Positive honorable points proportional to the attack profits

Forgive me if it was pointed out before, but I don't necessarily like the idea of debris significantly impacting profit, as there is no guarantee that the winner gets it. DFs can be stolen, or picked at by the loser, or the winner may not have enough recyclers (for whatever reason) to get it all without significant amounts of luck and/or help. Getting honour points because a battle would have been profitable but the attacker mistimed his recyclers just seems off to me.

I still think that defense should give HPs, as long as both players have nearly equal amount of MPs. However, the problem is that 100 places on MP list sometimes means a huge difference in MPs. Here is example from test server:

MP rank MP %
1 400.184
101 76.475 19,11%
201 52.728 68,95%
301 42.132 79,90%
401 34.972 83,01%
501 28.491 81,47%
601 23.023 80,81%
701 18.464 80,20%
801 15.025 81,37%

I don't think it's honourable for 400k MP player to attack a 76k MP player, no matter his profits.
I think It's honourable for a 76k MP player to attack a 52k MP player, no matter his profits.
I think It's honourable for a 52k MP player to attack a 42k MP player, no matter his profits.
Etc...

The point is, if both players have nearly equal amount of MPs, lower ranked player can surely do something to defend himself (except when encountering large number of RIPs).

For turtles:

NusaDua wrote:

...
Hello Marv, please forgive me for quoting your messages partially, I just want to concentrate on the core idea.
I don't know in which community you play, this could impact our analysis too.
...

I believe this could be the reason why I don't understand your concerns. In communities where I play (.ba and .com.hr), pretty much everyone hates turtles. So when someone makes a zero/small negative profit hit on a turtle, everyone congratulates him. So I'm sure that nothing will change with honour points. I don't believe that someone will make a HP gathering hit if he will have big losses.

As for miners:

Before, you could hit anyone you wished, and get away with it.
Now, if you hit someone that has a certain amount of MPs less than you, you will get negative honour points.
For miners this shouldn't be a problem, because they should have civil ships and small defences for protecting satellites and resources. When added together, that should be a low enough MP score not to be a honourable target to a strong MP player. Of course, if you just build tons of useless fodder, you will have too much MPs, and will be honourable to players with large fleets.

That's why I think that the real problem lies in "100 players behind you on the MP list" rule, and not in non profitable attacks.

Maybe we should include the military points difference in the HP formula?

That way, we could still have the "100 places" rule. Strong players will still have enough targets they can attack without being penalized, but HPs won in a battle against a player with significally lower amount of MPs would be next to none.

As for profits, I think it's honourable for a low ranked player to get his revenge on a strong player by bashing his defence and satellites, no matter his profits, because after all, that's all he can do.

I simply don't believe this. It's not a fact. It's something that you wrote and it's based on other people's complaints. I have tons of players in my community that bitch about the 3.0 version, and very few of them have good arguments.

I think It's honourable for a 76k MP player to attack a 52k MP player, no matter his profits.
I think It's honourable for a 52k MP player to attack a 42k MP player, no matter his profits.

Look at the definition of honorable ...
Doing that is just nasty Nothing to do with honore.

Ok, I'll rephrase that:

"I don't think that it's dishonorable for a player to attack another player, if they have approximately the same amount of military points."

The point is, if both players have nearly equal amount of MPs, lower ranked player can surely do something to defend himself (except when encountering large number of RIPs).

That fact is you are wrong. They get attacked and don't have the fleet (and the time) to do something.

No, you are wrong. It's fairly easy to create a defense which will guarantee attacker's losses. Mass RIPs excluded, of course...

Especially for weak player, when they haven't gauss, or plasma, or enough defense to protect from destroyer.
Think that you have a defense in many planets, then the fleet can be bigger than 2 times you defense.

This was always the problem at the begining of unis. If you want to play defensive, it's hard to keep up with fleeters, but it is possible. As for new players starting in an ongoing uni, there's the newbie protection.

I believe this could be the reason why I don't understand your concerns. In communities where I play (.ba and .com.hr), pretty much everyone hates turtles. So when someone makes a zero/small negative profit hit on a turtle, everyone congratulates him. So I'm sure that nothing will change with honour points. I don't believe that someone will make a HP gathering hit if he will have big losses.

With ACS, no turles are safe ...

Yes, I thought that was the problem. People still building defenses like in an no ACS uni. You can't do that. You have to change and adapt you strategy.

