I will concede that allies, like decks and mods are a choice and no one has a gun to your head to add them.

That said, i think it would be groovy to have something , vis a vis darkbots, which lessens upkeep on allies. I have all 12 now, at the end of next week 11 will be maxed, with oraus chugging away. These pups are expensive. I pull in a couple hundred billion income a day, but God forbid i invade or make too many purchases.

This could be a module (hello GP sales!) which takes up a nominal deck space.. Possibly another ally, with some manner of requisite abilities...Or even an addendum to an existing chain to allow for finding/unlocking this. Very possible this isn't needed, but was a passing thought and figured worth tossing to the masses for input and discussion.

For second part here, and with halloween upcoming, what about a VAMPIRIC ally?

I can envision an ally which somehow leeches off your ship to grow in strength. My initial thought would be that it eats ranks from existing allies--either in a random or patterned format to grow (eg- vampirism). Other possibilities might be that it permanently eats a large chunk of hull and/or shields, or that it causes weakness in your ship for a limited amount of time, (-10% to all att/def/invade for a given timeframe) or could cost 'x' crew either from existing recruits or something like helms, rp and sci in cargo. Lots of room here for options.

Tiers of rewards could include cloak (seems logical for a shadowy minion), small pvp attack % bonus (super strength), ultimate---????

now I do agree that most ally's range in the silly expensive, However, you just need afew more toxics to deal with it. Their expense is actuly a GOOD thing, as it helps motivate SSB to have SOME mining worlds (instead of all ap)

As far as the ally that vampires you, Well the ability would need to be stuiped good for the stats suggested. The only drain I can see would be a fixed -X% stat that is remotely palatable. The rest would need some REALLY REALLY REALLY crazy good ability, Keep in mind what it is compeating with, For example Thracci only costs badages and has a great ability, Anubix costs nothing to upgrade attack % again great ability, If you wanted this to permanently take away my crew or ally's levels it had better be REALLY amazing like planet size boosting or 3:1 artifact building with some cloak on the side.

One thing that could be used to rank him is the "Sacrificial Lamb" ability.


Sacrifice a certain amount of crew, gain a level.


Im hoping his ability would be worth it. Maybe to go along with the "vamparism" ability, say each time you attack a enemy player, you drain 0.5% of the enemy players health each time you attack?


Just spitballing here.

Actually, draining level from other allies seems interesting.
There's no harm done, and I don't see any possible (unfixable) exploit, and it actually encourages people to rank up their allies once again.

Aside from Zane, which must be ranked up via scanning, other allies can be ranked quite easily.

I'm thinking of :

Rank up when using Leech/Parasitism.
R1 : Gain ability : Leech/Parasitism > When used, random ally will lose 3(1?) ranks.
R100 : Gain ability : Symbiosis > Grants 5% increase on att, def, scan, and cloak, plus 1% for each maxed ally.

aasquall, that was kind of where i thought of first..but didnt think people would like losing major ally ranks...the first draft thought was suck 1 level off eACH ally...that way you would ALWAYS have stuff to do to keep all your bonuses.

IT would suck and be timestaking, but if the end result was awesome enough....it would keep you involved in all aspects of game play and provide a new epic challenge. Your thought of a few ranks off a random ally is good...just hate to make someone lose potentially several ally ranks a day, which they could only make 1 up per ally. So get hit a few days in a row and you'd be stuck for a while tryinng to regain for some allies.

I was thinking of granting another 'ultimate' level ability, now capping the ally's level to 120, which can only be achieved by using Symbiosis 20 times after reaching r100.
But then I gave up, making another 'ultimate' ability for each ally - 10(?) times seem too much for Dan, with all the testing and whatsoever