Topic: PBS Blog discussion

New thread for discussion of the PBS blog.

- Terminals are the central hub of PBS building

- 1 Per Corp per Island

- Would seem to be just a terminal with storage, facilities are built seperately

- You need Energy to run your structures (Not Free, no more details)

- Other pretty cool stuff.


So my initial questions

1) No hard limit on terminals per Island? Are there any problems anticipated with alt corps / alliances building multiple terminals on an Island?

2) Are terminals destroyable? Able to be captured? Whats the situation for items in corp storage if either of these things happen?

3) Will walls be integrated into the PBS system?

4) Terminals will have access control? Or corp only?

I'm sure I can think of more smile

2 (edited by Obi Wan Kenobi 2012-03-02 14:41:48)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

a convo the devs had on IRC about PBS: http://pastebin.com/XQ7yPufL

lots of text but well worth the read smile

Some interesting comments made:

"reinforcement mechanism" If the armor of the terminal drops below 60% it switches to reinforced. Nothing can hurt it. But repairs will work. The reinforced perios is 12 hours long. This gives some time to the defenders to prepare/evacuate/reorganize. Then it switches to vulnerable for 12 more hours. During this period it can't switch to reinforced -> it can be destroyed. Resulting a heavy loot from the items stored in the base including market, pr

for the alt corp spamming issue: there is a limit per zone for amount of terminals

Also seems Reactors will require fuel of some kind.

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

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

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Interesting parts:

  • You can dock in the main terminal

  • Builds will have varying in and out types and amounts.

  • Alt corps and alliances will be very powerful if they work together and guard each sector of the island

  • Main terminals will be rather small. Bases will be very large.

I AM NOT A GM™

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Some random thoughts:

1. I hope no matter the size, light ewar gangs are not able to destroy any part of any POS anywhere.
2. I think in order to do serious damage to any POS, you should need specialized siege weaponry on existing or new bots.
3. I think if any individual component is too easy to destroy, it will lead to griefing during off times. We need to be able to add effective defenses on critical structures.
4. If turrets are underpowered, they won't be worth building at all. We need highly effective defenses to protect our investments.
5. I hope we will see many turret options (ECM, Neuting, DPS, various ranges, eventually configurable AI)

Looking forward to new players and new conflicts.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

What I took from that:

  • You can energy transfer and neut turrets.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

1) No hard limit on terminals per Island? Are there any problems anticipated with alt corps / alliances building multiple terminals on an Island?

given from the sizes displayed in that blog, and the current landsize - you would shoot into your own leg if you plaster down an island only with the "Hangar" building.

- it will consume place where you could place other, important, base buildings
- it will block places where you could gather minerals or shoot NPCs
...

im sure after they reveal more details, more reasons NOT to do it will arise.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Things from IRC today (taken as 'currently' and may change before expansion);

There will be an over-all cap on the number of main terminals an island can have, in addition to only allowing 1 per corp.

Main terminals will be destructable, and storage items will drop as loot containers; 100% drop rate.

There's no definitive information on Teleporters or the number of gamma islands to be introduced.

The island resources are going to be generally redefined, there will eventually be beta and gamma only materials, but what those will be wasn't revealed.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Single reinforce with a 12hr timer seems a little short given that you can lose everything you have stored there. I do like the idea of destructible terminals, but I think they may well cause issues.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Dazamin wrote:

I do like the idea of destructible terminals, but I think they may well cause issues.

And so what, indestructible ones?   lol

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Dazamin wrote:

Single reinforce with a 12hr timer seems a little short given that you can lose everything you have stored there. I do like the idea of destructible terminals, but I think they may well cause issues.

i might have some issues here as well.

- powerfull blocks might take adavatge of this and wipe a lot of outposts of smaller groups just to get the loot.

- to prevent that ppl will most likely not call the gamma terminal their home. they most likely leave a lot of stuff on alpha or beta and will only use their gamma terminal as a hub with minimal equipment in its storage.

- 12 hours defently is way too short. to destroy a terminal it should be more like 12 days with mulitble successfull attacks to get it down. so ppl will have time to reorganise, repair the attackers damage, or evacuate if they see fit.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Syrissa wrote:
Dazamin wrote:

Single reinforce with a 12hr timer seems a little short given that you can lose everything you have stored there. I do like the idea of destructible terminals, but I think they may well cause issues.

i might have some issues here as well.

