Let's consider the following hypothetical scenario. You are being attacked by a moon-destroy mission, composed of 10,000 RIPs. Your attacker has W/A/S/P techs of say, xx/xx/xx/xx, and your techs are at a respectable 20/20/20/15.

For the defender (ninja-er) to have even a chance (about 45%) of "winning" the battle, he needs at least 350K Lunars. The resulting clusterfrack would unquestionably be ranked among the top three battles of all time with TD ranging from 65 to 110 BILLION, with an average around 90,000,000,000 units. Let's remember, now that the current top battle had a TD of 86,416,118,800. But let's say we want to destroy all of the attacking deathstars entirely, regardless of our own losses. This means we're destroying 75 billion units of the attacker's RIPs. That's the second biggest battle of all time given you loose nothing, number one if you have any kind of significant fleet loss of your own. This feat would require about 450K LGs, and the chances of loosing most of your fleet are incredibly high. In fact, with this number of LGs, the attacker might still win (because rapid fire is weird like that, IDK).

If, by chance we'd like zero losses, well, then we need more LGs than anyone on zorg anywhere has... about 3 million... that gives a pretty good chance at zero-lossing, but it's still not a guarantee.
Okay, now, we all know this (I think), but this kind of attack (the 10K RIPS, not the ninja, unfortunately... I wish.) happens on a regular basis (sometimes more than 5 times a day). This is a great strategy, if you have the ten thousand deathstars just lying around because fuel cost is incredibly minimal and the chance of RIP implosion, as many have noted, is much lower than any kind of rule or forum post indicates. I would like to point out that, within current game rules, this kind of thing is, of course, entirely legal, and, honestly, the best strategy I've found in terms of cost-benefit analysis given that almost no one has the kind of lgs needed to kill it.

The question I'd like to pose is simply... is this fair play?
Should it be? I know it's completely allowed by the rules, but is there some flaw there? Perhaps in the nature of the game? What about the power disparity that this kind of thing creates?

It's really time-consuming and expensive to get and build up moons, but they can be destroyed with virtually no risk to the attacker. I think it could be possible to make an account essentially unplayable, certainly unfleetable, (depending on the circumstances) by legally destroying all of its moons, even many ruby moons, in a period of only four or five days... Without rubies, gates would be impossible to insta-build and the account could be paralyzed. Even if you consider ACS Defending, no player outside of the top alliance has these numbers (that I know of... am I wrong?)

Fianally, I admit that I don't know everything, I haven't been playing this game all that long, and I certainly haven't read every forum post ever made (although I've sifted through quite a few looking for MD info and the like), so I invite all who know or think they know anything on this issue to comment and enlighten us all. Heck, I want to know what you think even if you don't know much at all about any of this.

The argument I can think of against that is time.

Time is everything in Zorg. Time is what separates the Top 10 from the Top 100.

Yeah RIPs cost next to nothing to move, but the trade off is that they take an ungodly amount of time to move anywhere outside of a few systems. And yeah, the strategy of popping every single moon a player has is being implemented by players right now, but they also have fleet aside from that. Sure you could sink all of your res into building a vast fleet of RIPs, popping every moon in sight, but when it comes down to it; crashing fleets with RIPs is a very delicate task, exactly because of their speed.

The ideal fleet crash takes as little time as possible due to the unknown of how long you have until the one you're hitting comes back online. How long the target will stay on the ground. How long you have until someone else notices that something is off and tries to do the same thing you are. Death Stars aren't the kind of ship you want to use for that. Though that's not to say that it's impossible and has never been done before. I could go into a whole range of strategies to pull off exactly that, but that would just be explaining how you fleet.

Basically what I'm getting at is that it takes skill to successfully fleet with only RIPs, and most people would rather have a more diverse composition than that.

