Current damage formulas have led to ships that have few decks and get most of their power from crew instead of modules. These ships take very little damage due to the way damage is calculated, and have an advantage in PVP. Ships that have not embarked on this strategy from their inception cannot go back and take advantage of it without losing their entire progress within the game, sometimes representing years of play. This has made some people upset.

There should be a way to rebalance the game to reduce this arguably unfair advantage. Obviously the damage formulas could be tinkered with, but here I present an alternative.

Crew need space to work and provide the services the ship requires. This would mean that you would need more decks if you had more crew. So I propose that one deck can support X engineers, Y tactical officers, and Z helmsmen (scientists are iffy since they don't give a combat advantage / can be left at home). All crew in excess of this number provide no benefit until they have workspace added with sufficient decks. (If needed, a constant can be added or subtracted from the total.)

This means that if a ship constrained decks, it would constrain its other stats as well. Therefore to have a high-crew ship, it would also need to have a certain amount of decks, increasing the amount of damage it would take. It also has the bonus effect that high energy builds - or any other build that pumps up a single crew component - would need to invest additional points in decks as well. It also gives an additional use to all those ship bots that people have been avoiding adding to their ships in order to reduce damage taken. Lastly, it encourages ships to invest in well rounded ships, rather than focusing on single stats.

In short, this change discourages having few decks and pumping stats unevenly.

I wasn't aware deck numbers affected PVP - can you link to or explain this one to me? (not trying to be smart - this is genuinely the first I've heard of this)

Oh, right, some might not know this. Damage calculations take into consideration two numbers: the "max hit" and the attack/defense ratio (plus a random component). Based on the A/D ratio and the random factor, the actual damage done is some proportion between 0 and 1 of the "max hit" value. Therefore, if the max hit doubles and everything else stays the same, all hits on that target do twice as much damage.

For NPCs, the max hit is equal to 2.5 times their rank (at least most of the time anyway). For players, the max hit is the greater of this number and another number proportional to the number of decks on the ship. Therefore if you have a low rank but a lot of decks, you'll be hit for lots of damage, but if you both have low rank and low decks, you'll be hit for much less damage, and no amount of attack will be able to hit for more than a little bit on you.

It is because of this relationship that recently released modules are of the upgrade variety: start at a certain number of decks and stats, then increase the stats without additional decks required. This is opposed to the previous model of modules, where multiple copies of the same module were given out, requiring large amounts of decks. In addition, crew require no decks to provide their benefit, and modules that give percent bonuses include the crew contribution. In this way it is becoming easier to have a powerful ship without having to have that many decks.

In fact, the advantages are so strong that people are using the "reset account" feature to completely start anew so they can rebuild their ship more efficiently, given what they now know.

No.

No, no, no

Dear god NO.

PvP is fine as it is. There are strong LSBs and strong SSBs. Lots of people have reset and gone SSB after long play times. If you don't like how your ship measures up re-set, improve or stop complaining. Damage cap formulas are fine as they are and Dan would piss a lot more players off than he would please if he started tinkering with it (and by tinker with, I mean nerf SSB ships who have taken the time to plan and strategise how they are going to play the game)

I just have two questions about this:

• When was the damage cap ....(Rank+19)/2 or Decks/2, whichever is larger... first introduced?
• How many decks have you added since that time to support your Pokemon style of play? ...Gotta catch 'em all!

I have long supported that rank should be the sole damage caculation, That being said having a min crew to Deck (or even cargo) size would greatly help.

This actually raises a personal question. Is the damage cap formula for NPCs different to the PvP one?

NPCs are 2.5 * NPC rank.

damage cap history is outlined on this wiki page:
http://galaxylegion.com/wiki/index.php/ ... _%28PVP%29

you can see from Dan's post of 13jul2010, that the damage cap is working as he intended with regards to deck size and crew. so -1 to the OP's suggestion.

i still have plenty of 'easy' pvp targets at my rank, so i see no urgent need for this kind of change. folks who have spent a lot of time to work within these mechanics that have been in place for years should not be penalized now. they sacrificed by not having space for new attack mods and scan mods for other areas of the game in order to be tougher at pvp.

i still do not understand why folks feel the need to nerf SSB.s ... taking away an entire playing style just hurts the game ecology. if you want extra decks to be worth the damage cap incurred, go towards suggestions like:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=40435

or

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=40127

By the time I heard about not installing all modules possible, it was far too late to do anything about it. And I'll be buggered if I give up my GP stuff and my invulnerables for a reset!

