suggestions

At the moment I believe that the energy system so heavily favors attackers theres no point to keeping more than a 1.0 ratio. Heres why:

You gain 18-24 energy upon attacking someone and winning

You loose 8-14 energy upon attacking someone and loosing.

Theres no reason not to suicide yourself upon a target as long as you win 50% of the time. even if we do the extremes (only gain 18 and loose 14) over the course of a rape:

At level 40: You win 25 times and gain 450, you loose 25 times and loose 350 energy. Net gain of 100 energy. While that doesn't seem a lot that is the EXTREME here's what it would normally be: 500 energy gained and 250 lost. Thats just for winning 50% of your fights, you gain 250 energy (This might not seem like a lot, but I mean thats half a days regen which can add up)

At level 80: You win 50 times and gain 900 energy you loose 50 times and loose 700. Net gain of 200 energy. Again this is the extreme (18 win and 14 lost) Heres a normal spread (20 gain 10 lost) 1000 gained and 500 lost. 500 energy thats a lot of energy for 50% of the fights and theres no way for the defender to even stand a chance.

The ratios just get ridiculous the more you level: At 100 you would gain 1350 and loose 1050. Net gain of 300, the extremes are slowly increasing but look at the normal ranges: 1500 gained and 750 lost. Net gain of 750 energy. Once again, thats a lot.

750 doesn't sound like a lot to us who are used to 150,000 CS, but keep in mind how scarce energy is: The guy in the led for monthly energy gained only has +5,531 (And is level 70ish). One guy decides to suicide on him, going 50/50 right? He only has 5031 energy now. Thats NINE percent loss because he TIED with a bot. See how thats just plan crazy? You are equally as good as the other guy but he gets nine percent of your energy every two days.

Also keep in mind that I didn't do the extremes in the benefit of the attacker (I.E. 24 gain and only 8 lost) I only did the extremes that benefited the defender (18 gained and 14 lost).


Theres no reason to ever be on the defensive. You log off your energy is free game. I LOVE this about the new system I think however, the defender should have some way to "protect" his energy. There should be no free zones. But there should be a way to GAIN energy from someone attacking you. If they want to suicide on you, then they should defiantly have something to risk as well.

What Im suggesting is that the energy gained and the energy lost ranges overlap:

IE you can Gain 15-24 energy per fight. You can loose 9-18 energy per fight. I made these numbers up on the spot(Two ranges of 9), but they can be tweaked as everyone sees fit to make them "fairer".

The difference in lost/gain was done on purpose though, or there'd be no point in challenging a bot that's roughly as strong as you.

I'm sure it needs fine tuning. And i'm also sure people will find ways to protect their energy reserves once ob starts.

I agree with you, there should be a reason to challenge a bot thats even skill with yours, there should be some risk however. At the moment there is 0 risk. You will -always- steal his energy, I feel like there should be a little more risk then the defender needing to win twice as many fights as the attacker

This is an issue that's on my radar. I don't want energy to be so impossible to hold onto that there's no point in fighting for it until the end of the month, but I also don't want it to be so impossible to take from other bots that there's no point in attacking them. And I do feel there needs to be some advantage for the attacker because they are investing their time to carry out the attacks. How much of an advantage this should be is debatable.

I'm not sure the numbers behind the example of being able to take 9% of someone's energy with one suicide attack will hold up as we move into open beta and beyond. Once more bots start participating in the clan race, I suspect we're going to be seeing much larger numbers. The trend will be for regen to play a less and less significant role as the number of participants increases.

I think we'll have to wait until at least open beta to get a better idea of how best to carry out this balancing act. I think it's clear that the energy given by a losing attacker should be increased. It's less clear how much of an increase this should be.

I have just had 105 fights with a good bot, 13 levels highter that me. I won only 77 of these fights, yet I was able to take all of his energy (1,736).
This seems wrong to me. I think the raito between an attack win and a attack defect should be more like (4:3)

I'm glad this issue was raised Shadow :) I have a couple of ideas when it comes to balancing energy also. I believe it may be in the best interests to lower the amount of energy gained/lost during a battle in order to put it in line with rape limits. Also, I believe in FNIX's idea that different levels should have different regen values. Here's my idea on how to balance the whole mess:

- As it currently stands, regen is set to 20 energy per hour for all bots in clans. I believe this should be 10 for bots lvl 20-49, 20 for 50 to 99, 30 for 100-149, and 40 for lvls 150+. I pick these values due to the rape limits between these levels(50 for 20-49, 100 for 50-99, 200 for 100-149, 300 for 150+). In the 48 hours(72 for 150+) it takes for a rape counter to reset, a lvl 20 would gain 480 energy, a lvl 60 would get 960, a 120 1440, and a 160 2880. The 100-149 still needs some work with this system I admit, so bear with me.
- Energy gain is 2-10 per win in this system and 2-8 for losses. Ideally if you rape a good dex bot and it takes you an hour with a total 75 wins and 25 losses, you would gain 9-10 energy per win and lose 7-8 energy per loss(as the battle depends on things like your con, how many times you hit etc.) for a total of 550 energy gained. If it were 50-50, you would have only gained 100 energy. Comeon, you need a little bit of reward after raping a dex bot for an hour lol. Not that the current system couldn't work, but all of my regen values would have to be doubled from my evaluations.
-The entire reason I bring this up is that as it stands during the 48-hour rape limit, a lvl 60 would gain 960 energy. If somebody attacks them 40-53 and wins all those times, that 960 energy is gone. There's little motivation to even finish the rape. My entire idea revolves around balancing the regen values on par with the rape limits so as to try and make a somewhat balanced system. But hey, its just an idea after all.