(08-11-2022, 10:07 PM)Binski Wrote: These are all good to have and use, without a doubt!

I know it might not be your area of responsibility, but we need some new events going on to get some use out of these plugins. Bonuses alone don't really entice logging, but make playing to some purpose much better.

What events? Well apparently I'm the pro siege guy so allow me to suggest sieges. And who's? Truth is, I don't say that to suggest a war, I hate pre-scripting a war, like a house vs house combo chosen just because it hasn't been done yet. Don't force a war for any faction, but don't prevent them from making real moves that could cause one either. If this place worked like that it would be back to busy here all day, any day. If players (OF's) could determine where to make moves, it would create a fresh atmosphere here that it's worth hanging around for again.

The bottom line of my reasoning is, the 'random' factor of not knowing what comes next, and never having to wonder if an event is real or has real consequences, makes this place a game far more interesting, even competative to modern games.

Ideally, each siege could/would employ a supply and combat aspect. Ships would converge on an area just like a POB siege, to run supply, interdict or escort suppliers... or show up to attack the base or counter base attackers. Lots more chances arise for rp, pvp and regular story progression that would make it much more fun to participate here in general.

(08-14-2022, 01:57 AM)Zentor Wrote: POB Sieges atm are quite unpleasant for all sides from my observation- until a rework is implemented, but I am for unique and varying experiences. I was brainstorming earlier tonight of making some CTF type base events though.

(08-14-2022, 03:09 AM)Binski Wrote:

(08-14-2022, 01:57 AM)Zentor Wrote: POB Sieges atm are quite unpleasant for all sides from my observation- until a rework is implemented, but I am for unique and varying experiences. I was brainstorming earlier tonight of making some CTF type base events though.

Well as I write this there's less than 10 people online, there's not much to do that isn't fairly monotonous after a short while, and these low player counts make logging to find a battle impossible and piracy practically cruel. To me 9-12 people online is far more unpleasent. Average player pop now is 25 at best.

The problem is that the only sieges we have are of POB's, that take a lot of work, mostly of Core 1's that can barely get off the ground before being destroyed. The places most desired to build at are often impossible to build at.

I imagine sieges of major npc bases that would not result in a base's destruction, only a change in IFF to the victor. A days long attempt that would generate something to do, an ongoing battle to jump in on, cause some news. Not every siege would be a one time rush with a massive fleet gank, but small waves here and there. Which would still leave open the ability for major organized attacks. To me, not totally losing a base, and always being able to try again, should mean we could have this kind of competition and keep the fight in the game. Make the events earnable in game, and they also add to the economy during normal game hours.

The most fun I ever had was years ago when there we had real battles over stuff. I remember the sieges of kappa defense station and the (pretty much) Zoner civil war. People stood guard, scouted/spied, I would rip around hunting incoming supply transports in the old Hathor. Things were exciting at least! After all these years, the mod is great but we badly need more "real things" to do with all these ships and equipment and mad skillz. Use the game world more, people will love it!

(08-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Zentor Wrote:

I'm curious of the community's input in our Events plugin functionality and activity scope. I am currently working on code implementation of adding these options to Events, but would like input on these and other ideas players may have:

(08-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Zentor Wrote: [Trade/Mining Event] - Pirating Bonuses: Allowing specific ID's a bonus for pirating the haulers of the Event commodity (according to lore etc) once sold back at specified bases. Could even give "vendetta" bonuses atop these bonuses if x pirate faction has a particular vendetta or hatred for the "main" trading faction

(08-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Zentor Wrote: [Combat Event] - Scaleable Combat Bonuses Allowing specific faction ID's different tiers of combat bonuses (based on implied lore).

(08-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Zentor Wrote: [Combat Event] - Ship Class specific Combat bonuses Making kill bounties customized to ship class or event ship classs vs specific ship class.
i.e. Dreadnought killing snub gets less than Dreadnought killing Dreadnought of enemy
or Friendly kills grant 0 money or subtract moneys
or snub kills transport grants xx money ( allowing us to tailor the confrontations to either moderate ganks or just align better with the lore situation )

(08-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Zentor Wrote: [Trade Event] - Ship Class specific Trade Bonuses Making bonuses customizable by specified ship classes, allowing for events to be x ship-class only or just tiered bonuses, leaning in to the RP.

i.e. Freighter-only Trade events
or Passenger Liners make xx more profit per unit than transports
or literally Snubs making king profits for something that align with the story ("reconnaisance" or whatever)

(08-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Zentor Wrote: [Either] - Peak hours bonuses Suggested by Slappy a whiles back of having higher bonuses during peak Server hours.

(08-14-2022, 04:00 AM)DariusCiprian Wrote: Binski, let me inform of something, this coming straight from basically the person in charge of current Bretonian affairs (aka the PoB House, as it used to be more commonly known and largely still is due to the number of bases there and, to my knowledge, the number of sieges that have occured)

PoB sieges do not actually provide anything beneficial to either side. Sure, short-term, you'll get those fancy hours of activity (that can you get anyways simply through flying about and interacting with the rest of the game world), some PvP action (that you can get anyway from the usual raids) and a LOT of drama, the latter taking a massive toll on everyone's willingness to log. But, long-term, the entire region becomes absolutely empty. Look at Bretonia. I can boast about the lawfuls being all epic and great... but we have nobody to log against. Everyone left because of sieges (among a few other things too, to be completely fair). That became the only activity until late into 2021, after which the region slowly started to fizzle out. This is a trend not only there, but in the Sigmas too, along with a few other regions like the Taus and, going back a bit more, Liberty itself. The constant "new player joins -> builds a base -> X group arrives to siege -> newbie gets help to defend -> PoB dies anyway because of wacky siege mechanics -> new player leaves" does no good. Your proposal is that, but on a much greater level, and not involving newbies, but older players, too. The last thing we need right now is to shove aside the remainder of the playerbase.