Oh, I totally get that, you can almost always improve rather than reset.

However, given the damage cap has been around for a very long time, I kinda feel like at some stage you should have stopped adding decks and replaced inefficient modules with efficient ones instead.
From a quick look at your ship, it's not as if you were already 7000 decks at the time and suddenly the damage cap was forced on you.

Ardent Adventurer 1309 / 1460

It's Huge!
Expand your ship's size class to 'Colossal Galaxy Destroyer' (not including bonus from Sillixx)
4400 / 4400
Awarded:
Jun-03-14

Free advice for what it's worth, scanning less than 7000 times in 1309 days is probably not helping your ship strength.

I actually like this idea and have thought of it myself. It has never made sense to me how people can shove huge crews into tiny ships.Also, on the flipside, some people have huge ships but crews that are smaller than crews aboard small ships.Its so unrealistic it really bugs the hell out of me.

However, I am forced to -1 this suggestion. As retarded and unrealistic as it may be, too many people have invested far too much time and effort into building their small ships under the current system and to change it now would completely screw them over. Can you imagine pissing off all the ssb in the game..We would lose at least half our player base.

(I really wish I could +1 this but unfortunately, I cannot)

-1

i think the damage cap definitely needs to be re worked. there have been a ton of times when my attack and defense has eclipsed my enemy's yet we do about the same damage.

Well apparently Big, bad, powerful space ships with state of the art weapons and scanning systems for some odd reason cant effectively target certain ships just because they are small.. Again completely unrealistic and just plain silly. These ships, with all their advanced technology should be able to put a photon torpedo right up the arse of a small dog running around the surface of a near by planet. Instead we can't even hit a small spaceship within firing range in open space..
Nobody said it had to make sense I guess lol.

Actually, it makes perfect sense. A tiny ship would be more maneuverable, meaning they would be harder for targeting scanners to lock onto.

PvP is just broke. Period. Possibly even unfixably broke. My personal opinion is it got broke when the first DamCap update was made, totally removing hull from the calculation. That was way back before most of yinz were born, btw. With an effectively infinite hull limit and a nearly static damage cap (there's only so many modules), it gets out of hand rather quickly. Go try to kill someone your own rank that is not in a complete vegetative state while they're online. Good luck, not likely to happen. Why? Because the amount of hull vs damcap means they have oodles of time to pop a nano. Look at my statement that Golgotha pinned to his sig. That was several high power ships taking on one ship with low(ish) damage cap and high hull. It's also a situation that just plain should not happen. I recall Negron posting a year or so ago when he hit 1M hull. Granted, that was with Lazuli Fixer and all available buffs, but with a max damcap of 3500 (about 7k decks worth of modules at the time) that's 285 shots to disable (disregarding shields because of the "useless" krionite torpedo). At damage cap. So to get one kill on that ship, with a 6% proc-rate from Geminis, you have to expect 17 hits of 10% to yourself. Meaning you have to repair twice just for 1 kill. Even if you were 10x more powerful than him. Absurd.

Damage cap-Broke
Geminis-Broke
Crew to decks-Broke
Rewards-Crap
PvP-BROKE

Damage cap incorporating decks, rank, and hull-Usable
Geminis only active if no actions in last 24hrs-Usable
Crew to decks generously limited-Usable
Improved rewards-Usable
PvP-Fixed.

+1

I like the idea and think it makes sense.. I mean really how can you have 30,000 + Tactical officers all cramped into a tiny ship?... Either way Damage Cap is broken, period and needs fixed.

If not this, then something based on attack vs defense, or a modifier added to what is currently there based on rank difference or atk/defense difference, something, anything.. as it is now it is absurdly broken..

once again, I agree that damage cap misuse simple broke PvP as such - this part of GL is dying if not directly dead for majority of still active players.

on other side, to be constructive, the problem is behind non-sense logic, that either a tiny can ship can have 100K+ crew and actually no weapons installed at all or a super colossal ship with all modules one including max possible hull is simple possible to disable by much less direct hits as number of direct hits on SSB. I would like to point out the fact of direct hits! Not even mentioning the non-logical hard limit for critical hits. If you are hit, then you are hit and no magic to be applied in scifi war game

So what about to implement a logic of % of effectiveness of the crew?

