Maybe you could introduce the bank like an actual bank, where they would guarantee a certain amount but anything over that is a risk but could be invested to earn more (at the risk of losing it all if it's pirated or the "stock" crashes)

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A way to offset the negative effect on this for long term active players stock piling could be another ship that Fatelords introduced towards its end...

carrier that can hyper jump a fleet of jumps to a location for a massive one time cost per jump - this would allow players concerned by piracy to continue to move their ships, could even allow scheduled flight times into iflight. Would also act as a resource sink for other resources that are under valued by certain players currently.

A hyperjump capable fleet would quite likely change game balance significantly wrt attacks, and not substantially change cans in space or their defense. I expect they are already hyper capable, and thus can move around with minimal difficulty, and would likely all be stashed at different coordinates.

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SkyLords Head Programmer

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Re Cajin, what kind of balance between range and window seems reasonable to you for an active player to effectively defend?

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SkyLords Head Programmer

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The thing is, if you stick a bunch of transports out in deep space with 50 probes in front of them, and better yet, 50 probes and then 55 shield trannys, people won't be able to pirate them- and the travel time to get out there with a fighter or a group of fighters if have the shield, to take them out would be quite awhile- not to mention if you just wait, see someone do a probe in deep space, then jump your ships to that area afterwards- how long till someone else gets around to probing that area?

So for an active player, it should not really be an issue keeping banking trannys safe- it is the potential assault fleets in the populated sector that will be unsafe- after the initial probing of the universe at least-

and if you change the trade/attack of ships to how it used to be, then that changes the HW assaulting dynamic quite a bit, making it much more dangerous

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Assaults accidentally crashed: 2

@Cajin: I'm not sure which "how it used to be" you're referring to - there have been quite a few balance changes to assaults. 2500% XP would certainly make HWs much easier to kill though, I agree. I do not believe there have been any recent shortlisted proposals about changing the balance of planetary attack and defense. While that could happen some day, for now I'm fairly happy with the balance. Well defended planets are "somewhat safe", which correlates well with game design goals.

You make an interesting point re shielding a ship scanner. We can certainly play with the order of ships on the attack screen if we would like to encourage or discourage this behavior - for example, ensuring ship scanners are always first on the list.

I agree that transports owned by active players can just hyperjump away. This is the expected defense. This is why I asked what kind of balance between range and window seemed reasonable to you for an active player to defend.

One of the thoughts in the second post in this thread showed how assault fleets could remain undetected if that is something we desire.

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SkyLords Head Programmer

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The how it used to be was partially before my time I think, in that you could trade with page numbers of ships I believe at some point, but that had been changed like I said before my time. And professor found out the hard way that it was still possible to kill page numbers of ships when he had the bet that he could take out the one LTC planet, and that was changed after that so you could only attack the first page of ships. So if that does not change and we can only see the first page of ships, then like I said, it is easy enough to block trading of the banks with some probes.

Due to this, I don't think there should be a window, it should be instant like a planet scanner. The range could be related to distance from 0, so as they are in the outer they probe larger, like we had talked about. How big of a range in the outer, I'm not positive, but the basis could be on how long it would take a fighter to get to the outer section of the probe. So if you had a fighter at the probe location, how long would it take to get to the far end of the probe reach, that is your window of defense/move. And if you have a true ship shield blocking banks, then it would take a small armada of fighters to make pirating potential. Moving those around in the outer area between probe areas would be a pain, since certainly not guaranteed to hit something with the probe.

And one thing to consider, as you mentioned, is the initial run on probing vs continued probing. The continued probing is what active players would need to worry about. A range of 3k in the outer area would require 13k probes and with 3k distance it would take a fighter an hour to get to the edge in one direction, so with multiple axis then looking at probably an hour of notice to get to the ships (assuming any there, and then 2 hours of travel to move to the next probe location, consuming a lot of U as you move around, that doesn't include the initial travel to get out there.... so sending fighters out would be a pain)

And with that many probes required for outer, it would probably be a one and done thing, especially with the defense as I mentioned, so the big key would be harvesting the resources that the inactives have sitting in space. Once that is done, then people might do it around their HWs on occasion to see if someone is preparing an attack on them, but that can be negated by shortening up your staging/attack time. But other than that, I do not seeing it being of further use after the initial rush.... unless, I just had the thought, that it is a hugely expensive ship, and it just probes the entire verse... like a navigation system hack instead of a probing ship- pay an obscene amount (lot of gold for payment and silicon for computer circuitry) to hack the navigation system everyone uses and you get a dump of all ship locations that are not docked on a planet (powered down in the dock)- this would be a lot of data to sift through (which would get pared down as people go and destroy those ships)- but that creates your window.... and just thinking that to create some level of parity between vets and newer players, the obscene amount might just be a planets worth, 16M of each resource whatever you are using up.... hmmm, I like the idea- could have it be where if the ship is just near a planet then it is not detected, protecting the wandering assaults that way, but I would think that would create some additional headaches... though being able to distinguish if a ship is docked or not might also, though if the system is like a players ship list, then docked ones show the planet name and not the coord..... let you all ruminate on that... and I'll assume that I properly used all the words that came to my mind that were not basic english.

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Assaults accidentally crashed: 2

It sounds like you are suggesting a very small window for counterplay - essentially none, and only defense. I would like to introduce counterplay options to various systems, including homeworld attacks, instead of only passive defenses, to make direct player interactions more valuable. The problem I'm facing is that shorter windows are similar to no window, and too-long windows substantially reduce the viability of an action. Other counterplay options are possible, such as instant scanning of empty space and analysis taking longer for ships found - perhaps that player's last login up to some cap.

I think a single hour might not be long enough to be comfortable for active players who have to sleep to feel they can defend their resources. I can see your point re relocating the ship and fighters though. Re ship counts I'm seeing around 10k for everything at 3k range, or 2.6k if excluding the center range.

Re "one and done" - that's one of the reasons I'm thinking of making these reusable - a scanner rather than a probe. A large investment should encourage regular re-use.

Re massive cost universe-wide probing, I'd probably make that kind of thing a planet rather than a ship, and have a very long window - maybe 1-2 months with public coordinates? It could give people a reason to take out a HW for sure. Even still it seems too powerful, and I'm not sure I can balance cost and regular use in any way with a design like that.

One key goal with this design is regular use - the "choose your way of life... pirate" aspect of play. If it's one and done, that is not a way of life - that just a way to clear out inactive banking ships, which I can do myself by posting coordinates publicly with forenotice w/o a building.

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SkyLords Head Programmer

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Building on the third post from the top, I think this idea pairs nicely with suggestions for a bank system with upkeep. The UI will definitely have to be improved to better communicate home planets and what that means via consistent subtle cues (since overt ones aren't read, though we'd have those too).

One element could be "your planet <name> was captured at <time>. The following ship(s) used this planet as their homebase, and the attacker plundered the coordinate database, revealing the following: ... <ship> at <x>:<y>:<z> ..." in the board computer; but the board computer would probably best be a bit more prominent in that case.

Overall we need a UX pass on the notifications system . See "local news" discussion in the Discord for one offshoot of those thoughts.

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SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.