There is congratulation if he hit a big fleet hide behind a big defense. Not just for hiting defense of a peaceful player

No, people congratulate just because it was a hit against so called turtle. If a big fleet hides behind defense, and someone makes a big damage no profit hit, that's another thing.

No needs to have big loss the get HP...

If attacker sees he will have big losses, he will not make a HP gathering hit. If he does, he won't last for long, because HPs don't offer that much of a bonus to cover his losses. He won't be able to evolve as fast as other players do, and sooner or later someone will overrun him because of bad tactics. Yes, it's said that HPs will offer some more benefits in the future, but until we don't exactly know what those benefits are, we can't discuss them.

For miners this shouldn't be a problem, because they should have civil ships and small defences for protecting satellites and resources. When added together, that should be a low enough MP score not to be a honourable target to a strong MP player. Of course, if you just build tons of useless fodder, you will have too much MPs, and will be honourable to players with large fleets.

You still speak about big fleet. But the problem is no only here.
Big fleet hit big def
Medium fleet hit medium def
small fleet hit small def
...

Big def can make losses to big fleet
Medium def can make losses to medium fleet
Small def can make losses to smal fleet

And it's easier to make sure attacker will have losses when small fleet and defense meet.

That's why I think that the real problem lies in "100 players behind you on the MP list" rule, and not in non profitable attacks.

If the problem were that, it would be no problem out of the top 100.
But as said and said again, there is a big problem whatever your rank.

No, that simply can't be a problem. But again, it's what you claim against what I claim. When you show me some concrete examples, you may convince me that is true.

Maybe we should include the military points difference in the HP formula?

If defense are still in the MP points it's useless

If defense isn't in MP points, it's unfair to fleeters.

As for profits, I think it's honourable for a low ranked player to get his revenge on a strong player by bashing his defence and satellites, no matter his profits, because after all, that's all he can do.

You get attacked (for profits . :P), and you are angry ? It's more a lack of fair-play than an honorable action
But why not ... IF you are weaker.
(with the 3rd solution I propose, you will have some HP for that ;))

I'm not talking about any profits. I'm talking about type of players that you mention all the time. Small players molested by big players.


Look, we can go like this for days. You're telling me I'm wrong, and I'm telling you that you are wrong. You base your theory on something that players complain about (which they will always do), and you're not giving any concrete details to prove me I'm wrong. Only example you gave was RIPs against badly constituted defense.

I still claim the following:

1. When two players with approximately same military points meet, either side can have losses.
2. If a player has significant losses (big negative profit), he will not make a HP gathering hit.
3. As game progresses, the difference between fleeters and miners military points will increase.

And please, please, stop bringing RIPs into this discussion. That's completely different problem and isn't the topic here.

NusaDua wrote:

The HP ranking is now 100% dominated by Rippers, not because they are "honorable", but because the feature was not perfectly balanced.

+1 !

Most of the fleeters become rippers as well in a late stage of an universe (because that's the best way to make regular profits, right ?).

Of course, the best method in old universes which are decreasing and dying !

At the moment, there is a race of "free destruction" for HP, and what do you think the impact is for the universes / GF customers ?
The concept of HP needs to be rethink : that's why I widely share vulca's analysis to remove the defense from HP in a first move (to stop the wave of destruction).

+1 once more !
Very good analysis of the french situation ...(about 179.000 players given in infuza)

I agree that RIPs vs defense is a problem. But as I already said, that's a problem which is older than HP system. Turtles were regulary harassed by rippers in my community even before the HP system came, and they will be harassed no matter what you decide here. Currenty, the rippers in my community get HPs for destroying defenses, but that's just because the player count is too low for "100 players below you on MP list" to work.

Look at the test server. Our top ripper is no1 on MP list. That means he can honourably attack only 100 players. If some other system was developed, something like 50% of his MPs, like in ACS, that number would drop down to 12 players.
Of course, we can't do that, because it would be unfair to top players. They would have just a few targets which they could attack without getting penalized. But if we leave the "100 places" rule, and add MP difference in HP formula, they would still have enough targets to attack for profits, but just a few targets to attack for HP...

Well yes, as I already said, at the beginning of an uni, it's important to research you defenses in time with fleeters. For example, when they have cruisers, you must have gauss, when they get to BS, you must have plasmas. If you succeed in doing that, you can be sure they will have losses, no matter what they send at you.

And if a player attacks the way you describe, just for HPs and getting small or no profit, he won't get much out of his fleet. Pretty soon, he'll realise that he isn't progressing as fast as other fleeters do, and one of those other fleeters will run him over.

