At least it is objective as opposed to "the effort" it takes to take one down. By your logic I should get better drops from warp stations that people who can take it down in fewer hits.

Ah, the Warp Station. Another bone of contention. I don't think the individual effort matters. What I think matters is the average amount of effort versus the reward. Take Graxis; the Prisoners are always worth the energy investment if you can fight it. To a player who has to invest a ton of energy into Graxis, those 6 Ship points are invaluable. To a player who can lock Graxis in 8 hits, those 6 Ship Points are a nice bonus.

The reward for any mission or NPC or Base should be relative to the average amount of effort across all eligible players. I don't feel that the Base rewards or the XRP Warp Station are anywhere near adequate. I think the payouts are never even close to proportionate to the ludicrus costs. For rank 600 players it can still cost as much as 5000 energy to lock an XRP. a +70 Energy module would barely be a worthy pay off if it wasn't an upgrade of a +40 module. And the other rewards are just as inadequate.

Similarly, the Adumbrate Station is okay, but not really worth the energy typically expended to get a level five crate.

If it takes you 5k energy to lock a warp station you sir need to build your ship better. It takes me 1k without an RI on it.

As for bases, either find weaker ones to hit or get into a legion that can hit bases harder.

I'm a leader in a training Legion. And part of the Honey Badgers / Galaxy Desperadoes Group. So, thanks, but I think we've got the whole bases thing covered. I still think the rewards aren't worth the outlay.

Agreed completely, but I don't think a 3 should be allowed to be raided and IF Dan changes the drops or revises them 6+ all should drop the same thing still.

on "Easy" L5 Bases and "Hard" L4 bases I've calculated how much energy all members need to use on average for each one that comes up.

The numbers are not exact but I guestimate that if I am doing 25 to 45 damage, with a floor of 10 damage minimum for every member, then we might be able to average 20 damage per shot per person.

These bases have high defense and hull and shield, so they often require about 1500 to 5000 energy per member if we can get the max members per slot.

That assumes that the base will not be repaired, and that you can get that number of members involved in the base in the first place, which is hard to begin with.

Because you have to kill L5s and above especially ASAP, so that the opposing legion has no time to trigger defenses and do repairs you end up with a small number of members doing far more damage, for far more energy, using energy refills and the like which cost GP.

5000 energy even for high rankers is a large outlay especially considering the XP/Energy ratio.

If a base is repaired these energy outlays can skyrocket.

a "Hard" L3 can still require a few hundred energy per person too, but they are always doable if a high ranker is willing to outlay energy.

Yes, weak L3s, L4s, and L5s exist, L3s being weak is not uncommon, but L4s being weak is maybe 50/50 at best and L5s and above are rarely weak.

L3s can't be locked by high level bases (L7+) and while L6s can lock them and do for the badges, it's a let-down considering you can only lock one base every 8 hours, and you have no way to get rid of a bad base lock.

If you could have an artifact that scans bases, lets you know how many members are online, and if you could queue up bases and lock them when you want to, and/or drop a base that was locked so that you don't have to have a wasted timer on incredibly hard bases, that could also help with this issue, however the L6s and above would probably rarely be attached, and many L5s woudl never be attacked, if you could do all that, because the effort is not worth the reward.

-Q

My thoughts on this:
Bases NEED to drop better things, at least more frequently. And the raiding thing is all broken.
My proposal:
Base raids are automatic (i.e. you get the crate with the badges)
ALL the raids are successful, regardless of position.
The rewards stay the same.
The Type of crate changes DEPENDING ON BADGES EARNED.

For example, a level 5 base:
1-5 get 5 badges and a Epic large base crate. This contains 3 artifacts, of which 1 MUST be rare (or better).
6-10 get 4 badges and a Super large base crate. This contains 2 artifacts, of which 1 MUST be rare (or better).
11-20 get 3 badges and a Great large base crate. This contains 2 artifacts, of which 1 MUST be uncommon (or better).
21-30 get 2 badges and a Good large base crate. This contains 2 random artifacts.
31-40 get 1 badge and a Uncommon large base crate. This contains 1 random artifact.
Everyone else gets a standard large base crate. This contains 1 common artifact.