- powerfull blocks might take adavatge of this and wipe a lot of outposts of smaller groups just to get the loot.

- to prevent that ppl will most likely not call the gamma terminal their home. they most likely leave a lot of stuff on alpha or beta and will only use their gamma terminal as a hub with minimal equipment in its storage.

- 12 hours defently is way too short. to destroy a terminal it should be more like 12 days with mulitble successfull attacks to get it down. so ppl will have time to reorganise, repair the attackers damage, or evacuate if they see fit.

Yeah, the typical person works and sleeps 8 hours per day. 8+8 = 16 hours straight without being able to reinforce, worst case scenario.

Needs to be 24 hours.

Looking forward to new players and new conflicts.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

you guys forget that this terminal is the CENTER of your base.

12h are only an issue if some can get that far in less then 12h AND bring it down below 60% in that time AND then after 12h he can continue to do that.

What is with the Base defense?

and ontop of that - theres still no information about how BIG the world will be. IF those powerblocks Syrissa mentioned have time to travel 10 islands in a row, that dont have any pre-built highways, it probably means that 50% of the playerbase is in that one powerblock...

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: PBS Blog discussion

I've changed my mind, no issue here, please put all your shineys in your new terminals. tia smile

Re: PBS Blog discussion

The important thing here, I think, is that we are starting from the main terminal being destructable, and the loot dropping. Those are key elements that will drive some corps to attack and the owning corp to defend.

The details now, are in balancing attacker time/size to defense time/size.

A scenerio that the 12 hour timer eleminates, is an ad-hoc coalllition of players embarking on a 3-4 hour mass terminal destruction spree.

The 12 hour timer does not eliminate an issue where a dominent organized force on the server embarks on a weekend mass terminal killing spree.

Taking into the potential for returning players bolstering a single corp or alliance to the point where it numericially exceeds the largest possible defensive forces by a significant majority, it would be likely that this force could, in a Saturday, visit all main terminals built to that date, reducing them to 60%. They could then log-in on Sunday, and complete a server-wide wipe.

Or taking a real example, if all 600 of Nex's players (not picking on you Nex, your just the best example) return with characters that were hibernating (gathering EP), this size force could indeed roll the every terminal in a single weekend.

The assumption here is that even if corps manage to get 50 players online for defense, that the turrets and other devices would not over-come 12 to 1 disadvantage; mainly because if it could, then it would take 600 players to defeat a 50 man defense.

While its basically impossible to create a game mechanic that would STOP a 600 man corp from taking ALL the terminals, it is possible to add stops to prevent it from happening in a 24-48 hour time period.

While that's an extreme example, there are a lot of current examples where 12-15 man squads rolling up to an outpost on an off-time zone could easily be greeted with only 1-2 players.

Looking at the timeing here:

0:00 15 man Squad attacks outpost defended by turrets and (3) defenders. They eliminate the defenses, reactor, and the majority of the nodes over a 3 hour time frame

03:00 Main term is reduced to 60% and goes immune.

11:00 Owning Corp's prime time

15:00 Terminal is repaired, reactor is back online, and some turrets, walls and TF are redone.
          Terminal Immunity drops.

19:00 Small off time zone team has worked through the night to bring terminal defenses back to 80%

0:00 Next day, still 3 hours remaining on reinforcement, 15 man squad shows back up

2:00 Defenses defeated, this is the 'middle' of the day for off-time zone, not the middle of the night, so they are off at school or work, no CTA alarm clock defense is do-able.

15 man squad has 1 hour to bring the outpost from 100% to 0.


------

So, the choices with this system are .... well, there is no choice. Once someone attacks your outpost, and pushes it into reinforcement mode, you have to evacuate because the odds are they will very likely beat the 12 hour timer and collect all your loots. It makes it that much easier, because instead of being able to rebuild in those 12 hours, your're going to need them to move.

On the other hand, if you make it even an 18 hour immunity, then you push the attackers into THEIR off timezone, and then the pendulum swings the other way, making it almost impossible to lose defense (with even a resonably sized prime-time defending presence).

----

Currently, it takes at least 3 days of pressure to simply switch outpost ownership, without any other benefit to the attacker. The gamma system provides way too much incentive with dropped loot, in comparison to the time the attackers need to dedicate to achieve it.

15

Re: PBS Blog discussion

@ Arga:
You raised some issues that are very important for the reality of living on these gamma islands. But I think and hope the DEV’s have thought about these as well.

