I don't feel like it has any connection to the real world and it just allows people to abuse others.

Practically the only time dropping land is not abused is when you are BRed/ABed a bunch and can't afford/don't have the turns to rebuild. Perhaps make a 'conditional' drop land option for that scenario where you choose to drop an amount of land such that it no longer counts against tech percentage or SPAL but also doesn't contribute to population, food production and it is undefended. This is equivalent to holing up all your defenses and resources in some population center. This land can be freely grabbed from your country and you lose the land as if your total acreage was the same as ever. Once you would have losses that drop you below zero 'conditional land' then your land starts becoming defended. If you have 10k acres and drop 5k, you will be grabbed with standard land losses but no military losses until you are below 5k acres. If you have 10k acres and drop 1 acre, you will defend your land normally since you will be losing more than 1 acre.

There would be no buildings lost or ghost acres gained.

When dealing with conditional land I think it would make sense to have cash/food losses at some fractional, maybe quarter the rate of normal.


The downside is this could be used to redistribute land freely, however honestly people are probably better off land trading to get huge land influxes if they want to grab their alliance mates.

So, this has received a number of views now - any criticisms?

I think there should definitely be a delete option. I do not think you should be able to use it within 72 hours of making an attack, like GDI.

interesting idea detmer, like an "abandon land" option



perhaps normal DRs could apply, as well as having to "break" the defenders military, even though suffering no losses (you still have to send forces and use oil)...idk, interesting :)

Exactly, it really is like abandoning land. There is no "land pool" to abandon land too though and I am very averse to the idea of land destruction. I do think normal DRs could apply. Perhaps the way conquering the land should work is the fraction of the military you send relative to the break is the fraction of land you gain relative to normal gains. So if there is a 2M jet break and you send 1M jets, you only get half of what you would have if you sent 2M jets (of course oversending should not work that way). That way there are still standard expenses of occupying the land but it is merely "claiming" it rather than combat for it.

cede land to another country?

that could be abused pretty well i guess

That sounds unbelieavably abusable. ;)
I definitely think that once you have land, someone else should have to take it from you. You can effectively stop using it by abandoning it, but being able to give it away would create tons of issues.

The solution that I always liked the best was adding a cost to the act of dropping land.

Why does it cost something to give up land? Just from a reality stand point (sure, the amount of military is not realistic here, but whatever).

How much would you suggest it costs to drop land? Like presumably anyone who suicides will have enough cash on hand to drop the land. At the very least they could sell off military on the private to fund dropping land.

One potential solution we discussed at one point was:

1) we bring back the free 15A;
2) every day, land dropped gets put in a "land_pool"
3) at the end of the day, set end_day_land_pool to land_pool and then end_day_land_pool/(total countries) is given in addition to +15A (rounded some way) and subtracted from land_pool

4) Dead land or Deleted land would be put in the pool;


that way land would never disappear from the game, but would be redistributed to everybody else in the game.....


thoughts?

I have never liked 15 free acres, however if dropping land is kept, I do think redistribution is preferable to disappearance.

Dead land is an interesting issue. In an FS you might see 10 countries with 20k land die... so 200k free acres given to 750 countries is 267 acres/country. Sure could mess up a TMBR (I suppose they can drop the land in turn... maybe an 'opt out of free land' option would make sense)

The one real downside is that this doesn't really give any victims a chance to regain a significant amount of their land.

right

one of the other solutions we discussed was basically....

if you grab land, then drop it, just return it to the other country... maybe if they make one attack.... it's like invading and leaving, they'd just take it back instantly...

but actually coming up with good logic to handle that is a little odd....

Right. There are obviously a number of time-dependent (which are in my opinion non-desirable) ways to handle this situation.

1) Dropped land is returned to whoever it was grabbed from within 24 hours
2) No dropping land within 24 hours of grabbing
3) a. Dropped land from the aforementioned land pool being distributed proportionally by land lost by attacks over the past day. Clearly this would only be 'fair' for acres dropped, not killed.
b. Being distributed as described above however taking a cut for all other countries if the total exceeds a certain amount, say 5 acres/country. As an example for 750 countries in server, if more than 3750 acres enter the pool in a day, then all countries get 5 acres with the remainder being divied out to those that lost land. I feel like that might give suiciders incentive to grab and release amounts of land that would get it distributed evenly with little left over for victims.

Not being able to drop land that you have gained in the past 72 hours seems reasonable. Why do we need to make it any more complicated than that?

I think that is one of the better solutions. Even 24 hours perhaps. The big downside is such limitations could inhibit stonewalling.

in all types of war situations a player might be grabbing for bushels, cash, buildings, etc. not being able to drop the acreage for 72 hours is a major downside.

i like the idea of dropped land going back where it came from

would stop grabbing to hurt someone rather than benefit via retal policy abuse/gaming

yea, going back where it came from works; but it's a hugely complicated problem programming-wise

maybe we'll come back to this problem when we've sorted everything else on our plates out heh