Wow, don't even like that word?
Bit overly strict in my opinion, but no worries.
Suggestions... other that removing the limit completely? First, I guess, I'd need to know why the 40 attack limit is in place. I assume the limit is there for either hardware purposes or aesthetics; ie., either Playmesh was having a problem with overload on their servers with people sending spam attacks, or players were using spam attacks as a way to confuse, and annoy, other players... ie., you'd log into your city and see 300 attacks at one of your cities, you'd click the down carrot to see when the attacks would hit and, 20 minutes later, your list would stop scrolling.
In the case of the former, not much to be done. In the case of the later, a better display would easily fix it (and then the limit could be removed). On the main city page with the carrots just display the nearest 5 or 10 attack times. If you go into the rally screen then you can segment movement by page... say 20 attacks per page, sorted by arrival time. This would be easy to plow through and disabling an enemy city through sheer spam would be removed.
If the limit will absolutely not be removed (and let's face it, raising the limit wouldn't matter. If people have the time to send 40 attacks per city to chaos a guild member, then they have the time to send 100 attacks per city to choas them. Or 200, etc. The limit wouldn't matter)...
One possible solution would be to create a sort of ad hoc rule set (this is messy so follow along carefully)...
First, we say that you can not attack a city that is owned by a guildmate... Fair enough, this rule actually already exists. Neat!
Next, when a player joins a guild we say that any city that they own can not be under attack by their (now) guild mates. This would be part of the joining a guild code... when a player joins the code grabs their city data and looks to see if any of their new guild mates have attacks sent to any of their cities. If so, "oh no!" We either change the attacks to support, or the attacks are cancelled automatically and they turn around and start marching back to their home city.
Now.. the above code is *only* triggered during a guild join. If 2 guild mates each attack the same city, and the first one conquers it, the second will still attack it. Why? Because the first guild mate did not leave and rejoin the guild upon conquering the city, so this bit of code was never triggered.
It's a bit of a hack, I admit. But it's about all I can think of to work around this. Some possible problems with it:
1. It will encourage people to do chaos not with their own guild, but with their sister guild. Granted, it is more difficult as sister guild communication is usually a lot worse than in-guild communication. But this would get around the above code.
2. It will encourage people to leave their guilds and be "guildless" guild members. Ie., a member in all but game code. While guildless their guild could chaos them until the cows come home. The drawback to this strategy would be that there would be no easy way to tell that they are a part of a guild so all other guilds might decide that they are easy pickings. Yes, they are still chaosed, but it might encourage more guilds to start hovering. As well, while guildless it will mean communication between the player and the guild will be difficult and disjointed.
Another possible addition to the above would be to put limits on leaving/joining a guild. Perhaps when you leave a guild you must wait 2-3 days to join another guild. Perhaps you can join a guild for free, but joining another guild costs resources (perhaps equal to 15% of the maximum holdings of your combined cities... ie., 10 cities with max warehouses would be 5 million resource capacity, and 15% would be 750k of each resource... Some pot could be created that you could dump funds into it until you hit your cost and then you could be allowed to join a new guild).
Basically some mechanism that slows down or prevents people from leaving/joining guilds rapidly, as this is the current flavor of the day for entering into chaos.
Like I said, everything has benefits and drawbacks. Balancing them, or deciding when a benefit outweighs a drawback, is for those that make the big bucks.
Good luck.
Wow, don't even like that word? :) Bit overly strict in my opinion, but no worries.
Suggestions... other that removing the limit completely? First, I guess, I'd need to know why the 40 attack limit is in place. I assume the limit is there for either hardware purposes or aesthetics; ie., either Playmesh was having a problem with overload on their servers with people sending spam attacks, or players were using spam attacks as a way to confuse, and annoy, other players... ie., you'd log into your city and see 300 attacks at one of your cities, you'd click the down carrot to see when the attacks would hit and, 20 minutes later, your list would stop scrolling.
In the case of the former, not much to be done. In the case of the later, a better display would easily fix it (and then the limit could be removed). On the main city page with the carrots just display the nearest 5 or 10 attack times. If you go into the rally screen then you can segment movement by page... say 20 attacks per page, sorted by arrival time. This would be easy to plow through and disabling an enemy city through sheer spam would be removed.
If the limit will absolutely not be removed (and let's face it, raising the limit wouldn't matter. If people have the time to send 40 attacks per city to chaos a guild member, then they have the time to send 100 attacks per city to choas them. Or 200, etc. The limit wouldn't matter)...
One possible solution would be to create a sort of ad hoc rule set (this is messy so follow along carefully)...
First, we say that you can not attack a city that is owned by a guildmate... Fair enough, this rule actually already exists. Neat!
Next, when a player joins a guild we say that any city that they own can not be under attack by their (now) guild mates. This would be part of the joining a guild code... when a player joins the code grabs their city data and looks to see if any of their new guild mates have attacks sent to any of their cities. If so, "oh no!" We either change the attacks to support, or the attacks are cancelled automatically and they turn around and start marching back to their home city.
Now.. the above code is *only* triggered during a guild join. If 2 guild mates each attack the same city, and the first one conquers it, the second will still attack it. Why? Because the first guild mate did not leave and rejoin the guild upon conquering the city, so this bit of code was never triggered.
It's a bit of a hack, I admit. But it's about all I can think of to work around this. Some possible problems with it:
1. It will encourage people to do chaos not with their own guild, but with their sister guild. Granted, it is more difficult as sister guild communication is usually a lot worse than in-guild communication. But this would get around the above code.
2. It will encourage people to leave their guilds and be "guildless" guild members. Ie., a member in all but game code. While guildless their guild could chaos them until the cows come home. The drawback to this strategy would be that there would be no easy way to tell that they are a part of a guild so all other guilds might decide that they are easy pickings. Yes, they are still chaosed, but it might encourage more guilds to start hovering. As well, while guildless it will mean communication between the player and the guild will be difficult and disjointed.
Another possible addition to the above would be to put limits on leaving/joining a guild. Perhaps when you leave a guild you must wait 2-3 days to join another guild. Perhaps you can join a guild for free, but joining another guild costs resources (perhaps equal to 15% of the maximum holdings of your combined cities... ie., 10 cities with max warehouses would be 5 million resource capacity, and 15% would be 750k of each resource... Some pot could be created that you could dump funds into it until you hit your cost and then you could be allowed to join a new guild).
Basically some mechanism that slows down or prevents people from leaving/joining guilds rapidly, as this is the current flavor of the day for entering into chaos.
Like I said, everything has benefits and drawbacks. Balancing them, or deciding when a benefit outweighs a drawback, is for those that make the big bucks.
Good luck. :)