Bounty Suggestion (with a H/F rant thrown in)

[tobapopalos]

OK, this is probably a pretty bad idea for reasons I haven't come up with yet, but I feel the bounty system could do with a major change. I'm well aware that the chances of any changes happening before The Rapture are slim, but we all enjoy discussing hypothetical changes for the benefit of the game. So here is a fairly loose idea I've been musing over today:

Firstly, H/F just does not work. So many times I've had BRs where the amount of honour I've earned is completely skewed. For instance, I sent loads of honourable pol briber attacks out and got an average 0.5 honour a tick, but on the first day of the round I had 25 hippies and 25 yobs and got 17 honour for losing land. Say what?! Absurd. And on other occasions I've gained, say, 25 honour for the first tick of an attack on an allied player, and 20 honour on the second tick when defence arrives, which blatantly should be MORE honourable.

On defence, the amount of honour you receive appears to be entirely random. Supposedly it should take into account the size of your attacker, the successfulness of the defence, the amount of defenders, etc. But it just doesn't appear to work.

Not to mention that imo the balance between green/red is majorly biased. It is far easier to get a bounty than it is to get a green title. Most of the time you will lose far more honour for a dishonourable attack than you will gain for an honourable one. Especially with a route like PoMs when I usually got about 7 honour per tick for an honourable attack, but lost the same amount an LET route would lose (maybe between 30 and 50) for a dishonourable one. There needs to be some consistency there.

So with that little rant out of the way I'll move onto my actual suggestion:

I would like to see a new bounty system where your level of bounty is fluid, and not based solely on your H/F rating.

Fame should not be taken into account for your bounty %. Gaining honour and fame should not lead to an increased bounty (see Lilow's thread for an example). So you can't go from having absolutely no bounty to having a 20% bounty straight away. It should be a linear progression as you lose honour. So you get a 10% bounty, then 15%, then 20% as you lose more and more honour.

But on top of that, and this is where my suggestion starts getting a little bit convoluted and possibly contradictory, it would be interesting if your bounty increases the longer you go without getting killed. If you get a 10% bounty and don't do anything to get rid of it, and nobody comes to kill you, it will slowly increase until either you get killed (and it will go down to 10% again) or you get rid of it with honourable attacking/defending. The amount of honour required to get rid of your bounty would be based purely on your original bounty. So if you were on -260 honour and had an original bounty of 10% and an added 10% for not getting killed in a week or whatever, you would still only have to gain 10 honour to get rid of the whole 20% bounty.

We could call the original bounty from losing honour a base bounty (for lack of a better idea. I know we already have a crappy base bounty, but I'd very much like to get rid of that), and the added bounty when nobody kills you could be your wanted level.

And that is pretty much it. Please be aware that this is basically just me putting a few random thoughts down and I know it might be a stupid suggestion, so keep the flames to a minimum

 

[Dimitar]

Would need a pretty solid definition of getting killed

 

[tobapopalos]

Would need a pretty solid definition of getting killed

Well the way I imagine it is like the AR system. You die a bit, you lose a bit of bounty. The actual idea itself is more important than the numbers. If the idea doesn't get bombed then the numbers can be discussed.

 

[Dimitar]

Well, I'm fairly sure I don't like this idea. Sadly I'm still struggling to find out why...

PS: All I know is, my gut says maybe.

 

[tobapopalos]

Fair enough

I'd quite like to hear any other ideas for improving H/F and bounty if anyone has some.

 

[timtadams]

The idea of a fluid bounty level directly related to honour only sounds good to me. But I'm not convinced of the idea of getting increased bounty for not attacking honourably (for example being inactive)

Also, just on the topic of actual honour/fame, we know the system is screwed, and it really should be fixed first before we try to come up ideas integrating it.
Off the top of my head, i would relate honour to total troop score sent (inlcuding other attackers) and total score of troops defending, as well as the score damage done and the score damage recieved (as some kind of a percentage of player scores)

i think fame would be easier to define, and it should be related to the damage you do and recieve as a percentage of average player score. In my opinion. If anyone agrees/likes these ideas, or has alternative suggestions, I may actually try come up with example formula.

 

[tobapopalos]

The idea of a fluid bounty level directly related to honour only sounds good to me. But I'm not convinced of the idea of getting increased bounty for not attacking honourably (for example being inactive)

Inactive people are less likely to have a bounty in the first place imo, and defending would still get you honour. You don't have to attack honourably.

 

[xvi]

The idea of a fluid bounty level directly related to honour only sounds good to me. But I'm not convinced of the idea of getting increased bounty for not attacking honourably (for example being inactive)

Inactive people are less likely to have a bounty in the first place imo, and defending would still get you honour. You don't have to attack honourably.

maybe inactive people are inactive because so many people play dishonorably... ever wonder what makes one inactive?

