Universe Patch Brainstorming: Incentives Against Turtling?

[Edymnion]

With the Universe update up next, I think its time to officially have a serious conversation.

The game currently has a problem with turtling. Since homebases are invincible, and can essentially do everything, there is no real reason to ever leave one. Everyone docks everything they have to the homebase to protect it while they're offline, and many people (when faced by an overly aggressive PvP'er who won't back off) will simply run back home and dock until the other person gives up out of boredom. We've seen some of the bigger name PvP'ers here in the past say that these days most of PvP was essentially base camping waiting for someone to come out.

That is a problem for a game that is supposed to be about exploration and expansion. The question is, what can we do about it?

Few people would suggest taking away faction home base invulnerability, its just too important of a safety net. Which means there are really only two broad options that can be explored. We either have to penalize people who turtle to the point they can no longer stand to do so, or we have to incentivize them to come out.

Personally, I am too big a fan of the one faction homebase being your last ditch emergency fallback to punish people who try to use it as such, so I tend to come down on the side of baiting them out. However, I do have to agree that right now stations can do everything, so there is no need to ever make a second one, and that is probably going to have to change.

---

So, brainstorming time!

What can we do to get people to spread out more?
(Remember, brainstorming means ideas get thrown out, anything at all that comes to mind, if its good or not. The idea behind brainstorming is that even if an idea is terrible, it could spark a better one in someone else.)

---

Random thoughts of mine in no particular order:

• Separate out material processing and manufacturing. Not sure how best to do this, but make it so that it isn't viable on a large scale to have a capsule refinery making processed mats on the same station as factories. It would have to stay viable on a small scale for starting out, but if we can get it to where you need refining stations that then deliver processed mats to factory stations, we'd get multiple stations out there along with cargo/trade convoys moving materials between them in supply lines.
• Some new kind of optional resource that makes the game easier to play at higher levels, but isn't actually required. I put some thoughts on that out over here. If these resource spawns are spread out enough, and require something local to exploit, it would force multiple stations to get full benefit.
• Separate out shipyards. Same as above with refining and manufacturing, having small scale operations of both manufacturing and shipyard building together would be needed, but finding a way to split them apart on the large scale would mean more stations and more convoys. Kinda iffy on this one, as I generally like having lots of manufacturing in my shipyard to build what I need.
• While we're listing out separate stuff, some kind of bonus for mass storage would be nice, encourage supply depots.
• Parking lot stations. Right now EVERYTHING docked to a homebase is invincible. What if we limited that to only X number of docked ships, and had reactor chambers to increase the number of protected dockings? The homebase itself would still be indestructible, but it would mean you couldn't dock entire fleets anymore without making a serious investment in reactor capacity.

And for pretty much all of the "separate it out" stuff, I'm thinking more carrot than stick. Instead of penalizing people by saying "You can't have them on the same station at all", I'm thinking maybe more reactor chamber oriented. Right now, we already have chambers for stations to increase manufacturing capacity that if you max out manufacturing it uses 100% of your reactor capacity, and I think that is a great place to start.

Reactor chambers could happen to increase refining speed and efficiency that max out the reactor as well. If you could chamber up to get 10x the refining speed, and double or triple the refined mats you got out of refining, that would be a great incentive to have a station that focuses entirely on refining.

We could do the same with storage. Chambers to increase the capacity per cargo block so that you can store more in less space. Oh, what if we put an upper limit on automated pull capacity? Right now we can instantly pull a hundred million blocks per tick into and out of storage, what if there was a cap on that, which could be increased via reactor chambers? We could still load/unload without the chambers, it would just be slow. Add in the chambers, and speed things up dramatically.

Shipyards can go the same route. Chambers to decrease power usage and increase assembly time. You want a shipyard that can build a titan? First you gotta build it that big. Then if you don't have chambers, it could take hours to assemble it. Enough chambers and you could reduce that time down to minutes.

And if we can split the levels of all of these things up a bit more finely, it would let us mix and match so that we could still have some limited hybridization (so maybe we could get 75% manufacturing focus and 25% storage focus), while still having the option for balls to the wall super-factories for end-game.

