Moot point at high ranks when every ship is effectively SSB.... PVP becomes a chore and the game becomes a bore... That's the core of the problem and the reason the game is dying

No need to be petulant about it all dude...

oh, so you didn't install ANY ship mods using those extra decks ? no attack mods, no defense mods, no hull mods, no shield mods, no energy mods, no cloak mods ... only scan mods ? use your head.

as for PvP being the most important element of the game ... LOL LOL LOL.

- i get hundreds of terraforming devices from disabling every ship on my battle tab !
- i can't find enough planets to use all those quasi-spacial expanders that show up when i take down a LSB !!
- and look ... enumeration crystals are dropping from every ship that i raid !!
- and i love it when i crit.hack for a star chart purger !!!

ship on ship PvP gives you access to PvP-oriented ship mods from the battle market, along with a few structures that are useful on many planets. but those green, silver, and dark badge items and upgrades have zip to do with ship on ship PvP.

the fact that some ships can play their entire GL career halc'd up and pacified demonstrates the utter fail of your bald statement that "PvP is most important".

i do PvP because it is fun and challenging for me ... and i like being a tough ship that takes a lot of effort to kill. but that is just ego on my part. the number of PvP kills or deaths mean squat in terms of overall GL success.

Not being petulant at all mate, just pointing out that personal responsibility for strategic choices is still a thing.
At Rank 1675 I have yet to see any evidence of every ship effectively being an SSB ...quite the opposite in fact in my experience at least.

PvP may be more difficult, but that has not been my experience either - I surely don't think it is in any way impossible.

Then again, I also think it is my responsibility to spend the energy if I want to disable someone.
This is particularly true for me given the fact that as the attacker I have almost every advantage - probes and examination of effects allow me to make a calculated and generally accurate assessment of whether the ship is online and what traps may be set and the ability to repair as often as I wish makes it simply a matter of time and energy.

Might just be me, but I don't feel like anyone owes me their badges and I am happy to work for them if I want them.

Not at all. It's just seems ridiculous spending 10 minutes clicking away for one tiny part of a game with such a minor reward... Admittedly, the current biweekly could be an influencing factor in discontent due to pretty much all non-SSBs being halc'd or amp'd...

Oh for sure mate, the current bi-weekly made PvP a bit of a tiresome grind and in general the rewards for PvP are not great once you have maxed everything.

It's simple. Having the damage cap formula based on deck size in any capacity is bad. At the end of the day, forget your SSB vs LSB arguments. Every higher rank ship in the game is pretty much at the size they are going to stay now. If we follow the simple logic that we are going to chase arti production into the ground, ships hulls and shields will continue to grow while deck size remains constant. Over time, PVP will become more and more of a chore. Think bases for a minute. All the top legions have grown the base stats of their base like crazy over time so most are huge, even unbuffed, now. Yet the damage cap is fixed (as most ships is at whatever it might be). Your ever increasing attack whittles a tiny bit more off of them as you grow, but the hull + shield continues to grow in an unlimited fashion over time. Even if you get so strong that you can cap on all those LSBs (or debuff the dickens out of them so you do), you're going to be limited by their damage cap so PVP will become more and more of a chore over time and not reflective of much other than their arti income over time. This effect is growing more slowly in the PVP arena than the base arena because the base damage caps get fixed at such a low level early on and stays that way even as the base levels up and grows in size. I have slowly seen this taking hold already as ships that have been on my BT for a long time now take more clicks to disable even though my attack has kept increasing. My attack continues to outgrow most of my opponents concomitant defense increases, yet they still take more to kill due to their fixed damage cap, regardless of size, as their hull and shields continue to grow.

One thought change how TO's work, instead of adding raw attack, they add 0,01% of the total attack of all installed moduals.

How bout some manner of limit to attack by deck? buwahahahaah


LEt's face it its hard to use that phalanx tomahawk missile off a 5 meter long skiff.

