Flux, I'm Laughable. I'm in the mid-300's and I doubt I could *defend* my ship from any player in triple digits. So defense is not an option. When I get attacked, I get disabled, unless the attacker trips my halc.

When I get disabled, I'm usually doing one of two things, NPCing or missions.

If it's NPCing, then every PVP disable means I have to stop and wait for ten or fifteen minutes until my shield rebuilds enough to let me NPC without tearing up my hull. And since I don't have time to sit here staring at the screen all that time, that means that either I stop playing GL for that amount of time or I switch to missions. Either way, I'm not doing what I wanted to do in the game. That makes a big difference to me.

If it's missions, then it's not quite as big a deal to get disabled, but it disrupts the flow of the mission and interrupts the story I'm telling myself about what my ship is doing on the mission. More pragmatically, for many missions it means that I have to pull out of the mission and repair my hull before I can continue. And at my level, hull repairs are *expensive*. Particularly when you're trying to upgrade all your planets with +12's, as I was until very recently. For the past two months I've been lucky to make my upkeep every day; that's how close to the margin I've been running. So that makes a difference to me too.



I think you're misunderstanding the point of the halc. Halcs aren't there to protect you when you're offline. They're there so you don't have to set an egg timer (or the modern equivalent) to tell you when your calming amp is running out. You set a calming amp; when it runs out there's a good chance that the next attacker will trip your halc. You see the announcement that your halc has been tripped and reset your calming amp.

In a GL without halcs, players like me would have to set an offline timer and then scramble, on the buzzer, to get in another calming amp before getting disabled (you can't proactively set one; it has to go away before you can set it again). That would be a major nuisance. Shortening the time of the calming amp would make it an even worse nuisance (and double the expenditure of energy for it, which would be non-trivial for smaller players -- of course, the shortened amp could be made free to use.)

To reiterate, I don't mind being disabled when I'm offline. I don't actually like it, of course, but I can live with the expense in credits and the loss of points in raiding. But being disabled when I'm online makes a tremendous difference to my experience of the game. (If you're wondering how I know this, if I play as I say I do, well, I do invade planets (I use governance probes to make sure the owners are inactive) and every time I do that, I have 24 hours to endure without halcs or calming amps. So I do speak from sad experience here.)

This whole post brings two questions to mind: Why don't you have enough Repair Nanodrones/Shield Restorers & why are you struggling for upkeep?

Both questions stink of poor leadership in your legion...

Feel free to add me or any other players that are willing to help. I'm sure players would donate funds and some artifacts restorers and drones are almost free(very cheap and free in some cases). May recommend a new legion to provide some advice.

StuffyBeary, I am grateful for the offer and half-tempted to take you up on it, but I wasn't posting to ask for charity. On the whole I would rather not be beholden. It won't be like this forever. I've recently become a Builder and that's helping a lot with upkeep and repair costs. I've pretty much finished with my +12's and now I just have to worry about upgrading to best cloaks.

Umbongo, while I cannot judge for certain, having been in only one Legion since I came here, I think my Legion's leader is a very good leader; it's just that he's our only four-digit and he's trying to help and support thirty smaller players, many of them much smaller. (Half of my Legionmates are smaller and newer than I am). He doesn't have the credits to help me with my upkeep; all his credits go to supporting our base.

Back when a wave of us joined six months ago, he did have repair nanodrones and shield restorers to give us, but we used them up faster than he could resupply us, so all this year we have been running very short.

what amazes me that any suggestion or idea that eots don't liek they pile in and all say the same thing to the point of every other player in teh game being in an inferior legion and have inferior ships... so lets all ditch the legion ideas and all join eots... cos theyre the only ones who are doing right... and if anything gets too close to the bone with eots they invoke their moderator account and close the thread.. if that doesn't work they invoke moderator account and ban teh person from forum...

since dan is obviously awol and eots are in control of teh game.... may as well all join them and get their handouts cos otherwise were all just doing it wrong...

Ok, not to criticize your legion and all ..... But the more you try to explain, the more it makes it look like this is a struggling legion that is unlikely to survive. You, and presumably many of your legion mates, go wanting for things that should be easily supplied either from the base arti pull directly, or from the higher ranked players in your legion.

I have to wonder if your leader IS a great leader (not saying he isn't-- I don't know him), why he has not been able to attract other, high ranking players to join him in his legion. Sorry, but a legion with only 1 high ranker and tons of low rank players, where all the efforts go into just paying base upkeep -- so much so that the builder profession starts to seem viable is not the picture of a thriving legion. Indeed, it seems the recipe for a legion on the brink of failure.

I hope you guys pull it out and go on to become a self-sustaining legion full of players that have all they need to enjoy the game...... I'm just skeptical. To have to wait for your shields to recharge on their own, or to have to scrimp on every last credit to afford repairs because you don't have or can't afford to buy nanos has got to make this game seem unbelievably difficult and boring as you continually wait, and wait, and wait for credits/natural re-charge of your shields.

If I were you I would give some serious thought to at least checking out a few other legions.....even on a trial basis to see what a difference a good legion can make.

