I have been in meetings, so haven't had time, but I will send a ticket ingame in a few hours about not seeing a warning when I launch an attack.
EDIT - it works normally now, no need for a ticket!
But I think there are 2 different perspectives here:
1 - the modern world (and definitely modern gaming) is all about immediate gratification, not about overcoming a challenge. With all modern games you can choose to play hardcore, or you can choose to be able to go back one hour to your last save and therefor avoid all consequences of poor play. The SI team obviously need to find a way to meet this need. The new SI has become more and more about gratification with treasure hunts and free rubble and interdimensional spins and easy aliens and spacia res for free etc. Nobody should be surprised about this trend. SIMs are very popular, because they are not difficult.
2 - this game was a tough war game in its origins. Players that have been around for over a decade are definitely the ones who love the challenge, and who are skilled enough to meet any opponent on the digital battlefield. It was aggressive and there was no mercy. THAT is why this game became popular with the faithful old players. It was not easy! And those tough players were not wimps, they were fighters by nature! The purist fleeter built no mines, and he would attack ANYTHING that was red! That was the SI identity of old. Harsh, unforgiving, and so so so satisfying when you crush others, especially when they wept tears!
Unfortunately these two perspectives are OPPOSITE to each other. I don't think there is an easy solution. But clearly the team is just trying to do their best to solve it. I can't complain about that. At least the game is not being abandoned like BigPoint did!
However, is there not a different solution? What if there was a multi level interaction? For example, when I spy and attack someone, my attack could go through and it is me against another player. The best player wins. Great challenge!
But possibly, the attack goes through and does not land on a player account, but an AI planet (Spacia MKII) becomes the target instead. I still get the res from a successful attack (and the risk of interception if the victim is strong enough), and the attacker enjoys the challenge of crashing fleet, but that player account is untouched, and my rewards come from the Spacia MKII. So after the battle lands, I see the player is still there, untouched, but the temporary Spacia MKII has that player's specs and this Spacia MKII can respond. This might be difficult to code, but initially it could just be a passive sense of leaving the victim account restored to what it was before the attack while the attacker still benefits from aggressive play.
- The conditions for when a victim gets this Spacia MKII help and when not can be done on a few criteria:
how much bigger spice value is the other player?- Attacker more than 25% bigger and the victim has 25% chance of Spacia MKII taking the hit.
- Attacker more than 50% bigger and the victim has 50% chance of Spacia MKII taking the hit.
- Attacker more than 75% bigger and the victim has 75% chance of Spacia MKII taking the hit.
- Etc
- how active is the victim?
- More than 1 log in per day = additional 10% chance of Spcia MKII taking the hit, etc...
- was an asteroid involved? - then more chance of Spacia MKII helping.
- maybe achievements can be factored in some way to add to the chances of help.
I know I am trying to lay out a poorly developed idea, and I know there will be problems with this, but the base idea I am trying to communicate is a way to keep both styles of play a possible choice for anyone. It should not be so that active aggressive players are punished. But it needs to be that weaker less skilled players are helped so they don't quit. If only the strongest, most aggressive players, with 15 years of SI experience stay to play, the game will die. We need new players...
