I don't see how it's a problem for you that people from the CR are in the MR
It used to bother me, but tbh part of the reason I bring up these ideas is because when there's a more tangeable objective like bases to be sieged, territory to be kept or lost, people can belong to multiple factions, but you can only fly for one at a time. When it comes to these battles, players would get the chance to back a side they prefer or simply join in where they feel needed. In theory if there is opportunity for gain on both sides, it seems likely to balance out equally. But of course there will be some imbalance in places, in a war you want to keep the balance in your favor. For such wars, I feel NEMP's were perfect balancers for smaller factions.
In the case of the Outcasts vs CR, I would find it interesting if the CR cap bases were attackable in real time, and outcasts go raid here and there. Thats also why I suggested that factions with shipyards get to replace 'destroyed' ships within a week or so for another go, and if the movements were guided by the system and updated by the devs with patches, if one side loses a bit, its not over. But maybe CR would lose territory in Tau-31 for a while? Then regain it a month later? Say the ship by Harris is taken out by players after a few days or weeks of attacks (depending on how well defended, and the stronger they are the better) and they lose the planet...? In theory they could focus a group of battleship bases from Coronado to move up in a series of moves from point A to B to C over the course of a few weeks, and try again to move on Harris. One ship may fall easy but a group wouldnt. Players could try to stop them all the while, and defend. Bear in mind, they might have other areas to protect in other systems from other factions. Every faction with caps would be in the same situation. Thats where forging agreements with other factions would be important, to cover your rear!
I also think of the Enclave. They have a planet and a shipyard, so you'd think that would pose a theat and provoke another war. I say, let them try to expand, get more ships, while if made attackable, they'd also be losing ships, so how well they do is up to the players. Same goes for Bretonia.
So the chance to expand comes at the cost that in some cases factions like Enclave could be finally defeated or be reduced to secret bases in isolation. On the other hand, with a strong player base, they could keep Bretonia on its toes for years to come.
All the while, these battleships could be buying munitions or arms at a high price and basically foster supply events at the same time. That is also a perfect chance to add extra scores to battles, like each 100000 units sold might give a faction a point or special right to be used in the battle. Essentially, players would be a swarm that follow and defend their sides' ships, while also branching off to try and attack the other side. Under the battle system, every faction has a chance to expand or stengthen themselves, make small or big moves, and recruit people for various jobs and the real need to work on goals.
This would almost need to be a totally new game, discovery wont ever change its basics because it wont ever have the resources to do so, and there are just to many people who would rather see it dead than grow.
(11-30-2019, 12:35 PM)Jeuge Wrote: the idea is good but impossible for some faction because their number is too small to face some faction
Its true that some factions would be not actively using the system, but I also anticipate the attention would go into where the majority of the player base is playing. Some factions would simply remain unchanged.
Also, bases that are inrp 'secret' bases would obviously not be able to be sieged. I'm all for adding a way to finally do something like that but I think there should be a few requirements that would make it very difficult, and in that case, very rare if ever a thing.
I would hope that small factions (unlawfuls) would at least though have the chance to get out and stage attacks on navy battleship bases, and chip away at them. The only real significant programming needed to perfect the system would be making repair ships work on those mortal bases, so they can be equally repaired by defenders. I did the math and pretty sure if repair ships did 10 000 RPS (repair per second instead of damage), that gives 3 600 000 repairs an hour. So a few repair ships would do pretty good in undoing the damage on random attacks on these ships, and players would need to organize their own group attacks to do significant sieges. For big sieges, I'm sure that would get quite interesting.
(11-30-2019, 12:41 PM)Silverlight Wrote: This would almost need to be a totally new game, discovery wont ever change its basics because it wont ever have the resources to do so, and there are just to many people who would rather see it dead than grow.
Well the intent would be to certainly revolutionize how we play discovery, and how our roleplay effects gameplay. Organization to the battles and therefore the corresponding RP would, I think, bring a new degree of accuracy in unfolding events, with a lot more player driven output, and that is always fun for players. Join a side, get involved. Recruit from other space game communities that we need good pilots for our own 'wars'. Wars, in this case, might be big like the Gallic war, but could also be small conflicts of unlawfu factions harassing house navies, trying to knock out one of their caps, while the house factions defend. With multiple 'mortal' targets, they could switch it up as they see fit, etc.
But its true that if one of the major things holding this back is a lack of people to facilitate it, we can fix that, but we need the staff to sign off on it first.
And just to reitereate, the basics of the system only require capital ship bases to be made mortal solars, and for devs to simply move them around at request of their owning factions, at regular intervals, so all sides are in the same boat and make moves as they go.
