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Comments
HA. Me kill someone. That's rich. Disregard my comment.
With regard to other spawns, @Sarapis already built (and was ready to implement, apparently), a 'mini-lode' concept. However, he seems to have dropped that in favor of more frequent, smaller lode spawns. I do agree with you, though. I've shown up a few minutes late to random lodes spawning. It makes it very difficult for someone new to jump into the system, because there's rarely any unclaimed lodes available. And if they do get lucky and find something unclaimed, there's still enough scarcity that they'll be targetted, likely fairly quickly, by people who have been in the biz longer.
Maybe like 25% of the defending legion should escape before they are annihilated.
One second thought, not that either. Then people would just get friends to attack with 1s until they get level 20.
It won't be that specifically, but we're likely to put in some kind of negative feedback loop to accomplish something like that, or narrow the effectiveness between level 1 and level 20 squads.
For defender (warning, massive block of numbers):
And for attacker (similarly massive block of numbers):
Defender:
- ~71,000 : current market price for a large mine at commodity market prices
- 20,000: expected loss from lost legions
Attacker:
+ 71,000: Free large mine (sure, this is 'savings', but same deal)
+ <whatever current storage is>, say 10-20k when sold on average
+ profit per hour of the commodity you're mining
- cost of lost legions (10k?) + training time (free!)
And presumably the defender has to claim storage frequently, because they're very likely to be attacked, while the attacker won't have to claim storage because they are rarely, if ever attacked.
It seems like as long as you can attack (specifically, you have enough higher level legions in reserve to then defend the mine), you should attack.
This leaves the newcomers with the only option of getting into the game being to keep building large mines until the attacker run out of high level legions. Currently, it seems like lode spawn rates are too slow for that. The higher level players take all the large nodes, and by the time they're mined out they have a fresh supply of legions to stomp with.
Also, I'd personally pay the mining costs at a loss to operate an iron, coal, or stone mine and hopefully get enough commodities out of it to build a new mine, because I really don't want to pay anything to the mine barons.
Second, you are ignoring any profit the defender might make for their storage and profit per hour.
Third, being the aggressor is costly for your legions. True, you can use the conquered mine to help level up squads, but often times you will need to start fresh with level 1 squads.
Fourth, I think you're drastically underestimating the potential cost of lost legions. (training time is also not necessarily free, as the mine can be attacked by someone else fairly easily)
Every time you attack, you risk losing higher level squads/units. It's entirely possible to lose all your high level squads in an attack. Now, if you are going it alone, without the support of an organization (house, city, etc), then when your mine is attacked and taken that's likely the end of it (unless you have extra squads sitting on the sidelines, which could easily happen if you are waiting for new lodes to spawn). Otherwise, you could coordinate with those orgs to counter attack. Anyone who attacked you is going to have weaker forces, and thus be easier to attack.
The other thing to realize is that the level difference between say 1 and 5 isn't that great. This is mostly due to the +10/20% bonus your squads could get. Most people seem to have a mix of soldiers, meaning that even if you have lower level guys, if you're defending, you have a strong shot of holding off an attack (or dealing significant damage to the attacker). People who consistently attack are going to consistently have lower level squads anyway.
- This isn't really relevant. We're talking about new people getting started. Yes other people have mines (and can attack each other). No, the people getting started can't attack them. New people cannot themselves level the playing field.
- This was what I was referring to with the claiming storage bit. People not highly ranked will get attacked within the first few (or one!) hour(s) (or maybe it's just me?), so you have to claim storage aggressively. Nothing spawns at rate of 4k gold/hour, ergo, I don't include that as part of the defenders income (/costs).
- I understand that you will lose some legions (maybe all - though no attack I've defended has been successful), even against level 1 defenders. But more established players generally get to choose when to spend their legions. Obviously, if you throw all of your legions at attacking a mine you're in trouble, but you can always (and should!) choose to hold some higher level soldiers in reserve. The new guys don't - they get attacked every time they build a mine!
- This is the same as point three. If you keep 200 trained legions in reserve, you should be able to rebuff most attacks and train the news guys. Sure, it might be slow, but it's faster then the people that keep losing all their legions.
- Just probabilistically, these should generally wash out if you're using a mix of soldiers. You will get lucky with some squads and unlucky with others. On average the average will be what's happening - that's the definition.
Are the top players having their legions wiped out every couple hours from attackers, and I just don't realize it? If everyone is constantly at level 1, my arguments don't make much sense, but it doesn't seem that way from my experience.
To pull an example out of a hat, do we really think that Proficy is carefully managing troop costs, carefully selecting lodes, and carefully choosing targets to make sure his bottom line is positive? Or does he just enjoy Pokemon battles and has plenty of money to spare from his UW/Annwyn bashing trips? If the latter, the "profits" of mining are really just a "bonus", compounded by the lure of exotic minerals that help with his other primary interest: fighting. To a player like that, the costs that are supposed to be a balancing or gating mechanism for mining aren't really a factor, he could sustain serious monetary losses for long periods of time and not really care, because profits aren't why he participates. (Thought they don't hurt.)
Now, to a degree, this is just capitalism in action and not really "broken", but that does run the risk of falling victim to the same problems that actual capitalism has run into, where small cabals of magnates are simply too rich to be unseated, and develop a de facto monopoly on the market until they get bored or go dormant. On one hand I feel the system was intentionally designed that way, to be cutthroat and give rise to a few powerful mining magnates rather than something anyone and everyone gets to participate in, but at the same time, it does seem unreasonably difficult to break into the game, given that some players already have the head-start and will just have no regard for the costs they have to pay to remain on top.
It's clear that Mhaldor is working very well together, which allows them to hold a large percentage of lodes at all times, but they do so by specifically targetting newcomers in mining. Perhaps it would help if it only showed the top 20/50 in rankings mining?
Intentional or not?
The issue is that people are likely afraid to attack the mine of a top ranked player. So that player is given a free pass to level up legions, which are then used in attacks (sometimes suicide attacks). And then the cycle repeats.
Now that I think of it, I do want to address your second to last point: The reason this doesn't wash out is because the defender attacks first. Let's say you're very outmatched, level 5 attackers versus your level 1 defenders. Your guys have a 16.67% chance of killing a unit, while theirs have a 66.67% chance. If both groups have a mix of soldiers, then your defenders will always have a 26.67-36.67% chance of killing a unit. Your units attack first. Even though you have less of a chance to take out an attacker's units, your first strike means they'll have less units overall, and thus less of a chance to wipe you out. And even if you do end up losing overall, they'll take a fair amount of damage in the attack.
I've done some limited attacking, and a bit of defending as well. I can honestly say that defenders are fairly strong.