From time to time people post about how unfair it is that over time they've built up their planets, maxed AP production on a fair few of them too, their ship has tons of attack and defence, it has a massive hull, all the important and shiny new powerful (cough) ship mods installed, boosting this and buffing that....but when they've nipped off to the bathroom or to make a coffee someone has come along and hit them with 200 emp's, then it's pew, pew, pew, bang, disabled and badged. You could say well that's just part of the game, deal with it....end of story, or is it?

Maybe like if this seems to happen to them all of the time I can see their point of annoyance, but removing the damage cap isn't the answer here, getting rid of emp stacking is not a good answer either, this is a war game after all, people get alerted, zero'd for being a complete Richard head etcetera, emp's are a valuable part of the tool kit for dealing with ones own personal or legion wars and revenge strategies.

I've also seen mention of some ships taking +4k energy to disable, like it was a complaint, well suck it up buttercup, as you rank higher and higher yourself and other ships should get tougher, by adding engineers and always able to be in a position where even at a few hundred energy left most tasks would naturally give you enough xp to rank within 10 minutes of play, be it PVP or missions with good xp to energy ratio using a neural, also fair play to anyone who builds a ship that requires lots of energy to take down, IMO way more ships should be tougher to take down than they currently are, it shows that some people should get themselves in a good legion that offers lots of help and ship building advice.

Having said all that some of the effects the damage cap has are not perfect, over time there should be a natural progression toward increasing ones ship size to accommodate the best new mods, upgrading existing ones and the benefits and bragging rights that all brings too. A possible way to help achieve a better transition to a larger ship over time would be to add a few things rather than taking something away, so I offer up this idea for consideration, improvement and criticism of what I have come up with so far:

Added on ship tab page between Cargo: and Upkeep:
? Max Dmg:
Info: Maximum damage another players ship can currently do to your ship per hit.

Player Artifact – Name Needed – Reduces the maximum damage another player can do to your ship per hit by 25%, lasts 20 minutes. A containment missile fired from an enemy player debuffs it.

Enemy Player Artifact – Name Needed – Increases the maximum damage that can be dealt to another ship by 10% for 30 minutes. Can be removed with a containment cage and is counted as an offensive action.

Text: Name has hit your ship with a Name Needed, increasing the maximum damage per hit that can be done your ship for a short while.

Deck/hull bonus: For each deck installed a 0.05% hull bonus is added to your ship, so 5000 decks would be equal to a 250% hull bonus. This encourages more players to naturally progress toward a larger ship build over time, it does not force anyone over to having a LSB and would still be dumb to add more decks than needed for your rank or toughness level, it doesn't get rid of or change the damage cap formula.

The amount of decks "needed" will always be dependant on individual player style, the ship mods available, those already installed and in cargo, their shuffling strategies and overall goals. The bonus gives everyone more hull, everyone is instantly a little tougher to kill, it also better balances out an obvious SSB Vs LSB problem that still exists too. It also opens an opportunity for yet another player race or profession that maybe has a -20% Max Damage to it, plus added to seasonal events that add or remove % of maximum hit damage is a possibility too.

A few issues;

Where do these new artifacts come from... ap shipments is the only place i can see those coming from and if that's the case then -1.

Your deck hull bonus just put me in the 3 million hull club, so thanks for that suggestion. So another -1.

There already is a natural progression towards adding more decks, which is gaining ranks. Unfortunately for the mid-ranks, the majority of SSB's have no intention of ranking fast to gain those decks. It'll probably be 2-3 years before i even get to see another SSB enter my badge range & the few MSB's in my range atm perma-halc when they can.

If anything what a few SSB's are doing these days is progressing to the MSB so they can have all the scan modules installed, but beyond that they don't care about 90% of researched/mission ship modules.



I said it in another thread and others have said the same in the past, keep things as is, but just create 3 offensive weapons that proc when you attack a player, similar to how Gemini Cannon's work when you attack a player, except reverse the person that takes damage.

