Gar

Don't get me started on the ridiculous reasons I've been banned. Might I add NONE of the so-called reasons are written down anywhere, nor was I warned or even told why until I pestered people via PM.

lol! this happened to me. edit: 5 times.

Nah, it'd be fine, because brick wars aren't that big of a deal when teams are spread out. Bricks cost a mount at least (maybe they should be 2 if they recharge) so just learn to use repel and learn to play the game without cheese and things will be fine.

Here, I'll try shortening my posts for the textually challenged. Problem: PD isn't used anymore except as a novelty, because it's not worth a sig spot. Solution: make pd fire BACKWARDS and to the SIDES like Lancaster's multifire. Add a couple bullets to compensate for the spread. This will make the slow crappy turn speed of PD not an issue, will protect the big PD ship much better, and make PD worth sig.

Rechargeable bricks would be fine if pub was Turf

I like no rewards in center. That makes things alot simpler. I do have to disagree with the 'let's get it working at higher pops' comment - there's no reason not to approach the whole design at once, and in fact it will only lead to problems later if you don't. Actually, the big freq would be 15 players, and you'd thus get about 7 times your normal reward. Still too high. I for some reason did the math with the ^name for a priv freq in mind counting, which would make you by yourself get 3x normal rewards when the biggest team has 15. I think that's actually pretty decent considering you have major opposition and you're not getting flag money. Aside from all that, as a player I can guarantee you that we will collude if it is at all possible. Yes, idling in bases is possible. The *moment* mods leave, everyone will collude, because it's simply the optimum strategy. I've already seen it happen twice. As soon as Rareitanium left, a few players took the lead in setting up the collusion and everyone else just doesn't care and goes along with it. I am dead certain that the only way to guarantee absence of collusion is making it impossible for two freqs to equally share flags.

Don't get me started on ridiculous bans for no reason. It's really unprofessional of you guys to allow mods to have personal biases. I think artificial moving of people would be very bad. That's why I suggested the money changes, so that players would move themselves and thus not feel so bad about it... stop the 'ARGH SETFREQD!' and 'GOD FIX SETFREQ' cries before they even start.

The post isn't going anywhere, so take your time in reading it. Silly me for thinking the point of a forum is discussion.

Go Turf = fix basing = fix stackedness.

