Bring back the power of moons

The basic problem, I think, could be summed up in: OGame has much less players than it once had, with all the consequences that brings. Basically, almost any suggestion is in some way ultimately trying to bring back the activity and life to the game.

That is due to many many many different variables, and of course, we don't know the key and even if there exists a key to “solve the problem”. There are other broader discussion here in Origin about that subject, with little activity, by the way. Those variables include changes in the game, changes towards dark matter expenditure, lack of advertising, the expansion of smartphones hence pivoting the time dedicated to gaming to a completely different level (so, different games gather more attention), etc. There are a lot, and it's interesting to discuss them.

Here, with this thread, I was trying to touch only one of those variables, which I think I spotted, and to propose solutions to them. May be I just thought that something is a problem when it's not, and of course, may be no acceptable solution has arisen; both of them can be discussed within this thread. While the rest of the discussion is welcome, may be this thread is not the right place, since it would loose focus.

So, here's what I thought.

One of the aspects of the current speed universes is that there's poor activity, lots of inactives, and lot of semi-actives who play in v-mode. The universe get's a lot of attention at the beginning (well, if 3.000 players could be called “lots of attention”), but in less than a year the activity decreases a lot. At first I thought, well, this is something that's just a consequence of speed universes, that's what it is.

But then I tried to get to the source of that problem, what's exactly about the high speeds that make universes die that fast? Obviously, it's not the fact that researches take less time to investigate (just to say an example). So I tried to leave those out, looking to something more concrete than “just high speed universes are this way”.

Eventually, I arrived to something that satisfied me. There's an obvious difference between the power that moons held in the past to what they hold now. Of course, lots of other things have changed since then that definitely contribute to the problem, but this is one I thought was a key point. Hence my suggestion: bring power back to the moons. And also I thought of a possible solution for that: slow down just the moon destructions to something more decent (for instance, 2h50min instead of 1h20min in my example equation).

And, I thought, the basic change this would make would be that a lot more people could fleetsave during the day (a much larger pool of people can connect every 2h30min rather than the current 1h20min time frame), to cancel the deployment over the night. That for one. And as a side effect, it would also discourage the absurd moon popping that sometimes we see in advanced universes, since, instead of 2h30min flight time (two ways in case you don't loose rips) it would become for instance 5h30min; which makes people plan a little bit more. Of course it would still be possible to pop moons, but at least it would be discouraged a little bit.

So basically that was my initial post, and some suggestion to start the discussion. People suggested other things to bring the power back to the moons, like reducing % of moon destruction (which was not welcome in the form that was proposed), changing how the moon destruction works, etc. And I think that's what could be discussed: what do we think about the relation between lack of activity in the universe when big forces form (usually less than a year) and the lack of strength of moons, and if there's something we could to stabilize that with the least possible disturbance of the game.

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That's in general, and a big wall of text, sorry for that.

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Now just in particular, answering to RiV-.

First of all, as you say, there's a problem for those who can only play after work and need to deploy during the night, needing to wake up every X time to check if there's some problem with their moons. I opened this thread without caring for them, for me those just cannot play safe (well, they can, but waking up every X time); I was only thinking of those who can deploy during the day and cancel before bed. But, as a matter of fact, in particular the solution of slowing down moon destructions a bit would help them, since they could wake less times during the night. I don't see a plausible solution (easy) that would solve their problem. So, at most, I can think now that we can hope for the best with a mixture of slowing moon destructions, and hoping that absurd moon poppings don't happen that often. It would be great to find a simple solution.

And about your last questions, as I said before that I think they belong to a different discussion (much broader). But I could give an opinion (I'm not Gameforge, though). Although, at first, those questions seem quite crazy, and I don't see what's your point. To me, they have either a bit obvious “no” answers, or the possible answers would mean changing the whole game to a point where it's not ogame.

Okey, here's another suggestion: enable relocations only certain days, or limit the possibility of doubleclicking jumpgate in the first 24h after a new colonization (similar to the 24h cooldown after a relocation).

Not honestly suggesting that, apart from the fact that it involves changing DM consumption which GameForge almost for sure won't implement, it's just to revive the thread.

Any more ideas? Any answers from the developers? Any other proposed equations for moon destruction % or moon destruction flight time or whatever? C'mon, keep this alive

@Valent @Lord Katrosh The problem with that is that... what does that solve?
Yes, it does add more complexity to the game, but still, it's just something that will not change anything, some people will get some benefit, but on the other side if the enemy researches the correct technology we are again at the starting point.

I think that the main thing we have to aim to do is raise the bare minimum of strength of the moon vs. rips (by strength I mean everything that have been discussed here, more time = more strength in my original post). After that, may be it could be interesting to add complexity to the moons–rips situation and something could be done in that line of making more technologies useful, but still, I think the main problem is the “starting point”.

Personally, I think the moon vs. rips situation is acceptable (I mean the size / number of rips needed / % of destruction, etc. not really a big problem), and with the current problem of deuterium consumption of recyclers, or large fleets in general, or fleetsaving in general, I would try to give hyperspace, graviton research, etc. some usefulness in that direction.

@Kaldor Could you detail a little bit what you had in mind with the “pulse” you suggested?

I don't play any other game, so I don't know how the problem of “saving” is approached in other online games like OGame. At first I thought that making a safe sleep would be something unimaginable but now I'm not seeing it as horrible as I saw it before.

You could expand how that would work to see if we can throw some ideas to the pot. Here's another, with that same intention: to add more ideas.

Related, but not really equal at all to Kaldor's proposal. Imagine one could add a shield to protect a moon for a number of hours (say 8h), with a cooldown period of certain amount of hours (I'll talk about this in a moment). Too add some complexity, the shield is not deployed instantly, so for instance you activate it at 22:00, it takes two hours to activate (this times depends of the speed universe, the idea is that in this time someone can sneak a moon destruction), and then it lasts 8h. So your moon would be undestructible for 8h from 00:00 until 08:00.

Something could be done with Graviton technology, which is a research that is never going to be above level 7 (and 99% of the OGame population would never have more than 4 probably). For instance, every Graviton level extends this protection to that number of moons that could simultaneously have that shield. During those hours the moon can't be destroyed.

Now you do this independently for each moon, activate the shields at different hours, but simultaneously you would only be able to have 3 moons with the shield active if you had Graviton 3.

This adds security for a moon, you sleep well, and everything is perfect.

Now the cooldown period could be trickier if it was longer than 24h or 48h. This way you don't get players with unpoppable moons every night, and if they used many the day before they would have less moons available to enable the shield.

This secures the fleet, and with enough strategy one could fly every night protected.

Now, about having a humane fleetsave, the easiest would be to bring back the self-recycling possibility that existed before in x1. Now it's extinct because of higher fleetspeeds, and because of hyper 15 that almost everyone has. So may be add a new kind of slow mission that ensures 8h of two ways even in x5 fleetspeed universes?

What do you think?
Don't discuss the idea as a whole, please, it has many many variables, and we can discuss which are acceptable and which are not. For instance, if it's limited to one or two moons, one could give smaller cooldown periods to be acceptable. It could be completely unrelated to Graviton, and be a building built in moons, or even a mixture, that some research influenced one part and the building another of the secure period, the cooldown or the maximum simultaneous shields. Or the shield could reduce just the % of moon destruction and not make it unpoppable (although I think it should be 100% secure). And also we can discuss if should be visible after probing a moon (personally, if the cooldown is longer than 24 or 48h I don't think it should be visible, this gives enough room for the attackers to bring down the moon in the next two days, but if the cooldown is shorter like 20h then yes it could be visible).
Don't fix your mind on the whole idea.