Have you even read my original post? I'm saying that while gardeners are fine for flak, it's counter-intuitive, particularly for newcomers, to send your resources units into battle. I don't NEED flak, I just feel it makes a lot more sense to have a unit for flakking, seeing as it is such an integral part of the game.
We have read your original post, and all of your answers; the question remains have you read
and understood our posts? because it
seems that that is not the case. Here we go again....
I don't NEED flak, I just feel it makes a lot more sense to have a unit for flakking, seeing as it is such an integral part of the game.
You don't seem to understand. Your gardening/harvesting units ARE flak, and behave as such. You don't need to send them all out when you attack (especially harvies as i address later) but they are very capable of multi-tasking; i.e. Gardening *and* behaving like flak; or Harvesting *and* behaving like flak. It's much better in this game to have units that can perform multiple functions instead of having a simplistic ONE UNIT = ONE FUNCTION system. You wouldn't agree, but it seems to be where Azzer is at....
Moving on....
Okay let's take this one step at a time.
We all understand that sending out your 'resource gathering/using' units is counter intuitive when you are learning to play. I, as well as many others, did not realize that you could flak until i read about it/talked to some other players, and figured it out for myself. No one is sensibly countering that opinion.
What we do
NOT agree with is the necessity for having a separate unit called FLAK with all the same stats as a gardener. We would prefer another alternative. There are already a lot of units that exist for flakking, we have covered this in the first few pages of this thread. We don't think there is a need for another unit; but simply that there is a need for a better
explanation of what flakking is, how to accomplish it, and what units should be used to do such a thing.
If you have followed me thus far i'm going to take you one step further.
The proposed solution that have emerged thus far in this thread involved an added step to the tutorial which explains flakking and perhaps demonstrates how this is done. This idea needs a little further work but the basic idea is sound.
We would also like to see an enlarged section in the manual about flakking. Currently there exists
this section which explains flakking but could use a little more clarification.
Have you followed me so far?
Not to mention, for a new player, even more units to keep track of is not a good thing. as of now, you fulfill two uses with one set of staff.
Now if you don't feel the above suggestions. (wiki, tutorial and blurb in description) the only change I cann think of that is useful is to rename the gardener "worker" or something along that nature. Something that hints of a broader use for the unit.
You honestly think that one more line of text would confuse a newbie MORE than them having to send in their gardeners on a military attack? There have been enough responses on this thread of people who didn't understand flakking until it was explained to them.
It should be obvious, just as the hiring page is where you hire staff, the alliance page is where you view your alliance, the gardener should not be a military unit.
Okay, it is confusing to have a lot of units at the start, i remember being overwhelmed when i first started, i'm certainly not the best player at this game and it took me awhile to really get going. however, adding an extra unit called flak is not the appropriate solution. Having a better tutorial/manual is
far and away the better option since it actually explains
what flakking is,
how to flak, and
what units should be involved in flakking. Do you not agree that it's better to solve the problem at the root (i.e. explain how to flak?) rather than add another unit without explaining how to flak?
From the part of your reply i put in bold, i was curious, do you propose to have an extra page just like military but that says 'Flakking Page' where you only have geos/wheelies/and your generic FLAK unit? Because I feel that would be unnecessarily complicating the game for newbies, especially if you haven't gone out of your way to explain flakking anywhere, newbies might just send pure flak mobs at people and get killed because their lethals weren't included. The gardeners are included on the Military page because they are an
integral part of any mob where you intend to land. This is the basic foundation of
landing on players in the game. You cannot separate the two into two distinct parts because they are meant to be combined. I cannot make this clearer than i have already.
THE BOTTOME LINE: I do not disagree that there is not a lot of obvious explanation that Gardies/Harvies/INNs can be used as flak. however simply adding another flak unit is not the best or smartest solution in my eyes. Having a better manual/wiki and a tutorial step will truly address the problem rather than simply put another unit out there that new players have to grapple with and won't necessarily understand without having to read somewhere in the manual/tutorial about it. Do you get it now?
Given the abysmally low number of players at the moment, I don't think we can afford to sit on our hands on something that we KNOW causes people to quit. I get that a tutorial step would help, but it's still not getting to the core of the problem.
The low playerbase has more to do with the intensely high activity requirements than with the fact that people don't undertand flakking. It also has to do with the great length of time it takes to increase your units and land to a point where you have fun units. It also has a lot to do with this game being pretty much unique on the internet (or at least i've seen nothing like it elsewhere) and that it takes a lot of manual reading and then hands on playing to learn all the elements. I've been playing for 15+ rounds, and i still don't know tons and tons of things. Which i honestly believe to be a good thing since i'm learning all the time and this game would be boring if 15 minutes in i already knew everything there was to know about this game. Do you not agree?
