I'd like to suggest a Planet Tomioka style atmospheric area be added to Planet Leeds, basically to add flavour to the blockade running. Currently you dock on the atmospheric guidance buoy and are immediately teleported down to the resistance camp where you can offload goods and pick up refugees/casualties/whatever. This effectively means that provided you can get to the satellite, you've won and there's nothing defenders can do. It also makes loading transports ludicrously easy because there's an almost immediate turnaround on runs out to them.
Instead, ditch the satellite and add a neutral Tomioka/Kurile type docking indicator (the red arrow). This'll take you down to an atmospheric map, which would basically look like a burning map of Coruscant. There would be a 30k or so flight down to a BAF docking indicator, which would be for the current base entry. This extends the amount of time it takes to get to the station and also makes the trip vastly more dangerous because Gallic snubs could chase freighters down into the atmosphere. Commodities exclusive to the resistance base would probably need buffing/rebalancing in light of the additional travel time.
Depending on whether it's desirable, long range missiles could be added near the base of the map, designed to fire on hostile ships that are trying to land. That'd represent Gallic/resistance AA guns trying to control the airspace. So if my Bowex freighter is making a beeline for the resistance docking area, it's going to start attracting accelerating Gallic missiles. I of course wonder whether this would be desirable because this kind of area could easily act as a snub-exclusive area for dogfights if that's how the players wanted to use it.
If both ideas were popular, a compromise would of course be to give the guns a 10k range and place their invisible launchers just below the landing point - that way, the upper area around the entry point to space would be free of interference, while blockade runners would still encounter resistance from AA guns.
Thoughts?
I find it oorp at this stage in the invasion that any ship would be able to get anywhere near Leeds that isnt friendly to Gallic forces
(11-27-2015, 01:18 PM)Hidamari Wrote: [ -> ]I find it oorp at this stage in the invasion that any ship would be able to get anywhere near Leeds that isnt friendly to Gallic forces
Second it.
Cue me trying to make the mechanics of blockade running more dangerous and interesting.
I didnt say i didnt like the idea, but you wouldnt even get anywhere near the planet leeds inrp, possibly if your ship had a cloak (grinds teeth), but the moment it went down youd be history
(11-27-2015, 01:24 PM)Hidamari Wrote: [ -> ]I didnt say i didnt like the idea, but you wouldnt even get anywhere near the planet leeds inrp, possibly if your ship had a cloak (grinds teeth), but the moment it went down youd be history
I disagree, honestly. Leeds is covered by sensor obfuscating smog clouds which would enable smaller ships to slip in unnoticed. There's then a 10k window between the nearest smog cloud and the atmosphere. Given that the hostile ship would be emerging at speed and at short notice, it's plausible that they could get to the planet without being intercepted. Especially if they're working in conjunction with the BAF to draw reaction forces off in the other direction (a tactic Mollys are said to use to great effect in Dublin). The greatest risk to the blockade runner would probably be once they'd entered the atmosphere - fighter wings and AA defences would likely be aware of their entry and scrambling to pursue.
In actual in-game terms, if there's a GRN LF sat outside the docking ring and a freighter appears to try and speed-dock on the satellite, there's absolutely nothing they can do except wait for them to undock. They'll probably pick them up on sensors when they're about 7k from the docking point itself, after all. With my suggestion, they can dive straight down into the atmosphere after them and try and run them into the ground (literally).
I guess I can't quite comprehence the idea but it does sound like something added into game mechanic. And while the idea sound great, I believe it will be mostly unwelcome by the kind of people who think that NPCs are a cancer of all gameplay. Pretty much the same effect could be achieved by properly working out NPC and ship ballance, which wouldn't include adding anything new. If I am wrong there, point out where, please.
(11-27-2015, 01:30 PM)jammi Wrote: [ -> ]In actual in-game terms, if there's a GRN LF sat outside the docking ring and a freighter appears to try and speed-dock on the satellite, there's absolutely nothing they can do except wait for them to undock. They'll probably pick them up on sensors when they're about 7k from the docking point itself, after all. With my suggestion, they can dive straight down into the atmosphere after them and try and run them into the ground (literally).