Turf's the future of HyperSpace. Turf is just plain fun as !@#$%^&*. Current basing is quickly losing its appeal, as it contains far too many illogical optimum strategies and far too much frustration. Turf has its problems, too, but I think we can remove them with some slight reward modifications. First I shall convince you that Turf is wonderful, then I shall speak soft words to you of how best to implement it. Logic/balance problems with current basing: 1: Restraint. It's often in a player's best interest to not do his best. 'Don't kill the lanc!' is the common cry, as well as teamsends of 'Don't kill them too badly or they might not come back.' There is no stronger mood-breaking moment, for both sides, than the realization that the weaker team is only present because the stronger team wants them to be. Turf fixes this by rewarding true victory. Clear the enemy, grab flags, cash in. This goes from a currently backward system to a straightforward system with Turf. 2: Stacked teams. Current basing relies on a simple team-vs-team flow dynamic. One team pushes, one team defends. The 'better' team has a higher Dollars-Per-Time-Spent, so people quit that team less and join it more. Naturally, the better team becomes stronger until the weaker team can no longer compete. Ever flown your ship into ten levis tacnuking down a tunnel? It's not fun. There's really no way for the weaker team to compete because the totality of both teams are fighting eachother in the same place. In Turf, however, many sectors must be defended. A stacked team of 12 people becomes a bunch of smaller teams of 2-4 people spread out through the zone, while the weaker team of 12 people becomes 12 people attacking the same place. This allows the weaker team to take and hold enough flags to prevent total lockdown by the stronger team, giving them a fair 'proportion' of flag earnings relative to their victories (instead of nothing, as with current basing). Included in this but mentioned later are brickwarping and lanc killing, as chances for the weaker team to significantly turn the tide in a specific sector of flags. On the flip side, summon allows the strong team to actually have a chance of locking down all 20 flags. 3: Grief play. Current basing allows for many items and strategies that really are just grief play, because not only are they overpowered or ruinous to gameplay, they're just not logical - you want the enemy team to stay and keep fighting so you can make money, so if you wipe them out with cheese, you're not doing it for personal monetary gain. These tactics include brickwarping the lanc, clearing the lanc, coffin maker-ing the whole team, m!@#$%^&* thoring a whole team, and so on. In Turf, these things transform from 'grief play' into 'great play'. Think of it this way: coffin maker kills every enemy around in a cheese fashion. In current basing, that's all 20 of you. In Turf, that's just a handful of players, and only one flag-sector. The benefit of coffin maker thus becomes closer to its cost. In addition, in Turf, you WANT the enemy to die. You do NOT want them to stick around like in current basing. Thus coffining and brickwarping become natural tactics rather than illogical grief play. 4: Private freqs. Private freqs are currently impossible to balance. You all know the problems, so I won't go into them here. In Turf, however, private freqs take up a perfect position in the power structure. I think even privs might prefer turf to current basing. A private freq can hold one sector with absolute strength, but it cannot hold all 20 flags. Private freqs just don't have enough people to do that. So private players either must play in pub freqs, which is beneficial to the zone, or they must hold one sector for long periods of time against greater numbers of weaker players. Priv's dream right? A ton of weaker players attacking your small base, because your little base is costing them quite a bit of cash due to the curved nature of Turf rewards. I'm sure the bountying opportunities are enormous. Also, due to the curved nature of Turf flag rewards, multiple priv freqs cannot share flag income effectively. 2 teams holding 4 flags each does NOT equal 1 team holding 8 flags. Priv freqs ultimately become opportunities for privs and a non-game-ruining mechanic for normal players. 5: Flag victories kill population. Very simple problem: game's over, everybody specs or quits for awhile. Turf aptly avoids this problem by having a never-ending game. I can't emphasize how important this is. This could totally restructure the population dynamics of the zone. Imagine logging on every night to 50 people all the time rather than 70 sometimes and 20 the rest of the night? How to adjust flag rewards for Turf So you've hopefully seen why Turf is superior to current basing, but the problem still remains that Turf has unbelievable cash output. What's to be done? We must consider: Problems with Turf flag rewards: 1: Collusion. It happens. Both teams decide to just center while they sit with 10 flags each and rake in the cash overnight. This was actually fairly easy to maintain the moment the mods left. 2: Lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion. One team leaves for whatever reason, the other team sits on 20 flags and rakes in the cash. This is not to be confused with collusion, where players are in the zone, they're just agreeing not to steal flags. 