The Quick and Dirty on the Dual Zelos FM Fleet

A Quick Look-See

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

Again, an FM change. Again refits. But wait... there's MOAR! The Mono gets a change! What's that? Your speed-tuned fleet doesn't work now? Your Zelos is lagging behind? Let's go refit... O wait... there are escalation weapons in the FM this week for our Raid fleets... ***grumblegrumblegrumblegrumblegrumble***

Yea, it's been one of those weeks in Battle Pirates land again. I'm not sure how much more of this the community can take. On the one hand, if you refit for the 'old' 115, your fleet should be doing passably mediocre at least in this version, unless you had a speed-tuned Zelos... then you're going to be driving a bit to keep it ahead of those 'speed improved Monoliths'. Even with the heavy priority on penetrative damage on my fleet, they could pull out a couple 115s passably well. Given how many I needed, that wasn't acceptable so I, of course, started refitting (to the detriment of my Raid fleet).

Side Note :

Before I kick in on the 115 and the changes, I do want to take a minute and express my utter disappointment with the 89 target. It was excessive upon introduction and it remains excessive. This is a 'low' level target that players were relying upon in order to get themselves established or caught up in the FM. The fact that you can't pull these off with T2 tech or below is deplorable. At a BARE minimum, the Trident should be put into T1 so players have a fighting chance of climbing up out of the abysmal ranks of less-than-mediocrity. This is supposed to be a game. If you can't even see the possibility of parity on the horizon, why would you continue to engage? Just sayin'... that has GOT to be looked at.

Changes : 

Back to the 115 and the changes. The first thing that threw me for a bit of a loop was the changes to the Gridiron and Monolith blueprints. The removal of the horrendous speed up - slow down mechanic, I'm fairly confident, was universally rejoiced. It made sense. It made sense to get rid of it the minute we saw it in action when it was released. I'm not sure exactly why it took this long, but I am pretty happy about it finally coming about.

The other change however was not met with the same universal enthusiasm. A speed and turn buff were applied to the blueprints bringing them up to match the Zelos. The problem with this is that many players, including myself, fine tuned their builds so that they would either stack or trail precisely when driving. This threw everything off. To add to this dilemma, there was only 1 Zelos token available in the FM instead of a plurality of them as we were led to believe.

Add to this mix the release of the escalation weapons and we have yet another pressurized week in the game. I really enjoyed the raid as that pressure did not seem anywhere near the levels it had been in previous raids, nor the previous week in the game... or maybe the previous week just made me perceive it that way... either way, I enjoyed the hell out of the raid and then heaved an ample sigh when this all came out. Ah well... on to the good stuff!

Regularly Scheduled Program :

Many of you noted when the 115 first came out a few weeks ago, I mentioned something about an offset dual Zelos/Mono fleet. Originally the fleet was designed to mitigate the insane missile volleys from the fleets in the original 115 and to take advantage of both the stacking aura of the Zelos (primarily the accuracy buff) and the incorporation of a second duality CM into the fleet. Thankfully, the change to the 115 did nothing to mitigate the effectiveness of this design theory. In fact, I didn't have enough tokens for a second Zelos and needed the tokens from the FM, so I instead took the theory and applied it to the fleet I had on-hand first. It worked like a charm. This is the design of the fleet from the video of a no damage single Zelos run I posted up Wednesday when the 115 came out.

This is actually a better fleet to explain what I'm doing than if I just went to the final fleet build, so bear with me a moment. Let's start with the Zelos.

The Zelos lead has a bunch (maybe too many?) of gales. It also has a CM special to increase the range of the Phalanx, Gales and Duality. This is rather important because...

That extra range that I gave to the Zelos CMs comes into significant play because I have the Sprints on the Monoliths and they have no CM specials. This allows the Zelos to fire the gales well before the Sprint takes any shots at the UAVs. It also allows the more accurate Phalanx to fire before the Sprints as well. The extra bonus here? If the UAVs are missed by the gales, or they get in range between salvos, the Sprints can still take a poke at them! The CM ranges of this set up look like this:

Yes folks, you CAN do the 115 for no damage with this fleet. FLEET BUILD

The big gap in the CM ranges allows the gales to easily fire first at the UAVs thus giving you multiple chances to shoot the little buggers down. If you don't happen to get them with the Gales, when they get into range of the Sprints, they have a go as well.