2% proc rate per weapon, which will deal 2%(of their shield+hull) to the enemy ship when you attack it. That way you should save a bit of energy during the disable(if they're offline) and if a player is online defending a planet from 10-20 players(which really shouldn't be possible to do, planetary defense should require legion coordination, not just a big ass ship ), they can actually be disabled, you just need a few procs to go your way and boom they're disabled.

and each of those 3 offensive geminis would take 250 decks.

another set of researched scan mods at 250 decks apiece would also enhance MSB / LSB and further extend the SSB scan disadvantage to a higher deck value above 2k.

or better yet ban every player over rank 1k that has less then 5k decks give them 1 month warning they have to add decks or be banned for cheating lol

Oh the sweet irony... *Barely contains the laughter*

Thanks for the feedback Kirk, I was hoping for more than a few -1's here and there, or just +1's replies for that matter to progress the discussion further. Apologies if my suggestion seemed to make you feel yours was being dismissed in anyway, in fact it would probably do a very good job at the specific issue it addresses. While my suggestion maybe does or maybe does not go part way to fully addressing that problem in of itself, it's more about progressing the overall game play, making things a little more exciting, tougher and challenging especially at higher levels as you progress through the game too.

"Where do these new artifacts come from... ap shipments is the only place i can see those coming from and if that's the case then -1."
There's no reason they couldn't come from ap shipments, if it's for fear of getting less good stuff then that's a pretty easy fix, lessen the cost of a few other artis like emp's and such and boom you're pulling the same stuff, plus more for the same cost.

"Your deck hull bonus just put me in the 3 million hull club, so thanks for that suggestion. So another -1."
You're welcome Where exactly in the chain did you apply the % hull bonus to get to the 3m figure?

The discussion hasn't even headed in the direction of where the bonus is added, if 0.05 is too much, too little, or if it should be a % buff or a faction number per deck instead.

I'm sure there are many players who would love to have that kind of hull or better at rank +4k, myself included granted though you mention defending planets, Exotica would indeed be a #$&*@ to take if the tens of super tough +4k rankers were all in the same legion hogging it, it wouldn't be hard to add a target effect, say that lasted 2 minutes, so typically player pop down to less than 10, target ship 50% increase in the maximum hit damage, message: “You been tagged while guarding Exotica, your maximum hit damage has doubled, prepare to defend yourself!”, effect doesn't stack and can't be removed, for example. Sure would spice things up and bring another level to attacking and defending Exotica.

Anyway my whole suggestion that I would hope can be discussed further is not about fixing the damage cap formula, it's not broken IMO, it's fine and should be well left alone, without it the game would fall apart quickly, it would be misery, now it does have side effects granted, to what degree?, well while sometimes people do post about it ruining the game for them, personally I don't think that its the majority of the players though.

“but beyond that they don't care about 90% of researched/mission ship modules”

Exactly, why even have researched hull modules installed, if only there was a way of making them less useless somehow????

One thing I feel that can be done to benefit any further discussion would be to look at this from a day 1 player all the way through to the high ranking player, rather than with a how will this effect ME right now attitude.

I agree, any suggestion to alterations must consider all players, at all different levels and at all different strengths and production levels.
Having said that, Day 1 players will generally not be greatly affected by anything anyone suggests because for quite some time their decks will be limited and strength growth will largely be derived from modules.
So pointing out what effect it would have on specific players is exactly what any discussion of any idea should do.
In the absence of access to detailed and accurate info on other players, this will usually be based on the players themselves.

As for where Kirk got the 3 million hull he was thanking you for, that's pretty simple, it is straight from your original suggestion, illustrating the problem with all proposed % based bonuses in the end game... people with more arti get more benefit, always.

It doesn't really matter how you tweak it, anything you do %-wise to help an average player with average arti makes an elite player that much more elite.

That's pretty much the point I'm making here, everyone should get tougher to disable as their rank increases, it should take more hits to disable them, possibly to a point where teamwork may be needed to take out the toughest ships in the game, also it doesn't all of the sudden make it so that thousands of players become impossible to take down.

For a long time people have been crying out for more and more content, others quitting because there's nothing to do, or it somehow feels far less challenging, or repetitive etcetera. There's probably a hell of a lot more player resets than there should be too, at least some didn't quit this time around.

