Well, one of the things people strive for, yes.

But imagine this: you're new to GL, and nobody has told you how much more important artifact production is compared to mining and research. You probably think research is the most important, and are feeling good about yourself after finishing up with Plasma cannons. Yeah, you're pretty tough.

Then you log on one morning to find yourself disabled, your hacks and raids zeroed! Oh no! You go after the ship who did this to you, but when you retaliate, the guy does about five times more damage back than you dish out. But you are not deterred! You use up all of your repair nanos and a Tri-Matrix Emblem, rank up in the middle of the attack, and still don't have enough energy to kill him. Gah. How frustrating! Then to add insult to injury, once you're on his feed, the guy comes back every 12 hours to take more actions from you.

OK, that sucked, but hey, maybe he's just some super ship or something. You are annoyed, but go about your business. Then two days later, a different ship does the same thing to you. And another ship not too long after that! And of course when you retaliate, similar results.

"What the heck is going on here?" you wonder! "Why are some ships so impossible to kill? I thought I was doing OK!" You have no idea that this player has actually been around for 3 years (you probably don't look at people's medals yet), and reset with several 22x arti planets waiting for them on the other side. You have no idea that this player scores more Rescued Prisoners in 12 hours than you do in an entire week.

If it were just 1-2 oddball ships bullying everybody in the 20-100 range, that'd be one thing, but when you run into it enough, it gets pretty disheartening. Some people are stronger than you and that's life -- deal with it -- but when you keep running into impossible odds, you start wondering if you are doing something wrong, if these other players are somehow cheating. Or maybe you should just quit, because you're getting pounded by these cocky punks and there's nothing you can do about it, short of catch them offline and spend $20 in GP refills/repairs to take them down. And who wants to do that?

Now when I reset 15 months ago (no planets waiting for me. Guess I did it wrong! ), it was admittedly an annoyance, but as an SSB with reasonably good AP, I was left alone for the most part, but you could tell from reading people's ship comms that there was a fair amount of raging going on lol... and from my understanding, Super Annoying Slow Ranking Reset Scouts of Death are more prevalent now than they were at that time.

This just further points out the backwards logic of the damage cap based on deck size mechanic. This is the only game that I have ever played (and i've played many) that has this flawed type of logic.

A new player creates a ship, and LOGICALLY thinks that the more cannons they have the more damage they will do, the more defense they have the better off they are to fend off attacks. Most gamers who may try this game are going to have this basic common logic that spans across just about every game so they add deck after deck to install as many cannons and defensive modules as they can, Install all the hull and shield modules they can get to make their "Ship Tougher" which LOGICALLY it should do.

Damage cap based on deck size is totally backwards of this logic, basically bringing it down to "The smaller your ship is the harder its going to be to kill", which will and does frustrate players, old and especially New (when they realize that their standard normal logic is different from the backwards logic of the game) but by then its to late, they say screw this, quit and move on to other games have don't have such a mechanic that defies all sense of logic they possess. This may have also affected some of the higher ranks and quitting, lord knows I have thought about it more than once.

And I agree, add into the number of people that have reset, are slow ranking or freeze ranking just to prey off the new players and it is just writing a death sentence for the game. The FIRST thing that NEEDs to be fixed if the game is going to attract and MAINTAIN New players is the broken Damage Cap system, not a tutorial to teach them how backwards that mechanic of the game is.

And for any of the SSB defenders who want to debate the flawed design, more than happy to, start up a thread trying to defend it..

Well I personally think the biggest flaw is that resets get all their 15x Arti planets back. I've had one new member saying how on earth does a rank 50 have ridiculous attack and defense, and hull too. And to add to it the person has only played for 20 or so days. If there was a way for resets to not get back their pre-reset planets, I think that would be fairer, but there's no way for that to be fixed.

SSBs as annoying as they are, aren't the problem IMO. It's the people who have 20k arti by rank 100 that are the problem.

Finally someone speaking some sense...

I agree (except the part about SSB's not being a problem)

The thing is, being a problem is one of the main benefits of the SSB strategy. Frustrating you is part of why they choose to have such an inconvenient, swappy little ship.

If an SSB is a problem, they've done a good job putting together their ship.

TBH if you get your attack up and you can cap ride an SSB pretty easily, most of us can click at a base for an hour plus, 5 mins of ship is just some change

I concur that one of the flaws is the resets that are going back, keeping their planets and farming (griefing the new players). BUT I also don''t care how much 'work' that player A or player B put into maintaining their ship, that is irrelevant, this is about a Broken Backwards game mechanic that needs fixed / changed that is also driving people off as well. To be Honest, I've almost quit over it a few times, instead, I just avoid pvp (and its not even really pvp, more like kill a player while they are offline)...

#ragequit ... You aren't really covering the argument in glory, this whole post just comes across as some big vendetta against SSBs as you didn't have it how you wanted in a fight.

Rage quit if you want, plenty have left the game, if it were me I would find a way to deal with a play style I happen to not like... But hey-that's just me

You are missing the point.. there is something Inherently and Horribly WRONG and Backwards with a system that allows a rank what, 150? (per the thread i referenced) to hold off multiple rank 1k + ships. There is something WRONG and Broken with a system that allows a ship to hold off someone twice their rank just because they have fewer decks / smaller ship. There is something WRONG with a system that the players pretty much come to realize that if someone is online it is practically impossible to kill them.. These things should NEVER happen, at this point its no longer pvp, its player kill, 1 player vs an offline ship. Someone half your rank should NEVER be able to fend off attacks from you, period.

Having played many games over my years, I can honestly say that this backwards system is at least half the reason for new players not playing. Any LOGICAL Gamer who decides to try the game is going to add as many decks as they can to add as many cannons and all the defenses to their ship thinking "more cannons the better I attack" and "More defense, the better protected I am".. and then they come to realize that this is totally backwards, defense means nothing, just keep your ship really really small... eh...

There is something WRONG with a system that the players pretty much come to realize that if someone is online it is practically impossible to kill them.. These things should NEVER happen, at this point its no longer pvp, its player kill, 1 player vs an offline ship. Someone half your rank should NEVER be able to fend off attacks from you, period.

Having played many games over my years, I can honestly say that this backwards system is at least half the reason for new players not playing. Any LOGICAL Gamer who decides to try the game is going to add as many decks as they can to add as many cannons and all the defenses to their ship thinking "more cannons the better I attack" and "More defense, the better protected I am".. and then they come to realize that this is totally backwards, defense means nothing, just keep your ship really really small... eh...