still oozing its vile bile of guile under our communty's victorious boots, it is time to consider the future of this server.

Slagpit has said that altering gov types is not on the table for the foreseeable future. That debate has to be held but the one year anniversary of the gov type changes is coming in a couple of months so that is a natural time for that debate. On a side note, i think the winner of the last set was an F for most of the set if true then

noble slagpit was right.

The debate that is on the table is what to do about spies on the server. I believe that spies on this server are 84% weaker as revenue sources than they are on primary.

Yes 84% weaker.

Something has to be done about that to keep the server in balance.
The factors which figure into that calculation include the fact that in express you only get one spy op for every 3.6 turns while in primary you get one spy op for every turn. In addition, on express the techers can hide 45% of their tech on the market while on primary they can only hide 25%.
The reduction in power as a revenue source is not universally mourned. Some netters think spies ought to be banned and that LGs ought to be outlawed.

i propose we consider the impact of the oct10 changes and the subsequent forum posts by the cheating-whiner, JJ.
After his noobish move of leaving 40 million bushels vulnerable he whined for three straight sets. As a result slagpit, dantzig and i all posted the information that there is no reason whatsoever for any stock to ever be vulnerable to spies. With these lessons in mind, many players hid their stock last set.

In sets past, there were five or six players with $1.9B in cash stock defended by minimal defense and few spies. This set there was only one between 60 and 12 and only one who had a ton of spyless tech. There were none with stupid high food stocks. If players in fact keep hiding their stock on the market, then spies as a revenue source under the current rules are obsolete. There was only one player who had over $1B and five or six with just under $500 million. My belief for advancing into the top ten is that a high spy jetter country has to get seven $100 million dollar hits, there was only one available last set.

Even though spy ops are tightly restricted on this server, it still costs just as much to manufacture spies.

My proposal is that we greatly increase the yield from the small amount of spy ops we do allow.

thanks for your consideration, and as always reasonable responses welcome

Let's make this server the exact way you want it.

Screw the majority. If Gregg is not happy we can not rest.



You are the only person I have seen complain about spies on this server.

i used to complain about spies a lot. that was more to do with success rate, but they are better a now.. a bit too much on leash, but that's just personal preference.

i think that there's still plenty need on this server to keep a few spies around as defense from those like gregg... but on the whole, we shouldn't change the server so that lots of spies will trump any other strategy going.

i feel the balance is pretty good.

I'll eat crow and admit that Slag and several others were right about F being competitive in Express. What's funny is I repeatedly spied on the winner while he was an F to see what he was up to. He played a skillful round managing to keep his stock protected and his defenses high enough to avoid getting grabbed. Then he pulled off a successful gov't switch jump to top it off.

Regarding the usefulness of spy ops on this server, lincoln has a valid point. With the protection from harmful ops that GDI allows and the risk associated with performing them, they should be much stronger. It's not like you can't protect your stock and country from having your money, tech, and food stolen--put it on the market and/or get some spies and spy tech!

Consider this: If someone were to build a 20000 acre country with no defense and got grabbed repeatedly, no one would have any sympathy for them. Why is it so different when someone has huge stockpiles of money, food, and tech with no spies to defend them?

The facts that spy ops always have a chance at failing, even when your opponent has zero spies, and the chance of failing increases with each successive op is even more reason to strengthen their effectiveness.

If you don't want people to use these ops, you might as well remove them from the game. I think they're an interesting aspect of the game so I would like to see them stay and be improved to be useful in the right context.

I also agree with lincoln that spy ops should not destroy game assets as they currently do--or that ops to destroy assets should be separate from ops that acquire assets. If the assets are not destroyed, then they can be reclaimed (even if just in part) by other means (i.e. a retal LG). Perhaps the steal money, food, or tech ops should steal 0.5% and the destroy money, food, and tech ops should destroy 0.8-1% of an opponents stock? The percentage for steal tech could still be dependent on the aggressor's current tech level in relation to his opponent's tech level although I propose making it dependent on TOTAL tech instead of total of each category as it is now.

Wouldn't you get a better response without the LaEx remark?

counterintuitively,
i really do not think so

i have discovered that if i try to post a serious thread
with no mention of LaEx at all
they come on in droves and destroy the thread with volume
as an example i give you the thread about Fs that pang and qz were reading but that you had to close because they contaminated it with personal attacks

it is not the first time they have destroyed an attempt at serious game theory by jumping all over it and posting stream of consciousness gibberish in order to derail an idea

there are countless examples of this phenomenon

once warster ruled that he would not delete twitching pancreas posts because of the value they added to the thread
the thread was destroyed

i think it is one of their tactics to prevent this server from become the most popular server on the site

What is LaE and why should I care. Nukes should have a .0001% research success ration and instantly decrease the targets NW by 50% if it successfully gets through their SDI.

Don't fear the reaper.

gregg, don't you think people know by now that WHEN anyone disagrees with you, you automatically categorize them as being LaEx?? In your technicolor world, having a thread destroyed by droves is just people actually disagreeing with what you have to say.

You're full of crap lincoln,

you wanted every single post they made to be deleted, and that they should be banned, I dont delete posts just because you want them deleted, some of their posts were commenting on what you wanted changed or that you were discussin.

As players they have every right to disagree with what you think about game issues.

Everytime you want a serious discussion you always throw in a line about LAE, you claim you dont but every post I've seen has a comment aimed at Lae or its members.

How about you drop the whole LAE crap and just talk about the gameplay issues you dont like/do like.

gregg considers a thread "being destroyed" as any thread where no one agrees with him. It's all in your definition.

now that gregg killed LaE and they are called tctGk that should be easily accomplished

warster, your statement simply is not factual
there are countless threads through many months where gameplay issues were raised and tctGk was never mentioned until after they came on with a bunch of nonsequitorial homophilia.

everything i said is true or didnt you read it at all????


I said every post ive seen, i'm not going to go back and read old stuff that has no bearing on current debates

no other mod steps in to delete posts, yet i'm the one yo always attack and blame

maybe if you stopped being a jackass when you dont get your own way then maybe people would take you seriously