Trantor, being a low population server too, has the same situation. As redthorne pointed out above, this change didn't solve the core issues with conquests, at least on this server. With random teams, the outcome of each conquest becomes a coinflip where individual skill expression and team coordination matters little. If you're matched with someone who does next to no pvp, or someone with no ancient tech, you're bound to loose that match. To be fair, it was the same before the random update, all the best players would enlist together, and we would also know the outcome before landing.
The core issues are twofold:
- Trantor is a low population server, and with 15-20 people somewhat interested in PVP, it's hard to have a consistant 10 players in orbit every evening. I don't see this changing without a server merge, and as far as I know it's currently out of the question.
- Potential cq players are either interested in pvp (and most likely decent at it), or only interested in the achievement they provide. The new random system did bring a few achievement hunters in, since they were terrible at pvp and had no chance to win before cqs were a coinflip. But this is obviously not sustainable, they will leave as soon as they obtain 10 wins on each planet. There is no changing this, players play how they want to.
The new system feels good for achievement hunters terrible in pvp who had no chance of winning before, because they now at least have a chance. It feels bad for more experienced players who give their best, because they now have a good chance to be placed in a significantly disadvantaged team, and just loose.
Frankly, being randomly assigned to a bad team despite doing my best on my end, and loosing because of it is frustrating, and I only play to not have the 7days penalty, it is not fun at all.
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Here's a few "easy" to implement changes I think could be an improvement, and why:
Increase the drafting time in OTB
Currently, you have 30 minutes to enlist for an otb (clicking a single button).
You then have 2:30 to communicate to : Create squads and join them, adapt your ship to your team composition, go through 3 loading times to change your ship, equip drones on your chosen ship, and finally land. If you fail, you take 7 days of penalty btw.
God bless you if you actually want to try to communicate with your teammates to create a cohesive team composition.
It'd be very welcome to set the team in stones 10 minutes before the conquest starts, so the players in each team can start communicating before they have to land. At least increase the leniancy to land from 2:30 to 10 minutes, please.
Improve the impact of early game skirmishes
Currently, the first 30 minutes of each comquest is completely irrelevent. Since the same amount of crystals spawn per minute on the whole map over the course of the conquest, the last 10 minutes (2 heatmodes) make a single zone hold almost half of the crystals of the entire conquest. Who wins is almost entirely dictated by who defends this zone successfully.
An easy change for this would be to increase the amount of crystals spawning at the start of the conquest, gradually decreasing towards the end.
Killing a player with at least 1 crystal should also always drop at least 1 crystal. the current 10% drop chance is just way too low in the early game.
Vary enlist hours
20h is harsh for many, as it overlaps with dinner time. Having the starting time change between 18h and 20h would allow everyone to participate, at least sometimes.
Reduce the player count reward bonus
And buff the base rewards to compensate, obviously. There is no reason players on low population servers should be winning 3 times less than large servers because they clicked the wrong button 15 years ago. I understand that this is meant to cvreate an incentive for more players, but it's having the opposite effect. Rewards are terrible (120k average with a win 5v5, that's 20 mins of farming on sirius, or 2 sentries), so people don't want to come.
A 60% win in 5v5 should at least reward 250k cryonite @99 to be something to be exited for, the current reward being lower than 45 minutes of farming makes it a deterrent.
If a clan is enlisted on a planet and there's no opponent, make it a clan VS OTB
This should probably go with an increase in minimum tickets to enlist, to not have a clan enlist everywhere.
If a clan enlists for a conquest, they should be able to fight for it no matter what. Trantor has seen 1 or 2 clan VS clan in the last few months, and it's players who know each other fighting against themselves for fun. What if, instead, if a single clan enlists:
- Then enlisted clan players can join team A. If they don't have 5 players, they are set to -20 tickets (current system)
- The B team is open for all on the server, like an otb. Anyone can join to fight against the attacking clan, and earn cryonite (again, just like an OTB).
- If there is less than 5 players in team B, the conquest still starts. This would provide incentive to enlist (clan vs clan) against the attacking clan, to defend and take a share the the cryonite on the conquest planet. After all, if an army marches to new land and that land is not defended, why can't they claim it?