Still an incentive to score high, but everyone gets something for a lot of work.

+1 dropping crate levels down a level is a worthy idea.. having level 3's give 20-40 ctp and a small chance at a tri-phase is decent and definitely not OP.. we skip 4's as the amount of energy sometimes needed to take out a 4 is not even close to being worth 20 or 40 ctp so whats the point. and 5's .. a good chunk of them are BEASTS .. and to be at higher levels .. dumping 2-3 refills to get a tri-phase ALL the time (41 tri-phase 4 adumbrates 1 parser so far) is absolutely ridiculous ..

However .. I like the base raid percentage that taggers don't have as much of a chance at a crate as people who put in the effort .. so I disagree and give a -1 to the previous posters suggestion of everyone getting crates.. I think that would cause even more tagging and less incentive to get into the top damage ranks..

Absolutely. The only drops I've seen that is really even close to being worth 5000k are the Enumeration Crystal and Continuum Parsers... and even then, 5000k should be enough to guarantee one, not just beg for a chance at it. Even the Klorvis mission is a little over priced, but at least it guarantees something fairly decent.

And the Parsers get redundant after 4 right? So that leaves just the enumeration crystals.

Yup.

Quote for Truth.

I want to make sure this post keeps getting attention. now that we're an L7 base we can't even lock an L3, L4s are a pretty much useless lock, and L5s are not an easy set to deal with.

As part of this update, why not make L6s lock only L4s and above ?

Fluffy, most level 6 bases, and all L7 bases have the max modules, many L5 bases have near the max.

after you reach L7 you can only lock L4 and above, L4 are a waste, L5 are your best bet but there isn't a lot of reward for the effort.

I proposed that you also limit locking L4s and L5s at lower base levels, an L6 base should only lock L4s and above, an L8 should only lock L5s and above.

whether or not you can solo an L3 you can get at most 3 per day and I think most of your legion would be pissed at you for locking an L3, let alone soloing it so no one else had a chance to get any badges.

-Q

you are missing my point entirely...

The amount of effort is not what determines the prizes, it is the relative strength of the base at each level. a 6 and a 7 are not different except for a couple of shield mods. Why should you get a new prize for have a slightly higher DPS, which can come from the damage cap being higher?

I think some people have lost sight of WHY crates were added in the first place. As an enticement to attack bigger bases. Do they make it "worth the effort?" In many cases, no. But crates aren't the primarily reason to hit enemy bases. At least they shouldn't be. Base battles are about legion togetherness. Doing something as a team. And the reward is silver badges to improve your ship (tetras and plex), improve your planets (nexus) and improve your own base (exo-clamps). If Dan were to drop the bar by a level or even just add 3's to the crate list, that counters the actual intent of crates to begin with. Everyone goes back to farming level 3's again. The legions that are now attacking level 4's (because they can) just for a shot at a triphase go back to level 3's. The stronger legions that regularly attack level 5? They now farm level 4's. No need for battle pacts, even among the lower rank legions, because pretty much everyone can get 20 people online and attacking a level 3 base a few times within the 8 hour lock. Even the major legions would be sandbagging. TU/GP/PotC/Dyso battle three level 5+ bases every day. Drop crates down a notch and you see what's going to happen? We're going to hit four level 4 bases every 8 hours. And we're going to milk them for every silver badge we can. We'll keep our timers tight so we can gang up on heavy bases once in a while, but we'll have boatloads of silver in our coffers. And we'll have exo-clamps coming out the wahzoo, making our bases nearly impossible to take down without Mento. Personally, I don't see how that's going to be a good thing for anyone but us.