Transfer final poll

[Aileron]

Final plan for transfer next round:

 

The only thing that will be transferable from player to player is greens. This will remain because the results can be replicated by the attack function anyway. Transfer of weapons, soldiers, and turns will be removed.

 

I did consider leaving weapons and adding one for mercs, as weapons are bought by greens so a weapon transfer is like a green transfer. However, weapons can't be stolen, so the reciever doesn't have to be active at time of transfer, and having both will lead to the "trade with a Terrier" strategy currently being utilized by both clans. It isn't a good idea, so weapons transfer is going away too, and you won't be able to transfer mercs.

 

There will be five converters available: Two will be a converters for Spies and Sentries to Untrained Soldiers, essentially allowing players to untrain covert units.

 

The other three would be merc to green converters. It would be nice to be able to send mercs back to the pool, but the core restricts that. The nearest thing I can offer to that is the ability to trade a merc for 1 green, which is a lot like firing them. Merc income penalty will be restored.

 

Additional proposal:

 

Add a turn to untrained unit converter. This would allow those with extra turns to get something for them. However, with turn rate at 1 per hour and UP about 100 or so per hour in even the weakest players, this would not be significant. Turn rate and max turns per attack would have to be changed to put the value of a turn in the same ballpark as the value of a UU.

 

What this would do is give less wealthy players a break from attacks, as it would encourage players with excess turns to spend them on growth rather than taking some pocketchange.

[Falcoknight]

Sounds good.

 

 

Greens are the only thing that can reasonably be left in for transfer.

If mercs were left in and had a negative income, they could be used as a weapon by transferring them to an enemy while they're logged off, killing their income.

Or even without negative income, they could be used to up the army size of people like HoE through transfer, allowing them to be attacked.

[Aileron]

I considered those possibilities with mercs actually. You aren't quite right with using mercs as an income leech. It would take four days for the merc to drain enough income from the victim to offset the points lost by the attacker. If the victim goes four days without logging on, his income will probably be shot by basic attacking anyway, so !@#$%^&*uming he does log on he'll either transfer them back to the attacker or fire them. Given how the players around here operated in the past what'll happen is that everyone confronted with this situation would buy more mercs, and send them all back to an enemy. There would be an ever-increasing army of mercs that keeps getting transferred back and forth between Dav and Falcoknight, which would be funny to watch but probably wouldn't be good for the game.

 

As for transferring them to someone in order to attack them...actually I would consider that a good thing. I'll admit that playing population games is lame.

 

Additionally, mercs would also be subject to the Terrier trading technique.

[Sound]

I was also considering the transfer merc to attack idea.

Another thing, with everyone buying more and more mercs, many could end up sitting in the game being transferred back and forth.

Eventually one player would get them all and be untouchable for the rest of the game (Ex. Falcoknight). Keep that in mind.

[Dav]

i like the fire mercs idea.

 

As far as greens go i think it should cost something to do it, turns from the attacker and damage to the defender means that its not just going to be "have loads of greens" all the time and gives the enemy clan a chance to sneak in and take some.

[Aileron]

Dav, what is the "it" you refer to? I honestly don't know what you are talking about here.

 

 

As a general clarification, I'll state what I can do and what I can't do with converters to pre-empt any suggestions which are impossible to implement due to the core. Converters can only convert from one int variable to another int with no multiplicative factor. I can only set up a converter that will trade one apple for one orange. The following things I can't do:

 

Trade 1 Apple for 2 Oranges

Throw out 1 Apple at the cost of 1 Orange ( 1:1 works, 1:-1 doesn't)

Trade 1 Apple for 1 Orange at the cost of 1 Pear

 

Also, as it so happens, Weapons and Spy Tools are arrays, not normal ints. They can't be placed in a converter. I suspect that if there are as many elements in the sending and receiving arrays that a transfer is possible, thus it is possible to have players transfer weapons to each other. I might be able to set up a weapons converter if there was only one type of weapon, but not only would that ruin the game, but it probably wouldn't work anyway.

[Hellonearth]

Or even without negative income, they could be used to up the army size of people like HoE through transfer, allowing them to be attacked.

 

 

 

The transfer of mercs would be really f*cked up, it would ruin my game and would destroy the use of spider.

[Aileron]

Well, its not happening anyway so don't worry about it. I figure if player A wants to reinforce B with some mercs, A can transfer some greens and have B buy the mercs.