I certainly understand what you are saying about crashes, Weresloth, but I think you are missing a large portion of the point... This post is really about MDs... Even if the attacker never catches fleet, they can still effectively paralyze an account. Even if I only were to lose a single moon per day, my account would soon become immobilized unless I had a large stockpile of rubies to instabuild gates, as without rubies, gates take at least 3-4 days to build. If this were to occur, my fleet would become effectively trapped in a single location; I would have difficulty raiding, and no real opportunity to catch smaller fleets myself... This is how I grow, and thus my options would be extremely limited. This in addition to the cost of rebuilding gates... Which would further impede growth... sure, the attacker is gaining nothing... but I'm losing a lot, and they really aren't losing anything at all... Even a skilled fleeter could be paralyzed in this manner... If you disagree, I would very much like to hear your argument.

The point Ari was making is that the kind of MDs certain players send are essentially impossible to ninja... and likely this will be the case for a very long time...as such there is no real recourse against them... Thus, a large player can use this power to suppress smaller up and coming players, if they displease the larger player... This is, as Ari pointed out, absolutely within game rules... But I believe she's just trying to point out that it's potentially an incredibly problematic dynamic...

I, too, would like to hear other's thoughts on this issue...

Sorry, long day at work. A quick reread definitely helped.

I agree that without moons, anyone with a decent sized fleet is immobilized. At the least set back quite a bit.

As both of you stated, all of this is quite within the realms of the rules, but what would you propose to counter this?

While you have to congratulate the players that succeeded in getting tens of thousands of RIPs, which in no means is a small challenge. It creates a certain unbalance to the game, that also influences the money making of the project.

I find it difficult to come up with a solution that both still commends the player that achieved such a vast fleet, wile at the same time avoid the chasing away of new additions.

Simple fact is, that the ruby moon can be BOUGHT with real money, because it supposedly grants you a certain safety of those MD's.
With the stated situation, your chances of getting one are diminished by some 50%.
Meaning, i have to ruby up a moon, hope for the upper size of the bandwidth and delete it if it's not!
Do it again some 2 or 3 times to get what i need.
I'd say that that is a great way to gain extra income, but then again, how many are willing to do that?
Ruby a moon, you get a 9777 and you're still no safer, so why did I spend the money then?
This becomes too much of a gamble and when i want to do online gambling, I'll take my money to an online casino!

The fact that a player can now destroy multiple ruby moons in a 24 hr period makes this a rather odd situation. Throw more money at it, to get all 9999's ? I think Zorg would cheer for that solution, but I don't think you have many players left...

The problem I have is;
I don't want to take away the success for the one player, that worked years to get to his current fleetsize.
The issue now though is that there is money involved and where you could buy safety in the past, that option is no longer applicable or at least became more expensive...
If that is what Zorg intended, by all means, but I don't believe anyone has viewed it from this angle yet?!

Could it be as simple as this...

A hard cap for those players to attack...Another 5 times smaller/bigger noob protection would be created after 1million points in order to keep the hard hits away from the small players... I have been victim of it myself where a player with 5million points can attack someone with 40k points and wipe them out...

Obviously this is not about the noob protection limit...But if you truly think about it, the only way to fix it properly is to put an attack limit on those top players that do nothing but 1. Tear down new players to gain small-medium profit, 2.Assert their dominance by popping moons of all the players that pose a future threat (They could pop their moons right out of noob protection just because) 3. Abuses the fact that their is a power disparity which is technically abusing a bug in my eyes...

Now there are some other ways to make the players happy and keep the fleeters that took years to get where they are...

1.When buying rubied moons, make them impossible to destroy.
2.Increase the percentage allowed in moonshots to (X%), maybe 50%...
3.Allow a player 1 free moon with a jumpgate and lunar base for every 10 moons they lose...
4.Code it so that a moon on your home planet can not be destroyed...As your home planet can not be deleted, it is only fair...
5.Make a cap that forces an increase in ship price after a certain number are built...so then it becomes a much harder thing for players to create such an unbalanced force in the game...Lets say a 10% increase after a certain number of each ship...I.e. 10k RIPS would increase in price by 10%...500klight fighters would cause a 10% increase...100k battlecruisers...100k destroyers... etc...


