Background
QONQR is a very mature game. It’s longevity has, in some areas, caused domination and stagnation. This makes it difficult for newer players to come into the game because they simply do not see a way to compete. When an area stagnates, the existing players become less involved and sometimes leave the game. This is why the game needs a mechanic that addresses the zone stack size in these areas. It is referred to here as Attrition. There are two kinds of attrition Player and Zone.

Attrition {noun}
The process of gradually reducing the strength of something through sustained pressure.

Player Attrition
This is a plan for players that leave the game. We should introduce another player status beyond retired. After 365 days since their last launch, a player’s status would become ‘abandoned’. Once the player has abandoned the game, their bots will be removed from the game. The player’s account would remain. If they return to the game, they would have to start over in their bot count.

Zone Attrition
At 000 QST on the 15th of the month, bots will be systematically removed from selected zones. For each zone with a total bot count above 100,000, each formation for each player will be reduced by 10%. This will reduce the largest zones by a greater number than smaller zones. Forcing the defending players to choose where they wish to invest their limited launches. The 10% reduction is productive in reducing the count without being punitive. Without other actions, a 1 million bot zone would take 23 months to be reduced to the minimum 100,000 bots. While a 2 million bot zone would take 30 months and a 10 million bot zone would take 45 months. The largest towers are far fewer in number whereas the 1-2 million bot
zones are the focus of this attrition.
The 100,000 bot minimum limit protects the ‘missile game’ that is popular with many long-term players. It also limits the number of zones that have to be processed on a monthly basis. Based on the most recent monthly zone file, there are only about 80,000 zones above this limit. This is 3% of the total world-wide zones or 6% of the active zones. While this is a relatively small zone number, it is how they are concentrated that is critically important.

Conclusion
This is a big departure from how QONQR works now. We are looking for your feedback as to its merit. Whether that be positive or you see issues. If we are to pursue this change we want to be sure all angles have been examined. Just like launches in Atlantis, all feedback counts.

I still think this is a great idea overall! I wonder if the player attrition penalty is too sudden, though? What if instead retired bots were counted differently than not retired bots? The active ones would contribute to the zone size and drop by 10% every month until reaching the 100,000 limit, and retired bots would have their own counter and drop by a higher percentage every month, maybe 15%, without a lower limit. This would have the effect of getting rid of all a retired players’ bots over time but the process would be a little more gradual.

For me, scrolling around the map and seing the marks left by retired players is an interesting aspect of the game, and also a good way to collect the gold status which I would not like to lose in an instant. And a million bots being reduced to less than 500 in two years (assuming 15%/month) still seems fast enough to me, so I would agree with Cesium.

Definitely agree that the player attrition being total rather than incremental strikes me as rather extreme. I do know players who have come back after more than a year. That said I would think that a mechanism to eliminate all of a players bots would be easier to implement since it already exists (for faction change).

For sure the proposal is aimed at improving this very real problem for the game, so it’s definitely appreciated. However the zone attrition does have a bit of an artificial and enforced from the Deus Ex Machina type of feel to it. From a certain point of view the logical conclusion of it is that all zones eventually shrink to 100k without active maintenance.

I will agree that the Player Attrition is sudden. That is because the venerable age of our game. We have far more players that have left the game than those currently active. How these players impact the game for new players is what is most troubling. They just make it appear to new players that there is no way to compete. Since this is like a 'reset button', maybe this a one and done activity.

I'm warming up to Cesium's suggestion that the retired players' formations be reduced at a 15% rate. From a production stand-point, having different zone minimums is problematic. I think the 100k minimum still works, it limits the number of zones to be processed. Yes, the objective is to reduce the zone size to 100k. It becomes more difficult to maintain an empire. Leaving more zones for new players to compete in.

I feel like a change like that would make a radical shift in balance towards offence over defense while also removing the the most valuable targets from the game. the mega towers that make MM targets worth while and the retired bots that that offer large pools of higher kill rate bots to draw attacks away from new players. there should be ways to counter this for players that are actively building up towers, as that is kind of the point of the game and i would feel could alienate some of the veterans who build up their empire and then spend money on atlantis.

