Other features resulting in their fair share of drama:
Cultist events
Sci Data
Mining
NEMPs
Jump Drives
IDs
There will always be drama. But there's a difference between remembering the risks and coming to some catharsis after losing a POB and being downright salty. There's drama because it's an investment, an investment that's required because the payoff is huge. Look at WoW, COD, Dark Souls and any number of other games that require investiture of time.
It's wrong to blame players' ability to cope with loss on this plugin. The problem we do have is that to engage with, it is for the most part, boring. That and the clear imbalance betwen construction and destruction.
(11-19-2018, 04:29 PM)Thyrzul Wrote: [ -> ]Just a few words in defense of the recent change, since I was (at least one of those who were) propagating the direction of change and helped devs picking the extent of it by visualising possible outcomes of each change through spreadsheets made out of an old one originally made by Karst about four years ago.
Many were complaining (and for some reason still complained after the change) against timezones and that huge fleets can destroy their bases within just a few hours while they were working or asleep. Buffing the hulls was meant to fix that by stretching siege lenght to days so the defenders have enough time for their attempts at defense. Side effect: sieges became more RMB-grindy.
Others complained that they don't/can't have the required warship fleets or even the ship classes to effectively siege a PoB. Nerfing the repair rates was meant to fix that by reducing PoBs' regeneration capacity so the attackers can achieve progress with less firepower while additional ships won't make much of a difference. Side effect: with a big enough fleet siegers could reproduce the timezone issue.
A mathematical example for comparison: in the old system a Core 5 PoB with 3 repair materials was immune to 12 warships, fell in 3.1 hours to 13; in the new system a Core 5 PoB with 3 repair materials was immune to 1 warship, fell in 155 hours to 2, and even 20 warships would need 6.1 hours to take it down.
Actual example: the Tau-29 event lasted over two days despite the massive playerbase and fleets on both sides, the massive battles and only 30 minutes respawn penalty.
I consider the test resulting positively, because the implemented changes did what they were meant to, fixed at least some of the issues, while pointed out other flaws.
Perhaps we can't fix all of the issues with these mechanics, but until we have a viable and sensible alternative of a mechanic - and turning them into SRPs isn't a mechanic, just administrative restriction of the system in order to mitigate the effects of this mechanic and what Disco's playerbase does with it - I'm of the opinion that we should seek further means to tweak what we have at hand.
In accordance to that I'd rather look into what possible tricks can be added to how repair material consumption and repair mechanics work, perhaps adding a synergy effect or other balance to each material individually. That's something the recent balance change did not cover, but maybe the next one could.
Additionally, since Laz said he's looking for ideas for new mechanics, and that he's about to finish the rework, I'm curious about whether it would be possible to add a partial deconstruct feature, according to which destroyed PoBs would respawn upon next restart with one less core, only Core 1 PoBs would be destroyed permanently. It's not a new idea, and it's not mine originally, but I've always found it an interesting one.
And you think your pob rework solved anything? No. It brought even more cancer to the field. People sieging the base with 2-3 guys at timezones where defenders are sleeping and attackers nolifing it. It is utter cancer and bullshit now. Previous system was better. Only thing the new system achieved was camping the base and alttabbing and ghostcapping, get your new system to trash bin and if you can, come back with a system where everyone has equal chances.
Now you may ask, are you salty because you lost Helios? Partly. Do i want the old system of gathering 20 BS s and RMBing the base for several hours? No.
What i want would be similar to Eve's outpost siege system actually.
For those who dont know how it works:
-Your base is invulnerable to damage for a period, and at intervals, it loses the invulnerability and becomes open to attack. Attackers have several hours to attack for that given day. If they cannot succeed in time, base goes invulnerable again but stays in same HP and does not regen. Defenders have 2 option there. Either supplying the base with mats, or taking matter into their hands and shooting attackers. And every party has equal chance, cause you know when to expect attack and when you are safe and can fortify the base with mats. Of course that doesnt stop attackers from blockading the routes for mats. IMO giving shields a timer, %100 damage reduction and then say, making the shield go down between most active timezone for like 3 hours, would be more beneficial. With tweaking the new numbers of course. At least that way we wont have people logging at godknows in what time zone while defenders have no one to log during that time and losing %30 HP when they wake up. That is pretty bad gameplay.
Perhaps we could add that the pob spawning NPC forces of said IFF, hostile to attackers, in waves, and removing those weapon platforms altogether. That would force the attackers to keep on their toes and not mindlessly RMB the base.
I see it's easy to trash talk when you don't get the points of the rebalance in the first place. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's still better than what we had before, it still has flaws, but it did solve previous issues. If there is one thing bringing cancer to sieges, it's the playerbase, ghostcapping, alttabbing and nolifing did exist before, and continues to exist, albeit with different conditions and with more difficulties.
If you are salty about losing Helios, blame the story devs, not the balance devs. Or the OC playerbase. Or the lack of CR playerbase.
