Adapt push rules to make complex team operation easier ?

    • Alliance and Player Interaction

    • Adapt push rules to make complex team operation easier ?

      Hello,

      First of all please forgive some unavoidable mistakes as I'm not a native English speaker, but I chose to write in this language anyway since Google translate can be confusing :D

      Some misfortune recently happened to me and my teammates, and I think it shows that the rule about push could be slightly modified in order to not be an obstacle for teamplay.
      I'll present you a short version of the case then how I propose to enhance the rule, if you want to dig further into the pointless details (such as precise numbers) here's a topic on the french board where I tried to get some opinions from the community (but damn, our community is so dead :stick: )


      Illustrating situation

      Let's call ourselves X, Y and Z
      X and Y are my teammates, with slightly higher points (respectively about 20m, 17m, 15m by this time).
      Some morning I noticed 4 fleets attacking a bunker I planned to attack myself. Being unable to take out all the fleets on their way back by myself, I asked help to my teammates X and Y

      We agreed that I would attack the first slot (so they could pull me back up in the event of a trap :D ) and they would attack together the second and fourth slot.

      Each fight should have been around 120m losses, 400m wreckfield (and a tremendous deuterium expense :whistling: ), I was recycling each wreckfield being the nearest from the target. The thing is, despite taking some margin, there was way more fleet than planned for my own impact.

      Expectations :
      => X&Y : (120m losses; 450m wreckfield) *2
      => Z : 120m losses; 450m wreckfield


      Reality :
      => X&Y : 110m + 220m losses ; 440+820m wreckfield
      => Z : 320m losses ; 1070m wreckfield

      ===> 1440m ressources collected by my own ships (380 + 380 + 680 after each impact), , 100m by X (after last impact). (~800m remaining)


      Do you see where I'm going? ^^
      Of course we wanted to share our gains, as we were attacking 3fleets on the same moon at 1mn interval, mostly backed with my logistic.

      The thing is.. It was considered push. Remember, I have lower points than X & Y. After naively (and without intent to cheat) splitting the ressources in equal parts (and providing evidence of the calculation and transfers to the support) , we were told by the operator that this was not a viable trade.
      => I was forced to get my full wreckfield, while they had to end up with the remaining 470m ressources (Ressources, not gains) to split in 2. Which, considering the deuterium used, was a pure loss for them.


      I know the rules are meant to be rigid, and in this situation, it was considered that I sent ressources from my own impact to my teammates (even if each wreckfield was recycled independantly 1s after each impact), I get it.
      My first reaction was to be pissed off that the operator would not agree to just consider each fight as a separated operation (-> each wreckfield for its own protagonists, which seems legit to me), then I realised they had no room for interpretation and I should blame the rule instead. So I just wonder if it couldn't be improved in order to have more flexibility when it comes to team operations, because it doesn't feel fair this way.


      TL;DR, we played in team but as we destroyed some additional unexpected fleet, we couldn't consider the gains as something to split equally.

      I have heard the same kind of situations from other players, with team efforts ending up in moderate (or tremendous) losses for some players because they were not allowed to consider their operations as a teamplay, but as a bunch of solo operations (and YES, I know, we could have just attacked together for the first impact instead, but we did not for safety reasons).

      In my opinion, the rule about push should leave some room for interpretation to the operator. It should not be impossible to create a template for a "team operation ticket" for such "edgy" situations (that involve to attack multiple fleets on their way back / multiple attempts when several speeds were plausible, or to attack a fleet moving towards a planet then attack it again when it's recalled), in order to collect all the required information and be able to judge whether the players are splitting the gains in a fair way. It could look something like this :

      Proposition of a "teamplay ticket" wrote:

      - Actors of the operation (+ proportion of points engaged in the operation, either roughly or accurate) in my situation, roughly 33% each
      - Impact calculations + API codes for all impacts <= there would be some explanations about how the fleet was spotted, and when it was planned to strike. Of course the API timecodes should match the calculation. So that if player A and player B try to attack a fleet on its way back and respectively strike 20% and 10% speed, it can be proved they are both involved

      - API codes for recycling <= Of course
      - Eventually other losses <= i.e moonbreaks with API, or deuterium consumptions (i.e if A forces a fleet to recall and B attacks it when it goes back) if provable
      - Rentability of the operation and fair splitting (using the proportions of points) <= in our situation, it would be around 220m each instead of +700/-40/-40
      - Any more detail you could think of, I'm open-minded
      I'm aware it would require some time to examine but
      1/ Such things doesn't happen that much, especially on dying universes
      2/ I'm quite sure it's faster to collect some data than to face players trying to question why the decision has to be unfair.

      Pros :
      - Making teamplay slightly easier (at the moment, to split the rentability we have to "group a significant amount of fleet in the fight", that's not always possible)
      - Generate less frustration (also to the operators that have to face players triggered by a decision that feels unfair :saint: )
      - Giving a less rigid role to the operators ? (Maybe it's me, but some points really seem to be boring)*


      Cons :
      - Analyzing the cases could take about 5minutes instead of just quoting a rule (however it shouldn't occur that often, even on young universes)
      - Unfair decisions due to flexible rule? *


      * I realise the rules are "blindly" applied because they leave no room for interpretation, probably on purpose ("everybody gets treated the same way", even when it's obviously stupid from every player point of view). However, being given a detailed case, I think there is no reason to fear that unfair decisions could be made. A way to avoid this could be to double or triple check theses cases, or some sort of tribunal? I'm just opening ideas... :whistling:
      Thanks for reading me, I hope I made it clear and, also, I hope you agree with me :D