It's been a very long time since I did an expedition, but if I were to do expeditions regularly, I would not want my fleet disappearing for the 6ish hours I remember it taking. Of course, for the life of me I cannot remember how long it actually took. Overall, I think this is a great idea, even down to the ruby rewarding. Though I would propose the solution to the possible exploitation by changing it from an automatic reward to a notification to the admins, with the ship with the highest available cargo space be 'left behind' (Ie, in a fleet holding 10 million metal consisting of 1 elite cargo and 1 BS, the BS would be frozen/deleted on expedition) and returned/respawned to the player with the addition of a ruby once the admins have had the chance to review the message. Suggested pseudocode/example :

I send out my fleet on expedition from planet x:yyy:zz (Moon), with 10 Elite Cargoes and an RIP, holding 90,500,000 metal on an expedition. I achieve the ruby find. The system finds that I have enough spare cargo space for an Elite Cargo to be left behind and records date and time. At this point, the system places a message in the admin mailbox reading something like 'Player RogueSpear(//Player Number here) has found a Zorg Ruby on expedition from x:yyy:zz (Moon). This last occurred (//Date + Time).' The EC is then removed from play (Suggest if/else type statement sending a message registering failure to remove EC from play if it fails to remove), and the remainder of the fleet is sent on a return mission to it's origin. Admin then reads the message and authorizes the receipt (Unless that RogueSpear bloke turns out to be a cheating *******) which tells the system to add 1 Zorg Ruby to my account, and place 1 Elite Cargo at x:yyy:zz (Moon) when (((Expedition Fleet Returned) && (RogueSpear == Online)) == True), thus stopping a player from being punished for finding a ruby (Primarily a problem for lower level players with no/low defences that a single ship is ripe pickings, but still).

Thoughts? I'm a bit sleep deprived and haven't really coded much in the last 6 weeks (Should reeeeaaallly start actually showing up in uni...) so I may have some coding flaws or a massive oversight somewhere, but I'm sure Zorg will be able to spot those easily enough and point them out.

Zorg wrote:With 30 minutes per expedition and 5 slots, it would be pretty different from what we currently have and as you all know, we are not up to big changes in existing universes.

Expedition are completely useless at the moment, but if you don't want any 'big' changes on it, might as well delete it altogether :/


In the event you are considering implementing this suggestion..

Zorg wrote:Counters:
1)Why discontinue the time selection ? Such small timings offered can virtually turn the game into a big cow and this can prove damaging to the strong pvp-oriented system we have now. The suggestion altogether hints that PVE can be even better than PVP, therefore it needs more careful planning.
2)Rubies cannot be awarded by the game in any other reason except referrals. The top reason is that it could easily lead to exploitation which in turn can lean into inflation of current ruby cost with damaging results of in-game economy.

1) With the chances of finding something good on an expedition being low as per Ista's post and the ever present possibility of losing the entire fleet, PvP will ALWAYS be the better choice in terms of gaining resources.
Discontinuing time selection isn't necessary but the current minimum stay time of 1 hour is too long, it definitely needs changing.


2)Exploitation? Please explain that to me.. you mean to say ZE's developing team isn't the best bunch of programmers in the world and they can't come up with a system that prevents exploitation?

Add to that the chances of actually finding rubies aren't that great either, as said by Ista in a previous post: "So in total judging by my proposals you have roughly a 0.75% chance of finding a ruby on an expedition."

Add to that the return if you hit that jackpot you find 1 ruby and yeah, I can see the whole in-game economy being damaged instantly..
On average it will take 1 player over 4500 expeditions to find 35 rubies (smallest buyable package). Even with 5 expeditions running 24/7 with a 15min stay-time it would take about 15 days to even run 4500 expeditions.


Merchant use will possibly rise, thus possibly damaging trading between players, if you think that is an economy breaker change the trade rates of the merchant to make trading between players even better than using the merchant than it is now.
Or leave the rate as it is and monitor merchant use after implementation of this suggestion and adjust if necessary.

i like the idea alot but i can see were theres a problem with the mercant and free rubies but still a great idea all around. i hope to see something done with this

Might I add to Malebolgia's analysis, it would take 15 days roughly to do 4500 expeditions on Speed Universe (30 days on Xtreme and 60 days on Standard), which would net you on average 35 rubies. Bear in mind you would have to be online 24 hours a day 7 days a week and be running 5 expeditions constantly without pause. Then factor in how many return time delays you would hit in that time period, extending the required time even longer. Then factor in how many bad results you will get in that time period, losing some or all of your expedition fleets in the process. In the end if someone does expeditions just to farm rubies then they are going to massively drop behind other players in rankings.

This revamp is nowhere near a challenge for PvP, hitting other players is way way way more effective for growing than even this new expedition layout. The only change I see is that this could give new players a faster start, which will then just encourage other new players to hit them and take what they got.. so it all just circles back to PvP in the end anyway, I don't see what you're worried about.

The only exploitation possible with this new setup comes from multi-accounting, which you should already be preventing so that is irrelevant.

Overall, this feature would make the game more fun and more diverse. Like Malebolgia said, the current expedition feature is unused and has literally no value for a player. So what's the point in having a game feature if nobody uses it?

*bump*

what happened to this? did everyone just forget? we all want it so give it to us

Great Idea!

Istalris wrote: So what's the point in having a game feature if nobody uses it?

This is truly an excellent point. Let's face it, expeditions are rare, successful expeditions are even rarer. Basically, the only use of expeditions is to destroy your fleet without any DF forming from it. Of course, this can be done by sending your whole fleet on an esp mission, so why have two ways to do it? So, Zorg, why don't we make expeditions useful?

Yea this should be implemented... +1

This idea gets a fat NO from me.
Expeditions work great for me and nothing needs to be changed.
Those that arent doing well with expeditions are not doing them correctly, and should not ask for the whole system to be changed to turn zorg into vegas to suit their needs.
Expeditions are player vs engine and this game is designed for player vs player.
If you want vegas go get a handheld slot machine.
And really do we need another way for someone to cheat the system with rubies.
You want rubies use your credit card like everyone else.
Sorry but no from me.