perhaps a limit to how low it can go, like the min is the (rank+19)/2.

Honestly though a rank 50 can kill me in 15 shots if there some one who debuffed me enough. torpedos/inhibitors/emps/bombs etc. That seems a bit silly that my ship can be nerfed that much and still maintain a damage cap of around 3k.

For a second forget the argument of SSB versus standard builds, think of this. Under no circumstances in the game should a defender of a planet or player under attack from 5 to 10 players probably more at times be able to still survive indefinitely, while taking hits from some and debuffing from others, having at times 10 or 30 debuffs and having expensive Tactical Inner-Bypass thrown at them.

You should never have this situation, be it from a strong build the SSB build is in the later game because of infinite supply of Artifacts an imbalance and creates an imbalance, the fact is over time SSB build ships will get even stronger and harder to kill at a disproportionate rate, game mechanics aside there needs to be some limitations, good job on you guys who have them but its time to fatten up you will have loads of bots in storage, use them because the game must change.

At the rate we grow imagine this situation next year. Its easy for you guys and again i take my hat off for you, to say but we worked for this, but even you must admit there comes a point where it does sound ridiculous. The game mechanics strategy does work for lower ranks but it gets all cocked up in higher levels.

Giving you advantage is fine, no problems but an ever widening advantage is not fine. and most importantly exotica guarding is a joke when 3 legions working sorta kinda together cant remove one player, be the problem, a mix between the SSB issue , or lag. Sort it please.

So no fights between players here Dan this one is on you.

+1

Having said that, I do think the damage cap itself needs to be revamped, but not in too-drastic a way.

A possible way to deal with the overall issue of diminishing returns on deck size is to boost the worth of modules. I'd suggest upgrades that combine multiples of the same module into a single super-duper one (provided it still took up the same amount of decks). Cleaning up the clutter in the modules tab would be a welcome bonus, and super-modules that took multiple copies of different existing ones would be better still.

A percentage stat boost, or better yet, special abilities like the new T.O. gun would be a great way to make these super-modules worthwhile.

but xtendacom, he CANT hold out indefinately.(3 legions will have more energy production and AP prod) the only thing thats stopping your legions from taking it is...Lag, like i said try a smaller group of ships and use a tactic to kill him not just spam him with debuffs then click as fast as you can in hopes to kill him. In TC we have special attack groups that help us bring down ships and i mean he says he has a 1k max hit, which means you guys arnt hitting him smart enough. Kill him smarter not harder.

That's not entirely true We did have teams part would debuff part would attack, other legions were doing the same trust me it was a sustained attack. and we did not do 1k at most of the time it was way lower only at full debuff would it hit 1k. with the lags involved he had plenty of time to react.

Now dont get me wrong the opponent must have been like a zombie, long hours sitting at the keyboard, frantically hitting fixing himself id say he also would have used loads of artifacts. it was a good job all round.

Still though the heart of the problem still being lag and the game mechanics not working well and will get worse due to the nature of these mechanics. Id say quick fix is something that should have been in place long ago Krio delays should be in place just like exotica has the delay for guarding there needs to be a short delay for loading Krio's, Shields, and Nanos. Note i add the other two because they can be just as effective as spamming Krios.

The idea is that this planet needs to be contested, mechanisms are in place to help it be as contested as possible but it needs to extend to ships, there is no point in adding these features that actually makes it fun, then a ship comes along and can sit there as long as the player is online. heheh and these are dedicated players who never seem to sleep.

No honestly.. anyone over a certain amount of hull is effectivly invincible until they run out of repair artifacts. Having cages simply changes that amount of hull. I am not even the first to do so, there is a rapidly growing list of people who can.

The trick is, as with all things, not to panic. GL is a patheticaly easy game to defend in - the only quirk comes up when some cheeky guy uses 20+ tactical remodulators on you. And heck, if we are going the cage-less damage cap route, even that is only important for three artifacts, the T-Plasma Genimi cannons. Thats simply because having them forces attackers to slow down every so often to repair, which lowers their dps against you. And its nice to punish them.

As long as you dont panic, it comes down to this. Either your hull is large enough that you can repair before you die, in which case you are invincible until running out of artifacts, or it is not and you die. Often, there is a fuzzy line between the two, such as your hull is sufficent to be invincible, but only when defences are reducing the damage you take, but in cold hard numbers you can be invincible with zero modules installed on a full sized ship once your hull is large enough. Of course, in theory you should always die when sufficient numbers are attacking you, but the lag issue means that the more ships that attack you, the slower they all attack. Perhaps some kind of change similar to the hiding of base damage stats needs to be made?

