Maybe just keep Sentinel as it is but permit it to be used only within x ticks from a fam's home system.  And create another tag, called the Guardian, also to be used only within x ticks of a fam's home system.  The Guardian tag gives a 50% attack bonus to the player (so for an attacker a total 100% bonus before research), and can be used against players of fams more than 60% higher NW without breaking the fam protection.

> Virgo Legend wrote:

> Maybe if you're in a tiny family and have grand plans of attacking a larger one by sneaking into their systems, the game could warn you before you do that. "The family you are about to attack is xxx* larger than your's. Attacking them could create a dire situation for your empire. Do you REALLY want to do this?" Then smaller families and new players, that don't understand the game, would know there's serious consequences for attacking someone larger than them

The whole problem was they expo'd all over our systems while we had nap in place, then cancelled threatening to take 150-200 planets first tick if we didn't give them 100 planets.   During this 72 hr time, I expo'd into their systems and portalled - not dishonorable as they were all over ours.   Once the 72 hr time was up, they jumped some and we were under 35% of their nw as we didn't build.   This ticked them off so they put sentinal tag on one of their guys and started blowing up our little guys planets, hitting banker/partax.   

Now... Had ONE of our family members not performed a retake after watching 30 planets either blown up or taken by this sentinel we'd have been ok as I was the one jumping and was at work at the time and only had cell phone to do anything with.   I planned on jumping that evening and clearing their attackers before they could hit 150-200 planets.   What really happened was a good old farming of a smaller family due to the sentinel rule.   Had sentinel not been able to attack our small guys in OUR core, this would not have happened like it did.

Sentinel rule was abused, there is no way to get around that.  Sentinel was created to protect your own core against others getting into it small and portaling/jumping.   I was in their systems, they didn't clear me, rather hit a small partax/banker...

This "abuse" is just utter bs. Just because we choose not to explain our actions. Dosent mean that we're in the wrong here or that everything that they said about what happend is true.  I wont go into details what we did for obvious reasons. Put please think for you're selfs. There is 2 sides to the story.

And for the Sent tag atm. Its just flawd. You cant clear low nws attackers without havy losses. Seeing as it will result in killing 15% of you're ground and not give you the planet( atleast for us ). And we did it with over 7times the fleet.  It deffently needs a rewamp.

What should happen is this:

The smaller fam should have an opportunity to form alliance with other small fams and send aid to each other so small fams can jump a fleet that could potentially compete with big fams fleets.  This would have to be a permanent alliance or 'faction'.  I really think incorporating factions into the game would solve these issues.

Simple solution

A scaling defense bonus based upon family NW differences.

If < 10% then no bonus

If < 20% then 1% bonus per 2% difference

If < 30% then 1% bonus per 1% difference

If < 40% then 2% bonus per 1% difference

It still means being top dog gonna win, but now the farmed has more pointiness on their sticks.