 

[tobapopalos]

People are as active as they choose to be. Nothing imposes inactivity on someone. An inactive player is likely to have more incomings, and send out less attacks, than an active person, which makes it less likely for them to have a bounty. Generally speaking.

However, this has absolutely nothing to do with the suggestion, so please stay on-topic.

 

[timtadams]

It is directly related to suggestion as we are determining what people will be affected by the suggestion. I dont agree with the increasing bounty. you get bounty for attacking dishonourably. There is no need to further increase someones bounty if they dont try to attack honourably. They get a nice bounty and players come for their heads. Is that not enough? This is opinion and it wont change.

Although would i be right in assuming you like to go bounty hunting Toby?

 

[tobapopalos]

Assume all you want. I try and vary my playstyle every round to keep the game from getting boring. This round I have a bounty. I got killed today by a bounty hunter, and a couple of hours later I made this thread. A few rounds ago I played bunkers and didn't send an attack out. The round after that I played PoMs. I'm not making this suggestion with selfish intentions, and the insinuation that I'm that petty is frankly insulting.

If an inactive player gets a bounty under the system I have suggested it will be no different from the current system. You have to get -250 honour to get a 10% bounty. Activity has absolutely nothing to do with it. The only difference is that active people will get a smaller bounty under my system because fame will not be a factor. An inactive player would get a 10% bounty atm because they won't have a massive amount of fame anyway, and under my system they would get a 10% bounty because fame has no impact. The only difference is that they have a real motivation to get rid of that bounty before it increases and people start gunning for them.

But as I've said already, it is much easier for inactive players to stay in the green anyway. If they do get a bounty then they obviously earned it.

 

[Dimitar]

Come to think of it, what toby is suggesting is actually the exact opposite of what we have going on right now. As the current bounty system takes into account both honour and fame it is possible for inactive people to "lay low" and lose a bunch of fame without doing anything, which would lower their bounty level.
I kinda like this. What I want to see is a bounty level in correlation to your exact H/F rating, so your bounty will instantly change, depending on what you do.

 

[timtadams]

I still don't see the point of it.

 

[willymchilybily]

Toby i liked your idea, but I think a base bounty should remain on everyone, dont do away with it. Base bounty keeps the incentive to battle and not worry about losses if you have a good fight with someone at a decent range. Once your break that base bounty and hit the first marker +1% bounty the concept that it can increase is fun, but there is a slight issue. The rate of increase, compared to the amount of bounty you have, would need to be linear else every one ends up at 90% bounty within a few days, or as soon as they step over the 30% bounty mark. But a linear rate of increase seems unfair to some extent, eg your at 20% bounty and some one else at 30% you and him take very similar times to hit 90% bounty, but he is twice as dishonourbale (20% on top of base of 10%; to your 10% on top of base 10%). The only way I see it working is by giving a long time for the increase. It should be around a 2 weeks before some one at 11% bounty hits 90% bounty imo. maybe even longer. I think about 5% bounty gained each day should suffice. Nothing more, else it would be to much, and there is potential to go for lower value of increase. but the game only lasts 10-11 weeks as it is.

I also like taking fame out for a sense of fairness to regaining your honour without further gaining bounty, which works for your suggestion, but i see the point in why azzer had fame. If you are dishonourable but atttack once a week it effects less people than if you are dishonourable and zero 5 members of the player base a day. That said fame shouldnt need to boost your bounty, as if you are attacking more regularly you would gain more dishonour a week than the inactive person, something i think azzer overlooked.

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[honour gripe]
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Timtadams, i dislike your change to fame. fame now is actually very good because it also accounts for effectiveness/successfulness and makes sense. effectivness also makes sense. The only thing that doesnt make sense is how much honour is gained and lost. But that actually does make some sense its just squewed. for example if you put a marker at attacking at 65% and said how far above or below that you hit relates to your honour gains/losses. eg. attacking 70% will theoretically net you as much honour as the dishonour you get from attacking at 60% So theroretically hitting 40% (which is so easy) and hitting 70% (which is doable), you would need to do 5 honourable attacks at 70% to make up for a single dishonourable attack at 40% range... And that would be fair. that is what i think the system is trying to do. But the reality is this doesnt match up, it would have been hard enough to be honourable if the system worked in this way, but what happens now is this:

i just got "You lost 18.14 honour." for hitting 53% so conversely i got a gain "You gained 28.38 honour." for attacking 126%.
-18.14 (-12% below 65%) vs +28.38(+61% above 65%). The issue now is it doesnt work how you would expect it to and how it should. not to mention the increased boost i should have got in honour because the guy was in rank 2 allie. so 3% of the allies score (an extra 47% attack range = 173% total) would have been addded to the base score that the system works on. So that should have netted me like 50-100 honour minimum based on how much i lost attacking a solo at 53%. but no -the system fails.
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[/honour gripe]

 

[timtadams]

Distracted: 27,074,075 [£132,007,330,000] enemies distracted.
Died: 25,607,306 [£62,954,487,500] friendlies dead.
Converted: 980,614 [£41,185,788,000] friendlies converted.

