Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Just so you know, we did some devtalk today about I2, and everyone agreed that it's still way too early to tell whether this works fine or not. Even if it's not, we will take small steps only.

We agreed that SAPs are too easy to complete compared to the 1 hour of defense necessary, so as the first step, we're increasing some timers/HP/etc there in the next patch (along with making the times persistent and fixing specimen processing of course).

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Any hard numbers?

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

DEV Zoom wrote:

Just so you know, we did some devtalk today about I2, and everyone agreed that it's still way to early to tell whether this works fine or not. Even if it's not, we will take small steps only.

We agreed that SAPs are too easy to complete compared to the 1 hour of defense necessary, so as the first step, we're increasing some timers/HP/etc there in the next patch (along with making the times persistent and fixing specimen processing of course).

Nice.

I'd strongly suggest forcing groups that control many stations to keep having to extend themselves otherwise they can simply log off and show up once per week.

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Good to hear your listening to the people who pay your bills.  Small changes are the way to go in a sand box. Thanks Zolm

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Intrusion 2.0 is working fine.
A lot of people just aren't ready for beta ownership but are ready for beta roams.
Too few players in game.
People want Mech Warrior Online and this is Perpetuum.

131

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Alexander wrote:

Intrusion 2.0 is working fine.
A lot of people just aren't ready for beta ownership but are ready for beta roams.
Too few players in game.
People want Mech Warrior Online and this is Perpetuum.

Now that PVP is happening again on a consistent basis, production is going to be a factor again! YEA!

Go Carebears, its your birthday, its your birthday...

*Did I say that outloud*

132 (edited by Takeo Prime 2011-12-09 19:24:28)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Zoom, great to hear of some needed tweeks, but please consider activities that the defender can do while they sit on their SAP timers....ie, repping to even higher HP, sitting on a passive to count the timer down, or other that makes sitting there "feel" like you are being productive. roll

Agree with Arga, when things go boom, things need bought; when things get bought, things need to be built; when things get built; materials need to be gathered; when things get gathered, they need to be sold....markets begin to thrive, demand goes up....looks like a great run for carebears!  Roar your little heads off! big_smile

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Triglav wrote:

Any hard numbers?

Sure.

Destruction: 5000 HP -> 10000 HP (with 150 point resistances before and after as well)
Active hacking: 60 cycles -> 120 cycles
Passive hacking: 5 mins -> 8 mins
Specimen processing: no change

Takeo Prime wrote:

please consider activities that the defender can do while they sit on their SAP timers....ie, repping to even higher HP, sitting on a passive to count the timer down, or other that makes sitting there "feel" like you are being productive.

We are considering this, but as said we don't want to make too many changes at once in order to get true feedback on the changes.

134 (edited by Arga 2011-12-09 19:43:18)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Takeo Prime wrote:

Zoom, great to hear of some needed tweeks, but please consider activities that the defender can do while they sit on their SAP timers....ie, repping to even higher HP, sitting on a passive to count the timer down, or other that makes sitting there "feel" like you are being productive. roll

Defenders shouldn't be able to reduce the active window time, but giving them something to do while they are on the SAP is brillent; and is why I really like the destruction sap idea, even if it only keeps then occupied for a few minutes.

What if the passive SAP timer was based on transferred accumulator?

SAP timer base 5 minutes.
Add 1 second for every 100 acc transfered, with a 20 acc / sec drain, and a 10 minute cap.

Meaning defenders standing in an AOE (no need for modules, and the area is away from the passive SAP)are each drained 100 acc / second, which gets added to the time the time an attacker needs to sit on the SAP to win it. Instead of just changing the SAP timer to a straight 5 min.

The drain means if you leave the defensive area, the timer will drop back down to 5 min.

So your 'doing' something while you are there, making it harder to attack the SAP, but at the same time it requires you to acutally be online and there. It could be changed to be active transfer, but that could end up being more boring having to cycle your transfer on/off, as well as making it more difficult to actualy defend by requireing defenders to fit a non-offensive module.

edit: changed base numbers from zooms post

135 (edited by Rex Amelius 2011-12-09 19:51:53)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

DEV Zoom wrote:

Just so you know, we did some devtalk today about I2, and everyone agreed that it's still way too early to tell whether this works fine or not. Even if it's not, we will take small steps only.

We agreed that SAPs are too easy to complete compared to the 1 hour of defense necessary, so as the first step, we're increasing some timers/HP/etc there in the next patch (along with making the times persistent and fixing specimen processing of course).

increasing some timers?

I sure as hell hope you guys don't plan on extending the 8-16 hour timer. Lower timer is more SAPs up and more ACTION or potential for action.

There are many other ways to tweak the system to buff defense, which I agree, it should be buffed.

