Multiple Invincible Stations

[Wildcat8787]

What happens though with the new players who are just starting out and can't set up multiple bases? As of right now, that initial HB is the biggest advantage a new player has, and to take that away would really unbalance things.
What about having the standard invulnerable HB, but the ability to make others invulnerable with faction points? That way a sufficiently large faction could setup relays for warp gates and have them remain protected. The drain on FP would be significant, but could be reduced by claiming the system. However, an invulnerable base, with the exception of the HB, would not be able to claim a sector, to prevent potentially infinite unstoppable expansion.

 

[MacThule]

This would be a good mechanic. If factions earned additional HBs for every 3-5 additional non-HB stations/planets/systems claimed it would open up a whole new world of conflict. As long as each faction retained 1 base HB slot regardless of anything except positive FP.

Especially under the inverted FP dynamic (which, honestly, needs it's own dedicated suggestion and to be referred to Schine by the council for implementation in Vanilla - personally I've seen enough test servers using inverted FP to know it works and improves multiplayer dynamics substantially).

 

[Madman198237]

That's the idea, Wild. Always the basic HB, but larger factions can, at the expense of infrastructure, have more HBs.

 

[Ithirahad]

This is fine, but every station protection after the homebase would need a timer before it becomes invulnerable. During this timer, scanning in the same system as the station should indicate the coordinates and status of the station.

 

[Lecic]

1. ALL bases are invulnerable if no faction members online.

To quote myself...

I think that invulnerability only while members are offline is a bad mechanic, as it encourages people to just log out when under siege, and encourages people to just play under, say, an allied alt faction instead.

Also, it would be really annoying to not be able to remove the territory of a solo player who got bored with a server and left.

I don't like invincible stations.
My suggestion is:
Increase the power of systems on stations. (remove soft cap, etc)
Add a new type of jammer for stations that prevents large ships from detecting small stations. Possible way this could be implanted is ships double the mass of the station can't detect the station also small ships within a certain distance of the large ship can't detect the station as well.
Add station based weapons e.g.

• Shield recharge disruptor
• shield recharge amplifier
• Large EMP blast that effects everything

I don't see why we couldn't have both of these. It'd help with making the claim stations that provide FP for the protected bases able to actually defend themselves, for one.

Why would anybody dock their ships to stations that can lose their invulnerability over night?

You balance FP capacity, FP drain, and FP cycle length in a way that means you have ample warning of your other stations giving out.

What about having the standard invulnerable HB, but the ability to make others invulnerable with faction points?

Congratulations on writing a tl;dr for the OP.

In case this wasn't clear to anyone else- I am not suggesting that regular HBs lose their protection to be replaced with this system. Regular HBs would still have unconditional immortality.

 

[TheGT]

Someone ought to bring in HolyCookie to this. This seems like a simple idea that could not take too much time to implement, and change the way multiplayer is played for the better.

 

[Lukwan]

Regular HBs would still have unconditional immortality.

There can be only one! No wait.... that's the Quickening. nvrmnd :p

 

[Sgtwisky]

Really like this idea. Also like inverted FP. I approve.

 

[Malacodor]

You balance FP capacity, FP drain, and FP cycle length in a way that means you have ample warning of your other stations giving out.

I'm not familiar with the inverted FP system. If I can dock my ship to an invulnerable station and it's still there when I log back in one or two days later, despite a massive raid that wiped out everything that wasn't invulnerable, then it's fine. Otherwise I'd only use the HB.

 

[Lecic]

I'm not familiar with the inverted FP system. If I can dock my ship to an invulnerable station and it's still there when I log back in one or two days later, despite a massive raid that wiped out everything that wasn't invulnerable, then it's fine. Otherwise I'd only use the HB.

Yes, that should work fine.

 

[MrFURB]

I'm not familiar with the inverted FP system.

The inverted FP system means that owned territory generates faction points while players in your faction cost faction points.
It promotes agressive expansion and having an active and lean roster as opposed to the vanilla config which promotes having lots of members with as little claimed territory as possible. It also usually means that to have a HB permanently protected you would need to have/defend a few non-protected systems to keep your faction points positive.