Even debuffs are easy to deal with, in all honesty. With xecti, teverazon and warp fuel up, attackers needed to hit me with 7 EMP's just to get me to my _normal_ defence rating, and 14 to get it down to half my normal rating. Cages do not suffer from the repairspam bug, meaning that a casual cage use every 15 seconds prevents anyone from ever actually getting past you average defence, once the totals are balanced.
Without xecti these numbers are 4 for normal defence and 10 for half defence. So just pop a cage every 7 seconds. (I was using one about every 5 seconds)

You forgot the insane giggling. Trust me, there was a lot of it. All of the balance problems aside, it was simply incredibly fun to be tested like that! Never before have I been in combat with so many people at the same time, but I honestly hope it does happen again...

And yes, I have not yet once slept while we held exotica up to the 8 hour mark

.....

The sad thing is of course that when we fix the invincible defender issue, exotica will be impossible to hold. If we dropped it to a half hour before reguarding it might be ok, but an hour wait? Its going to get dicey..

@1st paragraph: Lag is still the main issue though thats all im trying to bring to focus

@2nd Paragraph: then why the suggest change if it was a good job all around? perhaps suggesting that the Server is upgraded again to dispose of said lag?

@ 3 paragraph:while guarding a contested planet i agree, but not entirely. For higher ranks i find this fair but for lower ranks i find myself at a disadvantage. I would suggest Tiered KOTH planets perhaps. Such as one KOTH planet for the top 10, another for leaderboard rank 11-20, so on and so forth to 50, and beyond a KOTH planet for all the unranked legions to fight for. Each Koth planet having the same goal but a different set of rules on how it is played.

@4 paragraph: Why should that player suffer ingame what he does to himself in real life? If he wants to spend all day defending a planet and you cant remove him? perhaps your ships arent strong enough, or maybe a -10% debuff to a ship for being online? and a +10% for a ship being offline? would that help counter balance your issue?

lol I can't believe you go through all of that and not want to rank up ? I'd be too annoyed to do that.
When an npc get's alerted I hit it as soon as I see it. I'm different with planets. I want to make sure that some of the guys get planets that they need so I don't jump on those.
As for the rest I don't have the patience to go through all that anymore but more power to ya.

We can't take him without debuffs either if we want to do it legally from what I hear. We're all not supposed to use two tabs when we attack someone even though it's needed.
It's a lot easier to attack someone and click over to the other tab that has the null already to hit then click back over and attack.

When I heard that this tactic isn't allowed I quit doing it. So now when we hit a KV we have to go sift through all of our artifacts while they repair, cage and rebuff then we click the null fuse to get rid of the KV/Kriionus Virus and resume attacking. That's a joke and everyone here knows it.
The defender that has high hull and defense can sit back and watch everyone waste their energy while people are attacking you.

So we're all reduced to having to wait to kill the difficult ones when they're afk / away.

Another attack system needs to be put in place as well so we don't have to take so much time looking for our null fuses to null the KV's.

I mentioned in other threads that a HUD / Heads Up Display would be nice with all the attacking artifacts there to click when attacking a target so we don't have to waste so much time sifting through our artifact to debuff the KV's.

Lag is a big issue without a doubt.

Both sides did the best they could to do what needed to be done both the attackers and defender.
We've talked about a server upgrade before and guys that knew what they were talking about said it's too costly from what I remember or it was some other reason.
I'd like to have someone come in here and explain that further in here.

Your suggestion about other King of the hill planets for different level ranges are good.
I've thought about it and I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before in here somewhere.

lol our ships are some of the strongest in the game. That's not the problem at all.
Now the ship being buffed and debuffed online and offline is a good idea while guarding Exotica.
It would balance it more but I'm not sure how much.

I do think it's a good idea to put rank in the equation somewhere. The higher in ranks we go the stronger we all get.
Someone tried to explain this away but there is some merit to it.

Blitz, please go find out how the current damage cap system works.

Then i would be happy to have a meaningful conversation with you about it.

Im not sure if you are saying i use this double tab tactic or just a general statement but I do not use this tactic(ive tried it and its piontless). Also you do know that you can type in the name of the arti then click? Ive become quite good at this and know a few short cuts like what letters i can type to bring a arti quicker. And again this is just one player on one planet, your talking about a future filled with SSBs that may or may not even come to fold. And i understand your concern on that but its highly unlikely that, that will happen.

Well Golgotha, hats off mate, with all that giggling and frantic clicking; in a calm way, you managed to hold off. its not you i have a problem with yeah you were frustrating and every now and again I had a Freudian slip, and accidently (on purpose hacked you).

