Discouraging "Offshore" Alliance Banks

[Reagan]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

 

 

 

I have no qualms with just removing alliance bank looting altogether. In my opinion, it's a mostly avoided mechanic anyway through "offshore" alliance banks, and therefore removing it would remove the clutter and confusion of additional 1-man alliances being created and recreated constantly.

You could also implement requirements for alliance creation to help with the issue of one man alliances...cost 1 credit to create an alliance, nation age must be “x” days, and so forth. 

[dtc justice]

4 hours ago, Epi said:

Alliance bank caps scaling with cities and resource expiry would not only solve this problem but positively impact the game elsewhere. 

Bank caps doesn't work for private bankers + people who are just filthy rich...

I feel like the best solution is to either leave offshores as is but put a minimum city  to create and be a leader of an alliance to like 8 or something....

Or to get rid of bank looting all together

[Limbuwan]

Removing bank loot is the worst possible option put forward by some players here.

 

[Leftbehind]

Starting to feel like the only person that thinks offshoring adds a challenge to the game. It takes teamwork to bounce the bank around and even though it's not a complex process people mess it up all the time. Which leads to glorious memes and banter. 

I get why you want to end the unraidables but I dont think removing bank loot or offshores is helping make the game interesting. You might as well make it that a blockaded bankers can't send out aid if you wanna just throw things at walls to see what sticks. 

[Theodosius]

On 2/26/2020 at 5:45 PM, Basebond said:

I miss the Downvote button

 

On 2/26/2020 at 6:45 PM, namukara said:

This is what downvotes were created for.

 

I will champion your cause, friends! Rally for the Downvotes!

[namukara]

19 hours ago, Alex said:

 

 

 

I have no qualms with just removing alliance bank looting altogether. In my opinion, it's a mostly avoided mechanic anyway through "offshore" alliance banks, and therefore removing it would remove the clutter and confusion of additional 1-man alliances being created and recreated constantly.

Here is a revolutionary idea:

 

If it's not broken, don't break it more in an attempt to fix it.

[Shiho Nishizumi]

10 hours ago, Leftbehind said:

Starting to feel like the only person that thinks offshoring adds a challenge to the game.

Challenge that yields results if handled properly. Which is how things should be. And all it takes is one (preferably two) person that's dependable.

Just leave as is is what I would do, especially when there's a higher than a coin flip chance that the "fix" would break something else unintentionally.

Edited February 28, 2020 by Shiho Nishizumi
Minor edit.

[Guest Zephyr]

On 2/26/2020 at 11:53 PM, Alex said:

I find the use of "offshore" alliance banks a confusing gimmick that doesn't really improve gameplay. Alliances are effectively forced to use this gimmick to remain competitive, and I think that discouraging its use would be better for everyone. I have a few suggestions on how to do that:

• Set stricter standards on alliance creation:
  • Nation must be at least 30 days old to create an alliance
  • Nations can only create one alliance every 30 days (to prevent constant new alliance creation)
• Disable alliance banks when alliances have less than 5 members
  • While the specific threshold could vary, in my opinion every "real" alliance has at least 5 members. This requirement would prevent frivolous 1-man "offshore" alliance banks, and would increase the probability of an offshore being raided (and thus discourage the use of "offshores" altogether)

I think that these changes would discourage the creation and use of "offshore" alliances, which again, in my opinion don't add anything valuable to the game but instead force others to use the same gimmick to be competitive.

These improvements to game mechanics would help to eliminate situations like this: https://politicsandwar.com/alliance/id=7244

That alliance has one nation with 0 score and is effectively "unraidable." Alliance banks are not intended to exist to eliminate the possibility of money and resources being looted.

I feel like a lot of the "band aid" fixes offered just swing the advantage further towards larger alliances that can still circumvent them (the band aid fixes I've heard all seem to have workarounds or other major issues). I'm also not keen on alliance creation/operating restrictions based on the number of start up members or nation size as it will just roadblock smaller start up efforts and impose a presupposed correct way to play the game.

11 hours ago, Alex said:

I have no qualms with just removing alliance bank looting altogether. In my opinion, it's a mostly avoided mechanic anyway through "offshore" alliance banks, and therefore removing it would remove the clutter and confusion of additional 1-man alliances being created and recreated constantly.

I like the idea of just making banks unlootable as it seems at this stage established alliances are already next to unlootable anyway with offshore bank systems, and the status quo just disadvantages younger alliances that haven't had time to establish trusted relations to build their own offshore bank system.

This would also make the Hiding Alliance Banks rule redundant and further reduce need for game moderation.

[Viselli]

The problem with offshores is you can just move the bank back and forth indefinitely. I propose a 2 part change. First, you have to be a city 10 in order to create an alliance. I chose city 10 since that's the city number you can build to without a city cool down so its not prohibitive for new nations wanting to try to make a legit alliance, but its high enough to enable people to attack the nation that created the offshore. The second change would be to make it so you cant access your alliance bank while blockaded. This would prevent offshores from moving the bank back and forth and would encourage smart warfare in order to loot the bank.

[Mitsuru]

On 2/28/2020 at 6:58 AM, Limbuwan said:

Removing bank loot is the worst possible option put forward by some players here.

