The game design mostly works well

but

as has been stated numerous times over the years, except for our small hardcore group people dont hang around for long.

and nothing game changing has been added for so so so long

Along comes another new idea..

Remove small, large cargos and cruisers - a total waste of time
Every new player to the game is given 1x EC and 100 BCs - let them start raiding right from the start

No protection - for noobs

No WAS for noobs - takes time to develope it, let them learn all about fighting to stay alive

Every player under 1 mil ranking points may PAY (yes PAY) to buy 5 ECs and 500 BCs, no player may buy past that number


Research is still required

And suddenly we arent just raiding for res or pouncing upon a rare fleet left sitting

The game is alive with fleets to kill - players are happy

Noobs have a fleet killed - they are new and have a small taste - they will pay to keep going

** and more importantly they will talk to their friends about the game and we can finally grow

People actually stay and pay - Admin should be really happy, they get paid each month



I would love to see more changes,

each player is able to custom fit weapons to his ships - then attacking a fleet might not be as simple as it looks.. just a thought to make it more interesting.. less fighting ships but more powerful and suddenly that 500 BCs attacking arent there anymore.

this is meant to be a positive topic, I am not trying to step on toes here..

Well it's an idea. I"m not sure about making them pay for it.

But I do think something has to be done to encourage new players. When you first join, if you don't know anyone. You can build a couple things, if you are smart maybe you click the technologies button and figure it out.

But most people after a couple buildings, are lost and don't feel like just waiting and waiting to be able to build something else.

I like the idea of giving new players small fleets, although rather than making them pay to retrieve it if it is lost, allow reclaiming it for free while you have no additional colonies else I would just recreate an account if i lost those ships in the first few days. perhaps pay to double it. (one off or consumable... either way the cheaper it is the more likely to get money coming in)

Could easily be exploited by larger players for free fleets..... XD just think bout it

depending on the size, is it worth crashing 1 ec and 100 bc's?
if the size of the 'free' fleet is small enough then it's not worth the time for the recyclers to fly, PLUS those players will be under protection for a while no? perhaps when they come out of protection the option to reclaim a small fleet is lost.

And if you go down the "lets all acs defend this place and let xxx crash all of our new ships every day" then you're talking about milking in a sense (or feeding or whatever the term is for small players feeding large players)

In theory it works, but in practice some players WOULD defiantly exploit this..... We need to figure out another way.
Possibly giving expeditions a makeover, or adding NPCSs (i have seen npcs added quite effectively in other games of a similar genre to this)
Theres plenty of room for awesome stuff to be added

Nope. Bad idea, let them work for it like everyone else. Making the game easier isn't the way. Unfair also for the established players.

Oz, while I agree that its unfair, we need a larger playerbase before we worry about strict fairness

That's a little back to front. You have to make sure something works and is fair BEFORE you implement any changes. Best way would be (Unfair again) change the costings of ships and defences. Perhaps invent an intermidiate class of ship? How many players, past a certain point actually use Battleships for anything more meaningful than fodder? Perhaps bring the costs of that particular type of ship down. Instead of 50k metal and 10k crystal, perhaps 20k metal and 10k crystal? Give anyone new to the game 50 rubies, you could make this fair by giving any current players that are active an etra 40 each (Fair?). You would have the chance to procure a class of ship that is infinitely more usable to a beginner than what is currently on offer, the extra rubies would allow a newer player to utislise the merchant option to exchange their resources for whatever they needed. The ability to create a more meaningful attack/defence fleet would encourage more raiding and therefore in turn growth. What's worse than as a newb, spotting a very good, ignored inactive with tons of resources that you can't get to? THis way it would give a chance to those newbs to capitalise on that. Another thing that could be implemented. Restriction of players to only ONE server. Obviously, that would not be applicable to the players who already enjoy playing more than one server, but bring the restriction in for anybody new to the game now. It will not stop players who have chosen perhaps the wrong server for themselves, it just means that they have to go inactive in one server before playing another one. There are lots of players who supposedly play more than one server, but in fact do not. Choose a server, stick with it. Better to be full time in one than almost non existent in all.

I have to respectfully disagree with some of you here.

if you are by yourself and don't know what you are doing, it takes a very long time to get going. elite cargoes might be going a little far, especially considering they will have no way to replace them if they are hit (because they don't know about fleetsaving yet)

it would be better to give them a bunch of small or large cargoes imo, a hundred or so of those still goes a long way

getting rid of protection is nuts. do you want the big bad players able to pop EVERY moon they see? it's tough for weaker alliances already as many of them struggle to get moons up. they often go inactive without being fleet hunted.

oneone - if a new player signs into the game and is hit rather soon after by a particularly vigilant fleeter (or raider, frankly), do you REALLY think they will want to stay around?