yea im pretty new im only 2265 points but the reflection thing douse not sound good i vote not to have it

Okay- I dug into some data from the ranking boards. It appears I was way off by saying 100K should be the n00b protection cap.

Based on the active players, a cap of 25 to 30K would present a very even playing field at the current points level.

Thank you everyone for your opinion, it has been greatly helpful. I will leave the topic open for any future discussion on this topic.

dont know about all the technical discussion but it would be cool if at start of battle you get a message saying eg

"all wings report in... red leader standing by, gold leader standing by..."

I would like to further analyze our findings regarding the battle engine and the forthcoming changes we are thinking to implement.

One thing that we are contemplating to change has to do with the way ships hit each other. Right now, for example, if you take 10 BattleCruisers and fly to battle against lets say 10 LF, 10 Cruisers, 10 Battleships, the damage from the BattleCruisers will be spread among the three ship types. Some would expect that the BattleCruisers should hit against one ship type, each round (Not taking in mind rapid fire right now).

The bad thing is that many players are already adjusted to the current style so before we are going to change this, we want to hear the opinion of the players and decided afterwards.

Take in mind that if Rapidfire is enabled and the above does not change, the rapidfire will be perhaps too powerful for big ships (I hope you can understand why). The dev team is favorable towards a change of this specific issue, even if this means much more work for us.

============

We are currently very close to complete this whole procedure with the battle engine. We have rapid fire almost ready as well. For your own knowledge, there was some kind of Rapid fire enabled till now (Still is and will stay this way till the new system comes). This "kind of rapid fire" was taking in mind the rapid fire values printed in each ship type, but in a.. bizzare way. An example is the following:

-Current Battle Engine-
10 Bombers vs 200 Rocket Launchers = 10 Bombers win over the launchers (0 to 30 remain after the battle ends)

-Current Battle Engine without the current bizzare rapidfire-
10 Bombers vs 200 Rocket Launchers = 9-10 Bombers tie with launchers (130 to 135 remain after the battle ends)

(Tests may vary from person to person as other factors take place as well. This was for a 100%/100%/100% vs a 0%/0%/0%)

============

The way we are thinking to enable rapidfire is as follows:
-Extra attacks (No limit) where rapidfire exists.
-Chances: Rapidfire - 1 / Rapidfire * 100
-Chances reduced by 2/3 every time (against same ship type from specific ship, applies for all the battle time).
-Ship destruction does not play a role as to if a rapidfire chance will be granted or not.
-Rapidfire against a specific ship type each time that exists.
-If more than one ship types are eligible for rapidfire (ie BattleCruiser fighting against cruiser + battleship) then the choice is totally random. Chances are calculated before the random selection.(This means that for the random factor to play a role, both ships will have to pass the chance for a rapidfire. IF both pass it, only then the random comes into affect without taking in mind anything else).


===============

Battle Simulator will be released AFTER the implementation of Rapid Fire.

================

Repel damage as discussed before, will be striped for good.

================

We are looking for feedback for all chapters above. We will take in mind all suggestions but we will -as always- pay more attention to the ones who provide reasoning.

Finally, we speak of a re-design of the battle engine and this is why it is still taking time. We ask for your understanding as we are doing our best. We will allow a couple of days to hear your suggestions, then we will take final decisions.

Thank you

Personally, I think that any decision regarding the battle engine, as long as it is clearly announced when finalized, is as good as any other. When finalized, everyone will adjust to that and there 'll be no problem.
What I 'd like to point out is that there must be consistancy between the Battle Simulator and the actual battles.
What will cause resentment among the playerbase will be a simulation where your precious Death Star remains in tact, but you end up losing it in the actual battle. In other words, any "random" factors in battle, if they exist at all, should be eliminated.

Zorg wrote:I would like to further analyze our findings regarding the battle engine and the forthcoming changes we are thinking to implement.

One thing that we are contemplating to change has to do with the way ships hit each other. Right now, for example, if you take 10 BattleCruisers and fly to battle against lets say 10 LF, 10 Cruisers, 10 Battleships, the damage from the BattleCruisers will be spread among the three ship types. Some would expect that the BattleCruisers should hit against one ship type, each round (Not taking in mind rapid fire right now).

