(06-29-2020, 06:43 AM)Gardarik Wrote: But my biggest issue is the whole logic behind the war. Ofc, the gameplay benefits for pew-pew are obvious at the expense of ridiculous RP. An offensive war without quite good chance of success through very difficult for navigation and diplomatically dangerous region for a not quite good benefits. The risks do not worth the play. Instead of focusing on safe Sigmas to monopolise H-fuel production and economic expansion by either cooperation or going into confrontation with the GMG while Rheinland is too busy with internal war and unable to reply in any adequate manner, Kusari ventures into the region that is rich with minarals, surely, but has been in the past unsuccessfully contested by many faction ready to push back and actually use Kusari's failures to strike deep into its heart. I would repeat myself: good work, Kusari, you outplayed yourself. I would do a wargame in my uni software for that, but damn I am too lazy to adapt the software to space opera realities while I have my other research to pursue. Mark my word, tho, geopolitics (or stellapolitics in this case) are not on your side. Discovery being Discovery, however, we can apply altered Murphy's law to it: "Anything illogical that can happen, will happen".
Well after seeing how its going I'm still trying to understand whats happening. Everyone is reporting points, but are they for something, or just payouts?
I don't understand at all why these scenarios are arranged and locked. And yeah it wasn't hard to figure out that it must have been born from a random suggestion in a dischord thread, which is the main propellent of story here for some reason. Not like we have a common medium to use for that? If only we could invent a video game where we used the actual virtual world to unfold scenarios using the game mechanics. Seems like Freelancer came so close!
(06-29-2020, 06:23 AM)LuckyOne Wrote: I also want to add, your idea of fighting over territory has been done in many other ways and many other games before, but almost never on this scale you are proposing - whole Sirius with dozens of factions, except the often mentioned EVE Online.
I'm going to list a few games I'm familiar with that either feature a "campaign map" or building + sieging elements. As I came here from other, mainly WW2 themed communities you might find the list a bit biased towards that.
WW2Online - there is a map, you can build assets for your side to use and move around command centres. Everyone plays on the same server and a gigantic map of Europe. 2 factions, Axis and Allies
Heroes and Generals - haven't played a long time, but the idea is quite similar to WW2 Online. I believe there are now 3 factions so it's an interesting example of asymmetrical balance. I seem to remember there was a giant balance problem as one side (Allies) was always outnumbered
Foxhole. A really interesting example of real time player driven building, production, logistics and great PVE / PVP gameplay. Also features a map of territories to fight over. Again only 2 sides and one big server.
Planetside 1/2. Old but gold. 3 factions and player buildable defenses, faction deployable call-ins in the form of "Bastion Fleet Carriers". Also features one massive server with thousands of players.
Space Engineers - from the original idea of Miner Wars transformed through Minecraft-like building and crafting features. Factions are player organized. Features private servers, but everything happens in a single solar system.
EVE Online, of course. Arguably the most similar in setting and potential gameplay mechanics implementation. One gigantic server and many player controlled factions.
So as we can see from the examples, without the ability to go over a few hundred players on this old engine only a small scale implementation of the idea is possible in Freelancer. Maybe only during wars and focused on two opposed sides.
The thing is, most of the required gameplay mechanics are already present in Disco. What is needed is a mindset / ruleset change, but I'm not sure the majority of this community wants that.
As it stands now you could always try to build a POB then SRP it to be replaced by a Battleship model and get it moved into the war zone and then let players fight over it. It would just be very tedious to do, and might not matter for the war outcome.
Imagine all of that work when devs can do it in a fraction of the time. If only we had staff that wanted to work the game for the purposes making more fluid/interactive scenarios occur. Instead the game here became about controlling the world and its events oorply, not just working on keeping it working and giving players stuff to do that isn't a waste of time.
Looks like I'll have to find WWII online, I spend most of my time now playing a WWII flight simulator anyways.
As far as Eve goes, it may be different or not but I never had interest in a space flying a game that you couldnt pilot the craft. Or Star Conflict, where all it was missing was an open world. Those two games should get together.
I'll continue to argue that the wars here should have systems of rules guiding how they unfold, with objectives for each side to achieve (that can get them something out of it), and try to create some purpose to the activity. Is this an rp server? A pvp server? Mindless pew pvp kills immersion and removes all point to it. You either just log to have pointless fun, or you care about what goes on. So before people tell me to just log and not care, that's not how it should be here. As far as I'm concerned, nothing changes at this point to literally to spite me specifially, to avoid any uncontrolled factor from player activity, avoiding what is obviously the most logical course of action for a game like this.
As it stands, the ability to use pvp and rp to exert change and propel your character is neutralized completely, and over time this place has quietly changed from an rp server to a fixed story dictatorship with pointless pvp. I love the pvp here, but people only think it has to be the same thing over and over, no real scenario going on, and artificially balanced sides, like it matters for pointless battles?
In regards to the pvp, its painful to see people posting about accidental self kills. Don't shoot the messenger, but:
Mines are now pointless on snubs. I'm willing to bet the amount to times having a mine option comes in handy is much lower than the amount of times it screws things up. When you have to make exceptions so much it means change how it works. No mines, no self kills (except crashing). Is the off chance of getting a mine kill that important? I thought missiles were removed so no one would have to die fast or deny gun kills anyways?
I would make mines only for gunboats, make them a bit more powerful and have a larger explosion radius, and give them only 10-20, so its like they have some guided bombs to drop (perhaps while acting as an anti snub ship hoping to catch a few in an explosion). Of course if it were up to me, most fighters would only have chainguns and missiles. When I started here, when battles started, everyone launched their missiles first, and only those who survivied the first joust got to dogfight.