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Topic: intrusions and beta home bases

I think outposts should be a bit tougher to take than they currently are. One fight whose outcome is as often determined by timezone rather than strategy and equipment seems inadequate. Especially since I feel intrusions should be about taking/making a home. Right now, intrusions are more about delivering your opponent a slap across the face than anything meaningful. (I do, by the way, hope we get more reasons to fight than for the sake of fighting.)

The simplest adjustment I can see is to make it a three-stage process. If in the first stage the attackers take all three saps, the outpost is "under siege" but does not change hands. In the second stage (the next scheduled intrusion time), the attackers need only take two of the three saps to move to the third and final stage. In this final stage, the attackers must take only one sap and the outpost becomes theirs. So while the timing of the additional stages may not be as advantageous to the attackers, their conditions for victory are progressively less rigorous. Blocks cannot be used on outposts under siege. Registration for siege stages is free (and automatic) for the attackers who placed the outpost under siege, but any new entrants into the fray must of course pay. I think under this mechanic, outposts would still fall, but they wouldn't be going back and forth the way they do today, which is important because...

You shouldn't be able to set your home base to the outpost of someone with whom you're hostile. There are so many ways this inhibits a good gaming experience; people undocking arkhe after arkhe to scout/harvest noralgis is the latest. Everyone knows of other, I'll call them abuses, of this mechanic which players haven't yet taken advantage of... But though players haven't yet abused the mechanic (at one time, nobody was taking advantage of the essentially free registration for intrusions to grief people out of their beds), that doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed now. And, though I know there's no formal alliance mechanism, the same should be true of beta terminals on islands where all outposts are owned by one alliance. Owning your home should confer a home field advantage.

And note I'm talking about a restriction on the act of setting your home, not a restriction on where your home is. I think there should be an 8-day (4 days if the above three-stage siege process is adopted) grace period after losing your "home" outpost before you are required to set a new home. This gives a brief window for the previous owners to attempt to re-take the outpost from within.

Docking rights should remain unchanged (i.e., anyone can dock at any terminal or outpost).

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

And I would argue that Outposts are too easy to defend. All it takes is to turtle on the passive SAP for 10 mins and the intrusion fails.

I would also argue that outposts changing hands MORE is better for the game.

The concept of the outpost being a "Home" for the corp that manages it is ALL player driven. It is a motivation tool that CEO's use to get people out to help hold it, as there are some very good financial rewards for having an outpost; as well as EC in a future patch.

As many people have said, losing management of the outpost doesn't mean you still can't use it as your home base of operation. Trying to add that as an actual game mechanic is an attempt to solidify something that was never meant to be permanant.

As Alex points out, the formation of Island wide Alliances are the ONLY thing that makes holding an outpost possible.

If you lose management of the outpost due to time zone issues during an intrusion, that Corp can sign back up and take it back during the next one.

TL'DR - Outposts are not POS's, trying to change the game to make them into POS is because the game will be better with them; and we don't want to wait 6 months for them.

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

Outposts aren't meant to be end game but due to time and resources they have to make do. They're meant to change hands and be fought over.

We're missing a lot of end game content. At the moment you can take an outpost from day 1. There is no limit.

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

Didn't you recently lose 2-3 outposts?

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

Syndic wrote:

Didn't you recently lose 2-3 outposts?

yeah but they got nauwy and abbu back so dont smacktalk to hard

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."
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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

Jita wrote:
Syndic wrote:

Didn't you recently lose 2-3 outposts?

yeah but they got nauwy and abbu back so dont smacktalk to hard

Its not smacktalk its identifying a repeating pattern. People die to ewar = QQ NERF EWAR. They start dying to roaming mechs = QQ NERF MECH. People lose outpost = QQ MAKE OUTPOST HARDAH.

So far the Devs have been forthcoming; the radar system nullified the ewar-only roams that used to happen, mech HP got buffed directly with Armor / stealth-buffed with inefficiency of small weapons against them; would be uninteresting game if for 3rd time make it possible for people to defend outposts without actually showing up.

The home field advantage is already there = you can instantly undock an infinite (well, limited by your stock) amount of reinforcements; attackers in most cases have to go 10+ minute walks to reinforce.

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

They are rather hard to take if someone is defending them...


oh.. snap! lol

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

I'm sure the game mechanics are working as intended. Whether the gameplay outcome they deliver is what was expected (or even desirable) is another matter. From my perspective, I see a need for outpost ownership to be tied to use of the land.

When noralgis (another game element I don't like and will expand on in another post) was introduced, we had neutral arkhes undocking from our outposts every 10 minutes for hours at a time that first week. Impossible to stop and pure frustration if you tried.

Syndic says defenders already have a home field advantage and "attackers in most cases have to go 10+ minute walks to reinforce." Not true. Attackers choose to take 10-minute walks. They could park their reinforcements in the enemy's garage if they wanted to.

My imagination has no problem coming up with other, again from my perspective, very undesirable outcomes that are directly tied to the current outpost mechanics. So I proposed changes to those mechanics.

Having outposts flip-flop frequently doesn't fit well with also having them tied to the land around them. But I agree there need to be more meaningful and compelling reasons to fight.

Did you know that when you win an intrusion, instead of taking ownership of the outpost, you can choose to instead take the owner's deposit of up to NINE BILLION NIC!?!? What's that? Million... with an 'm'? Hrmph. Well it does show the devs are open to attacks on outposts having some result other than a change in owners.

Perhaps when you sign up for an intrusion you choose to either attack to capture (the three-stage process I propose) or attack to wreck the place. Wrecking the place is a single-stage intrusion exactly as we have it today except you steal whatever deposit plus you reduce the income from the outpost by 20% or some fixed number, whichever is lower, until the next intrusion as those funds are diverted to repairs. Whatever... something a large portion of the playerbase will find meaningful and compelling.

And we of course need more non-outpost-related reasons to fight. Other types of infrastructure to be built, sabotaged, hacked, and whatnot.

9 Reply by Hunter (edited by Hunter 2011-03-21 11:06:55)

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

I agree with the author. Capture of an outpost doesn't give anything except the insignificant income in corporation. And during war people go on good robots with good arms and they lose it in the field of fight. What do they receive in exchange?.

I consider that round bases there should be a safe zone for owners of an outpost and their allies. For enemies and neutrals syndicate protection shouldn't be in general. Besides should be impossible to set home base of the enemy.

Everyone should understand that any balancing generates only new a disbalance.

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

Outposts are not POS's. It is that simple, but we all want POS's, so I fully understand why you are pushing to convert the Outposts to POS.

I can almost also assure you that when POS is implemented, it won't be what everyone wants, and it will need some time to develop.

11 Reply by Campana (edited by Campana 2011-02-28 21:21:04)

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

I feel that the OP has a lot of good points lost in what is overall a poor main argument (i.e. that outposts are not easy enough to defend, which is not the case).

Here's my opinion:

What's good about intrusions

  • They encourage and give purpose to pvp

  • The advantage is on the defending side where the attacking and defending corp have equal numbers

  • Taking an outpost requires a sustained campaign usually lasting for more than one intrusion event

  • Owning an outpost provides a limited benefit (energy tokens will hopefully make them more lucrative)

What's bad about intrusions

  • The timings suck (as mentioned in the OP. Different mechanisms have been suggested in other threads for the timing and registering of them, we should start this campaign up again)

  • It's possible to sign up for every single intrusion event in the game every week and not turn up for any of them (as indicated by the OP)

  • The mechanics of taking them encourage attackers to form blobs (since the advantage is to the defending side)

  • Corps that are yellow/red to the owning corp can set the outpost to home (as indicated by the OP, this shouldn't be allowed. However, adding this feature would ensure that once an outpost is taken by an enemy, the previous owner cannot live there any longer. This would make an intrusion event a lot more decisive in the battle for an outpost. See below for an alternative to this idea...)

Other comments/issues

  • Intrusions are not supposed to be substitutes for POS (although we are treating them as if they are, as commented by other posters)

  • Taking an outpost via an intrusion event doesn't guarantee being able to evict the current tenants (and should it?)

  • The current set up involves a lot of flip flopping of outposts with little permanent or material effects on the owners aside from blows to epeen and morale

An alternative idea to restricting who can set the terminal to home would be the ability to set different rates on the outpost facilities depending on the player corp relationships. Thus an owning corp could set a 50% reduction to use of outpost facilities for all blue corps, but increase it for yellow corps to 125% (with maximums of, say 50% reduction to 50% increase). This would turn the screws a little more on corps who lose an outpost, but still allow them to operate in it. It would also give more revenue and benefit to the owning corp.

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Bernard Suits, 1978
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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

It seems to me that it is enough for owners and green stand corps to give protection near an outpost, and from enemies to take away. (Only molecular instability)

Everyone should understand that any balancing generates only new a disbalance.

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

Campana wrote:

What's good about intrusions

  • They encourage and give purpose to pvp
    ...

Wanted to give my perspective on this insightful statement. I think it's one of the things that's good about "intrusions" and not what's good about outposts or ownership. Intrusions are currently the only mechanic in the game that provide a framework for combat. If polled, I suspect at the top of the list of most peoples' favorite pvp moments were intrusions where the outcome was in doubt, not a roaming gang, and almost certainly not defending against a roaming gang. Isn't that the payoff most of us hope for? Ownership is part of intrusions, and it's not totally meaningless, but if you'd prefer having a really fun fight but fail to take the opponent's outpost over taking their outpost without a fight, ownership wasn't the main purpose for signing up.

Ownership of outposts, I believe, still needs to be changed for the reasons already mentioned.

But we certainly want to continue to have mechanics that encourage and give purpose to pvp. So maybe this new artifact system ends up with some rare drops that can be, for example, integrated into factory lines. Say three tiers of upgrades. It takes a week to install an upgrade to the factory. But when complete, your factories push out improved products. Tiers of modules would have sub-tiers... Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon (being the tier made with no artifact upgrades installed). So, while you can't stop your opponent from building T4 modules, is it worthwhile to attack them to wreck their ability to make beta-variant T4 modules? To me, that'd be a much more compelling reason to attack than taking ownership in the current system.

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

i don't think outposts should give any advantage in combat cuz, you know, they're not a fortresses, just industrial buildings. but they can provide for owners something else than money. says, little more theyt exac bonuses - f.e. facility lvl 4 or something (just for owners, other will use it on lvl 3 as usual). such things aren't need to be based on standings system.

other ideas listed here i'd better like to see implemented in POS - they should give very good reasons to build them.

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Re: intrusions and beta home bases

Giving a production/Combat advantage to an outpost owner only makes the "King of the Hill" worse.

That is, once an outpost is taken, the owner gets stronger while the competition gets weaker. This applies to Alpha based alliances or corps trying to 'break into beta', not to outpost vs. outpost owners.

By giving advantages to outpost owners, your basically making it a Beta Only game, in the sense that if you don't already own an outpost, or allied with someone that owns an outpost that takes it for you, you'll never catch up in terms of production.

This also means that if you were an outpost owner, and lose it, your production weakens while your opponets gets stronger.

King of the hill type of scenerio has to have some kind of decay built in, or there needs to be other external factors that an aggressor can do to make up the differences.

Getting and holding a 'hill' is a great game mechanic for fun, and waves of aggressors crashing against your walls can be thrilling, but if the agressor can't regroup and come back with equal or better strengh than there is no challenge to defend and no reason for aggressors to attack.