My proposal should lean the sieges away from people's hard worked for POB's to bases that won't go away, only change hands, that the fight can continue over as time goes on. Yes there will be winners and losers, if staff put their foot down on the drama queens, they'd simply carry about a new plan in the game, not fight via dischord. That cycle is ridiculous, and can easily change with changes to current POB mechanics. The sieges part is fun, it made this place really epic, but they avoided the most obvious thing here for years, like using existing locations that people care about. If properly balanced in advance, each side would have more than enough resources to put up a fair fight. At that point you gotta guage what's more important, having your way in-game, being safe when you're not online, or letting this place totally die.

Now that the "pros", if one may call them such, have been largely elaborated, let me get to the cons.

First, obviously, the drama. You will never ever see as much drama in this community anywhere else save for these sieges. There's so much hate spewed around that it's at an unfathomable level even to this day. That aside, we're in the unfortunate position of having to deal with a remaining portion of the community being hellbent on just safekeeping certain assets around even if they receive absolutely no story focus at all. Thusly, if you even propose such sieges, the idea will be shot down by most people as it does not in fact provide much interesting gameplay to play on (you select the siege ship account, log in, move to the base, hold right click and then alt tab for the next few hours while playing something else), not to mention the fact it just gives nothing beyond another asset to dock on. If we want to go that way, you can just submit a dev plan and earn your epically good solar without any drama.

You guys don't really think of it in terms of, we either risk a little drama, or it goes dead server wide because the point of playing is neutralized by the main mode of the game. What is it we do here? Why bother with this place at all? To me, regardless of the age and simplicity of the game, we can have really epic fresh experiences here indefinitely, if done right. The main reason drama unfolds is the unfair imbalance of representation within the admins/devs, who have avoided allowing in game avenues to continue challenging each other in the game.

Secondly, the sieges themselves. This does tie into the drama part but just slightly. In any siege, you'll have either a group that's made up of """aces""" or one that doesn't have any knowledge as to what a sleep schedule actually means, (prime example being that O-3 siege a few months back when Corsairs killed a station at 5 am because everyone was either asleep or packing for work) those two "sides" working to push the other one, even if not on purpose, to literally watch the playerlist 24/7. It's horrible to deal with. It's tiring. It's frustraing. I've seen about 10 such sieges happen and most of the time you're just left hopeless there watching the playerlist on your own while there's 10 hostile caps casually strolling up to the PoB. It's something nobody should be forced to deal with just so they have this supposed bit of fun.

The last siege I was involved in I spent almost 72 hours at it. It was stressful, irritating, and I was mostly alone. Yet it was still fun in many ways and I made the best of it. These bases wouldn't be worked for, or permanently lost, it wouldn't be that bad. Over time, more players would come and stay, meaning more availability of players in general at any given time. The worst thing to happen here was locking up all player influence so some people don't have to worry when they're not online. If you can't be one that much, let those that can step up, that's how it always worked. There are many who could log here almost anytime, but don't, because nothing new to do.

Thirdly, the PvP aspect. Often the most mentioned one, it's also the very same thing that made, in just the 2 years I've been around, roughly 20 to 30 people outright stop playing because they don't have anything else to do and defending their base was a waste of time. It's, just like the second point, a very tiring situation. You don't get to have too much fun, either. 90% of the cases it'll be either the defending side or the sieging side having three or four times the numbers than the other one and it'll be a pre-decided fight. It's not the way to go about PoB siege events.

Base mechanics problem, they've been so afraid players could do something outside of their omniscience, POB's are set so weak starting out so they rarely go far unless next to a capital planet paying useless base fees. Again, if a faction is under siege, or sieging an NPC location for inrp consequences, POB's won't be anyone's priority anymore, except ones built to reinforce NPC locations.

Fourthly, and the last point, this idea will not in fact bring about activity. The server (generally speaking) needs not more sieges that'll make even MORE people quit, but other types of events. We still haven't got ANYTHING in Omicron Minor, despite a story arc being started there, nothing in Kappa, nothing in Theta, and more importantly, nothing in Vespucci. You won't actually make people log to alt tab and hold down the right mouse button for 10 hours a day, but through giving them a trade event, a combat event, hell, even hybrid events.

People are quitting anyways, or just dropping off. Numbers are at the their lowest, TheStarport stats can prove that. Each siege would be also a trade event, and combat event, so I don't get that skepticism. If it were up to me, I'd return jumping transports up to 3600 cargo with the JD4, boost Core 1's majorly, and let players colonize minor, kappa, wherever. Again I can only suggest, but I'd love to see even a simple Nomad and AI POB one day. To me, the Nomads and AI could have decent OF's that should be sieging bases and planets all over the Omicrons all the time. The Core and the Order are dead, they have nothing to really defend or exist for.

(08-14-2022, 04:14 AM)Shimamori Wrote: I tell you as a person who led a successful Tier 5 POB siege: it is very time-consuming, boring, and not fun. I doubt that sieging an NPC station will be different. Most likely it will end up in 4 AM sieges by one side with nobody to represent the other side. Very easy to abuse, too. Imagine, OC want to siege Newark station. They log at 4AM a few ranseurs with siege cannons when the server pop is 9-12 ppl with most of those being power traders. A few days of such consecutive shenanigans early in the morning and the OC have their Newark station spreading cardamine love. InRP it would barely make any sense but your "system" would allow it. And if the current sieges can teach us anything - it will be quite boring. So what do we have as a result in a meaningless inRP and boring gameplay-wise system that additionally needs to be overseen by the admins in terms of changing the IFF and the population of the station. Great success (Not).