Assassination and sabotage

Changes will be made to allow smaller players to engage in these missions against larger players.
Just like you can hit a def with a smaller strike.

Also will look at balancing of different skill levels engaging.
For now it looks approximately as follows:
- Higher skill level will keep its current "efficiency" when defending against a lower skill level
- But instead of sending now 50 spies to beat the enemy 100, less efficient, spies, it'll be necessary to send 75 spies (arbitrary numbers)
Tech efficiency will remain untouched with all likelihood

Bunch of other things, re-evaluate turn costs, time between missions...

No spam and keep it constructive

only issue I have is it seems your just upping the cost for higher skilled players(As in tech and training levels) to perform these acts. I trust your judgement and that it will remain fair/balanced, but it is a concern of mine presently.

I don't care for someone weaker then me to be able to do the attacks, and to do damage in the attacks, as long as their loses are reflective of the fact they are weaker and less skilled spies and assassins. I hope to never see the higher leveled player suffering more losses then the lower leveled attacker. Yes I do see you said the efficiency when defending would remain the same. Guess my question is, if it cost more ot less for the smaller player to use them on a larger more skilled? because you state that it does cost a larger player more to use these attacks on smaller less skilled players.


*all skill remarks are based on tech and research levels, not skill of the player*

It will cost more than it does cost now
For a "larger" player to attack a "smaller" player.

Cost for someone with a lower skill to attack a higher skill will remain unchanged.

One thing that might come in some form is that a bigger player's army will be less ruthless in killing enemy soldiers when attacking an "unworthy" target. (Possibly regardless of mission, so overt and covert missions will be affected)
Might link it with if both sides declare war then the "penalty" effect is nullified but still gotta find something to give the "smaller" player an incentive to declare war back

Just a few toughts. Maybe it should be some sort of function of size. It is a lot easier for to track spies in a population of 1 thousand than say, 10 million. Then on the other end of the spectrum, the larger the population the easier it should be to infiltrate.

Person A with 1k spies and 10mill population should be harder to infiltrate than Person B with 1k spies and 50mill population.

Miglow wrote:Just a few toughts. Maybe it should be some sort of function of size. It is a lot easier for to track spies in a population of 1 thousand than say, 10 million. Then on the other end of the spectrum, the larger the population the easier it should be to infiltrate.

Person A with 1k spies and 10mill population should be harder to infiltrate than Person B with 1k spies and 50mill population.

this sounds like a good idea.

I guees it wouldnt be a bad idea to have % of population trained as spies reflect the strength of spies.

Kenzu wrote:

Miglow wrote:Just a few toughts. Maybe it should be some sort of function of size. It is a lot easier for to track spies in a population of 1 thousand than say, 10 million. Then on the other end of the spectrum, the larger the population the easier it should be to infiltrate.

Person A with 1k spies and 10mill population should be harder to infiltrate than Person B with 1k spies and 50mill population.

this sounds like a good idea.

I guees it wouldnt be a bad idea to have % of population trained as spies reflect the strength of spies.

So what exactly are you saying kenzu? You are saying that a person with 50% their army trained as spies, with a 500mil CA, can have stronger spies than someone with 5% trained with 1bil CA?

Admin wrote:Changes will be made to allow smaller players to engage in these missions against larger players.
Just like you can hit a def with a smaller strike.

Also will look at balancing of different skill levels engaging.
For now it looks approximately as follows:
- Higher skill level will keep its current "efficiency" when defending against a lower skill level
- But instead of sending now 50 spies to beat the enemy 100, less efficient, spies, it'll be necessary to send 75 spies (arbitrary numbers)
Tech efficiency will remain untouched with all likelihood

Bunch of other things, re-evaluate turn costs, time between missions...

No spam and keep it constructive

I don't mean this as spam; I seriously don't understand what you are attempting here, so In order for me to be of any assistance in this at all... I'll need you to explain things to me as if I were a 3 year old ok... sorry to be so much trouble, just trying to help...

You have spy skill and spy techs that you can upgrade to increase efficiency of spies.

There's gonna be a slight change that if if have a skill of 20 and you have a skill of 10, assuming both have the same techs and 100 spies each.
Then instead of me only needing to send 50 spies to beat your 100 spies, i'll need to send like 75 spies to "win".
On the other hand you would still need to send 200 spies to "win" (maybe, not 100% sure on this though, will maybe also give it reduced needs)

techs would remain unaffected for now

If anyone asks why, then I'll direct you to how the weapons work. They give you an increased efficiency, but their cost goes up disproportionately, making a weapon that is twice as powerful NOT be twice as efficient. So will do the same to spy and assassination skills.