You gained 18,812 effectiveness.
You gained 3.76 fame.
You gained 24.64 honour.
You will soon be receiving £5,256,000 insurance.

Distracted: 20,029,068 [£134,820,671,600] enemies distracted.
Disabled: 548,667 [£23,289,723,200] enemies disabled.
Died: 129,904 [£4,339,598,200] enemies dead. 7,640,397 [£148,940,864,900] friendlies dead.

You gained 48,924 effectiveness.
You gained 1.18 fame.
You gained 32.56 honour.
You will soon be receiving £484,230,900 insurance.

The second BR summary shown was when i was smaller (having taken damage previously). 100% of the distracts were mine in the second one, whereas probably only 70% were mine in the first one. I received more damage in the second BR (obviously; see insurance most of the loses weren't mine).

Yet the first BR i get 3 times the fame. The only reason i can see for this is the pathetic amount of extra damage i received in the second BR. RETARDED.

btw, we all know honour is ****ed Willy...

 

[willymchilybily]

Yet the first BR i get 3 times the fame. The only reason i can see for this is the pathetic amount of extra damage i received in the second BR. RETARDED.

I dont think the amount your units that die has very much of an effect but the relative damages/disables/distracts do. i have two brs below showing the same damage taken. the main difference is values of enemies disabled.

The BR I got more fame and less honour on was actually a repeat attack at a higher range. both vs harriers. one i sent just poms the other i sent poms, hippyvans and loudies too. and i think that helps. having multiple units. facing multiple enemy units. doing a good amount of disabling/distracting/damage for the amount you take.

I am also sure the honour loss/gain itself is added into the fame value. seems to be i always get higher values of fame accompanying higher honour losses/gains

--------------------------------------------------------------
BR1
--------------------------------------------------------------
Distracted: 23,655,873 [£190,598,263,200] enemies distracted.
Died: 4,016,788 [£13,088,396,300] friendlies dead.

You gained 14,960 effectiveness.
You gained 19.55 fame.
You lost 61.97 honour.
You will soon be receiving £895,800,900 insurance.
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
BR2
--------------------------------------------------------------
Distracted: 22,665,810 [£88,146,373,000] enemies distracted.
Died: 4,858,621 [£12,336,478,200] friendlies dead.

You gained 19,993 effectiveness.
You gained 0.75 fame.
You lost 18.14 honour.
You will soon be receiving £331,800,400 insurance.
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[tobapopalos]

Toby i liked your idea, but I think a base bounty should remain on everyone, dont do away with it. Base bounty keeps the incentive to battle and not worry about losses if you have a good fight with someone at a decent range. Once your break that base bounty and hit the first marker +1% bounty the concept that it can increase is fun, but there is a slight issue. The rate of increase, compared to the amount of bounty you have, would need to be linear else every one ends up at 90% bounty within a few days, or as soon as they step over the 30% bounty mark. But a linear rate of increase seems unfair to some extent, eg your at 20% bounty and some one else at 30% you and him take very similar times to hit 90% bounty, but he is twice as dishonourbale (20% on top of base of 10%; to your 10% on top of base 10%). The only way I see it working is by giving a long time for the increase. It should be around a 2 weeks before some one at 11% bounty hits 90% bounty imo. maybe even longer. I think about 5% bounty gained each day should suffice. Nothing more, else it would be to much, and there is potential to go for lower value of increase. but the game only lasts 10-11 weeks as it is.

I agree that it should take a decent length of time for the bounty to amount. 5% a day sounds ok to me.

As for the whole 30% bounty / 10% bounty unfair thing, what you're forgetting is that to get to a 30% bounty he would have to have played dishonourably for quite a long time, since fame is no longer taken into account and you can't jump straight in with a 20% bounty. So he has already gone through all the lower rates of bounty to get to where he is, so his wanted level would've been increasing all that time as well. The chances of someone with a 10% base bounty and someone with a 30% base bounty ending up with a similar overall bounty is very, very slim.

 

[willymchilybily]

ah yes true. i did over look how much slower it would go upwards. fair point