Universe Patch Brainstorming: Incentives Against Turtling?

[Ptotheextreme]

There's still one big problem: Time.

It's very easy to attack someone that is offline and many people have jobs and responsibilities outside of the game. Not to mention the different time zones of each country.

How about we restrict the vulnerability to a certain duration at a certain time per day/week/whatever, and it is configurable by the server (or faction?).
This way, everyone has the chance to mount a defence or offence at the same time, and it's more likely that everyone is online at the same time.

I'm not suggesting that we only apply this to the home-base or not. I'm just saying that if we do want any kind of vulnerability, we all need to have the same opportunity to defend or attack, at the same time.


This is basically what EVE Online does, and it seems to have worked so far.

 

[JinM]

You guys are mixing up 2 playmodes here:

The first playmode is where people can build protected bases. They want to be creative at their own home area (yes this includes multiple stations), without to have any fear that someone could attack them - unless they want to let people engage some station of them. Everything outside of the home area is more or less vulnerable (maybe a gradual decline of extra shielding? ).

The second one is where people can basically attack every entity in the universe. - For example after a certain time has passed and the home station comes from a protected into a siege mode.

I am for the first one, and after answering what playmode you want for yourself, the rest of the universe update and shields and stuff is pretty much just a balancing act. How many trade stations, where go the missions, can players make missions for other players - how complicated are those missions, maybe even questlines from player factions for other players? How does the home area expand? And so on.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

OK, here's my 2 cents about the matter.

Faction roles. These roles would be set by the faction owner or by the server if a specific event triggers. Solo players would also have to assume one of these roles and would be considered PvE by default.
- PvE factions like explorers, builders, traders, miners, can assume a PvE role which would give them full homebase protection, allow them to have one (or configurable by server) station per faction member (aside the homebase) that's also protected - so, say, they could set up a network of trade stations, leisure centers, event arenas, warp network etc), BUT the moment they would attack, or even declare war on, anything that does NOT belong to an NPC faction, their role is set to PvP Rogue forcibly, and cannot be reset for a set time (24 hours at least, up to one week, again configurable) after peace is made. If they are attacked by another player faction, they are permitted to strike back against that single faction without repercussions until peace is set.
- PvP rogue factions would have only an offline protection on ONE homebase (meaning all faction members need to be offline for the protection to activate, after 10 minutes of the last logout to prevent combat logging) and thus leaving them open to retaliation whenever they are online, putting every operation as a high risk one - they would need to hide their assets, or build a nigh-impenetrable fortress. Their homebase locations would however only be visible to members of PvP enforcer factions.
- PvP enforcer factions would have full homebase protection, one protected outpost station for every 2 faction members, and still be allowed to engage any PvP Rogue faction members and assets without being provoked, but only them. Because they might be engaged in protecting PvE factions or in joint operations with allies, a similar system to the already existing in-faction "Kick on friendly fire" would be in place which would give a set tolerance limit for friendly fire before the game considers it treason and sets their status to PvP Rogue (Or, if the faction leader sets it, kicks the violator from the faction before the event would trigger for all of them)

This would let builders build in (relative) peace, this would let PvPers who like challenges go for it (but having a lot less protection themselves, especially during their shenanigans), and this would allow knights in shining armor to be the heroes, or mercenaries for hire do the dirty work for those who don't want to engage in PvP, and mercilessly hunt down player pirates without risking being considered one.

 

[Edymnion]

I'm stuck in middle, really.

I'm 100% for players who dont want to fight to be able to avoid doing so. I'm also 100% for wanting to encourage people to WANT to get out there and rumble.

But I also want to see encouragement for BOTH sides to do more than sit in one single base all the time.

I think we can all agree that the reason turtling exists is that the risk to reward ratio is greatly skewed against us. If that is in the form of being afraid of griefers, or simply finding it's not worth the time and resources to build when anything an outpost can do, a home base can do better, outcome is the same.

A solution to the issue therefore has two possible paths to take. Reduce the risk, by say increasing protection against unwanted pvp, or increase the reward so that it's worth getting a station blown up every so often.

Can we agree on that much as a basis of discussion?

