Is slow travel a contributing factor to the decline of PvP?

[Dire Venom]

YES.

+1
Heard some players say there have to be speed limits for performance, e.g nothing rendering in while traveling etc....
This is NOT true, when one of my ships bugged out on shattered skies (and got negative mass) I was able to travel at 20,000 m/s without any problems, everything was rending in well while traveling and it felt AWESOME :D
If there could be a way to incorporate this into the game (extreme power costs? specialty designed ships?) I'm sure it would improve the SM experience a lot.

 

[Lecic]

I'm still of the opinion that the only viable option is to have pure PvP, restricted PvP, and pure PvE servers, with mandatory explanation of rules and requiring consent upon joining, and strict policing of infractions.
Sad, but that's the way human psychology works in my experience when they have no common goal.

This doesn't solve any of the problems, unless you're forcing everyone on the PvP server to live within a 10 system radius around spawn or something. A concept that MIGHT barely work within the current game, but is going to fall to pieces the moment that territory becomes important.

 

[Valck]

This doesn't solve any of the problems, unless you're forcing everyone on the PvP server to live within a 10 system radius around spawn or something.

Not saying you're wrong, I admit I don't have much experience with a pure PvP setting, but I fail to understand why, if I'd want to engage in PvP, would I wander so far off that there's virtually no chance I'd ever meet someone else to fight.

EDIT:
Even if one player would for whatever incomprehensible reason do that, it would require the majority of players who allegedly want to engage in PvP to wander off in different directions, as far apart as possible. Which simply doesn't make any sense to me if everyone agreed they want to have PvP action.

 

[Lecic]

Not saying you're wrong, I admit I don't have much experience with a pure PvP setting, but I fail to understand why, if I'd want to engage in PvP, would I wander so far off that there's virtually no chance I'd ever meet someone else to fight.

People who want to engage in PvP don't necessarily want visitors at their homebase. You can already see this with the people I described earlier.

 

[Valck]

People who want to engage in PvP don't necessarily want visitors at their homebase. You can already see this with the people I described earlier.

Protecting your home base makes sense I guess, but I think the underlying issue is why would someone go out of their way to avoid PvP when by joining that server they express their interest in actually having PvP? That's a nonsequitur in my eyes, and the real issue that needs to be addressed. Not a problem with game mechanics, but with player psychology.
To me that sounds like someone has different expectations and interests from everybody else on that server, and maybe just doesn't fit in, or perhaps the expectations of everybody else weren't made clear enough.

Anyway, speed and jump/warp distance settings can be changed in the configs, so why not just up them and see what happens...

 

[Lecic]

Protecting your home base makes sense I guess, but I think the underlying issue is why would someone go out of their way to avoid PvP when by joining that server they express their interest in actually having PvP? That's a nonsequitur in my eyes, and the real issue that needs to be addressed. Not a problem with game mechanics, but with player psychology.
To me that sounds like someone has different expectations and interests from everybody else on that server, and maybe just doesn't fit in, or perhaps the expectations of everybody else weren't made clear enough.

Anyway, speed and jump/warp distance settings can be changed in the configs, so why not just up them and see what happens...

They aren't going "out of their way" to avoid PvP. They're going out of their way to avoid being on the DEFENDING side. They only want to be the attackers.

You can't change player psychology. You can just make it so what they want to do (live a galaxy over and launch raids on the weekend) doesn't work.

 

[Valck]

You can't change player psychology. You can just make it so what they want to do (live a galaxy over and launch raids on the weekend) doesn't work.

Right. And you won't change their ways with game mechanics changes that affect everybody else in the same way. The only way is to either get them off your server, or make them play according to your server's rules. Have the server rules expressly forbid "weekend raids" from outside galaxies. Declare it an exploit on your server.

If you absolutely want to change travel times, you could even experiment with increasing them to the point it just isn't feasible to reach another galaxy within a weekend's time while still having weapon systems on a ship, and set up warp networks within your own galaxy. Defending the warp routes would give an incentive and a focus point for PvP, too.

 

[MacThule]

Unfortunately, this theory was already proven that doesn't work.

GenXNova had a very restrictive ship size on its rules, and even with that, the server was pretty much unplayable thanks to it moderately high population.

I don't find your anecdote to prove anything. One server is not proof, IMO - especially without stats.

 

[Ravenskysong]

I feel like pvp would be better if servers could better control the size of galaxies, how fast/far jumpdrives can go, and how shops restock. like if a galaxy was really small, or easy to get around, and shops had enough material to make your pvp ships (so that the first people on the server wouldn't have a huge benefit by being the first to get all the loot from planets in a smaller galaxy)

 

[Tunk]

More control over the environment (galaxies, shops, general spawning, etc) would be awesome, hope that comes in soon.

As much as I would love a hyperspace/fast travel method the biggest obstacle to that at the moment appears to be sector loading speed.
Pretty much once you reach 1/4 sector size speed you start hitting issues with loading new sectors ahead of you, which results in rebounds as the sectors load in (would be great if we could get pre-loading, tunnel loading, or null loading at high velocity).

Personally the biggest issue for me is that travel is boring, its just endless staring at a tunnel screen.
Its either charge, click, charge click, while staring blankly at the screen, or running off to make a coffee while a logic drive does its thing.
Even with a max theoretical speed drive I've got enough time to make a coffee and a sandwich while going on lecics trip.

Pretty much once you are on your way there is nothing to do, and nothing interesting can really happen (unless you somehow regularly enjoy sun diving).
There are no natural phenomena that effect a jump drive, sun diving isn't really a issue, hell worm holes are the most interesting thing I encounter.

