Topic: "Seige Stones"
What do people think of perhaps changing the instability function from its current incarnation of more or less ninjaing station scanning saps and dealing with mini-game style mechanics that tend to be boring as hell like specimen and standing there shooting an object?
Im not suggesting removing scanning and sap loot, I think that's a fun idea that leads to small scale fights. Keep that.
Im talking about flipping stations.
My idea is jacked right from Darkfall where you buy an expensive siege stone, declare war, drop the siege stone within radius of the holding (station) and in X amount of hours the siege stone goes live, then shortly after the holding goes vulnerable.
This leads to large fights that everyone in game knows about, leading to fun/interesting fights...which is what this game lacks now and has in the past...big fights where anything can happen.
Im not suggesting an EVE style war dec where pve players can be griefed...but a public notification that corp X will attempt to take Corp Y's station within the next two days or so.
Siege stone of the attackers must be defended until the station goes live. Then perhaps a destruction sap will go live and once its destroyed the station changes hands. Siege stone must be expensive, perhaps have it craftable?
This mechanics could also work for gamma with some tweaking. This could render mega bases of death useless, and bases could be more about defending its players outside of war rather than being as close to impossible to take as the game will allow. Again would need some tweaking to not totally render a base worthless to defend in siege.
Leave sap loot for the mini fights, we need a mechanic that will allow for larger fights, that make more sense than needing to be online ever 8-14hrs per station (yours and enemies) and doesn't cater to ninja sapping stations. Would also encourage you to bring your sunday best when dropping a siege, which means heavy asset loss which makes the current infinite resource system more logical to how the game is played.
BTW I use to love in Darkfall when a noobie or small clan got seiged, the merc clans would come out the woodworks, non allies who hate the sieging clan would offer assistance, and it would turn into a crazy fight involving lots of parties. Backstabbing and double agent clans would flip sides mid fight. It was fantastic. You never knew what would happen, or if those who came to you aid were actually friendly (often they weren't but would rather see your enemy not win)
Current beta sieges involve ninjas, no shows, and maybe one decent fight with 8 or so hours heads up that it will occur. This system would make the station flip a larger deal, give more heads up to involved parties, give time for some quality diplomacy to occur and be more of an event rather than "look what just happened"
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