Or just limit the number of engineers you can hire per rank...

which is basically 10 since you only get 5 rank points per rank. if you restrict that, that'll crush my dreams of power ranking once I get enough energy.

IMO there should've been a soft cap put in place like in most games. At a certain rank the experience math changes drastically to slow people down at the top. The proper place probably would have been rank 1000 but it's too late for that and it would have to be 2000 now which might not be effective anymore but probably still necessary.

Think of it like WOW. The closer you get to the (soft) cap the longer it takes per rank. Then when the cap gets raised you release new content that makes the old cap limit easier to get to for those still behind while still making the new cap challenging.

Or you just have challenge ranks. Say if 1-1000 had been linear experience then 1000-1100 was exponential and finally 1101-2000 linear again. People would still do it just like people get beyond flamehawks taking 20 hits to kill.

btw auto ranking is a great recipe for a week pvp ship these ships will only do well on missions and will suck with PVP and if they only concentrate on engineers it will surely make them weak for PVE as well.

if Dan uses an option to curtail the engineers per rank then what does he do to those who have already done the 10K plus engineer. I know some players above rank 1000 that have 10k++ engineers.

That is why i say doing such a move might be the last straw on players who have invested rank points to engineers. If you curtail the new people they will say unfair, if you curtail the higher rank people to make it fair for everyone.. they might as well just quit the game. Better leave it alone since autoranking makes for a weak ship (ship strength/rank anyway).

If The developers will show the ship strength again people might see the light and try to slow down on the ranking process.

yea a double edged sword for sure

Hmm, Seems like this is talking about me. Here is my situation.

I have over 20k engineers and was able to autorank off of missions using neural and rsls. (wasn't a human or inergon.) At one point I was able to get 200ranks in less than 2 days just from autoranking off of missions(I got bored so I ranked up for kicks). If I had to autorank off of npc's I'd pull all my hair out.

I'm rank 1740 right now but could easily be 2500 if that's what I wanted. I stopped trying to rank up around 2 months ago (now I rank up ever 2 to 3 days (usually with a lot of extra energy), all my points have been going into TO's.), since there is no point in it (The only advantages to higher rank was the credits from daily (taken away) and the # of planets you could colonize (I'm at over 90billion to invade, cost is crazy, so I have over 100 empty slots). Pvp sucks with only 5 targets that give me badges (Getting tired of farming Dan's ship ). There is absolutely no benefit while having more disadvantages to reaching the highest ranks except status.

This ability to autorank at higher ranks comes from high arti production, which allows you to get a lot of prisoners. (I don't even have the highest arti production in the game, that distinction belongs to someone in the dysonians. But he has put more into To and defense).

Dan has slowed down hyper ranking by introducing npc's with lower energy/xp ratios. Also, by making rsls harder to get.

Another thing he can do is lower the xp/energy of the Sithion mission (Done it 2700+ cause there is nothing else to do) and add another unending mission with very low xp/energy ratio that gives a good reward.

To be honest, I don't know what Dan can do to slow down auto ranking and be fair to everyone.

At rank 425 I have nearly 5000 energy (over 3000 engineers), I can autorank and gain pretty much as many lvls as I want a day. The only thing holding me back just now is my Artifact production, whilst fairly high I have about 12 planet slots open because of a lack of good art planets to take/colonize. Right now my invasion cost is just under 2 bil.

Nearly 15k npcs and I hope to pass 20k within the next week.

Auto ranking does not really work. The game math is set up for it not to work, or only work to an extent. Every level up your next requirement increases by 40 xp. If you add all 5 rp to engineers, thats +10 energy. You would need a sustainable 4:1 ratio, which is usualy nowhere to be found.

NPC battling with a NI comes close, but remember, most npcs are matched, so in the longer run it takes you even more energy to kill one if you dont at least make an effort to invest some rp into attack/defense. Little by little you will start falling short of the next rank xp requirement.

Yes, this is inherently the issue. Limiting the number of rank points spent per rank on engineers would be a simple way to handle that. For players already over this 'limit', they would just have to reach a certain rank to spend again.

While limiting the amount engineers seems like a good idea I dont believe it is. What about CC/Power levellers?

If you limit the amount of engineers it wouldnt stop it altogether, all it would do is allow the CCers to get that much further ahead. I would prefer a rank limit, say a max of 3/4 rank ups a day. That would allow people that have built up a few energy cubes and tri matrix's to use them to gain a few lvls, wouldnt affect 99% of players and would slow down every auto ranker and power leveller.

I guess I don't really see the problem? Unless someone has finished the research tree, constantly auto-ranking can hurt them because their tech will fall behind, resulting in a weak ship. But if someone wants to apply everything into energy so they can rank up really fast, then why stop them? One thing I like about this game is how everyone can build their ship in a different way, and I don't want to see that aspect of the game nerfed simply because a few people no longer have to buy energy refills.

Just my opinion and no offense intended, Dan. But a few of the changes that have been made recently I found rather distressing, and I'm tired of seeing updates that take away from the fun of the game.

I share this view. A ship and it's building strategy involves weeks if not months. There are trade offs and it's this latitude which contributes the most in creative terms.

Ultimately things are already balancing themselves. If it ain't broken ...

