As things stood this morning, I had ample objection:

Nuada wrote:

Zorg wrote: The meaning is that if you want to fleet save safely, you need a moon. Before this, you did not need one. This was wrong. Moons are meant to be very important in the game.

Moons surely would remain quite important if the Planet to Moon FS wasn't lanxable. What this now compels is one of two things: 1) Membership in an established alliance where those with large fleets can Moonshot those with resources enough to create a debris field - and then pray that this Moonshot is among the merely 19% that succeed; or 2) Spend 500 rubies in a game where the spending of rubies has previously not been necessary to successfully play the game. This is an automatic disadvantage, in a major gamechanging way, for those unallied and for those new to the game regardless of being allied or not.

And, even if a player does manage the necessary two moons, the popping of one destroys that FS attempt. How "wrong" the prior status quo was seems among your player base a subject of debate.

Zorg wrote:A 9600 diameter moon needs at least 153 deathstars to get a roll, which may fail and which may cost the attacking player his fleet. If a player wants to take this risk to take down your moon, he should be able to get the chance to also catch your fleet. (Not to mention that the chance to catch your fleet is not great enough, especially if you have many moons)

If you feel too uneasy about it, try getting larger moons.

Many, perhaps most, of the top fleeters have RIPs numbering in the thousands. If they want to pop a moon, they will - and it would not then be difficult to calculate interception time.

Zorg wrote:You are right, you are no longer safe to attack from your moon for example, your fleet will appear on phalanx. But it would still appear on the player you were attacking, right ?

I believe the concern not to be from those being attacked, but from the stalker.

BUT as things now stand, or shall shortly stand, I'm feeling more reassured:

Nuada wrote:

Administrator wrote:When a fleet is coming from a Moon, you can only see its hit time, not its return time.

A necessary correction, for which I'm grateful. When I first tested the lanxing of Moon to Planet attack, I saw the return time.

Administrator wrote:A) Any recalled deploy mission either sent from a Moon or a Planet.
Currently it shows time but not fleet composition. We can accept this proposal and completely remove it (it will show no fleet movement in this case) as it makes full sense.

Yes, implementation of this would be reassuring.

By the way:

Zorg wrote:There was a multi page thread in BUGs where most agreed that a fleet starting from a planet and going to slot 16 should be visible on phalanx. It does not make sense to me to have fleets going to outer space from planet visible but those going to moon hidden. It sounds like an inconsistency.

From one hand you want us to remove the option to an easy fleet save to outer space and in the other hand you care about the small players who will not be able to get moonshots?

It does not sound right.

This was not the concern. I believe the central issue with Expedition Moon was that Expedition Moon cannot be popped. Moons in other galaxies may be mapped, and espionage conducted. Planets nearby these moons may be lanxed. Nothing in outerspace is conducive to conduct of espionage, and outer space can't be lanxed. In short, the issue would not appear to have been with moons, but with somehow being able to travel to moons in outer space when no 'destination' in outer space should be able to be targeted.

I am concerned about those smaller players not able to get moonshots. The fact that they can no longer FS to someone's moon now puts them at considerable disadvantage, while also removing an alliance utility through which stronger members could assist the weaker. The above noted corrections regarding return time and fleet recall do help make this more palatable, yet I can't help but suspect several exigencies and contingencies may not have been taken into consideration in how this was implemented without player base input.

For now, the corrections permit me that stance of, "Let's see how this affects gameplay." With the noted modifications, this enhanced phalanx may make a game out of what would - without them - essentially have transformed the newest among us into little more than lambs led to slaughter. My hope is that these modifications might instead facilitate improved game play. I'm looking forward to Gozar's rejoinder.

His proposals are very reasonable, and I'm pleased to see they're being weighed.

Sprog wrote:NOTHING launched from a moon should be lanxable......I don't know anyone who had a problem with that setup before except the slot 16 issue............you will see mass vmoding for sure if not addressed asap!

i have alway had a problem with that. it shoud be only from moon to moon or from moon to harvest debris that are not invisible.

it should include times and fleet information.

I just wanna say while we are on the moon stuff, thi guy attacked me and with an %18 chance I got a moon!

The Phalanx should have like some kind of feature where it overloads the computers thus decreasing your computer technology by one. It shoulkd also have the abillity to scan into other galaxies. Finally it should have paticular strength and weakness with the overall sum of you energy and/or you deuterium. But who am I to say all this when not evn knowing what sensor phalanx means. So, Zorg staff what does Sensor Phalanx mean?

