We're working on improving the NPC code. Part of those improvements include the capability for NPC countries to fight back against countries that grab or do spy ops against them. Would that be a positive or a negative change for FFA?

Yes, end this tree hugging sitting around in a circle smelling each other's farts cumbaya garbage!

You know how I feel about it and KoH doesnt even play this server. FFA is far too labor intensive already. Most of us struggle to run 16 without overflowing already. And I think in general we should be encouraging player v player interactions, not further isolating individuals into a competition against bots.

Bots are what drove me away...

Yeah you and me and about 5 others would prefer all x to be viable with a viable market for it. But I think retalling bots just makes an already labor intensive server moreso.

It's still going to be a landgrab competition against the bots, they're just going to ruin sets on occasion. It doesn't add anything worthwhile to human interactions, and I think the bot fest doesn't change.

I think the tree hugging circle of players smelling each other's garbage continues while the bots behave in an irritating way. The only other way I see it playing out is the gameplay becomes similar to primary and we go back to the old days of LaF farming small tags off servers because the landgrabs are better and the risk is the same.

The bots were added so that the very best players didnt smash new players out of the game anymore. We're either headed back there or everything is exactly the same as it is now with bots ruining sets here and there.

The last time I played 1a without bots was when I was in DKinghts many many moons ago, I don't have time to farm bots and that's the only way to stay competitive in these bot servers 🤷

I would think FFA could do without retalling bots and I agree with Derrick on this point. FFA is hard enough to play 16 countries on. But it would be nice for some of the other changes you are working on to be made. Like the destocking changes, govt/strategy changes, have them fully built, etc.

Bot clans!

I support bot retals! I wouldnt mind a new government type or two either. I have a very good idea for doing a slight change to the tech tree, that would be pretty sweet.

How about we try it in 1a first?

See how that goes?

^^ This

I support it for some reasons

I totally don't support it for others especially in FFA

Frankly I'd like to go back to the heyday of bot farming which is um not now

I would be willing to try it in 1a.

I hope my opinion matters as I have definitely invested serious time in bot farming just as others who have already posted also have.

KoH sorry u don't enjoy it but man I enjoy it enough for the both of us

I don't know how I feel about bots retaling I guess it would depend on a few things.

I'd need to fully understand the retal thresholds for bots to make proper comment. For isntance, are the retals successful all the time? What is the process for bots to retal.

I'm not going to post the 47 reasons why I dislike it because I dont think they need to be echoed in yet another spot, but from what i understand, they might use any attack in any amount sort of at random.

If the country has tanks you'll have ABs coming. If they have missiles they may missile you. In the heads of the people in support of it, you have to op every single bot and probably look for ones that are mostly turrets and low missiles if you dont wanna get flattened.

That sounds like 8000 ops and an experience where the best netters will most certainly be better looking and certainly more efficient targets than a bot, and the purpose of having bots at all is completely moot. But again I'll just keep all that fluff to myself because I find the conversation itself is one that I dont get heard on. People want to believe it won't suck so I guess they'll get to have that experience. I guess I'm just supposed to try it without raising any pragmatic questions about it or someone will threaten to suicide me for not being a team player.

If that’s the case D - I don’t like it, time consuming

i still think it would be worth a try regardless of outcome for at least 1 set in 1a

definitely prior to the same kind of idea in FFA

pilot the idea FFS

I agree but I could honestly come around to it if it were not random. I like that every player has the exact same conditions to win. If a bot chooses at random to retal with 1 SS that fails on me, but your bot decides to respond with 2 chems, we're no longer playing in the same environment and my advantage is entirely based on randomness. And that's as an aside to the point that I think having bots that act like humans makes a pretty solid case for not having bots at all and we should leave humans to play the game with each other.

If we decide we dont like that the bots have made it uncouth to hit each other, we should get rid of them and try another path rather than just adding fake humans because we miss the 5k people who used to play. Because it's quite frankly no contest between hitting a 600k acre casher vs a 18k acre bot if we both will retal. I'm certain you all can do the math and figure out which is a better net gain. And also, if you hit the 600k casher, the owner will likely respond diplomatically rather than robotically. Most netters will just want their land back and will not missile you which makes them a better target undeniably. Thus, the bots would lose their purpose entirely.

^agree

That would be awesome Slagpit, I would be much more interested in playing FFA every reset if you did that, I would like to see an NPC tag that nets and wars as well as untags with "Random Behavior" I would also like to have a feature where you can challenge an NPC string to a 1 vs 1 and it can either accept or decline to a friendly war or you can hit them and risk having them bring an NPC ally into the fray on their behalf. Just remember some of these players are lazy and hardly want to lift a finger in effort.

