Bushranger said:

do combine wars last a set time or until a certain score is reached

I believe they must be canceled by leadership. I'm not sure if one side can cancel on its own.

Challenges last a set time - I believe it is a week.

Edit: It looks like you can end the war by changing the diplo status to neutral. Ally or peace require the other side to accept it.

Edit2: Here's a summary I found for those that are interested:

https://wiki.plarium.com/index.php?title=State_of_War:SI

Very helpful, thank you.

An interesting part of that discussion is "gaining battle advantage."

Unfortunately the writer doesn't seem to understand what the term means:

Battle advantage is not a simple summation, but a comparative statement, similar to words like "better", "stronger" and "faster".

When a person says they feel "better", they mean "better than I was feeling", even though we take a short cut and just say better.

Case 1)

If you gain the same number of points as the opposition from an action, then you don't actually gain an advantage.

The formula for losses is approximately: (A x D) / (A + D) 

Taking a simplified battle with only 1 unit type that has 30 points for attack and defense:

Attacker has 100 units to defender's 100 units. (Perfectly even battle)

Attacker's combat strength is 3,000 vs defender's 3,000.

Attacker's losses are 1,500 and so are the defender's.

Both sides gained the points for 1,500 kills, their "battle advantage" values both go up the same amount, so neither side gained advantage.

Case 2)

Now let's look at a bit more complex battle, still 1 vs 1, but with different troops, since attacking troops are worth more:

Attacker has 1K units with attack strength of 40 each. Defender has 2K units with 20 strength each.

4K vs 4K means both sides again lose 50%, or 2K. Attacker loses half as many troops that have twice the value, resulting in neither side gaining advantage.

Case 3)

Usually the force combat rating is not the same, so let's look at what happens when 1 side trashes the other.

Attacker has 9K strength to defender's 1K defense.

Attacker loses 10% of 9K (900) and defender loses 90% of 1K (900).

So clearly attacking is not the way to gain battle advantage. Even though it increases the battle advantage score, it does so for both sides.

This means that technology or other buffs that aid the effectiveness of a unit are the way to gain advantage, assuming that the game mechanics don't simply use the combat values to calculate the gains. If the game uses actual combat values, then there is no means of adjusting how fast you gain vs the enemy except maybe to take advantage of rounding.

On the other hand: actions such as raiding can be 1 sided, and offer a true advantage to the attacker.

Hi there!

Many thanks, Commanders! I hope your comments will help many newbies in the game! And my hat's off to you guys.

Badlag247 said:

-snip-

Case 3)

Usually the force combat rating is not the same, so let's look at what happens when 1 side trashes the other.

Attacker has 9K strength to defender's 1K defense.

Attacker loses 10% of 9K (900) and defender loses 90% of 1K (900).

So clearly attacking is not the way to gain battle advantage. Even though it increases the battle advantage score, it does so for both sides.

This means that technology or other buffs that aid the effectiveness of a unit are the way to gain advantage, assuming that the game mechanics don't simply use the combat values to calculate the gains. If the game uses actual combat values, then there is no means of adjusting how fast you gain vs the enemy except maybe to take advantage of rounding.

On the other hand: actions such as raiding can be 1 sided, and offer a true advantage to the attacker.

I wanted to point out that you can get an advantage by attacking.

To do so you must use the occupation mechanics. This is done through any of the following attacks:

1. Sending an occupation at a base
2. Attacking an MC
3. Attacking an HQ
4. Attacking a repository
5. Attacking a depot
   

Note that this mechanic also works when defending against an occupation.

Inaginni said:

Badlag247 said:

-snip-

So clearly attacking is not the way to gain battle advantage. Even though it increases the battle advantage score, it does so for both sides.

I wanted to point out that you can get an advantage by attacking.

To do so you must use the occupation mechanics. This is done through any of the following attacks:

1. Sending an occupation at a base
2. Attacking an MC
3. Attacking an HQ
4. Attacking a repository
5. Attacking a depot
   

Occupation mechanics have an overwhelming force factor that becomes obvious once you are roughly 10 times stronger than the other side. Depending on how far you outnumber the opponent, you can reduce your losses by staggering amounts. One of the best, big, hits I've seen was one that reduced it's losses to 1/200th of the opposing side's (attacker losses about 100k offense with roughly 20 mil defense destroyed). Just remember to pull your troops quickly ;P

Note that this mechanic also works when defending against an occupation.

Sending an occupation at a base, or otherwise attacking, does not give you a disproportional gain in points until the forces are significantly imbalanced. In my opinion: any game mechanic that only rewards bullying is a game flaw. Hitting someone with over 10 times their power as the only way to actually gain an advantage. (as opposed to using recon to gain strategic information, then sending an equal force to disproportionately damage an equal opponent.)

Yes, you can gain some points by hitting weak players, but then they quit the game after you wiped their puny forces. Unfortunately this does seem to be the way to win a war. A byproduct of this is that the stronger team always wins, and good strategy or game play is irrelevant to the advantage.

