Let's be civil.

The biggest problem I can see with suiciders is the dropping of land and the lack of a chance to retaliate. I agree that suiciding is absolutely necessary to keep balance in the game, but the key component that is missing now is that there is no way to ensure that the defender can retaliate.

The trick is not affecting legitimate war efforts whilst making rule changes.

My three part solution below..

1. Land Retention Rule - Newly acquired land cannot be dropped for 24 hours. There is no real need to drop land that you have recently grabbed - the only legitimate reason I can think of is if you are looking to improve your chances of stonewalling by raising your SPAL and techs. Not something a suicider should have the advantage of doing anyway.

EXAMPLE:

Country X grabs/suicides 15k acres off Alliance Y, taking his tally to 25k acres. He is only allowed to drop the original 10k acres at that point and the remaining 15k acres is up for grabs.

In-game message - "Newly annexed land may not be released until a 24 hour processing period has elapsed" or have no message and just show the amount of acres that can and cannot be dropped in the Destroy Buildings screen with an info message about the annex rule.

2. Grace Period for Account Deletion - The other part of this change would be instituting a 24 hour grace period after an attack on another country, not allowing account deletion in that time (similar to vacation mode). Sort of a cowardice clause.

Ingame Message - "You may not deactivate this account while it has made recent attacks"

3. (Optional) Revenge Multiplier - Attacks done by Country A on Country B will incur a Revenge Multiplier against Country A by Country B.

This could be calculated like this (the formula guys would need to work out a more effective ratio)- every 1000 buildings destroyed grants the defender a 10% attacking force revenge/motivation bonus in the form of the Military Strategy tech for 24 hours after the attack. (Suiciding comes most damagingly in the form of BR/AB/SS - buildings destroyed)

EXAMPLE:

Country A grabs 5000 acres and in the process has destroyed 5000 buildings of Country Bs - Country B now has a revenge factor that increases his Military Strategy from 100% to 150% (if he had no tech). This could easily reach 180% with tech. This allows that country to grab or help kill the target with the 'SEND ATTACK' screen quoting something like: Military Strategy Update - Your forces are calling for revenge! You may capture 187% More in Combat.



These rule changes might have the following benefits:

Victims of Suiciding
- Increased chance for targetted country to gain back acres in an SS attack
- Makes it easier for targetted country to profit from attacking the offender.
- Might push suiciders into more AB/BR attacks which might push netters to at least have a passable amount of military

War Consequences
- Introduces more strategy for victims who manage to log on after a kill run. A 24 hour military strategy bonus against the attacking countries. This could be an exciting change to war, giving kill-run crippled countries a chance to still be a big contributor in killing other countries.
- I can't see any other war consequences.

Issues
- What happens when Country A hits Country B, Country B retaliates against Country A? Now the suicider country A has a case for a revenge multiplier against original victim. Could be a workaround for this, not sure.


Anyway, there's my thoughts on fixing this issue. Suiciding is only overpowered because they can basically do plenty of damage with grabbing land and then dropping it, without a chance for the victim to extract revenge. I truly think that if you fix that issue, you fix the problem.

Perhaps if you put alliance NAP's etc into the actual game mechanics suiciders could be avoided. Let me explain.

Laf is FDP with TIE. We don't want any landgrabs at all on them right? So have it a possibility to limit all land grabs done by members tagged laf to 0 on TIE by some mechanic of the tag holder ingame.
Lets say you dont mind grabbing PDM for example but dont want it overdone. Keep it do 2 hits a day or somesuch? Or for tags you wanted to farm set it to unlimited.

You could also have this stay in effect for 72 hours after leaving a tag. So if someone drops to untagged you are still within your previous tags LG limits.

Suiciders couldnt happen unless they were alliance endorsed and I doubt many clans would allow unlimited grabbing of legit clans anyways. Also this wouldnt take LGing out of the game but would limit you to what your alliance felt appropriate?


rar

Yep, I've advocated for an alliance-level relations system ingame previously, but it would have to be done in a way that (a) allows a suicider to suicide and (b) not affect an alliance declaring war on another alliance. I agree with you though - if SOL has a UNAP/FDP with RAGE ingame - there could be a mechanism to stop a suicider coming from the SOL tag and hitting RAGE. NAPs though? I don't think so. NAPs are grudgingly given to non-friendly alliances to avoid topfeeding/landwars.

Suiciding is a mechanism of the game. There is suiciding - which is done to promote a cause or make a statement, and then there is cowardice - grabbing 15k acres and dropping it all.

How about all the alliances grow some balls and not recognize the "72 hour" rule.

It makes no damn sense how the alliance is responsible for helping it grow.