 

 

 

 

The Spider is going to go through a radical change though, as next round we'll be using Army Core 3, meaning a positive overhaul of everything covert related. Army Core 3 features covert turns, which are like regular turns except used for sabotage.

 

Sabotage will return to its former glory of being able to destroy someone's entire armory within a day. However, those type of results will require significant investment in time in order to get the covert turns, probably from multiple sabbers, needed to do it. It will probably take 3 players a week to stockpile covert turns in order to do it. Additionally Core 3 has caps to the number of turns that can be held, so you can't just stay inactive for the first month, get a mess of turns, and then be a sab god in the last week.

 

The Spiders' role will change signficantly. One Spider will no longer to be the sole source of an entire clan's covert strategy. Currently, one covert guy sabs the entire enemy clan, doing a little damage to each steadily. Next round, the covert guy will need to focus on the toughest enemy, and doing a lot of damage but only on an infrequent basis. If the clan wants additional targets sabbed, they would need more people on their end to contribute. Ultimately the entire clan wil

 

Well, its not happening anyway so don't worry about it. I figure if player A wants to reinforce B with some mercs, A can transfer some greens and have B buy the mercs.

 

 

 

 

The Spider is going to go through a radical change though, as next round we'll be using Army Core 3, meaning a positive overhaul of everything covert related. Army Core 3 features covert turns, which are like regular turns except used for sabotage.

 

Sabotage will return to its former glory of being able to destroy someone's entire armory within a day. However, those type of results will require significant investment in time in order to get the covert turns, probably from multiple sabbers, needed to do it. It will probably take 3 players a week to stockpile covert turns in order to do it. Additionally Core 3 has caps to the number of turns that can be held, so you can't just stay inactive for the first month, get a mess of turns, and then be a sab god in the last week.

 

The Spiders' role will change signficantly. One Spider will no longer to be the sole source of an entire clan's covert strategy. Currently, one covert guy sabs the entire enemy clan, doing a little damage to each steadily. Next round, the covert guy will need to focus on the toughest enemy, and doing a lot of damage but only on an infrequent basis. If the clan wants additional targets sabbed, they would need more people on their end to contribute. Ultimately the entire clan will need to sab,

[Aileron]

Well, its not happening anyway so don't worry about it. I figure if player A wants to reinforce B with some mercs, A can transfer some greens and have B buy the mercs.

 

 

 

 

The Spider is going to go through a radical change though, as next round we'll be using Army Core 3, meaning a positive overhaul of everything covert related. Army Core 3 features covert turns, which are like regular turns except used for sabotage.

 

Sabotage will return to its former glory of being able to destroy someone's entire armory within a day. However, those type of results will require significant investment in time in order to get the covert turns, probably from multiple sabbers, needed to do it. It will probably take 3 players a week to stockpile covert turns in order to do it. Additionally Core 3 has caps to the number of turns that can be held, so you can't just stay inactive for the first month, get a mess of turns, and then be a sab god in the last week.

 

The Spiders' role will change signficantly. One Spider will no longer to be the sole source of an entire clan's covert strategy. Currently, one covert guy sabs the entire enemy clan, doing a little damage to each steadily. Next round, the covert guy will need to focus on the toughest enemy, and doing a lot of damage but only on an infrequent basis. If the clan wants additional targets sabbed, they would need more people on their end to contribute. Ultimately the entire clan will need to sab, with the Spider as the spearhead of the sabotage effort.

 

The above results I know will happen because I've seen covert turns before in other MMORPGs, and they have a huge effect on balancing out Sabotage. I am bold enough to say that covert turns actually balances out transfer, though I am not bold enough to put that statement to the test.

 

Its hard to describe in words, but Sabotage will get both stronger and weaker. On one hand it will do a lot more damage to the bigshots like rasta420, Dav, Falcoknight, and JDS. On the other hand there won't be enough covert turns left to pummel players like AstroProdigy into dust.

 

What I'm not so sure about is how this will affect the Spider. My guess is that they will have a tough time competing with the Sharks. Right now, the Spider only has a slightly better sabotage capability than the Shark, but much worse offensive capability, and that thin sab advantage will get even thinner now that it won't be multiplied by ten targets.

 

On the other hand, Colonies mixes up everything. A Spider can simply set up a Javelin colony and earn greens that way. But, the strategy of avoiding massing by not having many troops won't work with Colonies. The attacker need only transfer his armies over to a colony, carry out the mass and transfer them back. I count this as a good thing, because though I have done the strategy in the past, I've always considered it lame. But, the verdict isn't out with Colonies yet.