Faction Modules - Should be detectable

[rariisan]

A friend has a star system with its respective planets. Now a third person came and hid a faction block under the rocks, claimed the planet and left.

Wouldn't it be logical that one can "scan out" the faction block of that planet to destroy it? I don't see the point on having to destroy ALL the planet just to change ownership. Same applies to stations, if you have total control of the captured station, there's no realistic reason why the captors have to blow everything up! There's no fun in claiming an entity if metagaming allows you to make it impossible to recover.

My suggestion
Faction Modules should be detectable. For example (not that I want it specifically like this, I don't really care): with a scanning ship, it should then pop up for a second so people at least know where the thing is hidden.


If you like this idea, take a moment to check the other ones:

• Let servers give out local titles/badges/ranks/medals
• New storage button: Add stored blocks to filter
  
• Option to highlight blocks of a certain type in Build Mode
• Mannequin for skins/uniforms

 

[Mariux]

A friend has a star system with its respective planets. Now a third person came and hid a faction block under the rocks, claimed the planet and left.

Wouldn't it be logical that one can "scan out" the faction block of that planet to destroy it? I don't see the point on having to destroy ALL the planet just to change ownership. Same applies to stations, if you have total control of the captured station, there's no realistic reason why the captors have to blow everything up! There's no fun in claiming an entity if metagaming allows you to be impossible to recover.

My suggestion
Faction Modules should be detectable. For example with a scanning ship, it should then pop up for a second so people at least know where the thing is hidden.


If you like this idea, take a moment to check the other ones:

• Let servers give out local titles/badges/ranks/medals
• New storage button: Add stored blocks to filter
  
• Option to highlight blocks of a certain type in Build Mode
• Mannequin for skins/uniforms

Yes*10^42

 

[Jaaskinal]

Yes1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

 

[Deleted member 433088]

Seems like a good idea. While I'm a SP person, I support.

 

[Lecic]

This is so annoying. Being able to find them with a scanner would be fantastic.

 

[CaptainTaz]

This could also solve the pirate station dilemma since nobody will share where the blocks are.

 

[Comr4de]

Not a big fan of this for one big reason. Pinpointing the faction module just sucks. It's part of the defense strategy. Making the faction block hard to find is part of protecting it. If you're gonna nullify that protection it becomes infinitely more difficult to claim/hold territory.

I think it'd be a lot more useful for scanners to say what planet segment its on but that's just me.

This could also solve the pirate station dilemma since nobody will share where the blocks are.

git gud. get a buddy to deal with pirate reinforcements while you find the station's faction module. it isn't exactly rocket science.

 

[CaptainTaz]

git gud. get a buddy to deal with pirate reinforcements while you find the station's faction module. it isn't exactly rocket science.

*Plays single player 99% of playtime*
*Has used build mode on many, many, MANY, occasions to try and find the damn things, and has blown up several to only know very general positions*

 

[kiddan]

Without spotting faction modules, we will have to stick with captives and hostages, for now. :p

 

[Comr4de]

*Plays single player 99% of playtime*
*Has used build mode on many, many, MANY, occasions to try and find the damn things, and has blown up several to only know very general positions*

rip

 

[Deleted member 433088]

Not a big fan of this for one big reason. Pinpointing the faction module just sucks. It's part of the defense strategy. Making the faction block hard to find is part of protecting it. If you're gonna nullify that protection it becomes infinitely more difficult to claim/hold territory.

I think it'd be a lot more useful for scanners to say what planet segment its on but that's just me.

This could be balanced in two ways, as I see it:

A. The scanner needs to be charged, requires quite a bit of power and time to do so, and has a max charge depending on the number of modules attached. Lower charge levels will only indicate a rough large volume where the module/core could be, and with a big random displacement. As more charge is put in the scanner, it gets more accurate. This way, scanning ships will have to specialize to be reasonably useful, and can't be spammed in the middle of a fight.
This would help solve OP's problem of having to destroy half a planet to find a faction module buried in it, a situation in which you have no pressure to charge the scanner, and make it so scanning an active enemy vessel or station is far from trivial.