Do you really
know that people not understanding flakking causes people to quit? I would dearly love to see proof of that and until that moment i will casually dismiss your histrionic claims. And we are not
sitting on our hands as you so delightfully put it, Azzer puts in a large amount of hard work to increase the gameplay, and many changes have been introduced (especially recently) to make gameplay a lot easier on newcomers and to reduce the intense activity requirements. There is an active suggestions forum and a lively debate amongst the playerbase as to what should be improved and what should be changed. A regular and proper exchange of ideas does exist.
All you are saying is that we don't NEED it. We didn't NEED the journal, we don't NEED anti-rape, we don't NEED interactive IDs. We don't NEED half the features in this game, but they make the game better. Seeing as how few new players take up the game, I feel that a dedicated flak unit would make it far simpler and encourage retention of players.
We are saying that we don't need a dedicated flak unit when there are already so many units that act in either their primary, or secondary abilities as Flak. To act as Innocent (massed) flak you have Gardeners, Harvesters, Cyborg Gardeners, Tractors, Combines, Stealth Harvesters, Arsonists, and Chemical Sprayers. These can all be massed to a lesser or higher degree depending upon your route and what you want to accomplish. All of those units have multiple purposes. I direct you to
this page to see what they can do. Now to go further onto Innocent landstealing flak items you have Wheelbarrows, Geo Phys Thieves, Stealth Thieves, Thief units, Seed Thieves, Plant Thieves, and Money Launderers. Obviously like before, you cannot have *all* these units in one route, but many routes have multiple flakking options and you can mass/use them appropriately to flak whatever your main landstealing unit will be.
What we need is a more appropriate and visible definition of flakking as a core concept to stealing land and gameplay so that people *understand* the concept of flakking. Adding another unit without adding in the requisite explanations simply adds a further layer of complexity without achieving anything. Conversely, if in this scenario that I have just outlined, you add in a detailed description of flakking as the core concept of landstealing in bushtarion, you make the need for a dedicated flak unit obsolete.
As many people have demonstrated prior to me, there are dozens of other INN units. The key one we can talk about is the
Tractor* which are astonishingly useful units because they allow you to keep 'resource units' home, while sending out your more easily accessible and useful Gardeners as flak. I understand that this doesn't help at the start of the game because you don't have tractors teched, however it helps immensely as the game progresses and being a several month long round, i sure you see the value of the tractor unit.
Also, sending out your 'resource units', while counter intuitive can be easily explained with the manual and tutorial. You don't always need your Gardeners home, you don't need to be planting 24/7; with harvies you *do* need to keep a portion home, but that too is explained in the manual. And as i stated before, you don't have to send *all* your gardeners out on your attack, you have the option to send out as many or as few as you want (ideally as many as you need to land, but not more than are necessary so you can be economical with your resources).
All you are saying is that we don't NEED it. We didn't NEED the journal, we don't NEED anti-rape, we don't NEED interactive IDs.
We do actually need AR; however this isn't the place to explain why.
Your idea, amusingly enough, is not needed, or even the proper solution. We have given you numerous reasons as to why, and we've even agreed with your
original complaint that flakking is not explained well enough in the game. Thus we came up with what is a better, easier, more flexible, and more appropriate solution to the problem. I have tried to synthesize this into this one post so you can read it all here.
'Don't fix it if it's not broke' is a nonsensical attitude to have. If we all thought like that, Bush would still be in age 1.
It's a very good attitude to have in general, and only fix those things which are broken. You have brought to our attention that flakking is not explained well enough, you have proposed a solution, we have proposed a counter solution which
achieves the purpose of your original post far better and with less complexity than yours, and yet you still resist? It simply doesn't make sense. I cannot make this simpler than I have in this post.... Hope it helps. This has nothing to do with us being reactionary, we simply see a better solution to the problem you so graciously brought to our attention; yet your responses are insulting and flagrantly hostile posts. You would get more respect from the playerbase if you behaved less like a spoilt and petulant child, and more like a responsible, literate and objective adult.
*
Name: Tractor [£41,000]
Unit Type: Machine/Vehicle
Unit Class: INN
Attack type: Gardens [close]
Stats: * / ***** / 4,500 plants.
ETA: 7
Initiative: 980
Route(s): Generic
Description: A mechanical monstrosity, these old tractors look like they really could churn through land at quite a pace.
Technology "Tractor Factory" gives access to this unit.
)