That's the theory behind the basic mechanics I wanted to manipulate. A single Zelos and four monoliths performed very well in the 115 if you kept moving. The problem was the damn Arc missiles just were not getting shot down. Which meant that you had to drive the fleet like you stole it, like so:

While this is good, and I had a bunch of Monolith tokens, I was not at all pleased with having to drive my traditional mortar chuckers as if they were Icebreakers. In addition to that, given the severe memory leakage that is currently going on in the game, if I lagged at the wrong time, driving this way could get me too close to certain Coldsnaps that put a serious hurt out. Besides, I'm lazy and this is a chore. That has to be done repeatedly. A lot. There was a better way...

The Dual Offset Zelos :

This was the test mule I put out as quickly as possible this week:

THIS IS NOT THE FINAL BUILD, but, it did perform surprisingly well. The intended final build for the fleet can be found in the link at the end of the article. Currently I am not running ANY armor on the second Zelos.


Now that I knew the theory was sound I had to refit. Thankfully I had Mono tokens and I had my Zelos T2 tank I had built for an 88 NOOB article. I got some basic refits done and the second it came out, I had to try it. No armor, missing some CMs but... this was the result; Another perfect run:

Yessss.... oh yes... come over to the dark side... The interesting bit was that the Arcs were now countered. This made driving the target MUCH less stressful and I could -gasp- sort of enjoy running them- until about the third one. Then I very much did not want to run another. In fact, I didn't want to do anything in the game because looking at all the other things I had to do, well, I just decided to do something else. But I digress...

If you look at the build, you'll see the same thought process I mentioned above. The speed of all the hulls is tuned such that the lead Zelos should drive in front, giving it a hair more of a lead for the Gale and Phalanx CMs and keeping any enemy missiles firing at the Zelos instead of the Monos. The second Zelos is the slowest, but loaded with as much projectile speed and reload as possible for the Sprints to react and fire on any rockets. This also keeps both Zelos hulls in each other's fields so that they both get the accuracy buff of one another as well as being within the duality CM ranges.

Of note- I did refit my Monos so I could get damage up since I was running only 3 now. Again, the intended final fleet build is at the end of the article.

Ok, look, this isn't ideal. We really shouldn't have to run two tanks in order to pull off runs like this. We invested in these fleets in either time or coin and with the last two changes to the FM, it just doesn't seem like I've gotten the promised value from my Garrison raid fleet. Regardless, the offset dual Zelos fleet works amazingly well in these targets. Hope this helps!!

The build will eventually end up like this: OFFSET DUAL ZELOS BUILD

Hunter's Call

Testing... Testing...

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

The second raid of the set brought with it a new specialized target for the Hunter fleet. While I don't quite understand the need to change the targets on the second iteration instead of the third, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. This was a nice surprise given the previous week. I am not happy with regard to the option for the lower players or those that did not have full fleets as yet.

Let me make this clear as well, I am autoing the targets. This was the intent of the hull and honestly, it made the raid far more palatable for me this month.

The testing that was done last month by Thor-1SP  and myself panned out nicely for this target as well. The fleets we used were the ones I reviewed in this article. While it performed better last month, it still performed as designed in these targets as well. Do I wish it still pulled the same damage as it did last month with no crew? Of course. I'm just resigned to this cycle at this point.

Last month's run:

This month's initial maiden run:

What I found was that I could get the repair times down close to or to 1 coin repair per engagement, particularly running one of the rare crews. Some of the results were interesting and others reinforced my initial design path which is always a good reaffirmation to get.

CREWS

I tried to get a pic of a median repair. Some of these crews were consistent, some were a little erratic. I tried to run a minimum of about 5 engagements for each crew.


Control :

What can I say? This was pretty consistant damage on auto which is a testiment to both the target design and the build. I'm not sure how I feel about the #2 and #5 boats consistantly being hammered in these targets, but...While this is edging close to double last month's results, I'm resigned to this. Hopefully next month it stays somewhat around the same. If it gets too much higher I don't think it will be an acceptable total. This is an auto fleet. They did a fantastic job in design for this particular target. It provides a value for my investment in this hull and fleet. I would hate to see that marred in the last month. The no crew runs were pretty consistent and I think the high was 1 h. 5 min. damage.