And as everyone has already brought up, the faster we make stuff the more dispersed people get.
So my suggestion here would be a mechanic that makes it more 'interesting' the further out you go to discourage the dispersal behavior and make navigation a bit more interesting than setting a waypoint (and ultimately frustrating without infrastructure if permanently residing far out).

Increase accuracy of jump drives dependent on average local system masses, so in other words around the center of a galaxy where there are a lot of systems (mass from stars, stations, roids, etc) jump drives will have a lot of accuracy.

Out in void space between galaxys/arms or isolated systems you might as well spin the bottle and throw a piece of string in that direction.

This will also encourage further use of gates to gate over void systems as well as introduce choke point systems and the likes as you get further out.
Funny enough, this would also make high mass ships more accurate than smaller ships when jumping in low mass areas.

Add in faction point draining via stations for siege warfare and hopefully this will encourage players to be a bit more active, and give various systems actual value to fight over.
That and possibly rare resources that only spawn in some systems.

 

[nightrune]

You can't change player psychology. You can just make it so what they want to do (live a galaxy over and launch raids on the weekend) doesn't work.

But it kinda has to. I'm busy during the week, and pretty much only have the weekend.

I'm sure there are others like me out there. I've gotta work but I love this game and I'd like a chance to pvp, but also have a place I can play and experiment at.

 

[AtraUnam]

I don't understand why people dislike being on the defending side, setting up gigantic seige guns and watching the sky fill with explosions makes for great gameplay.

 

[StormWing0]

I don't understand why people dislike being on the defending side, setting up gigantic seige guns and watching the sky fill with explosions makes for great gameplay.

I coat my whole system if I have the resources in guns so attacking my systems is like attacking the most heavily defended place you can think of in reality sometimes. XD

 

[NeonSturm]

Interaction-benefits:

if there is a warp-gate route between you and certain other faction, you get something that you can't get otherwise or takes some time to get.

Optional : depending on distance/faction-size, faction-size-ratio, …
​

I'd like to see a network of gates built by many players to connect rare blue stars, sentiment species on some planets, …

Imagine immature species which supply you with playing-god-points when you play god in their world. The more carefully you do, the more points you get.

​

The game needs more interesting places which are PRE-DEFINED, not create-able and attract players.

 

[Nickizzy]

I think a big incentive for pvp would be that(all or only player spawned ships and stations) entities would, when shot at, would give the attacker a percent of the damage done in capsules and composite amd mesh, about 20% of that destroyed (Like in from the depths). This would make fighting other ships a lot less of a risk, because you would get a sizeable amount of reasources from it. And losing a ship would not mean "a hole bunch of reasources down the drain", they would be with your enemy, and you could reclaim those reasources back.

Every 5 seconds a ship is in combat, the game checks if any blocks have been destroyed, and gives each block's value to the shooter of the shots. The value would be in capaules and composite and mesh, and a froction of what the whole block is worth(20mesh power block gives you only 4 mesh). Reasources are placed in player inventory, or in a storage connected to the core.
[DOUBLEPOST=1452203632,1452203596][/DOUBLEPOST]Only worry is hiw the game knows who destroyed the blocks.

 

[Lecic]

I think a big incentive for pvp would be that(all or only player spawned ships and stations) entities would, when shot at, would give the attacker a percent of the damage done in capsules and composite amd mesh, about 20% of that destroyed (Like in from the depths). This would make fighting other ships a lot less of a risk, because you would get a sizeable amount of reasources from it. And losing a ship would not mean "a hole bunch of reasources down the drain", they would be with your enemy, and you could reclaim those reasources back.

Every 5 seconds a ship is in combat, the game checks if any blocks have been destroyed, and gives each block's value to the shooter of the shots. The value would be in capaules and composite and mesh, and a froction of what the whole block is worth(20mesh power block gives you only 4 mesh). Reasources are placed in player inventory, or in a storage connected to the core.
[DOUBLEPOST=1452203632,1452203596][/DOUBLEPOST]Only worry is hiw the game knows who destroyed the blocks.

50% or more of a ship remains after it overheats to be salvaged.

 

[Nickizzy]

I'd rather like a coupling of that with https://starmadedock.net/threads/asteroid-wrangling-a-new-way-to-mine.22455/, with having to drag the parts back to base to get them. What about stations though, and when you can't lug around mining megagrids everywhere, and definately not into a battle.

 

[Keptick]

They aren't going "out of their way" to avoid PvP. They're going out of their way to avoid being on the DEFENDING side. They only want to be the attackers.

You can't change player psychology. You can just make it so what they want to do (live a galaxy over and launch raids on the weekend) doesn't work.

Defending side with an invincible homebase? lol. It'd be way easier to get into fights by using your own base as bait, instead of roaming for hours without finding any potential kills.

 

[Lecic]

Defending side with an invincible homebase? lol. It'd be way easier to get into fights by using your own base as bait, instead of roaming for hours without finding any potential kills.

Yes, defending side. You are on the defensive if your base turrets are incapable of doing enough DPS to break something's shields. Chances are, you're under attack from a swarmer boat, and you can't do anything about it because there's so many missiles that they're lagging the server and glitching through the walls and killing you. It forces you to get into a build block, and anyone who doesn't have a high enough rank to get into one and can't get to a docked core? Guess they're shit out of luck. Might as well just log out at that point, because there's nothing else for you to do.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm I usually fight swarmer boats with a massive swarmer array sitting on top of my HQ assuming we don't have allies over for a visit.