lower injury rates on converted or bribed units.

[Chewie]

because im sick to death of my lessers dying then 80% of them returning. And really should free bribed or converted units gain such massive injury rates? You don't have the capability to train them so surely you should have limited ability to heal them.

[f0xx]

Agreed, sounds kinda silly...

That is ofcourse from a gameplay point of view.

[Nonny]

Disagree strongly! Why should my bribed terrorists or any other units have a lesser injury rate because you don't want what your chosen route provides?

If you don't want you're lessers, keep sending them off to get killed until they stop coming back. I did it with my combines and they're a lot slower!

Personally, I'd rather a trash option to get rid of units you don't want.

[f0xx]

Briber branches already have an advantage.... there is no injury rate if your units get bribed... give them some of their own medicine I say...

[Nonny]

Bribers go last, that's their downside.

You get injuries on units not bribed as the vampire bug has been fixed, so it's hardly a huge advantage.

[f0xx]

What does the vampire bug has to do with bribing? You puppetmasters can get 70% injury rate, but your target's SAs or assassins will get none!

This plus the fact that the units you kill (bribe) actually become yours is QUITE a huge advantage don't you think?

[Nonny]

So huge an advantage to make up for the pitiful initiative that the highest value ranking top ten briber is value ranked at 43......

If it's so huge an advantage don't you think bribers generally would be featuring a tad higher?

[f0xx]

What does rank have to do with all this? If you are using it to proove that the route sux then you failed miserably.

[Nonny]

Prove that the route sucks...?? Where did I say that?

What does it have to do with it.......

K, let me put it like this:

What does the vampire bug has to do with bribing? You puppetmasters can get 70% injury rate, but your target's SAs or assassins will get none!

This plus the fact that the units you kill (bribe) actually become yours is QUITE a huge advantage don't you think?

QUITE a huge advantage, to quote you, as bribers keep their original staff as well as bribed. Staff have a score value, ergo if bribers are keeping more staff than others because of injuries they will have higher scores and this will be reflected in the value ranks.

If you're not complaining that bribers get to keep more staff due to bribing others and keeping their bribed units through injury, what are you complaining about?

[f0xx]

I am not complaining about anything, I am just saying that:

1. It is not fair for bribed units to have no injury rate while the attacker gets 70% of his units back + the bribed units.
2. There should either be injury rate for the bribed units (from non briber's point of view) or the bribed units should have no injury rate once they become property of the briber.

That is what I am saying.

Oh and there is no puppet player in top 10 (for example) just because there is no puppet player in the top alliances,
which does not mean that the route sux, it means that it takes a skilled player to play with it. Or atleast that is how it used to be before... nowadays every 5 year-old-kiddo can play and pwn with it... just as it was the case with SAs and TLs in the past when there was XP and Bounties...

[Nonny]

So, in essence....

All the top players who are playing to win have missed the fact that this route is now a piece of cake to play and obliterates everything?
I assume it's not become just puppets now and that all the bribe / convert route have it so easy too?
In which case why is the vampire player in interlude, (the leading alliance), not miles ahead of his team-mates given his big advantage? As opposed to being rank 52.


I think the injuries just make bribing a more practical route for more than before as bribers do such poor damage for cost compared to their other LET counterparts and fire so late. Their init's is something you still haven't commented on?

It's not as if the game has ever been awash with bribers, and they're hardly dominating the rankings now despite this apparent gross unfairness you percieve?

[f0xx]

I never said that route "obliterates everything". I am saying that it is more powerful than it should be, that is only due to the new injury system.

I never said it is easy to play with, I just say it is MUCH more rewarding for experienced player to play with puppets than to play with robots for example (as it was with SA and TL in the past)

Also, we already made a comment on converting units, they DO get injury rate (the units that get killed by a converting unit).

And lastly, a good player in a winning alliance will be top 10 no matter what route he plays. This does not mean that the route is better than other given route.

Now you main argument - If the puppet route is so good, why noone from the winning alliance plays it?

This is a huge subject I can discuss on it for hours... but to put it simple - our playerbase is conservative. There are some of us which like to experiment more than others (such as DarkNoobster). Such people spot potential "betterness" in certain routes, "abuse" it and thus make the route much more powerful than an ordinary route in their hands.

Small example: Dunno if you remember, but back in the days noone used to bounty hunt. Then came DarkNoobster who was single handedly opposing top players and even zeroing them sometimes. Few rounds later there were tons of BountyHunters and the red titles could be counted on your fingers. Those were nightmare for the leading alliances, eventually the BountyHunters learned so well to abuse XP and the bounty system that Azzer ended up removing those two.