All that aside though, two issues arise here Lag and the long term effects of a defense that is almost impossible to break. Now i would say though in all fairness this only revolves around exotica.

As a build and general play yeah players would simply have to wait until you offline if they are determined to kill you. I don't fully agree with your statement about without it you would not hold it this week has proved that various legions have held it.

And again in all fairness i cant really compare a legion who collectively have what 1.8 mill defense vs one where the ships are weaker, the tables will turn in a relatively short while though where it will be more open to junior legions which is great.

On the issue of lag, im afraid upgrading servers and connections by itself will have very little impact, the fact is there allot of references to a database and various cross checking and calculations, the problem is very complex and may need a complete rewrite of the code with more use of multi- threading and asymmetric calls for a complete rewrite this is non feasible.

Look at how the processes have changed over the years, a simple equation before attack def vs attack def taking into account caps ( 1 to 3 cross references per action) look now at the 50 to 60 different effects that a ship has each affect would be factored into the equation, two dissimilar ships having their own unique values, now possibly this equation is already simplified, ie possibly another table having the near end result ( a new temp attack and defense based on the modules installed )

The point is this is a complex set f instructions, compound that by several people attacking simultaneously we heading for nasty lag.

Now I know i have over simplified this because i have no clue as to the coding applied but the point is that merely upgrading hardware will not have the expected effect.

To me its far simpler to just add a short few second delay in the ability to add artifacts while under fire while guarding exotica. to do this for the rest of the game would remove some PVP players fun.

lol are you serious ?

How about you tell me when you find out ?

Better yet .......... Dan can you come in here and tell us more about it ?

No I'm saying that the the double tab null fuse works the fastest but I don't recommend that you do that. Like I said it's against the rules now so I hear.
Go click on an enemy and there is a blue button to click on the bottom right.
Click on it and there will be all kinds of artifacts to click on.

Those are the ones that we have to sift through to find the null fuse after we trip the enemies KV while they install one in one click by typing theirs in the trade area after they typed it in.
These will keep being clicked as fast as the person can click them until they decide it's time to repair.

Click out of the battle screen/ ship then going into your trade area and typing null to click on in your artifacts. Then go look for the guy again that's alerted and click on him. Then click the attack button and trip another KV . This is complete waste of time, energy and rare null fuses.
Try it yourself and knock yourself out. Just make sure they're online and clicking on kv's and that you have plenty of Null fuses to waste.

Very serious. It is in the galaxy legion wiki. Or, this very forum. For example, under the April Patches and Updates section. That would be the part where Dan came here and told us all about it.

Now, if you want the ramifications of the damage cap, I can give you many more details.

But man - Not knowing the basic details of how the system you are trying to change works is scary. Understand, then modify. Messing up the damage cap system has ramifications for a lot more than killing exotica guards.

Man I'm not out to make this this difficult for anyone. Something needs to done about an SSB guarding Exotica or any ship that is impossible to bring down.

We both know it's not feasible for one ship to hold off a legion let alone 3 or more.

I'm not trying to open Pandora's Box if that's what you mean. It can't be that difficult to make a fix with Exotica. It's recently been done.

Seriously you can have all the difficulties you want to go through all day and night with your ship and have the benefits that you like but when it comes to Exotica there is a problem that needs looking in to.

And I'm glad you brought up your concerns because they need to be there for everyone. I don't want something to change that we all will regret anymore than you do.
We all need some kind of compromise on Exotica is all I'm saying. Ships can't be invincible and we don't need another legion hoarding Exotica just because they want to either.
We all should have a shot at the medal and be able to hold it for that long and lose some major defense while guarding it after the 8 hour period ...... Whatever works.

I do agree - and i hope that i have made clear that both now and in the past i have been trying to think of methods to deal with something i saw coming a long time ago.

Perhaps part of the problem with this thread is there are two different agenda's going on.
One is that of the small ship build.
The other is that of exotica guards.

Now, they are related in that small ship build defence shines when guarding exotica, but fixing one does not fix the other and visa-versa. It is simply the entire point of a small ship build is high defence.

I personally feel that the critical hit system suggested earlier would be an excelent balance to small ships without removing what they shine at. They would take less damage on normal attacks, but be paticularly vulnerable to critical hits. This system would also help counter any ship with massive effective hull in general, without having to nerf their current defence or survivability.

As to exotica guards, i feel that something that interferes with a guards ability to repair over a prolonged assult makes the most sense, both themeatically and mechanically. It could easily be attributed to the same effects that make exotica's own defences drop so rapidly.

However, these are just my opinions and of course they may not be the best options - they just resonate in my imagination the most.

Edit: Forgot to ask... what other ideas can people come up with?