---

Of course, we're going to need much more intelligent AI and control options to make the most out of this. We'd need to be able to build a cargo ship and then be able to tell it "If your stores are full, go to point A. If they're empty, go to point B" so that we could set up delivery routes and schedules. Would also need better fleet controls so that we could assign some fighter escorts to the cargo ships for some level of defensive support.

---

Anyway, what ideas do you have?

 

[Byamarro]

Well, I think that what will resolve turtling are points of interest. Remember that Universe Update aims to introduce resources distribution, so if You want to have steady inflow of some kinf od resources you'll have to use fleet that digs it, other players can destroy your salvagers, which will cause loses.

 

[Kingofanime]

What if we just did something simple like, remove homebase invulnerability and give your homebase a x10 shield capacity and regen multiplier instead? Make it hard to kill like a planet core. That would protect big bases from small things.

Then add some kind of illusion/cloaking abiltiy for small space stations, to disguise them as something else. To hide them from big things.

I mostly play single-player, and I've always kinda disliked homebase invulnerabilty, because it makes all my space station building and fortifying on my homebase feel like it's for nothing. But at same time, I also dislike losing my homebase, so I always end up using it.

I think what we need is some kind of automated AI constructor ship owned by the player, that can automatically go out and replace destroyed stations. That would take the tediousness away from managing them. If I had a way to automate resource gathering, and a way to automate replacing things it would be easier to maintain everything.

 

[Edymnion]

What if we just did something simple like, remove homebase invulnerability and give your homebase a x10 shield capacity and regen multiplier instead? Make it hard to kill like a planet core. That would protect big bases from small things.

Because home base invincibility isn't there to protect you from small things.

Its there specifically to protect you from griefer players who would swing by while you're logged off and destroy everything you own while you can't do anything about it.

And no amount of shields or armor will EVER stop a player who's absolutely decided to destroy your base, because its way too easy to build a cheap gun that can take out any amount of shields. I've seen griefers destroy stations with millions of shields using nothing but what they could get within hours of being on a server.

 

[kurosawa]

is this even a problem, why not just let pvp's find like minded pvp's so they can pewpew together and not bottom feed on base builders.

adding various rules and punishments does not seem to do much good for a creative sandbox game

 

[Edymnion]

is this even a problem, why not just let pvp's find like minded pvp's so they can pewpew together and not bottom feed on base builders.

Because most of them in my experience don't want a fair fight. They'll avoid someone who can fight back like the plague and only attack someone they know can't possibly hurt them.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good ones out there. There's just a lot more bullies than there are sportsmen.

Turtling wouldn't even exist if people actually fought fairly and left weaker opponents alone. The very fact that so many people absolutely refuse to leave their base out of fear of somebody swooping in and wiping them out is testament to the fact that there are a lot of people who would just swoop in and take them out for no reason.

 

[kurosawa]

Because most of them in my experience don't want a fair fight. They'll avoid someone who can fight back like the plague and only attack someone they know can't possibly hurt them.

Them being pvp'eres ?
your statement validates a fully protected and functional homebase, that is the only way where builders and pvp's can be on the same server.

So the solution must be to accept that people have different play styles and not force people in to 1 style.

 

[Edymnion]

So the solution must be to accept that people have different play styles and not force people in to 1 style.

Except that this is a game, and PvP is a part of it. Its not the MAIN aspect of the game, but it is an important one.

We do need something to actually use all of these ships and stations for, after all.

Right now, with no incentive to spread out, there is a distinct lack of organic PvP. There is no reason to go out, there is nothing to fight over, and since there is nothing but invincible home bases the only PvP options left are griefing and basically pre-arranged tournament style duals (with the latter there being rather infrequent).

I happen to greatly enjoy legit PvP. I just don't approve of "If you don't wipe the other guy off the server, whats the point?" total war PvP. I actually WANT some soft targets to go after. I want to be building defenses and escort fleets and all of that.