End of the example.

This answers your question which was: If the puppet route is so good, why noone from the winning alliance plays it?
The simple answer is that people still havent realised how powerful the route CAN be.

At the end you wanted a comment on Puppetmasters' initiative...

Here it is:

Do you really think that a route having those stats -

Puppet Master LET Bribes [all] ALL LET 820 5 £90,000 *** ** *** ***

can have a low initiative? You must be joking...

[Subdivisions]

Haha, I have to agree with f0xxy, my pnap restarted just a few weeks ago to play puppets, and he's already top 100. I almost feel sorry for all the poor souls he bribed from :P

P.S. Even with this alleged 'fix' the bribing is unfair. I am striker and attack a lot of robo players ofc, and I can usually do about 5x the damage to them as they can to me. And because I heard striker is good against vamps, I figured I'd give it a shot...and I only did like 2x or 3x the damage, which is no biggie to me since striker should counter robo more then anything. But! I got basically zero returns from the attack on the vamp player, which makes my damages completely not worth it! And, the target was 30% of my score, so I would think I should at least come out on top (which is not the case with no returns)!

[Melnibone]

TBH guys i have to disagree simply because a bribed unit has been co-erced to switch sides by the political skills of puppet masters or recruitment officers, or in the case of vampires and scrapbots have been converted to another type of unit nonetheless whether its a terrorist leader or a lesser vampire thats been taken they are still a unit in their own right providing score and troops to the respective player whos 'bribed' them and should be treated as such

I can see no reason why a terrorist for example should not recover just as well in a puppet masters force as it would in its original thug army, if you feel that briber routes are currently unbalanced then ofc suggestions to balance it are welcome but imo this isnt it

[willymchilybily]

Personally, I'd rather a trash option to get rid of units you don't want.

cant be done because of score drop capabilities. if you can drop score to trigger ar and keep land. it would be unfair.

As for the topic of bribed/converted units. i agree entirely with Melnibone. As a briber you gain score through bribes not land. if your bribed units didnt get the same rinjury rates as every one else it would make the route far too weak. and easy to kill.

this "advantage" from bribing has always been there. You didnt get insurance for anything that got bribed. in that respect the units power hasnt changed. all that has changed is it affects alliance and solo's now. where as before in an alliance you dont get insurance it didnt matter. Now every one gets injuries. so it effects everyone. it just makes it balanced between solo and alliances. As before solos were more at a disadvantage from being bribed. If anything its more balanced. (and the reason solos got the insurance was to make it fair between alliance and solo)

[Nonny]

cant be done because of score drop capabilities. if you can drop score to trigger ar and keep land. it would be unfair.

Ahh yes, true. Delayed action trashing....?? Then again, is it worth considering further? I think not, I concede. :)

I never said that route "obliterates everything". I am saying that it is more powerful than it should be, that is only due to the new injury system.

No you didn't say obliterates everything, but you did say it could be used by a 5 year old who would pwn. As a user of exaggeration to prove a point myself it half hurts me to bite you back with it, but only half. ;)

Do you really think that a route having those stats -

Puppet Master LET Bribes [all] ALL LET 820 5 £90,000 *** ** *** ***

can have a low initiative? You must be joking...

You're putting words in my post again!! I never suggested the init should be lowered. I was highlighting that bribers are already penalised by having a lower bang for buck compared to other LET's and being a lot slower. I think those penalties balance them fine as they are.


Re: The bounty example, I see where you're coming from but it's pure conjecture. I disagree that bribers will get as strong for two reasons.

1) Bounty hunting relied on speedy units hitting hard and fast before dying, that's what allowed them to attack upwards score-wise. I confess I missed out on the bounty hunting phase, so I could be wrong but I believe that was the core of it?

Bribers can't do that, they have to find a way to survive all the enemy fire. I really should look at the injury rates but, doesn't your 70% injury rate example rely on being a defender, or attacking lawfully? I believe that bribers generally attack down because of the need to survive the enemy fire and so rarely get 70%.
It's been said that the greater bashing taking place is because the higher injury returns gained from attacking lawfully don't make up for the greater losses. Losses which a briber can't buyback.

The bounty hunting problem was primarily caused by it being indefensible due to the init of the attackers, I believe?

2) Bounty hunters didn't need anything else. They just used the cash to buy more of the same and go again. Bribers can't. They have to replace losses with bribing attacks. Which comes back to the injury rates for attacking at different ranges.