One simple solution to much of this is to make the structures have the “right” amount of HP
For example:
Turret 75~100K HP
Reactor 2.5 ~ 5 Million HP
Main Terminal 10 ~ 20 Million HP
These types of HP amounts are just ballpark but they will make it so that groups of people coming in small 5 to 10 man roams will not be a threat. They may kill a few walls and turrets but they won’t be able to touch the main reactor to Terminal unless they bring some serious firepower. I’m thinking 20 + heavy mechs shooting for hours to break the main structures not just a few minutes. 

The amount of time it takes to destroy these things needs to be very well balanced. Attackers should actually need to “campaign “ in all senses of the word to take out a PBS terminal not just throw together a few weekend warrior runs.

Tux ~ Kill the messenger, he was part of it all along.
Euripides ~ Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
Bertrand Russell ~ War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Yes make ppl shoot terminals for hours while the defenders sit inside and play Tanks............................ I personally think reinforce timer is probably too low, and TZ issues should certainly be taken into account. However, the fundamental issue is whether players should have to defend and PBS structures will assist them, or whether PBS should defend on your behalf through massive firepower and ridiculous HP, I'd hope after all the fun of Intrusion 2.0 and walls, we might get something that actually encourages active participation from both sides.

17 (edited by Tux 2012-03-05 17:13:08)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

@Dazamin

I agree there needs to be something that makes both side want to play..

There also needs to be a HARD stop to prevent flippin PBS terminals in off TZ roams. This is the fundamental problem with this system right now is that people are only vulnerable in their off hours and that's when they get hit. if this is not addressed buy massive amounts of HP or good defenses [or something else] then PBS is the same as Beta. If the owner does not show in his time zone to defend the terminal then he needs to lose it but he should not lose it because he has a job and Real life obligations that prevent him from playing 24/7.

There needs to be blocks of time for the terminals to be attacked that the owner sets like one 4 hours block or one six hour block where it can be attacked. Allowing PBS to be attacked in off TZ is bad idea and it will not benefit anyone.

the reinforce timer looks good

Tux ~ Kill the messenger, he was part of it all along.
Euripides ~ Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
Bertrand Russell ~ War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

18 (edited by zigZag 2012-03-05 20:48:42)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

I have read the blog and these insightful posts.

From playing two games with open pvp and forts, camps, walls, turrets, rep fields. ect, programed AI, including planes, tanks, art, scouts, i will just relay what worked in those games and why. (by the way, there are no perfect systems)

The main Power plant should be the hardest target in the camp.  This keeps the Main PP from being a single target that wins the day. It should be the last building standing including the Main Terminal.  After the Main Terminal is destroyed the PP goes pop. Defenses are reliant on the PP and defenders are done if it is gone. Replacing destroyed turrets, walls, is viable as long as the PP is up. With this one decision to make the PP hard, all the defenses are usually destroyed before the camp is captured, if the defenders have done a good job designing the camp. 

I don't know how to solve the time/zone issue, it is also a lag issue for some. While the destruction of a OP is going to happen in off hrs with the current 12 hr clock, OPs might be limited to EU players. Its just not one issue.  Currently walls get blown up in off hrs, to be replaced, and that is the only cycle that happens.  I don't have a problem with the walls being blown up, you play when you can play. But it is the same cycle all the time, because of the time/zone issue. (no ones fault). And with some having to work on their Monday when everyone else is on Sunday. It is not a easy answer.

Also,, is the ability to place Terminals and PP plants on the foes island,,going to enable respawn sights close to the target?  Establishing a attack base with short response times to the target, with a clock to limit 100% so defenders can respond with reasonable chance of destroying this intrusion on their island paradise? And now the time/zone issue rears its ugly head again. O well, i am pleased with the blog, and look forward to playing..

PS, something else that works.  A player set spawn. Garage, beacon, displacement gate. limited distance from the Terminal, 360 degree.  Cool off time of 10 seconds from deploy to deployed.  Deploy can be seen on radar. The garage, beacon is always on radar, and may be used to deposit loot, get ammo, be destroyed for a two min time delay, until the next garage can be set. You know what this would stop...cheers.