Dragonslayers :

This was an interesting finding. A lot of people questioned the use of Strike Warheads in the build because of the loss of reload. I did not think the difference in reload time gained was enough to overcome the extra damage one would get with the Strike Warheads. With the addition of the ECM any difference should have been exacerbated. Instead the results were very much akin to running no crew. This crew also produced some erratic results, but not too bad. The high was in the same neighborhood as running no crew and the low was around 45 min. damage.

Sea Serpent :

The go-to crew of many using the Hunters. This crew is particularly useful in autoing the target as evade plays a much more significant role in that type of engagement rather than if you were driving. The results for the most part were consistent using this crew but there were a few outliers that went up close to 50 min. damage. The low was 32 min. damage.

Fearless Blitzers :

I used this crew in the hopes of changing the timing to mitigate some of the THORNs damage in the target. Surprisingly it worked a little. This was a crew whose results were a little erratic. The high was just under an hour damage and the low was 39 min. damage.

Demo Squad :

This is my favorite crew to run with the Hunter fleet on auto. I ran many hits on this trying to get a good feel on the damage range and found that about 4 out of 5 times it would end up under 30 min. damage per engagement. I had one single outlier of 42 min, but generally any time it went over 30 min. of damage it would hover around the 36 min. mark. I also took advantage of this crew in later testing for maximizing the potential of the Apex.

Grease Monkey :

The venerable Grease Monkey. This one was an erratic crew, as was to be expected. When one of the edge hulls (#2 or #5) got whacked good, it would throw off the driving pattern so that the end result varied widely based on the RNG hits of the engagement. As is typical, this crew is better used in conjunction with another rather than on it's own. I also took advantage of this crew in later testing for maximizing the potential of the Apex.

Steelheads :

I had tried this crew the first day and was getting mediocre results. I sort of brushed it off. A comment below made me a little curious and I tried it again tonight. (11/11) I was pleasantly surprised. While not exactly consistent, it did yield some very nice numbers for the most part. Much like Demo 4/5 were close with one outlier. 4/5 were between 34-38 minutes and I had one for 46 min. damage. Not bad at all, particularly on auto!


Maximize Potential :

One other aspect to take into consideration when trying to mitigate costs is the mechanics of the hulls and fleets with which we attack this target. The Apex Hunter has a much better repair coefficient than do the regular Hunters. You can run the campaign back-to-back until it is time for repairs. Using the Demo Squad you can get 6 engagements in before you need to come in for repairs. Using the Grease Monkey you only get 5. Now you can either repair this now, use a Grease Monkey to repair and then go back out with the Demo, or...

Once here you can pull the Hunter out by itself and repair. It works out to 2 coin and a little bit of wait time. You can leave the Hunters at half damage and run the target again. Using the Demo Squad, you can get 3 more hits in before you need to repair the Apex again. This works out to 2 coin for 3 targets. THIS is where I would use the Grease Monkey to further maximize potential.

Repair the Apex using the Grease Monkey, put it back in the fleet with the Demo, go out and hit 3 targets, come in and repair the Apex alone. This will net you 3 targets for essentially one coin repair and a little bit of wait time depending on the RNG over three engagements.

So that's it. This pirate is rather pleased with the options presented to us in the upper area of the raid. That said, I really REALLY wish there were better options for the lower level players. The A sets are horrid, particularly if you are using the Hunters. Those targets are clearly designed for Fangtooth fleets. I hope in next months targets there is a little bit of adjustment to take into consideration players that are running Hunters on less than a full tilt build. For fun, here is this same fleet attempting to auto an A set. The 81 and 83 went off without a hitch, but the 85... Hoo boy... Pay particular attention to the last hit and the absolute craziness therein. Good luck in the raid folks!!

Forsaken Mission - Where It All Begins

RIP WIP. RIP FM. RIP... ??

By: Some Pissed-Off Pirate

a/k/a Dragon_Bane     

I almost didn’t finish writing this. I wanted to have a cooler head on my shoulders before delving into this. Then I got to read Robyn’s profanity laced tirade (in my mind). Putting aside the sexy accent, I realized that, if that bonnie lass is that upset, I know bloody damn well that the people I’ve talked to, as well as myself, are not overreacting. I did wait to 'cool off' and took a look over my notes again and this came out of all that. Much is free form, well, ranting, so then...