3: Constant cash flow. Players that play all the time will have gigantic amounts of cash just through the flow of time, even if they sit in safe. Players that can only log on two hours a night will gain little to nothing. Current basing has a slight advantage here, actually, but the typical 4k to 7k jackpots from current basing probably won't be missed. THE SOLUTION! How do we account for collusion, lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion, and the constant cash flow of Turf, yet still keep its advantages over current basing? We want Turf because it encourages people to stay on as long as possible. It encourages people to get the )#$# out of spec and play for once. It inherently balances the zone by its very nature. It offers opportunities for rich and for poor. It's simply a better way. So how do we keep the incentive but dampen the out of control money production? Can we, in fact, enhance the benefits of Turf even further? Components: 1: Flag rewards scale based on population. I believe this is already partially implemented in Turf, but it seemed a little off when I played it. Currently the flags just give less if less people are in the zone, and more if more are. Instead, I believe that kills should add to the next flag ding just like they add to the jackpot now. This presents an 'organic' way to add to flag rewards without allowing m!@#$%^&* numbers of people to simply sit in safe and milk. The important thing should be that a kill only benefits the killer's team, not both teams, and the kill should scale based on the flags the team holds, too. For example, if Freq 1 Bob kills Freq 2 Joe, and Freq 1 holds 12 flags at the time of the kill, $12 is added to Freq 1's next flag reward. If at that same time Freq 2 Joe killed Bob, Freq 2 would get $8 added for their 8 flags. Edit: The reason this is so important: freqs are now spread out across the zone. Most won't share normal kill money. We have to be careful to counteract the negative penalty of scaled rewards, which is that people will view it in reverse and not want to play when pops are low. This brings us to the next component of the plan... 2: Low population relief. I'm a firm believer that the most attention must be focused at low population times, because they are the seed for everything else. The shorter you can make the dead times, the greater the population the zone will reach overall. Powerball is the first option that comes to mind, with high-reward center goals that have rewards that turn to 0 once ten people are in the zone. I also think that kill rewards, as described in Component 1, should function even if Turf is 'off' due to too few people, and that rewards should be boosted the fewer people that are on. The toughest situation for players is when just you and one or two other people are on: why not just spec and wait? Instead, why not let these few duke it out with double or triple reward for kills? It might encourage them to actually stay in and get some more people to join in. The cash won't get out of hand because with so few people kills are slow and far between. 3: Equal flag amounts result in nothing. Simple change: if both teams have the same amount of flags, neither team gets anything for that ding. This immediately makes collusion very difficult. Which teams gets 11 flags? Which gets 9? Why should you guys get the 11 flags and not us? In addition, I would make a significant additive boost in the rewards curve at 11 and above, so that a team with 9 (for a totally meaningless numbers example) is getting 500, while a team with 11 is getting 900. Try to convince someone to collude then, right? It also makes sense, as that is the point of 'majority' (> 50%) where one team is now technically winning. 4.a: Negative penalty for team number differences (pub only). Freq 1 has 20 players, Freq 0 has 5. Cut Freq 1's flag+kills ding money by 75%. If it was 20 and 10, cut it by 50%, and so on. This neatly takes care of 'Lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion'. Are you going to sit bored on a freq making $40 a ding or are you going to hop to the smaller freq and grab just a few flags for more cash than you're making now, because of 4.b? No need for an autoevener - i'll do it myself! 4.b: Positive bonus for fighting outnumbered! (all freqs). If your Freq has 5 and the guy you just killed's Freq has 20, multiply his kill->ding money by 2! (as in half of the ratio they outnumber you by - 20/5 = 4, half of 4 is 2). This is not just for Lack of Compe!@#$%^&*ion. This is to help privs do their thing in their little base, bountying. I think this series of small changes would make a huge impact on the zone in addition to Turf, and fix Turf's problems. Collusion is fixed with the @11-flags-boost and the equal-flags-nullify-rewards change. Lack of compe!@#$%^&*ion is fixed with team-difference bonuses and penalties that will encourage players to balance things themselves. Low population relief and scaled rewards will help to balance the cash flows of all-the-time-players and peak-only players: peak will have significantly large cash flow from all the kills, and will hopefully last longer, so peak-only players won't miss out too badly. Adjust all the numbers as you see fit, I'm at work and bored