As to planets, I usually fall back on strategy games for examples, but in this case, they're more like cities, so the rules could simply be that the factions that can keep a battleship in orbit, claim the planet. So instead of making them attackable too, that can be axed for something simple, like most military units nearby indicates who holds the planet. It would just mean that eventually if a planet was challenged over, by enemy battleships moving into orbit, and was lost, would need an IFF change by the devs. Hopefully, as it goes, the only things devs would need to do on regular intervals is follow a list of location changes for battleships and cruiser bases, which GM's could process via the forum and send to the devs every week. I suggest a week but even 2 week intervals would still work.
All I can say at this point is, if it were decided to try this, I'm sure we could then put out word that we need people for the jobs involved. I'm under the impression though that the staff we have could handle this (maybe we need a few more GM's), its just getting into a new routine that would be the hard part.
AND, at the very least, even the staff could use this very same system on their own to make the wars happen. Where there might be a lack of players for some factions, staff could just operate them themselves. At least then it would appear that an organized 'war' was happening at the player level, and they might not even notice who's behind it. Its really so that the average player is in the middle of it, they may not even get the big picture of where battleships are, what they're doing. They may just hear that Faction A moved 3 battleships into System X, and now Faction B are also doing the same, and there will be a small war over a system, and it may jump to another after that battle is over in a few weeks. Then under that situation, at least each side's players can in real time try to take out the other's ships, rp around it all, and rp some alliances or deals to bring back up, or strike a deal with other factions to not join in, for a price, etc. The options such a system opens up is huge because it will be a new game within the game to learn the ups and downs of.
All the while I'm fine with making sure houses aren't wiped off the map. I believe this should be a relatively slowly unfolding system, and currently ZOI's limit most factions other than OC's from raiding capitals. But houses might have work to do to protect their other systems, and border systems, from unlawfuls getting too strong or brazen. And like I said, staff could divide up factions that are dead and only require 1 person making decisions at the top if players aren't there to fill the gap, and they can basically fight these wars under this system by themselves! But at least they'd follow these systems giving players an ordered structure to follow, that they can accurately anticipate and play around.
As to NPC base sieges, I'd say IF a faction eliminate its enemy's battleships in an area and it basically 'takes' a system, or half a system, the bases that fall into dispute could then be made siegeable for the purposes of IFF changes. That would also start a whole new situation because even though they may not have base ships there, players could still try to take out those attacking ships to buy time until the losing side can move more ships into that area, within a week or 2. Just make these bases very strong so they take a long time and a lot of group player effort, and we'll see some really cool situations develop here. The basica MO of the system is that you probably wouldn't want to start a base siege unless you knew your side had elminated most of the other side's caps in the area first, or it may backfire. On the other hand, they may want to try while they get a chance!
Binski Wrote:Example: Aland Shipyard
Say IMG moves 5 Sagarmanthas back into Omega-3. First of all, everyone would see them coming, they'd have to come from an IMG base, but say we allowed them a hyperspace jump, and they moved them up to the base. That would require probably 1 move from base to somewhere in Omega-3, then another a week later to approach the shipyard.
Ok, so Bretonia sees the ships when they enter the system, and they order more ships to Omega-3 to bolster its defense. (I'm also in favor of publically posting moves so people will get a fair chance to counter move, so Bret side would know the ships were moved and know to move their own at that time too if they want).
At that point, both sides would have mortal capitals around the base. Players go to work trying to eliminate the other's side. IF IMG and friends eliminated the Bretonian defending base ships (essentialy making them wrecks until removed on next patch), THEN, IMG could request to siege Aland for the purposes of recapture.
Even still, more Bretonian ships might be coming next turn or two, so they'd need to try to take it down within a week likely. All the while still Bret players would still be trying to defend the station and take out the IMG Sagarmanthas. IF by next turn, they failed to take down the base, and lose their capship bases, and Bretonia moved more in, they fail!
Under this system, a place like this may get fought over indefinitely, and would go back and forth depending on player efforts and decisions. And remember, they can't send every ship they'd have, since they still would need them to cover the rest of the House territory from other factions. Perhaps if they fail, they may only be able to retry to take the station in a few months. At least though, factions can have more real goals to work on over the long term. Meanwhile, the entire time, nothing would also stop players from building POB's or using POB's to bolster their defenses. Perhaps SUPER important bases would need to be reinforced by POB's like that to compensate for a lack of navy ships. With all of that opportunity, players should be able to find a lot to do, and have good reasons to advertise to friends about the place.