And let's watch the SSBs squeal in protest.... However apt the analogy may be...

I think that the deck-based cap should be removed, or at least replaced by cap that incorporates the crew numbers as well... A single damage cap formula utilising decks & rank & crew would be an interesting change.
SSBs would still have a lower damage cap, low ranks would also have a lower damage cap, but if you have a large number of crew on a small hull then each hit is going to do more damage...

Everyone's opinion and view point generally falls along the lines of their ship and style.

Me? SSBs teerorized me as i grew to fast, ranked to fast etc. But, eventually i caught the lil bastards and when i did come back to say hello, 80% of them slapped a halc
on to avoid the daily abuse once handed to me (names not mentioned to protect innocent) So, more than one and less than 10 SSBs flew halc panties when i returned the favor. The daily favor they loved giving me. So, my opinion of them is that they are cowards. Hiding in the lower ranks feeding off people who are enthusiastic and trying to *grow*

So, i dont like most the little bastards. That and i dont want to *think that much* when i play a game. I think running my business, i come to GL to blow shi....stuff up and steal planets and kill ships because its fun to me.

Its all kinda funny. Just a game, but i could never be an ssb and have to switch stuff out. Gimmie a house boat for the party and ya'll take the jetski. I need room for guns n beer and speakers and music and hookers and cocaine and midgets and donkeys and goats and firecrackers and....

vodka.


and flapjax.


and....yahtzee

i have no issue with adding something else to the damage cap formula besides the current deck and rank. but if crew gets added, it should probably be restricted to tac officers. that would nerf SSB somewhat, but it would also nerf the higher ranks, so you will likely not get much support there.

now, whether it should be a third threshold like ranks or decks, or a multiplier effect ? i have no idea which would work out better.

I could see that, Damage cap based on rank/deck size OR Crew (total TO's Helmsmen divided by 10) something like that would spice stuff up, take the biggest of the 3.

That sounds like the idea of someone who wants everyone else to suck.
If you think it is acceptable to make the damage cap that then you obviously have next to no AP.
What would be the point of continuing to play the game for people who don't have laughably poor crew counts?

+1,000,000,000,0000 or more....LOL. As anyone who's read one of my more cynical posts on the subject knows, one of the problems I have with the game is the utter lack of realism. I have trouble thinking of any other combat games where you damage is limited on such an arbitrary factor or there is never a good "head shot" that can take the target down. Luke Skywalker would have been doomed in this game as he could never have destroyed the Death Star with one well placed hit if he had to follow these rules. I have trouble rationalizing how continually adding crew continually adds attack and defense with a static set of weaponry and defense modules (or even worse -- NONE). Or how adding hull infinitely has absolutely no impact whatsoever on your ship size or maneuverability. In any real combat ship situation (or even more realistic game), things like weaponry, ammunition, supplies, fuel, hull, etc., limit the amount of crew you can squeeze into your ship and your design aims for the perfect balance of fitting in just enough crew to handle all the operations of the ship in the maximum effective manner. But the game gets really silly when you can just keep packing more and more crew into a fixed deck size with fixed weapons and defensive modules and it just keeps getting more powerful infinitely. Not to mention the "Doctor Who universe" cargo holds that can grow infinitely and carry megatons of stuff, but have no impact on anything at all....

Early on in the game, when we were all building our ships, most of the PVP seemed somewhat rationale. But as the game goes on, the flaws in the damage cap rules are continually being magnified (as well as the absurdities of the enormous crews since we didn't have them yet.....). And, just because the rules have been static for a few years now doesn't mean they shouldn't be tweaked to bring some more "even sci-fi" realism back to the game.