You are correct, this specific suggestion, as with most others does indeed have no effect on a day one player, even a rank 400 would probably struggle to notice anything at all, obviously with the more ap someone pulls like anything else in the game they'll indeed benefit more, yes legions will still have to continue to and some still need to educate newbies on building a tough ship, making sure they're not adding too many decks early on and even maybe feeding them some hand-me-down planets.

I'm sure many players especially new ones would find the maximum per hit damage figure shown on the ship tab of some value, as they add more decks they'll see it rising more than the hull is. Even with all the current hull buffs and bonuses, permanent and temporary on a ship for a high ranking tough player, pulling mega ap per hour a 0.05% hull per deck bonus wouldn't see their hull gain an advantage over what the already in place damage cap takes away from them.

Of course any of how anything will specifically benefit themselves is more than welcomed and indeed very helpful data to have, however, however absurd an idea may seem at first it is more valuable to try and see how you think it may effect game play, others and player retention rates before yourself too.

It's not hard to think of how things may effect others who are progressing through ranks you've surpassed yourself, or from foreknowledge gained from one of ones many resets over the years!.

One thing to point out here is that if someone had come up with all of this when the damage cap was added in the first place Kirk would possibly have up to a 3m hull already and would have had it for a while and rightfully so felt like he had earned it, and surely bragging about how untouchable he feels somewhere!!!, I understand where you're coming from buddy and yes you are thinking of others before yourself here, kudos mate

just to stir the pot,

how about there is another type of hit points added that is based on the amount of decks. So the larger the ship the more hp added to the ship, that could balance out the "issues". It makes a simple sort of logic but this is a game and games don't need logic.

-1000. Just read this post, so I'll share what I think the real problem is with the damage cap as-is. It's the ever increasing TIME it takes to perform PVP. At lower ranks, a full PVP run (50 kills + 50 yellows) can easily be done inside an hour. Now it takes me more like 3 hours and I expect that the time will grow even more over the next year. Because of the damage cap, ALL ships become increasingly difficult to disable time-wise, energy wise, and experience wise. Why? Because regardless of your build, you stop growing at some point and just collect artis. That means, over time, every ship has more shields and more hull and more defense. Even if you cap against the ship, the ever increasing shields and hull will mean more hits over time. And using artis to make it easier is a bad idea, since it take away from your available TM actions (as it rightly should).

The fact that gemini cannons are everywhere at higher levels (and seem to pop off more frequently that you would expect a lot of the times) also slows down PVP as you have to frequently restore your shields and/or hull. Kirk's idea of an offensive weapon that acts like a reverse gemini might help level the playing field between offense and defense. But, as is, the current damage fomula is a toxic long term idea -- probably Dan's worse thought ever -- as it will inevitably lead to a decreasing desire to PVP over time and decreasing interest in the game as you observe this awful trend (if you're into PVP, that is), so the idea of keeping the damage cap as-is is just bad.

The SSB builds always kick and scream over any idea that would change PVP dynamics in any way, but I think they're missing the big picture. PVP stats are more about aggressiveness and PVP orientation than they are your defensive build (or lack thereof). As they rank up, PVP is going to become more and more of a pain for them too since they're constrained by the same damage formula that larger builds are when attacking others. They too will experience a day when they rank faster than they would like due to PVPing and have to spend more time at it than they would like (unless they decide to stick with hacking or ice fishing). Ignatnic and Senator are actually players who prove the point that aggressiveness rules on the leaderboards. Their SSB builds didn't actually earn them their places on the leaderboards -- it's the sheer number of PVP actions per day that makes them stand out so prominently. Even if they had double or triple their number of deaths, it wouldn't really mean anything in relation to their leaderboard status as they would still be where they are if they maintained the same level of aggressiveness they have shown in the past.

