Read by Council Make Homebases Vulnerable, Without Losing Everything

[Lecic]

I know, but what if this main force or even the whole is not sufficient to repel the single enemy super-titan?
Either

• Your territory will be defence-less and the fleet suicides.
• You lose 1 outpost after another and can only watch it happen, even if you are online at that time.

There really needs to be a limit on how much damage a player can receive.

Perhaps when you once owned 100 billion, you should get 10 billion insurance - always a fraction of what you own.

But then there needs to be some clean-up system (scavengers) in place to clean up player-made abandoned things, so you can not just disown and get your insurance before re-capturing the stuff that's made to be easy re-cap-able.

If someone has a ship strong enough to annihilate your entire fleet, THEY'VE BEAT YOU. End of story. You will get pushed back to your HB, and you will need to start over nearly from scratch, plus whatever is on your HB. The goal is to prevent that from happening in the first place, because if all you have left is the stuff on the HB, you're not going to have much.

I would like an invasion to not be able to travel at the speed of light through your territory. But I think the best way to do that would be to implement a proper minelayer system and SYSTEM WIDE, HOSTILE ONLY inhibitors, forcing the enemy to take time to get through your territory, allowing you to strike back in their own territory.

The point is that you don't NEED territory at this point in the game. Especially with the upcoming boost to mining that lowers the extra gain by owning the system and raises the extra gain all around. Wasting materials? More like ensuring I never need worry about losing my status as a powerful faction.

And my point is that the game is going to change so that you NEED territory, making storing 90% of your fleet at a HB, allowing for anyone and everyone to easily wipe out all your undefended bases, a really fucking dumb idea.

 

[Kirosha]

And my point is that the game is going to change so that you NEED territory, making storing 90% of your fleet at a HB, allowing for anyone and everyone to easily wipe out all your undefended bases, a really fucking dumb idea.

I might be blind, but where did they give that bit of reveal?

 

[Lecic]

I might be blind, but where did they give that bit of reveal?

Devs talked about controlling a large fleet, stations, planets, etc, populated by many NPCs in the Q&A, as well as the development direction post, to an extent.

 

[NeonSturm]

I would like an invasion to not be able to travel at the speed of light through your territory. But I think the best way to do that would be to implement a proper minelayer system and SYSTEM WIDE, HOSTILE ONLY inhibitors, forcing the enemy to take time to get through your territory, allowing you to strike back in their own territory.

They would slowly kill you while the enemy territory is protected by an equally impossible-to-beat fleet and jump-inhibitors.
Assuming you have scouted where they have their valuables in this huge, mostly empty void.

If someone has a ship strong enough to annihilate your entire fleet, THEY'VE BEAT YOU. End of story. You will get pushed back to your HB, and you will need to start over nearly from scratch, plus whatever is on your HB. The goal is to prevent that from happening in the first place, because if all you have left is the stuff on the HB, you're not going to have much.

Biggest faction will dominate. Nobody can beat it because all others get trashed before they have a chance to catch up.

Your post doesn't provide a final, well-rounded solution.

 

[starhaiden]

I would pack up all my valuables and fly to a different galaxy.

 

[Lecic]

They would slowly kill you while the enemy territory is protected by an equally impossible-to-beat fleet and jump-inhibitors.
Assuming you have scouted where they have their valuables in this huge, mostly empty void.


Biggest faction will dominate. Nobody can beat it because all others get trashed before they have a chance to catch up.

Your post doesn't provide a final, well-rounded solution.

Unless that megafaction gets a month long headstart over EVERY other faction, this isn't going to happen. Other factions are going to be claiming things at the same time they are trying to build up. They will fight over important structures, like, say, rare gas giants, or resource rich planets (when we finally get mantle extractors), or over control of the natural wormhole transportation network. The fighting is a constant resource sink that prevents people from ever getting to the stage where they completely dominate everyone else, unless they have so much free time and manpower that they are unbeatable (and really, at that point, should be.)

 

[NeonSturm]

I would pack up all my valuables and fly to a different galaxy.

Where you won't encounter other players?
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The fighting is a constant resource sink that prevents people from ever getting to the stage where they completely dominate everyone else, unless they have so much free time and manpower that they are unbeatable (and really, at that point, should be.)

I really hope it is for the dominating factions that want many wars.

But I've seen in SpringRTS games that peoples don't always attack the strongest and thus creating a gap that actually helps the strongest player to win.
You can mob somebody to disqualify them from competition.