A relatively fair and balanced PvP environment where the focus is on taking and controlling resources, not just trying to utterly destroy other players, that I wholeheartedly support and endorse. But we need to actually have incentive and reason to get out there and build all those resource control points.

Invincible homebase so that people are protected is not at odds with also supporting PvP.

 

[IKindaCrashAlot]

How about minimize the amount of chamber usage factory power efficiency and factory production efficiency use and add some defense chambers to homebases and stations. Add a defense tree for armor and shields on regular stations and a different one for homebases. For the regular station (maybe this tree unlocks once you get atleast 5000 reactor blocks) you can get a massive shield regeneration and shield capacity bonus, and on homebases you could get an extreme shield capacity and regeneration bonus. Then on regular stations you could maybe get like a 200% AHP bonus and a 500% AHP bonus. However this doesn’t solve offline raiding. I think when you’re offline your base should get like I don’t know a turret damage buff so that your turrets do like 300% of the damage so offline raiding really takes some manpower and firepower. Also this is an entirely new game mechanic but if this system were to be implemented or something similar to it, maybe to load a nuke weapon (currently a missile/pulse/explosive you’d have to craft a nuke which would be very expensive in order to reload the weapon and every time it is fired it would be removed from your inventory. This would open up a really fun gameplay style similar to that in Rust where honeycombing bases and making certain styles of bases would be ideal which I’m sure would make rp guys but with all the airlocks and stuff that would be necessary

 

[Tolnorus]

I agree with Byamarro above; the Universe update is going to make exploration more important and interesting.

And while I appreciate any discussion of game balance, the solution to me is obviously to let the PVPers do what they please while I play on a server without PVP. Problem solved. I have yet to play on a public server mainly because of PVP. Also, I categorically deny your assertion that PVP is a part of the game. Maybe it is a part of your game, but it is not a part of mine. I learned my lesson in Minecraft and am no longer interested in PVP in this kind of game. If anything, the PVP rules could be changed to make it less all-or-nothing so that losing isn't utterly backbreaking, thus creating an incentive to become involved in player conflict.

Honestly, I think that the problem you are describing is a feature of PVPers and griefers rather than a feature of the game. I do not think there is anything to be done to change it. In my experience, the only sane response to base-camping is to leave the arena and find something else to do.

 

[Briaireous]

I saw that someone already suggested the option of x10 shielding for bases and my opinion of what could prevent turtleing goes along with that idea.

Since I have yet to play on a server for a long enouph duration yet. I can't really offer any solutions based on gameplay experience.


One option I suggest is totremove the base involnerability. Then also make it so that turrets on stations get a damage buff, range buff, and maybe even a recoil dampener. While shields get faster Regen and at least x10 buff. With that bases can at least be defended when facing ships of similar sizes. That way a tiny station with the mass of 4k can be expected to defend against ships of about x10 it's size. But anything below that it should hold off for at least a long time. Survivability depends almosy entirely upon player design.

Option 2, only one base in involnerable. Then impose a limit on the size of said base. Only that base will have a build limit. The purpose of the build limit is only to prevent people from hiding larger ships in the base. (Not exactly the ideal since it places a huge restriction on player build freedom based on the size of the restriction)

 

[Coyote27]

Because home base invincibility isn't there to protect you from small things.

Its there specifically to protect you from griefer players who would swing by while you're logged off and destroy everything you own while you can't do anything about it.

And no amount of shields or armor will EVER stop a player who's absolutely decided to destroy your base, because its way too easy to build a cheap gun that can take out any amount of shields. I've seen griefers destroy stations with millions of shields using nothing but what they could get within hours of being on a server.

Even Edy is right twice a day. Protecting a vulnerable base isn't simply like Britain trying to protect the Falklands, as challenging as that was in reality. Instead, it's more equivalent to the Argies being both willing and able to bulldoze the islands into the sea and make them vanish from the map before the fleets can even get there. It'd be very difficult to protect far-flung bases even if you have a large faction with someone on every hour of the day; for people that have jobs and perhaps just a couple of friends it's entirely impossible, and not even rapid-deployment warpgates to every station would be any help.
If players can blow something up, or think they can even if they actually can't, they will try.

