Offline Protection is Exploitable

[QuakeIV]

As dean aptly pointed out:



I'd like to therefore remark that offline protection is at this point being employed to ensure that cities cannot be retaken ever by placing them into an always-offline alt empire, which has been employed against Syndicate (specifically our vassals) at this point and which I think is not good.

I am not opposed to protecting beginners, and would even say something like 2 months of invincibility in their home system they spawned in to get them started would be perfectly fine, but the current feature is basically just unpleasant.  You can imagine if someone takes your Q255 crystal system and then surrenders it to an empire that exists only to surrender cities to, then thats somewhat frustrating because it will never be seen again no matter what you do.  Well, to be clear you could give in to their demands, but there is literally nothing that can be done to fight back against that.  This happened to a vassal, not to Syndicate proper.

I feel like even if you don't like Syndicate you can agree thats kindof BS and that at the very least some kind of change is needed.

[Xantheose]

An online vassal should remove the protection as if it were an empire's avatar. This would balance a little the big/newbies empires gap.

Despite this, a friend alt empire is still possible to make the main empire protected everytime. Then, a way (probably not the better one) to prevent an empire from being always disconnected is to allow a offline protection when the last avatar disconnect with a maximum of 24h, and only if this empire was out of this protection at least one hour.

Then, it would allow regular empire to be protected as usual, but exploit-users will have to connect at least one hour every day to keep their protection.

[Booterror]

This is where conflicts of any kind will eventually end up:

Any gains had can be immediately surrendered to an offline alt for immediate offline protection to prevent any recapture.

Ships can be kept safe in the noncombat protected bubble of an offline empire, and moved freely in or out by an alt empire, making it nearly untenable to actually stop it.

Losing a fight? combat log off and log into your alt empire and keep fighting without any worry of losing.


All of this is going to lead to stalemates, defined by this quote:



...Where the literal only way to "win" is to stay logged off the longest.

[Grecanis]

IMO, If war has been officially declared and both sides have engaged, then any protections should cease. Especially for the side that made the declaration.

[Deantwo]

An online vassal should remove the protection as if it were an empire's avatar.

Declaring an empire your overlord doesn't require confirmation, so in this event you would just make a new alt empire and make it a vassal to your enemy, then you can disable their offline protection by logging in on that alt. So this would be a horrible idea with the current vassal/ally system.

IMO, If war has been officially declared and both sides have engaged, then any protections should cease. Especially for the side that made the declaration.

Since "war" is not an actual thing in Hazeron, it is hard to say when two empires are at war. The idea of formal war declaration and having it affect some form of protection was considered in the past, but on closer inspection it seems to have all the same issues as right now because empires themselves are intangible and easily replaced.
See: (Idea thread) Formal War Declaration

I abandoned the idea of a formal war declaration system in favor of the idea of declaring war on a location instead of an intangible empire. We have been discussing that idea in another thread.
Here: (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems

[Grecanis]

So you're telling me that the game doesn't know if one empire has declared war on another, or that one empire has attacked the assets of another.

If that's the case then there's the problem.

[Deantwo]

So you're telling me that the game doesn't know if one empire has declared war on another, or that one empire has attacked the assets of another.

If that's the case then there's the problem.

That is is exactly what I am saying. There is no "war" mechanic. Mechanically the only thing you can do is set your diplomatic stance towards an empire to hostile. Having your diplomatic stance set to hostile doesn't mean you are at war with another empire, it just means your units (ships, troops, defenses, etc.) will attack if they get too close.

You can setup your empire's "war policy" (fancy name, but still has nothing to do with actual war) to automatically change your diplomatic stance towards an empire to hostile if they capture/damage/kill/destroy a unit of your empire. But again, this does not mean war, it can have been an accident or a prank.

Many veteran empires have their default diplomatic stance towards everyone set to hostile. This helps protect their empire from first strike issues such as pre-hostile recon and pre-hostile checkmate moves. It also helps against a bunch of alt empire exploit issues.

What would be actual "war" is a player concept that just doesn't exist as a game mechanic currently. There is no way to determine what a hostile diplomatic stance might mean without actually asking the empire that has set the diplomatic stance to hostile.

[Grecanis]

So if the game can recognize that an empire has attacked another as the "war policy" mechanic suggests, then why couldn't that be the trigger to cease protections as well.

If it was a mistake then "oops" .. that's where diplomacy comes into play.

[Deantwo]

So if the game can recognize that an empire has attacked another as the "war policy" mechanic suggests, then why couldn't that be the trigger to cease protections as well.

If it was a mistake then "oops" .. that's where diplomacy comes into play.

Cease protections for how long? What you are suggesting doesn't make much sense. You might have to read up on how the current offline protection (AKA "noncombatant") mechanic works before continuing this discussion.
See: hazeron.com/wiki/Noncombatant

[Grecanis]

It's very simple, you engage in hostilities then you are no longer protected while offline from those you have attacked. By the same token, if you take advantage of your attackers lack of protection and attack while they are not online and cannot respond then you lose your protection from them as well.