness/inactivity/whatever comes into play is a good way of encouraging the opposite. What is not good is disabling the ability of players to prevent this altogether as Shifty's suggesting. I'm all for improving the system, but I don't think this should be anywhere near the consideration list right now.

Also, question:

1 hour ago, Alex said:

and if you got Blockaded you'd be screwed.

How so?

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5 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

How so?

If you're in a war and all your money/rss are protected in the bank, being blockaded means you no longer have access to them. Your warchest doesn't do you much good if you can't use it.

5 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

I'm all for improving the system, but I don't think this should be anywhere near the consideration list right now.

What do you think would improve the system?

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2 minutes ago, Alex said:

If you're in a war and all your money/rss are protected in the bank, being blockaded means you no longer have access to them. Your warchest doesn't do you much good if you can't use it.

I misunderstood. I thought you were saying that you'd be screwed due to a change in the system. 

2 minutes ago, Alex said:

What do you think would improve the system?

I was referring to the changes being played out in test / being proposed currently, in that we can probably put changes to the alliance looting function on the back-burner for now.

Edited by Dio Brando
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To add to what basically most people have already said here, I'll go to a bit of an extreme here. Recalling Knightfall where five major alliances (and a few smaller ones) fought over 30 other alliances. If offshore banks weren't available and you were forced to keep all your belongings in your bank, then the banks of those five major alliances on the losing side would've been looted into oblivion.

Naturally that would've ended the war sooner than it did end but at the same time it would create a situation in which these alliances would have been basically unable to rebuild themselves and their resources for future wars would been depleted. These alliances probably would've been out of the game - in the sense of being able to go to war again - for months. And being weakened they could've become an easy target for new declarations.

Taking offshore banks out of the game could potentially do so much damage to alliances in wars that they basically either can't recover from it at all or it takes them an unreasonable length of time.

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Uh, didn't BK during Ayyslamic Crusade just play hot potato with the bank by moving it between the BK Bank and the beiged nations of gov members?
Mate if you can't figure out how to coordinate that your alliance deserves to be KO'd like that, it's not massively different from the offshore bank beige hot potato TCW played.

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1 hour ago, Alex said:

While I agree, it would be nice to eliminate this weird mechanic, I don't really know how to go about it in a meaningful way.

I mean the simplest answer would be just to eliminate looting of alliance banks altogether. While that's not ideal, and basically makes funds/rss untouchable, that's more or less the de facto status quo anyway. It would eliminate all the extra 1-3 nation alliances clutter, and there's be less of a penalty to some nations/alliances for not being clever enough about hiding their stuff.

The mechanics would more or less be the same as now; you could hide all of your money/rss in a bank (your alliance bank) and if you got Blockaded you'd be screwed. I don't know, I don't like it, but it wouldn't really make anything different than it is now.

This seems like a decent fix. There isn't much alliance bank looting anyways outside the rare mistake, so this just makes it more convenient then funneling endless resources back and forth.

2 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

Uh, didn't BK during Ayyslamic Crusade just play hot potato with the bank by moving it between the BK Bank and the beiged nations of gov members?
Mate if you can't figure out how to coordinate that your alliance deserves to be KO'd like that, it's not massively different from the offshore bank beige hot potato TCW played.

Exactly. 

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6 minutes ago, Mitsuru said:

Well the thing is that the intention of you and the original poster is different.

Shify wants to abolish alliance banks so that people can raid alliance banks and get nice loot.

You want to abolish alliance banks because you don't like the cluster of tiny alliances.

I have not much of a problem with the cluster and would oppose eliminating alliance bank looting entirely just for the sake of reducing the number of alliances. I think offshore banks in total are not as much of a problem when it comes to the huge amount of alliances in comparison to many dead alliances that basically make up almost every alliance from #150 to (currently) #240 in the alliance ranking. If reducing the number of alliances is an important matter for you, then I would suggest you implement something into the game that leads to the deletion of alliances below a certain alliance score and below a certain amount of members after a certain amount of time if all the members are inactive.

Edit: One of the reasons I oppose abolishing alliance bank loot entirely is because the occasional slip does happen. Grumpy Old Bastards during Knightfall would be a good example for that.

Mistakes should have consequences especially when another player capitalizes on it. Isn’t this the logic used to defend your alliance mate’s bot in the past?

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7 minutes ago, Mitsuru said:

Edit: One of the reasons I oppose abolishing alliance bank loot entirely is because the occasional slip does happen. Grumpy Old Bastards during Knightfall would be a good example for that.

I mean I would argue that you shouldn't be able to and the only offshores looted this year were political enemies. Its a mechanic with no basis in the real world and just makes it more annoying. The fact that one mistake in a war can cost billions doesn't encourage war.

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3 minutes ago, ?ϟħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™? said:

Mistakes should have consequences especially when another player capitalizes on it. Isn’t this the logic used to defend your alliance mate’s bot in the past?

As you can see when reading my post, I have perfectly pointed out how mistakes can have consequences. Sephiroth. Grumpy Old Bastards. Knightfall.

Also I'm not entirely sure what kind of bot you're referring to but what does Shifty trying to stirr up beef matter?

1 minute ago, The Mad Titan said:

I mean I would argue that you shouldn't be able to and the only offshores looted this year were political enemies. Its a mechanic with no basis in the real world and just makes it more annoying. The fact that one mistake in a war can cost billions doesn't encourage war.