Anyway happy hunting,

DL101

Um just a follow up, it decreases the enmies computers by one. I do not really understand this so I do expect some death threats im pmk so fire away!!!

JOKES!!!

i was surprised to phalanx a planet i was attacking from a moon and see my fleet...wow i though now my fleet from F.S is going to get crashed...if the new phalanx remains..i'll crash my fleet my self and become a turtle..cause it's over..

also leave the moon destruction as they are and give us the MS defend...

Hannah I beat you to it bye bye fleet!

Moons are the main issue with regards to phalanx.. statements have been made with the fact that moons are "EVERYTHING" within this game. without them there would be NO phalanx..
Sensor Phalanx:-
Utilizing high-resolution sensors, the Sensor Phalanx first scans the spectrum of light, composition of gases, and radiation emissions from a distant world and transmits the data to a supercomputer for processing. Once the information is obtained, the supercomputer compares changes in the spectrum, gas composition, and radiation emissions, to a base line chart of known changes of the spectrum created by various ship movements. The resulting data then displays activity of any fleet within the range of the phalanx. If these details are correct, then a Phalanx can not give information on a moon as moons have no or very little gravity subsequently no atmosphere to be able to have gases composition. Based on this fact I would in fact say that only a planet to moon mission gives a partical report.. however a moon to planet stays as it is unseen on phalanx.

Talking of moons the Moon destroy mission that has been raised.. Very few players seem to understand the background of such..
I will try and give my prospective of this issue. 1st moons are based on the diameter in kilometers. thus I will use to start a mid range moon as an example of 7.500 k.. this would require 55 Death stars needed for a 99% of success. the remaining 1% of failure then has a 43% of ending in the destruction of the fleet.. the lower the % from 99 to say 50% means that you have a 50% chance of not destroying the moon and the chance of loosing your rips raises to 22% from the original .57%
This may seem a little one side at this level.. but I wish to show the formula is very one sided when a moon is bigger. The dramatic rise in the number of rips required is disproportional and ridiculous as to be impossible in anyone's life time.

Moon size Rips required for 99% chance
7000k 37
8000k 88
9000k 372
9500k 1,529 Rips.
9600k 2,401
9700k 4,290 at this size ZE offers safety for cash..minimum moon size for your 250 rubies.
( I would like the option to purchase a moon removed, I feel a moon should be earned not bought.)
9800k 9,703
9850k 17,293
9880k 27,061
9900k 39,008
9920k 61,011
9950k 156,424 if you build 1 Rip on all 21 planets every day for a year you will need 511 yrs to get to this amount.. Now this is outrageous and unreachable so why have this at all.

You all think it is easy to pop a moon think again. the cost involved as a risk is huge.

The following result was on a 6705k moon to reach a 99% chance required 30 rips I sent 35.. lol
The fleets deathstar concentrated their graviton shocks on the moon. Tremors rocked the surface of the moon. But something goes wrong. The deathstars graviton guns shake, There is a fatal backwash. Alas! The fleets deathstar explodes into millions of pieces! The explosion destroyed the entire fleet.
The probability of the destruction of the moon is : 99 %
The probability of the destruction of the fleets deathstar is : 41 % a loss of 262.500.000 resources.. my choice but to make the risk even higher when we are talking 1,000's of Rips is ridiculous.. The reason I can pop moons is because I have earned the right to do so by my fleet development.. input into this game and abilities.. you can all do the same with effort.
If moon destroy missions are made harder with any greater risk, then forget it moons will no longer be in danger the cost is to high already.. If you take the time to workout that even a small moon being popped for a fleet that contains say 30k LG means you would have to send 5k Rips to prevent a ninja, it is not always the moon size that is the issue but the risk is the same. I would stand to loose 10 times more than I could gain.. do the math..

Greetings everyone,

Our final decision is to keep all fixes but keep functionality where it was. The Phalanx manual will be updated shortly to show the exact current usage.
This means that any activity towards or from a moon will be completely hidden.

Our philosophy is always small steps at a time. Initially we saw this a small step but the arguments of some people in this discussion revealed to us that it was more than a small step.

We cannot overlook that there is also a number of players that are in favor of phalanx functionality tweaks. Therefore we cannot rule out a future phalanx implementation on existing universes. This can only happen through mass appeal in the forum (Open a suggestion with universe tag, get a big margin in favor of it with votes). We do like the new functionality as dev team and we would like to at least implement this to one of the four existing universes, with Standard being the least desirable option. Perhaps we could also add it in one of future universes.

Phalanx will be reactivated across all universes, as stated in-game, in about 2 hours.