Now for the flame weapons, with area of splash...:)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

an outpost is no pos in eve. its a way bigger thing especialy with the assets of the players in it.

so if you are able to destroy it then it has to take time. just as it takes time to capture an outpost with the current intusion system. so one attack over time period (lets just say 8h for now) should get the outpost down at max by 15%. and still you would be able to level it in 2-3 days. what i think is still too fast...

a assault on a outpost schould take at least a week with a lot of fighting and bombing or whatever to get it down.

the system has to be ballanced that the defender has the advantage, and that the attacker has it hard to take it. then there may be a lot to gain and for the others a lot to lose.
if the attacker gets the easy kill with a lot to gain with not a lot risk or effort then the pbs will fail because it will not realy be used.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Syrissa wrote:

an outpost is no pos in eve. its a way bigger thing especialy with the assets of the players in it.

so if you are able to destroy it then it has to take time. just as it takes time to capture an outpost with the current intusion system. so one attack over time period (lets just say 8h for now) should get the outpost down at max by 15%. and still you would be able to level it in 2-3 days. what i think is still too fast...

a assault on a outpost schould take at least a week with a lot of fighting and bombing or whatever to get it down.

the system has to be ballanced that the defender has the advantage, and that the attacker has it hard to take it. then there may be a lot to gain and for the others a lot to lose.
if the attacker gets the easy kill with a lot to gain with not a lot risk or effort then the pbs will fail because it will not realy be used.

THIS.

All the new and fancy construction mechanics are worth nothing if the op can be destroyed in less than a day.

21 (edited by Dazamin 2012-03-06 15:52:10)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

I was thinking about possible adjustments to the system. I thought of one possible idea as follows.

1) The owning corp gets to choose an 8hr time period during which their terminal will come out of reinforce when attacked. For example a euro based corp may choose the period 5pm-1am as covering their timezone (although the period is wide enough to make defences happen outside of 'peak' times sometimes.)

2) The terminal will come out of reinforce a minimum of 16hrs after being put into reinforce at a random time within the defenders 8hr period (This time will be randomly generated at the point the station goes into reinforce and displayed on the station.)

3) So, the quickest way to take a terminal is to initially attack in your opponents prime time (Yay PvP!!!!) which will generate a reinforce timer of 16-24hrs. If you were to attack out of that 8hr "Prime Time" the defenders will end up with at least one "Prime Time" period for them to rep station, prepare defences, etc, before the terminal comes out of reinforce.

4) Once the station comes out of reinforce, it is vulnerable to being destroyed as it cannot enter a second reinforce due to {insert RP here} In order to fix this you need to {insert moar RP} which in game mechanic terms is basically an active hacking SAP outside your terminal. This takes about an hour? to do, and can only be operated when the terminal is not actively under attack (e.g no one is shooting at it). Only one person can do this at a time, but multiple people can contribute.  e.g one person hacks for 20 mins, then someone else takes over. Once this has been done the terminal is reset and needs to be reinforced again by attackers. This means if no attackers show, the terminal is back to full strength with in 1 hr.

5) If the attackers take the terminal to 0 armor it is destroyed and lootable.

22

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Syrissa wrote:

an outpost is no pos in eve. its a way bigger thing especialy with the assets of the players in it.

so if you are able to destroy it then it has to take time. just as it takes time to capture an outpost with the current intusion system. so one attack over time period (lets just say 8h for now) should get the outpost down at max by 15%. and still you would be able to level it in 2-3 days. what i think is still too fast...

a assault on a outpost schould take at least a week with a lot of fighting and bombing or whatever to get it down.

the system has to be ballanced that the defender has the advantage, and that the attacker has it hard to take it. then there may be a lot to gain and for the others a lot to lose.
if the attacker gets the easy kill with a lot to gain with not a lot risk or effort then the pbs will fail because it will not realy be used.

This is on the right track .. were not talking POS bubbles .. were talking Outposts dock-able stations here. destroying them in anything less than a week long campaign is silly which will lead to them not being used.

we have to remember this PBS are going to take a very long time to engineer and build correctly so it make little sense for them to be destroyed in a few days when it could have taken weeks to construct.

I am all for either several reinforce periods or one hellish amount of HP to even put it into reinforce 50 million HP heck make it 100Million HP ... what ever it ends up being it needs to be something that makes it NOT attractive to attack. 

Im all for PVP but using PBS as a reward token of PVP will not work because people will not build them. there will be too much time invested to see it go up in smoke because of a few random roams if the PBS does not have very high defenses.