  • You can reduce the points awarded for talking/defending SAPs. By doing this it becomes less critical to defend every SAP which right now, you have to defend every one. Losing a few points while I sleep ain't so bad, but alarm clocking every day with the threat of losing 20 will get exhausting. The point of stability is to reward you for using and defending you island over time.

  • Tweak the difficulty in taking or buff the ability in defending specific SAPs (I'll leave that one to the math wizards to give specifics)

  • Scale the difficulty of taking SAPs so that it's harder to take them at low stability and easier to take them at high stability. You can wrap up the logic by saying the outpost has xyz energy and as stability goes up you can divert that energy to facility upgrades and auras. While stability goes down, all energy diverts to defense. Eh? This way lethargy will never reward you with high stability as you gotta be on your toes to keep the pirates from jacking you over. And if you truly want to own an outpost and live in it, higher defense at lower stability forces you to truly grind for it. As a pirate I just want to get some ~good fights~ and some GREAT loot from high stability outposts. I don't want to live in your outposts.

BUT DO NOT EXTEND THE 8-16 TIME AND THEREBY DECREASE THE POTENTIAL FOR ACTION!!!

And yes, baby steps please ...baby steps.

Sparking to other games

136 (edited by Alexander 2011-12-09 20:05:02)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Someone can't read.. D'aww..

I agree with what Zoom said. Baby steps are better than changing anything too quickly.
Increasing SAP capture times will be a very good start.

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Mark Zima wrote:

* I want alliance feature so that many corps can hold ONE outpost without the risk of kicking each other out on a whim of a single CEO. So more outposts will be available to hold by new alpha corps (don't see anyone waiting in the line tho). Anti-nova rhetoric by WAR and 62nd is irrelevant to this matter.


Please leave Beta life – RAW. 
Do not add alliance mechanics that makes life easier for anyone.  Alliance mechanics are for those that want the option of allowing others to do work that they don’t want to do.  They want to be protected by numbers and not activities.

Beta should be unpredictable, emotionally challenging.  Big ups, big downs, rouge CEO’s who lock you out of your stuff, friends that turn on you in the middle of a war, enemies that become friends for the greater good.  I want to wake up and say WTF, what happened?  Alliance mechanics smooth’s out all of these epic events that turn into awesome stories that are told by others for years.

There are mechanics in place for the life of the predictable, it is called Alpha!

Bring on the unexpected, and thank you, thank you, thank you, for bringing PVP back to life in this game! wink

138 (edited by Alexander 2011-12-09 20:09:45)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

DEV Zoom wrote:
Triglav wrote:

Any hard numbers?

Sure.

Destruction: 5000 HP -> 10000 HP (with 150 point resistances before and after as well)
Active hacking: 60 cycles -> 120 cycles
Passive hacking: 5 mins -> 8 mins
Specimen processing: no change

Takeo Prime wrote:

please consider activities that the defender can do while they sit on their SAP timers....ie, repping to even higher HP, sitting on a passive to count the timer down, or other that makes sitting there "feel" like you are being productive.

We are considering this, but as said we don't want to make too many changes at once in order to get true feedback on the changes.

Takeo has a really good point.
Destruction should start at 10,000 HP / 20,000 HP and you should be able to repair the SAP to it's full health.
Passive should be a count DOWN which you can increase to 10 minutes by standing on the SAP. (KOTH style).
Active hacking would work better if there was a SAP fortifying module for defenders to use or hacking your own would increase the number of cycles.. etc.. You wouldn't be able to WIN the event with any of these actions but you could delay the capture or at least give your something to DO while defending.

139

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Alexander wrote:

Active hacking would work better if there was a SAP fortifying module for defenders to use or hacking your own would increase the number of cycles.. etc.. You wouldn't be able to WIN the event with any of these actions but you could stop it.

Mmm, yes, standing on the passive SAP to increase the capture time would be alot easier than my suggestion.

ECM is the counter for active hack, when you lose lock you have to start all over.

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Arga wrote:
Alexander wrote:

Active hacking would work better if there was a SAP fortifying module for defenders to use or hacking your own would increase the number of cycles.. etc.. You wouldn't be able to WIN the event with any of these actions but you could stop it.

Mmm, yes, standing on the passive SAP to increase the capture time would be alot easier than my suggestion.

ECM is the counter for active hack, when you lose lock you have to start all over.

Oh really? I didn't know that.. Stiill saying ECM is the counter is like saying "Blowing up the targets" is the counter to passive hack.

I'd like to see some fortifying tactics. Then they can solve the ECM issue on the active hack. Else we'll just see a Vagabond army at defences to SAP block.

141 (edited by Norrdec 2011-12-09 20:34:07)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

My biggest problem is sitting an hour on the SAP. If you don't want the defenders to finish the saps, make it at least possible that: for example the passive SAP activation range is 100m, if defenders sit about 200m from it, the SAP will close faster, the time could decreases  by 10% for each person near it (with a max of 5 for example). So you could at least limit the time people have to sit around and do nothing.