But I don't have the feeling, you consider that the faction which is bigger has a lot less losses, because of practically invulnerable, never dying ships that continue to conquer.
And if not one ship, then a fleet of tankish ships or shield-supplying that as a whole have enough fire-power to kill the enemy before they suffer damage from retaliation

Maybe you considered it. Still this is tbe greatest issue I worry about for balance.​

 

[starhaiden]

Where you won't encounter other players?

Yep then i will build a huge fleet alone.
Ganging up on the large faction might work.

 

[Lecic]

Where you won't encounter other players?
[DOUBLEPOST=1450474972,1450474679][/DOUBLEPOST]
I really hope it is for the dominating factions that want many wars.

But I've seen in SpringRTS games that peoples don't always attack the strongest and thus creating a gap that actually helps the strongest player to win.
You can mob somebody to disqualify them from competition.

But I don't have the feeling, you consider that the faction which is bigger has a lot less losses, because of practically invulnerable, never dying ships that continue to conquer.
And if not one ship, then a fleet of tankish ships or shield-supplying that as a whole have enough fire-power to kill the enemy before they suffer damage from retaliation

Maybe you considered it. Still this is tbe greatest issue I worry about for balance.​

There are always ways to harm a larger enemy. Alpha weapons and warhead weapons both let to harm something much larger than you.

 

[Kirosha]

There are always ways to harm a larger enemy. Alpha weapons and warhead weapons both let to harm something much larger than you.

Yes, enough ships with enough DPS can take out a super titan but no, realistically you won't find many people with the guts to lose their ships to a super titan on the off chance that someone finally takes it out, then be willing for those final ships to salvage the leftovers and become the new strongest. See there is always a strongest....

 

[Lecic]

Yes, enough ships with enough DPS can take out a super titan but no, realistically you won't find many people with the guts to lose their ships to a super titan on the off chance that someone finally takes it out, then be willing for those final ships to salvage the leftovers and become the new strongest. See there is always a strongest....

You think these allies would turn on eachother so quickly? Eh, perhaps. Or perhaps not.

 

[Blaza612]

You think these allies would turn on eachother so quickly? Eh, perhaps. Or perhaps not.

That would make the war more interesting though. :p

 

[Kirosha]

- Finding enough people with powerful enough ships to be worth taking to the fight and willing to lose their ships to win.
- Fielding enough ships with enough power to win against a super ship
- Having the survivors of the fight willing to evenly distribute the loot or fairly distribute the loot
- Winning in the first place


The problem with fighting the strongest is that it can go bad quickly. Ultimately if your alpha attacks are strong enough to do anything to a super titan you don't have much to worry about in the first place. If they aren't strong enough to do anything without help, you are screwed in the first place.

But if you can find people willing and able who are fair about the outcome. Yup, you live in a fantasy. But that's my view of humanity anyways.

 

[Blaza612]

- Finding enough people with powerful enough ships to be worth taking to the fight and willing to lose their ships to win.

If some guy in a mega-titan is flying around and being a prick to everyone, then it'd be easy to find a bunch of allies, you just gather more resources form there.

- Fielding enough ships with enough power to win against a super ship

Drones anyone?

- Having the survivors of the fight willing to evenly distribute the loot or fairly distribute the loot

That'll be interesting. :p

- Winning in the first place

Drones can easily crush a mega ship, it's just a matter of building them well. :p

 

[Kirosha]

Maybe we have different opinions on what makes a drone but I hear "Small swarm craft smaller than a fighter controlled by AI" and wonder exactly how many thousand it would take to drain the shields of the imagined super ship to 99%....before it recharged.

00000

Super ships aren't built overnight. It takes time to gather the materials and it will take even more time considering we're talking about single player super ships. So all the while he is gathering and building so is everyone else including those popular six member factions. So feasibly that faction is capable of six times the gathering of materials.

At the end of all this, the single player isn't going to automatically go attacking the strong factions. He will typically go for the weak and slowly add their resources and feeling out the power he now possesses. He might even go after the middle ground factions. Ones with decently sized ships that would make it more worthy of salvaging but essentially all the people who COULD gang up on him, he'll be leaving alone in the first place.

Now switch views to those strong factions.

You have a single player super ship messing around with the newbies and weaklings and they are whining and crying about John Doe killing them with his op ship and how unfair it is. Do you think that they'll sit there and say, "Oh hey. We should go do something about that and possibly lose everything in the process." You might have some willing but will be stayed by the fact that the other factions aren't. Some factions will wait for other factions to join in while those factions wait for you to join in and it circles around until the idea is dropped entirely.

