> AnarchyAngel wrote:

> OR

Just combine morale and special ops...

Either way, just let us use more ops!

This!

This would add a new dynamic to the game.

The problem would be balance.

So you combine the two, now we have to define how much each op uses.
So lets say

Hard ops 15%
Soft ops 10%
Self ops, and all intra family ops 5%

The problem now is it regenerates slower then what we have now. 5% morale up to 10% means your getting more initial ops off, but a lot less over time...

But if you decrease the value of the ops, then being able to jump a partax and have him cast 20 FFs in a tick, then another 2 every tick thereafter is rediculous..

So to solve that you'd need to start comparing the networths of two empires to determine how much it costs to op..

But then you'll get abuse by having really small partaxs able to alot of damage against top people..

So now we'ed have to remove partaxes, or nerf them...

See where this is leading? It would need a long long time of balancing to get right.

> AnarchyAngel wrote:

> I don't think balance would be an issue. If a small partax can get spells across on a larger banker then more power to him. The larger player has the advantage of building more wizards more quickly.

Absolutely untrue.
1: The opper chooses the moment of the strike.  If a family, for example, just jumped a resourcer, the opper can choose that moment to take advantage of the resource dedication.
2: Considering relative science burdens, a wizzie opper will generally have smaller research requirements, and therefore more construction science (needing only construction and perhaps resource science depending on whether they produce their own octo), compared to the pop banker (income, construction, welfare).  Result?  The opper will most likely be building wizzies quicker (from a time sense) than the banker.
3: Banker wizzies have to sit there idly for defense.  This has a couple implications:
A: It means it can be actually slightly cheaper to unleash an offensive army than it is to build a defensive army, depending on other circumstances.  If the banker wants to defend himself against attacks that would be stopped by 2 million defensive wizards, I would need to buy the 2 million wizards (expensive in itself), then have them sit around while I pay 2 million in upkeep for them every tick (that's 48 mil per day lost just on upkeep).
B: It means my defenses are relatively known.  Let's say you've got infils on me, and have had them for the past 4 days.  You would have a good idea of my wizard defenses and, as a result, could calculate whether or not you could successfully undertake the attack.  Even if you don't have infils, though, you could use the soft op trick (soft ops require half the wizzies that hard ops do to be successful, generally, so if you can successfully hit a soft op at 40% of your wizzie count, you can probably get the hard op through).  So you have an empirical method of determining what is a proper wizzie count to build.  The banker, on the other hand, is more or less guessing.
C: Worst case scenario, you're a bluff.  I'm a banker, and my fam is about to go to war.  We get spy on targets on your family, and see that you have enough octo for 4 million wizzies.  Assuming our opper doesn't want to fight, and assuming I'm our family's biggest banker, it would probably be a good idea for me to put somewhere between 2 and 3 million wizzies for defense, which would be enough to give you plenty of trouble getting through (I'm not sure on the exact ratios, but let's assume that's true for this purpose).  You, however... don't really need to do a damn thing.  Sure, you have the octo.  However, you could just as easily sit the war out, letting the other pop banker waste 2-3 million gc per tick in upkeep, plus the gc required for those wizzies to build, for a relative daily loss of 48 mil gc for the banker to... 700k octo decayed.  Or better yet, jump your wizzies, scaring their banker into jumping his own defenses... then spend your ops closing attacker portals!  The attackers will give that octo-hoarding pop banker the dirtiest glares ever!  So the opper doesn't actually need to op in order to beat a banker.

Why are you quoting me only a half hour after I began waivering on my support for the idea?  lol!

That does, however, create a problem of scaling.

If, for example, we are interested in preserving the one op/tick regeneration equivalent, it would mean the average op would take away 5% morale, which would mean you could get 22 ops off against a target in the surprise attack, as opposed to the current 7 ops.  If I hit a banker with 22 successful hypnos, I would reduce that guy's population to .04% of its original population (Not 4%... .04%.  So if I had 100 million pop, it would be reduced to around 40,000).  That's not just bad.  That banker might as well pass his planets to someone else.

However, if the objective in scaling is to preserve the current ops limit (so 110% morale lost would be about equivalent to 7-8 ops), the amount of ops usable per day would be less than half the current amount, and would only even come near 1/tick after grabbing 5 morale planets.

So the real problem here is mathematics.

But do we REALLY need conflict?

> Zarf BeebleBrix wrote:

> Why are you quoting me only a half hour after I began waivering on my support for the idea?  lol!

So you can't edit your reply and withdraw your support for this good idea!