Skirmish Suggestions

[Most Lee Harmless]

I guess until we know more about how Specialization will work, and what benefits it will give, it's hard to balance evasion chances for different ship types : but as we already have 5 categories for basic speed I might suggest the following :

If we take a 20% evasion chance for a medium speed fleet (defined as the slowest vessel in that fleet) as the baseline ; then the speed of the attacking fleet will either increase or decrease that 20% chance accordingly.

So : based on attack fleet speed the bonus would be :

very slow fleet : evasion chance = 30%

slow fleet : evasion chance = 25%

medium fleet : evasion chance = 20%

fast fleet : evasion chance = 15%

very fast fleet : evasion chance = 10%

then to reflect the defenders speed, they also get the same bonus from their category ; so, a very fast attack on a very fast defender would give both a 10% bonus which would nullify each others advantage, giving the base 20% evasion chance. A very fast attack on a medium speed defender would give the attacker a 10% bonus, reducing the evasion chance to 10%, whilst a medium speed attack on a very fast defender would increase evasion chances by their 10% bonus to 30%.

Where this falls down slightly is that a very fast attack on a very slow defense would end up with 0% evasion chance : realistic maybe, but perhaps a minimum 5% evasion chance should remain, a lucky fog-bank, navigational hazard or other element of chance saves their day.

[Roberts]

a level 10 mow an beat almost anything thank you very much

For your information , level 10 MoWs are quite crap actually... PM me if you want to know why.

[Captain Jack]

Escape Probability

We can have escape chances from a) Speed and b)Specialization (and c, whatever we think it fits in the future, ie Voodoo)

So,
Escape Probability = Speed Bonus + Specialization Bonus + Other

a)Speed
Speed is a value from 0 to 50 (base speed is up to 50). We can use a formula to determine chances based on Fleet Speed. We can count speed difference between the two fleets.
For example, it can be this simple:
Speed Bonus = 25 + Defender Speed - Attacker Speed

Which means for same speed, there will be 25% escape bonus.

b)Specialization
Specialization could work with various ways. It can work in both directions: elimination of escape probability (attackers will specializae this) or increase of escape probability (for the defenders).

They can be implemented with ship ability points as part of the ship specialization.
Or there can be technologies that will affect this, which will be researchable in the Academy.


Protection
Another thing that needs tweaking is the Skirmish Protection feature. Right now, it is 5 skirmish defends per player. Only a few players ever reach this limit daily, mostly because there are not many skirmish points available. We expect this to rise with the rise of skirmish points availability. Before this happens, we will need a more fair system for this limit.

We are thinking to make it ship based. Here is a suggestion:
0-40 Ships: 1 Skirmish allowed
41-80: 2
81-120: 3
121-160: 4
161-200: 5
201+: 6

These limits will be calculated once, daily and not live in order to save cpu resources. Which means that the number of ships you have during the update will create the limit of skirmishes for the day that comes.


How these sound? Other ideas?

[Most Lee Harmless]

I'd suggest the reason there are not that many skirmishes taking place is that for many players, there is small value in doing them : the potential loss from the return hit from the danger gained exceeds the potential plunder from the skirmishes, unless you score lucky and hit the jackpot of a GB carrier. To illustrate : say I run 3 skirmishes (18DP gained) : assume none evade : assume I score wins on all 3, assume they are all 500 capacity tool carriers : I'll plunder about 50-60K in total : all well and good : my hit fleet now lit up, stationary and now faces a return hit for a possible 16-18hrs : thats most of a days trade for that fleet lost : if my purse exceeds 1.2mil, I risk losing all my gains : if my purse is held lower, I will probably have to pause my goldsmith : more income lost : if I have high value warships, i risk a raid being mounted to steal them, especially if I have lowered my purse. But, I get lucky, I get hit immediately and only suffer the minimum loss of 1% : So, if everything goes right, no evades, all full plunders on my hits, minimal losses on return fire, low damage on my winning fleets : I might make 40k. But, more likely, one evades, one is a howker fleet full of food or lumber and i will probably only manage to plunder 20k or so. Even worse, I may run up against a serious war fleet and lose with major plunder lost and still lit up for more losses.

