How do you protect the little guy?

[Nickizzy]

A pretty big theme on the forums seems to be pvp and losing and wining and stuff, and especially on things where one person/faction attacks a noob miner or destroies warpgates, because they are less defended than other targets. How do you stop this from happening?

Option 1: Git Gud
Anyone that is just starting on a server should be able to hide from people, and warp gates should be properly defended. A server admin can make invincible warp gates if they want.

This makes people quit and leave servers, it's unfair to new players and can be called griefing.

Option 2: Peace Flags
If your peace flag is on, then you can't be attacked or attack. Faction wide, it has a cooldown switching between the two.

Kills PVP in strategic warfare, doesn't allow open pvp or ambushes or tactical fights. Highly expolitable as a "shield" until you go to war, then back to shielded once you leave combat, not allowing counterattacks.

Option 3: maintenance

Every time you take a ship out into combat(fire it's weapons, take shield/hull damage) you have to pay maintenance through resources(mesh? We don't use that much) or in credits at a shipyard. This makes people value their attacks, and only attack when they will profit, not just to squish some miner buggers.

Resource black hole, makes people not want to PVP at all.

 

[Edymnion]

Option 2 is easily fixed by simply saying you have a cooldown period of several days before you can re-flag yourself for peace. And perhaps that unflagging yourself drops your shields like transporting does to prevent "peace sniping".

But from the responses of the vocal people here, the answer appears to be "Nothing, newbies only exist for us to screw".

Any attempt to protect new players or make it so griefers can't just destroy everything that isn't docked to a homebase (and more than a few people wanting to get rid of that protection too) is generally met with mocking and name calling until you shut up about it.

 

[KiloZulu]

Your first point seems flawed to me, Arkudo. The game's resource system practically demands that players create/join a faction and establish a home system for mining purposes in order to get the mining bonus. If players have to avoid doing so in their early game, just to avoid being ganked, they are simply being put at an even greater disadvantage to the established players that are doing the ganking. So, not only would new players have to deal with established players constantly undermining their efforts to advance, but they are asked to tie one arm behind their back while doing so.
[doublepost=1490028768,1490028522][/doublepost]I guess I'll choose an Option 4 - play on a PVE server and/or with like-minded friends. My friends and I choose to play on our own private server where, even though we allow PVP, none of us desire to hinder one another's progress in the game. About the only competition I've experienced in the game is trying to top one another's ship designs.

 

[NeonSturm]

Spawn should have newbie-ships. Taking one could reset your positive Karma (it is called credits). A warning tells it to you.

If you shoot down these newbie-ships, you get bad Karma which can only be purged by helping newbies or paying those who do.

 

[Crashmaster]

Option 5; Emergent gameplay policing?

Have the PVP'ers police themselves, when ships that are set as peaceful are attacked;

-the attacker's location is flagged on the map and updates like fleets even if unloaded
-attacker's entity chain is switched to 'NPC pirate', it will not switch back but can still be used by the attacking player because...
-player character and all crew on the attacking ship are set as 'NPC pirate' faction until character death/suicide. Their facilities and home base are now against them as well. They must run and fight forever to survive.

If someone want's to attack peaceful ships for PvP they will forfeit to piracy all entities used to attack, their crew and current life including related faction point loss but they will get plenty of PvP from being hunted by other more justice-minded PvP'ers

Faction ships should be able to attack anything in faction space that they control without penalty IMO.

Perhaps peaceful ships need a nerf for this. I think being more visible - greater NAV detection range, would suffice.

 

[Batavium]

This is all done at server level.

Join a server that has rules that suit your style of play.

That gives everyone unlimited choice in how they want to play the game.

Does your style not exist? Then create your own server.



StarMade as created by Schema should not come in set way to play. Or a set environment in which to play.

That will give you the greatest adoption and ensures that it will not end up a niece game only a select few want to play.

Do not think this is how i want to play StarMade. There is no how to play StarMade. Everyone has a view point on that and everyone is right in having that view point. Think if i had my own server how would my Galaxy look like. Find that or create that.

 

[NeonSturm]

Perhaps you should choose good/bad for one reincarnation.
Good gets better mining bonus, bad gets better PvP buffs.

