Greifing or Legitimate Strategy?

[Tunk]

I find your faith in humanity... disturbing.

 

[Megacrafter127]

You missed the other two parts,lilheartless, if warheads were targetable, had the 10 second self-destruct timer, and had to be activated (meaning you'd have to link them to some logic to start the countdown or activate them manually), then a lot of the problems you described would go away for the following reasons;

1. Being able to target them makes it so PD can take them out, even if you armor the torps they could still be taken out with one hit to the exposed warhead from a 1 damage cannon/cannon turret. Adding shields to prevent this would prevent the insta-kill on the warhead, but would make the torpedo much larger, needing more push modules, energy, shield generator, and shield capacitors. Too big to fire from a small torpedo bomber, much less one that can cloak.
2. The countdown timer guarantees you'd have to fire from at least 750m, assuming the server max speed hasn't changed and the push modules are strong enough to push it to max speed before the warhead self detonates. This puts the bomber well within the firing range of the longer range weapons available, so a beam/beam or missile/beam turret could peg your bomber before you even get a torp launched.
3. Having to arm the warheads before they can explode would prevent people from deploying stupid numbers of them in open space and firing them all at once. It would at least slow the process down enough that you might get a few shots off before station defenses kick in and start shooting back, instead of a massive 20 torp volley all at once.

I keep coming up with ways that these could be countered, but I keep getting the same tired rebuttals I heard back at the beginning of this thread. I feel like I'm trying to convince my 2 year old son to eat his veggies, there's a lot of screaming and not much gets done. I'm not saying anyone who disagrees with this is wrong, but maybe we should be trying to fix the problem instead of wasting energy fighting about it.

Just pointing out that this solution could easily be bypassed using an area trigger right in front of the warhead, which is used to activate the warhead.

 

[Zaphord]

I t

i blow things up for fun on servers because this is PART of the game... to say destruction is not part of the game is like saying breathing aint part of life

so random attacks would be offput by an admin in godmode deleting everything? sounds like a good way to loose most of your player base

If you got spawn killed a half dozen times in a row, would you stay on that server? How about if you got nuked by a much stronger player just after starting out for no reason other than for his entertainment? Damage control; it's about keeping new players, not protecting the troublemakers who've been on the server long enough to know better.
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Just pointing out that this solution could easily be bypassed using an area trigger right in front of the warhead, which is used to activate the warhead.

Then don't allow them to link to area triggers.

 

[Edymnion]

Then don't allow them to link to area triggers.

Then you simply have the area trigger tied to a damage pulse. Work out the pulse radius, put the pulse block far enough back that it will detonate when something is one block in front of the warhead, and the damage triggers the warhead because damage has to trigger it in order to keep it unstable enough to be a threat.

There will always be a way to exploit anything if you try hard enough.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Then don't allow them to link to area triggers.

Area Trigger->Activation module->Warhead
Circumvented.
Not allowing linking any logic would violate a requirement of an example in your fix.

 

[MacThule]

No you can't you have to attack it tke its shields down to 50% wait 12 hours and then you can actually attack and destroy it meanwhile you can have notifications set up so that you know the instant your base is attacked the first time and mount a defense. You are allowed time to react and mount a defense to account for the fact that people don't live in the game.

Your statement was misleading though and sets a false standard of expectations for gameplay here. You *CAN* destroy a POS in Eve while the owner(s) is(are) offline. It's unlikely that in the clemency period none of the station owners will show up - because no one in Eve even has one station without a fair sized active team - but if none do, you are perfectly free to kill it. There is nothing absolutely preventing POSs from being blown up if their owner is on vacation in Nepal, grounded or dopesick. There is also no reason why stations in Starmade should be absolutely protected from being destroyed while their owner is gone. If you have a fBuild alliances, build a team and you won't have to worry about it as much - same problem as the poor little battleships that couldn't.

Did it occur to you that it simply isn't wise for a 2-3 man faction to set up more than one or 2 space stations or at least to invest a lot of resources and time in one that isn't homebase protected? In real life do you image that 3 guys could set up multiple huge space stations and defend them? Where are you getting this expectation that that should be safe? If you have a 15-man faction, it's reasonable to expect to be able to protect a couple of out-stations because you'll probably have someone online at least 75% of the time.