Lol....Ok, should have seen this coming. Bitter much. No, I am not in EoTS and they are FAR from the only successful, viable legion in the game. It is, however, painfully obvious that there are too many legions in this game many of whom would be better served by merging with other struggling legions to form stronger, more successful legions that can at least support themselves, their legion-mates, and the base without everyone doing without, and/or becoming builders just to survive.

Flux, how's this for on topic?
Of course the formula DOES reflect the hard limit of damage cap ...what do you suppose happens when you multiply the calculations by the damage cap at the end?
*shakes head*

Spoiler Alert: The value of Tanh will never exceed 1, so the damage cap is a hard limit.



Okay, just to plug in some numbers so you can see why the damage cap is... a damage cap.

Caution: Maths and a small degree of logic beyond this point.

Damage per shot = tanh( attack*(random(0.6 to 1.666)) / (defense * 5) ) * damagecap

Let's make Attack 1 Million (kinda extreme example, but will help to show why the damage cap can't be exceeded).
Let's make Defense 5 (Yep, again the most extreme example).
Let's further assume the RNG gives you the maximum 1.666 positive multiplier.

tanh(1000000*1.666/(5*5)) = 1
Wowsers, damage cap can't be exceeded even when 1 million attack goes against 5 defense.
Who woulda thunk it?

Hate to break it to you, but that sounds a lot like he is holding you back more than anything, nice guy or not. There are plenty of top 50 legions who could provide you with plenty of all the resources you are after.

Heck if you fancy a few maxed Toxics, give me a shout and I can load you a few

My guess is that Aegis' legion would have been dead in short order w/o the infusion of new blood into the game, which as stated started about 6 months ago. There were 8 or 9 of us to join then, mostly migrating from another game w/a tyrannical admin (who I hear is no longer allowed to login by the other admins but haven't been back), so the legion is strong activity-wise as we've only lost a couple of us from that group and have been adding more as we go along. Given that we're all friends and enjoy playing the game with each other, that works out well, although the "older" folks were mostly inactive or not interested in being communicative other than a few exceptions so it was hard for a single barely-4 digits to supply all our needs when we were learning the ropes of the game. (Only one of us went SSB, for example, since the rest of us are more interested in having fun and meeting our own goals than just being strong.)

We flew through what seemed like limitless artis early on; it'd be nice to get a few big players more active in the legion, but it won't be more than another 6 months before the crop of us that joined all at once will be getting close to that stage where we're not just completely self-sufficient but able to support the new players to join the legion (which we've already started to do despite being mostly in the 200-400 range rank wise.)

Since I recently switched to PvP-focus while trying to rank Thraacti, I'll admit that halcs are really annoying, but I do think they serve a purpose. I think it would be nice if halcs were a 4-hour trap instead of a 7-day trap...folks can still halc up and get up to 6 hours of protection, but they'd have to be online inside that 6 hours. There'd be no sense in setting a halc at the same time as a calming amp, but you could set one near the end of a calming amp to extend that 4 hours of inulnerability. (Ideally I'd like to see 2 hours across the board - CA lasts 2 hours, tripped halc lasts 2 hours, halc trap lasts 2 hours...)

Folks could still play uninterupted, but they wouldn't necessarily be able to spend an entire day without getting disabled unless they actually logged in regularly throughout the day.

I don't generally get the luxury of noticing that my ship is under attack and having time to respond to it. I get a whole set of messages popping up on my screen all at once. Usually they say: "X has set off your Omicron Mine Trap. // X has set off your Krionus Virus Trap // Your ship has been disabled by X." And that is the first I've heard of any of it.

I think once a week or so it doesn't actually say that my ship has been disabled, and then I scramble off to try to set another trap and/or to repair myself, but it almost never does any good because it turns out I really was disabled by that time and the game just hadn't told me.

Two or three times since I started playing the game I've been able to be fast enough to reset a trap and have it go off before the attacker finished disabling me, but it's never actually stopped them. Long ago when I was in the low double digits sometimes if a trap went off the attacker would stop entirely at that point but that was a long time ago.



Yes, seriously. 15 minutes. I wish I were exaggerating. I'm not. My shields aren't that big and they take time to come back.



I can repair my hull at once, assuming I have the money. I can't repair my shield.



Sure I should. I should hit the Powerball jackpot too. You live with what you have. Someday I'll be a high-level and I'll have all the artifacts I need. I'm not there yet.



Er, actually I often *do* get hit immediately after each calming amp runs out.



But GL isn't a war game. Or it doesn't have to be. That's what I like about it. It's a building game. I colonize planets. I defend my planets from marauding NPC monsters. I explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations. None of that needs to involve attacking other players or having them attack me.



I think if you tried it you might find it was difficult. You could test that now to see how annoying you actually would find it by setting a timer to go off every two hours as you played the game. Every two hours, when your timer went off, you could go in and use a void shell on one of your planets. That would take about as much time as resetting that calming amp. I think you'd find it was somewhat disruptive to your game experience. Not terribly so, certainly, but disruptive.