(HU·MAN_LIGHT)
/ ↑ \
// (__HU·MAN_FIRE_)-‹ .|. ›---(DE·MON_EARTH) //
/ \ | / \
// (HU·MAN_WATER)--‹ . ›Ø‹ . ›--(DE·MON_WATER) //
\ / | \ /
// (HU·MAN_EARTH)---‹ .|. ›-(_DE·MON_FIRE__) //
\ ↓ /
(DE·MON_DARK)​

Which side is yours?​

 

[NeonSturm]

NeonSturm Giving that last idea is the worst idea ever, you only encourage that you change your log in name to get extra mining or to get extra pew pew.

Only until you can get 2 characters per account.
Switching works like teleporting and swapping inventory. (logging one of and the other on or making it an NPC during that time?).​

 

[kulbolen]

But from the responses of the vocal people here, the answer appears to be "Nothing, newbies only exist for us to screw".

you have been addressed but have an agenda to push and make things up to suit your argument.

The game's resource system practically demands that players create/join a faction and establish a home system for mining purposes in order to get the mining bonus.

you are wrong.

 

[Dvaren]

Does any of this really matter? Is PvP in general, and newbie ganking specifically, so prevalent as to merit asking these questions in the first place?

I've played on multiple servers, through multiple server wipes, and without exception, had an entire base and multiple ships built before ever even encountering another player (randomly). Nine times out of ten, that encounter lead to a polite greeting and nothing else.

 

[KiloZulu]

you are wrong.

I often am, and am willing to accept that when told. I'd love to hear some qualification for that assessment, however.

Does any of this really matter? Is PvP in general, and newbie ganking specifically, so prevalent as to merit asking these questions in the first place?

I've played on multiple servers, through multiple server wipes, and without exception, had an entire base and multiple ships built before ever even encountering another player (randomly). Nine times out of ten, that encounter lead to a polite greeting and nothing else.

In my limited experience on public servers, PVP has been very limited, and I haven't experienced it at all. One of my faction members reported that someone showed up at our station and destroyed everything that wasn't docked once, but we never left anything vital floating about anyway. The vast experience with other players was that of help and friendship. I personally visited and was visited by numerous strangers to check out one another's creations and provide helpful feedback.

So, there is a potential for ganking, but the nature of the game doesn't encourage such play. My opinion for this is that, given the time and effort required to build a good PVP ship on a public server, few players are going to risk getting kicked from a server for griefing. Such play would only be allowed on servers that expressly encourage such behavior, and I'm skeptical there are that many players who would want to participate and suffer the experience.

 

[NeonSturm]

Does any of this really matter? Is PvP in general, and newbie ganking specifically, so prevalent as to merit asking these questions in the first place?

I've played on multiple servers, through multiple server wipes, and without exception, had an entire base and multiple ships built before ever even encountering another player (randomly). Nine times out of ten, that encounter lead to a polite greeting and nothing else.

Some larger multi-server factions complained about being unable to defend themselves against trolls, especially griefing, but I guess logic fixed most of the issue (passwords with display modules) together with minefields, sector-loaded detectors and stuff.

It also depends where you travel. If I would want to troll a server and I don't know the peoples, I would first look at coordinates like 100,0,0 / near spawn / near warp gates.
Maybe you have just evaded these spots. Or server-settings which attract them, but I was mostly offline and busy with logic because of online lags and login issues on sunworld.

I joined the test-server some time ago and got trolled unintentionally with "beautiful heat-seaker fireworks". But I think that most servers are just too boring for trolls and that it will change with less fps-issues and a higher player-count.​

 

[kulbolen]

I'd love to hear some qualification for that assessment, however

its not speculation or assessment, its done very frequently by solo pvp types who have basically infinite resources in a matter of hours to days. i dont expect it needs a tell all guide for people to figure it out with a little thought.

 

[Panpiper]

The solution is to finish the game. Right now we have a build and combat system more or less and virtually nothing of the game that those things are meant to be a part of. It is small wonder that things seem broken. They are not broken, they are simply not yet there.

I cannot tell you what the final result will look like. I can say that things will be very different in a year or two. Right now there is no consequence to random griefing. There is no cost to it. Sadly too, because there is little to actually do in the game, there are those who would stoop to random griefing simply to have something to do.

