invulnerability is, for the most part, fine, and very important to prevent domination by established factions and random griefers.
See... I always feel like theoretically that makes sense, but that in practice invulnerable is what makes trolling in Starmade sooo bad. No matter how anti-social someone gets, you just can't touch them. There are no repercussions except to turn to the admins, and that then quickly becomes the way to deal every problem. It's part of why every single attack is often regarded as some kind of rules violation: because there is absolutely no way to retaliate other than to convince admins that the other person broke a rule. It becomes Lawyermade and it seems like politicking with admins often takes precedent in MP.
In most games there is a conflict, contest, or competition. Resolving that competition within the game's rule set is literally what it is all about. If the rule set of a game is rigged to prohibit in-game resolution of the conflict that constitutes its own primary premise, then the game can only be won by clever manipulation (anyone notice an abundance of clever manipulators around?).
So yes... this is a sandbox. It is also a shooter. It bills itself as a "sandbox space shooter."
I enjoy socializing and sharing creations, and would never wish for there not to be options and settings that cater to peaceful play, but... in a shooter, you can't
eliminate shooting as a path to success, which is exactly what invulneravility does. It's a rule that contradicts the basic premise. I have always felt that it is choking the game.
It's convenient, but because it's the default it undermines any sense of dynamism, thrill or excitement - replacing those with frustration. Frustration because instead of the racing thrill of "OMG will I even survive this madness?!" It becomes no question of any chance for game over, instead every loss amounts to a "setback." More work. It ends up feeling a bit Chutes and Ladders - it's no challenge to build up to some high level of development. It is pretty much assured of you perservere long enough.
I think HB protection should be a server option, but I think that servers with vulnerable HBs and rather invulnerable
regions of space (that come with tradeoffs) will be far more exciting and compelling in most circumstances.
I enjoy playing anyway. Compensations would help, costs and penalties and limitations. It's a shooter though, not just a sandbox, yet if you shoot too many people instead of a shootout, it turns into political wrangling and angry chat windows. Because that is the only effective response to aggression as long as your HB is invulnerable. Admin power. I hate that... it's why the community is so full of discontent; we wage war on-server by smearing each other. That is bad and cannot lead to a happy community.
I just wanna play; you aggress me, I come after you. You got too many friends, I start quietly building a coalition. I love games like that. I played years of Starcraft and Lord of Ultima and other very aggressive MP games and they all would have been boring as hell if there were 1. No chance for failure and 2. No chance for success.
Players often cite other games where HBs are not invulnerable and the game suffers, but there are dozens of examples of games that do expose players to the chance of failure and they are/have been wildly popular.
Sure, it's a sandbox, I love that, but let's not prevent it from being an honest shooter as well. One where people lose. A sandbox, not a padded playpen.
It's a majorly divisive issue. I can turn off HB protection, but the game isn't balanced to handle that. I wish it were balanced for fair play without HB protection, then turning protection on wouldn't hurt play.... and neither would turning it off.