E.g. player1 (SSB) has installed only 4 Dominion Tri-Blasters and 50,000 crew with 1000 decks while the 100% satisfaction/effectiveness of crew is set at ratio 50 crew/ deck. There would be no change for such ship. However as crew is to be counted the entire population unless somehow Dan can split the Androids from regular crew from rank points (where Androids would count less = 20-50% of required decks)

Player2 SSB with 50000 crew with 500 decks would have satisfaction/effectiveness of crew 50% and thus these would add only half of expected effect when attacking/invading or defending or maintaining max energy bar. This would be case of ship with low credits and slowly disabling the modules on ship = falling apart and not providing the necessary life support to the crew. Androids also require maintenance and power supply.

LSB could potentially have with 50000 crew and 2000 decks satisfaction/effectiveness of crew at 150%, thus the maximal output damage in case of critical hit would not be limited by damage cap (or other bonus).

This could also provide space maybe for introduction of ship captains/commanders to control big number of crew with some effects = for draft they would act as hero raising morale or effectiveness of the crew. Could be hired temporary from missions or for permanently for GP etc. (common 20 GP - extra rare/strong for 160 GP).

In general, the above numbers are for example and for balancing could be used totally different ratio. Also the captains/commanders would not be needed crucially, but could be a source of GP income for Dan to make win-win solution or further consume the almost godlike energy bars. The current SSB with sensible picked ratio would not be harmed significantly! Only the further development would have to be modified.
Plus it is from convo here : http://galaxylegion.com/wiki/index.php/ ... _%28PVP%29 - already in 2010 is highlighted the issue with damage cap and further it was modified/altered. So this current version of damage is hardly to be considered are written in rock and thus unchangeable. Quite an opposite.

EDIT: We, players can be now captains, later we could have option to rank up and thus have higher ranked/leveled commanders overseeing the crew etc.
Anyone, we can have so many ally, that actually one would look like swarmed .. so rather something with less pictures for ship design and more for stats maybe? One nice captain picture would do it pretty well!

Well I'm glad I opened discussion on this topic. Seems opinions range from we have to leave the illogical system the way it is because everybody's taking advantage of it already and we can't inconvenience them to various ways to change the system to something that makes more sense but will upset lots of people. I personally don't think tradition isn't a good reason to hold onto a broken system, but at least it's being discussed!

you are working on the assumption that the PvP system is broken. it aint. i am high on the raids leaderboard. i have been climbing the kills leaderboard for months now. i am aiming to get onto the hacks leaderboard. i am doing this with less time put into the game than those who have come before.

look at the rest of the individual player leaderboards ... are there ANY other areas of the game where someone with less time in the game can become competitive ?? rank ? research ? battles ? medal points ? and how about attack power ? crew counts ? arti production ? energy level ? only in PvP can you hope to see your name in lights (at least until Dan implements monthly leaderboards).

the fact that some folks focused on other areas of the game first does NOT mean that the system is broken. it may not make sense to you, but it made sense to all of those who wanted to be competitive in PvP. as has already been stated ad nauseum ... those who focused on building their ship to specialize in PvP at the expense of other areas of the game should not now have their years of effort wiped away.

i already listed a few reasonable suggestions previously offerred by others (critical hit boosts from super.scan or super.cloak, super.size mods that SSBs can not use effectively, etc.) that could be used to mitigate some of the perceived advantages of SSB's, but nerfing the damage cap formula after 4 years ... FOUR YEARS ... is NOT reasonable unless you also plan to nerf the advantages gained by those who did NOT specialize in PvP ... FOUR YEARS of higher.cloaked planets scanned, planets invaded, boosted planetary production, base drops, base payouts (from energy donations), module repair costs, etc.

here, try this on for size:

SUPER BIG GUN: [size: 500, attack 5000] - activated ability (recharged with GP) for 1 charge and 5000 energy - do 50x damage cap on enemy ship with 5 minute cooldown timer.

1-shot kills ?? oh, the humanity !!!

And you're working on the assumption that disabling a lower ranked ship and raiding them 5 times while they are offline is PvP. That's essentially just another version of NPCing. As I previously stated, go after someone your own rank that is online and not brain dead. You fail. If you examine what I said about fixing PvP, you'll see that it would affect large ships just as much as small ships. It would actually bring back into play artifact use beyond krio/nanospam.