Deathmonger

HS is dead at next reset because items have become way too expensive relative to income.

Broken again, as of 10AM.

Honestly with the way money works now you can go a year without a reset and still not max out your ships. It's not time for a reset yet until some major game change is ready to be introduced.

^ LIE, they are all 3vil Honestly that flag control gameplay might be fun for pub HS as a change from the money-making hamster wheel. Everybody starts off the same and uses skill to win.

Thanks for clarifying. No I didn't realize that the bounty situation was unintentional. Maybe the solution is as simple then as juicing up the jackpot rewards. There was a brief period earlier this year where it was giving out crazy amounts; now it's not giving out enough to get people out of center very often, at least under typical population. Obviously privs also factor into this. Small privs right now would probably be trying to win jps if the reward were enough. I know you're thinking about how to handle privs in the future.

I don't get where HS is going. Games typically have some object. TW has base control, EG has flag games and bountying, SWZ has flag control, MG has capture the flag. The object of HS has been to progressively acquire $ in various ways in order to buy increasingly powerful equipment. In the past there have been various ways to do this: - Basic center killing - Goal scoring (long, long ago) - Jackpot winning - Base bountying - Turret bountying - Center bountying - Bounty hunting All of these were at one time more efficient money-makers than vulching in center. Players generally discover and spend their time doing whatever is the most efficient way to make money. I remember a long time ago there were massive ball games in center between teams. Those were a blast. Then it became most efficient to bounty in bases and milk flag games. Turret bountying was another option. Then running around center bountying was best, until nerfed recharge settings, availability of proxed emp, and slower bounty growth made it nearly impossible for runners to get past 500 bty. One-by-one, these forms of gameplay have been removed by reducing rewards or changing items to disable them. For example, nobody turrets in center anymore because you can't build a decent turretting lanc and the bounty reward is gone. Removal of privs removed runwinning, good basing rewards, solo bountying, flanking, and so on. Once base bountying and jackpot growth were removed, players tried bountying in the minibase, creating the minibasing game. Then mini was weakened, and the minibasing turned into a mass tradekilling game. Recently, bountying was turned off altogether. Now, all that's left from the original gameplay is center vulching, making money at $30-$ per kill, or minibase tradekilling, which is more efficient. Since minibase tradekilling is now the most efficient way to make money, that's what players are doing, despite Arnk's consternation.* I'm all for removing the mini, but then all players will have left is center vulching! The items today are way too expensive if that's the only income opportunity that will be left. While the ships and items are more balanced than ever, and there are a lot of interesting new items, most of the gameplay has been wrung out of HS. Maybe you consider turetting or jp milking a form of exploit. Ok. It would be one thing if new gameplay were being introduced to replace old, but that isn't happening. Presently the lowest skill way of playing (button mashing in center) is also the most lucrative. That's a more fundamental issue than ship and item balance. I love the zone and its homage to classic games like Star Control and Elite. That's why I waste so much time on it. Thanks for reading. DM * It is in fact more efficient right now to spend 15 mins making a consistent $500/min in mini ($7500) than to spend 10 mins collecting flags, having a 5 min flag game, expending money on reps, bursts, thors, and winning a $3-6K jackpot. Do the math--the players have. If you don't like stupid gameplay that results from your economic system, instead of whining that players are stupid, change the economic incentives.

commode

The reset wasn't today.

I'd like to point out the now-demonstrated utter failure of reducing flags from 20 to 12 to affect the basing game whatsoever. GJ wasting everyone's time.

