Fame earnings through gold earnings

[Most Lee Harmless]

My suggestion was two-fold : my last post was just addressing the second part : fame gain/loss in battle and how it can better reflect the relative strengths of the combatants.

The first part was directed more at what you suggest is the problem : that is to make fame gain more reliant on actions taken that strengthen a player : so, trading, building ships and banks, etc, would all add fame relative to the value of the action : a good example being CJ's suggestion of a 174k fame gain for building a SotL. Building or upgrading a bank should also build fame in a similar manner. I agree cashing in party stocks should attract the same gain as directly selling those stocks into a port would.

This kind of fame gain would be hard to shift without recourse to lots of voodoo, and the expense in turns required : or it would require a significant number of battles to be lost. There-in the second part : 'battle fame' : currently, you can pretty much calculate how many battles you need to lose to get under the bar : My suggested system is much less predictable as much will depend on exactly how your foe attacks you. To maximise target fame loss would mean closely matching the targets fleet strength. Downside is, your attacking fleet becomes vulnerable itself to counter-attacks from others. Make it more powerful to resist those, and then you lose the ability to influence the targets fame loss. A nice conundrum to solve, no?

Where difficulty will arise is that 'legacy' players have already avoided much of what fame would be gained from building up an account : My war-fleets have already been built, any fame from those builds will never be added to my total should a new method of calculation be implemented. But hide-out builds will add significant amounts of fame : if we use the same metric as the '175k per sotl', then a goldsmith level one will add 3.6mil fame just on the gold spent.

So, there would be your conundrum for any large player trying to minimise their fame to avoid combat : keep your fleets but no hide-outs for you : or build the hideouts and banks and smiths, but lose the 'low-fame' protection potential.

[MAjesty]

*Danik you play this game like it's a full time job. your willingness to do so much math.. it's astounding.

what do u think about loading fame on based on net assets. i think it would be a good way to keep the big accounts from hiding in low fame.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Bit of a job calculating those assets on a day to day basis for each player.

I reckon it far better to apply the fame gain at point of acquisition of the asset then make it tough to lose it.

EDIT : Also have to bear in mind, cargo plunder, when introduced, will also diminish the economic effectiveness of the low-fame model: We have to be careful not to go overboard in addressing that issue and totally unbalancing the 'legitimate' protection it offers a player.

[MAjesty]

if that's ur only concern, u should have more faith in technology. computers are very good at calculating such things. the billionaires especially rate a fame increase accordingly, and that's just the money that''s buried in the ground. everything else already has a base value, adding them together would certainly be a non issue.

also i think a novel approach to the ""legitimate" protection model, might be to accrue vacation days. either as a credit purchase, accumulated value or both.. it's separate from this discussion but its definitely worth looking at. 50 credits. account is sealed off for 2 weeks or until u next log on. =p

[Most Lee Harmless]

Way back last year, I did propose a 'vacation' voodoo card, but it got knocked back.

Just wary about 'double taxation' : if fame has been gained on acquiring the gold ; via trading ; then it seems wrong to then add more each day afterwards. We don't want it so that traders just halt their fleets rather than gain more gold that adds more fame next day, and the day after, ad infinitum. Then who would we hunt?

[Captain dungeness]

+1
I 100% agree with a redesign of the fame gain system. I have spent a lot of time creating interesting strategies for high-fame and low-fame trading and it's obvious the fame system is not doing what the devs intended. There is excessive protection for super large trade fleets- I say this even though I'm one of them. The 25 fame protection is both helpful and unavoidable as a large trader. One Hostile Natives attack or FoJ attack and I'm going straight to 25 fame in less than 2 hours. As a large trader who gets plundered often I have been able to survive by keeping low fame and using party cards which make this BOTH the most profitable strategy AND the safest. Usually I have to choose between Safe OR Profitable but in the current system I can have BOTH, Sweet Deal!

Well, not a Sweet Deal because it's not exciting or difficult. Once I showed my strategy, multiple large traders joined in and now where's the challenge? If this was a low-profit strategy I don't think it would be much of a problem since I would only use it while on vacation or while taking a break... but this is the HIGHEST profit strategy I've seen so far. If you give fame to players for buying trade goods then you don't have this easy, high-profit trading situation. You don't need to mess with the 25-fame-protection because large traders will not be able to stay near 25 fame.

When players win battles I think it should stay 10% of their fame because a flat number wouldn't reward for winning against large players. I like the idea of a +1% to +5% fame bonus for winning a battle when your fleet's gold value is lower or much lower than the opposing fleet's gold value. This way a good pirate can take out a larger fleet for even more fame.

-Captain D

[Captain Jack]

So, to get it straight so far, we all agree to implement the following:

Plank A: Fame earned through Gold Spending
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Code: Select all

-1 point of Fame earned for every 100 gold coins spent.

As a correction for a post above, a level 1 Goldsmith will add 380k for the gold itself, not 3.8m

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Regarding Plank B, why not make it similar to the proposed suggestion for Skirmish?

Plank B: Fame earned through Battles
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Code: Select all

-Fame Loss: (10% of total Fame) / (Number of Fleets owned by loser) -> Winner loots half of this

With the introduction of Ship Specialization, we can add further modifiers on the Flagship; ie when the Flagship's fleet loses, then fame loss is 10%.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Plank A: Sorry, my math was out on the goldsmith fame earned, but the principle was solid enough!

Also need to add the fame gain for all gold earned, including party card use.

Plank B : That could work :

My only caveat would be the case of single ship/fleet raiders : currently there are few ways to deal with such, having such low-value ships at risk and low purses carried, using voodoo on them becomes impractical, expensive and largely pointless : this formula would also reduce their fame to below the bar in what 12-13 hits on them? Thus, as long as they carry a purse sufficient to meet the plunder costs of those hits, they would become largely invulnerable to any serious attempt to de-fleet them, the only punishment available as is.

[Jessy's Dream]

We need to either choose gold spend or gold earned option. The gold spent option is a more solid option.

There are two important reasons:
The gold spent option will take in mind all the current wealth in Avonmora whereas a gold earned option will start counting from now on.
We are speaking of a good sum of gold coins available now in Avonmora; 6B in nation treasuries, 700M at hand and 9B in the ground, a total of 15.7B or 1.57B fame. Fame that the gold owners should not lose. If we choose the gold earning option, they will lose it. With all the positive and negative aspects.

The other reason is what CJ said; it is difficult to measure earnings and even if we do, it will lead to uncontrollable actions for the player. For example, a Generosity card adds gold coins. If we meter is as earnings, then it will also add fame points. Same goes with Bank Balances, if we meter them as earnings, then we again create the same problem. We will need to create one rule above another in order to make it right.

We must not make the fame formula for battles too detailed on cannons,crew and ship types. We can have two big categories; Flagship Fleet and all the rest fleets. Easy for all to understand and it will work with most players, who have 1 good war fleet. Ship Specialization is not far away and we will get to see the whole picture soon. If it does not work, we will revise again.

If no one else has anything of substantial value to add, I suggest we finalize this and move it directly to announcements forum so it can get implemented as soon as possible, once 10 days pass. On development side, it is a tweak, which means that we need few time to implement it.

[MAjesty]

The party card loophole. Will people be able to generate wealth through the party cards, but not gain fame?