I wrote this without reading the topic to the end, sorry for duping smile

<GargajCNS> we maim to please

142

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Some SAPs should be easier to ninja, like passive.

If you can field an army of Vagabonds, then that's great, the attcker will need to clear them out before they can make any progress on the hack.

There's a sort of hierarchy and balance to the SAP difficulty, you may lose every passive SAP, because tossing a tank on there is really a good offensive strat that takes a significant effort to counter; Small offense, big defense.

For active hack, coming with a single tank and a hack module isnt such a great strat, even with eccm, your going to lose lock every few minutes for sure, and you'll never complete it. A small defending force can counter a small offense. Tanking defense on the active hack would work too, meaning defense can put an ECM tank out there and counter a fairly large offense.

Speciman saps need a lot of effort from offense, so your likely to need a larger defense to counter it. A single ewar isn't going to ninja a speciman sap.

Destruction, with the change, is one of those that could go either way. A single bot could destroy a totally undefended SAP, but the more defense you put on it, the more offense they'll need.

Difficulty of the SAP shouldn't be the same, and it doesnt seem like it is.

All of them should need active defense, and they've definetly done that.

143 (edited by Alexander 2011-12-09 20:44:55)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Arga wrote:

Some SAPs should be easier to ninja, like passive.

If you can field an army of Vagabonds, then that's great, the attcker will need to clear them out before they can make any progress on the hack.

There's a sort of hierarchy and balance to the SAP difficulty, you may lose every passive SAP, because tossing a tank on there is really a good offensive strat that takes a significant effort to counter; Small offense, big defense.

For active hack, coming with a single tank and a hack module isnt such a great strat, even with eccm, your going to lose lock every few minutes for sure, and you'll never complete it. A small defending force can counter a small offense. Tanking defense on the active hack would work too, meaning defense can put an ECM tank out there and counter a fairly large offense.

Speciman saps need a lot of effort from offense, so your likely to need a larger defense to counter it. A single ewar isn't going to ninja a speciman sap.

Destruction, with the change, is one of those that could go either way. A single bot could destroy a totally undefended SAP, but the more defense you put on it, the more offense they'll need.

Difficulty of the SAP shouldn't be the same, and it doesnt seem like it is.

All of them should need active defense, and they've definetly done that.

I think I am seeing Intrusion 2.0 in a new way because of you Arga. I just wish there were more players and more.. "Even" sides that could fight these battles. In a theme-park game where battleground can be regulated this system would be a lot of fun but here it's a sandbox and these fights you're explaining just won't happen that often. And that's what needs addressing more than Int 2.0.

I want more sand in my sandbox.. Not more buckets and spades to play with the same sand.

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Alexandar, I like to think the Devs are simply tweaking the sandbox, bringing in the best Hawaiian beach sand, making sure the box dimensions are big enough, putting the right amount of cool  toys, before they completely open the park to the public. Its open now, but they simple haven't promoted it because they are putting the finishing touches first. I'm liking the new sand. smile

145

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

I like Turtles

Undefeated 2013
"Even alone you probably are one of the best" - Khader Khan
"Lemon the 1 man army .... also know as: THE TERMINATOR!" - Obi Wan
"There are people who are just better then you at doing many things at one time, some are far better then myself, far better." -Merkle

146 (edited by Rex Amelius 2011-12-09 21:50:43)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Another thought...

I'm on board with the idea that defenders need something to do for two reason:
1.) it's boring sitting around doing nothing.
2.) the objective is to promote activity on Beta. Current system theoretically allows a corp to take an outpost and never come back again. As long as no one is taking the SAPs, the 'defender' gets increases in stability. Stupid. Defender should DO something to increase stability or at least increase it more than doing nothing.

Enter NPCs
Just like beacons, perhaps you devs can spawn some NPCs to chew down while the defenders are sitting around protecting SAPs. Which NPCs? How many? How hard? Do they spawn on the SAP? Around the station? I don't know.

That could help with the boredom issue, but not even gonna attempt to go there on how it could affect SAP gain/loss.

...just an initial idea


------EDIT, I've decided to 'go there'

Combat NPCs sits or roams toward passive: No point loss if NPC succeeds. Point gain if you keep them off. Point loss if player sits there.

Combat NPCs shoot at your Destructive. No point loss if NPC succeeds. Point gain if you save the Destructive. Point loss if player kills it.

Industrial NPCs do, uh something, and carry all the specimen requirements. No point loss if NPCs succeed at whatever they doing. Point gain if defender stops them. Point loss if player succeeds at the specimen.

Hacking?, I'm getting tired...