urinal

Dedicated to Arnk Dylie, the Father of HS Minibasing. History of Minibasing HS players generally gravitate towards strategies that make them the most money in the least time. By far the fastest way to make money in HS is by bountying. It's virtually impossible to bounty in center past 200 bounty or so under current settings. The next best strategy was to milk flags in a base and hold them there, collecting bounty from attackers. Then bounty growth in bases was eliminated. Jackpot growth was also eliminated, and for a short time flipping small calculated jackpots was the way to go. The jackpot formula has now made this relatively unprofitable. Fortunately Arnk foresaw this and there is a place in center that is both slightly defensible and bounty can be accumulated. This is the minibase. As it is now the fastest place to make money due to the reduced return from flag games, you see it constantly used now instead of the main bases. Its recent widening has made it harder to bounty, but permits a more wide-open style of minibasing than before. Strategy Attack: 1. Mindlessly rocket to minibase entrance, firing into it. Proceed as far in as you can, killing as much as you can. After you die, repeat. 2. Buy thors from left side safe, fire into mini, repeat. 3. Drop a lightning field over the whole mini. Defend: 1. Drop mines at entrance, shoot at attackers. 2. Call out "FREE [something] IN MINI" on pub chat if attackers slow down. Flank: 1. Camp at minibase entrance, shooting at attackers. 2. Cloak past defense, sit in minisafe and taunt the other team, occasionally flanking them from the inside. 3. Wallbomb the defenders, although the mini was designed with thick walls to discourage this. As you can see, the variety of possible gameplay with minibasing is limitless. Without minibasing, it would be impossible to generate enough money to buy the ridiculously overpriced items. Be thankful that we still have the mini! See you in the mini!

What about tacnuke fishies?

tuna

Wallneuting adds special urgency to leaks. It's not that big a problem as long as sharks suck If you can immediately grab all flags and win in 4 mins, you can use bricks/fields by themselves to hold off the other team. That was happening in the 5 flag scheme and was pretty lame. Now you are always missing a couple flags and you can't hold a team off with bricks alone for 15 minutes.

I don't know what "problem" reducing flags from 20 to 10 is supposed to solve. Dr. Brain's stated goal is for flag games to last 15 minutes or so, which they do now. Recall that with 5 flags and no jp, teams were winning, grabbing flags within seconds, and winning again before an attack could blow them out. Games lasted 5 mins. With 10 flags, you're moving back in that direction of gameplay. The ability of a freq to hide a couple flags gives them time to organize an attack, and forces the defense to chase reds and divide forces between attacking and defending in order to collect the last flags. Oh, but that's "too hard" for you guys that just want to quickly win over and over because it's the new milking. Never mind that HS had 20 flags for most of its existence and all the other flagging zones have 20+ flags without players complaining that it's too many. 20 flags is perfect.

The arrival of Christmas is dependent upon how many expensive Christmas gifts you can afford? Apparently the commercialization of Christmas is complete. People are usually surprised to learn that the whole Xmas tree tradition with presents is less than 100 years old, and a creation of early retailers.

With the current settings, the winning team tends to win, warp to center and quickly grab all 5 flags, return to the same base, win, rinse, repeat until the other freq dies. The flag games are effectively being won in the first 20 sec. To counter this, I'm suggesting that the number of flags be bumped back up to 20-30, while constraining a single flag carrier to 5-10 flags to keep runwinning under control as originally intended. That gives both teams time to collect a few flags when a new round starts. It also extends the mad scramble for hunting reds, which I think most people find is one of the funner parts of the game.

snore

nuts (I don't think they make neuticles for squirrels.)

neuticle (see http://www.neuticles.com)

munch

choke

In the spirit of today's freq balancing discussion, let me make a proposal for what a HS freq balancer ought to do. I realize that this requires work. - No pub freq limits - Private freqs limited to 33% of total non-spec population. I.e. a constant 2:1 pub:priv ratio limit regardless of total zone pop. - Pub players can freely switch between pub freqs, including having all of pub on one big pub freq. This is meant to reduce flanking and enable pub to reach 2:1 advantage vs. priv. - Lock all freqs including pub when the last flag is being carried (no freq hopping once the music starts). This will allow pub to win flag games without everyone hopping to dilute jp. It will also foil vets hopping onto pub to try to prolong the flag game and ruin the privs' victory. - As population increases, additional priv spots are available--announce to arena that the max priv size has changed - As population decreases, priv spots are taken away. If a priv is over the limit, priv has 30 sec to switch someone to pub or freq balancer will switch one at random. That way when a pub starts to dwindle the priv gets nerfed in order to even things out again. In this system, privs are incented by winning 2x jp, killing more pub cannon fodder, and being able to scale up if a larger pub pop shows up. Pub gets a way to avoid flanking and gets a 2:1 numbers advantage. The system balances itself regardless of current population. Cats and dogs become friends.

misunderstood

To make this worthwhile you'd have to add trading posts and an economic model to the game. Which would be cool...but commodities by themselves would just be annoying.