 

[lokilog]

A lot of people have said this already, but I think it would be best to remove homebase invulnerability. Some think it's a good idea to give it another perk instead. I don't like the idea of basing things off of reactor power (as suggested by, as it would still allow the biggest factions to operate without change. That could be solved by adding some kind of cap that no one can bypass (other than changing the configs, of course). Maybe that cap could be increased through reactors or another mechanism, but not by much. That way, powerful factions can make a powerful station without being invulnerable, while weaker factions won't have to worry about being destroyed by the dominant faction in their area.
At the same time, Edymnion and Coyote27 have made a good point: a dedicated player or group of players will always find a way to destroy a station. So, the compromise between these two issues should allow factions to destroy each other's homebases, but prevent attacks while the faction is defenseless while few or none of their players are online. So how should this be done?
One way would be to make homebases invulnerable when no one from that faction is online. This has multiple problems: to begin with, one member of the faction could be online, far from the homebase, which would allow for an attack, while the defending faction would be unable to fight back. This could be solved by allowing invulnerability while there are no players within a certain radius of the station, but that could be bypassed by warping away whenever your homebase is attacked. The second problem: all members of the faction could log off during an attack, making the station invulnerable. Servers could have rules preventing this, and it would take an incredible amount of persuasion to bypass, considering it would be an unlikely event for every member of a faction to have to log off at the same time, right as an attack was taking place.
The solution given above isn't anywhere near perfect, and someone will find a way around it, but it's the best idea I can think of at the moment.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Them being pvp'eres ?
your statement validates a fully protected and functional homebase, that is the only way where builders and pvp's can be on the same server.

So the solution must be to accept that people have different play styles and not force people in to 1 style.

Here is the problem with just making HBs stronger: Even if you make them 100x as strong, a new player will alway be at the mercy of an older player. 80% of the times my HB has been attacked has been within the first week of joining a server. If HBs were vulnerable, players would just wait a few days for noobs to gets some resources together, then wipe them out with a force 100x their size. There is no balancing that with a fair siege scenario between two moderately equal factions.

With the Universe update up next, I think its time to officially have a serious conversation.

The game currently has a problem with turtling. Since homebases are invincible, and can essentially do everything, there is no real reason to ever leave one. Everyone docks everything they have to the homebase to protect it while they're offline, and many people (when faced by an overly aggressive PvP'er who won't back off) will simply run back home and dock until the other person gives up out of boredom. We've seen some of the bigger name PvP'ers here in the past say that these days most of PvP was essentially base camping waiting for someone to come out.

That is a problem for a game that is supposed to be about exploration and expansion. The question is, what can we do about it?

Few people would suggest taking away faction home base invulnerability, its just too important of a safety net. Which means there are really only two broad options that can be explored. We either have to penalize people who turtle to the point they can no longer stand to do so, or we have to incentivize them to come out.

Personally, I am too big a fan of the one faction homebase being your last ditch emergency fallback to punish people who try to use it as such, so I tend to come down on the side of baiting them out. However, I do have to agree that right now stations can do everything, so there is no need to ever make a second one, and that is probably going to have to change.

---

So, brainstorming time!

What can we do to get people to spread out more?
(Remember, brainstorming means ideas get thrown out, anything at all that comes to mind, if its good or not. The idea behind brainstorming is that even if an idea is terrible, it could spark a better one in someone else.)