Like as was mentioned about HQs in another post: they only give an advantage to the strongest teams. Weaker teams are limited to level 5 HQs. Get to level 6, and those with level 20 HQs will swarm in for points, with their significantly higher bonuses.

Another serious game imbalance is the repository you mentioned: strong players can quickly hit facilities with powerful marches sped up to the point that distance is irrelevant. Lower level players can't hope to use those resources because they need to wait 5 minutes before they even start to collect, and it takes less than 5 minutes to hit an occupied one. No way to meaningfully retaliate as the distance to the attacker will be in the hundreds of Km. This is just a way for strong players to sucker punch weak players. Again: using the over 10x power attacks.

Really, there should be a limit on the power advantage. For example: 1,000 guys trying to shoot 1 guy would be likely as not to incur some friendly fire. A means by which either the bullied forces can recover faster/cheaper, or the stronger player takes more damage, is in desperate need here.

Inaginni said:

P.S. Just to note that, if you wanted a game with some form of power balance between coiner and non-coiners, this is not the game.

I'm aware that coiners have an advantage. This is true in most MMOs of any type. even so: I think it is foolish for a company to make it so imbalanced as to make it strictly playable if you coin. Those who coin need to have community and competition. F2P can provide both, if allowed to.

Lately it seems the trend in MMOs is to make the leverage you gain from coining overwhelming. For $5 in most games you can get instantly what would take months or years of playing for free to achieve. Sometimes $5 is all it takes to gain a permanent advantage that no F2P player can ever compete with. (For example, some item or unit that never dies or goes away, that is only available if you pay.)

In one of their other games, not a clone of this one, you can get 30K troops of the highest capability for $5, along with other stuff in that package. Those troops are roughly the equivalent of 25x as strong as troops a new player can build, and takes nearly a year of F2P to even start making them.

By comparison: this game is more P2P and F2P balanced.

Badlag247 said:

Inaginni said:

Badlag247 said:

-snip-

-snip

Sending an occupation at a base, or otherwise attacking, does not give you a disproportional gain in points until the forces are significantly imbalanced. In my opinion: any game mechanic that only rewards bullying is a game flaw. Hitting someone with over 10 times their power as the only way to actually gain an advantage. (as opposed to using recon to gain strategic information, then sending an equal force to disproportionately damage an equal opponent.)

Yes, you can gain some points by hitting weak players, but then they quit the game after you wiped their puny forces. Unfortunately this does seem to be the way to win a war. A byproduct of this is that the stronger team always wins, and good strategy or game play is irrelevant to the advantage.

Like as was mentioned about HQs in another post: they only give an advantage to the strongest teams. Weaker teams are limited to level 5 HQs. Get to level 6, and those with level 20 HQs will swarm in for points, with their significantly higher bonuses.

Another serious game imbalance is the repository you mentioned: strong players can quickly hit facilities with powerful marches sped up to the point that distance is irrelevant. Lower level players can't hope to use those resources because they need to wait 5 minutes before they even start to collect, and it takes less than 5 minutes to hit an occupied one. No way to meaningfully retaliate as the distance to the attacker will be in the hundreds of Km. This is just a way for strong players to sucker punch weak players. Again: using the over 10x power attacks.

Really, there should be a limit on the power advantage. For example: 1,000 guys trying to shoot 1 guy would be likely as not to incur some friendly fire. A means by which either the bullied forces can recover faster/cheaper, or the stronger player takes more damage, is in desperate need here.

At the end of the day, what we really want is a lot of battles, lots of play action, and players to be able to recover easily enough that they don't quit when hit. Unfortunately the game design across all 6 clones, as well as other TW style games, seems to reward actions that lead to servers dying. Having to kill 100 points at enemy bases, and later 250, to clear a 4 hour mission is a bit like asking people to see how many others they can make quit. On the other hand, I don't suggest making rules that give overwhelming advantage to turtles either.

I tend to use this against people as strong as I am (well, when they don't have everything out), although I do admit I will take advantage of weaker players. However, I choose to not wipe people out because I want to have future PvP, not one off PvP (unless I hate the person I'm attacking xD).

Also, just a note about your statement of strong bullying the weak. That is basically what combine wars enable. They remove the force limit.

That aside, HQs have force limits tied to their level, so it is workable for all combines (technically).

I 100% agree about repositories around PvP time. Not worth it to send anything. However, outside of PvP it is much easier to earn a profit on them. I still prefer the depots of old that they replaced, and still think of it as a bad update from Plarium.

P.S. Just to note that, if you wanted a game with some form of power balance between coiner and non-coiners, this is not the game. No Plarium game has been for over 2 years. I, personally, stay around for the friends I made back when I didn't know what this game/ Plarium really was, and also because I enjoy teaching the new guys how to maximize their efforts. I hope you have something similar that makes this game fun for you.