+purf....agree in synch

increasing time is not a problem. an LM task that is 'easy' for low.ranks, but harder for high.ranks balances things out. if you are doing it in conjunction with a legion mission task .. you have 3 days. if your definition of a PvP run is 50 reds and 50 yellows .. then yeah, it should be hard. if you are doing it to get reds for base.locking ... duh .. have a few low.ranks in legion do most of the scanning since they have more PvP targets. if you need yellows (i still have planets without heist stations !!!) then there are many techniques available that don't require you to do the disabling yourself. there's a reason that i went on a PvP (reds) binge after rank 600 after i lost access to the most lucrative NPC sources for ctp. i *knew* that higher.rank PvP would only get tougher and i planned and acted accordingly.


gemini cannons are no biggie. i already supported Kirk's idea about offensive gemini cannons (as long as they are huge guns ... or are the next blaster upgrade in the battle market so they cost red badges). there is NOTHING wrong with the damage cap, only with players who don't want to take the effort to work around it. not sure i quite follow the OPs suggestion about displaying the damage cap (is it for the attacking ship ??), but if the damage cap should be displayed for anyone, it should be for the defender so they can make better decisions in deciding when to add decks.


i have zero issue with changing PvP dynamics .. as long as the changes do not just benefit those who have been too lazy to plan for the current damage cap even after it's been in place for over 5 years out of a game that is 6 years old. yes, PvP is about agressiveness. the point of me going SSB was not just to be a SSB, but because i enjoyed PvP ... and in order not to find my ship disabled EVERY SINGLE DAY upon login, SSB seemed to be the most prudent approach. so i took years to rack up hacks and raids while ranking slowly (Marauder medal achieved at rank 209, double.Marauder status achieved at rank 360), and then once i achieved SSB at rank 385, i planned my climb up the kills leaderboard.

i would concur with your point that my SSB status did NOTHING to get me on the kills leaderboard as i had an abyssmal level of TACOs. the point of SSB was to minimize the retaliation in response to my own PvP activities. instead, i cherry.picked the weakest targets on my battle tab ... i burned caches just to get more nulls to max out my TM.actions each day. i threw CMs randomly in hopes of getting more targets on my newsfeed that i could take out and raid at my leisure. and even then, i took my time, maximizing my brackets per rank, and only jumped into the top10 once i had ranked high enough that my ship would be an untasteful mouthful for the vast majority of players in the game. others took a different approach. Chromozone was #1 on the kills leaderboard in a MUCH shorter time .. and then realized too late that their weak weak ship could not stand being targeted by EVERYONE in the game 24/7.

there are plenty of other games out there where PvP is always easy .. and bigger is always better. this game aint one of those, which to my mind, is to its credit and why i still buy GP every few months.

I wasn't talking about the impact of the ever increasing time requirements on game play issues like LMs and the like but in terms of real life time thrown into the game. If I want to keep working on your kills leaderboard stats vigorously, it takes LOTS of RL time to do a full run now. It's still regularly do-able, it just takes so much more of a time committment than it used to for the same set of actions and I've watched as the same ships that stay in my BT range take longer to kill every month or so -- even the big ones. It's one of the reasons I've been PVP-ing even more than usual recently as the trend is distressing to me and I can't see much interest on my part in pursuing all-out PVP in a year or so when it takes maybe 4 hours or more a day of RL time to accomplish the same goal. My concern is that, on the course the game is on, very few people will have the motivation to PVP anymore as the game continues. I've also noticed that most of the players (outside of FUNK) who are much higher ranked than me rarely go on all out PVP runs anymore and can't help but wonder if it's not just too much WORK. Most of us got into this as a pastime, a game...but it's turning into a job to stay competitive. At about 400 ranks below me, you probably still aren't feeling the pinch as much as your target pool is still broader (mine usually recycles within an hour now) and most likely contains much weaker targets and probably a significant percent without geminis still. But, at some point, I expect you will since the offensive side of the rules also applies to you as you rank up. If this game is not all you have to do and you find it impinging on your RL responsibilities, something has to give -- and it should be the game obviously. About the best advice I can give anyone given the current damage formula is, if you want to PVP seriously, do it as much as you can while you're still lower ranked as it becomes more of a drag with each rank you put on (an maybe be in a legion where LMs aren't the most important thing in life). But, personally, I'd like to see the dynamics changed somewhat because the deck based damage cap was Dan's worse idea ever (imo) as it inevitably leads to this situation.