(11-30-2019, 12:35 PM)Jeuge Wrote: the idea is good but impossible for some faction because their number is too small to face some faction
Its true that some factions would be not actively using the system, but I also anticipate the attention would go into where the majority of the player base is playing. Some factions would simply remain unchanged.
Also, bases that are inrp 'secret' bases would obviously not be able to be sieged. I'm all for adding a way to finally do something like that but I think there should be a few requirements that would make it very difficult, and in that case, very rare if ever a thing.
I would hope that small factions (unlawfuls) would at least though have the chance to get out and stage attacks on navy battleship bases, and chip away at them. The only real significant programming needed to perfect the system would be making repair ships work on those mortal bases, so they can be equally repaired by defenders. I did the math and pretty sure if repair ships did 10 000 RPS (repair per second instead of damage), that gives 3 600 000 repairs an hour. So a few repair ships would do pretty good in undoing the damage on random attacks on these ships, and players would need to organize their own group attacks to do significant sieges. For big sieges, I'm sure that would get quite interesting.
(11-30-2019, 12:41 PM)Silverlight Wrote: This would almost need to be a totally new game, discovery wont ever change its basics because it wont ever have the resources to do so, and there are just to many people who would rather see it dead than grow.
Well the intent would be to certainly revolutionize how we play discovery, and how our roleplay effects gameplay. Organization to the battles and therefore the corresponding RP would, I think, bring a new degree of accuracy in unfolding events, with a lot more player driven output, and that is always fun for players. Join a side, get involved. Recruit from other space game communities that we need good pilots for our own 'wars'. Wars, in this case, might be big like the Gallic war, but could also be small conflicts of unlawfu factions harassing house navies, trying to knock out one of their caps, while the house factions defend. With multiple 'mortal' targets, they could switch it up as they see fit, etc.
But its true that if one of the major things holding this back is a lack of people to facilitate it, we can fix that, but we need the staff to sign off on it first.
And just to reitereate, the basics of the system only require capital ship bases to be made mortal solars, and for devs to simply move them around at request of their owning factions, at regular intervals, so all sides are in the same boat and make moves as they go.
As to planets, I usually fall back on strategy games for examples, but in this case, they're more like cities, so the rules could simply be that the factions that can keep a battleship in orbit, claim the planet. So instead of making them attackable too, that can be axed for something simple, like most military units nearby indicates who holds the planet. It would just mean that eventually if a planet was challenged over, by enemy battleships moving into orbit, and was lost, would need an IFF change by the devs. Hopefully, as it goes, the only things devs would need to do on regular intervals is follow a list of location changes for battleships and cruiser bases, which GM's could process via the forum and send to the devs every week. I suggest a week but even 2 week intervals would still work.
All I can say at this point is, if it were decided to try this, I'm sure we could then put out word that we need people for the jobs involved. I'm under the impression though that the staff we have could handle this (maybe we need a few more GM's), its just getting into a new routine that would be the hard part.
AND, at the very least, even the staff could use this very same system on their own to make the wars happen. Where there might be a lack of players for some factions, staff could just operate them themselves. At least then it would appear that an organized 'war' was happening at the player level, and they might not even notice who's behind it. Its really so that the average player is in the middle of it, they may not even get the big picture of where battleships are, what they're doing. They may just hear that Faction A moved 3 battleships into System X, and now Faction B are also doing the same, and there will be a small war over a system, and it may jump to another after that battle is over in a few weeks. Then under that situation, at least each side's players can in real time try to take out the other's ships, rp around it all, and rp some alliances or deals to bring back up, or strike a deal with other factions to not join in, for a price, etc. The options such a system opens up is huge because it will be a new game within the game to learn the ups and downs of.
All the while I'm fine with making sure houses aren't wiped off the map. I believe this should be a relatively slowly unfolding system, and currently ZOI's limit most factions other than OC's from raiding capitals. But houses might have work to do to protect their other systems, and border systems, from unlawfuls getting too strong or brazen. And like I said, staff could divide up factions that are dead and only require 1 person making decisions at the top if players aren't there to fill the gap, and they can basically fight these wars under this system by themselves! But at least they'd follow these systems giving players an ordered structure to follow, that they can accurately anticipate and play around.
As to NPC base sieges, I'd say IF a faction eliminate its enemy's battleships in an area and it basically 'takes' a system, or half a system, the bases that fall into dispute could then be made siegeable for the purposes of IFF changes. That would also start a whole new situation because even though they may not have base ships there, players could still try to take out those attacking ships to buy time until the losing side can move more ships into that area, within a week or 2. Just make these bases very strong so they take a long time and a lot of group player effort, and we'll see some really cool situations develop here. The basica MO of the system is that you probably wouldn't want to start a base siege unless you knew your side had elminated most of the other side's caps in the area first, or it may backfire. On the other hand, they may want to try while they get a chance!