And, while I'm on this particular silly rant, it's time for Dan to think more about the modules he introduces in the game. Most are practically meaningless (what's an extra 80 attack or 100 shields to most bigger ships in this galaxy when you can pick up that much with just a few hours of arti pulls). The steep growth in upkeep for such small tweaks is ridiculous. Also, for a strategy game, the inability to shrink your ship when you remove modules without resetting (or rebuild your planet inventory in many ways) is silly. It's like a version of chess where a bad opening move always determines the outcome so you should just resign and start over after the first bad move you make (of course, the whole deck situation would be irrelevant if the damage cap formula wasn't totally nerfed by having that as a limit). But, even if that were fixed, it would be nice to have many more planet rebuild options to make up for early planet building mistakes to add a little more tot the strategy portion of the game....

Well 1/10 would be high but one every 20 would be entirely within the realm of reason. you get 10 rank points every 2 ranks, this would keep pace with that assuming you don't ap ramp.

For the love of little kittens, your maths only works for people with no AP.
Anyone above Rank 500 whose primary source of crew additions is Rank Points gained by ranking rather than Rescued Prisoners and Android Helmsmen is clearly setting themselves up to be disappointed with how things pan out in the higher ranks.

There is another thread somewhere here that talks about levels of crew... whatever numbers you are using (or not using) they are utterly ridiculous, rather than "within the realm of reason", when applied to existing users.
There is no way people like Sun Tzu deserve to have a damage cap in the insane range it would be with either 10 or 20, simply because they understood the value of AP and have spent years building it diligently.

Given such a large proportion of Dan's income is derived from items which increase AP, like Transfusers, QSEs, seasonal items etc, why would people continue to buy them if you were penalized for having good AP? No income = no game.

Edit: Topic on Total Crew is here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=43182

According to these figures, under a formula of (TOs + Helmsmen)/20 then Sun Tzu's Damage cap would be worse than a ship with 40,000 decks:
427189/20=21359.45... which would make him considerably weaker than high level ships that suck a lot.

Clearly this would not in any way be fair and would effectively prevent any high ranker from improving their ship at all after research modules had been exhausted.
The ideal build would then obviously be SSB/MSB with low AP, as adding anything at all to "strengthen" your ship would simply make you a ridiculously easy target to take out.

So the point of continuing to play after leaving the kiddie pool below Rank 600 would be...?

look at how much benefit you get from a ssb nerf


1. you can get reds a bit more easily. - getting more reds means what for your ship? pretty close to squat

2. you can kill offline ships off planets easier? - how often do you have to do this? pretty close to never.


Why do you spend such a disproportionate amount of time whining about it.

and lets look at what issues arrise

every ssb effectively has their effort cut to squat. their sacrifices at lower levels to reap a reward at higher levels were in vain

what happens when these players effectly are told that the work they have done was pointless and no, adding decks does not mitigate the fact that all the effort wasted, if you cant see that then your a lost cause.

they hate the game, they buy less gp, the game gets less funding.

and now THAT is a problem

Not if they make combat more fun allow more blood into the game, where we don't have SSB clogging up the low rank pvp. They block new players from entering, pvp is a fun part of the game for new players, SSB's who sit/freeze rank reseters with good planets MAKE PVP for low ranks NOT fun. the new players leave, get rid of the clog, new blood will flow new players come and play and the game grows, cut the cancer save the game. SSB is just that a tiny tumor destroying our game.

ah, one pulse of the ssb dilemma....the clog at lower ranks...

I would argue that many people cruise anyway and rank, but i would be willing to agree there is probably an unhappy amount of people who quit playing cause they cant kill anyone due to ships at rank 100 who are a year old and act like rank 500. To what extent this exists, i cannot say since i havent been within 1000 ranks of that for a couple of years.