B. Now I'm not quite versed in PvP strategies and the like, but as I understand it right now armor's value is nonexistant. When it gets to the point where it matters where you're getting shot at because it is close to the core/faction module, it's because your shields are down, so it would seem you're pretty much owned unless your opponent is a 100-block drone.
If sniping the core/faction module is considered an issue by the community and not actually intended in the game's design, then the answer shouldn't be to hide it, but revise the mechanics that allow this in the first place. In my knowledge, these mechanics are our ship's armor, and a lack of diminishing returns in weapon scaling.
If weapons couldn't be made arbitrarily powerful, and 400 damage wasn't enough to destroy the best armor in the game, it seems to me that we'd then move from "hiding" the core to physically shielding the important systems in our ships.
That is, if the coming HP system doesn't just put a single health bar on the whole ship. We'll have to see with that one.

git gud. get a buddy to deal with pirate reinforcements while you find the station's faction module. it isn't exactly rocket science.

So... screw people who play SP?

 

[CyberTao]

So... screw people who play SP?

If you play SP and want to know, you're gonna have to ask someone. People generally will tell you the general area on chat/forums, can't really expect them to pinpoint it. The whole point of this wasn't even stations, it was finding faction modules on a planet (Which I had to do once, on the old disk worlds, and it wasn't fun then).

On ships it's different. It's security. A low level new recruit can't just steal a Battleship and go solo if he can't re-faction it, nor can an enemy faction make use of the ship before they find the module. Also helps prevent the de-factioning of stations as well.
It would also remove any benefit the HP system gives. Instead of coring, you could just locate and snipe that pesty faction module, now the ship is public! Trolls be praised! Dock it or lose it doesn't work on all servers, less so on the ones that restrict homebase docking.

So yeah, there are valid reasons why this is a bad idea. Maybe add admin command that lets him target planets and stations (maybe ships as well, since you could just mass copy/paste to find the faction block in single player anyways) and causes a pulse-like ping to emit from the block.

diminishing returns in weapon scaling.

We used to have that pre-weapons update, but it was changed to linear for a reason presumably. A lot of things got turned linear for now, but most can be altered in the configs. Maybe play around with those and offer a suggestion to your server admins if you find something?

 

[Comr4de]

So... screw people who play SP?

I don't think balancing PvP around singleplayer is a good idea.

Drones. Get some drones to deal with the pirates while you do the important work on the station.

 

[Deleted member 433088]

I don't think balancing PvP around singleplayer is a good idea.

Drones. Get some drones to deal with the pirates while you do the important work on the station.

But the AI uses the same modules and mechanics players do. One change in the game will affect both sides, so unless you keep both in mind you are screwing one over.
Also, you say balancing PvP but the sentence I quoted from you was about pirate reinforcements, in response to a post about pirate stations.
Allied AI ships might work, but it's still not an argument against what the OP suggested.

If you play SP and want to know, you're gonna have to ask someone. People generally will tell you the general area on chat/forums, can't really expect them to pinpoint it. The whole point of this wasn't even stations, it was finding faction modules on a planet (Which I had to do once, on the old disk worlds, and it wasn't fun then).

On ships it's different. It's security. A low level new recruit can't just steal a Battleship and go solo if he can't re-faction it, nor can an enemy faction make use of the ship before they find the module. Also helps prevent the de-factioning of stations as well.
It would also remove any benefit the HP system gives. Instead of coring, you could just locate and snipe that pesty faction module, now the ship is public! Trolls be praised! Dock it or lose it doesn't work on all servers, less so on the ones that restrict homebase docking.

So yeah, there are valid reasons why this is a bad idea. Maybe add admin command that lets him target planets and stations (maybe ships as well, since you could just mass copy/paste to find the faction block in single player anyways) and causes a pulse-like ping to emit from the block.