It is the old issue of the man controlling a crowd that can overwhelm him with the simple issue that the first couple of people are going down before the rest of you take him.

 

[Lecic]

You have a single player super ship messing around with the newbies and weaklings and they are whining and crying about John Doe killing them with his op ship and how unfair it is. Do you think that they'll sit there and say, "Oh hey. We should go do something about that and possibly lose everything in the process." You might have some willing but will be stayed by the fact that the other factions aren't. Some factions will wait for other factions to join in while those factions wait for you to join in and it circles around until the idea is dropped entirely.

I don't know about most factions, but mine LOVES killing arrogant douchebags who pick on newbies and weaker factions.

 

[Kirosha]

You have plenty of factions who like the douchebag for keeping possible competition from rising up. Then you have other factions who just don't think it is their problem. More who just don't care. Even more who are peaceful in nature and have the firepower but not the willingness.

So on and so forth.

I feel like you. If I had the power to do something about it, I'd do it. People like that drive new players from the server into another one and I like keeping my server active.

 

[nightwalker_007]

The problem with Eve Online, and why I no longer play (I've logged well over 1k hours in that game.. actually I stopped playing the steam version, so I lost count after 600 hours), is, in factions, the game moves from being fun to being too much like work. Having to log in all the time, and make sure your bases are safe. I sure as hell don't want to check my station every 4 hours, because I have a life, and I work.

It is irresponsible to make a game that compels players to log in constantly to play. Eve Online does this get people addicted to the game so they can soak users for subscription fees, and what not.

Starmade is not, and will never be Eve Online... unless they start a monthly subscription service and have payer skills that are developed over time based purely on how long you've had a blasted user account.

 

[Blaza612]

The problem with Eve Online, and why I no longer play (I've logged well over 1k hours in that game.. actually I stopped playing the steam version, so I lost count after 600 hours), is, in factions, the game moves from being fun to being too much like work. Having to log in all the time, and make sure your bases are safe. I sure as hell don't want to check my station every 4 hours, because I have a life, and I work.

It is irresponsible to make a game that compels players to log in constantly to play. Eve Online does this get people addicted to the game so they can soak users for subscription fees, and what not.

Starmade is not, and will never be Eve Online... unless they start a monthly subscription service and have payer skills that are developed over time based purely on how long you've had a blasted user account.

I'm not trying to turn this game into EVE, you don't need to log in every 4 hours, that's a bare minimum. Hell, if you only log in for a few hours, play something else for a month or two and come back, then you're homebase will still be protected, as you'll need to have been online for 24 hours in order for it to have the vulnerability stuff.

Not only that, but we're having to trade off the possibilities of war and such, which have proven to be Starmade's most prominent aspect, just so that people don't have to look after their base. At the moment, the only thing that'd be bringing you back would be having to keep your home alive, but in the near future, with the many updates that'll be coming out soon, there will be so many more reasons to keep playing, Schine is trying to create a living world, thus you'll be sucked in via everything else that'll be around to dick with, rather than having to look after your home.

 

[DeltaEpsilon7787]

Here's my simple solution: maintenance.

Basically homebases should have native credit storage. Homebases are invincible if they have enough credits to pay for each damage unit inflicted.

Basically the system philosophy goes like that:
1. There must be at least one faction member who logged in half an hour ago to make their homebase consume credits. It will prevent players to destroy homebases while faction members are offline yet also preventing losing faction members to log off and wait until the attack is gone.
2. The amount of credits consumed each time depends on combined mass of a homebase (including docked entities, cargo and stuff) and damage inflicted. Amount should grow exponentially with mass and linearly with damage. That will allow bigger factions to not care about little fly attacking their base as they have vastly more resources. On the other hand it will prevent developing factions from being utterly destroyed by random people. We all know that we shouldn't fly something that we can't afford to replace.
3. All faction members must be notified of their homebase being under attack. They will get who's attacking and amount of credits they lost during first attack and amount of credits left in storage. If attacker used even bigger weapon, faction members must be notified again and state a bigger sum of credits. Only evergrowing credits lost due to certain players should be reported. Everything will be reset after an hour since attack has been stopped.
By doing that relatively complex operation, we can notify faction members about enemy attacking and evaluate whether they should worry or not (amount of credits lost / amount of credits left)

I am done here. Hope I covered everything.