Before anyone from Kixeye reads this, I would appreciate it if you pulled some numbers. Just a nice monthly log on chart from January 2016 through October 2017. I can only guess at the metrics, but I don’t have to guess at the player perceptions or opinions, and I may be referencing back that far at times, but I think even if I do not, it would elucidate some of the background issues I may reference.

Background and Context :

We really can't have this discussion without some context. As this game has progressed it has gotten more complicated as needs must. To that end, one has to have a starting point, a foundation point if you will, in which to keep the rest of the game referenced. This is a basic necessity in a game as complex as this one.

Rather than base my premises upon my own perceptions, let us instead rely on the company who actually owns, produces, and directs the game, Kixeye. 'Where would one begin?' you ask? How about this thread and flowchart linked right here. Now, putting aside the fact that I've been vociferously pushing the FM as the cornerstone of the game for over a year, Kixeye themselves have had this position for at least the last year.

See where it says START? The Forsaken Mission, at its core, is the epitome of accessibility to play the game of Battle Pirates. Period. It is the absolute cornerstone of the game. It might not be what people initially state when trying to explain their displeasure at the changes, but when you dig down to the basic concepts that players hold of the game, the Forsaken Mission is exactly that. It is the yardstick used to determine accessibility of this game to the players. We have articles, videos, forum threads, page threads and EVEN a Kixeye logic diagram that puts the Forsaken Mission as the absolute foundation of the entirety of the game.

It is also a fantastic miner's canary of the game. Discount the warning at your own peril.

Can you not understand WHY the community has lost their collective minds over this? Why players are quitting?

Put the damn data and metrics down and talk to your players. Clearly, whoever is deciphering the data is doing something wrong.

Let me reiterate this so it is clear because I don't think Kixeye is understanding this... the Forsaken Mission is the FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF THE GAME. Whether you want that or not, you are pretty much stuck with it without a slow gradual phase out. That's how it is perceived and what is expected.

The FM Today : 

The absolute goal of the fm now is the tokens. At least that is the generic insta-answer I get from everyone. In the past, they were the goal of the end game player in order to get themselves ‘caught up’ on builds- and that used to mean pvp mainly. This was sort of the balancing act of the tokens. If you were getting into being an end-game player, they were a boon to catch up in your PvE stuff and was a fantastic way to get into PvP. It was a great transitional tool and helped infuse more PvP into the game at the end of the spectrum. It kept the PvP part of the game fresher. It wasn't enough to do either, however, it alleviated a bit of the 'gap' between players.This was balanced. Was.

What happened?

Kixeye decided to take into account the availability if the tokens in their determining of build times for PvE fleets. In other words, they negated the tokens through game design. What's worse is that they thought the community was too ignorant to understand what they did. To exacerbate that basic condescension, they doubled down and gave us lip service about listening to the community. The FM posting was the latest and most egregious example of this.

Now tokens have become a necessity in order to just try to stay afloat on PvE builds. This is an issue created by Kixeye purely through design. The build times for hulls never came down when we switched to a three month raid cycle. In fact, given the proliferation of flagships and escalation tech, both coming after the initial offering, cumulative build times have gone f’n coo-coo for cocoa puffs. A WAG is that the token value is something around 18% of what it initially was when all this is taken into consideration.

Let me repeat- this is an issue created directly by Kixeye and their choice of build times, and now with escalation, refit times. Rather than balance or correct this issue, they incorporated the FM tokens into their expectations of *PvE* builds further exacerbating the issue and then to top off the shit sandwich with some lovely diarrhea sauce, they reduce the availability of those same tokens, decrease their accessibility (timers on the chests) AND increase their cost. Look, I can usually logic my way on either side or an argument or position and have a self-made sounding board, but if I were arguing this in front of a panel of people, or a jury... I absolutely would not want to argue one of these sides because the position is patently untenable.

Side note: Why do I use cumulative? Because in the past, once you ‘figured your build’ you were generally done. You had a finished product. Now you generally don’t have a finished product until AFTER the raid cycle has ended. W.T.F.

Mini-Rant :

I've waited. And waited. I've heard you Kixeye! I've listened to your feedback, and I mean this in the nicest way possible:

Get your collective heads out of your collective asses. How many play-hours have you lost from last year? Compare Oct 2016 to Oct 2017. How many active players? How many daily log-ins? I'd LOVE to see the data you guys use. I can guarantee a different interpretation.