Clearly you don't or you would have sufficient arti to produce you the Shield Restorers and Repair nano drones you claim to not have access to...

Ok.....questions for Texas Toast or Aegis or.... whoever.....

Ok you guys are RL friends and like to play together; I get that. Certainly there are legions out there who could handle a group of players joining at one time, yet are still a fully functioning legion. May take a little looking, but doable I think. Probably not a top 10 or even top 20 legion. But, so what. My legion is currently bouncing around the 50 or 60 mark and guess what.... No one does without.

TT, you say in 6 months you guys should, for the most part, be self-supporting...... Do you really see everyone putting up with another 6 months of struggling just to scrape together the common artis needed to even play the game? Or, will they lose interest since a lot of their playing seems to be simply sitting, waiting, and doing very little because they can't even recharge their shields or repair their hull?

There is also the merge option......Heaven knows there are enough struggling legions out there that would likely welcome an influx of new players all at once. That, of course, brings-up the ego question...... There are far too many players who stagnate in a struggling/failing legion only to eventually quit the game because their ego won't allow them to leave a failing legion where at least they get to be Chief, for a successful one where they may have to start as an Indian.

As to the question of wether GL is a war game..... Check the leader boards.....Over 50% of the categories are directly related to Pvp. These are the leader boards for the top players in the game. Not the top Pvpers, NPCers, Colonizers, etc. but the Top Players, period. Beyond that.....check the emphasis on buying items from the battle market for your ship and/or planets. Yeah, I enjoy the colonizing, building planets, building an empire idea as well. But guess what..... Pvp and conflict is at the center of all that.

Anyway, you will all do what you see best.... and I wish you the best of luck. If you insist on remaining in a stagnating/borderline failing legion at least consider the generous offers of help along the way to give you at least some respite from your struggle just to survive.



**PS....just a side note to Aegis..... I really don't get your concern/need to constantly worry about or try to repair your shields. I'm reasonably successful in the game from both a Pvp and NPC aspect and I virtually never have shields anyway. They are only full when I first start my run. After that I don't bother with them. Pvp/Npc until hull is approximately 75% gone, repair, repeat. I never recharge my shields, ever.

this is so all over the place i literally forgot what the op was...

All my planet-slots are filled but one, and it's empty because some of the people in our legion are doing Lone Conqueror with football planets and the rest of us are helping them.

I *have* taken far too many research planets and far too few arti planets; I realized my error about a hundred levels ago and I've been trying to fix it since, but it takes time.



That's just a side-effect of not having money and having a shortage of nanodrones. Shields don't cost money to repair.

I am pretty much self-supporting at this point; my need for nanos (or shield restorers) and time manipulators outstripped what could be given to me and what I could generate myself so I've been buying them off the trade market or in private purchases here on the forum. I am rank 360 right now, so I'm not doing a ton to contribute to base upkeep yet (now and then when there aren't other expenses for me to worry about I send my aidonium to our big guy since he can sell it for half the tariff I can until I find Caelon) but all in all am pretty happy with where I'm at.

My research is over 10k/hour and I've hit as much of the tree as I can realistically use at this point; right now I'm doing base research so I can contribute CTP to upgrade our base directly, and then will try to find the last couple of items in our CT Lab.

All in all, it was our big guy that introduced us to the game, and we're not unhappy with it (or we wouldn't be online so much every day.) The legion is a lot stronger now than it was before we arrived; some of the older players have gotten a little more active, a few still don't interact a ton with us, and we've kicked a couple out (planet stealers, the both of them) but all in all there's certainly a vitality from us smaller players and we're getting bigger faster and doing a good job of contributing more as we go.

I don't think Aegis was really complaining so much as stating why she likes having the option to use calming amps and halcyon traps for her style of play. (Now that I'm trying to stop being laughable, I hate all the halcyon traps I run up against! But I still see their merit.)

Yes; TT and I joined on the same day, and his ship is easily twice as capable all around as mine; don't judge us all by me. :>

And while I am truly grateful for your offers of help and I've accepted a couple of them, TT's right that I didn't intend to be asking for help in the thread. I explained my own situation only to support my statement (early in the thread) that it would ruin the game for me and players like me if GL players had the ability to override halcs and calming amps.

I love the game. I play it for hours every day. I think the others in our legion enjoy it too. And if what I'm experiencing is really not the common lot of the midranger, as I thought it was, then as soon as the first of us get big enough, say in another six months, we'll be able to make things easier for the next wave of midrangers.

folks, thanks for the bumps
but this thread is not about productions, and help to new player who has issues with credits.
PMs are the solution here... unless you want to hijack the topic by purpose.

btw, nobody strongly against nor in favor of any game change e. g. in field of NPCs I mentioned in OP?

My thoughts on both of those are: "meh"


I love the idea of a monthly leader board...or even a daily leader board rolling over for the past 7 or 30 days...
I could see Warrior as being a neat option although definitely not for all races, not sure about piercing a truce but would be cool if they didn't trip halcs.
The rest of those: "meh"


Love these ideas.


I'm small enough that this makes no difference to me, but providing bonuses to folks running out of content can only be a good thing.