Invulnerability and Base Raiding

[friendofvampires]

I agree with invincibility, and normal damage to NPCs, and also would suggest firing upon a player and damaging a block on their ship/station could be considered an act of war, revoking non-combat status and invincibility on their home base. Why I say damaging a block or a player is because that would have to be deliberate or a huge malfunction

though that brings up what if THEY are attacked by other players? That would penalize them for defending themselves, unless their ships are invincible, which seems a drastic measure. Thoughts on a solution to this? the only way i can think of is to buff some speed, shields, or something. maybe their shields are twice as effective to player fire?

 

[shadowulf]

friendofvampires, My answer to that is sadly economic. For this example, let's say Faction A is a salvaging faction, and Faction B is combat. Faction A gives Faction B a discount on materials, bypassing all competition because Faction B let's them salvage after a battle. Faction B's newest player fires at, and murders a Faction A member. Then Faction A retaliates by approaching Faction C, rivals of B, and telling them of B's bases and ships, as well as giving Faction C a large ship, to destroy Faction B.
Economically, destroying a salvager or explorer would cause loss of resources, as well as vengeance because the explorers have compromising maps of your sector and have seen your base, and salvagers know your ships and your weaknesses, and hold sway over resource prices.

 

[ltmauve]

So here are my Ideas

Invulnerability:
1) Instead of Faction home-base invulnerability, we get personal home-base invulnerability
2) Maybe make a “Personal Invulnerability” block, that needs a signature.
3) Acts like a faction block in that other players wont have permissions.
3) Personal invulnerability should be limited by size/mass (including docked ships)
4) You can only activate one Personal Invulnerability block at a time.
5) If you use a faction block to claim the system, it will cancel personal invulnerability.


So how to encourage factions:
1) Factions get a percentage of mined blocks in that system.
a) If you mine in somebody else’s system, the owning faction gets ore from the faction mining bonus.
b) A storage block should be linked to the faction block to receive the ore.
2) Factions gets a percentage of shop purchases. (like a tax)
a) This would require some kind faction bank account.
3) Factions get a percentage of salvage. (linked storage block)

How to protect your Faction Base(s):
1) Well hopefully AI turrets get better?
2) The more members you have, the better chance somebody will be online to defend the base.
3) Set up automated emails?

How to take over a claimed system:
1) Scanners should be able to see the direction of the faction block claiming the system.
2) Faction blocks should only have 1 hit point.
3) Once the faction block is destroyed, replace it with your own faction block.

Oh, and P.S. No faction points necessary.
also added benefit of encouraging players to defend miners.

Thoughts?

The "How to protect" section is laughable. Completely laughable. With that kind of protection no one would want to play online. It's dumb because you can't always have someone online. People have jobs, they have social lives, they have to sleep. All it takes is one titan on when no one else is to eliminate a faction and make it start from scratch.

The fact that there are no costs to claiming a sector means that any faction could simply claim an entire galaxy when no one is looking. The fact that invlunerability cannot be had in owned systems means two things: much rarer for a faction to make a cool base, and if someone claims the galaxy overnight they can destroy everything in the galaxy.

 

[alterintel]

The "How to protect" section is laughable. Completely laughable. With that kind of protection no one would want to play online. It's dumb because you can't always have someone online. People have jobs, they have social lives, they have to sleep. All it takes is one titan on when no one else is to eliminate a faction and make it start from scratch.

The fact that there are no costs to claiming a sector means that any faction could simply claim an entire galaxy when no one is looking. The fact that invlunerability cannot be had in owned systems means two things: much rarer for a faction to make a cool base, and if someone claims the galaxy overnight they can destroy everything in the galaxy.

Your right. As you can see I didn't give the "How to protect" part much thought. My goals were to encourage faction fighting, but also allow for beginner protection. I didn't give any thought to protecting big elaborate faction home-bases (that wasn't scastic, starmade should encourage big creative builds).

The problem now is that for newbies to get an invulrnerable home-base, they need to create a faction of one. This creates a ton of single player factions with claimed sectors. The result all claimed sectors are invulnerable.

What if everybody could get one personal home-base protection without the faction bonus. You would need ten signatures to create a faction, then 10 signatures each month to maintain the faction. No size limit on one personal invulnerability per player, put a system claim in the same entity will cancel invulnerability?

 

[ltmauve]

No size limit on one personal invulnerability per player, put a system claim in the same entity will cancel invulnerability?

No. There is no way to prevent an enemy from claiming the sector your homebase is in, and then destroying it once the invulnerability is gone.

The problem now is that for newbies to get an invulrnerable home-base, they need to create a faction of one. This creates a ton of single player factions with claimed sectors. The result all claimed sectors are invulnerable.

So the question is, how do you get people to team up into factions? Perhaps let each player make a faction base their own personal home, at the cost of it contributing less to sector/system claim. Then you get a bunch of people with bases nearby each other in a system.

 

[alterintel]

No. There is no way to prevent an enemy from claiming the sector your homebase is in, and then destroying it once the invulnerability is gone.

Claiming a system should should only give faction bonuses (taxes, ore percentage). I don't think claiming a system should give you the right to remove the invulnerability of entities within your system.

