Experiment: Levis can only !buy in safe

[qan]

Discuss merits and counter-merits here.

Buy system is broken, and nowhere is this more clear than when in the hands of LTs. Levis that must !buy in safe are bound to safe. Though of course this doesn't cover the terrs.

Possible alternatives:

• Everyone can only !buy in safe
• Levis can only !buy when >20 bty (greened)
• Levis can only !buy when <20 bty
• Can only !buy in a small area at the edge of the arena, which includes safes
• Can only !buy once every 60 seconds (or various items have their buy counters increased a fair bit)
• !buy items cost more
• Restrict particular items on certain ships (for example, Levi and perhaps weasel can't buy rep and/or rocket)
• Different prices for different ships for each item, to reflect how much that item helps that ship
• !buy can only be used X # times on your freq per X seconds
• And so forth

Change is temporary and experimental -- a sacrament of the old ways, if you will -- and arose out of a lengthy conversation between PL, myself, LF and a few others.

[Shaddowknight]

remove portal from !buy altogether.Make LT's be careful. This would reward skilled LT's and encourage less skilled ones to become better. Perhaps lessening antiwarp's range to compensate. To compensate for baseterrs being unable to buy portals, raise their chance of being greened slightly.

[Dral]

Completely agree with removing portals, but don't think their green chance should be altered. Baseterrs did just fine before the !buy system was introduced and I would expect them to continue doing so. I think this is the most reasonable course for the intended effect.

I also like removing reps, but that's just because it's damn annoying to fight anything that keeps buying reps =p

A lot of those suggestions are not practical if we are moving to a points based pubbux system.

[Maverick X+]

I can tell you already that the buy in safe only is a stupid idea and will not do anything to curb the LT's, and needless to say its actually killed off me playing it solo as the ship should be anyways

[qan]

Yeah, agreed about the excessive ports; that's a fairly major change though and this was about the lightest touch I could use while still having a somewhat significant effect.

Re: points-based bux, still not sure if it's going to happen. The command we use for adding/subtracting points resets every player's Avg to 0 every time it's used, AND it converts all points to Flag Points. It's a bit heavy-handed, and the only thing that it does is forces the buys to safe and keeps the DB from being accessed whenever a player enters/leaves. Not really worth the effort to change over, considering, IMO.

Re: solo Levis, yeah, it makes it harder to cycle through 4 macros where you buy full charge, repel, rocket and portal, all of which can get you out of a sticky Levi situation. But the Levi always has meant to be pathetic/nearly defenseless without a Terr, and I think it always should be. The big issue I see is that other people can still !buy out of safe, putting the solo Levi at a greater disadvantage now than it was before !buy. Then again, if they get on an LT, the Terr can still buy ports (and bursts) and the Levi can buy reps in safe, which many LTs still use anyhow.

The one reason this really does put a dent in LTs is because of the rep issue -- a Levi can't just keep buying reps every 15 or so seconds. (That's a lot of reps possible.) So if a shot hits and the Terr fails to port -- something that happens more often than you'd think -- it's over. The rep just gave even one more step of defense at the end. Now at least if they want to use reps regularly they need to trudge back to safe every time, putting themselves at risk and in the meantime leaving base alone.

A Levi would also now need its Terr's help to green (if such a change is kept), rather than being able to PM them 30 seconds after first spawning and telling them they're in safe, or being able to attach. Under the old system they can buy roughly 8 greens every 30 seconds, + team greens. That's close to 1 minute to green fully (while being able to use all sorts of escape mechanisms in the meantime) even if the team collects no greens.

[Shaddowknight]

Ive got a possible solution/idea concerning pubbux, when I get home from work today Ill type it out (hate typing long stuff on smartphpne OSK...

[Bosshawk]

so you spend all your time trying to destroy LT's... fine... but at what point do you give the levi the aiblity to protect itself as a ship?

you are changing the game so much... and the ship settings, you have destroyed the levi so badly that the only way to play it is to LT, we have driven levi drivers to have to LT to enjoy playing the ship... where years ago many levi drivers prided themselves on NOT riding a terr...

give them back to ability to defend themselves and prevent them from attaching...

i like the simple idea of restricting all ships to an attach of like 1 second or less or something.... and you can make all ships do not just the levi and it wouldnt change the dynamic of the game that much

but if your going to do this you need to give the levi the ability to defend itself... a portal and 3 reps and l2 bullets... if you want to keep the bomb lower so be it, stronger bullets and recharge would not be a detriment to the pub

[project dragon]

What if terrs need a minimum bounty before levi's can attach (50+?), along with the levi bty requirement? Is that even possible?

edit: some reasons why this idea would be okay:
- Priv freqs would require longer time to get set up. A single terr cannot suicide levi to green it and then let it attach, it would also need to meet their own bounty requirement as well.
- Would encourage LT's in a team setting, rather then a private setting. LT's would have to attempt to work with a team, since greening a terr on pub freq is a lot quicker since there are more players picking up greens. Levi's in FR can actually be beneficial and lead to some interesting plays.

Possible bad things:
- I assume terrs can just green up, go to spec and then change freqs? Or does that reset their bty?
- More coding, since the bty restriction should not interfere with the other ships when they attach (which I assume will not be possible without the bot)

This is along with some of the !buy restrictions that people seem to be talking about. But maybe this can reduce the restrictions that are put in place? I think the issue at hand is not the levi's themselves, but LTs. If you destroy just levi's, then there will be no chance for it to be experimented with in a team setting, since it will be next to impossible to do anything meaningful with it. Restrictions should only be put in place once LT's are formed, or possibly on priv freqs where most LTing seems to occur.