NPCs would affect a bunch of things fairly positively
-Raising oil usage across the board -> Better oil prices for oilers
-Raises Turret prices, turrets serve no purpose atm in FFA other then the occasional squabble
-Some military heavy NPCs that can retal will be left alone, leaving people with defenses a whole fresh line of targets to grab
-Military prices will increase (other then turrets) as NPC will have more losses, and players will have more losses
-Medical tech will have a value once again, no longer useless (currently at least)
-Doesn't attacking reset your DR to a certain extent? This will allow more opportunities to attack NPC that aren't in DR

Sure it hurts a hardcore minimalist netting strategy, but since players only attack bots not, and not each other, bots were the whole reason why this strategy because possible to begin with. Hardly an overall net loss, players hitting you was way worse then bots retalling.

my preference for bot retals is to emulate old school bottomfeeding retals

the basic theory was when a player logs in they look at their recent news and get mad at anyone who hit them the most, but most people arnt tracking who hits them every day

and as a rule of thumb you might get missiled if they had missiles on hand when they logged in but probably not if they made missiles while running their turns

and people tended to spy most targets and even diffuse most missiles

but rather than being fully binary, why not tie it to c:c dr, or just a flat 1 hit a day is ok, but 2 or more could trigger retals

heck you could even make it so the bots would reduce their 'hate' for you if you sent an old style message like

"sorry just a landgrab, have a nice set" style messages that it was really common to send

also if you grab someone while they are playing it tends to make them extra mad

bots might be better set to play only once a day to do that

And skynet was born

I support bots retalling in FFA

...you don't even play..

Ok. I think bots should hit back in ffa but to an extent. Maybe no special attacks?

I feel that if they started missiling people, most clans would kill them.. so.. there's that option..

Do the bots then start killing us?

You know what. Whatever. I'm down. Burn it down

I've been killing maiming and messing with the feckless myopic bots for years.

Frankly it sounds like there might be some consequence.

Bring it on. Finally some action.

Would you say the same thing to me if I said I supported it?

yes

If you allow them to retal on one server it's only fair to allow them to retaliate on every server. Or you could create that easy server Xyle was talking about years ago.

In all fairness, he could have been referring to about 4 or 5 different people in this thread.

Don't back up Bug :P This is ongoing war, you don't want to be in it Prime :P

Just let me run bots I’ll fix this game.

lol, I'm not so sure you would make them much better Req :P

LoLz ur right it would be a dumpster fire!

Fair? I think we should definitely not have retalling bots on primary or team for sure. Different servers have different dynamics. Let's just make every server totally identical because its fair. Maybe they should all have exactly 120 turns and 5 members clans and have no distinction between any servers at all because if you do it on one, you gotta do it to em all eh?

I also like this "we're not pretending the bots are human players that left the game" while simultaneously saying "maybe you could message the bots like old humans." Lol. Y'all are fluffin hilarious.

Oh no we dont want the bots to just replace all the humans that left........but itd be cool of they did hahaha

Inb4 someone get deleted for running a script to message the bots they been hitting because they feel its too boring and meaningless to do manually.

Here's an idea.

How bout we have the bots message me every night around midnight telling me they love me and once in the morning it can message me saying "I hope you have a good day" and it can replace my ex-wife.

You were married?

Hell no hahaha. I just thought it was a good punchline.

ttt

I told you that you will pay for those grabs!

Unleash the Krakken!!!

anyone remember the lulu tag bot?

it was a bot in ffa that had fair and standard retal rules, 1:1 3:2 etcetra

homer didnt accept fair retals and ended up getting killed by it then had to call in FDP's against a bot they picked a fight with

id be in favour of some bots acting like that again, but not all of them

That's equivalent to telling white people that their opinions on how to deal with inequality doesn't apply nor should be taken to account because they're not a minority....oh wait....that actually does happen in the real world!

My bad, disregard, let's apply stupid here too!

No offense Bug, I'm not calling you nor others with that mentality stupid, but that school of thought is stupid in it of itself.

Lol. Ignorance is important to recognize tho. It takes some serious effort to farm bots with 16 countries in FFA. Someone who never hit them in the first place and just played all x and topfed netters saying said bots should be hitting the players is at least a little irritating. If you've never put the work in, it's hard to imagine you could imagine how much work it is.

I don't disregard his opinion as a player because I think FFA was his favorite server when he did play. But considering he spent his last set playing cross server suiciding me on team because I was playing with NBK people and he was mad at them, and I had to deal with his 10k acre fluff topfeeding me constantly here, well...

...I just honestly believe he doesnt give a fluff about the health of the game at all or else he'd treat the player base differently. Looking at a dude who was likely told not to play anymore because he was actively killing the game for his opinion about improvements seems at least a little silly.

I see where you're coming from, I'd like to think the majority of us want this game to carry on, at least that's what I'm sticking to since I'm an optimistic person....

Yeah I hear you and actually agree with your opinion above.

I just think this is one of those cases where someone said "you dont even play" because it felt more appropriate than "go fluff yourself." Just my interpretation tho considering the reasons that person likely doesnt. haha. The comment "you dont even play" to that particular person has a few layers to it because theres a reason for that. And I agree that being a mod and a griefer is a bad look.

Imo mods should be required to net if they play because it's a bad look having them start drama even if they dont go about it like a griefer, because of the difficulty of maintaining impartiality and hating a player at the same time haha. And having moderators just out there talking fluff is a bad look haha. But I guess that's another convo....

Sometimes I wonder why I hit you and then I read post like these.

Prime does care about this game. He just wants more player to player interactions and not bot farmer tycoon.

Ahhh just keep at mob wont go fishing with you bro. You're gonna hit me regardless of the necessity of an excuse and regardless of what I say.

Maybe I'd quit running my mouth if I didnt get hit every set. Which came first bro. Chicken or egg?