what he said. this is the equivalent of saying that cloning pods should be restricted on planets to make them easier to steal even if the owner is online to defend.

if you can't be arsed to look at an enemy ship's effects tab or use a spy probe resources to see that they are likely online, you deserve to get treadmilled.

What Sen said....

I agree with senator and umbongo on the suggestion as proposed. However, in terms of getting treadmilled by people too small minded and full of themselves to kri spam, I might suggest a simple remedy: on Atirroth (and lepus as well if I'm not mistaken) when they repair themselves the message "Repair +1000000" shows up on the actions tab for around 10 seconds. If something similar were instituted for nanos, than the attacker would know when the person repaired and wouldn't waste 10 minutes trying to eat through infinite hull.

I agree that there is nothing at all wrong with halcs/calming amps and that they both add a strategic element to the game (being able to block actions against your ship). It's handy a lot of times. Work, sleep, big LM NPC hunts and base battles, etc. Also, there are many people who prefer other aspects of the game and I don't begrudge them their desire to use halcs/calming amps or both together to block me from bothering them whenever they choose. I'm currently in the low 1500 rank range, have 8000 player kills and have no trouble maxing my TM actions every day I choose to. We're now up to 7 players over 10,000 kills on the leaderboard which seems to indicate that there is no shortage of targets for the motivated. Even if the number of halced ships was 80% (I don't think it is), I always seem to find enough targets to keep me happy. But there are a lot of ships out there that just want those red badges handed to them. They want PVPing to be as simple as NPCing and I don't sympathize with that argument at all. Personally, I like the fact that PVP requires more work than NPCing and that we can't just slap every NPCer silly. The game would probably fold as probably 90% of the folks I know are not super PVP chasers and would probably walk away if they were being disabled every time they repaired.

We on the PVP side can easily bump ships with calming amps at no energy cost AND we have Stryll Trap Probes to help us find and bump the players who are all trapped up at a minimal energy cost. In addition, if the non-PVPer sticks their head up for any reason (to say invade a planet), they're exposed for 24 hours so it's not like there's no limitation on their use. And, even as a reasonably aggressive PVPer, I don't want to PVP ALL the time. For one thing, I like to give my BT a day or two of peace between PVP runs so I'm not harassing them every single day. It's nice to be able to PVP one day and not PVP the next.

I'm also fine with the repair nanodrones/shield restorers staying as they are. The occasional treadmill doesn't detract from the game enough to merit changing them. It doesn't happen often (particularly if you screen out targets that are obviously online) and is usually not to difficult to detect (with the exception of some talented SSB's). If there is anything out of this thread I would implement, it might be the message Lytol suggested so treadmilling would be totally obvious -- it might save some folks some unnecessary energy/XP.

Yes... A strategic element. Let's call it that. It's not like words have meaning or anything...

The nanodrones we have now are already good enough. It is not broken, so it is not necessary change it. Changing it would make it inferior to all other sources of hull repairs and increasingly less significant in the long run. In the end, it will have much little use and become worthless, since people will more likely use time manipulators to restore their hull, rather than use nanodrones to repair.

If this was implemented, then we will have an increased wave of disabled ships that do not want to repair, even though they have other sources of repairs and will less likely be able to npc when they have made actions to other players in the past 24 hours.

Moreover, it makes people less likely to PvP and decreases the activeness of players, while making PvP much harder for those who are already or are still struggling with it. Basically, this idea will kill this game from the inside out because people will not want to come and continue playing and people will leave more as a result of not being able to get back up to fight back.

-1 on changing repair nanodrones and -1 on any changes to halcs or calming amps. As a fairly active player, 875 ranks in under a year, halcs and calming amps are all that stand between me and people that have ranked more slowly and have far higher attack, hull and defense and are 500+ ranks higher. I was okay with speed ranking under the current system, knowing that when the battlefield got too harry I could limit the damage to my combat rep.