These are just options that are possible... And I would add in more about how losing moons paralyzes fleeters but I would just say that obviously that is the point of the moon popping...

You can't put in new rules, just to protect smaller upcoming newbee's.
This wouldn't be fair to the established players that put a lot of effort in to getting where they are now!

indestructible moons are a myth, they never existed, but u ruby moon used to be as near as...
nowadays though it's shifted to where your chances with a ruby moon are less are less evident...instead of making em indestructible...reduce the bandwidth from 9700 - 9999 (or thereabout) to 9850 -9999 that seems more fair to the current situation.

about the amount of destructions in a certain timeline...
5 MD's ? fine!
but 1 MD per planet per 24 hr...or week or month or whatever we can agree on but MD...MS...MD..MS...MD on the same location ? doesn't matter who's doing what and who's side it from...it's a bit silly to be possible if you ask me...
even a moondeletion requires a 24 hr cooldown, before a new one can be build!

Valid points. I'm still a fan of multiple layered attack zones. I don't mind getting my moons popped daily by the same player, I'm used to it... but I'd like to keep players with 101k pts from quitting. I've definitely spent a lot less money on the game since I realized ruby moons are simply a time saver and not a form of safety at all.

Ari wrote:Let's consider the following hypothetical scenario.

Like the start till you make certain facts known that fit only one player...this changes your post from hypothetical to personal. Where you are free to post your own WSA...you are not allowed to post mine without my permission.. which you do not have.

Now back to your scenario.. What I find hard to understand is you join to play a war based game.. and then proceed to complain.. about game rules that many or most of us have had for over 6 years.. Oddly many of the points raised here are very one sided.. Based on the start of this game 6+years ago there was no limit to the amount of MD a player could do...also anyone had the ability to destroy any size moon even a 9.999 could be destroyed, with just a few Rips..
But due to certain out cries and complaints by the turtles and raiders which out number the fleeters in this game by 10 to one.. the rules where change ...along with the n00b protection rule raised from 10k to 100k..and yet again so many want to penalise players that have spent years building up their account to where they will stagnate and quit.

Why not add to your so called hypothetical scenario why these hypothetical mission occurred in the 1st place..how 9 hypothetical members of the same alliance all moved into this one players homeworld system and hypothetical proceeded to IPM the crap out of his homeworld...

If you can not stand the heat keep out of the kitchen..

as for the statement that ruby moons are not indestructible...this is so wrong.. a 9.999k moon requires
360,000,000 rips to give a 99% chance.. a minimum of 25% for the smallest chance of success..requires
25%: 24,998,750 Death stars needed. almost 25 million.. as stated before would need 0ver a 135years of game play to get any where near the minimum needed.. don't think I will live that long..

So why not look at alternative ways to do attacks.. after all I never send my entire fleet on attacks.. in fact very few players ever do...

I would simply appreciate the ability to continue to play and grow in the face of these realities without the threat of having my account completely immobilized and without being forced to purchase rubies... I think there should be space in the game for non ruby buyers, and that it should be possible to succeed as a fleeter without rubies... As the game stands, this is not the case, unless certain other players allow you to do so... I could still hang onto my fleet if I were subject to daily MD missions of the type I described above if I played carefully, but I would be unable to use it...

My suggestions? I think it's time for Zorg to increase the risk of rip implosion to some number that is actually real, so that this style of playing actually poses a significant risk to the attacker. Wasn't that the original intent of the RIP implosion risk of MD missions? Simply increasing the risk to a number like 10% would satisfy me. As it stands, the incredibly low risk does not serve as a real disincentive to the attacker.

As an alternative, if Zorg were to make it possible to rebuild gates quickly without rubies after an MD (lets say, at an additional resource cost) this would also satisfy me to an extent.... All I want is the ability to keep playing in the face of these threats without pouring money into the game...