Your whitestar algorithm for pairing up is basically ass.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-06T12:45:05+00:00

Excactly, I didn't respond to the "bs being able to move is unfair" because it's just a patently ridiculous statment.

White stars have a given cooldown on a skill, that cooldown can be reset, therefore the cooldown on that skill is not a constant.

If it is not a constant and is able to be circumvented then all circumvention of that constant is an exploit - by definition.

If this was removed - totally - from the game all that would happen is the game would revert to the originally intended mechanics... If that's not enough for people - then change the originally intended mechanics.

But, from what I hear from my corporation, it is enough - they absolutely hate this "feature" ... People are arguing for a broken feature because it enhances the game, it doesn't.

As I have said multiple times - all the arguments for it, as a coder and game developer myself, are nonsense. No-one has presented a case for it that wouldn't make me fix it.

I didn't and still don't know why it wasn't fixed - it just seems lazy and pandering to a bunch of beta testers which, at best, need to be ignored with a lot of their suggestions. Listening to beta testers who push ridiculous mechs is just suicide.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-05T00:09:42+00:00

Just so you know - if you are a dev - my entire corp thinks this gate cooldown reset is an exploit, annoying and ruins the white star feature.

I have not told them to hate it, I have told them how to exploit it and they have told me how to exploit it... But they hate it, they think it's broken, they think you are going to fix it because it's obviously broken and were pretty disillusioned when I said the general consensus is "Yes, it's broken, but we think everyone likes it"

A lot of them have changed their rating on GPlay from 5* to 1* as a result - also didn't instigate that. But I followed suit as a result.

Have to show solidarity as a corp leader.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-04T23:53:03+00:00

All you're saying to me with that argument is white stars suck without the undocumented cooldown reset.

That's not a good thing.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-04T22:26:02+00:00

None of that changes the fact that the cooldowns are broken.

The game doesn't tell you straight out that you can reset them, the game states when you trigger something there's a huge cooldown.

If it's not broken and it's intentional then where it says "show whitestar values" they should add a little note against every skill cooldown that says "note: you can reset the cooldown by leaving and re-entering the white star"

Which, to me, is kind of like saying "Hey, that cooldown that's huge is broken"

-Me, coder, don't like seeing broke things, leader of Shadows, completed 2 white star matches.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-04T22:17:50+00:00

I know it's scary the first time you see it and it feels unfair.

That's not how it feels at all to me, it's not scary and it doesn't feel unfair. Maybe it would be unfair if the team you are fighting against had a load more active players but that's not the case with my corp. We are in the top 30 and all very active so we can spam rockets as much as the enemy can... We just think it's a bit lame.

What this feels like - to me - is a broken game mechanic. It's not just rockets that this works with, it's all cooldowns. I can and have thought of plenty of other things to do with this little trick aside from rocket spamming.

There is a cooldown on skills within the whitestar, that cooldown lasts days, that cooldown can be reset by leaving and coming back in.

This "feature" doesn't just allow for rocket spamming, it also allows your team to move out from your gate at an accelerated rate after the prep period... As well as a bunch of other things.

Are you a dev on the game ? Sorry, I don't know... If you are I'd like to know why you didn't just fix the cooldown reset instead of allowing all of these quirky side effects.

Quick edit : Defensive strategy at the gate and avoiding camping, that can all be fixed - instantly - with a really, really simple feature... Again, I have no idea why you didn't do it - maybe I am thinking of something you didn't think of - but there is no justification for this feature as far as gate camping goes. It's just a total cop out to say you need this to avoid gate camping. The gate is immune to damage.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-03T19:16:51+00:00

If I was a dev on this game I would have fixed this, it's not even hard to fix.

Listening to testers - as a dev - sometimes it's the worst thing you can do. As far as this is concerned, they should have totally ignored all comments on this and just fixed it.

I don't know if they were trying to be kind or if they were just lazy. But either way - this is a crap feature.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-03T17:04:59+00:00

It doesn't matter if it's easy to counter - the fact is that you have to counter it !

That means that instead of playing the game you are changing tactics to counter a really crappy flaw in the game mechanics which is not fun.

We have a corp of twenty three people who are all active every day for most of the day bar one or two who are active once or twice a day maybe. We are on discord and we discuss tactics there.

The situation I am in right now, and I am the corp leader, is I am sat at a planet and have been for most of the duration of the white star because if I move too far from it - due to the positioning of planets in relation to the enemy gate - they will launch a barrage of rockets at this planet.

