2022-01-13 FYI

[OnePercent]

The new home for the servers is considerably less expensive than the last. I could pay for it myself indefinitely without help. However, help is appreciated, believe me.

You have no idea how happy I am to see you back and kicking again, the mantle of responsibility to make a *hazeron* game is now firmly back in your grasp.

I'm so glad that you found a more optimal place for your servers and will gladly subscribe to Shores of Hazeron again. Welcome back!

[QuakeIV]

edit: i am trying to reply to Norm49 but the quote vanished once I posted.

This is kindof a cool idea.  You could imagine being able to spawn at the effected cities while the militia are still alive and trying to retake them.

[Xantheose]

When the counter-attack comes, the alt empire logs off.

What if an empire which has attacked any other empire remains in a combatant state for a minimum amount of time? At present, when the last player logs off, the empire becomes noncombatant after 3 minutes. That could be an hour if they've just attacked someone.

An hour or two maybe yeah. But can definitely start imagining more unpleasant scenarios for this feature now.

In one hour, we annexed all your empire, and you were here for defending it.

I think 15-30 minutes is enough to do a significant amount of damage to an empire if the attack was prepared, enough to persuade players to not disconnect once they are under attack.

Plus of that, the player should be marked as logged in the online player list during theses 15-30 minutes, to prevent "blitzkrieg once someone disconnected" tactic, which can be very efficient if the attack is focused on shipyards.

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The infiltration tactic

If the spaceships/cities could not fire once placed in "noncombatant state", players still can hide inside cities and ships, place bombs and wait a player to connect.

This is a major vulnerability in every defense system, even Q255, unfixable in game.


Even in a noncombatant state, the spaceships and cities should be defending their areas.

In the counterpart, the noncombatant state would be available only if the ship/city is in a system claimed by the empire that owns it. Every ship outside the empire border would be vulnerable.

[Neils Iyssada]

Here is my list of potential abuse of the classic "2hrs - no return fire" noncombattant state :

• Attacker abuse :
  

1. Blockading a noncombattant city with one or more warships, with orders set up to attack once the enemy empire switch to combattant state. Making a rule so an officer can't attack any unit if they were noncombattant at the time you gave the order. Make it so they either can't take combat orders regarding noncombattant units or need you to give them the green light again when the empire switch to combattant state.
   
2. Scouting cities / ships and systems, placing spies and logging alt characters for a future attack, all of this while not being threatened by ships and defenses. Make ships and units able to fire on enemies after some clear noncombattant warning on coms, according to actual officer stance and classic diplomacy rules. Ships can't move but are still unkillable - should discourage any easy noncombattant grief and can even help for point 1 as the blockade would need to be far away to even survive before being effective.
   
3. Attacking with an alt empire to negate any significant counterattack damages. Make the noncombattant state linked to player account instead of character ? I mean when you log in and actually play, all your avatars could be taken into account and all your avatars' empires would be in combattant state. Or could be balanced by being triggered if one of your character's empire have actively attacked another empire.
   

• Defender abuse :
  

1. Using alt empires to freeze a potential war against their main empire ?
   

I definitely see more abuse coming from an attacking player.

My ideas are highlighted in red next to the abuse.

I got another question regarding the noncombattant state : what about automated trading / mining ships ? Are they stopped where they are, or do they continue their missions unaffected by the noncombattant stance ? Maybe this state should only affect ships that have no mission, orbiting any empire's city. Moving / missionned ships should be left unaffected as they can be considered as unprotected or out of empire's protection.

[vuo]

Great to see that Hazeron is back. I second the post above about considering keeping the game F2P. Hazeron is a fun game, but I don't think it's $10 a month fun. Ultimately the way you decide to finance your game is up to you. I look forward to seeing this iteration of Hazeron regardless.

[jakbruce2012]

Glad to see Haxus and Hazeron are back.
I'm looking forward to building broken ships and scanning the universe for Q255 again.
The noncombattant thing is going to be a pain to balance, best of luck with that.
Welcome back, glad things are going well for you.

[Haxus]

Thank you for all the great comments and suggestions. I read all of them.

Keeping it simple, the formula for noncombatant empires that I favor is beginning to look like this.

Empire becomes noncombatant 15min after the last avatar in the empire logs off. It is complicated to check all avatars on the same account and a player could easily sidestep this by using multiple accounts.

Units within orbital range of worlds with an empire military base are immune to attack; they will defend that area but they will not pursue enemies outside the area. Thus they become invincible defenders but their range is limited; otherwise someone will put a big invincible station somewhere bad, like near an intergalactic wormhole. The presence of a military base insures that no other empires have cities on the world, to prevent an invincible defense using an alt empire.

All other units continue to attack and defend as normal without immunity.

Harvesters continue to operate. Officers and crew execute their missions. Manufacturing processes grind away.

[phenologist]

So excited to hear this.  Thank you for bringing this back Haxus.

[Zensras]

Thank you for all the great comments and suggestions. I read all of them.

Keeping it simple, the formula for noncombatant empires that I favor is beginning to look like this.

Empire becomes noncombatant 15min after the last avatar in the empire logs off. It is complicated to check all avatars on the same account and a player could easily sidestep this by using multiple accounts.

Units within orbital range of worlds with an empire military base are immune to attack; they will defend that area but they will not pursue enemies outside the area. Thus they become invincible defenders but their range is limited; otherwise someone will put a big invincible station somewhere bad, like near an intergalactic wormhole. The presence of a military base insures that no other empires have cities on the world, to prevent an invincible defense using an alt empire.

All other units continue to attack and defend as normal without immunity.

Harvesters continue to operate. Officers and crew execute their missions. Manufacturing processes grind away.

Interesting. My original idea was to have somewhat of a building that was powered off a city's infrastructure that decayed over time if the land's owner didn't log in for awhile but this makes both sides happy.

Will be there be anything for empires that do not log in for a long period of time?

[Snowmantis]

Looking forward to playing again! thank you