Aileron

Well, there may be times where something else is more important, but its something you just can't go wrong with. Even if there is a better source of income, troops are valueble in and of themselves. I'd certainly recommend maxing out your UP before messing with a super saver account scheme.

Well, he did free them. It seems like a standard case of brinkmanship. It really means very little except to show that Iran is more cunning than fanatical. Clearly its an attempt to embar!@#$%^&* the British, emphasis on the word "attempt" because frankly the international community is quite used to this by now and knows that it doesn't really matter which side of the line the British ship was on.

Um, has the repair costs for the weapons been updated to fit in with the new prices? It seems to cost ten times more to repair a shield+super than it should. Currently it costs 3500 per point per weapon. Meanwhile, the entire weapon new costs 500,000. That means that more than 140 points of damage and its cheaper to replace the weapon, which translates to when the weapon is at 98.6% efficiency.

Hey, I only buy weapons which I can afford to repair. Which brings me to the next piece of news: Celebrations are occuring in the capital today as the nation of Ailestan has officially returned to #1 status. Some skeptics claimed that was only because the infidel bagelrific's army seems to have dissappeared due to divine intervention. Those skeptics were quickly rounded up and sent on a sabotage mission. This comes after a WMD attack by the country. The Office of Information of the Democratic People's Republic of Ailestan states that the attack was infact more costly for bagelrific to carry out. In other news, police forces found illegal bacon being smuggled in the back of the car of the infidel amb!@#$%^&*ador from attraction today. Diplomatic immunity prevents the amb!@#$%^&*ador from being sent on a sabotage mission, so he is being held by Ailestani authorities until the matter of bacon smuggling is resolved. The infidel attraction denies being involved in bacon smuggling and claims the MG infidels are responsable, despite the overwhelming evidence that indicates otherwise.

Well, your version is complicated. Mine just involves finding a certain if/then statement in the code and changing a constant.

I half agree. The problem with that is that as you said it is that noone would have any clue who to go after, and would have to routinely recon everybody, which takes a lot of time and would mean most people would have too many spying attempts on them. However, maybe it should just be harder to see points on the attack screen and easier to hide it. There isn't much point in sentry if someone with a spy rating one-fourth of your sentry can still see your points.

Scratch that, Keiver has become the offense !@#$%^&*. sigh...Polix should have kept attacks locked for a couple days longer than he did...there are a lot of meatheads with overpowered weapons and underpowered economies in the top 7. Its like having a gatling gun with 10 rounds of ammunition. Over the long term, I know they will simply own themselves, but over the short term their weapons still do a lot of damage before they need to repair them, and they are cutting into my profits. I've had to spend my reserve stash buying a defense, which is annoying. I should stop picking on Deathboy though...he actually has a good UP, so taking him down will take some effort on my part. Veg, I've already sat down and done the math, and trust me by the end of the month, the super savings accounts will STILL explode, though it will take a couple weeks before it will even be worth creating one. I posted the results in the other topic, and then some fools ignored it and started complaining about transfer services. My whining aside, this game is really close to the point where we can stop worrying about balancing it and start worrying about features. There are two that I can think of: 1) Clan rankings. Simply have a ranking system which tallys up the sum strength of a clan and ranks them. Having clans ranked encourages teamwork. 2) Market. Players could trade turns, points, or units on the market. The cool thing about this is its actually easy to set up and can balance itself if done right. First off, the market should have an explicit value for resources which should increase at the same rate as the respective resource of the some of the players. For instance, if the total pop has 30 players who each get 4 turns per hour, the market should earn 120 turns per hour. Exchange rates would be based upon the ratio of the resources in the market. If the market has 100 turns and 10000 points in it, then a player could trade 10 turns for 10 * 10000/100 = 1000 points. This feature ensures that no matter what crazy unbalance may be occuring in the rest of the game, the exchange rates are always fair. It also means that some players might decide to become commodities brokers. Its unconventional, but requires an inherent knowledge of the current in-game politics, so most people have the opinion that its a legitimate skill, and I for one agree. If you are good enough to know what resources are valueble now and what resources will be valueble tomorrow and can exploit that, you deserve the profits.

I'd consider it a problem. Not necessarily one that the state should solve, but generally I think that most homosexuality is a result of many emotional problems. Our society is such that people don't really talk to each other as much as we should, and in my opinion homosexual desires must stem from people who lack a proper social life. The person who engages in the activity is the victim of that act in this case, much like most cases of drug abuse. The state has limited right to deal with the problem, but the source is that some people's life sucks so bad that they resort to such behavior.