 

[Briaireous]

Just got another idea. How about we make it so that the area around the core block is indestructible. For example, maybe for a 50x50x50 area centered around the core block that can't be destroyed but can be invaded via boarding. Boarding is only allowed when the player is on. But aside from that, the place can't be taken over but can be destroyed all the way up to that smaller center area. (Also promotes character combat)

Actually... Can bases be boarded in the first place?

 

[Edymnion]

Actually... Can bases be boarded in the first place?

They can be, and as long as they're not invincible that is a great way to take one out.

Board it, find the faction block, and cut it out. Free station!

 

[Matt_Bradock]

They can be, and as long as they're not invincible that is a great way to take one out.

Board it, find the faction block, and cut it out. Free station!

I remember Alliance Armada back in the day using clock pulses on outposts that could only be remotely deactivated (or in some cases, usually defense outposts and drone ships just activated and never deactivated) to prevent boarding.

 

[Edymnion]

I remember Alliance Armada back in the day using clock pulses on outposts that could only be remotely deactivated (or in some cases, usually defense outposts and drone ships just activated and never deactivated) to prevent boarding.

I've been known to put discrete anti-personnel turrets in my stations, particularly at the end of long hallways or in the ceiling decorations of hub rooms. And none of those wussy "Oh, hey, something shot me, let me duck back and make a plan on how to deal with it" turrets either. One shot player annihilation turrets. If a boarder knows what hit them, I built it wrong.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Anyway, I still favor an option that if a griefer wants to grief, he should have repercussins and one such repercussion is for the other players to strike back at him without being punished. My faction role concept lets that happen. Builders can build their nice things that make a server look alive, and PvPers can wage their wars but at a cost of being threatened themselves. Unless they are the good guys and defend the players who need it. Thus encouraging server communities to police themselves through those enforcer factions.

 

[Edymnion]

Anyway, I still favor an option that if a griefer wants to grief, he should have repercussins and one such repercussion is for the other players to strike back at him without being punished. My faction role concept lets that happen. Builders can build their nice things that make a server look alive, and PvPers can wage their wars but at a cost of being threatened themselves. Unless they are the good guys and defend the players who need it. Thus encouraging server communities to police themselves through those enforcer factions.

I've told this story before, but its important in regards to this.

Griefers don't care about retaliation. I was once on a server where we basically came under a coordinated griefer attack for a solid week. They would wait until no one was online, come in using throw-away account names, combine resources to make a really powerful alpha strike ship, and then destroy literally everything that they could find that wasn't nailed down.

Warp gates, unattended ships, secondary stations, you name it, if it wasn't invincible you woke up to it being destroyed. We tried building better defenses. They just took it as a challenge and came back twice as hard the next time. In the end the only way we stopped it was to lock the server down for a while until they got bored and left.

All the "Well get a posse together and go hunt them down" stuff in the world didn't matter, because these griefers didn't stay long enough for it to matter. They would log in, destroy everything, then abandon the accounts as soon as soon as they were done.

The ONLY time server rules or getting other players to help is a worthwhile thing is when the person in question WANTS to be on the server long-term in the first place. Otherwise, the only protection from a griefer is what is hard coded into the game to actively stop them from doing damage in the first place. Any form of after the fact justice is meaningless in this scenario.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I've told this story before, but its important in regards to this.

Griefers don't care about retaliation. I was once on a server where we basically came under a coordinated griefer attack for a solid week. They would wait until no one was online, come in using throw-away account names, combine resources to make a really powerful alpha strike ship, and then destroy literally everything that they could find that wasn't nailed down.

Warp gates, unattended ships, secondary stations, you name it, if it wasn't invincible you woke up to it being destroyed. We tried building better defenses. They just took it as a challenge and came back twice as hard the next time. In the end the only way we stopped it was to lock the server down for a while until they got bored and left.

All the "Well get a posse together and go hunt them down" stuff in the world didn't matter, because these griefers didn't stay long enough for it to matter. They would log in, destroy everything, then abandon the accounts as soon as soon as they were done.

The ONLY time server rules or getting other players to help is a worthwhile thing is when the person in question WANTS to be on the server long-term in the first place. Otherwise, the only protection from a griefer is what is hard coded into the game to actively stop them from doing damage in the first place. Any form of after the fact justice is meaningless in this scenario.