I've been trying to let people know about this problem in various posts for quite a while now. With the deck based damage cap, everyone pretty much ends with a fixed damage cap at some point. However shields and hull continue to grow more or less geometrically with time (as peoples arti incomes increase over time, the gain in hull, shields and defense grows ever faster). Yes, this problem seems worse with the SSB targets since it takes fewer brackets and cells to grow the number of hits it takes to disable them, but it is true across the board. I'll use FUNK again as a good example of a big ship that acquired massive APH very quickly and is growing at a phenomenal rate (over 500k unbuffed hull in only a little over 2 years is impressive -- think what it would be like in 2 more....). Honestly, I can't see how that is a long term sustainable model. But, then again, maybe built-in obsolesce was supposed to be part of the game. Originally viewed as a ship building game, Dan hasn't introduced anything really new to the researched module change for the entire time I've been playing. And, the modules, allies, etc., he's released through missions have all had pathetic stats more meaningful to beginners than long term players -- all we ever hope for is some good ability when we're done ranking the thing and that's been a pretty disappointing outcome at least 50% of the time. Maybe Dan sees only sees the GP market flourishing at lower ranks and really wants folks who have their dysons, rifts, etc., to just move on out so newer players will come in that will spend GPs on those things? Who knows?

the game is designed so that players have to make serious choices in their playstyle that will have consequences. if you do a bunch of missions that give crap rewards ... you are missing out on NPCs. if you do a legion mission NPC hunt task at too low of a rank .. you will need many rankups to complete it .. missing out on all the extra artifacts that you would have collected if you had ranked more slowly. i aimed for the PvP leaderboards right from the start. others who neglected PvP until after rank 1k ? well, that was their choice.

let people know ??? seriously ?? here's DF from 18sep2012:

so players have had 3.5 years from that time (and Golgotha had issued warnings even before then) to decide if they needed to increase their focus on PvP. anyone acting all surprised about the increasing difficulty of high.ranked PvP is just being willfully ignorant. ships *SHOULD* get tougher to drop as they get built up .. that is the whole point of improving your ship. players seem to have zero issue doing hundreds of thousands of damage to a base over hours ... but when they need to put a bit of extra effort into PvP, that's suddenly unacceptable ?? hypocrites.

are there changes that could be done to improve PvP ? sure, and you could get a lot of player support for them as long as you avoid nerfing the damage cap. but everytime you go down that path, you are basically just hosing years worth of effort by those who have looked at how the game IS and optimized for that.

here are some ideas that could make PvP easier without affecting damage cap:

1. offensive gemini cannons that randomly fire to peel off 5% of the target's remaining hull
2. critical hits based on scan / cloak that do 2x or 3x damage cap
3. add a 5.minute timer to repair nanos
4. for those that already have the King of the Hill medals, increase the downtime to 4 hours to re.guard Exotica after being disabled
5. an offensive arti that blocks hull repairs for 2 minutes .. similar to an engineered virus on a planet
6. make the top 25 on the 3 PvP leaderboards (disables, hacks, raids) targetable to everyone in the game
7. remove crew from attack and defense calcs for PvP only (i.e. the displayed value from ship mods and allies only ... no more +), including planet defense

I technically agree with your point, but I think it addresses a different topic that I was trying to get at. The amount of RL time dedicated to the game if you want to PVP creeps up due to the hard cap on ALL ships and the ever increasing RL time is what I am concerned about. I visit the SSBs very infrequently and just to test out how hard they are to disable at whatever point -- but not frequently enough that they make a serious dent in the time it takes me for an average PVP run. Most of my time is also spent trying to attack the lower range of my BT, laughables, and ships I do high damage to -- yet the time investment continues to grow. As the time required to play seriously continues to grow, it becomes a disincentive to players and this is a trend I don't see stopping anytime soon given the current damage cap rules. I'm really not sure that was intended -- I think if was more of an unintended consequence of the damage cap rule change way back when that just took longer to manifest itself. I still think the game focuses entirely too much on lower ranks and nerfs out as you rank up. Maybe it was intended to try to keep player turnover going for continuing GP investments, but I doubt that's working as I think there are fewer and fewer serious new players coming into the game and I see more and more legions collapsing...