---

Random thoughts of mine in no particular order:

• Separate out material processing and manufacturing. Not sure how best to do this, but make it so that it isn't viable on a large scale to have a capsule refinery making processed mats on the same station as factories. It would have to stay viable on a small scale for starting out, but if we can get it to where you need refining stations that then deliver processed mats to factory stations, we'd get multiple stations out there along with cargo/trade convoys moving materials between them in supply lines.
• Some new kind of optional resource that makes the game easier to play at higher levels, but isn't actually required. I put some thoughts on that out over here. If these resource spawns are spread out enough, and require something local to exploit, it would force multiple stations to get full benefit.
• Separate out shipyards. Same as above with refining and manufacturing, having small scale operations of both manufacturing and shipyard building together would be needed, but finding a way to split them apart on the large scale would mean more stations and more convoys. Kinda iffy on this one, as I generally like having lots of manufacturing in my shipyard to build what I need.
• While we're listing out separate stuff, some kind of bonus for mass storage would be nice, encourage supply depots.
• Parking lot stations. Right now EVERYTHING docked to a homebase is invincible. What if we limited that to only X number of docked ships, and had reactor chambers to increase the number of protected dockings? The homebase itself would still be indestructible, but it would mean you couldn't dock entire fleets anymore without making a serious investment in reactor capacity.

And for pretty much all of the "separate it out" stuff, I'm thinking more carrot than stick. Instead of penalizing people by saying "You can't have them on the same station at all", I'm thinking maybe more reactor chamber oriented. Right now, we already have chambers for stations to increase manufacturing capacity that if you max out manufacturing it uses 100% of your reactor capacity, and I think that is a great place to start.

Reactor chambers could happen to increase refining speed and efficiency that max out the reactor as well. If you could chamber up to get 10x the refining speed, and double or triple the refined mats you got out of refining, that would be a great incentive to have a station that focuses entirely on refining.

We could do the same with storage. Chambers to increase the capacity per cargo block so that you can store more in less space. Oh, what if we put an upper limit on automated pull capacity? Right now we can instantly pull a hundred million blocks per tick into and out of storage, what if there was a cap on that, which could be increased via reactor chambers? We could still load/unload without the chambers, it would just be slow. Add in the chambers, and speed things up dramatically.

Shipyards can go the same route. Chambers to decrease power usage and increase assembly time. You want a shipyard that can build a titan? First you gotta build it that big. Then if you don't have chambers, it could take hours to assemble it. Enough chambers and you could reduce that time down to minutes.

And if we can split the levels of all of these things up a bit more finely, it would let us mix and match so that we could still have some limited hybridization (so maybe we could get 75% manufacturing focus and 25% storage focus), while still having the option for balls to the wall super-factories for end-game.

---

Of course, we're going to need much more intelligent AI and control options to make the most out of this. We'd need to be able to build a cargo ship and then be able to tell it "If your stores are full, go to point A. If they're empty, go to point B" so that we could set up delivery routes and schedules. Would also need better fleet controls so that we could assign some fighter escorts to the cargo ships for some level of defensive support.

---

Anyway, what ideas do you have?

Many of these idea are okay on paper, but would turn bad in practice. Bases are just too vulnerable. You either need to make them so strong that even a concentrated attack can't destroy them (so turtling continues), or they will be weak enough that they will constantly get wiped out and not be worth the cost. There is also no natural balance to this problem because a base balanced to be able to handle the coordinated attack of 10 lesser players, might still fall to a single player using a well designed titan or troll tactics. While these ideas are all good, they fail to address the basic issue how to prevent waterfall attrition and server genocide which are far bigger issues than turtling.

I think that our recent discussion about planets could alternately apply to bases if they were expected to become the next points of interest; however, I don't foresee optionally specialized bases alone being juicy enough of a carrot to encourage expansion. War in this game is EXPENSIVE, far more so with how weak new shields are; so, points of interest need to not be optional if you wish to progress past a certain point in the game.

 

[Edymnion]

Even Edy is right twice a day. Protecting a vulnerable base isn't simply like Britain trying to protect the Falklands, as challenging as that was in reality. Instead, it's more equivalent to the Argies being both willing and able to bulldoze the islands into the sea and make them vanish from the map before the fleets can even get there. It'd be very difficult to protect far-flung bases even if you have a large faction with someone on every hour of the day; for people that have jobs and perhaps just a couple of friends it's entirely impossible, and not even rapid-deployment warpgates to every station would be any help.
If players can blow something up, or think they can even if they actually can't, they will try.

Yeah, lets be honest here.