That kind of grief would ofc fall under the purwiew of the admins of a server. Funny enough I saw a lot less of those on servers with active admins who gave a damn about the players. They are the ones who can easily handle them, even if they use VPN and disposable Starmade Registry /Steam accounts. And to be honest, I don't see what the devs could do to prevent them (unironically, there's one thing: killing the free demo and forcing authentication. Suddenly the disposable accounts become pricey. It's easy to mass produce alts when the game is free to play. Paying the full price every time you get your account banned? Not that much.)

 

[JinM]

That kind of grief would ofc fall under the purwiew of the admins of a server. Funny enough I saw a lot less of those on servers with active admins who gave a damn about the players.

We talk about Starmade. 90% of the servers don't have active admins.

So what Edy wants (hard coded invulnerability) is totally fine, as he sees as the world as it is, and wants to find solutions for the reality as of now.

It could be optional for servers to disable such home area protection, and use whitelists, for example pvp ones.

But the vanialla ones just can't have what you like to have. This whole PvE factions thing only works on paper where there are Starmade servers with 100 players online at the same time, like in Eve. But that just isn't the case. And the best case of the future in two years there will be two or three big servers with 20 players online, but for 90% of servers your solution wouldn't apply. And 20 players isn't enough to even gain such eco system. And Starmade can't handle more than 30 players online on one server right now...

 

[Edymnion]

We talk about Starmade. 90% of the servers don't have active admins.

So what Edy wants (hard coded invulnerability) is totally fine, as he sees as the world as it is, and wants to find solutions for the reality as of now.

It could be optional for servers to disable such home area protection, and use whitelists, for example pvp ones.

Yeah, I would be perfectly happy if there were simply more options for more hardcore protective measures built in and left disabled by default. If you don't want 'em, don't turn them on, but have the option be there for those who do.

Hell, what I'd really like to see is a straight up PvE, PvP, and Build server config setting defaults. When you make a universe/server, you select which kind of universe you want, and it auto-selects appropriate groups of settings for you. PvE could have more extensive player protection options, PvP can default to wild west anything goes, Build can do things like increase the build area and turn on creative for everyone without manual admin intervention.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

It's gonna hang on the universe update thought whether the universe will offer enough for PvE play.

Also, griefers aside, the PvP players who love big battles with (at least relatively) balance fleets (or even just anyone who's willing to put up a fight and not just dock everything to HB and sit it out) are still part of the community. And even thought the lines are sometimes blurred (especially if a server or the game itself becomes too stagnant) I still don't think we should mix griefers (who just want to f*** s*** up and j**k off to the cries of the players they bullied) and PvP players (who want a good fight, and enjoy a hard-earned victory more than they enjoy a one-sided roflstomp, and only resort to the latter when really bored or no worthy opponent show up) up. And tbh, why not create an environment where we can use the latter to try control the former?

Spoiler: A little off-topic

I've been lobbying for an improved battle mode for a good while, that would offer instanced battles that aren't preceded by or followed by days of grinding, maybe in a dedicated PvP system existing within a normal survival server (just like the shipyard test sector) triggered by the event of enough contestants signing up at the recruiter NPC at the spawn station or something. I think that could sate the bloodlust of a lot of people in a safe environment and incentivise some of the more passive players who don't like taking risks as much, to try and learn PvP without losing valuable assets in the process)
For a matter of fact, this is something dedicated BUILD servers should also have. For those who don't just want to build pretty showpieces but also pretty war machines that they want to show off in a battle too.

 

[JinM]

've been lobbying for an improved battle mode for a good while, that would offer instanced battles that aren't preceded by or followed by days of grinding, maybe in a dedicated PvP system existing within a normal survival server (just like the shipyard test sector) triggered by the event of enough contestants signing up at the recruiter NPC at the spawn station or something. I think that could sate the bloodlust of a lot of people in a safe environment and incentivise some of the more passive players who don't like taking risks as much, to try and learn PvP without losing valuable assets in the process)
For a matter of fact, this is something dedicated BUILD servers should also have. For those who don't just want to build pretty showpieces but also pretty war machines that they want to show off in a battle too.

I like having optional pvp on one server.

Instanced is good. - Also allows for leaderboards and stuff.

Or having zones that allow pvp and zones that allow pve.

