Limit total energy generation per sector

[Lone_Puppy]

This would heavily depend on the fleet sizes. It might result in a heavy penalty for the besieged station. But as soon as the attacker entered the station's sector, they'd suffer from the same penalty. Also, the defending fleet could make a sortie and attack its enemies in their sector.

Interesting idea.
I was mainly indicating the attacker to clean up the defended station and ships from outside the sector use long rang weapons and torpedos.

 

[Lukwan]

What about something that just inversely affects ships? Thinking like the more energy usage in a sector the higher likely hood something will happen like blackhole? or some cosmic event?

Along this same line. Lets avoid any Cap & just focus on the 'consequences' of harnessing massive power.

Massive power generation attracts unwanted attention or Agro from pirates. Pirates can more easily detect these energy signatures so they show up in greater numbers to Shoot & Loot the big fishes. Build as big as the soft caps allow and deal with the fallout. That doesn't sound boring.

 

[Malacodor]

Massive power generation attracts unwanted attention or Agro from pirates. Pirates can more easily detect these energy signatures so they show up in greater numbers to Shoot & Loot the big fishes. Build as big as the soft caps allow and deal with the fallout. That doesn't sound boring.

Great idea, if players amass more ships than the server can handle, the game "solves" this by adding even more ships.

 

[StormWing0]

Great idea, if players amass more ships than the server can handle, the game "solves" this by adding even more ships.

and this my friends is how an unreasonable idea starts to evolve into a reasonable one.

So in this case instead of a hard cap we just attract more and more attention from the enemy AI factions and other things that want us dead and that would keep large ships and large fleets down a bit at least. Keep in mind it won't likely be adding more ships than the server can handle, the build up from AI faction attacks could start at about half that point. AI fleets could float in and attack the player and each other to keep the number of ships and stations down to a level the server can handle all the while ending up providing the players and the AI the spare resources to rebuild from the overheating fleets and stations if they salvage them. Basically they would rebuild at reduced levels that would get lower with each attack from both sides. In the end it would enforce a dynamic balance without forcing a hard cap at the same time. Keep in mind the consequences for overbuilding ships and stations in an area could be any number of things not just AI fleets trimming the mass. Also there could be maintenance costs for massive fleets, ships and stations as well. There are other ways than hard caps to limit players without ticking them off at the same time.

 

[Malacodor]

and this my friends is how an unreasonable idea starts to evolve into a reasonable one.

...which is totally not exploitable.

 

[StormWing0]

...which is totally not exploitable.

Keep in mind even NPC/AI factions will have resource pools to work with in the case of using them to trim player ship/station mass down. So the fleets spawned to attack or defend would cut into their resources and reduce them to 0 sooner or later so not as exploitable as you are thinking if they don't have unlimited resources anymore.

 

[Nickizzy]

Keep in mind it won't likely be adding more ships than the server can handle, the build up from AI faction attacks could start at about half that point.

Veeeeerrrrry important. Otherwise it just makes more of a lag fest. Other than that, this sorta morphed into a good idea. Now we need a method to reduce mass other than adding more mass. Maybe, sun damage?

 

[StormWing0]

lol why not give the sun a light gravitational pull to it so anything not docked to a station gets slowly pulled to it for a firey demise?