[Maverick X+]

so you spend all your time trying to destroy LT's... fine... but at what point do you give the levi the aiblity to protect itself as a ship?

you are changing the game so much... and the ship settings, you have destroyed the levi so badly that the only way to play it is to LT, we have driven levi drivers to have to LT to enjoy playing the ship... where years ago many levi drivers prided themselves on NOT riding a terr...

give them back to ability to defend themselves and prevent them from attaching...

i like the simple idea of restricting all ships to an attach of like 1 second or less or something.... and you can make all ships do not just the levi and it wouldnt change the dynamic of the game that much

but if your going to do this you need to give the levi the ability to defend itself... a portal and 3 reps and l2 bullets... if you want to keep the bomb lower so be it, stronger bullets and recharge would not be a detriment to the pub

The problem though Boss is that if you take away the attaching, the LT players will bitch hardcore. I'd be glad if Levis DIDNT have the power to attach but that wont ever happen. I had suggested making the attach bounty much higher (500) during the player meeting last year but that was shot down even when i gave the full idea of making a levi bounty pack available to them. (Much like how the 2011 lev was when you had to buy superlev) and make the pack purchasable once every 30 minutes, this way it cut down on both, how many lts would pop up, how often they would pop up and how fast they quickly pop back up.

[BooBiesYaY]

so you spend all your time trying to destroy LT's... fine... but at what point do you give the levi the aiblity to protect itself as a ship?

you are changing the game so much... and the ship settings, you have destroyed the levi so badly that the only way to play it is to LT, we have driven levi drivers to have to LT to enjoy playing the ship... where years ago many levi drivers prided themselves on NOT riding a terr...

give them back to ability to defend themselves and prevent them from attaching...

i like the simple idea of restricting all ships to an attach of like 1 second or less or something.... and you can make all ships do not just the levi and it wouldnt change the dynamic of the game that much

but if your going to do this you need to give the levi the ability to defend itself... a portal and 3 reps and l2 bullets... if you want to keep the bomb lower so be it, stronger bullets and recharge would not be a detriment to the pub

truthfully, you could argue the chicken or the egg scenario on this all day long. what i mean is, did 4-6 hunters/spawners that devote their lives to hunting or spanwing levs all day long come first, or did levs which needed changes (may or may not have/debatable) thus provoking their wrath come first..

but in the end, the truth is that if you try to green in mid, and have no buy options, you will be spawned or hunted probably 20 times in a time period of 4-5minutes. sometimes less or something more, but on average about that much.

so, i guess what it comes down to is that if you take away !buy options or other things for lev to green, it will then be defensless to that reality, a bunch of disgruntled basers or anti-lev ppl hunting levs all day. some spec hunt, some hunt with anti (like contempt or others), and so forth.

so no matter who you blame thats just the reality. as it stands, levs cant really survive in mid. occasionally you can slip by and wiggle yourself into base, but most of the time your attaching to a base terr to escape the hunting/spawning.

[BooBiesYaY]

The problem though Boss is that if you take away the attaching, the LT players will bitch hardcore. I'd be glad if Levis DIDNT have the power to attach but that wont ever happen. I had suggested making the attach bounty much higher (500) during the player meeting last year but that was shot down even when i gave the full idea of making a levi bounty pack available to them. (Much like how the 2011 lev was when you had to buy superlev) and make the pack purchasable once every 30 minutes, this way it cut down on both, how many lts would pop up, how often they would pop up and how fast they quickly pop back up.

Levs attaching at 500? after 100 kills without dying? what lev can get 100 kills without dying playing solo. I mean maybe once a month you'll hit 400 in base, and porting out like skyman employs smartly/costly, but with population the way it is for the most part a solo lev getting 300-400 is really high/rare.

furthermore, i think we can all agree that taking away the attaching power from levs to terrs wouldnt be unpleasant to LT'ers (ie making them bitch hardcore), it would actually remove the LT from the game itself.

[Maverick X+]

Levs attaching at 500? after 100 kills without dying? what lev can get 100 kills without dying playing solo. I mean maybe once a month you'll hit 400 in base, and porting out like skyman employs smartly/costly, but with population the way it is for the most part a solo lev getting 300-400 is really high/rare.

furthermore, i think we can all agree that taking away the attaching power from levs to terrs wouldnt be unpleasant to LT'ers (ie making them bitch hardcore), it would actually remove the LT from the game itself.

Which exactly the point i'm making, if someone wanted to LT all they need to do is dump stealth, contact a terr to give them a few kills and then off they go, 500 bounty to attach means it'll take at LEAST 3-5 minutes of constantly letting them get killed over and over again. Not to mention that nice little kick feature should you get so many times in a row without a kill yourself you're kicked from the server. See where i'm getting at about controlling the LT population?

As i stated before, if they wanna shortcut it, make a bounty pack (500 bux) and make it available every 30 minutes, this way the LT'ers can still be happy while basers can sit there and enjoy their basing games MOSTLY undisturbed.

[bandcampgirl]

plz stop listening to lf

There was nothign wrong with levis who are at the mercy of people spawning non stop

and bring back original killothon as no one cares about it the way it is now

[Shaddowknight]

plz stop listening to lf

There was nothign wrong with levis who are at the mercy of people spawning non stop

and bring back original killothon as no one cares about it the way it is now

People do care about it (killothon) , but it's not perfect.
Levis in spawn are not the problem we feel is needing of being fixed.

[Maverick X+]

plz stop listening to lf

There was nothign wrong with levis who are at the mercy of people spawning non stop

and bring back original killothon as no one cares about it the way it is now

take your killothon cares to another thread!