Quit being a !@#$%^&* who attacks every turn on the turn and you won't run out of turns...simple enough. Turns are supposed to be an actual obstacle. The idea is that a player should be able to go to sleep or go to work without having to worry too much that he won't get attacked three times for doing so. Given that I keep getting attacked for one or two hours worth of income, I'd say that the number of turns is still on the heavy side.

It's okay Sama. The sign of true MMORPG mastery is to be accused of cheating by fools.

Deathboy has the highest attack I've seen.

Come now, freakmonger. attraction's account will provide an easily accessible source of income for us. He's spending his time and energy charitably so that we can have easy points and free target practice. You have to respect him for that.

Right now the Christian population of the US is pretty much split 50/50, 50% Catholics and 50% other denominations. Right now the Catholic population is increasing very quickly due to illegal immigrants from Latin America. I've just realised something though. If somebody lived outside the US and has had to judge Americans by American television, that person would come to the conclusion that we are morons, because all of our actors and journalists are idiots, and live in communities that are filled with wannabe actors who are even dumber than they are. The thing is most intelligent Americans go into science and engineering and recieve NO fame whatsoever. Point being, don't judge us by how we appear on TV. The big issue I keep hearing too much about is race and culture actually. Usually its just some hyped up difference between groups of different races who in reality have the same culture because they have been in the US so long that they have an American culture, so they go to ridiculous lengths to try to act otherwise. As for the Catholic stance on homosexuality, yes its wrong, but it isn't much of a priority. I mean the big ones are world hunger, disease, poverty, violence and in the US abortion. So much so that a politician can be openly gay, but if he had a plan to undo Roe vs. Wade, he'd get the Catholic stamp of approval, and if he actually pulled it off, he would be canonized. That's why the Catholic church abadoned Kerry. He had everything going for him, except that he was pro-"choice". Abortion is THE most imporant issue for Catholics in the United States. So much so that everything else doesn't matter. Homosexuality is a insignificant problem, less important that a shortage of vocations in the US.

In foreign news today, Ailestani forces engaged in light raids against infidel targets. This was a glorious victory indeed, as a decent amount of treasures were brought back, and not a single Ailestani life was lost in the raids, though it is noted that some foreign contracters that had been hired were killed. In diplomatic news today, the infidels which follow Deathboy have seemed to have acqcuired some heavy weaponry. However, our intelligence believes that their economy does not have sufficiant capacity to maintain those weapons. Their citizens are starving under the strain as every fils is spent maintaining these overpowered weapons. The Department of International Charity of the Democratic People's Repubic of Ailestan considered a motion to ease their suffering by sending them a half-dead goat, but decided to eat the goat instead. In domestic news today, Ailestani police broke up a major bacon smuggling ring today. Many criminals, such as Al-Achmend, Al-Khalid, and Al-Jafar were arrested and promptly sent on a sabotage mission. Captured records show that the bacon smugglers have ties to Rootania. In an address today, our beloved leader Aileron stated that if rootbear does not put a halt to the bacon smuggling, that the entire country will be held accountable.

See? Now THAT is an actual suggestion.

Jeez, you ppl are morons. I got troops faster because my UP is higher than any of yours. I got the money to pay for the UP upgrades in the arcade, which by the way we don't need to worry about because by this weekend its payout will be an obsolete income. Deathboy-evil is about 150 troops behind me. Our UP is 70, so that's not much of a difference. So, yes it is possible to get this many troops this quickly on your own. Right now he has been a !@#$%^&* in the arcade, and also has 4 each of the offensive and defensive top weapons. That's fine...by the end of the week the arcade won't be time effective and we'll see what happens to him. Transfer services are nothing to worry about. The items being transferred need to exist in the first place. It doesn't really matter if those items are held by one player or the other. Actually, if one of your enemies gives all their stuff to another one of your enemies, that's a good thing for you. The core of any army is the UP, akin to the cardiovascular system of the body or the engine of a car. Offense, defense, spy, and covert are nowhere near as important as UP. With UP, the other stats grow as needed. Without UP, the other stats languish. UP is non-transferrable. One player may give all his offense and defense to another using the transfer service. However, the second player will not be able to maintain the double-sized army with a single UP. I took down three people who had their accounts boosted with transfer services last round...by took down I mean "kicked their !@#$%^&* so bad that they quit". It can be done...the only problem is that upon death they tend to create a new one, so you get this chain of boosted accounts, but taking them down like dominoes is fun as !@#$%^&*. What you people have done is attached some random reason to why other players are doing better than you are. The reason I'm doing better than you are is simple: I have had about a year's worth of experience playing similar games, and know exactly what to do by now, and trust me, I spent half that time in the same position as you guys, getting my !@#$%^&* kicked and wondering how they do it. While there were some cases of actual lameness, most weren't, and those that were didn't base their strategy upon it, but rather based their strategy on having UP and used lameness only when they really needed to.