That LF could be very easily at patrol around the planet, if you decide to exclude the fact that GRN have enough capital ships to ring the planet completely in Lore.
Edit: Ah yes, from the player interaction point of view it really makes little sense as well, because even if you let a thought of player actually being online for such action, he, as you said yourself, would unlikely have a chance to catch the smugler regardless of the way you make it difficult for him to land, except maybe sort of "cheating" ways which include the same annoying NPCs that people are so unhappy about.
(11-27-2015, 01:31 PM)Timmy Wrote: [ -> ]I guess I can't quite comprehence the idea but it does sound like something added into game mechanic. And while the idea sound great, I believe it will be mostly unwelcome by the kind of people who think that NPCs are a bad of all gameplay. Pretty much the same effect could be achieved by properly working out NPC and ship ballance, which wouldn't include adding anything new. If I am wrong there, point out where, please.
Not entirely sure how this is reliant on NPCs to work. If anything, this simply enforces positive game mechanics that make player interaction and interception more likely.
(11-27-2015, 01:31 PM)Timmy Wrote: [ -> ]That LF could be very easily at patrol around the planet, if you decide to exclude the fact that GRN have enough capital ships to ring the planet completely in Lore.
The LF could patrol, but that doesn't change the fact that the odds are vastly stacked in favour of the blockade runners at the moment, which is kind of backward of the way it should be, surely? I'm saying this as the prime beneficiary of the way things currently work, mind you. If once you dock you've got another 30k to go, the advantage shifts back towards the defender because they've seen you and now have time to stop you. The initial case of docking isn't an immediate "I win" any more.
As for ringing Leeds with battleships - maybe, maybe not.
Their enormous fleet is required to:
1) keep the domestic population repressed (there's a civil war roaring)
2) protect their vast supply line through the Taus
3) guard the new entry points into Sirius from Gallia
4) Protect the space they're currently holding from counterattacks
5) keep pushing forward into Magellan/Cortez and Liberty/Bretonia.
They have a lot of ships, but they're also doing a lot with them and are consequently spreading them very thin. Having the bulk of their forces creating an impenetrable iron dome around Leeds is a massive waste of manpower that'd result in them losing out anywhere due to dumb deployment choices.
I didn't mean just battleships there, Jammi. If Gallia possesses about 200 battleships in their disposal, I doubt that the count of their gunboats for example would be so small that they wouldn't allow themselfs to do all that you mentioned and patrol the space around Leeds very frequently. In Lore.
As for player interaction, it really isn't that much of the help, because it implies that the player who will be catching smuglers will be flying the most unpopular kind of fighter, be online when attempt occurs, be close enough to have a chance to intercept. And to top it all off, with current ship ballance there's very little chance that even if he manages to catch the freighter, that smugler won't give him hard/long time killing himself.
This have been a long time problem, and it's not exactly the topic but it touches this thread as well. Focusing on only player interactions is bad idea. I will not go into details, unless you want me to. Just gonna say that forcing people into player interactions only in such a huge universe as Sirius by removing any other option and only adding more and more stuff for player interactions will not give you any desired impact, it will make things worse.
Of course that maters if you are trying to fix the problem of inactivity, rather then just suggesting something new into the game. If it's later, I guess I better not mess this thread, so please, tell me which one is it.
Timmy, you're jumping head first AGAIN into a discussion when it's obviously clear you don't know the ideas background. Go to Nagano and check the planet there, then read the OP again and you'll understand everything. Also, just cause Jammi used a light fighter as an example, it doesn't need to be a light fighter , could be something bigger ( except caps, cause planetdiving with those are a delicate thing and unusual )
On the idea itself, I personally like it, could give opportunities for events and / or ransom encounters, while having it's charm with the planetside battle athomosphere. I'd rather not comment on the RP or ooRP agenda, but since the BS guarding Leeds was destroyed inRP afaik, I don't think they should have any major problems with smaller ships ( would be good to elaborate on smaller ) to planetdive in the clouds.