Binski Wrote:Example: Aland Shipyard
Say IMG moves 5 Sagarmanthas back into Omega-3. First of all, everyone would see them coming, they'd have to come from an IMG base, but say we allowed them a hyperspace jump, and they moved them up to the base. That would require probably 1 move from base to somewhere in Omega-3, then another a week later to approach the shipyard.
Ok, so Bretonia sees the ships when they enter the system, and they order more ships to Omega-3 to bolster its defense. (I'm also in favor of publically posting moves so people will get a fair chance to counter move, so Bret side would know the ships were moved and know to move their own at that time too if they want).
At that point, both sides would have mortal capitals around the base. Players go to work trying to eliminate the other's side. IF IMG and friends eliminated the Bretonian defending base ships (essentialy making them wrecks until removed on next patch), THEN, IMG could request to siege Aland for the purposes of recapture.
Even still, more Bretonian ships might be coming next turn or two, so they'd need to try to take it down within a week likely. All the while still Bret players would still be trying to defend the station and take out the IMG Sagarmanthas. IF by next turn, they failed to take down the base, and lose their capship bases, and Bretonia moved more in, they fail!
Under this system, a place like this may get fought over indefinitely, and would go back and forth depending on player efforts and decisions. And remember, they can't send every ship they'd have, since they still would need them to cover the rest of the House territory from other factions. Perhaps if they fail, they may only be able to retry to take the station in a few months. At least though, factions can have more real goals to work on over the long term. Meanwhile, the entire time, nothing would also stop players from building POB's or using POB's to bolster their defenses. Perhaps SUPER important bases would need to be reinforced by POB's like that to compensate for a lack of navy ships. With all of that opportunity, players should be able to find a lot to do, and have good reasons to advertise to friends about the place.
This is a lot of words / effort. I think you could do some really great stuff if you focused your motivation elsewhere
(11-30-2019, 10:03 PM)Silverlight Wrote: This is a lot of words / effort. I think you could do some really great stuff if you focused your motivation elsewhere
Hard to get motivated for me when the server pop is so low, and players can't really develop their factions or make moves to expand/consolidate territory. As far as I'm concerned, I can't imagine anything else that should take precedent over this issue. I'm absoutely positive that adding a battle system/RP system will allow this place to regain some credit and give us something to advertize as new again.
Regular Base Sieges of NPC bases (ships) to drive online activity
As an alternative to sieging POB's, which is rare these days for it to occur past Core 1 (which isn't really fun or challenging in most cases, just necessary to maintain a territorial precedent) is the idea is that scattering (or using the already scattered) NPC cruisers/battlecruisers/battleships as siegable targets has some obvious purposes. Not only that, but every potential battle could be used to create supply events to run arms/medical supplies or repair materials.
The general sentiment I gather around my proposed system is that, everyone seems to think their faction will suddenly be overwhelmed and wiped off the map. But that is not true! All of these things allow for only incrimental change.
Think of it this way, if they can make a trade lane or an NPC weapons platform (or storage depots) de-activateable with health bars (even wrecks have them), its likely doable with these objects. Just set the HP extremely high so it takes waves of attacks like with well defended POB's.
The real question is, why would we not want to try to stimulate activity? By this point players should be realizing that doing the same old thing is not going to help any more than what it already is. We need something different, and in this case, far overdue. Especially since it has never been tried often on the server. Every event similar was designed to only last a couple of hours at most. The Gallic war proved that when there was "something" going on, anything, people logged on in higher numbers. Even more enticing is the possiblity of player driven victories, instead of scripted ones. It is OK for a side to lose, or battles to be unbalanced, because when something is on the line, like territory or important bases, you'll fight for your preferred side anyways. That gets people out even when odds aren't perfect. And if you only fight when odds are perfect or even, you're missing the point. Space battles can easily change in balance with a few things to help underdogs (NEMP's). A good cause is also a chance to entice player involvement. We have players and factions and objects but aren't really doing much but fighting to fight.
There should be a gamble. I find that the general attitude among players has gotten rather...lazy! But if we let the lazy perspective take root, we only ever wind up shrinking options, and therefore, the server. We are set up so that most of the Freelancing here is done from offline, and it leaves the online population in need of regular activities to stir direct involvement. Some real risk (just needs a fair heads up) will definitely get people moving. We should be setting up wars and letting players do what they can as they can, use their freedom and abilities as they like/can to try to win. The shift away from that because some players wouldn't do so well, or don't want to have to try (but also hate low player count) has only been appeasing players that want to do less, and it purpetuates a cycle of shrinking.
