Prolonging alerts by 15 minutes was a step in the good direction, but there are two problems with it: It's sometimes awfully long when the defending team is being brutally double-teamed. It's still too short when the defending team already has a huge territory bonus. So why not make the duration adaptive? e.g. as many minutes as the percentage of territory held (at alert start) minus 5 minutes, with the total alert duration clamped at 60 minutes max. For example: 40% territory: 35 minutes 50% territory: 45 minutes 60% territory 55 minutes 65% territory or more: 60 minutes
That would be a good step. Really the whole problem with ANY rewards system for any game of this sort is that they don't take into account the actual difficulty versus some theoretical idea the developers assume to be the "norm". Its hard enough to get an alert started when you have 30% of the population versus 40% and 30% and its a true three-way fight for the continent. Trying to do that, or keep one, when you're facing the bulk of both other factions is a marathon effort. One that quickly mentally exhausts people even when successful, and when not successful outright depressing. I laid it out in a different post, but the territory thresholds for triggering and winning/ breaking an alert and the amount of time available really should depend on a number of factors. Including relative population on the continent, how much of each sides forces are fighting against the other empires, relative strength/ weakness of ones starting lattice, etc. In effect how much territory and cotrium you need to start and win the alert and how much time they other guys get to react should depend on how easy or difficult it was reaching the needed point and how strongly the other sides react. So, for example, if the Emerald NC trigger an alert with 25% of the population versus 45% TR and 30% VS and both of those throw everything against them, they would need to hold less territory than normal and have a shorter time span they need to hold on to win. Conversely the TR in such a situation triggering an alert would need more (say 50%) of both, and if the VS chose to ignore them while the NC threw everything at them they would need to hold out the full 30 minutes or longer.
That sounds fine. My idea was needing to hold on to 80% of the territory you had whenever you started the alert. There are a couple reasons I'd like shorter alerts than longer. Casual players should be able to take part in them and see them through, and an hour long alert plus the time it takes to start the alert is more than a lot of people could invest after work with real life things going on. I want more ISO. Winning alerts is often incredibly random and depends a lot on who's over-pop that night. I'd like to at least get the 50 iso every hour just for stopping alerts. Faction swapping, and this is probably the biggest one. Over-pop is still a big problem, and shortening alerts makes it harder to switch teams in time to reap the rewards. Shorter alerts would encourage players to just stick with their faction because another alert that they triggered could be right around the corner.
Yeah, adaptive amount of minimum territory to hold also sounds great, IMO. It all comes down to proportionally attenuating the amount of advantage the defending faction has at alert start.
