i understand and support the restrictions on colonizing invincible planets owned by inactive players. however, i now have enough decks to surpass 10k scan on my next scan run

so, there should be a way to restore unoccupied invincible planets back into the pool from when players reset. invincible planets should also become unoccupied at the time a player is banned. to guard against multi.abuse, when a player resets or gets banned ... all their invincible planets become unoccupied and all scans of those planets are purged.

my suggestion is that if someone newly scans an unoccupied invincible planet, that they should be able to use an artifact that will remove the invincibility. this arti will also randomly reroll the planet's name and resource richness.

- for mission exotics, the rerolled exotic will be VL size, and capped at 5x for any resource richness (i think that is the natural limit).
- for mission dysons, you will get a rerolled C natural dyson
- for mission rifts, you will get a rerolled C natural dyson

this arti could come from a mission drop (1 to 3 total - extension of pawlacite or rift chains) OR from the artifact market for a sizable GP cost.

i think i have covered the multi.abuse angle, but i am wondering how many of these planets actually exist, and if they would be in sufficient number to justify the coding effort. also, while i would be willing to spring for GP for something like this arti, would other players ?

1. if a planet is alerted, it remains available even if it is removed from scan. so if anything of the nature is to be added, a 12-hour no occupation protection is needed.
2. IMO, the resulting planet should be a "fair" planet based on "resource" spent and what is possible, therefore:
EXOTIC: you will probably use this on the WORST planet you have ever colonized(and would likely otherwise abondon it). Large/Rich is probably being generous, so a Large with 6x cap would be appropriate, taking into account the terras. Personally, I turned a Average/Very Abundent or something to that effect. It would be heck unlikely that anyone turned a VL. (note, resource beyond 13x would be "transferred" over, as that is done post exotic-fy)

DYSON: size should be VM metallic, even if you account for QSE spent that's the largest size you'll get. People will use it on their WORST metallic, taking into account the cost of QSE and convert that into terraformer, 2x to 4x all resource is reasonable(specifically, up to 6 QSE into 8 terras, uplifting an average-very abundant planet and the result can be as low as VM 2x, again, you will be using the WORST you have)

RIFT: below 35x arti/mining should become a VM non-transformed planet, 36 and 37x should become a C "transformed planet", only 38x are C dyson. Resource is easy thou, just -15 all, no need to "roll". By transform/non-transform I mean gaia/terra, irradiated/gaia etc. 35x and below can be achieved by non transformed planet, which even if you account for the QSE consumed for uplift is VM at best. And 36/37 can be achieved through any number of transformation, so a random C transformed planet is more suiting(again, taking into account QSE consumed). It is only C as opposed to MC(max size of transformed, i.e. melters) because I doubt people would use that for rifting project as it provides no benefit whatsoever. Only 38x cannot be achieved by any other mean than natural dyson. And note that I'm only talking arti/mining and not research, because research can be expanded by cubes beyond the limit.

I'm not opposed to the idea of "reseting" the planets to avoid having wastage and (eventually) require more planets to be added in the pool. But I do think it's more reasonable to do a reversion based on cost as opposed to just randomly generate something out of nowhere.

+1

I know a few players who had rifted natural dysons and quit. Now those awesome planets can't be taken by anyone and are just wasted. I'm all for making them uninvincible and occupiable, with restrictions in place to prevent multi abuse.

While I do understand the desire to colonize those incredible planets, on the flip side think of this...

Player A - goes inactive is gone for a month, two months, for whatever reason (joined military, in an accident and cant play, or many other reasons).
Awesome Planet #1 goes available to colonize, someone grabs it
Player A - returns to game 3 months later to find all his awesome planets that he spent actually Money (GP) on gone..

How many games have you or other people quit, maybe to return to 3, 6, 12 months later.. and you expect your character to have the exact same stuff they had when you quit, went MIA / Inactive.

I hate to say it but, based on that I have to give this idea a -1

You have a fair point on not being able to recycle inactive player planets in this way, for exactly the reasons you outlined.
However, SenatorHung's idea specifically covers this point and refers only to the planets of resets and banned players, who cannot possibly return to claim the invincible planets.

I think resetting those planets to prevent multi abuse while still recycling them back into the available pool of planets is a solid plan that is well worth consideration.

That's a lot of headaches for Dan (coding-wise) for the sake of what? A couple hundred planets out of nearly 5 million?

fair points. didn't think of the alert ... reset path.


maybe it would be better to skip the GP arti and just have Dan run a script on the server once a month. this would go through all the unoccupied invincible planets and re.roll them. i prefer the re.roll mostly to disguise the original name of the planet, and Dan already has a mechanism to add new planets so there would be no new coding other than the monthly SQL filter.

- for mission exotics, Dan's script would just reroll a random planet
- for mission dysons, Dan's script would reroll the planet into a random metallic
- for mission rifts, Dan's script would just reroll a C dyson

i think even the possibility of a larger pool of natural dysons available to be found would give hope to some of us who have never found one any of those that get turned back into rifts will provide more GP to Dan.

You know, on second thought, there is no need to roll anything whatsoever. Dan could always keep a back up file of the planets upon initial generation OR invic transformation. And should any invic become unoccupied, that planet will revert back to whatever it was on the backup during maintenance or whatever
I'm not entirely sure if he have any kind of backup set up, thou he probably have some records. But while he might not be able to properly revert planets already transformed, at least the future ones can be returned to proper state.

Note: backup on generation would mean a bigger overall file but only access/modify when he choose to add planets or do the reset maintenance. This means that it does not have to be attached to the server itself and hence does not slow down the system whatsoever. It just takes harddrive space
On the other hand, on-transformation would require(at least) a temporary table to track the new ones until they can be added to the primary list, this would take less overall space(smaller number of planet) but will cause a slight amount of server overtime.

Thou in any case, this method would require minimal coding and no modification of in game mechanic, would be a simple maintenance issue.