See?  I was hoping to see a response or some movement. Instead we have gotten silence and evasion. I hear that, that is your feedback to us. I don't have to look at any data. I don't need to go to a meeting to talk about it. I don't need to have many discussions so I can have another discussion and not even make a substantive comment with regard to the subject matter.

Additional Issues : 

Why now? Why this extreme of a change when the Garrison Raid is right around the corner? I could understand a tweak, but this... I don't even want to tell you how many coins and tokens I went through trying to adjust to the 'rebalance' to help the community mitigate the adjustments they had to do.

Why no transitional period this time? That was asinine. Why was the sprint held back until after the change? This is absolutely one of the worst things you did, yet, it isn't mentioned much. Why? Likely because the rest of this is such a clusterfuck that people can't get past the fundamental change in both the FM and it's apparent change of function in the game What that function is, no one knows because you won't communicate with us!!

I will acknowledge that there has been, in the past, some side of the mouth talking. The targets won’t change for a year really meant that the targets wouldn’t fundamentally change, BUT, they decided they could tweak them so long as they still confirmed to the standard deviations of the target type. Right?? Guess what? Not anymore. Now you get to hop into a target and have a Glee inspired mash-up of Garrison and Assault with an apparently huge side of 'we don't care'. Here is the problem guys, if your design failed for garrison, that’s YOUR fault, not mine. Git gud. Stop beating me over the head with a blackjack because you can't figure this out.

Good segue, the target itself. Assault in garrison? We play by the rules you decided to incorporate. It was a reciprocal arrangement. We built to those specifications and ideals, and then get smacked in the face with a hunk of monkey-poo with this change. For everyone's reference, all of this was well communicated and defined right in the forums for everyone, last year, y'know, when the game was in a pretty apparent upswing.

Nanny state or puzzle solver? It is an odd juxtaposition. On the one hand you insist on giving us targets to 'solve'. Sometimes puzzles within puzzles. Yet you also want to severely limit us with regard to what we can build and what we can use in certain targets. If that's the case, you MUST hold yourselves to those definitions and rules which you base these limitations on.

Why is the generalists still doing better than the hulls and fleets intended to do these f'n targets?!?!? This runs counter to what you keep pushing with regard to this entire game. What is the explanation for this?

Why am I playing a raid every single damn week now?!? Where is my half repair then?? Does anyone on the damn Kixeye team even understand the f'n theory behind WHY we have 1/2 repair time during raids??? (Here is a hint: Time constraint concurrent with pressure to complete concurrent with designed intended damage.)

This change fundamentally changes the role of the FM. This is unacceptable in the extreme. This would change the whole of the game in one way or another, or maybe cause irreparable harm.

88 to 89. This is the one that makes me scratch my head in the extreme. You have essentially locked out all the players that were struggling or trying to reach parity in the game. It is a requirement of R&D 3 ffs!! This issue should be self-explanatory.

We got the Icebreaker and Monolith TLCs... but where are the Zelos tokens? Why, if you are going to even pretend that you are giving us some sort of access to what we need, do you not release some way in which the players can adjust or build the number one CM hull in the game (and thanks to URF,apparently the number one option to do the f’n targets to boot!)??? Why are there no Zelos tokens in the raid???

Options :

Deep breaths... deep breaths...

The best correction is now impossible. We have idiots like me who blew all their tokens and likely too much gold trying to crack these abominations. Rolling it back will be impossible.

The Assault aspect of those targets needs to be removed and the the target must go back to being an actual Garrison target.

The FM should stay at about the same time requirement as before. I.e. about 7 targets to fully complete.

• If you insist on leaving the 115 as it is, the points per 115 should be 500,000.
• Add the 113 back in for 150,000 points.
• Make the 103 75,000. 
• Put the 88 back in for 30,000
• Keep the 89 but make it 50,000.
• Add a point cap to each prize pool. I do NOT want to see a prize show up in PP5 for 5 or 7 million points. That type of abuse will not be tolerated.
• Get rid of the f’n timers on the chests. You've already reduced our tokens without reducing build times - again. There is no need for timers on the bloody chests.
• The Trident needs to be in PP1 or PP2.
• The Mono and Icebreaker need to be in PP2 or PP3.