Maybe the alliances should be using more bribers? At the moment the complaint is that it's impossible to hurt each other due to injuries! I still can't see bribers domainating if they do as it's such a pell-mell battle when opponents defend that you can't plan a force to minimise casualties. It's surely a bribing gamble, and that invariably works out in a net loss?

Given that it's a potential scenario we're discussing we may have to agree to disagree?

Edited - hopefully for greater clarity!?

[Augustus]

Personally, I'd rather a trash option to get rid of units you don't want.

cant be done because of score drop capabilities. if you can drop score to trigger ar and keep land. it would be unfair.

Ok, well how about selling unwanted troops? Or trading them in for other units? I'm sure people will dismiss this as abusable but this could be countered by the money received being less than the value of the troops. I think that swapping units would work better, especially if its only for basic units as this would leave little room for abuse.

Another way around the AR issue is to have a delay in the recalculation of AR. Preventing someone from self triggering by dumping unwanted troops.

[Melnibone]

Im the first to say too abusable sorry :) but itd be too easy to sell troops that only fire r/m to buy troops that fire close and vice versa on the relevant tick

As for the 2nd point again abusable through the fact it would need to be a minimum of 3 ticks to allow a full battle to occur therefore thug thiefs could send massive mobs to steal land or anyone with gargs/jeeps/hummers etc etc could rush troops in to destoy the offline solo

[Augustus]

Im the first to say too abusable sorry :) but itd be too easy to sell troops that only fire r/m to buy troops that fire close and vice versa on the relevant tick

I thought it would be abusable, just was unsure how! But what if you could only trade them in for INN's? I cant imagine there being any abusable benefit to this, especially if it is only Gards and Harvs you can trade in for.

As for the 2nd point again abusable through the fact it would need to be a minimum of 3 ticks to allow a full battle to occur therefore thug thiefs could send massive mobs to steal land or anyone with gargs/jeeps/hummers etc etc could rush troops in to destoy the offline solo

I'm not sure I fully understand this one. Do you mean that anyone who pays enough attention could spot troops being discarded/swapped/sold and use it as an oppertunity to strike before AR recalcs?

One last suggestion that may solve it is that any one of the suggestions is implemented, but there is a daily cap on what you can discard/swap/sell based on either value or quantity. I think the numbers people have in mind aren't tens of millions, so it could work. I know I've had some wheelies left for ages that I keep sending out to die in attacks/defence but they keep coming back! I'd love to have the option to discard, swap or sell them.

[willymchilybily]

this topic has now gone off topic imo. sorry.

just think that bribing routes are damn hard to play with as they have low init and arent particularly powerful. the fact that they can kill is an advantage. but the fact that they fire last makes them counterable.

there is no real problem in my opinion with bribing units keeping thier troops. and i dont think they should experience any different injury rates. due to the fact most people who play bribers successfully rely heavily on thier ability to bribe to make score. not thier land as holding land when everything fireds before you is hard.

They are a bit more deadly when they fire sure. but they havent suddenly been made any easier to play with.

and any ability to change one type of troop to another is bad. It brings back that unpredictability factor. Its more of an advantage to that route that is supposedly already to powerful.

And can i just ask. how many people who are complaining have actually played as puppets. It's by no means easy. it takes a lot of work to get decent units. And if after all that work my routes troops died easier than most id be damn pissed off.

in fact imo azzer has made the change intentionally so people that are playing with puppets route etc and trying to gain troops dont loose thier progress. because you cant just send puppets against anything and expect to win. you need to bribe what you can and tactically attack. And if you loose all those sirens you spent ages getting (to allow you to get other units) then at least you dont loose all of them if some one bigger just decideds to bash you due to your slow init.

Imo complain all you want azzer wont change it because he bought the change in specifically for the briber routes. to balance the game.

[Enrico]

Hmm then should acres you steal be less useful than acres you buy? Same difference.

A briber route is based on the fact that you don't buy staff, you steal it. Naturally the staff you steal should be 100% similar to the same staff if bought. Briber routes are slow, and take a lot of skill to play well. I can't see where the problem is. Its not like the tables have been dominated by bribers this round.

As for loosing unwanted staff? Just send the stuff you don't want on some small target guaranteed to kill it? Kills of 75% of the staff in one go as your injury-return will be punished for hitting a target much smaller than you..

And if bribers have been strengthened by the changes? Cool, means more diversity!