Core issue of Useful Actions and a simple fix

I think the biggest issue with Useful Actions is that they heavily punish deaths, especially at top tier with more dynamic gameplay.

You may be very active, have a positive kd and still lose massive amounts of SL. If you get 5 player kills and die 4 times within 15 minutes, you will be rewarded only for 2 of those kills and punished for all 4 deaths.

Solution: Useful actions should limit Silver Lions profits, not earnings.

Useful actions would work exactly the same as now, but limit SL profits instead of earnings. Every 15 minutes the server would take your SL earnings from the last 15 minutes, subtract the losses from the last 15 minutes and add the resulting profit (or loss) to results of the game, but no more than a set amount.

RP gain would be unaffected.

It’s a simple solution, that doesn’t require a big economy overhaul.

Let me know what you think and if I should post it in the suggestions category.

11 Likes

This is a vital and sorely needed change. The system punishes active players that engage in combat, while rewarding passive players who do very little.

4 Likes

This could work, yeah.

My idea was that you get a “insurance” or “deathbank” pool which gains SL for individual actions like in RB.

Useful actions pays direct SL.

Your post-battle income is

  1. Expenses = Spawn Cost - Insurance (cannot be less than 0. This is important)
  2. Take-home Income = Useful Actions - Expenses
3 Likes

A simpler solution that uses the existing code is to just use the normal crew repair mechanic cost/minute and backups. Die on takeoff? It doesn’t cost you much. Strafed on runway? Again, nothing really. Fly for 3 hours? Literally zero cost.

I have MULTIPLE planes in sim that have nearly 2.5m SL in backups/free repairs each. I keep getting ‘rewards’ of backups on planes I will NEVER USE! I can’t even recycle them.

My Squadron F5 is Aced and I have 8 free repairs on it and FORTY TWO backups!

Some planes can use these up in ground sim, but many are not worth playing there.

Also ground crew is just a waste of crew points since you’ll never repair something in the hangar. Reload or repair is not worth buying since may of my planes are done in 10 seconds and I’m still waiting 30 seconds for fuel… :p

Gaijin… do something! ANYTHING! :p

3 Likes

how do you have 8 free repairs? Did you just not die that many times or is there a way to get free repairs?

Free repairs only activate when you die/are damaged in non sim EC games since you’re always paying a ‘deposit’* first and not a repair afterwards.

I have scores of spaded planes that still have 10 free repairs since I’ve only ever played them in Sim EC.

Everytime I see ‘buy this premium plane and save XXXX GE from XX free backups’ I feel cheated…

  • non refundable… which is bullshit :(
1 Like

I see. Never knew that. Kinda makes sense now why you pay to spawn. I was always wondering why thtat is

I’ve seen your thread when I was making this one. It’s a good idea, but I feel like it’s overcomplicating things and Gaijin wouldn’t like it.

They’re clearly not interested in sim and making it impossible to exploit sim for grind is much more important for them, than keeping it alive. The solution has to require as little effort as possible. In my opinion a small change like this to an existing system will be much more persuasive than adding another mechanic.

1 Like

Good observation, backups are basically useless for sim players, when they don’t have to be.

1 Like

No point* deaths should also give you a crew lock.

No one who only comes into Sim to attack airfields will bother if they’re now waiting for 8 minutes between spawns…

No bots and slightly better SL rewards… plus using backups to save and therefore earn more SL…

They can just make it like RB and keep the stupid UA and it will be better…

  • ie someone needs to damage you.

That would discourage new players that struggle to fly and frequently crash.

New players that currently crash ON the runway in a bomber will lose up to about 20k SL!

If they made my proposed change those same players rolling into the tower or sliding off the runway would be charged about 1k SL…

New players who ‘frequently crash’ soon learn not to… it’s more discouraging to players to look at their ‘earnings’ and discover that a few crashes and a few times being killed just cost them 100k SL… whereas the same type of game in ARB was only 10k and with a premium account they would have lost…

nothing!

Why is sim the only game mode you can end up losing ALL your SL?

1 Like