Because I'm the best?

The biggest effect they have is that specialists are a lot harder to kill.

!@#$%^&* no

Hmmm, come to think of it, Polix needs to learn how to tell the time of day. Its 10:00 EST now and my soldiers wanna kill something.

Um, no. Attacks re-open at 10:00 PM EST, which is exactly 5 hours from the time you posted. And in an address to foreign nations today, our beloved leader Aileron commented that attraction had best master how to tell the time of day before trying to take over the world.

Well, the Israelis did bomb bridges, airports, etc. That's usually standard for modern warfare. I will admit it the Israelis didn't make it any easier for bona fide civilians to get out of dodge by taking out such targets. And if I recall the Israelis did drag their feet pulling out of Lebanon. They did have the time to do a proper count.

Believe it or not, limiting the transfer services will hurt weak players more than strong players. Strong players can rely on well rounded stats. Weak players however need some sort of mobility to take down stronger players. The ability to transfer gives them that. The thing that is slightly lame is the policy that when you quit you give all your stuff to a friend. However, its not unmanigable. If your enemy is quitting, its because obviously you have done something to piss them off. If you piss someone off, they deserve a shot at retribution. If creating another suped up enemy is their way of getting even, adapt. If several players are using the transfer function to engage in hit-and-run against big shots, good for them, for they actually understand this game. Remember that there are newbie protection features in the code. The higher your pop, the higher your casualties. The more weapons you have, the more vulnerable you are to sabotage and the higher your repair costs. Its easier and less costly to do damage to one army of 2000 armed troops than it is to take out two armies of 1000 troops. Not only that, but the group had the UP of two accounts before and only one account later. The key to true victory is not in stealing points. True victory is obtained through killing soldiers and destroying weaponry. If you take their points, they will get it back through their income. If you destroy the source of their income, they are screwed. In conclusion, yes, a player can give all of his stuff to his ally, but other than ability to protect measly points from pissant raids, that doesn't help the sum of them and actually makes it easier for an enemy to take them out. Ofcourse, if somebody has a multi-account, that's a whole different story. In that case, they are a cheating !@#$%^&* and should be banned. However, its not like you can hide a multi in a population of 60 anyway, so that's not a real problem.

Actually, the point I made goes further than that, given the sort of tactics Hezbollah uses and the demographic makeup of the organization, it is very likely that most of those civilian casualties were actually Hezbollah gunman who had left their weapons at the last cache. 99% of Hezbollah members are essentially full time civilians that volunteered for militia service. In the eyes of the UN, a civilian who picks up a weapon and engages in military activity may be considered a soldier. The thing is, from a practical standpoint, all the Hezbollah gunman has to do is leave his weapons somewhere, and if he dies, the UN will tally his body as a civilian casualty, because he is a full-time civilian and is dressed as one. Additionally, given the tactics Hezbollah uses of fighting from pre-arranged caches and moving unarmed, their gunman routinely leave their weapons behind every time they move from position to position. This isn't a tactic to run away, desert, or surrender - the idea is that when they reach the next cache they will pick up another weapon and resume fighting. They also use the same tactics with their widescale troop movements. The idea is that minimally en!@#$%^&*bered cars and trucks can travel much faster than tanks and APCs. The point is if the Israelis took out a Hezbollah transport, it is virtually indistinguishable from a civilian transport, and since Hezbollah members are most full-time civilians, when the UN does background checks on the casualties, they will find them to have jobs and families and such, and will assume that the intel was screwed up and that a civilian vehicle was hit. I'd bet about 800 of those 1000 "civilians" Israel killed were members of the Hezbollah militia who just happened to be unarmed at the time. That's obviously a guess, because Hezbollah doesn't have a public list of who works for them. There is one way to find out...if you can state your source, maybe there could be further details on the casualties. If there are a disproportionate number of men over women in the casualty figures, then that would indicate that my theory is correct.

Well, technically the third place finisher happened to be held by one of those people. Sama, keep in mind that those outside our clan were really competing for the #3 spot anyway.