What if a country spends the first 2 weeks in SoF, then the next 2 weeks in PDM, then detags and immediately suicides on TIE.

Who are you going to hold responsible for allowing it to grow? PDM? The idea is ridiculous.

It is just a tactic for people to get their money back. It has nothing to do with ethics.

It discourages some suiciders surely Tan. People who actually like their alliances.

And dagga, the NAP part wasnt overly important.. it was more the ability to limit hits on tags to a certain amount if you so wish'd to do. Or allow as many as you want if you wished :P

wow

degga made a post i agree with

GREAT post dude



p.s.


SWAGGER OF A CRIPPLE

You cannot change the attack formula to thwart suiciders....what would SOL do for attack strategies???

yeah, actually all 3 of daggas ideas seem like good ones to me,

lockets ideas are OK, but i don't think they should go quite how he said them......def not for the game telling me "you can't hit xxxx cause of NAP" i really don't like that idea....maybe ingame NAP's just so it could give you a warning screen saying "this is a pacted alliance, are you sure you want to proceed with attacking?"

and for the rest of lockets idea.....i'd say, make it so you can't leave a tag for 48 hours after attacking, and also 24 hours automatic psuedo-vacation mode after dropping tag, where the only action that may be taken is to retag another alliance, effectively ending the vacation mode, and the only hits on the country may be from the alliance he dropped tag from(disallowing SS/PS......48 hours after attacking+daggas 24 hour land can't be dropped rule......allows for victim alliance to take revenge on suicider if they choose to do it from inside tag...(potentially get most/all of their land back and also able to hold alliance responsible since country is still in their tag)....and 24 hours psuedo-vacation after dropping tag....allows for the tag he left from to be able to have advance notice knowing the country MAY suicide and take pre-emptive measures and kill it if deemed necessary so that there is no suicide for them to be held accountable for in the first place.

*done rambling on *

edit: apparently not done rambling......but, also with an ingame alliance system where an alliance could dec war on another alliance, it could be made where declaring war eliminates all suicider rules so that war can commence without the military strat or whatever other rules there may be.......also i like the military strat idea because it will make those farming untags need to actually be caring about their defensive levels
*now really done rambling*

just kill the damn suicider and get it over with

Hrm, you're right - that could be a boon for a low-to-mid-range struggler who gets 10-tapped. If they can get to a level in 24 hours where they can retal at 180% Revenge military strat, they could discourage the farming real quick.

PS iTavi, killing the suicider is well and good, but that's not really what this thread is about.

I think there are some valid points up there.
imo curbing suiciders is a bit of tricky issue since many of the actions that could be taken could also alter the way wars are fought on the server. I can say that we have discussed this issue somewhat at length but haven't really reached any conclusion on what to do.

Certainly the deletion suggestion wouldn't but I can think of several ways suggestions 1 and 3 could be abused in war time. However the trade off here might be worth it.

The revenge thing is a good idea, the *only* thing is that if it were to create more ghost acres in the process then potentially it could encourage more self farming.

I will draw the game admins attention to the thread.

Account deletion, like GDI, should not be allowed within 72 hours of an attack. I think that much is 100% obvious.

As far as dealing with acres, I think my suggestion on the bugs/suggestions forum is better, but that might just be me.

I agree with land retention rule. It will cut down on stonewalling abilities some though, but...

Why not simply not have attacks gain food anymore? That would incredibly cut down on stonewalling and I don't see how that would affect wars at all. I mean I can't remember a time a warring clan blindsided a netting clan mid/late set and began with a whole bunch of SS to gain food. Not saying that wouldn't have been a good idea (it would have been) but the war clans as we all know are stupid. To take away this option from them 12+years into the game if they have never utilized it before doesn't seem like a bad deal to me.

Plus the war clans right now are highly unbalanced over the net clans to begin with. The reasons are simple they can go to war and be happy, if the net clan goes to war they are sad. There is no way LaF can force SOL to net next set, but SOL could certainly force LaF to war...

I really really like the not being able to hit people you have a unap with. I think as the size of this game dwindles, and thus it is more likely to have less mature leaders (eg the SOF leader who broke unaps a few sets ago) actually formalizing relations in game is not a bad idea...For me thats somewhat apart from the suicider issue however

errr 2nd paragraph should read incredibly cut down on suiciding. My apologies.

Ya know, there's that little 'edit' pencil in the top, right-hand corner you could have used instead of making another post...

For express:

Just raise the amount of oil that tanks consume to 1 barrel per tank. That ought to stop them dead in their tracks.