SSB is a very enticing new ship build...id bet there are some GO big ships, most decks = more lasers...but i would double down that pvp over missions is a heavy consideration...and since pvp means putting pts into to's rather than engineers and energy mods -as well as the fact that pvp is less exp per hit...there is likely a growing clog of ships at the lower spectrum. I can say , in their interest, it is prolly best they ARE low rank. Even ssb wouldn't save many if they suddenly ranked into the 1k plus level range. Ships who have npc'd and missioned to that point are so much stronger. Npc and scan are the easiest way to grow. When i attack, hack, etc i like to probe for att/def and also check out how many npc's the ship has killed. There is a pretty nice correlation (in my experience) between higher volume of npc kills and meaner high attack ships.

what if ships ranked weekly? auto rank up and corresponding free points (say 2 ranks a week)...like real life...longer you lurc, you age regardless. (i only say this tongue in cheek, but half mean it)

Hmmm. I'd actually guess that the SSBs spend way less per capita than the LSBs since most probably don't buy all of Dan's expensive ship modules. But, on a more serious note, I just don't see that as a problem at all. Nor do I see them quitting at any more of a rate than people do at any rate since they can easily rebuild if they wanted to -- only LSBs live on a one way street. Remember, that if there are 5000 players still in the game, only 1% or so will even be on a leaderboard at any point in time. I'm guessing that at least 95% of those non-leaderboard folks don't even try to be "serious PVPers" and any change in PVP mechanics would have little or no effect on them. All you have to do is look at the PVP stats on most of the ships on your BT who have the 4 or 5 year medal to see that. (BTW...as an aside...those people like their halcs and calming amps and that's one reason I defend them frequently. People should be able to pursue their own goals in the game without having to be the punching bags for a minority of players that are looking for easier PVP targets.) So, please, let's stop the focusing on SSBs in this discussion or even stretching the point so far as to try to make it sound like the game would fall apart or Dan's income would drop if the game's mechanics were tweaked and stick to the key issue under discussion: the damage cap.

The one and only key to a powerful ship in the game is "artis + time". An SSB build is nothing but a deterrent to some attacks. At the current exp-to-energy return, most of the big ships can autorank off PVP easily and kill anyone who is offline that they're willing to invest their energy/experience in. Many of these guys take on bases with far more hull and shields than an SSB but just about the same damage per shot but the ridiculously low damage cap on bases only deters them so much. The main reason most SSBs only get hit once in a while is that the people with massive attack who can see them don't want the excess experience you get from hitting those SSBs too often. A cheaper kill is just a better investment for a badge. In a straight up (no arti) PVP battle, they're more likely to chase an SSB down than than they are some of the super strong larger ship builds because the strong LSB's defense will keep their hits just about as small and they expect the powerful LSB to have even more hull and shields to whittle through than the SSB. But, generally, they'll avoid both and go for an easier target.

The real problem is the damage cap (which SSBs seem intent on blocking any realistic discussion of as if their lives depended on it). Since the damage cap is limited by decks most of the time and no ship has any realistic motivation to grow by the time you're in the 1K+ range somewhere, that number is essentially fixed for most ships at higher ranks. However, your hull, shields and defense essentially creep up forever so the amount of energy to disable ALL ship builds simply creeps up over time. The bigger your arti pull, the faster all three of those numbers grow. That means PVP will make you rank faster than you want to (if you pay attention to the things like the NPCs you lose when you rank too fast) unless your rank is already too high for that to matter. That makes PVP just flat out less appealing unless you're fixated on the leaderboards and want to spend lots of your time on PVP. Those of us who aren't totally PVP fixated want to balance our play style with an eye toward maximizing that arti output that we see as being all important in building a powerhouse ship. If you're also interested in a leaderboard position, you have to balance that problem with the need to get the actions you want done before your rank is too high and your target pool shrinks too much.

An interesting theoretical issue with the more or less fixed damage cap is, will there come a point when there is a ship powerful enough that the damage you can deal to them will not exceed their shield regen rate and the only way to attack them successfully will require you to use offensive artifacts to block their shield regrowth? And, if so, do you think that ship is more likely to be an SSB or a big ship like Warlord Minion's that has to have a truly phenomenal artifact output?