If the base isn't invincible, then it will be destroyed in 2 shots if the attacker is dedicated enough. One giant ion burst alpha strike to drop the shields, then a massive regular attack to vaporize half a kilometer in one shot. With Power 2.0, its not even a problem with making a ship with enough power to fire those shots either, you could have a gun with 100,000,000 output and a single reactor would eventually power it.

Make a huge wad of weapon blocks and a ship that can get it in range, and its game over. Damage outpaces defense in this game, and there is no defense that a suitably larger gun can't tear through like it was toilet paper.

 

[Kingofanime]

I'm gonna throw some random ideas out...

- when a player faction owns a sector, free space stations magically appear out of thin air to populate the sector slowly over time.

- homebase is only vulnerable to other players who have an equal or similar net worth to yourself. Invincible to everyone else.

- give player factions the ability to store blocks in some kind of decentralized space, like an infinite bag of holding. Then people will be less annoyed when their stations blow up, because they won't lose their blocks that are stored inside. Only space stations would be able pull blocks in and out of this storage through a special block. Players would not be able to access it directly. Also allow shipyards to unload ships from existance to be stored in a similar way.

- Force people to watch a 30 minute safety video before being allowed to attack someone's homebase.

 

[MrGrey1]

Without a level playing field competitive play is no fun for anyone bar the small minority of 'sandcastle kickers' and there is frankly no way to level the playing field in this game short of destroying what it is at its core. A sandbox building game. It is a creative game, not a destructive game. People who invest more time are always going to have an advantage. That advantage should not be detrimental to others enjoying themselves. Like all creative activities there's always a small bunch of 'people' who like to kick over others sandcastles because their daddies didn't teach them the meaning of fair play. Under no circumstances should this lot ever be catered to. They are toxic. Anyone who thinks spawn camping a home base is fun can go jump, (that's the G rated version.)

Having said that I agree it would be nice to have incentive to leave home base. It should not be compulsory however it should offer a benefit to do so. The only way to achieve this is with an economy which would require resources to have some value and also a resource that gets used up or is hard to come by.
I like the idea of having stations that don't automatically take system control but instead generate a resource that expands faction boundaries bit by bit. Faction points would easily fit in here. Think of the Zerg creep. You have to move out to the edge of your territory to place a new station for it to then slowly advance. You can't place a station in territory that is not your own except for your homebase. You have to protect and control your territory long enough to move onto the next station. The bigger your territory gets the more generation you need to maintain it and the harder it becomes to maintain and the slower it expands. You can't just go plonk down a bunch of stations and take control of half the galaxy simply because you accumulated enough blocks. Expanding territory should take time and effort. Exponentially so.
Thinking on that if your stations were linked organically like a tree growing out from home base, you could attack a station low in the tree and cut the others higher up the tree off leaving them more vulnerable...? If your faction space withdrew behind a station the station becomes derelict... your faction space would be like a growing organism. Hmm. Needs some thought. Also if you added to this idea, where you had to expand within your own territory and at the same time resources were unevenly distributed around the galaxy it would almost certainly force either trading or having to leave your territory because although you had tons of x in your terriroty you had no y... this idea I really like and is much how the real world works. I have something you want. You have something I want. We can trade or we can fight for it... or we can steal it.

Another point, a lot of games go toward cosmetic bonuses or bragging rights. Maybe a functional and in depth leader board system so people can get competitive over who's on top. Nothing better then lording it over others with a concrete ranking system. You could have it appear on their name in chat. Lord BlahBlah, ruler of the universe. All Hail BlahBlah!

 

[Tolnorus]

Without a level playing field competitive play is no fun for anyone bar the small minority of 'sandcastle kickers' and there is frankly no way to level the playing field in this game short of destroying what it is at its core. A sandbox building game. It is a creative game, not a destructive game. People who invest more time are always going to have an advantage. That advantage should not be detrimental to others enjoying themselves. Like all creative activities there's always a small bunch of 'people' who like to kick over others sandcastles because their daddies didn't teach them the meaning of fair play. Under no circumstances should this lot ever be catered to. They are toxic. Anyone who thinks spawn camping a home base is fun can go jump, (that's the G rated version.)

