Simplest White Wizard/Knight fix

[Alcibiades]

Warning: This is part gripe and part suggestion; if you wish to skip, go to the bold italic part.


Right, so I've restarted this round after leaving C UNT and am currently "enjoying" the process of growing after the round start, which usually involves loading up on land from all the dead/bored/bots that are around. Usually this is, to borrow an expression, piss easy. And then presto, you've got your techs done and nice amount of land, ready to get pwned since your AR is zero Right, however, i've discovered that White Knights are the utter bane of rebuilders. They make rebuilding too damn costly, you're better off just leaving your land to make money than try flakking them.

I can't afford to spend anywhere from 5 to 15m flak a tick to get ~200 land; even at 55-125% there are lots of WKs, especially in the rank 300ish area, there are lots of lowbies with WKs, because they continually are getting bashed by other players (higher presumably with more ability to waste flak). This is an absurd situation I find myself in at the ranks we're talking about (300+); i shouldn't be incapable of attacking and growing because of an H/F given unit which is essentially free, easily manipulable, and horribly indecent to flak through or kill. It's simply unaffordable, and takes all the pleasure out of rebuilding; which is one of the features i genuinely like the most about this game. Rebuiling is fun, i like it; except now it's not because it's nigh on impossible, and therefore teching takes forever, and that has it's own consequences into which I need not go. One of my other favourite things are WKs sweeping for Sleepies and someone with not enough yobs. That's really a significant pain in the ass. These units are ****ing everything up down here

So, the point i'm trying to make is that the White Knights absolutely must be switched with the White Wizards. It makes far more sense to have the LET flak come out first; and then have the more powerful units come out later when they are a little better balanced by players around them having more land, more troops, and better techs. I think this is a win-win situation. (I'd also like WKs to be a little reduced in firepower, since 1:15 is absolutely ****ing ridiculous; pardon my french.)

Just switch them, it'll be so damn easy; and it's what should've been done at the very first.

EDIT: This is a good example; I've just gotten assassins and am going to have a go playing around for fun, maybe some land. Here's a good target.

Staff
White Knight [138,854]
Gardener [5,788,371]
Harvester [4,803,299]
Hippy [2,347,422]
Yob [1,476,077]
Wheelbarrower [11,015]
Geo-Phys Thief [62,098]
Small Droid [1,686,273]
Automoton [1,028,631]


Autos kill about 3mill or so a tick lets say. That's only 6m flak, easily affordable, considering the land will make up for it, and SDs are easy enough to flak through as well as the hippies and yobs. Not a problem; but those WKs are going to cause some havoc, they'll kill about 2m flak a tick or so, somewhere in that range, which'll add up to another 6mill flak which starts to make this not really seem worth 12mill flak dead, not to mention the extra flak i now have to buy to cover the basics.

I know i'm not the greatest player out there, probably somewhere in the range of low to middling noob; however, even if someone streamlined the attack for me, i'm still going to have to waste a lot of flak on those goddamn WKs. And of course, that's only the people with a few hundred thousand, some people have anywhere from 500k to 1.5m... You can all do the math, that's a lot of dead flak for a free unit which is, in turn, batshit insane. Switch please, table 1!

 

[Twigley]

I think the point of it was as you put already.

These players have been bashed to get those white knights already, and the fact you cant just easily flak past them means that they are not just pwned over and over again.

I also think that was the point of white knights at the start of the round.
The allies that get bashed by the rank 1/2 alliance get the white knights so they can sort of "put off" attackers as you'll know how impossible it is to compete at the start in a rank 3 - 5 ally or so.

I saw people who kept getting bashed at the start being able to actually play after being bashed rather than wait a few weeks till the active people went out of range.

 

[Alcibiades]

I think the point of it was as you put already.

These players have been bashed to get those white knights already, and the fact you cant just easily flak past them means that they are not just pwned over and over again.

I'd rather they have LET flak so they can use insurance to buy their own units, not have to rely on ridiculously overpowered free units. I'd think it's better to teach a player the basics of LET flakking (maybe include it as a tutorial step to add in L/F?) and how to use their own units. Better to teach, than to build a crutch for them which they learn to rely on. They're too powerful for how early they come out, regardless of the good deed they are supposedly doing. They might be keeping that one person alive, but it stagnates the gameplay of everyone else around, since you basically have to buy more flak than you used to. It's killing the growth aspect low ranked.

I also think that was the point of white knights at the start of the round.
The allies that get bashed by the rank 1/2 alliance get the white knights so they can sort of "put off" attackers as you'll know how impossible it is to compete at the start in a rank 3 - 5 ally or so.