I admit that I'm running a tanker heavy country this set, and I found how surprisingly easy it was to, you know.... do stuff.

it's too bad that you burned a lot of bridges with your previous comments, dagga....

still waiting for that apology

my bad Nukevil, just started posting on these forums. Now I will make a third post about this issue:P

don't do that in Alliance, or else you will eliminate a pillar of PDM war strategy!!!1!

He just wants to get his post count up. He's a post hoar!

Burned bridges or not, a good idea is a good idea. Why not encourage him to continue being thoughtful instead of trolly like usual? I could even get to like having this dagga around...even if he does still have the swagga of a cripple :-)

@bobby--your first point....land retention rule, you should not have been landgrabbing the past 24 hours if you are currently stonewalling.....and since it would only apply to land gained last 24 hours, you'd sstill be able to drop all your land while stonewalling.

I gave dagga some pills this morning to stimulate his senses.

STIMULATE THIS!!

*points to his crotch*

It's called Viagra. I will be more than happy to give you a prescription.

PRESCRIBE THIS!!!

*points to his twitching crotch*

Dukey,

You are correct. I misread it as saying you could drop no land if you had grabbed at all in the past 24 hours. Thanks for the correction!

@martian - do you think that the changes would have a detrimental effect on war? i am more of the opinion that it would -change- the dynamics and perhaps make it more interesting with more strategies. Netters have several strats, why not increase war strats! :)

@Hobo - hmm I would agree with that change in express only. I still like the idea of preserving some power for suiciders in alliance - just as long as the recipient has some form of recourse.

@BobbyATA - for stonewalling, you can drop all the acres you had not grabbed in the past 24 hours. That should be plenty.

@Pangaea - get over yourself - first step is apologising for first censoring and then closing my game-specific thread because you didnt like it. Self importance is not endearing.

I think that would end up really sucking for late set wars, BobbyATA - Maybe just make a limitation on how many times you can drop land in a 24 hr period? Cap it at 2? 3? No waller should ever need more than that.

dagga/pang - you guys gotta get to even terms sooner or later, as you're rather stuck w/ each other it appears....one of ya's just gonna have to eat some humble pie for the sake of making things work better. Letting personal tastes disrupt good conversation is a waste...

I would do without option #3. You might be onto an idea there, but I think in it's current form it would also discourage mid-feeding, which I think the game needs.

The revenge factor actually sounds really good. but maybe make it only active if you have been hit by that country in the last 48hr or so?

"Revenge" rate seems way too strong. Especially being that almost all retals on countries that retain the grabbed land are pretty beneficial already.

Revenge factor I could see limiting landgrabbing even further if people think they'll automatically get retalled back for 10% more.

First two are good ideas.

Pang/dagga both need to kiss and make up or just ignore each other. Luckily, if Pang is going to ignore this, at least qz/slagpit should give it some attention.

If you limit the "revenge" rate to only grabs over 2k acres, it might discourage topfeeding though and wouldn't discourage normal mid-level or low-level hits.

Only if you're basis of a topfeed is on land. If its on NW then its not gonna matter much because the NW ratio disparity will decrease returns.

Under your suggestion TAN, it'd actually be pretty pointless, cause most of the times suiciders are much lower NW and are aiming for stock not land, so by suiciding at a large NW ratio like 1:4, you'd instead see less land (keeping the revenge from taking affect) and the suicider still getting plenty of stock.

The revenge thing is stupid. Especially since so many clans two-step suiciders immediately anyways.

sorry bobby, but

"I mean I can't remember a time a warring clan blindsided a netting clan mid/late set and began with a whole bunch of SS to gain food. Not saying that wouldn't have been a good idea (it would have been) but the war clans as we all know are stupid. To take away this option from them 12+years into the game if they have never utilized it before doesn't seem like a bad deal to me. "


rd did that for years. not the point you were making, i realize, but not all of us were oblivious to it :P

SoF used it successfully as a war tactic on several occasions in pre-arranged wars. Ask Tan:p

I've looked at a few of these ideas for suicider prevention over the years; i posted some on the old earth forums, and then on the Jolt forums and email the jolt admins....

but haven't really had time to sit down and churn through some numbers yet...


But i'll definitely look at feasibility of these at some point here

Suicide nerfing is easy, take away the ability of suicides to gain stock. Let me make one of those SAT type comparisons

Nerfing suiciding is to making grabbing possible/fun in 1A server what social security reform is to health care reform in American politics.

One variant on taking away stock stealing from SS is to simply cap the amount of food you can win in a grab at some % of your own food on hand, say 5%. That way if you grab with 100M food in war environemnt stock stealing is legitimate still and can be used as a tool. I can't remember a suicider who ever had any stock so...