Sparking to other games

147

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

I fully agree with that Alex, the size (number of active players) of the corps/alliances needed to stabilize outposts is much higher then what we currently have.

The balance seems to be in favor of the pirates, at least for the moment, because they appear to have a larger active population (not just 62nd, but all of the players that are non-outpost owners getting PVP from outpost defenders).

I can't imagine that the pirates have more stockpiles then CIR though, CIR may be having a manpower issue, but if that is resolved they can withstand more losses then the pirates.

Alliances, and alliance tools may be a good solution since small corps don't want to merge and give up their identies. I don't think alliances taking over all the SAPs will be an issue though, however it could end up as a 3-way conflict; 2 alliances holding 2 islands, and pirates. That may not be too bad a situation to have while we get more players into the game. With many many unstabilized (Ownership doesn't really mean anything still, only stabilized owners) outposts left up for grabs, there is plenty of opportunity for alpha corps to ally and make a move on them.

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Nah, we're fine. We got the best miners in the game.

Dont decrease the time the defender has to wait, make those who take multiple stations have to pay for holding them. That's been my going line now for this thread. If you decrease the amount of work an alliance has to do to hold 6 stations, it's kind of just I1.0 then.

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Arga wrote:

I fully agree with that Alex, the size (number of active players) of the corps/alliances needed to stabilize outposts is much higher then what we currently have.

The balance seems to be in favor of the pirates, at least for the moment, because they appear to have a larger active population (not just 62nd, but all of the players that are non-outpost owners getting PVP from outpost defenders).

I can't imagine that the pirates have more stockpiles then CIR though, CIR may be having a manpower issue, but if that is resolved they can withstand more losses then the pirates.

Alliances, and alliance tools may be a good solution since small corps don't want to merge and give up their identies. I don't think alliances taking over all the SAPs will be an issue though, however it could end up as a 3-way conflict; 2 alliances holding 2 islands, and pirates. That may not be too bad a situation to have while we get more players into the game. With many many unstabilized (Ownership doesn't really mean anything still, only stabilized owners) outposts left up for grabs, there is plenty of opportunity for alpha corps to ally and make a move on them.

Your understanding of the current situation is slightly off the mark there.

Anyone making a push into Beta has two things to consider;
a) The small pirate corps are opportunistically trying to ninja undefended SAPs.
b) Big players like SovNov are employing a policy of "scorched earth", where the key goal is to destabilize outposts.

Meaning for SovNov, we have 2 SAP's we care for defending every 8-10 hours, others are irrelevant as long as stability is low, or like with Hokkagaros where we have a mutual understanding about each other's outposts. It prevents burnout of our pilots fighting over pointless SAP's on outposts that have no importance to us (Ref: Domhalarn, Norhoop).

The patch by itself cannot change one fundamental thing: If I have 200 people and the enemy has 20, I can put 50 people at 4 different locations, pursuing different strategic objectives. Manpower and strategy always trumps tactics and opportunism.

CIR's numbers have actually skyrocketed. We've gotten all of our industrial powerplayers back in-game during the Alsbale War, and since then we've only grown with the influx of new members from defeated corporations and old friends (GLiMPSE is still fapping about it don't get me started...). With the new station buffs, our production is even more efficient then before and we're actually depleting our raw ore stockpiles for the first time since release.

Also, it's important to note: There are no Alpha corporations anymore to make any sort of push into Beta. They're all either dead, assimilated by bigger corps, or subbed-but-not-playing. There is no influx of new corps, what you see in-game is all there is atm.

150 (edited by Arga 2011-12-09 23:06:51)

Re: Intrusion 2.0 issues and feedback

Naismith wrote:

CIR's numbers have actually skyrocketed. We've gotten all of our industrial powerplayers back in-game during the Alsbale War, and since then we've only grown with the influx of new members from defeated corporations and old friends (GLiMPSE is still fapping about it don't get me started...). With the new station buffs, our production is even more efficient then before and we're actually depleting our raw ore stockpiles for the first time since release.

This is actually great news! But sort of goes into my theory that a second alliance will need to form that can withstand the SovNov, likely doing the same thing; holding an Island and fighting to make sure neither faction gets too many stabile outposts.

For alpha, more PVP is going to create opportunity for industy. Also having outposts where newer players can show up and get some PVP without having to commit to an intrusion (more pirates essentially) we could see more players coming back. Its too soon to tell on that, but personally I just have a few things to tidy up before the mothballs out kicked off PIE.

Also, it's important to note: There are no Alpha corporations anymore to make any sort of push into Beta. They're all either dead, assimilated by bigger corps, or subbed-but-not-playing. There is no influx of new corps, what you see in-game is all there is atm.

Alpha corps forming is more of a 'long term' prediction, assuming the game gets more players. If it doesn't get new players, then... well, that's not really worth mentioning.