Admin wrote:You have spy skill and spy techs that you can upgrade to increase efficiency of spies.

There's gonna be a slight change that if if have a skill of 20 and you have a skill of 10, assuming both have the same techs and 100 spies each.
Then instead of me only needing to send 50 spies to beat your 100 spies, i'll need to send like 75 spies to "win".
On the other hand you would still need to send 200 spies to "win" (maybe, not 100% sure on this though, will maybe also give it reduced needs)

techs would remain unaffected for now

If anyone asks why, then I'll direct you to how the weapons work. They give you an increased efficiency, but their cost goes up disproportionately, making a weapon that is twice as powerful NOT be twice as efficient. So will do the same to spy and assassination skills.

So basically what you are saying is when attacking smaller players you will have to send 50% more spies? (assuming they have the same tech and bonus) That kinda leaves the bigger players with 5800 power at a major disadvantage to those with 4400 doesn't it?

Admin wrote:You have spy skill and spy techs that you can upgrade to increase efficiency of spies.

There's gonna be a slight change that if if have a skill of 20 and you have a skill of 10, assuming both have the same techs and 100 spies each.
Then instead of me only needing to send 50 spies to beat your 100 spies, i'll need to send like 75 spies to "win".
On the other hand you would still need to send 200 spies to "win" (maybe, not 100% sure on this though, will maybe also give it reduced needs)

techs would remain unaffected for now

If anyone asks why, then I'll direct you to how the weapons work. They give you an increased efficiency, but their cost goes up disproportionately, making a weapon that is twice as powerful NOT be twice as efficient. So will do the same to spy and assassination skills.

Thank you for the explaination... I need some time to think, & will come back later...

Kingofshinobis1 wrote:So basically what you are saying is when attacking smaller players you will have to send 50% more spies? (assuming they have the same tech and bonus) That kinda leaves the bigger players with 5800 power at a major disadvantage to those with 4400 doesn't it?

how is it a disadvantage if you send less soldiers?

and "50% more spies" out of how many? Cos you're making it sound as if a larger player would need to send more spies than the smaller player has.
You're making a relative statement without basing it off an absolute value.
I can say I have a bigger house than jim, still doesn't say jack about the size of my house, about how much bigger it actually is, or even if by bigger i just mean taller or wider.

I meant you said that if someone has a higher tech than another player excluding bonus and techs, that they would have to send more spies in order to sab/assassinate the smaller player successfully? Or do I have this backwards?

yeh you do,

the person with the higher skill still sends less spies.
Just not as few as now

I don't see the need for this update. Its devaluing the usefulness of sabbing and asssassinations - and considering that strikes already dominate the scene when it comes to war, your basically making the game even more of a "assault and invade" game than what it already is.

Lets recap past updates:

- You ve reduced the number of personal points players can have in a individual stat - this mainly hurt covert based players

- You ve brought in the new attack system - making attacks far more useful and far more highly valued

- You ve made it so number of weapons sabbed is based on a % of type of weapon - as oppossed to based on the % of the total weapons which it used to be before updates. This means it is no longer as easy as it was to significantly reduce a player's defence if they had an large strike (compared to defence) - making sabbing less useful.

- You now propose to make sabbing and assassinations even less relevant by making it harder to sabb for "larger" player's and by making higher levels less efficient.

Before any of these changes attacks, assault and invasion/ hunt assassion missions were already the main uses during war - very few people sabbed, even less used assassins. All this is doing is making it even less worthwhile.

Players only have limited resources - less and less will bother investing in having decent offensive sabotage and assassin capacities. Your basically shrinking and limiting viable game strategies - which WILL impact on the game. Aderan War's unique war-system, with all its different options - was one of its major strong points - by making many of those options less viable, your pushing it ever more towards a bog-standard game with less strategies.

As it stands right now - about the only alliance/ force on the game which will even bother investing substantially into a decent covert capacity is The Imperium - and thats only because we can afford to. Other alliance's and player's are forced to choose between having a strike based war-capacity (much more cheaper) or a covert capacity (much more expensive, and increasingly less effective).

You should be doing something to encourage players and alliance's to adopt a variety of game strategies and account development - not something to shrink it.