An open server, or a closed server that players could share would have helped IMMENSELY. The implementation that Kixeye chose stressed an already taxed player base to a breaking point. I acknowledge the 113 was too easy, however, it also was bloody time consuming for many players. It was clear from your data that not everyone was pulling off 18 second repair runs like I was. DON'T USE PLAYERS LIKE ME FOR THE BASELINE. Use a damn median value here. Again, it is not a single item, it is the cumulative affect.

Here is the final warning about this abominable mess... 'fixing' this Forsaken Mission is not going to correct the problem that has compounded into this. This broke the player base. You have to acknowledge that and own it and start from THAT position when 'discussing' this again. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. You have ignored the player base for a year while alleging that you were listening. Your response time to player concerns, when they aren't ignored outright, is far too slow. This has come back to roost and I really hope that it doesn't kill the game.

-----------

Last minute edit.

Ok, so the official answer to all the players 'using older tech' (i.e. locked out) is, quite literally: "To complete these higher level targets you are going to want Tier 6 tech." Wut??

Are you kidding me?!? It's NOT higher level targets. You changed them. Period. You acknowledge locking players out fo the cornerstone of the game and your response is "To complete these higher level targets you are going to want Tier 6 tech." Do you WANT players to quit?!? You changed the targets fundamentally. If these players HAD T6 tech they'd likely be building it. If they could get it, they likely would be getting it.

Running TLCs is NOT going to help these players. This is WHY the f'n Punisher and Citadel are in the lower prize pools. Can you guys not even follow your OWN logic?!?

I don't want to do more chores to help you correct your own screw ups! That's asinine. Seriously, this reads : We screwed up but will fix it by giving you more tasks to do... to get the tech you need so you can refit your fleets so they can do the new target. Why didn't you just design the f'n target to fit the f'n meta for crying out loud?!?!?!? Talk about being obdurate in the extreme. Smh...

Letting the Cranky Roo out!!

My martini glass is always half full.  I drank what was left in it last night!!

Most people that know me in the game and on the various FB pages know that I try to see the positive side of change. I look for ways changes will help players in the long run. I am always willing to WAIT to see the said changes before I go off on any sort of tirade and even then, I can usually find a positive to balance any negatives. That is until the FM cockup.

My initial thoughts on the FM were that it was a positive change

Kix listened.....Players have long talked about the time it takes to get to the hallowed tokens. No more frustration when Kix would add 3 new prizes to T5 in the FM after a raid.  No more facing the daunting task of having to play catchup if God forbid you took a two week vacation and didn't do your FM while you were out enjoying a life away from the game.

Tokens help a player stay current and build raid fleets that let them progress even further. They are CRITICAL to staying current. If you do not get the tokens you are not going to have, the now required, TWO fleets for a raid.

Another positive, players could catch up in one week, claiming as many prizes as they could claim in the order that would help THEIR needs and not be stuck in a queue of having to clear items that they don't need. Wow, they could EVEN claim tokens after claiming just one prize if they were not caught up!! 

Players had 6 days to grind the FM and do this. No more stuck with 3 days or rushing to finish it if real life got in the way.

Yes, the token amounts were lower and we gave unanimous feedback to Kix and they compromised with adding chests that gave the potential for more bonus tokens. They also increased the time of the Structure and Research Tokens. Not the best solution but it was a start.

I was concerned, (as we all were) about the damage we were going to see and the time it would take to do the targets. Based on our initial math it was going to take more than twice the amount of targets to get to the same point.  But I was willing to wait and see what the targets were like.

So they loaded the FM changes  

Wait, wot???  The tokens have an expiration to redeem???  WTF!! There goes all the extra time to do the FM. 6 days to do the FM??....not so much.

Hmm, okay maybe these new targets won't be so bad. Let me take a peek at a target maybe this will be quicker than expected, even with the extra targets needed.

Challenge Accepted!!  Hold my Martini guys while I go try a new 115 target......

(Editor's note: At this point I can clearly hear a sexy Aussie accent filing the room up with expletives that even a sailor would appreciate!)

Errr... Houston we have a problem.

What goober thought it was a good idea to put "Assault Class Rhinos from Hell" in a Garrison target???  Kixeye I am looking at you.  YOU made the target classes. It is  right there on that handy dandy info screen on the target itself.

