the cost of ions just went up to what they used to be, i am glad i like that it is back to normal. Now maybe my colony won't get ioned 2 times a day by some noob who's mad about being conquered or his crystal taken. I also think the nuke cost is right on right now. If you fire off 10 nukes then it cost you 5000 metal to rearm them. thats a chunk.
What i don't see in the update that i was hoping to see addressed was relocating a colony to a locked down op. that should be fixed pronto before some of these who really cares small pidly things. -1 metal per conquer. -2 metal for battle who cares. Its not about helping the conquered. Its about making it just a little bit harder on the conquerer.

anyways just my .02

lol, YOU are kidding right? The cost of E for nukes is 25 E per nuke, how is that high?



Its not the metal its the cost of E i was talking about. I dont care much for other things too, but the conqueror already has it hard maintaining income and now you get less income to add to the misery lol.

I'll tell you how it's high. When you're only making 5 E an hour!!!! And you have like five hundred units to warp around. Energy tends to become pretty scarce.

Hey guys

Ion was reintroduced back to the original cost due to some abuse it had.

All balancing are done in order to make the game more interesting.
Of course as a player you'd feel like 'everything is expensive!' that means you're faced with choices how to spend your limited resources.

If you had endless resources and no dilemma, then the game would come boring.

I'll keep monitoring the game and playing it to get the feel and make sure no strategy is ever 'the best strategy' rather each time the best thing to do is different. to keep the game interesting and more challenging.

This game is about strategic choices, tactics & diplomacy. not about farming.

There's been an overall shift of focus to getting income off resource outposts & territory control, instead of conquers. (due to multis abuse) and i also find it more interesting this way, when you have control over a resource outpost (which is essentially like a conquer who never deletes or rebels)

Spoils of war update is fine as it almost doesn't matter except after very large battles. E.G. 88k metal in SoW

Lowered Metal taxation makes the game more competitive (and more fun) by forcing more aggressiveness in regards to resource outposts (which is already most prominent on the Fantasy servers). Thumbs up there, same with the Force Relocation update.

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I do have a concern for Nuke spam though. Previously with the cost of nukes being 25E and Ions being 200E, you can Ion 1 of every 8 nukes assuming your opponent has plenty of oil and you are both on the same budget of E.

Now with Ions returning to their previous cost of 250E, you can only Ion 1 of every 10 nukes (for the same E). I'm sure it won't be hard to come up with the additional Metal and Oil to make and fire these nukes in the same amount of time.

Personally I've never had a problem breaking through a Nuke Array (without taking any major nuke hits) using spam-bombs and faux-fleets, but some of the lesser players would see this as an impenetrable and cheesy wall of stagnation. I've seen many players who forsake having more than a few squads to put their entire production and upkeep into amassing a Nuke Array, putting them into a very defensive position.

Ideally, increasing the costs of a nuke to 31E would bring back this 1:7 ratio but a more realistic solution would be 30E. My next argument asks the need for the Ion nerf and if paid attention to would make this suggestion unnecessary.

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As for the Ion cannon abuse, I'd like to hear what is honestly considered abuse.

Here are two situations that have actually happened to me:
More than once I've downgraded and razed half of my infrastructure just to get two more Ion shots out on attacking squads so that we would win the battle. After making our defending outpost a TB, I rushed many armor units and put the little extra E we had left into spy protection. We won, but only because of the mass of Ions we fired (1-4 from each of the 12 players online).

The same war, our enemy did something similar. We were parked on an outpost within the same area (AA, in the HINI vs SoLD wars) and they launched another attack on us. We had plenty of spy protection and we did manage to get quite a few Ions off on their attacking squads. What they did was have every member of their alliance and all of their active sub-alliances and allies Ion the outpost we were parked at, which totaled to over 30+ Ions. We still managed to win, but only barely.


Personally, I see both of these situations as fair play. Through the diplomacy and teamwork HINI put together, they managed to almost get an edge on us through mass Ions. I also see the Mass Ion tactic in general as a valid and usable strategy.


tl;dr 30E for a Nuke? And what is "Ion abuse"

WOW it just made it THAT much harder to get the IMPOSSIBLE ion 50 nuke achievement. i mean comeon....

This is not balancing the gameplay or making it more interesting, its making it more expensive. It makes it harder for non-supporters to play at a competitive level, between upkeep, the ridiculous amount of energy you get per tick and the now reduced income from conquers it is harder to get to the top ranks without boosting. It also makes it harder for supporters since we have to spend more money because of lowered income and increased costs.

Tell me, what is the point of lowering the spoils of war?? how does that make the game more interesting? or balanced?? it only makes it more expensive and slower to rebuild since the metal income from conquers has been reduced.



So, the main income source will now be resource OPs that never delete or rebel?? well, that is boring! What you have to do is find more efficient ways to detect multies


It means IT IS expensive, we are already faced with choices how to spend our already limited resources.


It also becomes boring if you have very limited resources.

I agree that the game has be in constant change to make it more interesting and more challenging, but challenging should not mean "want to win? boost. Already boost? boost more"

Need more support? then make it more accessible so you get more supporters as opposed to making it more expensive for those who already support you.


Bongo
SAGE E2

Many people keep bashing the fact the nuke needs to be changed in its resource consumption. The nuke has always been what you could say spamed, its nothing different people. The nuke itself is costly to make. 1K met for silo, 500 to arm and 25 E to launch. Now if you consider that new update with less income from conqs, its like an added burden. Consider the following:

This update gives you 1 less metal tick per conquer. Alright the average veteran can easily say they get and hold about 30 conquers a round. Now your making 30 less met a tick from this update. Turn that into one days income, your making 720 less a day. Turn it into a week, which is appox the deletion time, is 5K less income a week. All in all, its going to be much more difficult to keep spamming up with less income.

Not to mention, how much energy, in real life, does it take to launch a missle anyway??? On a scale very little, compared to say, if an ion really existed, a beam of energy that can hit anyone and anything in the world. More or less im saying, is just deal with it. Its not like we haven't had to play this way before. it can be done FFS. Only ion in emergencies, don't need to hit every missle that is flying, geez. Last i knew, it envolved corrdination to dodge nukes. You get left behind and hit, well, sorry but you failed.

We all dodge nukes that is fine. But I dont agree with this - "Its always been this way " argument. Just because its always been that way, doesn't mean it has to always be that way. If something needs to be changed for the better then it has to be.

Nukes at 25E and 1500 metal are not very costly compared to the cost of ioning one. One a one tick server, you earn 120 E a day, you could easily launch 5 nukes with that approximately, but ion none. How is it balanced? Gating squads etc are everyone's problem. But when there are 2 or more alliances fighting a single alliance, then nukes become a problem since they take out infrastructure, even if they dont hit squads. And combined with the fact that you already spend for spy pro, sat scans, scans, defence and gating, ions prove to be just too costly to do.

So what am proposing is, increase the cost of nukes, so the nukes launched are less and used more strategically than being spammed as they are today. And the conquer thing with 5k metal less a week, that you say will stop nuke spamming, that doesnt even matter. All i have to do is do a small metal boost, which is 130 blues. No biggie, if I vote everyday. And again, stop with the real life crap please. This is a game, not real life. I dont know why people have to think of real life scenarios everytime a game mechanic is discussed.



Bang on!! This is EXACTLY what I feel. I do boost big when necessary, but if I look back at it, this game is more of an expenditure than entertainment.

In my opinion, you should just increase the mana cap from 500 to around 700-1000.