I understand the common skepticism, but I will continue to hammer these points home periodically in this thread at the very least. Everyone wants solutions but never to have to do them or do anything more. Players, especially vets, should be ok with doing a bit more, and I'm fairly sure that a few minor adjustments, and allowing players to do the things we've not been able to the entire life of the server would be a big step in new direction. It is the current general attitude of 'why bother' that stunts us. Live a little folks! Take a gamble on something different. Set aside your personal feelings for the poster and consider the health of the server. I'm not saying its dead, in fact my point is that it still lives on, and with a little change could be more alive again. But I'm under the general impression that if there was more to do in game of a practical purposeful nature, more people would spend more time online than on the forum. The attitude against such things to me is literal insanity.
There's a lot of toxic, know it all, 'things are fine' attitudes here these days, and it holds us back! Immature toxic attitudes have killed this place over time, and it would be nice if it was reiterated often by staff to keep things generally mature. We could have lot of cool things here if it weren't for the fear of causing 'drama' by unfreezing the mod and allowing real competition. You know, like factions would be teams, and they'd actually compete in battles for stuff. Are we really afraid to do that here or is it that most of the player population belongs to so many factions, they'd be afraid to have to finally choose a side! (laughter)
Recently I passed by Ross Planetoid in Cambridge. The battleship there was guarded by 2 static Crecy's that had HP's of 10 million each. Well that is a step in the right direction, if not something overlooked.
I'm under the opinion that a lot of base siege drama could be avoided by giving players something else, but similar, to do.
So if we could set it so the damage on those solars is carried over each day like a POB, and made them stronger, and spread out little groups of them...POB's would take a back seat to sieges of static NPC military/navy ships.
It was fun, I tested it out and wondered how awesome it would be if there was some risk or principle attached it would entice players to want to defend and guard them, in the same way we deal with POB's. I think every faction that has access to caps should have mortal caps defending their territories.
Because what happens when all the POB's are gone? That must be great for player population too. But I'm not in favor of stopping the ability to do it, if a POB will be a threat a faction should be able to do something. To me sieging POB's for fun though is proof we have limited options here and could use another similar outlet for PVP activity. Sieges are great, too bad its not over territory too, and in some cases ship sellpoints. I REALLY think if we let houses move around static NPC ships more, and made them strong mortal targets, it would break things up a bit more, and take some heat off of POB bases.
I mean, why can't a house request NPC caps be moved to areas with threatened POB's to help defend them? If they could, the fact that they'd also be siegeable would be the balancing factor.
It does seem a little imbalanced that some factions can go on siege parades but don't have much to defend on their end. What if RHA static caps or stations were also made mortal? What if they had to use that fleet to also defend targets while trying to go on the offensive. Ensure both sides have something to attack and defend, and there is something to do on both sides, and wouldn't seem so one sided. RM might be more enticed to log if they can also just form a group, sneak up on an enemy base-ship on their own time, and attack it, especially if that means dealing a blow to them.
I feel like if RM players could organize there own raids against GMG static caps, RH static caps, etc, and vice versa, most of the action would move around that instead. Then in order for people to want to prioritize around the caps, literally make it so that if they are lost, not only do you lose a base, but it may lead to losing a shipyard, ship sell point, or eventually even a whole system, of you lose them all in those areas.
Not only that, but these smaller factions that also have shipyards and use large capitals should all be able to have those shipyards SIEGABLE, at least if any static caps guarding it were knocked out of play. Then, for a faction to even still get access to its capital ship sellpoint, it would have to fight hard! Otherwise RM could keep their ship sellpoint 'deactivated' when they need contain the RHA threat...if they can! (meaning if it was taken down to 0, it would stay undockable, either for a minum time like a month, or be able to be fixed by some player effort like a supply event). Now that would change things forever for factions like RHA, GMG, and Enclave.
If you're wondering how to answer all of the other questions around how to fill in the little blanks around it all, read previous posts!
As far as I'm concerned, many of the problems here still stem from there being nothing to do but show for mindless pews. POB's could still be invovled but in many cases now it seems all to easy to form a gaggle fleet to go siege a base, mainly because thats all there is to actually do 'battle wise' here in the live environment that will cause an actual battle, other than just waiting in an enemy system for someone to show up. A few little changes and the wars here would finally balance out.