My faction has 7 active and I very rarely log in and don't find at least one of them playing. But I flew out and found a jump-gate/mining outpost destroyed just Saturday evening, so I went in and scrapped it to my inventory, flew to a couple shops to re-fill the BP and respawned it in the same place. Took maybe 30 minutes - maybe - probably as long as it took whomever else to fly out and kill it in the first place. And it's not a big deal because our stash is in the homebase, and we BP everything. I didn't even have to get into our main stash to re-build it. So what if someone trashes your outposts occasionally - it's a choice to be butt hurt about it instead of just respawning and moving on with life. And if you're investing too many resources in undefendable outposts to be able to restore them in a reasonable amount of time, then see my original response to this thread. It's as foolish as flying an over-invested lag monster around the server without escort just to show your junk. Move your bases to another galaxy or server if you can't stand to see them burn.

I would be happy to see a turret setting that simply fired at ALL non-allied warheads in range. That totally addresses your primary complaint. If that's not good enough then feel free to start your own server where using warheads is banned already.

 

[Edymnion]

Where are you getting this expectation that that should be safe?

Because this is a video game. Video games are supposed to be fun. Logging in to find everything you've spent months building has been completely destroyed and you got no say in the matter, no chance to defend yourself, or even any notice that anything was wrong is not fun for anyone but the griefer assholes.

Unpopular opinion of mine at times, but I have yet to find it to be in error:
The only people who are against griefer protections are the griefers themselves. I have yet to meet anyone that didn't grief that had the slightest problem with steps being taken to prevent those who do from being able to do so.

 

[lilheartless]

Your statement was misleading though and sets a false standard of expectations for gameplay here. You *CAN* destroy a POS in Eve while the owner(s) is(are) offline. It's unlikely that in the clemency period none of the station owners will show up - because no one in Eve even has one station without a fair sized active team - but if none do, you are perfectly free to kill it. There is nothing absolutely preventing POSs from being blown up if their owner is on vacation in Nepal, grounded or dopesick. There is also no reason why stations in Starmade should be absolutely protected from being destroyed while their owner is gone. If you have a fBuild alliances, build a team and you won't have to worry about it as much - same problem as the poor little battleships that couldn't.

Did it occur to you that it simply isn't wise for a 2-3 man faction to set up more than one or 2 space stations or at least to invest a lot of resources and time in one that isn't homebase protected? In real life do you image that 3 guys could set up multiple huge space stations and defend them? Where are you getting this expectation that that should be safe? If you have a 15-man faction, it's reasonable to expect to be able to protect a couple of out-stations because you'll probably have someone online at least 75% of the time.

My faction has 7 active and I very rarely log in and don't find at least one of them playing. But I flew out and found a jump-gate/mining outpost destroyed just Saturday evening, so I went in and scrapped it to my inventory, flew to a couple shops to re-fill the BP and respawned it in the same place. Took maybe 30 minutes - maybe - probably as long as it took whomever else to fly out and kill it in the first place. And it's not a big deal because our stash is in the homebase, and we BP everything. I didn't even have to get into our main stash to re-build it. So what if someone trashes your outposts occasionally - it's a choice to be butt hurt about it instead of just respawning and moving on with life. And if you're investing too many resources in undefendable outposts to be able to restore them in a reasonable amount of time, then see my original response to this thread. It's as foolish as flying an over-invested lag monster around the server without escort just to show your junk. Move your bases to another galaxy or server if you can't stand to see them burn.

I would be happy to see a turret setting that simply fired at ALL non-allied warheads in range. That totally addresses your primary complaint. If that's not good enough then feel free to start your own server where using warheads is banned already.

For some reason people seem to think i'm against warheads working like they do now.... i'm not ... I'm only against the fact that you can use them without retribution that is a dumb concept that should get fixed if there was a way to defend against warheads while you were offline that would completely solve the problem.

 

[Zaphord]

Well, PD turrets can fire at missiles only, so why not allow them to fire at warheads when set to shoot down incoming missiles? There'd have to be a way of flagging the torpedo as incoming munitions without flagging warheads on ships or stations used as a self destruct system or ones placed in front of doors to blast them open. Maybe if we add a tag for torpedoes or mines specifically, along side the ship / turret designations? Entities flagged in this manner would be recognized by the AI the same as incoming missiles and could be targeted wether there's a faction sig or not. I'd be fine with that.