Now, that risk/reward works fine for the raider with the 50-80k purse and low value sloop/cutter warships ; no complaints on that, they lose out on ever progressing beyond that so small gains matter for such small ambitions. But for folk who are not so limited in strategy, skirmish offers little beyond the lottery-winning chance of ever finding and catching one of the fabled gold carriers... oh, and then you got to beat it, as I doubt any half-sentient goldsmith will be sending them out on unarmed howkers.

I love the skirmish idea, its great for pirates, its great for small fleet raiders ; but they are the only ones who will find any economic benefits in using them. For the rest of us, maybe the odd hit for fun or spite or as part of a wider attack strategy on a specific target, but for profit...nope.

[Stan Rogers]

I'll add that Danik's described scenario fits my situation exactly. It is not for lack of skirmishes that causes me pause but rather, the lost revenue no where equals the plunder gained.
I am hoping when there are more fleets carrying GB and the plunder becomes worth the risk of danger gained, Skirmish becomes more practical.

To date, I have made more gc from people skirmishing me than I can make by using skirmish. When I am skirmished, I go hunt the Skirmisher and usually recover 2-3x what I lost from the initial attack from their lit up fleet(s). As yet, there are not enough GB shipments that I can identify to make a Skirmish attack worth my effort.

[Captain Jack]

Both stories sound well to my ears. Established traders should not be suited by skirmishes anyway and it is good to hear that you are finding ways to balance losses or even win.

Gold Bars trade will increase as Academy is coming soon.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Aye, it was mentioned that skirmish points would have some other function, such as being redeemable for other benefits : having identified that there is a large sector of the player-base for which they have little use for skirmishing with, perhaps we might have a clue as to what other uses there might be for them, and when?

[Captain Jack]

Aye, it was mentioned that skirmish points would have some other function, such as being redeemable for other benefits : having identified that there is a large sector of the player-base for which they have little use for skirmishing with, perhaps we might have a clue as to what other uses there might be for them, and when?

We mentioned it but we do not have something specific in mind. A future expansion is to allow skirmish points to be used in Adventure options or special Fleet actions. Adventure options can both involve fleets at the current version or characters in a v2.0+

Nonetheless, we are open for your ideas at this.

How about the escape probability initial values? Do they sound at all good? It is too early to tell though, we need to make a case study first, to find which is the speed of merchant and war fleets. This will lead in the creation of the formula.

How about the player protection proposal though? We do not need a case study there.

[Sir Colchian Niveus]

a voodoo like chains of justice. No skirmish attacks aloud for 24 h Uncommon card 8 turns

[Most Lee Harmless]

I'm wary of the suggested formula for protection : too many thresholds will lead to folk not stepping over them : if adding a new ship means adding a further daily plunder risk how many will chance that for the marginal gain of some extra capacity? That added risk wont be fully diluted until the player hits the next threshold, where the same issue arises once more : right now, I am 10 ships over one of those thresholds : I don't need more ships : I can get by with 10 fewer: if being skirmished was costing me daily coin, then fewer ships is the answer and thus i would reduce my exposure to it. I'm not sure the game needs a further brake on fleet expansion, skirmishing needs more trade fleets to aim at, not fewer. I'd also be concerned that the small fleet raiders would get taken out of being skirmish targets themselves pretty much all together, as few run more than 10 ships, from my observations.

The evasion probability is in the right zone : we have ship speed categories already, lets use them : fleet/convoy speeds are always governed by the slowest ship in it, so that should be the defining factor, as it is sailing speed that counts for the getaway. If the target fleets speed is rated higher than the attack fleets speed, it gets an evasion bonus : if it is slower, it gets penalized and its chances correspondingly reduced. When/if new specializations/skills/technologies/etc occur, they can be factored into that basic calculation.