 

That is objectively false. An alliance like Rose would be severly screwed over by Alex' suggestions or the caps some people have proposed. So I'm sure your leadership could do much worse than bank loot being removed.

[Wendell]

On 2/27/2020 at 2:34 PM, Princess Adrienne said:

@Alex's concern seems to be more cosmetic than anything from what I remember and about cleaning up the alliances/getting rid of extraneous ones. If that is the case, this current suggestion in the OP isn't the right answer. A more permanent solution that addresses the gameplay issues that lead people to create offshores is what really needs to happen if you really want to eliminate offshores, Alex

His problem is that he doesn't want to moderate. He said this in the past, he avoids moderation whenever he can. His solution is unfair because his terrible moderation come at the expense of the players, when it should be at his expense. Normal people hire moderaters not punish the very players that support the game.

[Exar Kun -George]

Actually a good idea would be restricting alliance creation to 30 days, would require gov to cycle offshores leaving it slightly more at risk, dont add the stupid people requirement ect

22 hours ago, Viselli said:

The problem with offshores is you can just move the bank back and forth indefinitely. I propose a 2 part change. First, you have to be a city 10 in order to create an alliance. I chose city 10 since that's the city number you can build to without a city cool down so its not prohibitive for new nations wanting to try to make a legit alliance, but its high enough to enable people to attack the nation that created the offshore. The second change would be to make it so you cant access your alliance bank while blockaded. This would prevent offshores from moving the bank back and forth and would encourage smart warfare in order to loot the bank.

The issue is with the fundamentals itself 

 

ex. TKR, tCW, Rose ect.. with 100 members could afford to easily send 6 people to a offshore, set 5 to members, one leader to just be a offshore. 

 

While i am not a huge fan of offshores, I do believe thats since there is no viable and fair fix to just leave them be. 

Edited February 29, 2020 by George

[Alex]

How about a "soft" limit on alliance banks to discourage "offshores"?

Instead of just making all bank contents unlootable, the first X money and Y resources are invulnerable to looting, which scales based on an alliance's (active nation) city count. Then, there wouldn't really be a need for "offshore" alliance banks because the majority of your money/resources would be protected anyway. If you were hoarding a lot in your alliance, though, it wouldn't all be invulnerable. And by making an "offshore" you wouldn't be gaining any additional protection since the amounts would scale by city count.

This seems like it could be a better compromise that would improve the situation without drastically hurting anyone.

[Joel James]

16 minutes ago, Alex said:

How about a "soft" limit on alliance banks to discourage "offshores"?

Instead of just making all bank contents unlootable, the first X money and Y resources are invulnerable to looting, which scales based on an alliance's (active nation) city count. Then, there wouldn't really be a need for "offshore" alliance banks because the majority of your money/resources would be protected anyway. If you were hoarding a lot in your alliance, though, it wouldn't all be invulnerable. And by making an "offshore" you wouldn't be gaining any additional protection since the amounts would scale by city count.

This seems like it could be a better compromise that would improve the situation without drastically hurting anyone.

That seems more reasonable. 

A question that is a bit out of scope: Will something like this be done for nations as well? Like the last $100k a nation has is unlootable, but that $100k goes much further for smaller nations than it does larger ones. 

[Viselli]

34 minutes ago, Alex said:

How about a "soft" limit on alliance banks to discourage "offshores"?

Instead of just making all bank contents unlootable, the first X money and Y resources are invulnerable to looting, which scales based on an alliance's (active nation) city count. Then, there wouldn't really be a need for "offshore" alliance banks because the majority of your money/resources would be protected anyway. If you were hoarding a lot in your alliance, though, it wouldn't all be invulnerable. And by making an "offshore" you wouldn't be gaining any additional protection since the amounts would scale by city count.

This seems like it could be a better compromise that would improve the situation without drastically hurting anyone.

If alliance projects are ever a thing, where alliances use the alliance bank to make projects for said alliance, there could be a bank project that does this exact thing. since youd need to buy the project to get protection, offshores that get cycled frequently would have to dump resources into buying the protection.

[Guest Zephyr]

7 hours ago, Alex said:

How about a "soft" limit on alliance banks to discourage "offshores"?

Instead of just making all bank contents unlootable, the first X money and Y resources are invulnerable to looting, which scales based on an alliance's (active nation) city count. Then, there wouldn't really be a need for "offshore" alliance banks because the majority of your money/resources would be protected anyway. If you were hoarding a lot in your alliance, though, it wouldn't all be invulnerable. And by making an "offshore" you wouldn't be gaining any additional protection since the amounts would scale by city count.

This seems like it could be a better compromise that would improve the situation without drastically hurting anyone.

Unless the unlootable margin is set really high there's still a use for 1-man alliances to handle the unprotected excess bank using current offshore methods.

[Guest Epi]

1

Edited February 18, 2021 by Epi

[Sir Scarfalot]

On 2/29/2020 at 8:01 PM, Zephyr said:

Unless the unlootable margin is set really high there's still a use for 1-man alliances to handle the unprotected excess bank using current offshore methods.

I think the idea would be that the safety margin would be implemented alongside one of the other potential nerfs to one-man offshoring. Perhaps something like an automatic % loss tallied against alliance banks with less than 5 members, with deposits into such alliance banks disabled?