We used to have that pre-weapons update, but it was changed to linear for a reason presumably. A lot of things got turned linear for now, but most can be altered in the configs. Maybe play around with those and offer a suggestion to your server admins if you find something?

In my knowledge, there is a system coming that will allow you to restrict access to parts of a ship/station according to faction rank, with the groundwork already in place:

Faction Role Permissions

This new feature now allows faction members to restrict access to their structures over the faction block. The access can be set by rank, and only that or better ranks can edit/enter that structure.

That way, factions don't have to worry about double-agents infiltrating the faction and destroying the home base and all their ships when they are offline, as long as they don't promote that double agent.

Another feature is a 'Friendly fire' options for factions. This can be set to each role individually in the faction options. A member in that role with that option will be kicked from the faction on the 3rd attack on their own faction.

This will hopefully help factions to admit more new players without having to fear about their belongings being destroyed.

I will also add faction rank based permission blocks that can be placed on any block that can be activated (e.g. storage) to serve the same purpose on a more detailed scale.

So if you don't want a low level new recruit to steal your battleship, you can leave it in a restricted hangar. Same for the faction module. And since there is a "kick on friendly fire" option in the faction module, a player trying to force his way in is gonna get kicked out immediately; I'd think putting a small inside turret or two in these "sensitive areas" to gib anyone who tries to do it this way should be enough deterrent.

Also, I thought the whole point of the coming HP system was to prevent coring and make armor viable... wouldn't that serve just as well to prevent coring and sniping the faction module? Not to mention the latter has almost five times the armor rating, or 80 times the effective HP if my math is right.

I don't quite get what you mean when you say "dock it or lose it doesn't work on all servers", though. Seems there is an issue that eludes me here, so if you could explain I'd be grateful.

I find the fact that weapon scaling is infinitely linear quite weird. After all, we already have diminishing returns in power generation, shielding and thrusters. I thought this was so you can't just build an arbitrarily large ship and win against everything smaller than you. I'll look through the News section to see what the reason for this was.

 

[rariisan]

Making the faction block hard to find is part of protecting it. If you're gonna nullify that protection it becomes infinitely more difficult to claim/hold territory.

I get that it's part of military strategy in the current state of the game, but I don't think it's worth it with the loss of realism/immersion and how annoying it is to forget where your faction module is. Besides, I'm not sure I want a game which military strategy consists on a single person with the minimum amount of credits effectively DESTROYING half of your planet by just holding it captive and not telling you where the block is.

If your building is at your enemy's hands, without defenses, there's no reason why it shouldn't be considered lost. If there has to be a piece of technology that could make the wohle thing unclaimable, there should be a way to (with enough time) remove it/detect it. It's just... an exploit.

 

[Blakpik]

Sounds decent.

 

[Comr4de]

But the AI uses the same modules and mechanics players do. One change in the game will affect both sides, so unless you keep both in mind you are screwing one over.
Also, you say balancing PvP but the sentence I quoted from you was about pirate reinforcements, in response to a post about pirate stations.
Allied AI ships might work, but it's still not an argument against what the OP suggested.

The suggested mechanic would affect PvP in obvious ways, I didn't think I needed to spell that out.

realism

 

[rariisan]

Out of all the arguments I wrote you only respond to the "realism" part, and you respond with an image?

Unless your answer is at the level of a civilised debate I don't appreciate these kind of posts. This is not 4chong.

 

[Blakpik]

The suggested mechanic would affect PvP in obvious ways, I didn't think I needed to spell that out.

 

[Comr4de]

Out of all the arguments I wrote you only respond to the "realism" part, and you respond with an image?

Arguing for "realism" is absolutely ridiculous in this kind of setting. I agree that scanners should be a bit more specific with /which/ planet plate has the faction module, but having it pinpoint the location is pretty cheese.

Also you presented two arguments (one of which argued for realism in a video game that is anything BUT realistic) . I responded to one with an image. I've never seen anyone so assblasted from a reaction image before.