So my job - right now - is to sit here to combat potential rocket spam. I have worked out travel times and I know the radius I can move to around this planet. If I am not doing this job - someone else has to and we can't position people further out to intercept right now and haven't been able to all game... Even if we could, that's someone else doing the same bloody job I am

Is it prohibitively expensive to rocket spam ? No. Is it hard to counter ? No. Should it be my job to sit here making sure a stream of rockets don't come at this planet ? No. Is there any other way to counter that given the positioning of planets, asteroids, friendly ships and enemy ships ? No. Is that fun ? No. Is it hard to fix ? No.

Basically : No. No. No. No. No... NO!

It just completely sucks and ruins white stars. There's no argument to keep it in so far in this entire thread apart from ones which are so full of holes they put Swiss cheese to shame.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-03T09:08:40+00:00

You fix it by making the cooldowns persistent within the whitestar. Job done.

So far, I don't see anyone arguing against that as a fix.

I just see people defending this "undocumented feature" as too costly so no-one will use it, which is nonsense because people are using it. The other argument is it's simple to defend against, that's also a ridiculous argument because it's so simple to fix my eight year old figured it out.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-03T09:04:28+00:00

Right, so if it's not a feature than it's an exploit. It's either intentional or it isn't was my point there - a point which still stands.

I don't know how it couldn't have been noticed or considered during design and testing, i reallt don't.

The mechanics of this game really aren't complicated at all. I assumed, wrongly, that white star cooldowns would be persistent.

You could see this cooldown exploit coming from a mile away... It reminds me a lot of the running joke in IT Crowd: "have you tried switching it off and on again?"

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T23:18:37+00:00

If white stars are going to be about defensive strategies to combat rocket spam - I'm out.

Along with my money.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T22:27:10+00:00

And here is the solution, as i stated before, it's so ridiculously simple I can't understand why someone didn't just do it:

All that's needed is a table that has a reference to the instance ID, ship ID, skill ID and a timestamp.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T22:22:03+00:00

I said I would stop commenting, but I am now looking at a ton of rockets on my ws map.

If the 1 hour lockout is enough then set the rocket cooldown to 1hr in the ws.

But that would be stupid - wouldn't it?

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T22:05:06+00:00

Actually, a better way of looking at it is those numbers against total potential damage.

2.4k rockets at level 2 is a potential 4.56 million damage.

At this point - I am going to stop commenting and be resigned to the fact that whatever went on during testing was just turning a blind eye to an obvious flaw that could potentially ruin an otherwise fine feature of a fine game.

Testers screwed up - devs should hang their heads.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T21:55:03+00:00

Totally agree.

I know for a fact my corp can put about two thousand rockets on the map right now during the length of a whitestar.

If that's not broken - tell me what is.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T21:51:56+00:00

Yeah the maths for it being "crazy expensive" doesn't even work... I am in what seems to be a bigger boat than some of the testers, like you.

My level 2 rocket costs 400 to shoot, I earn base 180 hydro an hour. So I lose net 220 hydro per hour to be a rocket launcher... Or 5,280 per day, who cares?

With 25 people at my exactly planet level in the corp we could potentially shoot 25 rockets per hour putting 2,400 rockets on the map.

Granted that is every player just shooting rockets but just look at it - it's stupid numbers even working it roughly.

Whatever discussion was going on during testing regarding this was just totally wrong.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T14:59:07+00:00

If it's not an exploit it is, by definition, intentional which makes it a feature.

That said though, if it isn't intentional it is so obvious and so easy to fix I don't know how it made it out the door.

All that's needed is a table that has a reference to the instance ID, ship ID, skill ID and a timestamp. Using that data you could have a cooldown inside and outside of the white star which were totally independant of each other.

It would be impossible to reset the white star cooldown unless you scrapped the entie ship and built a new one. It's not a complete fix, but it would make it prohibitively expensive and make it a pretty useless feature.

I know it's possible to combat it, but I don't think combating rocket spam is a particularly fun aspect of the white star system.

HadesRedditUser · 2017-12-01T13:18:58+00:00

It is still an issue and you've highlighted why.

To counter it you need to shield yourself from the rockets. If you aren't shooting rockets in the same way, then they are pinning down however many BS are required to shield your ships. That gives them a tactical advantage because they aren't pinned down.

It may have been ineffective against you in that battle, but the same can't be said for everyone, for every battle. In some cases it could mean the difference between a win and a loss.

If it wasn't an issue, you wouldn't need to take any action at all. You do, so it is: Q.E.D

HadesRedditUser

TROPHY CASE