Throughout the ages, Ihave ended up having to remove clan members for their own safety. Most times, it was at a weekend, and they simply couldn't log on for a 24 hour period as they had other things to do, but hadn't queued a vacation. During this time, they were pecked away at by warring clans until they reached the point where they started to leak regs.

So, as a way to help those who want to have a life outside the game, and until the non-reg version is playable, this is my sugestion.

If a player does not log in for a 16 hour period, and has no outstanding revenges, the game will not allow him to go below 5 mercs, and an instant new surrender mode is activated - 'The army feels as though their general has abandoned them, and refuses to fight'. The player will also lose 50 xp points per 10 turn surrender (they have to be penalized somehow), and obviously still surrenders their resources and gold at the same rate.

I await a heated discussion :D

Seems fair. Although I actually wanted to yell at the idea when I saw the title :P However, make it that they surrender resources of amount equal to as if they were fighting after the 16 hr period.

This does sound like a good idea. It also means that the slaughtering of less active newbs would stop too.

I like it. I've already had to kick someone for losing lots of regs without a revenge. :(

This looks great. I can't see any drawbacks (well, except for those who actually enjoy slaughtering defenseless people who are offline). Apart from when something unexpectedly happens to prevent players from logging on, it's mostly newer players who don't log on during the weekend, and this might be one part in keeping them longer in the game, so that's an extra bonus

I like it! It allows people like me who do a crapload of camping year-round to not lose mercs and still research or whatever over the weekend. An excellent proposal!

I love this idea, it's great to keep new players in the game..and this would certainly help.

I think having the player go into vacation mode would be a simple way to accomplish this.

Good idea mate!

The vacation mode will mess with resource/gold raiding balance.


btw,

You guy have life oustside this game? :blink:

Damn - i was expecting at least one person to call me a f*cking idiot.
Still, i had to get one right in the end :P

Just to explain it further - that if the person was offline for 16 hours, and had say full mercs left, they could still be attacked up until the point that they only had 5 mercs left. or else no one would use vacation modes :D

Dalek Thay you are a f***ing idiot.

There!

sweet ;)

Also need to make sure that players that are suspended for X amount of hours or days, don't fall under this rule though, cause the whole point of being suspended is your not able to login to your account, but the rest of the game is able to bring as much damage as possible to it.

Added to official TODO list for next age.

.. and what happens when you're already at 0 mercs when you reach the 16-hr mark due to attacks made on you before that?

I think the cap of 5 mercs or whatever isn't required. Its just that once you hit 16 hours of no login, you go into 'offline surrender' mode - so your troops surrender no matter what the health is as you mentioned. You can impose a heavier res/gold loss penalty and exp penalty to minimise such occurences, leaving it only for real scenarios where the players were away for an extended period of time. So however many mercs remain at 16 hrs just remain all the way until next login. It helps protect those who couldn't login for some reason, at some cost of course. This is just my opinion of course.

Iv thought of a way this could be abused:

If a person hasnt given a revenge out so he decides to troops up enough so that if he lost almost 100% of his mercs he could still his original recruitment. So this guy gets surrendered for as long as he want with no penalty which means that the person No matter how many times he gets attacked gets to surrender and so doesnt ever have to buy back mercs like everyone else would. And giving out less resources and stuff that could be raided.

This may not be a big deal and if a person wanted to do this all the time he should just be a black knight. But i just thought i should mention this.

[QUOTE]

the player does recieve a penalty though. he gets a loss of experience as well as a loss of any gold/resoruces left outside his banks. i think i know what you are saying but you should read the original post as it mentions there must be a penalty for the inactive player.

i would however suggest that the loss of experience is higher, as 50 is not a great deal when if you attack someone above you in the ranks you can gain 750 no bother as ive done several times this age.

the recruitment would be kept at the same level anyway without this system - recruiting only goes down when you log in. all that is saved is the reg loss.

the xp loss was a number i plucked out the air - probably needs more thinking about.

the reason i said for the 5 merc limit, is to prevent people using it as an unofficial vacation. so any account with full mercs but not logged into for 16 hours would STILL be able to be attacked. just when it gets down to 5 mercs, the account then surrenders.

Wow, a nice idea. I've often had to boot people only to find out they had to go to hospital etc. There should be a penalty in line with the current offline rules where you loose production.

offline production would kick in as normal after 24 hours

I thought of one drawback to this feature that I will have to work around. If Newbly KnowNothing creates an account, and stocks it up with 90 level 3 regs and 30 level 3 mercs, chances are that by the time he is down to 5 mercs he will have already lost tons of reg pop. So I will be adding an extra bit of code in there that if you are inactive after 16 hours, and you lose a reg, you get the protection also. This will save tons of newbs. (And I'm also going to code the Advisor to be more demanding when it comes to merc deployment.)

So, If you don't login for 16 hrs ...you go on a protection period indefinitely? that will bring down the raidable targets to a minimum!

There are only about 150 active accounts. So in the first two weeks people wont get anything by raiding..

a player would still be raidable, just the easy reg kills would not be there.
Production would be reduced as of 24 hours of inactivity anyhow.

i do not like this idea 1 bit. Most vets have extraordinary minds and will make full use of this.

Wrong. The conditions are: 16 hours no log in. AND loss of a reg, or down to 5 mercs. I will add one other condition that you have to be over 40 pop. Because since no one loses any regs before that level, there is no need to add protection. So this will allow raiding in the early ages.

your a vet - tell us how this would give an advantage to you in the game over an active player ?

i am sort of just not a decorative 1. never tried for anything. Usual playing style can be used here. simple beat the crap out of war targets then lower stamina to 40 and log off. U lose 1 recruit which is better then the alternative of 30-40 regs

thats why i suggested the cap after 16 hours... so that all revenges can be taken.

Ahh cool my bad did not read the entire thread. In this case it is a reasonable idea

Ah okay ..that makes sense, thanks Bhaal and Thug ..it should work.

me too support the idea of thugi -_-

was trying to abuse the idea, found a hard one, but dont think it will worth much to abuse . so its fine I think :rolleyes:

50exp seems a bit low for the later end of the age. 16 hours also seems a little too low. I'd make it at least 24. :P

I mean, other than that... It doesn't seem horrible.

well considering people can easily get at regs in less than 5 minutes, id say 16 hours is plenty of time.

I mean I can see how someone could abuse it if they only log on one time every day for an hour or so.... but how much of a threat are those kind of people to you? all it does is make it easier for people like that to play. It wont give them an advantage over more active players. All it will do is keep them from getting additional reg loss after 16 hours have come and gone. And we all know 16 hours is plenty of time to destroy someone so dont complain about that. And yeah you active members can whine and say "wheres my free surrender mode time?" but the reality will be that you wont need that time as much as these inactive players will.

There are people that play the game that are and will like to stay inactive. You will all just have to accept that and accept the fact that in order to keep more people here we will have to start making the game a little friendlier to these folks. I love Dalek Thay's idea. I think its great. :)

And even I, being voted as a person that "spends too much time in this game" and knowing it will not benefit me at all, agree that this is a good idea

sounds great bhaal, good idea there to keep the start interesting. i think this age we should all give ourselves a pat on the back with some good ideas in the forums - this topic, newb empire etc hopefully it will bolster the number of active players.