And that is the essence of what is fun regarding PVP: when the two belligerents are nearly matched. In Civilization when you have 50 cities and an opponent has 5, defeating them is not only a mere exercise, but also boring and not fun, and even less fun if you are the smaller civ. All the best PVP games have this in common, that they try to balance the power of the two sides to create a challenge for everyone.

To create a balanced, challenging PVP environment in a sandbox game is a difficult proposition at best. But I think it could be easily done if a micro-environment was created, like some kind of instantiated arena (like WoW battlegrounds), or at least volumes of space tagged for PVP with other untagged spaces being no-PVP by default. But an open, contiguous world is going to be difficult to moderate without damaging the core of the sandbox nature of Starmade. Feel free to keep making suggestions, but I do not think there is a solution.

As far as the ease with which a fresh player can build an alpha-strike megaweapon to easily ruin somebody's hard work, I feel like this subject has already been well-explored on Minecraft servers. All the names are different, but the essence of the problem remains the same, and the war against griefers is a losing battle that I've only seen solved simply on one server.*

As MrGrey1 points out, there are ways for players to compete without destroying one another, and I think that there are many possibilities, but we can't really seriously examine any of them until the game has more of its core functionality developed and becomes stable. That's not stable in terms of "runs without crashing or bugging," but rather stable in terms of having a style and shape that doesn't drastically change with the addition of new mechanics and content. That may be pretty far away at this point, so perhaps this subject should be revisited at a later date.

So that's not to say that this isn't a real problem, but that it may solve itself as the game develops. Or at the very least, the nature and severity of the problem may change in the future.

Spoiler: Anti-Grief Strategy

* Regarding the Minecraft server and its griefer solution, for those who are interested, here are the details. (I regret that I cannot recall the server's name, and it went offline a couple of years ago for financial reasons.)
1- They created a ranking system where new players had no access to buckets and therefore could not use lava, a natural abundant resource of immense destructive power.
2- The state of the server was regularly recorded so the admins could rollback any damage to a few days ago. If someone did any kind of serious damage, all you had to do was ask an admin to come survey your damage, determine the affected area, and restore it to a time before the damage occurred.
3- They regularly moved the starting spawn location so that fresh players would begin an inconvenient distance from the existing works of other players. Griefers seek easy targets, and making them walk farther to find someone to grief usually resulted in them moving on to a different place to sow chaos.
In the two years that I played on that server, I saw zero grief.

 

[kurosawa]

i might have been miss understood, so to clarify i want invincible homebases. This will allow castle builders and PVP player to co-exist. no more is needed as the 2 players can just ignore each other.

 

[Alphajim]

Also, I categorically deny your assertion that PVP is a part of the game. Maybe it is a part of your game, but it is not a part of mine.

Wrong. PvP is a part of the game, exactly like PvE or building. It was even the second main part the game, the main one being building.

You can dislike PvP all you want, play in build / PvE servers : if that's what you want I can't see any problem. But PvP is (and will still be, whatever you think about it) a main gameplay of StarMade.

And by PvP I mean proper fights and wars, not trolling / griefing / bullying.


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To add something to the thread :

I think HB protection is a required thing, to prevent total wipe out of the server by someone else.

The idea of a limited size /mass / something seems a good one. Maybe adding a protection bubble radius, like shields, could prevent protection abusing. Add protection radius chambers if not too abusable.

Or we can make some kind of faction-relation limitation :

• In order to destroy important stations, you have to be in war with the faction. And maybe wait some time, to prevent abusing.
• Stations would have a "rank", limited in some way so that you can't have all your 20 stations being max-protected.
• This protection would be on faction territory only
• Impossibility to build stations on an ennemy's territory
• Maybe some kind of war types, like ennemies, war and total war. Each one would permit some more protection destruction and would have its own downsides.

This war system still need reflexion. I don't know if it's a good idea or completely bad one, but I hope it'll help to find other ideas !