(01-13-2022, 11:21 PM)Haxus Wrote:(01-13-2022, 10:32 PM)OriginalGangstaStaines Wrote: When the counter attack comes, the alt empire logs off.
<head smack> Blast you chess player.
What if an empire who has attacked any other empire remains in a combatant state for a minimum amount of time? At present, when the last player logs off, the empire becomes noncombatant after 3 minutes. That could be an hour if they've just attacked someone.
An hour or two maybe yeah. But can definitely start imagining more unpleasant scenarios for this feature now.
It depends a bit on what it is the feature is supposed to defend. Is it supposed to protect the cities of the empire? Or is it supposed to protect each and every unit?
From the adventurer point of view, I can definitely see it being nice if your ship isn't just blown up while you are offline for a few days. But maybe that should be the risk of leaving your ship away from a friendly harbor.
On the empire scale we are more worried about the cities and fleets. For the fleet it might be reasonable to say that it should only be protected if it is at a safe harbor, for example in orbit over an empire claimed world.
Still if conquest of a solar system only takes a few hours, it doesn't matter if someone is online or not. As we were discussing a bit, a way of claiming a solar system so it is protected would help a lot. An enemy would have to siege the solar system for upward to a week before they can actually destroy the infrastructure.
It might be something worth brainstorming more over at least, like in my above mentioned idea thread, (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems.