Holy *** WE TOLD YOU SO Batman

Sparks, too few islands, power projection.

Zoom, your 'refusal' to see sparks as a problem is frightening.

BUT none the less still broken with the current game situation.

Can some one just record this thread & put it on auto repeat for lets say once a month?

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ?

STC NO NO NO....

JOKE!

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ?

From my perspective, spark teleportation is a very broken mechanic:

I cannot agree. It is killing the game for many players, for above reasons. The islands are to small for spark teleports. The alpha Islands may have a better teleport network, or better highways, to compensate the spark teleports removal, or maybe as mentioned, the introduction of a skill based remote buy/ sell orders system.

Spark teleports, the way it is used on this size of the world for pvp, is just plain exploiting the mechanic and it would be ignorant not to admit to this.

Where are all the secondary tasks left, which you might also call "creating sandbox content". Tasks for players to keep them motivated actually playing the game, like gate guarding, scouting, organised fleet movement from one island to another if you want to attack. idk, but those tasks have all diminished with ST.

As a nub I like to say I am actually enjoying the game!

I think any sandbox game dominated by a focused core of players will have issues, it's a lesson to developers that if you want active players early on to help you then they will obviously grow too powerful and organised (and entitled) to allow new players to think that they can get anywhere in the game. I said 'THINK' since I'm hoping that with the Gamma islands newer players will get a chance on the Betas to nurture competitive power blocks. One example is that Beta control points could be adjusted to make them more fluid and harder to own and so present a pinch-point for the flow of goods from Gamma to the markets in Alpha, this would mean that the established power blocks would have to overstretch themselves to dominate both.  Spark Teleport is a bit of a killer when it comes to projecting power but you can't use it to transport goods and materials. Anyway that's one way.

The immediate concern NOW is to give new players more of purpose to play, at the moment their choices are either join the big boys or become future cannon fodder. With the markets dying a lot of the point of PVE is also lost and the missions do seem a bit pointless after a while, PVP seems hopeless as a new player unless it's against someone with comparable skills and experience, at present there is no way of cutting your teeth or learning and nobody wants to fight if there is no chance of winning, because that simply isn't fun.

The other immediate concern is to engage the older players and set them against one another, I'm hoping the Gamma islands will do that but I fear that it is more likely that they will just carve up the Gamma islands among themselves and keep sucking up the best resources, you should be getting them instead to burn up their stockpiles by fighting one another and so level the playing field for the smaller groups, I'm sure everyone can think of plenty of ways of doing this.

As I said, as a new player I'm enjoying the game, especially following the meta game and to be honest I've had my moneys worth already!

It does not matter which is the major Power block at a given time. Is it CiR & Co, STC, STAG or who ever. It will be and has been exploited and does the opposite to promote (pvp) game play. Due to the already mentioned reasons and power projection from the safety of alpha. 

As described in past posts, I feel that ST´s at the present size of the world should be taken out of the game until Gamma. And then limit those ST´s to max 1-2 with a 12hours recharge timer.

Dear players - you could have gotten back ten times the amount of bots farming and mining than waiting for those refunds.

The more important tickets get solved fast (like harassment).

There is a misconception here that should be corrected.

1. CIR and 77 with our recruiting/industrial sub-corps (PHM/133) are just two corps full of people that like to PVP a lot.
2. CIR hasn't played this game for 2 years barring 2-3 of our people who stuck around/poked their head in from time to time.
3. ST doesn't project our "power" nearly as much as the fact that nearly all of us have 2-3 combat accounts spread across the world.
4. Any point in-game is reachable in 5-10 minutes.
5. The other veteran corps could easily take islands from us if they were prepared to commit and risk their resources - evidently they are not.
6. We just want PVP. If the other vets are happy to sit on Alpha and try to "outlast" us until we get bored, that's their choice. Game is free now, no skin off our nose while we wait.
7. We neither need nor want all these islands, but since nobody is contesting us for them we will naturally take advantage of the economic benefits they bring.

Carry on.

....

Might as well reset everything back to the beginning when the servers moved to Amsterdam.  Everything is on even ground, then we can go from there.  Then everyone have something to do, mining/harvesting, noone is "dominating" the beta islands since the terminals are reset too.   Just make that one reset count, put the game on steam when everything is reset so new players dont feel like they are 4 years behind everyone else.  Should be almost like instant newbie action on the bat.

Unfortunately if they reset it all and gave lifetime boosts to the existing player base they would then have 0 income unless it gave them a new surge of players which is a gamble at best.

The boat for this action from a buisness model point of view has sailed once it went live on steam.