 

[lilheartless]

Well, PD turrets can fire at missiles only, so why not allow them to fire at warheads when set to shoot down incoming missiles. There'd have to be a way of flagging the torpedo as incoming munitions without flagging warheads on ships or statikns used as a self destruct system or ones placed in front of doors to blast them open. Maybe if we add a tag for torpedoes or mines specifically, along side the ship / turret designation. Entities flagged in this manner would be recognized by the AI the same as incoming missiles. I'd be fine with that.

there are hopefully some things coming with the ai update like including specific targetting parameters per turret so you could say have 30 pd turrets 10 of them are set to fire at missiles 2k or farther away 10 of them are set to fire at missiles 500 - 1999 meters away and 10 of them are set to fire at missiles 1 - 499 meters away

a distance system combined with the ability to set each turrets hostility level would be good that way you could have turrets set to fire at "any warhead within 250 meters so someone just flying by with warheads on their ship would be fine but if they got to close they would be shot as just one example

taken further hopefully you can set each turret to a specific level aka turret a targets only enemies turret b targets on enemies and neutrals closer than 500 meters or whatever hopefully with sliders so that they could be fully customizable.

Honestly for right now just being able to set turrets to shoot at warheads would be enough i suppose it doesn't really fix the problem of you being an ass by having to set neutrals as hostile but at least it allows you to protect yourself against torpedoes while you are not online.

 

[Zaphord]

there are hopefully some things coming with the ai update like including specific targetting parameters per turret so you could say have 30 pd turrets 10 of them are set to fire at missiles 2k or farther away 10 of them are set to fire at missiles 500 - 1999 meters away and 10 of them are set to fire at missiles 1 - 499 meters away

a distance system combined with the ability to set each turrets hostility level would be good that way you could have turrets set to fire at "any warhead within 250 meters so someone just flying by with warheads on their ship would be fine but if they got to close they would be shot as just one example

taken further hopefully you can set each turret to a specific level aka turret a targets only enemies turret b targets on enemies and neutrals closer than 500 meters or whatever hopefully with sliders so that they could be fully customizable.

Honestly for right now just being able to set turrets to shoot at warheads would be enough i suppose it doesn't really fix the problem of you being an ass by having to set neutrals as hostile but at least it allows you to protect yourself against torpedoes while you are not online.

Makes sense, I like the idea of being able to build a well thought out torpedo bomber that's specialized for taking out enemy bases, but having to worry about getting shot at just because I have warheads on this ship would still guarantee that if I was going to get shot at it should be because I'm actually attacking that station for a reason, not because I "might" be a greifer.

 

[GRHayes]

You can have good looking PvP ships, you know.

Sure can however you will sacrifice performance for it.

 

[Lecic]

Sure can however you will sacrifice performance for it.

Actually, with the HP/Armor update, bare system cubes are absolute trash, and hulled system cubes typically suffer from armor being too spread out. A wedge-like design can have much thicker frontal armor than a cube, due to lower surface area on the front of the ship. Even interiors aren't as big of a nerf to a ship as they used to be, because they give extra armor HP.

 

[GRHayes]

Actually, with the HP/Armor update, bare system cubes are absolute trash, and hulled system cubes typically suffer from armor being too spread out. A wedge-like design can have much thicker frontal armor than a cube, due to lower surface area on the front of the ship. Even interiors aren't as big of a nerf to a ship as they used to be, because they give extra armor HP.

I am just saying if you have X number of cubes you can build something more powerful vs something that looks nice. Right now the way I see armor and shields it is next to pointless other than to give you time to turn and return fire. If a ship the same size dedicates its mass to providing maximum damage against a ship of the same mass that doesn't it will be a slaughter.

Just take this simple concept I put in here http://starmadedock.net/threads/weapons-concept.21514/
And think of how you could use that simple concept to the extreme. All you have to do is extend it for more power. OR add more of the pairs and extend it.

People have built massive ships in this game and if you use this concept to build a ship anyways close to the size of those titans people have made it would be insane dps.

 

[Zaphord]

Personally, watching two titans slug it out isn't very interesting. I'd much rather be part of a medium sized fleet with more than just a giant pile of blocks to shoot at.