I disagree with the sudden removal of bots from the game. I would much rather a a continual decay of bot shields all the way to like, 90% or 95% or something like that for abandoned accounts. I kind of think universal zone attrition is also a bit harsh. it might be harder to develop, you could possibly tie it into bases and headquarters. Bases could act like a multiplier to either greatly reduce your own attrition and slightly increase attrition to players in other factions. headquarters could possibly completely remove your own attrition from a zone, apply an area of affect reduction to zones in a certain range say 10 miles.

It is evident the player attrition is too drastic for most people. While I think it is necessary, I will have to agree on that point. However, the discussion has opened new thoughts on how zone attrition could work. Most notably, that inactive players' bots would reduce at a higher rate that active players' bots. Another popular change would be to have the support bots reduce at a slower rate also. I have created a matrix of bot attrition that addresses these concerns. Even the most aggressive rate would take a year to reduce from 1m to 100k. More current players would take up to 2 years.

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SufNQaOfy7ohuWWLXaaUZ4sJTOu...sp=sharing

The idea of support bots reducing more slowly is a great point, expensive bots like that would be a pain to constantly replace. One other question I have on this topic is how it would affect the leaderboards. Since players with more bots will lose them faster it will be a lot harder for them to stay on top. Will that make the bot count leaderboard irrelevant, and is that a desirable effect or will it lead to older players leaving the game?

A thought I have had recently is to make this a specialized formation to launch as opposed to a universal effect. There could be an alternative version of missiles that leave behind bots that cause attrition while they are in the zone. That way players that are active can keep their boys up easier as well as being able to wear down retired bots. It makes it an easier way to build up attrition in inactive and areas. As toxic Nanos or whatever they end up being called could be sent over time. Making attrition worse in areas that that are truly abandoned. I would also probably see if there would be a way to give players under level 50 immunity from the attrition effect as that could used to keep them from loosing all their bots. I would say that attrition should be calculated daily but there should probably be rolling to some extent, as it could potentially be quite an extensive task to compute all at once, so possibly splitting into quarters or maybe by timezone.

I would like to add a suggestion to this feature.

Bases owned by active players should not be affected by zone attrition. In my case, at least, I have five bases in my hometown and all the others in the city where I currently reside, so seeing their numbers diminish from far away while being unable to do something about it doesn't seem to me like a good thing.

Perhaps to prevent abuse of this "immunity" thing, unaffected zones must have been someone's base for at least a month, or some other period of time considered reasonable.

I like Ali3n’s suggestion of a formation that that leaves behind toxic bots that melt a zone over time. Active players would need to destroy those toxic bots to keep their zones big, which feels fair. The bigger your empire, the more work it is to maintain it.

I’d also be more interested in a solution that makes it easier for active players to attack retired player’s bots, vs just having the server remove them.

What about just removing the support benefits for retired bots and have the support bots they have attrition slowly?

I agree with the toxic bot idea, at least that will make combat dynamics more interesting in terms of new offensive and defensive strategies.

However I don't agree that "attrition" is enough to deal with new players leaving, especially when they are unable to contest locally against entrenched superior forces. I recommend that a there should be automatic offensive buff when deploying bots if there zero zones controlled by their faction within say 100km. This then gets gradually reduced as systems detects more faction zones within said area until buff is gone when you control for example 5-10% of zones in the area.

This will give hope to new players to make a dent in their local area and allow for more fluid lines of control.

I like the idea of having some kind of attrition to reduce the giant bot towers out there. With the current state of the game primarily just a bot stacking contest it has made it difficult to recruit new players in over the years when they are surrounded by zones with millions of bots. Even as a veteran it is disheartening to see a 5M tower that I know even with boost will take almost a month to topple. If there is one player even half defending it then the assault becomes pointless. I would also encourage a buff to offense to help bring some life back into this game. Right now, you assault for 4k-5k a tank while they defend stacking 7k-8k a tank.

Started new in March. Currently killing a tower of 24M. Started a month (?) ago, maybe 6 weeks. 10M gone. Will keep killing it until I get it. This is part of the fun of the game. To watch millions of bots die after 7 years. The retired penalty makes it much easier. But to flip it after years is where the fun is.

Attrition is an idea that has to happen, and after dipping my toes in after 5 years I can't believe it hasn't been introduced already. A small clique in my area just keeps on conquering everything with no need to worry about maintaining already-taken zones because they've already bullied everyone else out. Hundreds or thousands of zones all under their control all because they've played the game for years.

You should have to make hard choices about whether you want to keep a set of zones or acquire a new one. You can't have it all.