I once had the idea to allow pvp everywhere, but have "high yield" zones where you get extra mining bonuses and extra pvp bonuses - but you can't build protected stations there. Having a station in such zones gives a free income tough.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I like having optional pvp on one server.

Instanced is good.

Or having zones that allow pvp and zones that allow pve.

I once had the idea to allow pvp everywhere, but have "high yield" zones where you get extra mining bonuses and extra pvp bonuses - but you can't build protected stations there. Having a station in such zones gives a free income tough.

Something like that worked for EVE (HiSec-LowSec-NullSec sectors) brilliantly, although since EVE had prefab ships you couldn't infinitely make bigger and power up, it was possible to regulate PvP in HiSec by throwing some wicked strong NPC ships at the violator. I doubt that'd work in StarMade since there's always a bigger ship, literally. Starmade's equivalent of HiSec could be however a PvE zone where player-made ships and stations cannot damage each other beyond dropping shields - but the PvP zones would contain the highest densities of resources/give a higher mining bonus. So you'd have to sneak in or power through to gather stuff from there. I think something like that is planned already but we haven't got details. Creating such a "conflict zone" (multiple ones, for that matter) could result in some interesting situations.

 

[Edymnion]

I still don't think we should mix griefers (who just want to f*** s*** up and j**k off to the cries of the players they bullied) and PvP players (who want a good fight, and enjoy a hard-earned victory more than they enjoy a one-sided roflstomp, and only resort to the latter when really bored or no worthy opponent show up) up.

Well, the griefers are a subset of PvP'ers by definition, as they are attacking other players and not NPCs.

But I did make a distinction between good PvP'ers and griefers though. I prefer to think of the difference as being the same as sportsmen and bullies. The good PvP'ers (the sportsmen) want a challenge, they want to push their limits and really see how far they can take it. The sportsmen PvP'ers are awesome, they don't attack lowbies, and they help build the lowbies up so that they can compete on their level for even more fun.

Then you've got the bullies who just want to win and be top dog, and apparently have egos so fragile they can't stand the idea of losing, so they only pick on weaker opponents who can't fight back.

The bullies/griefers need to be dealt with to stop them from driving players away. The sportsmen/pvp'ers need to be encouraged and given more mechanics to make the game fun for them as well. Ideally, I'd like to see actual mechanics put in place that would allow us to have both PvE players and PvP players on the same server. Let the PvE'ers do their thing, let the PvP'ers do their thing, and not try to force a playstyle on EITHER side they don't want to do.

The problem we've had in the past was we'd have people who were basically griefers pretending to be sportsmen PvP'ers and tanking *ANY* discussion of limits to PvP of any kind, even if it was entirely optional and disabled by default.

 

[JinM]

Creating such a "conflict zone" (multiple ones, for that matter) could result in some interesting situations.

I have to just mention here, that I like conflict zones. But EvE did it wrong, because you can't go into these zones without getting squashed by a bigger guy immediatelly, and you can't really do anything there. It should be possible to compete but EvE is just "bigger wins most of time". So maybe building stations shouldnt be allowed in such zones.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

I have to just mention here, that I like conflict zones. But EvE did it wrong, because you can't go into these zones without getting squashed by a bigger guy immediatelly, and you can't really do anything there. It should be possible to compete but EvE is just "bigger wins most of time". So maybe building stations shouldnt be allowed in such zones.

Starmade is the exact same. Bigger ship wins. Except, unlike in EVE, you can always get a bigger ship. Even in EVE you couldn't go above titan, and those were so insanely expensive that you'd think twice without sending one into actual combat even with a support fleet, unless you were absolutely goddamn sure that you will win it without losing that beast. In Starmade, there's no cap on mass unless the server enforces one through admins or clever scripting (MiniMade automatically disabled any non-NPC faction tagged ship above 3K mass until its total mass - docks and cargo included - went below that threshold. This allowed NPC fleets to go above the cap but not players... made things REALLY interesting in some cases).

 

[Nosajimiki]

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.

Non-physical storage is boring. Part of the fun of designing a HB is managing the cargo system. It also adds an OpSec element to the game where you have to decide how to protect your resources from infiltration.

...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....[/SPOILER]

Instanced battles are also pretty boring compared to battles that happen naturally (or even unexpectedly). The fun of PvP is that it is less predictable than PvE. You really never know who will show up, when, or with what.