All to often, they are quite unsporting. There is no challenge in destroying a ship several times smaller than your own. Rather than randomly assaulting newbies while flying about in a titan class doom brick, I think it would be far more interesting to fly about in a 50K mass cruiser and challenge any and all to defeat you if they can. Then do not balk at the newb who shows up with his 100K doom brick. Let him have his day, don't come back with a bigger stick. There is plenty of PvP entertainment to be had without also being an ass.

 

[Nickizzy]

Then why do we have these threads:
Easiest Answer for PvP: Flag of Peace
we need to talk about losing

Maybe I'm just not looking past them, or maybe I should turn off my blacklist filter for power system threads.

 

[kulbolen]

Then do not balk at the newb who shows up with his 100K doom brick.

you wont even need to... cause a noob in a 100k brick will lose to a good 50k ship. =D

 

[Lecic]

Just git gud. The big guys are almost always occupied fighting eachother. If they somehow find enough free time to attack a weak noob with very little resources or threat to them, either become a big guy yourself or ally with whichever big guy is currently fighting the one who is attacking you. If there's no one on the server who can rival them, then perhaps find another server? You did just start, after all.

 

[pietrko]

Newbies shouldn't have any special protection other than balanced game rules.
No special mechanics for them.

I agree with this man:

All to often, they are quite unsporting. There is no challenge in destroying a ship several times smaller than your own. Rather than randomly assaulting newbies while flying about in a titan class doom brick,

The problem is that building enormous advantage (big ships) is too easy for established players and there are no costs of maintaing acquired power.
Game is unfair at its core - it allows for exponential power growth and has almost no inherent "diminishing returns" mechanics or any cost to for maintaining power.

You can scale infitely and don't pay the price for it.
Such system make "power ladder" hard to climb and leads to all sorts of problems.
Like noobs dying to griefing, beacuse, well, somebody simply could do it.

People can and will do stupid things (attacking poor noobs) if they can.
One shouldn't create mechanics to prevent it - it's limiting and unhealthy.

Each action should have cost associated with it political and economical - that's the solution.

As long there is no cost of maintaining power (fuel someone?) there would be balance problems. It may seem far-fetched but it is not.
Going after noob in his shitty ship with your big ass Titan cost you nothing, no fuel, no political power lost (you're attacking nobody), you also gains nothing but pleasure.

Why you shouldn't do it?

It would be different when each move of your fcking big fleet would cost you.
In this case you would think twice before going after noob and his 20 salvage blocks.

Game with lacking economy allows all sort of shitty things to happen and you can patch it over and over again and it still be broken at its core.

 

[NeonSturm]

Economy 1*1

A company has >51% market share:

• for it, it is easier to fight other participants than growing by fair competition.

A company has <10% market share:

• If it fights one other, at least 8 others will profit from it by losing competition. thus it's a no-go most of the time.

Demand taxes in form of maintenance-costs for big fleets, especially after the first per player.
It is expected that players have a big fleet (attack, home), a medium fleet (regular use) and some task-forces (scouts, miners, etc)
​

People 1*1

Once 50+ peoples accumulate into a faction, factions become mandatory to have.
And because you can have only one, you are separated from other peoples which might become your friends if you weren't only in just one faction.

Instead, let everyone join many group. Call this group "Friends with X". Attack one friend, get bad Karma with his followers. Don't promote the already-big groups.

Promote groups which still looking for a builder, a manager, etc when you are interested to fill such a role.
​

The goal:

Distributing power equally.​

 

[Panpiper]

you wont even need to... cause a noob in a 100k brick will lose to a good 50k ship. =D

Yes, I realize that, and therein is the fun of the challenge. Create a smallish ship (I consider 50K to be on the small side), a ship that would frankly be easy to replace, and be the 'pirate' with that ship. Take all comers, defeat ships bigger than yourself and gain massive respect. Do it while also showing class and manners. Challenge all, but never attack unless they are bigger than you. Be the consummate sportsman. See just how big their ships need to get to defeat your small cruiser. Then go back to the drawing board and see if you can't improve even more, without resorting to a bigger ship.