I'm against this temporary vulnerability idea because most of the time it'll favor one side over the other. If it's defined according to base construction and lifetime, it'll always favor the owners, and causes no issues only if the attackers are also in the same timezone. If it's defined according to EU activity peak times, it'll favor EU players, if it's defined according to US activity peak times, it'll favor US players, and will not cause any imbalance only if both attackers and defenders live in the same timezone. It doesn't look like a fix to me.
The NPC spawn idea is interesting, Laz could tell if it's possible or not, and if so, about how much extra load it would mean.
Possible? Yes. Load? Uncertain.
(11-20-2018, 05:55 PM)Laz Wrote: [ -> ]Possible? Yes. Load? Uncertain.
I think there have been some really decent changes to the PoB that will change some of the gameplay around PoB's for certain.
Considering the costs.
1. The 'builder' will have to make a serious commitment to the base. That would mean greater thought about placement and purpose.
2. The base attack declaration would also mean that those who have a siege mentality would also weight up whether it is worth the hassle to attack a minor nuisance base fully built that has no real strategic or commercial value.
I look forward to seeing how these potentially really good changes pan out.
Good job Devs.
Why are we catering for POB owners in times when there are more POBs than ever? There are more POBs than systems, let alone active players - New London alone has 10+ POBs. It's counterintuitive.
As long as anyone can make a POB, they must remain destructible. Here's a harsh truth people don't want to hear - current iteration of POBs enslave you to a game you play to have fun and force you to play even when you don't want to through terrible activity (f2-f3 afk trading), and if you even think of leaving for a few weeks your pixel Tamagotchi will die. Sure you can get someone to cover for you, but then they're the ones doing the f2-f3 activity except they don't even do it for themselves. The concept of a POB is terrible and has always been terrible. Making them easier to supply is a fair point but then we get even more POB spam than the status quo. It can happen but then they should also be easy to destroy and even harder to initially make.
What I suggested was them requiring a lot of money on core upgrades. To deploy a base you'd pay 250m, then each next core upgrade is 250m. Sieges would require paying cash similar to the amount of invested money into it - if a Core 3 is being sieged, 3*250 millions would be paid in advance for the siege (these numbers are flexible and can be adjusted, you get the point). SRPs would do that to an extent and can replace the money requirement altogether, but I'm afraid it's a bit too late for that (same as restricting battleships to official factions only) - once upon a time we could've done it but too many players own them now. Indestructible POBs don't fit into any of the healthy "reworks" here. I'm all for reducing the terrible supplying process but that comes with a cost of initial setup.
As for sieges - you must really go out of your way to piss someone off in order to get your POB sieged. The most common example is traffic blocking POBs such as those in mining fields, on gates/holes or blocking an activity hub. Then there's badly placed inRP bases such as making a Xeno base in open space of New York. After that there's nothing but people's incompetence such as not respecting laws, refusing to ask for permission of locals in the area, pure ignorance to the environment, etc. If you can't handle these 2 basic steps, you don't deserve to keep your POB in the first place.
Think about it for a second - there are 100+ POBs in the game, why are only 1-2 being sieged on average? Why would someone intentionally pick your POB and not the countless others? Because you fucked up somewhere, and it's entirely your fault. It's really not hard not to piss someone off, just think before deploying a POB beforehand. OoRP hate driven sieges exist, but if we're still talking about similar amount of ships required to siege a POB there's nowhere near the amount of players that would kill it in reasonable time purely because of ooRP hatred, it would have to be coupled with one of the mistakes mentioned above.
Tl;dr reduce time wasted on supplying, make POBs require a lot of money on core upgrades, make sieges require money on declaration, don't make POBs indestructible. SRPs can work but it's a bit too late for that now. Get over yourselves when it comes to sieges.
I'd like to point out once more that a freshly placed Core 1 PoB, without any supplies or repair commodities, stays alive for 23 days right now with the current changes.
There are 120 bases currently. I would suggest that some of them would have been destroyed by now if it wasn't for the issue over the Russians blocking internet access.
That said, they are popular so there is a probable acceptance.
How is more POBs than players counter-intuitive? They don't negatively affect the player count - that's other factors - and if anything the vast majority of these actually create activity. I see this point made many times yet people don't actually explain why it's a bad thing; stating numbers for the sake of stating numbers.
There's more POBs than ever before with the player count being one of the lowest since POBs got introduced. What's counter-intuitive is that we're adding more protection from "unknown mighty forces of ooRP haters" to "help" owners protect their bases. From what? Give me a break. 99% of POBs never get sieged, for a good reason.
As for why POB spam isn't a good thing it's quite simple - all POBs are inherently area of denial tools. The more area of denial tools, the less opportunity for player interaction. Even if you make a POB non hostile people will hug it and bait others into shooting it as we saw in Bering. For a game heavily emphasizing interaction between hostile entities this is obviously a problem. Exceptions would be POBs with 0 platforms but realistically how many of those are there? The only way POBs could be made indestructible is if they lost all their weapon platforms or any potential guns.