Leader suicides

[Shadow]

Hey all,

we realized recently that the changes to leader suicides and losses in open attack op basically made leader takedowns not viable anymore, so we reverted things slightly.

Suicides now do the damage they originally did, and open attack op leader losses have been reduced if your opponent has around the same number of leaders as you. If they have cbarely any leaders, you will take heavy losses. Test it out. Leader takedowns are back on the menu.

This is on both reg and turbo.

[Shadow]

Suicide losses are now capped at 5 times the attacker's losses - indiers will not be very effective at suicides.

[Gen. Volkov]

Um, shadow, I think your second fix just reinstated the problem that you were trying to fix by the revert. Once again, the only way to suicide is to have about equal leaders to the other guy, and his will dissappear much slower than yours, because you will be losing lots yourself from the suicides. Each suicide will do more damage, true, but not enough to really offset the losses you are taking. The cap needs to be 10X at least, or you need to reformat how leader suicides work altogether. Leader takedowns are back off the menu.

[Holby]

Um, shadow, I think your second fix just reinstated the problem that you were trying to fix by the revert. Once again, the only way to suicide is to have about equal leaders to the other guy, and his will dissappear much slower than yours, because you will be losing lots yourself from the suicides. Each suicide will do more damage, true, but not enough to really offset the losses you are taking. The cap needs to be 10X at least, or you need to reformat how leader suicides work altogether. Leader takedowns are back off the menu.

I don't think that's true. We changed suicides deliberately because indyers could suicide leader players, and that was silly. There was no way to defend against it.

Now, if the defender has more leaders, they WILL lose more leaders. I think it will make suiciding more of an artform, or at least, bring Stoat back into play.

For me, the whole point is that Takedowns shouldn't be easy. They should be possible, but they should require some planning or forward though. Not just a "well I've got 50 turns left at the end of my run, may as well ruin some poor bugger".

Test it and we'll see. I think the balance will work.

[Gen. Volkov]

If I get a chance to test it, I will.

[Shadow]

With the old version, defender losses were a percentage of ATTACKER's leaders. Now defender losses are a (capped) percentage of the defeder's leaders. It is also set up so that you are almost certain to max out if the attacker has way less leaders than the defenders. Which makes takedowns much easier against large emps, but it still requires a leader player to do.

[Ruddertail]

Shadow - I don't understand how your first and second posts agree.  The first post makes it sound like what you just implemented makes defender losses related to attacker's leaders - the more leaders the attacker has, the more damage he does. The second makes it sound like they're independent of the attackers losses.

Now defender losses are a (capped) percentage of the defeder's leaders.

This almost makes it sound like indiers could still do suicides effectively. Can you clarify?

[Shadow]

Losses to the defender are a random number between 0 and 3% of their leaders. Losses to the attacker are a random number between 0 and 10% of their leaders. However, if the defender would normally lose more than 5 times what the attacker did, the losses are capped for the defender.

The first and second post don't agree exactly, we added the cap after the first post.

[Holby]

it seems to be working well.

2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 139838 Leaders, losing 229464 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 95563 Leaders, losing 49235 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 20374 Leaders, losing 101870 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 42958 Leaders, losing 121114 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 71335 Leaders, losing 12757 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 8113 Leaders, losing 40565 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 32681 Leaders, losing 163405 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 40364 Leaders, losing 97889 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 32862 Leaders, losing 57251 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 24514 Leaders, losing 2493 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 18496 Leaders, losing 92480 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 69536 Leaders, losing 84599 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 74954 Leaders, losing 118987 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 28 Leaders, losing 140 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 60154 Leaders, losing 57939 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 34173 Leaders, losing 156306 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 13508 Leaders, losing 67540 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 17835 Leaders, losing 89175 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 44588 Leaders, losing 126778 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 43098 Leaders, losing 182394 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 63985 Leaders, losing 15543 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    Your Leaders were defeated by Revelation (#131) and you lost 0 Acres of Land!    You lost Leaders, but you managed to kill of your attacker's Leaders.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 54872 Leaders, losing 51454 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 20917 Leaders, losing 61115 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 40341 Leaders, losing 64437 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 60551 Leaders, losing 145514 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 48482 Leaders, losing 144015 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 23838 Leaders, losing 86171 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 2483 Leaders, losing 12415 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 60492 Leaders, losing 128686 Leaders in the process.
2.6 hours ago    Your Leaders were defeated by Revelation (#131) and you lost 0 Acres of Land!    You lost Leaders, but you managed to kill of your attacker's Leaders.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 50131 Leaders, losing 52603 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 42542 Leaders, losing 68540 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 69859 Leaders, losing 50368 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 43181 Leaders, losing 62894 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    Your Leaders were defeated by Revelation (#131) and you lost 0 Acres of Land!    You lost Leaders, but you managed to kill of your attacker's Leaders.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 61095 Leaders, losing 109299 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 14144 Leaders, losing 65653 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 60704 Leaders, losing 145267 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    You find Revelation (#131) losing a fight with your leaders!    You killed 64128 Leaders, losing 115657 Leaders in the process.
2.5 hours ago    Your Leaders were defeated by Revelation (#131) and you lost 0 Acres of Land!    You lost Leaders, but you managed to kill of your attacker's Leaders.
1.9 hours ago    You find Golden Kitsune (#155) attempting to view your army!

[Shadow]

So, apparently there are bad feeling that leaders were changed follows by a takedown by marlfox.  For the record, I didn't even know that was happening, I logged in with a message to murder windy and did it. I was planning to do some takedowns, but I hadn't yet, and windy wasn't my target.

Would you guys prefer that I not play while devving? Because that's fine too. But I had no ulterior motive with this change, it just got brought to my attention recently with all the talk of suiciding so I pushed it through.

[Genevieve]

I think the timing just seems odd, Kyle. But I know the changes you've put forward are making for a more balanced game and are beneficial for all, so I don't really have a problem.

in b4 the rest of KM being mean.

[Shadow]

Eh. Turbo is currently a beta server. When we make changes, they need testing. If I can't do that testing without being called a cheat then I expect you all to do it while I sit out. Either way is perfectly fine with me. But I would prefer if you just said that outright to save me the trouble of explaining this.

So: We can have you guys test changes, or we can have me test things as they go in. But if we go the first route, I do expect testing to be the first priority for everyone who has access to this forum. If you can combine that with a turbo goal, more power to you. But let's clear this up now to avoid this nonsense in the future.

[Shadow]

Back on topic:

Minor problem I hadn't though of - if the attacker gets a really low roll on losses, the defender is going to also get a low one since we cap their losses at 5 times the attacker's on a roll by roll basis. Which is not a huge deal, but we really should be capping attacker losses at 5 times the defender's MAX losses so that the defender doesn't get double chances for a low roll.

Not hugely urgent, but right now the advantage of low rolls goes heavily to the defender. I'll leave it to you guys to decide if that is good or bad.

[Kilkenne]

So: We can have you guys test changes, or we can have me test things as they go in. But if we go the first route, I do expect testing to be the first priority for everyone who has access to this forum. If you can combine that with a turbo goal, more power to you. But let's clear this up now to avoid this nonsense in the future.

this is a public forum

but echoing lucy as she appears to be the voice of reason in this situation

[Shadow]

A woops, meant to post that elsewhere and moved it over here without a careful edit. Oh well. The important part is unchanged. If you want the person who is pushing these changes to not be playing, then say so.

Back to the thread, opinions on the minor problem I brought up?