A hard look at war levels

When You get big you wont want to be torn down.

I believe war levels were invented specifically to keep people apart and protect you. Same goes for secured mode among other reasons.

But I don't want to be "protected" by a magical hand. I want to earn my protection, by making the right friends, joining feds, building defense, learning diplomacy.

Instead we have a system of protection that takes all the fun out of the game.

I'll go premium if this happens

then maybe mr.thewhy you should unsecure yourself and let me poke at you some more

I like the system. After playing a number of games with multi player federations I am glad to not be subject to the vagaries of some hair brained scheme cooked up by a bunch of idiots. I can play the game and just grow my country. If I want to fight some C3's I can do that. I f I want to get all tough and narley and fight somebody, I can do that. And the fights are among somewhat equal folks which places emphasis on skill, tactics and strategy. They are not bozo knocking off the kindergarten kids. And, there is a war world.

Perhaps adjustments need to be made to rewards, I don't know since I am pretty low down. But I like the system.

I have played games with out strong restrictions on who can attack who. All that happens is a few gang up and beat down anyone that looks like they might in the future become a rival. It is petty and boring for either side. Usually dominated by 12 year olds who will not start dating until craig's list stops rejecting their solicitations.

I have not played long enough to comment on the rewards of high war levels but if what is said here is true than there is no point ... what seems to be the optimum profit war level?

If i could not have at least one safe nation where i can mind my own business allowing me to only risk what i was willing to loose in a second or fourth nation etc.. i would not have even started playing this game.

ive always heard from the vets that it was a better game without war levels and i believe them. i would think the communication levels would be much higher and people would be much more inclined to find a good fed.

war levels aren't really the problem. the problem is the attitude of some vets, that they have a right to win, rather than actually put out effort. so we end up with war levels, protecting players that shouldn't need any protection. and originally, the reason for war levels being introduced, was to protect a group of large players from actually having to do anything to claim their in-game power.

the purpose of a newish players being protected long enough to actually do something, is a good goal of war levels. how ever, they have a wider reaching effect.

war levels would work best if their where fewer. one level for non-combatants, one level for new or less enthusiastic war players. you know the ones that don't have the experience, assets, and/or time and a third or forth level for the more aggressive, active players. but having as many war levels as we do, offers the opportunity for way to many "miss-matches"

I think after war level 3 your war level should be determined by the size of your army and its strength not weather or not you choose to level up. And fighting a player with in 3 war levels when there are only 9 pvp war levels is way to open ended. If there were 25 pvp lvls that would make more sense.

With this system you would go up and down in war levels and would be a lot easier to match up for pvp as even a 7 year vet could not attack a wl4 player unless he shrunk his army down.

Only problem is assistance from allies would have to be limited along with reinforcements from space etc.

As it is now your war level is pointless other than moving from 2-3 ...and the vets all seem to regret ever moving up.

How about letting us raid at 3 levels down like we can versus players.

You guys want to know the biggest issues with the war levels.

They limit the amount of PvP warring.

When they first came out i voted for them STRICTLY based on an income stats and way of moving up game levels. They shouldn't effect PvP warring.

A war level 11 should be able to dec a war level 1.

But i suggested that each war level difference adds 12 hours to the war dec(this would mean the addition of 5days ontop of the current waiting period). Also should someone of 4 or more war levels dec someone a notice should be sent to all security counsel members Giving them a chance to vote to force a peace treaty. I also said that the Sec-con have more powers. As i said above if a player had to wait 7days before attacking a low level player they would have PLENTY of time to find allies, ask for support from other nations, or ask for some kind of Sec-con action to help them.

They should be allow to enact boycotts on non military and military goods alike. If the SC where to ban a nation from buying weapons on the world market for XXX amount of time, or requiring them to reduce there offensive military/strat military to XXX index number or face a boycott would be huge. Also if a member don't vote they are kicked out an replaced.

The players shouldn't be protected by some INVISIBLE hand but by other players. The GM will counter and say no one did, I'm only 1 person but if i had the backing of the Sec-Con i would be able to stop such actions

this topic is getting over done, whatever we say don't make a dent to what w3c wants to do.

there should only be one way to play this game, have war levels or game levels.

as i already posted in my "automation" thread, give every player max grace period of say 12 earth months in secured mode. the min grace period would be say one earth month so if any player declare pvp war after the min grace period, then no more in secured mode for such player once the war started.

war to be between players, not countries. every fedmate can participate fully without any restriction and every country in an empire can participate without any restriction, and every world can participate without any restriction so long as players have spaceships to get between the worlds.

no where to hide any assets, other than in one's account. weapons and ammos cannot be hide in ceos, and everything can be destroy in a country including all those of ceo's.

xon i would quit the game the day that happened. i have played gank fest games before and been on both sides ... neither is fun. I would like to war but if i had no safe mode on at least one nation i would be killed by some vet with like 5 mil bombs and 300k stealth bombers the first day i could be attacked. there is absolutely no way i could defend against that. And there are really only 3 feds i could join with active players which means few choices and would force me to build military to the point of stagnation for a few earth years or just quit. Because the moment it became cost effective to attack my defenses for my population id be gone.

with a safe nation i can enjoy the econ side of the game and when i branch out i can actually put enough forces in the new nation so attacking wile totally doable is not profitable for the population of said nation because i still have a worthwhile economy protected to allow me to grow.