Regards,
Plamok

I only like to spend only 1 recharge per level, thus I put engineers into my ship until I can make this happen. If you limit the amount of engineers the players can put into their ships, you really only hurt the lower ranked individuals. Most of the people that are high rankers won't really give a rip, they've had many levels to build up their stockpile and this just makes this a game of the people who were able to take advantage of no cap, vs the rest of us. What you're talking about is making a blanket rule that effects so far only a few, and makes sure the rest of us never have a chance of catching them. I don't see why you have to punish the rest of us for a few people (prob less than 10), credit carding the system and making everyone else whine because they don't have matching bank accounts. Let it wide open so that when we get the ranks on to enjoy it we can use it too. Rules like this ensure that the big players in this game will just stay on the top.

Furthermore, why limit it at all? You start to put limits on what you can do with your ships and soon everyone will have the exact same ship flying around the universe. No diversity whatsoever. So what someone makes 300 ranks with dumping points into engineers? That means their combat stats will suffer and they'll be easy to kill. If you want 50000 cloned ships out there and no diversity whatsoever, by all means....put limits on.

On the flip side, you have individuals who have went as far as to suggest a beneficial artifact which slows xp return...Those are the low rankers who do not see comfort in the actual rank number. They care about having the best ship in their league, so a level 400 can not only wipe out anyone and everything in their battletab unchallenged, but can also go head to head with the bigger level ships. So yes, celebrate diversity, if people want a high number next to their name, thats fine, but everything comes with a price, and again auto-ranking is not exactly foratted to work as you would need a 4:1 xp to energy ratio to make it self-sustainable, which does not really happen.

I think you're going pretty far to limit the 10 or 20 people who can achieve auto-ranking. I fail to see the real issue and why there needs to be some sort of limitation imposed on those who can auto-rank?

I mean, in all seriousness dan, with a cost of 10.2B to colonize and 20.4B to invade, there really isnt much in the ways of me being able to get better planets. I and a bunch of others who have a fair bit of planets have to resort to making them good.

I'll be frank. If this is imposed then there really is nothing left in this game for me. I could only assume that it would be the case with others who are in a similar situation.

But getting back to the auto-ranking...Why is it an issue/problem and why does it need to have something done to prevent it?

I never really autoranked to get to a high rank, it was just a side effect of trying to upgrade planets (that was my endgame). There isn't anything intrinsically awesome about rank 1000+ , in fact you lose some boss drops there. The point was I could play without waiting to charge, for that was pretty much what kept me in the game vs. pretty much all other FB games where you spend your energy then wait some odd hours to charge, which gets old really fast. I restarted because it had grown stale and there were a few things I wanted to experiment with certain things that I lost the opportunity to try out. Without autorank, the game for me becomes like all the others: 2/day energy drop and wait for charge. At that point I lose interest, because I'm a bit OCD and I have to have stuff to do all the time. I'm not really opposed to 40 energy/rank engineer limit, if the intent is to avoid monster energy bars for the purpose of base dumps. But neither do I really care whether the dys or NI get to rank 8-10 base or whatever since it's exponential cost for linear gain presumably.

If I can't achieve autorank again, I will probably quit. I heard the planet booster spawns were going to be adjusted to ext rare. If that happens, I will probably quit (it was slow enough before with unlimited energy, and that's eventually what I'm trying to get to, farming again). I think the prisoner drop rate is also 1/5 what it was but I'm not sure.

The problem is there isn't much of an objective for me other than upgrading planets (and even that is dubious). Reaching high ranks now that the credit daily reward is changed is only for more planet slots, otherwise ranking for rank's sake does nothing much beyond some point (in fact, some negative effects to really high ranks like loss of npc content, even pvp content/options for some people).

I know I over-analyze, I really wish I had something to suggest, Dan, that would work for everyone. I've seen pretty much everything from the math and the gameplay. I play this more like a planet sim game than anything, but I will raise the following points:

- Is there a way for people to play all the time that doesn't break the game ? For example, npc and pvp as much as you want (that would require drop changes obviously), and missions/plot/etc is energy/time limited. Sitting and waiting is boring. I can't even imagine all the people not putting most points into energy...
- Other than ranking and upgrading planets (via hours of npc farming), what is the game's objective ? What other options can there be ? Since high rank pvp is tedious at best, for me at least there isn't enough.
- How to balance things without increasing attrition of players ?
- Real time ship combat ? Fleet combat ? Something more than just ship stats, strategic npc combat ? I keep thinking about some alternate GL as a 2D space shooter with sectors to visit, because that's more exciting than click click click click etc.
- Strategy. There are so many planets out there, and player owned planets too. Why not map it out ?

I guess... strategy/action component would add a lot, although I'm not sure how that can be done I guess we're talking about a totally different experience at that point.

I played for about a year, and I'd like to play more but... adding a new mission or boss can only take it so far, I'm trying to think outside the box now.

I agree with everything you just said. If i cant play while i work and/or have to wait hours upon hours (or even days) to play then there isn't much point and it will become much like every other fb game out there...deleted and blocked.

For me, i get some enjoyment watching my ranks grow past Dysonians. I like becoming the player with the most battles. That being said, its really about upgrading my planets and upping my production. If i can't do that OR have new content all the time then whats the point in playing.

The way I see things, this game has boundaries, optimal paths, and other things to discover. It is a long term choice to turn rank points into tactical, the pay off may take 100 levels. If a player seems to gain some advantage, we have to take into account that months may be involved to support this goal.

If every avenue for these long term choices gets blocked because some have made other choices and feel at a disadvantage then the thinking and planning behind personal goals and strategies becomes moot.

May as well have a last mission with a Congratulations you have completed the campaign, do you want to play again? conclusion.

Plamok

i really dont see point in autoleveling... only if you have researched all research tab... which i doubt... sooner or later you will simply overrank your own research...
and there is more issues... like planets... costs... so on... you just dont have enough credits to maintain your self...