Aye, but again, I think they're still overpowered, despite the good they're doing there, I feel like they're doing more damage elsewhere. You may keep your land a little better, but god help you trying to get more land while you're teching + buying basics + buying massive amounts of flak to get a pittance of land.

I saw people who kept getting bashed at the start being able to actually play after being bashed rather than wait a few weeks till the active people went out of range.

I'd have to agree, WKs are invaluable to higher ranked people, but they are a bane to the low ranked players I find. They're too good, need to be toned down, or preferably just switched. That's how it should've been, that's how it should be now.

 

[Souls]

And they shoot too stupidly fast to kill, as well. They're really just stronger terrorists; they'll kill all of your flak before a majority of the units even get the chance to kill them.

 

[Azzer]

Increase the requirement to get 3mil WK to 30k H/F instead of the current 15k H/F needed to get 3 mil (so that while people can still start getting WK's early on, the max numbers they can get are much less without much higher H/F rating, preventing as large numbers coming out quite so early/easily... example at 5,000 H/F rating, instead of having 958k WK max as it currently is, it'd be 571k WK max)... prevent them firing close range (can't be last tick sweepers)... raise (worsen) their initiative to somewhere close to the bottom of the initiative list? Will still seriously help those getting bashed (the victims themselves), and still be useful early on, but won't be quite so deadly?

I also still want to rename them both, the names are meaningless really, just nicked from the old H/F units Could probably just swap the names around. Makes sense the "white wizards" are the killers, and the white knights the defensive people.

 

[Dark_Angel]

And they shoot too stupidly fast to kill, as well. They're really just stronger terrorists; they'll kill all of your flak before a majority of the units even get the chance to kill them.

Agreed.


I also agree with what Alci is saying tbh. Attacking "honourably" shouldn't be rewarded with a unit that makes you a fairly unattractive target because it takes so much flak to get past you (imo)

 

[WackyJacky]

It's lowered the land flow this round imo. And since bush is all about stealing land, I'm not too sure it's a good thing.

As for increasing the required H/F to get Whites, If you look at the current H/F ratings it'd take roughly 40 days to get the full amount of H/F for the TOP H/F players. Seems like quiet a bit of time imo?

What about making the gain rate relative to the dev modifier/the total time gone by? (Lower gain % in the beginning, increases as the round goes on?)

 

[Davs]

Taking his advice, I started reading Alci's post from the bold bit and I agree.

At this stage in the round, with most active players pretty much finished their developments, there are a fair few units around that will stop white knights before they fire, but not really enough. So imo for this stage in the round, although they make landing attacks much harder, they're not exactly killing the game.

In the flak wars, however, knights do far too much damage for how early they come out. Not to mention how easy it is to get them (I had enough this round to kill 3m flak a tick before I even had a green title, just for taking a couple of land hits - this is wrong, very wrong).

Wizards, as they are atm, don't do any where near as much damage to flak as knights - but would make useful LET flak in the early stages of the round (when people don't have many LETs of their own). They also make reasonable sweepers as they fire very late. So I'm 100% with Alci on this, swap all of the stats for knights and wizards over (i.e. max values, INIT and hp/ar/hd/ad values).

 

[Cheese]

Why not make WK block instead of kill? But obviously block the same amount...

 

[Iamsmart]

They'd have to get 1:45 ._.

 

[alwaysnumb]

I think that the amount you get should be more limited more for lower scores. Say max 200k wk at 100m score going to max 3.5m at say 2b score

 

[Davs]

I think that the amount you get should be more limited more for lower scores. Say max 200k wk at 100m score going to max 3.5m at say 2b score

for a lot of cases it's already like this. Not to mention the fact that 200k knights will kill an insanely large amount of flak for someone with only 200m score...

EDIT: I was just wondering what people would say to making WKs close only? It would help to make them less overpowered, whilst also being a bit more believable (swords don't tend to reach very far ). And before people discuss the value in adding a touch of realism with wondrous comments like "I don't tend to see Cybernetic T-Rexes on my way to the garden centre", please pay more attention to the fact that it will significantly reduce their overall damage.

 

[Twigley]

I did suggest to Azzer that the caps and rate you get them should be like ...

... if you plotted them on a graph it wouldnt be a straight line constant. It would be like an n shape.

My epic paint skill:

But we couldnt figure out the calc for it

 

[Azzer]

I actually lolled at your graph, Twigley

 

[Dimitar]

who wouldn't

 

[Cheese]

I think what would be a good way of stopping people getting ridiculous amounts of WK early on is make it so you can't gain honour/fame from white knight kills...

