Usually I avoid repeating myself, but seeing how large this thread has grown already, perhaps an organised summary of things mentioned before will prove useful.
+ guaranteed rewards for a successful attack
Perhaps the most positive change that this update has introduced so far. Encouraging more player attacks leads to more exciting and active gameplay.
+ reduced impact of the use of autoclicker tools
While they can still be useful for other aspects of the game, site control is no longer one of them.
- added benefits for multi-accounting
Attackers/defenders can place multiple accounts AFK on multiple sites to drain/heal them simultaneously and use their active accounts to hunt down the enemies. Players that can't be present during the Vulnerable phase are also incentivised to share their accounts to their allies.
- attack windows are a very restricting concept
By choosing specific times, you are simultaneously choosing the group with the most advantage. There is no surprise factor as people are actively watching the maps during the Vulnerable phase. No matter how you select the times, there will always be people that are disappointed with them. It is a very different experience to play the game when you most want it vs when the game needs you to be online.
+ travel sick status
In the early draft I noticed that spamming Recovery Kits would have a huge impact on the recovery and draining of a site. While they can still be very useful, spamming Kits with a Brachiosaurus to drain site is no longer an auto-win. That being said:
- attacking sites is a lot easier than defending them
Even with the ratio of 1 to 2, it is very difficult to succesfully defend a site. In many cases it is pointless to even attempt defending - not everyone has realised it yet, but people that did, began exchanging sites between clans and they did so for a good reason.
Imagine the following scenario: you have a server with a very active Town Hall and therefore all sites are open for the players to control. There is only one site held by Dinoville per map (= it's the only site that can be used for travelling). Vulnerable phase starts, all sites go red. No one can teleport anywhere. You want to defend one of your sites, but you need to reach it first. It takes ~6 minutes to cross the whole map on the fastest Dino as a lvl 55 player (55 Coelophysis with a 55 endurance implant). All excellent sites at the ends of the maps will be lost before you can even reach them (as of the current version: 2 minutes to fully drain an excellent site). You can reach a site with a very good yield, but it might as well fall before you manage to kill all the enemies.
It doesn't matter how many sites you own. You might only have that 1 excellent yield site at the end of the map. You might even be ready before the Vulnerable phase starts and stay close to it. But if you die once, you still have to respawn in the middle of the map and walk towards it. And you will not make it there before the site is fully drained. Losing just one battle may cause the defenders to lose their site, while the attackers after a lost fight can reorganise and try again many times until the Vulnerable phase ends. This does mean that even small attackers can take hold of a site for 1 Production phase, but they will lose it during the next Vulnerable phase anyway, so their best bet is to attack a different one instead of attempting a futile defense.
And the situation is no different on servers with a less active Town hall. With more sites to choose as spawn points, the attackers can reach any site they want quickly. All the attackers need to do is repeatedly walk towards a site and enter it to slowly drain it while the defenders can not even attempt to heal the damage they did. The only viable strategy to keep your sites is to overwhelm the enemy and spawn kill. Each time the attackers reach a site, the defenders start losing, regardless of the result of continued battles.
Jump links are not of much help for the defenders either, as they are also useful for the attackers. If the attackers can reach any site they were draining before the defenders can repair the damage, the defense becomes pointless. The site is going to fall anyway, unless the Vulnerable phase ends before that can happen. The only exception may be when the defending clan owns the majority of the sites in a map and only one of them is being attacked. If the attacked site is far away from Dinoville-owned sites, the defenders can reach it much faster than the attackers (they can use their other sites to teleport and spawn from) and they may be able to defend it.
And then the next phase, the cycle repeats - sites that were taken over previously, get easily drained again. Thus defending players get pushed towards 1) exchanging sites with their allies to keep them safe, as once they are taken over, they can not be attacked again until the next Vulnerable phase OR 2) keeping sites at a lower yield so there is a chance that the Vulnerable phase will end before the vicious cycle of losing a site.
I have very mixed feelings about this point.