@erin,
that's one of the many reasons to have fedmates, friends, allies, and those who will come to support you in economic or military.

if you're going to fight, fight to the death. what's the point to have a war with just sticking half of yourself out, using one arm?.

the current loopholes of vet using slaves to attack is making this game bad, base on what i read.

no protection for anyone means, you better be always ready because you don't know who's keeping eyes on your wealth or doesn't like your personality.

but the way this game is that anyone can produce any product in the game, what's the purpose to have wars with someone else?

really, is there ever war declaration on earth countries? fear of loosing everything is often what keeps people peaceful. war should be winner takes all, losser get nothing.

Xon, you're right about the current loopholes making the game bad.

I also understand where @Erin is coming from, cuz i too became sick of gank fest games.

We have a war world. Want pvp, go there. It is very difficult to know about Federations in this game. I've been here a year and have virtually no indication of which federations are which on my world. The only invite I've seen is from an absolute beginner.

There are a number of players who seem to crave a group environment and some of the ideas seem like good ones. The best I have seen are the allocation of resources to different geographical locations. thus maunufacturing of a product requires trade agreements with specific Countries or cartels. Same with goods.

The age old reason for aggression has been the need for food and resources. But this game has a myriad of weapons and so forth for war. The cost is very high to both defend and attack. The limitations on country size and development hinder growing sufficiently to afford all this stuff. The learning curve for all of it is steep.

I can see where some of the war guys get bored with attacking c3s and need fresh cannon fodder. It seems like many of those players economy is based on raiding c3s. It's how they afford the war economy and they are mostly at level 1 in my world cause they are spending all their cash I assume. Never asked.

I kind of like things the way they are. I can spend the time I wish at the game and entertain myself the way I wish. If I want war thrills, well there is a world I can go to and be at war. Right now, I see lots of disadvantages to Federations and very few advantages. I don't want to be at the mercy of someone else's problems.

I think there are a lot of ways to improve the interaction between the economy and war or limited conflict but that will require the GM spending more time developing the interaction of economies within the game and less on developing new weapons. Space could be a great deal but it is a gold coin game and will be forever limited for that reason alone. Lots of possible places to go with this game. I am not real keen on just increasing the cannon fodder.

@gr4yfox,
it would be dumb for me to just fight with one country if i have 100 countries?

perhaps more experienced players are picking fight with players with less experience because the former has no fear of losing anything significant.

if the situation is that the more experience player X has several 300M pop countries with stockpiles of valualbe goods, would he/she risk being the aggressor to wage a war on a less experience player Y who may have sufficient military wares to destroy a significant portion of player X's goods, if not conquer those highly populated countries?

as existing the more experienced player X would see no harm in testing his weapons/ammos on the less experience player Y; or raid the less experience player Y's goods every time these stuffs become valuable enough.

or just to simply annoy, control, bully those who just come on in less than an earth month, while the more experienced player X has been on for 5 to 10 years with sc.

this game needs a level playing field, base on skills and not on being credit cards. one of the wrongness of this game is, USD can get your GCs to get you SC $ to get you all the things you want in the game. as the game now existing, I bet that if you spend $1000 USD, you would be the #1 ranked player in your world?

@mute,
i've been posting so many times that there are more military products than any other products in this game. yet, i have not seen a single pvp war.

we need more food products, and other products that help to develop great countries. military products are mainly to destroy developments?

just about every upgade by w3c has been on military products.

when half of the products on sc are for developments, then perhaps we will see more players interactions. jump into chat sometimes, you will find no more than 4 chatters who are usually the same people, on average, and most of the times the cafes are empty.

the money itself isn't enough. i've seen people pay hundreds of dollars, just to keep up with me.

as far as country resources go. that is, limiting resources to the point that not every one can mine everything...

their will always have to be a stop gap measure, to prevent the economy of any given planet from just collapsing. and abusing newbs, or non-combatants from economic woes that they didn't instigate.

so the consept of "monopolies," "cartels," and limited resources, aren't going to be strong enough to encourage more wars. as the negative effects of a poor resource country, would have be to some what limited, to encourage people to continue to PAY.

country resources are a great idea, and should be implemented. but they can't really offer them strict enough to force resource gathering wars. ie a small carrot on a long stick.

in the past, war levels where added, so that no one would be forced into an unwanted war. but most the interaction of the past, was force fed by the need for protection. the GM are more and more tying score, and game awards to war levels, and lack of war protection. creating an incentive for the players that want to compete at a higher level, to seek allies.

The problem is, the Spark, is gone. that is, the excitement, that ignites more excitement, to blaze into more excitement, because we have people that want excitement. winning a war against an evenly matched opponent, cost more than you'll ever get back. the only ones that seem to be able to afford the drama, are the ones that hide behind protection, effectively ignoring the entire concept of a country building game. and then the rule changes... its amazing, in a bad way. It often times seems to me that the GM don't really want anything to ever happen.

to ignite the spark would be to allow players to trade among themselves freely, whether be products or money.

as existing, what is the point to hold trillions of dollars in your account if you cannot sell these money to other players who are not as great as you are.

greatness needs to be rewarded in this game, that starts with being able to help other players who may not be so great or need more help.

the purpose of fed is to support each other in pvp wars, do you need fedmates to help you fight a c3 at war level 10?

this whole war level concept is a "screw up" in my view, it does nothing but baby-sit players and discourage players to learn to play the game as warlords and as economists.

again, as existing there is no need to be in a fed or in a common market with other players.

right, further, the game is being rigged, in such a way, that no one looses. which also means that no one wins. with no real incentive to co-operate, and no value in winning, whats the point of sim-politics? except for the glory of it, itself? calculate in it takes a long time to build the skills, assets, and allies enough... it takes quite the investment of time to count yourself among an ever dwindling player skill base.

lol when the GM deletes every single one of your posts in makes the whole conversation abit nonsensical