 

[willymchilybily]

i think azzers solution works, more units can kill them now. and they are like easy to kill LET flak. that will never gather in such numbers to make a target hard to kill.

they will die, and only a few will fire. only really help in early round and not too overpowered for later round.

making them fire close range is silly. they will all be dead by then. no point in even having them.

ps. twigley nice graph, but i was under the impresion the rate you got them was already like that. it isnt constant, its based on the amount you have and the amount max your Hf allows you to have it speeds up as you get more slows down as you reach your cap.

pps. alcibiades, liked first post, disliked second. first response.
getting insurance from whiteknights and relying on it to buy your own units is silly. as they cost 100 per unit. max you get is 3mil ish so 3,000,000WK *£100*0.3ins. = £90,000,000

i don think having max H/F and relying on being able to buy back 15k hippys or yobs is really going to be much incentive/reward for being honourable.

 

[Twigley]

Willy, the graph isnt like how it is at the momment at all.
That graph shows the rate at which you get white knights to time of the round.
Think about it for a second.

 

[willymchilybily]

sorry
as accoding to azzer

Oh, you have less WK's - well there's your answer. The gain rate is 8% per tick of the number you currently have, up to a maximum of half your H/F rating.

As for WW's - their gain rate is 6% per tick, up to a maximum of 40% of your H/F rating. Gaining more WW's than WK's will be a sign that 6% of your current WW count is greater than 8% of your current WK count

I guess it doesnt drop off. my bad. for some reason i thought my gains were slowing down towards the cap. it must simply be they are at the cap. not that they slow down as the CAP is reached

I did suggest to Azzer that the caps and rate you get them should be like ...

But we couldnt figure out the calc for it

couldnt the code for a graph of this shape be

WK
gain rate= (AO*0.08 )*(((CAP-AO)/CAP)^2/5)

WW
gain rate= (AO*0.06)*(((CAP-AO)/CAP)^2/5)

Glossary:

currently amount of white-unit owned (AO)

H/f score related white-unit cap (CAP)

multiplier (the part in the second set of brackets) ie. rate= (AO*0.06)*(multiplier)

scaler (the 2/5 or number between 1-0 that the final bracket is to the power of) ie. rate= (AO*0.06)*(((CAP-AO)/CAP)^Scaler)

in effect, as the amount owned(AO) reaches the cap(CAP), the multiplier tends to 0. When you have less than the cap you have a reasonable rate still coming in. the power of 0.4 is simply a nice scaler. after all without it you'rd probably never reach the cap

this can be shrunk to null the effect of the multiplier. or increased to increase the effect of the multiplier. to get the appropriate balance just thought 0.4 was an adaquate number


example
so if you have 100 out a potential 3mil wk
rate=7.9999 per tick

so if you have 1m out a potential 3mil wk
rate=68,022. per tick

so if you have 1.5m out a potential 3mil wk
rate=90,942. per tick


so if you have 2m out a potential 3mil wk
rate= 103,103. per tick


so if you have 2.9m out a potential 3mil wk
rate=59,516. per tick

okay my scaler is too small. its making the drop off rate kick in a bit later than your lovely graph but you get the idea. so remove it or increase it to a number closer to 1 and the job is a gooden. CODE IT!

all you have to do if you want it to have an exact (semitrical) drop off at 50% of the cap, i diffferentiate my equation and put the limit to 0 and rearrange the sum when AO/CAP = 0.5 aka 2(AO)=CAP

but now i have to go to bead ready for work and am to tired to bother. just plug the formulea into an excel spreadsheet and plug in some data points(amount of WK owned for a set cap) to plot it on a graph. and change the scaler accordingly to get a gaph whos shape matches twigleys. aka its maximum gain rate (PEAK) is at a value of half that of the cap. Ill do it tomorrow if you havent come up with the answer before then. or tell me an exact value at which you want you're maximum rate of WK production (50% of cap 60% of cap 80% of cap and so on)

 

[willymchilybily]

okay done it myself. so for
WK
gain rate= (AO*0.08 )*(((CAP-AO)/CAP)^2/5)

the graph is like this ( the different graphs are for different scalers, read previous post for clarification of what i call a scaler)

so compared to twigleys

except im still not sure if twigley means he wants what ive posted. or literately it to be rate divided by amount with respect to time honourable, as my graph on his axis looks like a straight line of negative gradient..... i think he means the amount gained per time should be the shape of his graph. so as time goes by the gain rate drops off.

if he does actually mean he wants exactly what his graph represents then im confused as to what the actual outcome would be and the affect it would have on the gain rate

i also thought you may wish to see how these graphs compare to the current H/F gain rate (the 0 scaler brings the multiplier to 1, and thus the zero represents the current h/f gain rate.) obviously the maximum gain rate is so much smaller because its only 8% gained if it were the same code as i suggested with 20% gained the graphs height is much more reasonable with respect to the original this is represent by curve 1a
where the original gain rate is 20% not 8% and the scaler is 1