Repair nanodrones are an excellent way to PvP online, both when attacking and defending. If they were limited then people would focus more on making the laughable targets more laughable, less on attacking other players with attack that could do damage to them, and finally would make T-Plasma Gemini cannons a serious deterrent. The PvP system is more or less a PK system, most do not attack back when attacked but may retaliate later. Even people that have had massive ap for some time would reconsider PvP if repair nanodrones were more limited, at a 6% trigger from 3 T-Plasma Gemini's rate the attacker has to repair more often then the defender after a certain amount of hull/decks.

While you might be unhappy about someone doing the treadmill routine on you, imagine how you would feel when you have to spend TM's to repair your hull to continue your PvP session. Limit repair nanodrones and you will also be limiting yourself for the PK game later on. Incentives often work better than disincentives, I'd rather see Dominion Quad Blasters as an upgrade from tri-blasters that give 3% overall attack boost per installed Dominion Quad Blaster and an upgrade to the CK69 that turns it into a rankable ally.

Totally agree on incentives working better and like your ideas but 12.55% passive attack bonus is a little too much I think for the Dominions.
1% passive increase from each installed would be cool though, without being too OTT.

Uh....a strategy is just a "a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim". If your plan calls for minimizing disables or other harassment (not eliminate, that would be great but isn't possible -- yet), halcs and calming are definitely strategic elements. Don't know how you define strategy, but these are actually one of the things people can use as part of a plan that they fine tune over time. It's not like the decision to become an SSB or not - a one time thing you can only change in one direction -- that's not as much a strategy as a choice that you make early on and is irrevokable for LSBs. As for PVP, I do have an approach/plan/strategy (whatever you want to call it) that I follow in pursuit of my goals and it does include the occasional use of these elements (not frequently since I PVP a lot, but they're there when I want to use them). Others may PVP without a plan -- just bang away every day -- but not me. And as far as the NPC-oriented players, I see halcs and calming amps as a MAJOR part of their strategy to avoid having their combat rep destroyed by giving one side of the PVP equation (the attacker) complete, unhindered access to disabling their ship whenever they're not sitting right at their computer. I in no way begrudge them that choice. Let them play the way they want. Don't break the game for them.

Great post. Thought your points were right on the money. And totally agree with the idea that repair nanos and shield restorers are a SUPER important part of PVP attack. With EVERYONE in my attack range having Geminis and a small percent running with a Gammatron in place, PVP attack would practically be broken without them or with them in some nerfed down state. Last, but not least, I'm all in favor of your idea for additional incentives to PVP. The decision to be in the "disable-able" pool (you're practically always in the "hack-able" pool) should be in the hands of the individual players. Those who don't care about the new incentives should still be allowed to pursue whatever play style they prefer but additional incentives will definitely draw many into the active PVP pool as many folks seem to more-or-less withdraw after they've maxed out their Dominion cannons. Also, anything that can be done to emphasize the "spaceship-building" aspect of the game (i.e., getting something more out of your equipment instead of just collecting more crew) is a good thing in my mind.

Hmmmm....yeah. Exactly this. But it can't be true, because Mal doesn't want it to be true. Lol.

Hint to Mal.....Just because you can't see or comphrehend a strategy doesn't mean there isn't one there.

Sure, I'll concede that by strict and simplified definition you're correct. But imagine if Red Alert came with the "strategy" of just setting up an invincibility barrier which basically lasted forever, had no work-around and which was in stupidly high abundance so everybody could use it all the time. Sounds like a poor strategy game to me.

Halcyon traps and calming amplifiers may be considered "strategic" to use (again, by the strict and simplified definition) but they hardly promote strategy in the game. They remove incentive to PvP by making it dull and boring. 54% of targets on my BT have a halc or calming amp, and this is during an event where a lot of people are actually coming out and engaging a little in PvP for once; I'll do another sample when the event is over (and my studies have finished).

PufFikshun, you mention combat rep. All halcs and calming amps do is remove the need to maintain one's combat reputation; it'll hardly budge. Maybe the high combat reps should be left for those who actually, y'know... Engage in combat. Maybe you SHOULD have to earn your combat rep and fight to maintain it, rather than just gathering 1K kills early in the game and then riding along your ratio.