The bad thing is that many players are already adjusted to the current style so before we are going to change this, we want to hear the opinion of the players and decided afterwards.

Take in mind that if Rapidfire is enabled and the above does not change, the rapidfire will be perhaps too powerful for big ships (I hope you can understand why). The dev team is favorable towards a change of this specific issue, even if this means much more work for us.

============

I believe there are external battle engines available which may be costly but would save your team alot of time and headaches.

I dont understand when you say "rapidfire will be perhaps too powerful for big ships". The way the BC should fire in this example is that they randomly pick 1 target and fire. Lets say the BC randomly picks the BS, it fires and as it has RF against it, it gets another chance to fire. Now it picks the cruiser, it fires on that and again gets another chance to fire. Now it picks a cruiser and fires, after this it doesnt get to go because BC have no RF over LF.

Zorg wrote: We are currently very close to complete this whole procedure with the battle engine. We have rapid fire almost ready as well. For your own knowledge, there was some kind of Rapid fire enabled till now (Still is and will stay this way till the new system comes). This "kind of rapid fire" was taking in mind the rapid fire values printed in each ship type, but in a.. bizzare way. An example is the following:

-Current Battle Engine-
10 Bombers vs 200 Rocket Launchers = 10 Bombers win over the launchers (0 to 30 remain after the battle ends)

-Current Battle Engine without the current bizzare rapidfire-
10 Bombers vs 200 Rocket Launchers = 9-10 Bombers tie with launchers (130 to 135 remain after the battle ends)

(Tests may vary from person to person as other factors take place as well. This was for a 100%/100%/100% vs a 0%/0%/0%)

============

The current RF seems to be more harmful to the attacker as the defending fleet gets the advantage where the attacker does not. Against defense alone, its like the defense has RF over fleet in a reverse fashion. Its very random.

Zorg wrote: The way we are thinking to enable rapidfire is as follows:
-Extra attacks (No limit) where rapidfire exists.
-Chances: Rapidfire - 1 / Rapidfire * 100
-Chances reduced by 2/3 every time (against same ship type from specific ship, applies for all the battle time).
-Ship destruction does not play a role as to if a rapidfire chance will be granted or not.
-Rapidfire against a specific ship type each time that exists.
-If more than one ship types are eligible for rapidfire (ie BattleCruiser fighting against cruiser + battleship) then the choice is totally random. Chances are calculated before the random selection.(This means that for the random factor to play a role, both ships will have to pass the chance for a rapidfire. IF both pass it, only then the random comes into affect without taking in mind anything else).


===============

Will we be given an opportunity to test this? Not in a BETA server starting from scratch but in a prebuilt account.

Squirrel wrote: I believe there are external battle engines available which may be costly but would save your team alot of time and headaches.

Correct, but for the long term benefit of the game, my humble opinion is that it's better if Zorg team own all the software they have written. They may plan to make further enhancements in the game that we can't think right now, and a third party battle engine may be a showstopper, no matter how open and parametrical it may be. Even if it's open source, it needs a lot of time and resources to go through the source code in order to correct a bug or implement an enhancement. It makes you very "dependent" on the party from whom you bought the specific software component. According to my experience, the "tough" way to write everything on your own is the best way.

the ships with rapid fire should focus their attacks on the ships they are strong against
in a battle of
1 DS 100 D 100 BC 100 B 200 BS 200 C 2000 LF vs the same
BC should target BS and C
D should target BC
B should target defenses (also if marines were implemented they would target defenders marines and defense systems)
C should target LF
LF should target each other
DS kicks ***
thats my opinion (glad its almost ready )

I don't think the ships need to target specific ships. The SENSIBLE way would be for them to target all the weak ships first (The fodder, since they would be in front), but that just makes large fodder spams WAY too powerful (IMO). Unless, for some odd reason, the ships have one turret, the damage should be spread. It makes sense if you think from a logical position and I think it takes out all the random.

Now...If it turns out that RF balances out the "target fodder", I think I could go for that. Because you don't put your RIPs on the front-line, obviously.

As long as its balanced and there is no random factor that could drastically change the outcome, I'll go for it.