Uhm, yeh. I know that.

I'll say it again...

If the sysop wants ppl to have a hard time capping ships then all they have
to do is remove the combat scanner. That way it takes at least 2 waves to
cap the ship.

If you're slow enough to sit there for someone to send a ton of single wave
shots at you, then frankly you deserve to get capped. I have no sympathy for
idiots.

If you do have a "capture randomness" then make it a sysop option that
can exported with the TWA. Some people might want 0%, others might want
a 1%, or a 50% or whatever. It'll vary. IMO, 60% is way too high. It actually
takes a little skill to capture manned ships.

As for alien capping, that's just your personal opinion. Everyone has one and
we're all entitled to our own. Just because you feel it's a bug doesn't mean
it should be eliminated from the game entirely. If a sysop doesn't want alien
capping then they just have to make the ships worthless.

Well, the sysop option would be fine, however I would think even a 10% chance across board would be sufficient. The reason I think alien cashing is a bug, is that I'm sure J.P. didn't intend it to be a form of cashing when the idea came about. Plus the fact that in many games where ships are being captured and sold in such high numbers, it can cause file corruption. I've seen it happen quite often and can cause some really weird things to happen. I'm sure a change like this might effect a couple of people with alien cashing scripts, but they'll adapt and find real ways to cash.

Scottie says: "Captain! We're dead in the water and the Romulans are planning on boarding the Enterprise!"
Captain Kirk says: "Start the self destruct sequence immediately! If we go down, we'll take them with us!"

Yeh, but you're missing my point. Edits where people cap aliens for cashing work because the
ships pay more than the cost of the figs lost. In an edit like subzero, this only works because
the alien ships sell for like $9m a pop, and that one of the big ships has a gbonus that's massive.

None of those would be possible if you either reduced the cost of the ship, or eliminated the
gbonus. This is not a bug in the game, it's a feature of the edit. JP can't exactly prevent sysops
from making edits that stretch the limits of the game, or result in unintended tactics. If sysops
want to be free to do this, they should be able to.

If the sysop of the game doesn't like alien cashing, he/she is free to change the edit. Remove
the gbonus, reduce the value of the ships, whatever. Alien ship capping works as intended, it
gives the sysop an opportunity to create a unique style of game. If a sysop believes that it
corrupts files, then he/she is free to do something about it. But not everyone has that problem.

If you don't like that people alien cash, then the answer is very easy: Don't let people do it on
your server, and don't go into games where people do it. You can't just prevent others from
doing it just because you don't like it. If you extend that logic, then stuff like megarobs and
SDT could be considered "fake cashing" too.

My only concern with changes like this goes to that philosophy. As long as changes are optional,
then they improve the diversity of the game and appeal to a wider variety of players. If the
changes become mandatory, then for each player you gain you risk losing another.

IMO, the sysop should be free to make his/her edits do whatever he/she choses. That way we
have a wide variety of sysop opinions, a wide variety of edits, a wide variety of appeal to a
wider audience. If a sysop wants to make a game with alien ships that sell for 100m, then so
be it. If a sysop wants to make a game that doesn't allow SDT, then so be it. To each their own.

It's freedom baby, yeaaah.

Alien cashing might also be eliminated if the ship had no pod and was not capturable as well ?

Thus making the carbo real dangerous.

just a thought.

Simple solutions are usually the best. Allow the Ops the ablity to configure if a ship can be capped or not, and players will either play or they won't. It would be nice if the ship and planet information that the game gives was actually useful and provided information about if a ship can be capped (and other tidbits).

Alien capping is a different subject really, but some people enjoy playing that strategy and since we are wanting this game to grow, then let them. Not everyone wants to pay a 900 turn game with stock ships/planet, and others stay away from unlim killfests with hyper ships and planets.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

What it all comes down to, is should capturing a ship be a science or a random chance. As far as alien cashing thing, I expect J.P can decide himself whether or not it was meant to be part of the game or is a bug in itself.

Good debate, guys. It's good to see the many sides of the issue. I'll give it some thought.

Why not let that be something the sysop decides?

Alien capping is only a problem, if the edit doesn't give the aliens enough muscle. I've seen a lot of edits where the aliens are creampuffs. If a ship is worth $9,000,000 you should have to fight like hell to get it.

Wayne

Nod. In this particular edit, the aliens are aggressive and well-armed. 280,000 figs, crazy offensive
odds and a mean temper. The reason people can cap them is that the "Enterra" ship also holds a
lot of figs, an IG, has like 4:1 defensive odds and gbonus to boot. So you go in, pop a planet, turn
on IG and shoot like 17000 figs at the alien on the first shot to take out their shields. They will
return fire with a full wave of figs. From that point you just shoot a bunch of 1 fig waves, and
every time you do the alien will return fire w/ a full load. Against a gbonus like that, it's not even
scratching the paint.

Eventually the alien will have no figs, no shields. The next fig you shoot caps it. They're worth
somewhere between 4m and 6m a piece, with millions in corbo too. So you end up with between
7pm and 10m per ship. Once you get the pattern down it's easy to do by hand, and some people
have taken to scripting it.

Given that it takes maybe 20k figs to cap the alien (often less), you're looking at costs of 4m
or so max. That returns a net profit of several million per cap.

Naturally, all of this requires specific settings in the edit. It wasn't just an accident, it was built
as part of the edit. Otherwise any number of settings could be changed to eliminate this.

i think all ships should be cap-able. but shouldnt everything be configurable if possible? i like the idea of it being a variable

Which indicates a problem with the AI, the alien should have gotten the hell out when the number of figs drops below a certain point (by Transwarp if the planet has an IG).

Wayne

The planet you pop is level 0. No tpad, no pwarp. You use your ship's IG to
hold the alien. It would leave, if it could. You get IG tug messages all the time.
You do need to pull the fig from the sector, otherwise it will retreat off a
defensive fig.

Sometimes the alien does land, or port, and you have to wait for it to lift. But
it won't sit and hide on the planet for long.

The AI can be configured down to not attack players like this.

As I was saying, this particular edit is configured to behave like this. It was
intentionally engineered to make alien capping profitable. There's a dozen
things you could change, if the sysop was so inclined, to eliminate it.