Poll: Should fleet caps be made the same across all marks?

[TechSY730]

@Faulty Logic
With the change of the name of the poll, did you turn on the ability to change your vote, so people who voted no before due to a misunderstanding could change it to yes?

[kasnavada]

Which if you compare against the other units they're fighting of the same mark, you'll see that those specials scale relative.

So yes, a mark 5 fighter has 5 times more armor piercing, but the stuff it's normally firing at has five times more armor.  Reclaiming going up is, again, necessary.  A mark 1 unit with reclamation firing on a mark 4 unit is going to do diddly in terms of reclamation (1/8th normal) to the point of being detrimental (not as bad as it used to be, fortunately).

I'm not fighting considering same-mark units because same-mark unit balance will not be changed by changing caps. If 49 of one ships wins against 49 or another, 98 will win against 98 except in very rare cases. Also, because it happens rarely in the game either. A mark 3 planet can be assaulted with mark 4 ships.

The point I was making is that a higher cap of ships will making lower tier of ships less useful. 98 mark 3 ships are roughly as strong as 78 mark 3 + twice the mark 1 cap. now, I'm thinking of the power players could get with 30 more mark 4 ships... If this change is implemented on player side only, it will make the player considerably stronger, leading to other balance changes. Overall, the planet defenses will have to be boosted again, as will guard posts and reinforcements and so on.

The other thing that would change is the balance between caps. A full cap of mark 3 ships may now be as strong as 3 full caps of mark 2. If this change is done, you may need 4 full caps of mark 2 to fight the same threat (numbers are indicative to show a trend, not to be taken as truth). Given knowledge unlock costs, it might make it better (or even better ?) to specialize one unit to mark 3 instead of diversifying more units to mark 2. Which might or not make the game better (I think it will make it worse, but that's my opinion only).

[Hearteater]

This change would largely buff the player.  Both waves and reinforcements tend to be Mark I-III (except for the 10/10 crowd) for most of a game.  When it does come to Mark IV planets, the player has the ability to bait defenders and otherwise divide up defenders if needed.  Meanwhile, higher caps are a straight DPS buff to the player's fleet blob.  So I don't think we need to worry about how this would affect the AI, because the player's strength increase will dwarf it in most cases.

[Faulty Logic]

I'm pretty sure I allowed that during the initial setup. If not, I would appreciate a step-by-step of how to change this, as I did not see the option when I clicked "Edit Poll."
As a last resort, I could just reset the votes, but that would inconvienience everyone who has already voted.

[TechSY730]

I'm pretty sure I allowed that during the initial setup. If not, I would appreciate a step-by-step of how to change this, as I did not see the option when I clicked "Edit Poll."
As a last resort, I could just reset the votes, but that would inconvienience everyone who has already voted.

There seems to be an issue with the forum software where not even the poll's poster can edit the ability to allow users to change votes after the poll has been posted. Presumably admins still can, but this is still a rather annoying issue for non-admins trying to manage their own polls.

The best way for us to tell at this point is to ask people who already voted if they see a "remove vote" option, or are just allowed the selection to vote again. Either one of those means the poll has been setup such that votes can be changed.

[Faulty Logic]

To Techsy730: thanks for helping me with this poll.
To everyone else: can you see a "remove vote" option?

[keith.lamothe]

On the edit poll screen there's a checkbox labelled "Allow users to change vote:".  It wasn't checked in this case, but I checked it for you just now

Not sure about the chances of people coming back to change their votes

[Faulty Logic]

Thanks for the change, but I am quite sure that that option was and is not present for me on the "Edit poll" screen.

[kasnavada]

This change would largely buff the player.  Both waves and reinforcements tend to be Mark I-III (except for the 10/10 crowd) for most of a game.  When it does come to Mark IV planets, the player has the ability to bait defenders and otherwise divide up defenders if needed.  Meanwhile, higher caps are a straight DPS buff to the player's fleet blob.  So I don't think we need to worry about how this would affect the AI, because the player's strength increase will dwarf it in most cases.

Yes and no, since boosting the player will mean future game balancing to make AI stronger. Consequences are in my previous post: whatever could be blocked by a cap of mark 3 or 3 cap of mark 2 will then need to be blocked with 1 cap of mark 3 or 4 cap of mark 2. Which in turn could or not be better for the game.

[keith.lamothe]

Yes and no, since boosting the player will mean future game balancing to make AI stronger. Consequences are in my previous post: whatever could be blocked by a cap of mark 3 or 3 cap of mark 2 will then need to be blocked with 1 cap of mark 3 or 4 cap of mark 2. Which in turn could or not be better for the game.

The change would also directly buff AI reinforcements, and potentially AI waves, so I'm not sure a whole lot of additional AI buffs would be necessary.

It would somewhat reduce the gap between fleet ships and starships, and between fleet ships and superweapons.

[TechSY730]

Well, the rename seems to have caused this to get substantially more support. As of this post, it is 19:13 in support of this change. And most likely, two people did change their votes from no to yes (as it was 15 no's before the rename, and now it is 13, though there are other ways that this could of happen)

[Draco18s]

Well, the rename seems to have caused this to get substantially more support. As of this post, it is 19:13 in support of this change. And most likely, two people did change their votes from no to yes (as it was 15 no's before the rename, and now it is 13, though there are other ways that this could of happen)

Three.  I saw it when it was at 16:16.

[TechSY730]

So, Kieth. I know that you and Chris have the final say on this (Well, actually, Chris has the final say on this, but he has delegated most of this type of stuff you for the time being). As such, you are under no obligation to honor whatever results come out of this poll.

However, given the scope of this change and its implications towards balance and how the late game plays out, would you wait until you get a supermajority of yes's before taking the stance of the community as "strong enough", or a simple majority?

[keith.lamothe]

So, Kieth. I know that you and Chris have the final say on this (Well, actually, Chris has the final say on this, but he has delegated most of this type of stuff you for the time being). As such, you are under no obligation to honor whatever results come out of this poll.

However, given the scope of this change and its implications towards balance and how the late game plays out, would you wait until you get a supermajority of yes's before taking the stance of the community as "strong enough", or a simple majority?

If there's someone here who strongly opposes the change (now that the nature of it has been clarified), I would like to hear their arguments.  Poll numbers are nice, but now we're into the realm of the "why?".

In general, I would like to make the change, as I think it would improve several aspects of the game.

[doctorfrog]

I haven't kept up with the convo, but I trust you guys so I'll remove my no vote. I was mostly afraid of homogenization, don't necessarily feel like every ship should be useful and sensible to unlock all the time, and am occasionally afraid of the game being balanced too much in the service of 10/10 players.

But these are vague fears, and this is a thoughtful group of folks, I trust y'all. No vote removed