On a side note, not all bad decisions (like which LM tasks you're stuck doing) are always entirely voluntary in those legions deeply focused on LM successes (meaning they try to tell you what to do). But, of course, being in that legion could be viewed as a bad decision...LOL



Here I totally agree with you and you won't see me doing that. There are plenty of soft bases in the game that give the same rewards -- we even found a nice soft 8 yesterday. The people, in my experience, who want to pound on the big bases for hours are "usually" non-PVP focused. They're large, usually high ranked and high attack power ships, who want to flex their muscles on "something" other than their routine NPC killing.



1. (+1). I like the idea of offensive gemini cannons, but think they should be just the opposite of the existing gemini cannons in terms of effect and rate of fire.
2+6. (+1), good ideas.
3+5. (-1) . Not sure I like those as much as I think players should be able to defend themselves while actually online and, of course, they make no difference if the player is offline. I mostly try to leave players who show any sign of really being on alone so they can go about their business.
4. (+1). A good idea, though I don't see Exotica changing hands nearly as often as it used to. It seems to be a PA property whenever I look now...
7. (-1). This would actually nerf the really high attack-built ships and make PVP much harder as I roll it around in my head. It would reduce both attack AND defense -- but then makes the game even more focused on just the damage cap and the depth of your shields + hull (which I believe is already problematic enough). Most of the really high attack ships already cap or nearly cap on most SSBs builds, but with this in place, it would be like chasing them with a KVT on your ship. It wouldn't help much for the same reasons with PVP on larger ships.

The crux of the problem today is that almost everything grows through artis and time, but attack is almost entirely nerfed due to the damage cap. You can never exceed that. But ships can always grow shields+hull forever to make takedowns take longer in time, energy and experience. Add in increasing defense to help keep ships from capping on you and high activity defense mods (geminis and gammatrons) that have no attack counterparts and you have a formula for ever increasing PVP time requirements.

I agree completely with Purf. Ever increasing time of doing the same thing is completely opposite to whatever growing is supposed to achieve. You are supposed to become stronger, kill things FASTER, but instead, even if you're ahead in arti production, etc etc, you are doing things slower and slower, getting same result, for example earning a badge, becomes more and more difficult and time consuming. Then why the heck are we even doing this thing.

I am not saying stuff must come for free. But if you lead another ship in your ships growth and it takes more and more time to kill it, every day, makes no sense whatsoever, from any point of view (apart from the ever happy safe wanting to be SSBs I guess). I would like to encourage people stop thinking only about themselves, turn on your logical thinking and think whats best for the game overall and adjust your strategies accordingly.

no no no ... when you get higher ranked (and presumably stronger) ... everything should NOT automatically become easier.

- low rank / weaker:
___missions (especially LMs with high energy or NPC hunts) - hard
___planet scanning - hard
___NPC (darks) - hard
___bases (silvers) - can be hard
___invasions (greens) - hard, especially for the nicer planets
___PvP (reds) - relatively easy (as long as your TM and null fuse supply can keep up)
___PvP (blues) - easy
___PvP (yellows) - moderate vs higher ranks

- high rank / stronger:
___missions - easy peasy - decks for energy mods, arti supply
___planet scanning - easy - decks for scan mods, arti supply for purgers
___NPC (darks) - easy peasy - capped damage
___bases (silvers) - lol easy - capped damage
___invasions (greens) lol easy - tacos
___PvP (reds) - harder
___PvP (blues) - hacking can get easier if you want as juiceman can attest
___PvP (yellows) - easier at higher rank as you can cherry pick lower ranked targets

the current damage cap has been in place for nearly FIVE YEARS (as of next month) - 83% of the game history. a little planning goes a long way ... and those who made BAD plans on the ONE aspect of the game that can get harder with higher rank are the ones being selfish.

Red Badges: 3527

I have no problem with battle tab PVP and 97% of my kills hail from there and over 7K were above level 1200.