Sorry for the double post. (Nvm. Apparently double posts get combined automatically. How convenient). I mean that is a perfectly valid opinion as far as I'm concerned. And if a majority of players would support abolishing the looting of alliance banks all together, then I wouldn't protest until my dying breath because it would be such an outrageous change. I just don't personally like it. :)

Edited by Mitsuru
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Just now, Mitsuru said:

As you can see when reading my post, I have perfectly pointed out how mistakes can have consequences. Sephiroth. Grumpy Old Bastards. Knightfall.

Also I'm not entirely sure what kind of bot you're referring to but what does Shifty trying to stirr up beef matter?

I misread it, I see you do support occasional loot. Carry on.

The thing is, a coordinated alliance will still beat up a useless one. So even if the suggested idea that it’d discourage war, you only really need one side to feel lucky and confident.

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Mitsuru beat me to the punch on a lot of what I had been planning to say here so I'll just elaborate. I think finding ways to hide/protect your bank during war is part of the game and I don't think alliance offshores are inherently unlootable because, as Mitsu said, slip ups do happen. Mitsu gave one example during Knightfall but the war before that, it was us that it happened to. Other common methods have been to hide the bank with your allies who aren't fighting or to hide it in a nation and we've seen situations where those were looted too. All manners of protecting banks during war require some amount of coordination and we've seen where people have dropped the ball for various reasons. I think that's all part of the game and I enjoy seeing the creative solutions people come up with for trying to protect their banks and the ways other opposing players try to adapt to it. As for it discouraging war upon the occasional loot, I disagree. It didn't stop us when it happened to us. It just forced us to improve our system and pay better attention/stay on top of things and that helped us keep it safe all throughout Knightfall (sooo... thanks, KT ?). I don't think abolishing them as Shifty is proposing is the solution for the reasons that have already been stated but I don't think getting rid of alliance looting altogether is either.

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Ending alliance bank looting would make this game a lot more playable for newer alliances as well. Not having to build up the infrastructure to be able to hide your stuff at a second's notice is just a better deal.

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Guest Frawley

Alliance Bank looting targets those who don't have the infrastructure/resources to get around it. The volume of scripts that hit this game to protect banks would also reduce if the mechanic was removed. On the flip side it might reduce the scope for surety and trust services metagame, but its not a huge part of it presently either.

Edited by Frawley
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Offshore banks are not the only manner of protecting banks in this game, so I disagree there. There are already other options for alliances who don't have the infrastructure for an offshore.

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5 hours ago, Auctor said:

Ending alliance bank looting would make this game a lot more playable for newer alliances as well. Not having to build up the infrastructure to be able to hide your stuff at a second's notice is just a better deal.

Yes, this is a big part of why they're bad. 

It's just introduced a lot of different ways of hiding and people trying to do what they can to squeeze into the rules. There's no reason for the function to be in place. It's usually been unnecessary extra spoils of war for winners except for some incidents. A wealth transfer from those who are getting beat down to the winners is counterproductive.

 

Edited by Roquentin
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Well, I'd have to say that while removing alliance bank looting would help me and my own personal gameplay style a great deal, it just isn't something I want to see. It would remove the creativity and challenges of setting up the offshore banks, protecting them, negotiating where to put them, the risks inherent in such resource consoldiation, etc. Offshoring is part of the game; the one thing that really could be improved is how micros that struggle to hit 1k score in any of their individual nations can't really create their little offshore havens. I can't think of a good solution to that which isn't either exploitable or terrible, though.

15 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Yes, this is a big part of why they're bad. 

It's just introduced a lot of different ways of hiding and people trying to do what they can to squeeze into the rules. There's no reason for the function to be in place. It's usually been unnecessary extra spoils of war for winners except for some incidents. A wealth transfer from those who are getting beat down to the winners is counterproductive.

That's true, but we can hardly have wars without risk; looting isn't something to discourage, especially when it can be managed carefully with activity and creativity.

Edited by Sir Scarfalot
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I’ve had some time to think about it a bit more. I posted my opinion earlier as well, which in essence was against the initial suggestion by Shifty. This one is more addressed to Alex’s proposed change: 

I really don’t agree with the idea that you need to kill alliance looting altogether, but I’m on the fence (leaning towards ‘No’) because it has its up’s and down’s. On one hand it encourages and promotes activity & coordination, which is good. On the other, historically we’ve seen people get looted when they’re on the losing side. 

Off the top of my head I can only remember one incident of *AA looting* that was done by the loser in that war (and not nation that was holding the bank getting looted), and even that amount was pretty much insignificant. Happened with Thalmor (then Terminus Est) beigeing Chaunce/Flame of the Flawed from The $yndicate, if I remember correctly. 

The game as it is should promote and encourage those who coordinate and strategise more than those who do not. As Scarf points out, risk taking isn’t something we should discourage either. That said, we’ve seen again and again that the sizeable looted found are because of an almost uncapped hard value (goes up to 33% of the bank if I remember correctly); the formula is % based (with a ‘small’ RNG factor) and the scenarios in which we see  looting become a major issue are those of shell alliances/nations hosting the bank. Perhaps a tweak to the formula (in that the looting of a shell AA would still be damaging but not debilitating) might be better. 

That said, if the collective and Admin decide the mechanic isn’t necessary anymore, no big issue from me. 

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