It says "Garrison".  Not "Garrison with a super-sized side order of Assault".

You  stated when you released the target types that the ships would be stationary or slow moving.  No where in that description (below) when you released the target types does it state that I will need a damn Assault class ship to kill Rhinos from Hell in a Garrison Target.








I expected to take more damage. I knew I was not going to do the FM for instant repair. I knew that there would be a learning curve. I did NOT expect to be blocked from completing the FM.

There is no learning curve when you take massive amounts of damage from a fleet of stupid over powered ships that do not belong in the FM targets.

When a tank with three...yes I said THREE Charged M armors, 4 x phalanx 4 anti missile and 96% Pen damage protection as well as 69% evade looses a quarter of its health and most of its armor charge from ONE set of ships then we have an issue.  There is nothing I can do to improve these numbers.  Oh, and by the way, the only reason I could get to that point was because I spent $$ on speeding up a Hunter build to clear my shipyard and I happened to have Zelos tokens in my inventory.  My original fleet that did the FM with no issues (unless operator error) disintegrated to ONE set of ships. You can be the best driver in the world but nothing is going to mitigate that damage.

Again, I am not going to use a second incorrect target type fleet to clear the ships in a basic chore target that should not eviscerate my top of the line FM fleet in targets that were not supposed to change until July 2018 (Your schedule of map target changes not mine).

Enough of the 115. Okay, so the 103 is the same.  I guess I could give up any sort of real life and grind them for 5 days to get my weekly done. Goodbye getting anything else done it the game if it takes 5 days to grind out the FM.

Surely the 89 cannot be that bad?  Whoah....a Gauntlet.  I guess that hoses anyone with a citadel fleet.  I guess that is why we keep seeing offers for monos and IceBreakers (which by the way were illegal builds and die in the targets as well but I digress).  The 88 was the bread and butter for lower levels.  Not any more. They are reduced to hitting even lower targets for more time and less points. But wait, those lower targets changed as well.  Hang on, why did the 82 and the other lower targets change?  You explicitly stated the only changes were the re-balance of the 88 and 113. Did someone load the incorrect targets??  Hellloooooo??? What happened here?

At this point I just give up. There are no positives to this change. If a player cannot do the FM they cannot get the tokens, they cannot progress and there is no longer any point in playing the game.

This is not a challenge to beat the targets and get the points down.  There is no way anyone can get their FM done in the short amount of time required to get the tokens unless they coin or they use multiple fleets. You monetized the FM. This is the ONE thing that you HAD to leave alone.

If the 78 pages (at the time of this rant) of complaints and the feedback from ALL the shows and ALL the pages is not enough to convince you of this monumental fail then go run a query of how many points players have. (Editor's note: Exclude the psychos trying to help the community that ran up points trying to figure out how to mitigate this cockup.)  Go run a query of how many bases have been scrapped in the 48 hours.  Go count the amount of posts all over the place from people at all levels that have quit.

These are not just casual players, a lot of these are coiners and some of them coin massively.  People are walking away.

I don't know how to make this any clearer. If you are losing revenue and players, forcing those that remain to coin is NOT a solution. All you do is alienate those that remain. You are driving more players away and on a much larger scale than ever before. The game cannot sustain itself if it continues to lose players.

Most of us are reasonable, if you tell us you are listening and will be making adjustments then most of us probably will wait and see what they are.    Don't just respond with "we are listening to your feedback".  That tells me and other players nothing and just infuriates us even more. FFS, stop listening and start talking. It is pretty dam obvious this is screwed up. Get on the forum and tell us what you are doing to fix it!!

Solution??

I know you cannot roll the code back at this point. I know the data has changed and would be an absolute nightmare to back out and return the original FM. I know we are committed to this format.

What you CAN do, is between this FM and next, adjust the targets.  Next week is the raid (if anyone even bothers) You have a little extra time. If you cannot put the 113 back into play then remove the ships from the 115 (or make them what they should be, an easy kill with a garrison fleet and have them deal low damage).

Return the lower targets to what they were before the change, just adjust the points like you have on the 103's.

I am not sure if you realize just how bad this is. You have just over a week to fix this.....If you do not respond accordingly and make adjustments you WILL lose the game. The ball is in your court.


Cranky Roo.