Exotica Guards help progression alot

I still think the SSB crowd always sees any discussion of the damage cap as a threat to their chosen play style and refuses to see or seriously discuss the longer term problems with it. I keep trying to divorce that issue from the overall PVP trend time requirement issue although I think the ever growing presence of SSB builds that have risen through the ranks helps exacerbate the problem (and it could get worse if fewer large builds continue to stay in the game and more and more of your BT becomes SSB targets). No matter who you are, you are going to have to deal with the increasing time, energy usage, and experience gains required by the damage forumula someday as you continue to play and rank up (unless you stick to hacking, ice fishing, or multi actioning the people you kill to pad other stats). SSBs are not immune to the "attacker" problem -- they only have a defensive advantage. Eventually, this will bite everyone in the rear as the game keeps going this way. As I said earlier, this was a serious mistake that has taken a long time to reveal it's evil downside. And the trend should only slowly continue to get worse every day, week, month, etc., that we continue to play. PVP runs are already kind of hard to fit into the day now due to the length of time it takes to acquire the 50 disables I usually look for on a PVP run. How long will it take before ships have to spend 4 hours, 5 hours, etc., doing that? Just because a thing worked okay for years doesn't mean that we can't spot the ever growing downside it presents now that ships have had those years to pile on the artis. This is a long-term dead end strategy for the game. (Not to mention that the game is seriously nerfed for higher ranks as modules cap out way to early, new modules generally have pathetic stats designed at levels more appropriate for lower ranks, etc., and turns into a "nothing but collecting and applying artis" game way too early. Somewhere Dan just gave up on the ship building aspect of the game although there is a lot of appeal to that early in the game...)

I "technically" disagree about the easy base argument also. The reason 95%+ of bases seem to be easy to kill now is that there are so many defunct bases or bases that don't bother to defend seriously. But a strong, growing base that defends to the end can take hours of clicking -- if you're into locking those things (which I prefer to bypass for easier locks for simple strategic reasons). Unfortunately, legions are dying so fast that cheap bases are everywhere now -- quite different from my earlier time in the game -- so locking the harder bases is not a wise decision. The fact that we can cap (or come close to capping) saves us some clicks, but we can never exceed 600 damage per shot no matter how strong we grow, so the "thicker" the bases grow, the more time spent, energy spent, experience gained -- just like PVP kills! So as bases keep piling on the clamps, keep their fixer counts up, etc., they will keep getting worse (until the legion starts to collapse as so many are now....).

Ever wonder if the decreasing player base itself could be a long term side effect of this decision? Or why the vast majority of people in the game have minimal interest in PVP outside of collecting what they need to do to rank allies, complete missions, medals, etc.? Or that Dan seems to be trying so hard to encourage more PVP activity by making badges required for missions, things like the hull tests, etc.?

obviously you aren't *trying* very hard.


no, i won't have to deal with the increasing time / energy / xp because i will have done most of my PvP before i have to worry about that issue. the fact that PvP gets harder at higher ranks was OBVIOUS within a year of the current damage cap being introduced (set in april 2011 .. i started playing in october 2011). i went SSB by rank 385 (a month ahead of my 2.year GL anniversary) so that i could PvP to my heart's content without having to worry as much about PvP retaliation.

because of my focus on PvP since then, i still don't have the taltherian, drannik, xecti, genetarr, uldrinan (working on), crimson, raix, smugglers, titancore, or pawlacite mission chains completed yet. i can hold off on most of them until after rank 2k to maximize my PvP badges and terraformer drops. seeing as i have 4.5 years under my belt to get to rank 1380 ... i suspect i can go at least another 3 years to get to rank 2k as long as i cherry.pick wisely from any new biweekly missions (i will see what comes after the ravyn shield mod before i decide to continue with that chain).

and until i get past rank 2k, i am trying to avoid wasting xp on non.glass bases or base energy donations ... because those are all things that i can freely do later when PvP might become more of a challenge and when i lose the majority of the NPC pool. hey, look how that works .. fewer red badges at higher rank ... more willingness to lock a chewy base to save on reds because you have the firepower to drop it .. and more energy than i know what to do with to pump into the legion base .. almost like Dan PLANNED it that way ??

so i've been playing my game by thinking ahead and planning. those hares that sped ahead and got everything shiny now want to change the rules of the race after they run themselves into a PvP deadend ?? sorry .. no sympathy for you from this tortoise.