Well as many people have found, the galaxy is pretty overwhelmed with Halcyon Traps at the minute.

During a run today for Foundry of War purposes I came upon a semi handy way to avoid them- You target those much higher in rank yourself. This won't work at all rank brackets, but around my level (rank 745 or so) I had far greater success targeting the rank 1000+ ers, as they seemed to have given up on caring about traps. Some may be a bit more E than normal, but there are plenty of weak 1000+ ships out there.

Also a few random notes to tack on the end:

Any PvPers out there, please join me in tripping halcs when you find people with one on... It helps everyone who PvPs.

How are all these people taking planets? I steal planets daily (Bane I am looking at you), and can't picture myself rapidly improving my productions without doing so. So how are these people improving, without coming out from under their Halc Blanky to take planets?

I do 5-6 invades per week and have to agree that without it these peoples would be unable to build great ships. That may be precisiely why they have a halc on in the first place

And yeah, idk about halcs but I've given up caring about firewalls, mines and for the most part dont even bother with virus traps anymore. If someone wants to kill your ship a virus/mine trap isn't going to stop them.

indeed.

Those people are not taking planets and improving their productions. I still use KVT's, mainly for when I'm online and to alert me I'm being attacked so I can defend, too many times I've been online and disabled because I didn't realise I was being attacked.

Players like me who try to stay halc'd actually scan for their planets instead of stealing others'. Don't assume they have weak ships

Unless you are one of the few who has insanely lucky scan runs, I don't see how it is a sustainable model

i still have no problems getting 20+ kills per rank ... i go up rank or down rank ... up scan or down scan. stryll trap probe until those are used up and then keep going until null fuses are exhausted. laughables, miners, builders, explorers, sillixx and sabs. Red Badges: 2417

i still put traps on my own ship to:
1) burn other people's nulls;
2) warn off those who are smart enough to use trap probes;
3) warn myself if i am online so i can go into treadmill mode.

tis a great feeling when you realize that your KVT / omicrons have expired without being set off

and yeah, if i trap probe someone and they only have a single trap ... i always go in for the kill lol. i have no problem with halcs - i just set them off and move on to the next target. having a 11k energy bar helps, of course.

senatorhung's analysis: ship log showdown !; SSB strategy; leader in: Ancient Untouchables

Eh, I scan for my planets too... I look for unoccupied planets that are worth colonizing, enemy planets worth taking and any planet that has artifacts on it worth taking a crappy planet to yank them off of

Well said.

I feel like I must live in a different galaxy, because finding people to disable has never been an issue. Have always wondered why so many people complain about PVP:

• Halcers complain about PVPers feeling "entitled" to disable/raid/hack them, as if it is some sort of grave personal violation... complain about how even a Calming Amp + Halcyon Trap "isn't always enough" to keep those jerky PVPers away if you want to actually, you know, sleep.
• PVPers in turn complain about wasting energy on halcs or online players, and how "nobody has any actions."
• Both slow rankers and fast rankers can be heard complaining about PVP becoming "so much more of a hassle" at higher ranks. Slow rankers, who tend to lean more toward PVP, use this as a rationalization for maintaining their snail's pace, fast rankers, who tend to lean more toward NPCs, use this as a rationalization for halcing up and staying out of the action.

Now, if you don't have a lot of reserve energy and/or the arti production to maintain your null supply and you just blindly rush everybody on your BT -- then yes, it probably is a pain. Lotsa traps, halcs, and online players blocking your progress. Employ this brute force method, and you will probably feel like you're clicking on "Use Other Artifacts" as often as you are "Attack" or "Raid Cargo;" for the energy spent, you aren't gonna have great returns.

If you are one of those cautious types who exclusively target ships that are extremely weak or near the bottom of your BT range, it probably sucks, too: you get an even higher percentage of halcs, and if you don't have the world's greatest connection, somebody else is going to score "your" red 10-15% of the time, because the same people are targeted constantly. Again, poor returns and a lot of frustration for your efforts.

But: if you have a Null Fuse at the ready, if you maintain a decent level of energy and attack, if you make sure your raid timer is clear (either wait or use a TM) before attacking, if you check your BT opponent's buffs to see if they just now activated a buff, if you use trap probes on players with 3/5/5 or fewer actions to see if they are likely wearing a halc, if you resource probes to see if they have collected in the last hour or so (and to see if you will get credited for a successful hack if that's your thing), if you set steady, but easily attainable "minimum disables per day" goals... it's really pretty darn easy. You just have to employ a little bit of strategy.

As it stands, closing in on rank 1k, and still find PVP to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game. My only gripe with red-badge PVP is the fact that it gives so much lower a return on energy spent vs. improved planetary production compared to NPCs and Bases -- so if I disable too many people per rank, it kinda feels like a waste. But I still do it, cuz it's more fun to me.

This *may* be part of the issue. How high is your scan?

grah blargle argle. screw my browser.

Just a side note:

For PvP the experience returns vary depending on a number of factors these being: Did you win the hit? If yes awesome the XP returns are SIGNIFICANTLY better when you do. Is the opponent near the bottom of your BT range? If yes then your XP returns will be lower than if they were close to your rank or significantly higher ranked than you, assuming a win that is. Did you win the hit by a large margin? If yes awesome this helps a bit, but only noticeably if the enemy is close in rank or higher ranked than you.

If you LOSE a pvp hit congratulations. Your experience return will be marginally better than hitting a base without an interface on.

Regardless of if the enemy is higher or lower ranked than you if you win the hit the XP per energy spent is better than for NPCing if you discount the disable reward bonus experience. Such that 10k energy spent locking Attiroths, Pevreons, and Clusters produces LESS experience than spending that same 10k energy on killing enemy players.

From my data collected experience returns on PvP for an all losing hit 10k energy should produce approximately 16-17k experience. For an all winning 10k energy on a target higher ranked than yourself who you win by a large margin the returns should be in the area of 26-28k xp. That same energy spent on the above mentioned NPCs exclusively would result in ~22k experience.

I fluctuate depending on if I buff or not. Most of the rank 1K+ ships I target turn up when I have no buff on