But I won't argue any more, because it's turning into a discussion about tactis, and that definetly isn't the topic.

I still think that "100 places" rule is bigger problem than defense to HPs, but it seems that I'm the only one here who thinks that. And it's ridiculous that I'm defending the fleeters, when I'm a turtle.

Good luck with you suggestion.

I find it disgraceful. It's bad enough that defense isn't included in the escape ratio, and now you want to eliminate it from the HP system as well.

Of course it is.
You can't cut out huge parts of the game as you like, just because people are being attacked. It's simply wrong.

I already told you that we have tons of players complaining about the 3.0 version (not one complaint about being attacked just for honour points though), and threatening to quit OGame because of it. Should we abandon the 3.0 version completely because of them, or tell them to adapt and try to guide them how to do that?

I still think that the problem you write about is blown out of proportion.

Gather the data. How many players per uni have that problem? What's their regular/military score, and what's regular/military score of evil oppresors?
Encourage those players to describe the attacks in detail.

If gathered data shows that situation is really bad as you describe it, then yes, the system is wrong and we should change the way it determines what's honourable, and what isn't.

But I'm pretty sure that removing 40% of units from the honour system isn't the right way to do it.

Vuica, I don't know where you get your definitions from. Destroying something (no matter whether it flies, or stays on the ground) and stealing isn't honourable. So there's no point in arguing what's honourable and what isn't in OGame.
As to avoiding attacks for HP: simply don't build unnecessary units.

NusaDua, I realize that you're not proposing going back to the old version, I was just giving an example. As you said yourself, there will always be people which rather complain than try to do something constructive.
I also believe that the current system does not work as it should, but I'm pretty sure that defense isn't the problem. We could ask for LF to be excluded from the HP system, because cruisers in the same MP value obliterate them.

Since you're the only "witness" here, could you please provide some details about your situation.
For example, age and player count of your uni. Your highscore and MP rank/points. Highscore and MP rank/points of some of your victims. MP points of a player 100 places bellow you on the MP list, etc...

Edit:

This is what I think:

Idea is good: Encourage equally strong players to fight each other. Discourage attacking of weaker players.
Military points list idea is also good: If all units are balanced properly, players with approximately the same number of military points should have the same chance of winning the fight.

But the following question arises:

How to determine the maximum difference between military points at which the battle is still "fair"?

If the difference is too small, players won't have enough targets that they can attack without being penalized.
If the difference is too big, strong players will be able to molest weak players without consequences.

"100 places" rule ensures that there is always enough targets to attack, but it doesn't care about the military points difference, because different parts of military points list don't have equal differences between 100 players.

Let's have a look at our test uni:

Player 101 on the MP list has 19% of players 1 military points. That difference gradually gets smaller to somewhere about player 200 which has 70% of players 100 MPs. From there to player 1000, that difference is approximately the same (about 75%).

At first, this doesn't look that bad, but 670 is a young uni. In old unis, the situation is a lot worse; differences are bigger and they affect much larger part of the MP list.
That's the only positive thing about introducing the new system to old unis: we know in time that all unis will eventually become like that, and sooner or later, the HP system will break.

Perhaps we could introduce a "gray area" and say the following:
If I attack a player that has 75% (or more) of my military points, I get honour points. Attacking the players from 50% to 75% of my military points doesn't affect the honour system. Attacking players with less than 50% of my military points gives me negative honour points.

That way, the game will be more like before, but we'll still have the honour system. We would solve the "unequal distribution of MPs on MP list" problem. We would ensure that only battles between equally strong opponents give honour points. We would give enough targets for players to play with. Lower ranked players would have more "gray" targets than the higher ranked players, which is in accordance with OGame's nature.

Few other things to consider:

There are claims that miners aren't protected well enough, and that they're being bashed just for honour points. Personally, I don't think that's a big problem, because MP difference between miners and fleeters increases with time.
However, if that really is the case, we should consider whether transporters should count as military points? Presently, they count as 25% of their value, but they practically don't shoot at all, so maybe we could remove them from military points altogether. That way, the MP difference between fleeters and miners will increase with time even more, and fleeters will be forced to fight between themselves.

As for turtles, I really think there is no dillema here. We all know that defensive units are more efficient than ships (price/fire power). However, defense has disadvantages of not being able to fly, lack of rapid fire, and can be IPM-ed. So I think it's pretty well balanced as long as IPM-ing doesn't affect the honour points. Building tons of defenses on all planets never was a good idea, so I don't see why that should change with the new system.