So the question is, how do you get people to team up into factions? Perhaps let each player make a faction base their own personal home, at the cost of it contributing less to sector/system claim. Then you get a bunch of people with bases nearby each other in a system.

Maybe we're coming at this from wrong angle, maybe instead of claiming an entire system, it should be measured in a km radius around faction bases. The more faction members, the larger the radius. The same could be applied to invulnerability. The more members assign there personal invulnerability to a station, the larger the radius of invulnerability.

Not sure how to determine what could cause the invulnerability/faction radius to reduce though? maybe a player death would reduce the radius by one.

I'm just spit balling here. Thoughts?

 

[ltmauve]

What do you mean by "radius of invulnerbility?" If it means ships in that area are invincible, that means meaningful combat can't take place there.

The claim space would probably be measured in sectors, not in KM. I like the idea that players can do something to boost a station, but I'm not sure about radius expansion.
We've been talking about claim mass (you don't get full benefit from a claimed space until you have enough mass in it.) so if that hopefully makes it into the game, maybe faction members can boost how much a station claims? As for having the effect of member "voting" diminishing, it'd happen after the player is offline for too long.

 

[alterintel]

What do you mean by "radius of invulnerbility?" If it means ships in that area are invincible, that means meaningful combat can't take place there.

Radius of invulnerability would only affect a home base and entities docked to it. (what I meant was that if your home base extends past the radius, the part extending beyond the invulnerability radius would be subject to attack. If a docked ship extends past this radius, the part extending would also be subject to attack as well. So if you docked your ship, but half of it was sticking out past the radius, you could very well return only to find half of your ship has been blown off.

Sectors instead of km's could work as well. I'm not sure I like the idea of counting mass though. Anybody could just start building with asteroids parts to make their base massive.

I do like this idea of claimed sectors instead of a km radius though. Each sector claimed would have a players name assigned to it. So you could only have as many sectors as you have players? So when you join a faction, your own personal sector is assigned somewhere along the perimeter of the faction territory? or maybe each person chooses their own sector, and faction territory doesn't necessarily need to be adjacent to each other.

If you're in a faction you get faction bonuses, such as tax, salvage and mining bonuses, and invulnerability at the faction home base. If you're a loner, you only get invulnerability at your own home base in your sector and no other bonuses. (invulnerability only applies to home bases, and ships docked to them.)

Previously I suggested that a faction bank and linked storage block would have to be set up to receive tax salvage and mining bonuses. Perhaps instead the bonuses should go to each play individually? So if you join a faction you get bonuses from all faction territory.

 

[ltmauve]

Sectors instead of km's could work as well. I'm not sure I like the idea of counting mass though. Anybody could just start building with asteroids parts to make their base massive.

We brought this up earlier: Look here.

I do like this idea of claimed sectors instead of a km radius though. Each sector claimed would have a players name assigned to it. So you could only have as many sectors as you have players? So when you join a faction, your own personal sector is assigned somewhere along the perimeter of the faction territory? or maybe each person chooses their own sector, and faction territory doesn't necessarily need to be adjacent to each other.

There are 4096 sectors in a system. This would result in a drastic reduction in claimed territory, making mining harder and making boarder conflicts harder to have. I'll put up a picture soon(tm)

Radius of invulnerability would only affect a home base and entities docked to it. (what I meant was that if your home base extends past the radius, the part extending beyond the invulnerability radius would be subject to attack. If a docked ship extends past this radius, the part extending would also be subject to attack as well. So if you docked your ship, but half of it was sticking out past the radius, you could very well return only to find half of your ship has been blown off.

Yes, let's encourage boxy stations amd ships. Come on, that just seems mean. I decided to expand my base, and then part of it gets blow off. That'd be disappointing.

Also, I was thinking about partial claiming (goes along with the mass idea.) This would encourage players to team up since it'd be easier to get the full claim effect (and by extension, your full mining bonus, and bonus faction resources, and so on.)

Previously I suggested that a faction bank and linked storage block would have to be set up to receive tax salvage and mining bonuses. Perhaps instead the bonuses should go to each play individually? So if you join a faction you get bonuses from all faction territory.

Well, obviously you'd get things like the mining bonus for your faction while in the territory. But we were discussing faction taxes in another thread (too lazy to find it now) amd what we came up with is that the faction would get extra resources on top of the mining bonus, but it would go to a central storage for, say, working on the homebase or any major faction projects. This means that players get to keep what they mine, but the faction can still get plenty of resources.

 

[alterintel]

This means that players get to keep what they mine, but the faction can still get plenty of resources.

I think having the players get a portion of the mining bonus would encourage more membership. They should get a partial mining bonus in all faction owned sectors. So maybe something like this: player gets all original blocks mined, plus 50% of mining bonus in all faction owned sectors. Faction gets 50% of mining bonus from all players (not just faction members) mining in owned sectors.

 

[ltmauve]

I think having the players get a portion of the mining bonus would encourage more membership. They should get a partial mining bonus in all faction owned sectors. So maybe something like this: player gets all original blocks mined, plus 50% of mining bonus in all faction owned sectors. Faction gets 50% of mining bonus from all players (not just faction members) mining in owned sectors.

Yup, that's the general idea. If players can't make a one-person faction, then obviously teaming up will be important.