 

[Malacodor]

The inverted FP system means that owned territory generates faction points while players in your faction cost faction points.
It promotes agressive expansion and having an active and lean roster as opposed to the vanilla config which promotes having lots of members with as little claimed territory as possible. It also usually means that to have a HB permanently protected you would need to have/defend a few non-protected systems to keep your faction points positive.

Sounds like it discourages factions from accepting members with little time to play, or do players only drain FP when online?

 

[Lukwan]

Inverted FP sounds like a good fit for for a faction war server and vanilla is a good fit for build servers. Let's make inverted FP selectable by the server admin. I know there is already a mod but good mods should be folded into the vanilla game when they are widely used.

 

[MacThule]

Sounds like it discourages factions from accepting members with little time to play, or do players only drain FP when online?

Not exactly. There are variations on FP inversion. Some invert the territory to make it generate FP and completely eliminate player numbers from the equation. I've also seen it where players still also generate FP, but far less than in vanilla.

Personally, I think that the effects of player numbers / activity levels can swing either way and succeed. The key to FP inversion is forcing factions claim and hold territory in order to continue to exist as a faction... running out of FP means your HB becomes no longer invulnerable, and we all know that this is basically a death knell to most kinds of factions.

Systems can easily be made to generate instead of drain FP right now and several MP servers have run inverted FP. It would be absolutely brilliant if non-HB stations & planets claimed by a faction could generate FP as well (both because of the effects of having infrastructure and because it would give factions options and flexibility in terms of FP generation strategies).

To allow factions to choose to spend excess FP on making additional assets (stations or planets) temporarily or indefinitely invulnerable would be a real game changer under those conditions.

It would also be nice if we could spend FP to have a station or planet not show up on the map...

Or if we could spend FP to give a station 60% ion passive, or a 25% damage bonus to weapons. Any stuff like that would really up the ante on faction points.

 

[Jojomo]

Sounds like it discourages factions from accepting members with little time to play, or do players only drain FP when online?

Yes, sounds like it suits players online a lot, but wouldn't suit casual players. Factions would drop them from their rosters. The game would tend to exclude the less hardcore rather than include.

I'd have thought the need for resources would encourage expansion using the vanilla FP system. If not, then perhaps territory generating FP is the answer, but the player side of inverted FP would be problematic.
(Is the asteroid respawn rate too high?)

 

[MacThule]

I have yet to play on an IFP server where player numbers costs FP. Not sure which server that is happening on

To the best of my experience, IFP servers have only been inverting the function of territory, though as noted some also completely eliminate FP generation from faction members. I've never seen anyone actually CHARGE for faction members though. Is this a thing?

 

[Lecic]

I have yet to play on an IFP server where player numbers costs FP. Not sure which server that is happening on

To the best of my experience, IFP servers have only been inverting the function of territory, though as noted some also completely eliminate FP generation from faction members. I've never seen anyone actually CHARGE for faction members though. Is this a thing?

I don't think I've ever played on one that didn't charge for players.... how else would people run out of FP?

 

[MacThule]

Elwyn Infinity just set a high, constant FP burn rate. Default per-tic cost not affected by anything.

 

[nightrune]

Why not take away the control of what stations get protection?

Basically if it's surrounded on all sides by claimed territory then it's invulnerable. Creating a basic lattice. It forces combat at the edges and it gets harder to hold the larger it is due to surface area. This creates safe zones for mining as well, and reasons to hold the territory.

 

[Lecic]

Why not take away the control of what stations get protection?

Basically if it's surrounded on all sides by claimed territory then it's invulnerable. Creating a basic lattice. It forces combat at the edges and it gets harder to hold the larger it is due to surface area. This creates safe zones for mining as well, and reasons to hold the territory.

There are already tactical reasons to want to have outer buffer territory. There's no reason to make that a required feature. It would also have no warning and recovery time, allowing for a blitzkreig to destroy a faction literally overnight before they could react. Additionally, it would lead to one of two things, depending on how it's implemented- no station or planets within someone's territory can be destroyed because you make it so any claimed object is invulnerable, preventing any sort of internal attacks, or only the claim station is invulnerable, meaning you have no way to have multiple invulnerable stations in a system.