I have to say that Unix has a good idea despite those particular items being senseless... you could have these general items be similar to pilot skills. These could be pre-endgame items that are useful in distinguishing your playstyle once your ships are maxed. General item example: Name: Flaksight Description: After years of fighting you have an eye for bullets and how to best absorb them, but you never did get the hang of avoiding bombs. Cost: $500k / 17.5k xp Effect: All ships -10 bulletdamage, +50 bombdamage Name: Lucky Rabbit's Foot Description: Let's get one thing straight: you're not a coward. You're just a little afraid. And you rub your lucky rabbit's foot constantly. And you're quick. But you're not a coward! Cost: $600k / 20k xp Effect: All ships +1 speed, +1 maxspeed, +1 thrust, +1 maxthrust, -2 rotation, +10 bulletdamage, -1 energy

spice

Except this one, right? ; ) Cause I'm one of the people who actually had to play in the "30 max" era for the few months after this reset was put in. You know, when everyone was screaming HS was dead and nobody was playing. Note I said pops were deadened 'for a period of time'. Numbers are going back up now that alot of the set's problems have been fixed.

No, not really. Applaud yourself on an illusion once more (referencing your item set)

Block giant prox bombs? As for antiwarp, people have just been going out of AW range in the corner of the base and firing thors from there. !@#$%^&*O? They fly at light speed and through walls!

Resets kill the population for long periods of time. It'd be re!@#$%^&*ed to finally get back to working pop numbers and reset again so soon.

With the new attach command's total lack of delay and lag, thors have gotten even worse. They can be fired almost constantly with the right hotkey setup. Antiwarp helps but does not solve the problem. Implement a new field that absorbs Thors.

It's cheap enough that even pubs can get it ;p

This is probably the biggest problem with HyperSpace: the at!@#$%^&*ude of the higher-ups. It's simply moronic. They honestly believe this. They honestly believe that since they are not 'being paid' (and by the way, they are being paid, it's just in intangibles rather than money) they can do whatever they want and ignore the players and it's all fine. I'm sorry, that's just stupid. Most players would rather these devs did not work on the game. Why would you complain that you're not 'being paid' when we don't even want the crap that you're doing half the time? You seriously think ammo did anything positive to the game? Yes, ?attach is interesting, and yes turf could be good, but that doesn't mean you're some great magnanimous contributor to the zone. You do it for personal reasons, you do it for personal satisfaction, and we have to put up with what you do to the game for your own kicks. Stop acting like a )#*%ing martyr and treat people decently and maybe they'll be nicer back. It's like the movie Han!@#$%^&*, except you're white

Ah so in your method 200k put in for 24 hours would result in $211,925? In that case my 200k would turn into 1.13 mil in 30 days. I'd invest But real my point was a loan system might solve the 'newbie problem'. Give them a choice of getting right into the action with a great ship, but it comes at a price.

Strangely enough they pretty much implemented my idea with the new ?attach command, though I'm sure they didn't take it from this thread...

I do believe it'd be an interesting idea to allow Summoner on ship 5 as well, possibly allowing Terriers to come back from the edge of extinction. Sure only warbirds and javelins can attach to them, but it opens up the option for an extremely quick albeit fragile team as opposed to the current setup where a freq that depends on lancs pretty much just takes a base and sits in it like a bunker.

I accounted for the hourly compounding. I actually made an excel spreadsheet with your fifth of a percent interest so I know it's not a math error. I don't have any clue what '1,123,548.30' or '3200%' is supposed to be. 5 million in the bank for 60 days would generate $779,924... but nobody has 5 million, and nobody's going to wait 2 months for a payoff they could make in 8 turf events or 20-30 basing games. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but i took your .2416 percent as 0.2416%, or a fifth of a percent. Again, the formula I used was Amount = P * (1 + (r/n))^(nt) where n is 24 (for compounded 24 times a day), r is 0.2416%, and t is the number of days you leave P in. In my excel the interest multiplier is 0.002416, because .2416 would be 24.16%, resulting in unbelievably huge amounts. Maybe you guys are making that mistake? Honestly, you're a dev, why not just set it up force payback with grants? Someone takes a loan, the bot disables their ability to ?give, after their time is up they are degranted the amount they're supposed to pay back if they don't (and the bot regrants itself that amount), probably resulting in -60k or something in the player's account that they have to work off. I think that system would actually be pretty cool. Loan now, play with good ship now, make money quicker and enjoy the zone quicker. Who cares if you have to work off -60k or something if you actually have a good ship to do it with?

And you make money exactly how? Not that it matters, since your percentage is so extremely low people make next to nil. If I put 200k in for an entire month the interest would only be about 15k, and then there's your balance restriction which will basically make it impossible to ever get more money out than you put in as far as I can tell. Zone resets only last so long eh? Or you could pool some cash together with your friends and bank a million for the hefty payout after 30 days of 75k... Please do correct me, because I'd rather be wrong. I used P(1 + r/n)^nt.

Do a command that you pm to the player: ?value, which shows the money invested in that ship?