Tradelane weaponry: Remove?

[AeternusDoleo]

Some players have suggested to remove the peashooter-class defensive turrets from the tradelanes. I had initially thought to beef them a little bit instead, but can see the merit in both options.

Beefing:
- Deters people from sitting idly near a trade lane.
- Prevents people from trolling folk by zapping the lane continuously with just a single snub
- Would wipe out NPCs attacking a lane eventually.

Removing:
- Slight reduction in serverload
- Allows pirates to basically sit at a lane unchallenged until spacecrafts arrive

Since these changes are just a tweak to the loadout, they're not that hard to do. I'm going to put it to a vote and see what the playerbase thinks about this.

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[kikatsu]

This is tough, I would love to see the guns buffed a good bit, it works from a PVP and RP perspective...but reducing the server load is hard to argue with.

[Hone]

As I said before, I think they should have fighter (mk2) grade turrets, this would give them some point, and help out their allies a little, while not making them horribly overpwered and activity reducing like the Gallia ones. Remember in Vanilla the turrets were actually effective, but not dangerous, it's just Disco's ship upgrading has left them behind, thats how they were meant to be. Also could you bring back the ability to shoot them off? That was cool.

However if you dont upgrade them, Id say best to remvoe them, less server load is good, pointless turrets just break immersion.

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[LunaticOnTheGrass]

Personally, I'd simply remove them altogether. It's already tough enough to pirate as is (in my own personal opinion), and the relative prevalence of law-enforcing factions (RM, LN, KNF) already invalidates merely sitting at a tradelane for a long time.

Anything reducing serverload is, I think, a plus.

[Challenger]

Any merit to a mixture of both? Maybe for example, Rheinland would have very powerful weapons on their lanes because they prefer automated defenses, whereas perhaps the lanes in Liberty do not have weapons at all because they were manufactured at an earlier date?

This could be an interesting opportunity to reflect fundamentals about the houses. Maybe Gallic lanes would each have a single very powerful beam weapon. Possibilities abound.

[kikatsu]

Actually I like Challenger's idea.... it changes per house. Liberty might not have any guns on the lanes but Rheinland could have GB guns or something... but I am still leaning towards no guns a bit just to save the server.

[SummerMcLovin]

As far as I have understood it, the planned changes to the system map and trade routes in 4.87 have been put in place to encourage transports to use the lanes, where they are more likely to 'interact' with pirates, and lawfuls can in turn 'interact' with the pirates.

Currently the Sirius tradelane weaponry does very little damage, and only if you really wanted to die would they be able to take out even a Light Fighter. The only use they might be is wiping out low-level NPCs, but I believe that sort of server load problem will also be solved by your changes.

As I've said a couple of times recently, I am heavily of the opinion that players should be the ones doing the defence instead of NPCs, stations and player base weapon platforms. Buffing tradelanes is simply going to replace (somewhat) the need for a police player to come along or discourage pirates from going there in any way. Ask anyone who's given piracy on the Gallic tradelanes a go how fun that is...

So for that, I'd see removing them entirely to reduce server load and not hinder player interaction as the best option.
Also, as someone suggested (I think it was Duvelske but cannot find the post), removing IFFs would also lower the clutter for pirates' contact lists and not need to trigger battle music needlessly.

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[AeternusDoleo]

We already have an option to cycle between types of targets, NPC, PC or all. Click the target icon repeatedly to trigger this option. But that's not the point of this topic - Stay ontopic please.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[JayDee Kasane]

Well, as guy who proposed to delete em in a first place - I vote to delete em.
Trade Lanes shouldnt have such powerful weapons installed on them, this is waste of recourses (inRP) to arm so many TLs all over Sirius. Instead Id buff station turrets abit (not EMP ones, but normal turrets) so station could have some defence.

While more powerful turrets will be of sense for lawfuls, for unlawfus that will be real pain in butt. Right now, there is little numbers of TL that could be camped, because many of them is short enough to see pirate sitting on it before you already moving on highest speed (O3 and O7 TLs for example), so you will force pirates to camp JGs more, which is even worse (with peoples ideas to make PoB with turrets near them around JGs and JHs). This might be of sense to make more protection for traders, but not fair to pirates, who is already quite lack of number of trap spots in same system. Hire escort or force police to patrol more. Players should be killed by other players, not NPC objects.

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[AeternusDoleo]

That would be ideal JayDee, if there was always a good balance between lawfuls and unlawfuls. Since that is not the case and your "force the police to patrol more" idea is frankly, not implementable, that arguement fails. The issue with lanes that are too short is being addressed in 4.87. Requires system changes, thus requires a mod update.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.