Thats all i ll say on this update concerning whether its good or bad.

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If you do however insist on going ahead with this update, can you maybe simply just make it simpler?

I.e. you say higher skill levels will become less efficient. Currently a player with 5,800 covert skill, means their spy generates 5,800 power + techs/ personal points.

If you want to make covert skills less efficient, why not simply reduce them? I.e. below is how its currently worked:

5,800 covert - 31.8% more powerful than previous level
4,400 covert - 37.5% more powerful than previous level
3,200 covert - 42.8% more powerful than previous level
2,240 covert - 47.3% more powerful than previous level
1,520 covert - 52% more powerful than previous level

So..why not just reduce the % they increase by vs. previous level? It will keeps thing's far simpler and easier to understand/ work things out.

I.e. instead of the next covert skill being 1,520 after 1000 skill, why not have it 1515 covert - so only 51% more powerful than previous level (1% reduction). Next level could be 2,210 covert - so only45.8% more powerful (1.5% reduction).

The numbers would need working on - and i would say given the efficiency and capability of the skills is already *rapidly* declining between levels, while the costs of those levels is spiralling massively vs. what you gain - that ANY reduction be no more than 1% difference for *any* of the levels.

Honestly though - the above number's speak for themselves. Covert levels are already less efficient vs. the lower levels, and this decreasing efficiency only grows.

I.e. The cost for 5,800 covert is 155,320,583,404 kuwal. This gives you a 31.8% power boost over the previous level - 4,400 covert. The cost for 4,400 covert is 27,672,049,216.

So at a increased cost of 561% - i.e. 5.6 times more expensive - you get a 31.8% power boost.

THAT is the current setup - and your telling me you want to make covert levels even less efficient?

If anyone's interested the cost for the next level is 924,157,471,578 - so 595% more expensive than the previous one - and if current power rates continue, you ll get maybe a 25% power increase for the 595% extra cost. The power increase will drop if admin goes ahead with this update.

Don't you think covert levels are already increasingly less efficient?!?!

Compare cost of using different levels of spy levels with different levels of weapons.
I already have shown that spy levels keep a higher advantage unlike weapons which also disproportionately increase in building cost. Unlike spies which training costs always remains the same.

it's one of several updates.
I'm kinda busy right now being stuck in the uk totally screwing my university plans
I'm gonna add a number of things that will make it easier to go to wars, but first it requires the system for these two to get fixed

Sidenote, just noticed what you wrote: sabbing takes % of both weapon types, same effect as what you said when just going after defense, but if one goes for total destruction it's still the same thing as before, at least people with strikes aren't at a disadvantage now compared to people without strikes

Just a side thought after reading some of the ideas tossed around here. How about to nullify the person that is 5,800 from needing to send more then what is currently nessecary on a 4,400 we make it so this update only comes into effect if the player is 2 or more levels away from you. This will accomplish your goal of preventing larger players from picking on the smaller players but also not disrupt the battles where both players are large.

For instance a player that is 5,800 and a player that is 4,400 right now at this point in the game do not differ all that much army size wise. A person with 4,400 vs 3,200 also around the same area. The average army size of people with 3,200 compared to those with 5,800 however is much larger so this update will work perfectly for those bizarre situations where a larger players does decide to pick on a smaller player.

Vesper wrote:Just a side thought after reading some of the ideas tossed around here. How about to nullify the person that is 5,800 from needing to send more then what is currently nessecary on a 4,400 we make it so this update only comes into effect if the player is 2 or more levels away from you. This will accomplish your goal of preventing larger players from picking on the smaller players but also not disrupt the battles where both players are large.

For instance a player that is 5,800 and a player that is 4,400 right now at this point in the game do not differ all that much army size wise. A person with 4,400 vs 3,200 also around the same area. The average army size of people with 3,200 compared to those with 5,800 however is much larger so this update will work perfectly for those bizarre situations where a larger players does decide to pick on a smaller player.

I see. You make a good point. This update will basically make future mass and raids impossible though Oh well.

Kingofshinobis1 wrote:I see. You make a good point. This update will basically make future mass and raids impossible though Oh well.

you arent to be doing mass/raids...

seaborgium wrote:

Kingofshinobis1 wrote:I see. You make a good point. This update will basically make future mass and raids impossible though Oh well.

you arent to be doing mass/raids...

I know that lol. If the policy is deleted one day though, then there will be mass and raids. Just because I can't do it doesn't mean others can't lol.