Tux ~ Kill the messenger, he was part of it all along.
Euripides ~ Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
Bertrand Russell ~ War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Yes, Outposts need to be difficult to destroy, but ... requiring players to spend a continual 8 hours feeding ammo through thier bot is too much.

Providing attackers progress with repeated attacks would be a better mechanic.

The outpost should be well defended during prime time and challenging to attack from terrain and supplemental defenses like turrets during off times; hopefully augemented by a few characters. This should make attacking an outpost interesting at all times.

There should be a resonably attainable goal for the attackers to achieve, that grants them progress toward destroying the outpost. For instance, they shut down the reactor during the attack, which allows them to target the main terminal (the main terminal is immune to AOE).

The main terminal has only 100k armor, but after 40k, it goes into reinforced mode and is immune to damage.

After the attack, the defenders have no defenses until they bring the reactor online. After 24 hours, if the reactor has not been brought online, the main terminal is vulnerable and can be destroyed.

However, if at any time during the 24 hours, the reactor is brought back online, the reinforcement is recharged and will available again.

The repeatablity key here, is that the defenders can ONLY repair 20K armor in any 24 hour time period.

This means that a succesfull attacker can do 50% more damage per day then the defenders can repair. And if possible, they can camp the outpost and prevent the reactor coming back online and destroy the outpost in 24 hours.

Recap:

Attackers must defeat the station defenses and deactivate the reactor for a 'succesfull' attack.
Deactivating Reactor allows attackers to do up to 40,000 damage on the main terminal, out of 100,000.
Immunity lasts 24 hours, or until the reactor comes back online.
Immunity is recharged immediatly when reactor comes back online.
  (1 hour delay for base defenses and factory?)
Only 20,000 armor can be repaired in any 24 hour period, and only WHILE reactor is offline.
  (Main terminal is ONLY targetable while offline, so reppers must be run then).
Corporation can turn reactor on/off, with a 2 hour restart timer.


-----

Game play -

The relatively small amount of damage to the outpost means the attacker doesn't have to idle for hours after defeating the outpost's defenses cycling through ammo. But its a large enough number that defending players in bots can still undock and press the attackers to reduce or limit the total amount of damage the attackers do.

The reactor is key, since the outpost can not be targeted while this unit is active. I believe you can even have more than 1 reactor (??) making the outpost that much more difficult to attack. However, the defenders must remain offline to repair, although they can choose to turn the reactor(s) off during thier prime time to do those repairs.

If a defender has abandoned an outpost, that is they do not defend nor reactivate the reactor, attackers can destroy it in roughly 24 hours, since the immunity will not reactivate.

An attacker successfull in off TimeZones will still do a considerable amount of damage to outpost property as well as reduce the main terminal by 40k armor. However, during the defenders prime time, they can repair and reactivate the immunity. The attackers will be able to reduce the main terminal after 5 successfull attacks (5 days). Any 'repelled' attack, meaning they do not drop the reactor, extends that period by an additional day.

However, if at anytime, the defenders abandon the outpost, the attackers will again achieve destruction the next day.

----

Poor outpost defenses will allow a smaller attacking squad to be sucessfull. Extreme defenses will require a larger squad, but will also result in greater losses and more rebuild time.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

in my mesmer mk2 it takes me  ~40 sec to do 40k damage with no resist ~95 sec with 60% resist

[05:36:51] <Lemon> i hate you... just so you know

[15:05:49] <Ville> I have to admit, that was pretty fu**ing pimp ^^
                           http://www.perp-kill.net/related/749

25

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Arga wrote:

The main terminal has only 100k armor, but after 40k, it goes into reinforced mode and is immune to damage.

what a JOKE !!!

Kanogi wrote:

in my mesmer mk2 it takes me  ~40 sec to do 40k damage with no resist ~95 sec with 60% resist

/agree people can pump out massive amounts of DPS in seconds.


@ Arga the system you describe will just be a ****fest of attacking outposts on a daily basis just to throw them into reinforce. when the new system comes out if people are being forced to rep their out post every day because one or two guys come along and shoot it it will get real old real quick. 100K HP is nothing ..  anything less than 10 Heavy mechs should not even put a scratch on a out post.... you forget they have and are still going to implement larger bots. ... if they do your low HP system they will just have to change it when larger bots come out.

thanks for a good laugh tho lol

Tux ~ Kill the messenger, he was part of it all along.
Euripides ~ Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
Bertrand Russell ~ War does not determine who is right - only who is left.