Spend E for inactivity.

[icydee]

Spending 1E per day, after 15 days of inactivity, was intended to provide the following:-

• Allow people to go away for holidays without logging in.
• Have a mechanism to delete inactive accounts
• Act as a 'sink' for E.

However, people playing the game with little E are at a disadvantage. I propose.

• If the account has (say) 50E or more, then it deducts 1E per day as now.
• Once the account is below (say) 5E it deducts 0.1E per day

Truly inactive accounts will still be deleted (but after 50 more days) during which they can be pillaged by other empires.

It won't significantly reduce the E sink.

Having inactive accounts around for longer does not significantly increase the load on the server.

[dmcbride]

My first reaction was to go the other way (faster countdown, not slower), but as I thought more about this, when combined with the sitter changes, I've started to like this better. Precise numbers can be worked out, but the general idea I like.

Mitigations would include:

1. eveins should not accumulate for inactives. This leaves inactives around for far too long.
2. "during which they can be pillaged by other empires" -- ranking difference should not apply to inactives. Not sure if home-world protections should apply or not.
3. Maybe the ability to pillage E from inactives in small amounts (3-5e, but the spy has to bring it home via ship)? This would serve as a bit of a disincentive to try loading up an inactive with excess E before losing the sitter access so as to have more time to flip them.

[lemming552]

Looks like a spot where one of the places I'd like to see quicker cleanup. Empires that fall under these parameters delete after a week of inactivity 1) Not Finished Tutorial 2) Empire Creation & Last Login have less than 24 hours

(More about clearing names for reuse in this case)

[lemming552]

I do want a mechanism for people able to take time off from the game, but the current one has issues. Archiving perhaps of inactives to remove them, but the empire could still be restored in a fashion. I'll put something in the LS-wiki over the next week

[Imzogelmo]

There are several needs to keep in mind when trying to balance this.

• The need for a player to leave temporarily without serious injury.
• The need for a competitor to have targets to pillage.
• The need for an alliance to function properly even if several members are on time-off.

While an e-vein makes an inactive pretty much immune to the game's current purge mechanism, it does not deter a would-be attacker; quite the contrary, it serves as a strong motivator.

What if, rather than a steady trickle of E down to 0, the game were to trickle some E down as it does now, for (say) 45 days (after the initial 15 day grace period), and then, no matter what the remaining balance is, set the empire to auto-self-destruct? The E-code could still email to the player if they provided an address.

[icydee]

I like the idea of a maximum period of inactivity, irrespective of the amount of E.

I know that Norway has intimated that there could be some sort of 'archive' of an empire, but frankly I can't see how this can easily be achieved. All the colonies, all the buildings, spies, ships etc. would need some way of being archived and then some way of recovering them (assuming the planet's had not been occupied in the mean time. This would be a huge task but it would at least mean that even after 60 days an empire could be recovered intact.

Also, how about a better 'status' for an empire, other than just the last login date, so that people could more easily find empires that were in their final 45 days (or 30 days etc.) and so make them more easily identified and pillaged?

[lemming552]

My ideas for archive are all buildings per planet get recorded, ships and spies do not. Empire gets esssentia recorded of course. bin/util/pack_empire.pl has a prototype of the recording. My idea for recovery would be: 1) Capitol recovered on new starter zone planet. (Change type & size to match) 2) Colony Recovery ships for each colony that can be sent. These would be non-tradable and payload would be keyed to the empire id. So not usable by anyone else.

That's just a couple working ideas. We can also make archived empires be reduced to capitol, and have the capitol moved to a starter zone, NZ, or even a new zone for this. People could have the option of archive, and we'd still have a time base. However, I would want a buffer time between archive & unpacking.

On being able to pillage empires, the idea of the outlaw status is one that can be applied to this. I've been thinking of the best method to apply that, and what different states of the status could mean.

[Imzogelmo]

OK, change my comment above from "auto-self-destruct" to "auto-archive" and it works pretty well, I think. If they never come back, it achieves the same purpose; if they do, then it will still have a penalty just the same as a voluntary archive.

Icy's comment about an explicit "pillage me" flag is one I agree with. Everyone has a different opinion on how long is long enough. If the flag were explicit, it would keep people who want to be here more active, and those who are really done would be even more prone to the vultures (in fact, perhaps, it would remove the stigma of 'vulture' a bit).

[dmcbride]

Looks like a spot where one of the places I'd like to see quicker cleanup. Empires that fall under these parameters delete after a week of inactivity 1) Not Finished Tutorial 2) Empire Creation & Last Login have less than 24 hours

(More about clearing names for reuse in this case)

There are players who have been playing for years without finishing the tutorial. So I wouldn't include (1) unless they've also only been active for less than some period of time. Maybe if actively played for two weeks, then two weeks of inactivity before deleting, but if actively played for 2 years without finishing the tutorial, they shouldn't be deleted after just a week of inactivity (and 2 years would be too long, too). Once you've spent more time as inactive (to a minimum of 1 week) than you spent as active, that seems like a fairly good indication you're not coming back.

[lemming552]

That was an AND condition. Pretty much anyone who has been around more than a month would fall under the other conditions.

[dmcbride]

Sorry, my bad on misinterpreting. I'm good then :)