Re: PBS Blog discussion

DEV Zoom wrote:

There are many questions for which I don't have the answers. For example, if a 30-man group can destroy 10 buildings during an 8-hour mind-numbing shooting marathon, shouldn't they deserve it?

If you want to set up a gamma base in the first place, shouldn't you have the necessary manpower to field a minimal guarding force in every timezone?

I agree with both statements.

The trouble is that currently, even 'hard-core' corporations do not have coverage 24/7.

So, in essence, you would be adding in a new feature that no one would be able to use, not just a feature that casual players couldn't use.

put another way, ALL the hard-core players would have to join into a single corp to be prepared to defend something 24/7, but that would leave no one to attack.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Arga wrote:
DEV Zoom wrote:

There are many questions for which I don't have the answers. For example, if a 30-man group can destroy 10 buildings during an 8-hour mind-numbing shooting marathon, shouldn't they deserve it?

If you want to set up a gamma base in the first place, shouldn't you have the necessary manpower to field a minimal guarding force in every timezone?

I agree with both statements.

The trouble is that currently, even 'hard-core' corporations do not have coverage 24/7.

So, in essence, you would be adding in a new feature that no one would be able to use, not just a feature that casual players couldn't use.

put another way, ALL the hard-core players would have to join into a single corp to be prepared to defend something 24/7, but that would leave no one to attack.

Well it means no one would be able to take someone's PBS until the game grows a bit.

Or maybe someone could find a PBS with a weak network and take it?

John 3:16 - Timothy 2:23

Re: PBS Blog discussion

PBS destruction should need siege equip - which is at the same time useless against mobile targets (robots).

and no, the siege equip should not be a bigger bomb that you place on the ground...

*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

Annihilator wrote:

PBS destruction should need siege equip - which is at the same time useless against mobile targets (robots).

and no, the siege equip should not be a bigger bomb that you place on the ground...

This is what I have been saying.

I know that "other" game does it with Siege Modules.

Looking forward to new players and new conflicts.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Gremrod wrote:

Well it means no one would be able to take someone's PBS until the game grows a bit.

Or maybe someone could find a PBS with a weak network and take it?


I think it more likely that no one would be able to defend an outpost.

It takes significantly less incentive to attack something then it does to defend it; and in this case much less resources to do so.

Odds are more likely that 1 or more corps will actively attack any new gamma outpost on a regular basis, if for nothing else then having something to shoot at, and across all time zones. This is especially true if that corp isn't trying to build their own gamma outpost.

If the mechanics errored on the side of too defensable, that would disagree with Zoom's thoughts about gamma being for hard core players.

56

Re: PBS Blog discussion

@Zoom
you have very good points and i agree that players should:
* be willing to lose anything they deploy on Gamma
* have a "decent" number of people to live at and defend their outpost
* achieve a sense of accomplishment if they shoot something for 6 to 8 hours. honestly i dont know any group they could pull off having 30 to 40 of its members will to shoot something for that long of a time.

system looks like it will balance well we just need consideration that many corps in the game are one time zone corps with a very small number of members coming from other time zones. which leads us back to the option of having time blocks that the settlement can or cant be attacked.

hard questions to balance..

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.

57 (edited by Gremrod 2012-03-09 01:04:12)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Arga wrote:
Gremrod wrote:

Well it means no one would be able to take someone's PBS until the game grows a bit.

Or maybe someone could find a PBS with a weak network and take it?


I think it more likely that no one would be able to defend an outpost.

It takes significantly less incentive to attack something then it does to defend it; and in this case much less resources to do so.

Odds are more likely that 1 or more corps will actively attack any new gamma outpost on a regular basis, if for nothing else then having something to shoot at, and across all time zones. This is especially true if that corp isn't trying to build their own gamma outpost.

If the mechanics errored on the side of too defensable, that would disagree with Zoom's thoughts about gamma being for hard core players.

I have always been on the boat that it should be a lot more work for the attacker then the defenders. Let the attackers be the one to alarm clock it etc. But since they are trying to make a system that doesn't involve alarm clocks.

So with alarm clocks out of the picture (maybe) the attackers should be prepared to have a fight on their hands from a well networked PBS. If you go shoot at a PBS just to shoot it, you may end up with some dead mechs if they were not there with their real PBS attack game face on.....

Arga wrote:

I think it more likely that no one would be able to defend an outpost.

Let's hope not. Then like you said before there would be no reason to even have one....

John 3:16 - Timothy 2:23

58 (edited by Burial 2012-03-09 01:30:05)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

1 per corp per island is really unnessecary imo. Really easy to counter the restriction, just bothersome. Wouldnt it be better to have them perhaps one per area? Or just as many as one possebly could fit so they are some thousands of km apart from each other? That way there would be enought space between them while proper restricion radius would keep the count as low as needed.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Gremrod wrote:
Arga wrote:

I think it more likely that no one would be able to defend an outpost.

Let's hope not. Then like you said before there would be no reason to even have one....

I just want to clarify, this is based on Zoom's feedback about outposts being 'hard-core' and requiring 24/7 defending and having no timer based gating on the defense.

The range of the turrets (Dps or Neut) is going to play a big role. If a sniper group can sit outside of the turrets range, and all they have to do is retarget the next structure, then I would say that is exactly like mining, with the same danger element, and not a 'great' acheivement. Even if they keep at it for hours, miners already do this for no extra reward at the end; so, No. If taking an outpost requires a combat pilot to sit there for 6 hours, they don't really 'deserve' to be rewarded with destroying the main terminal, just for putting in 'time'.

If a real battle, with players on both sides, takes 6 hours... then yes, the winner of that has accomplished something. And that also ties in with Zoom saying it should be defeneded 24/7, in which case; Yes.

tl-dr again; Auto-defenses are, and should be, simply supplemental defense to players. There's going to have to be some huge reward for forming a corp that can defend 24/7 though, as anything less without timers will be impossible to defend.

60

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Now that people are talking about reward I want to mention the reward of the attacker is that they erased some other corps name off the MAP and maybe killed some of them in the process. just like most other PVP the reward is in the fight and excitement of killing stuff drops are just a bonus.

I think that what ever the terminal drops should be icing on the cake the the driving factor behind destroying the terminal. I will surely be hunting terminals just for the sure fun of it.


PS> DEVS please make sure to allow turrets to be drained and neuted  cool

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

Tux wrote:

PS> DEVS please make sure to allow turrets to be drained and neuted  cool

Im pretty sure CRM mentioned this on IRC.

Looking forward to new players and new conflicts.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

I see some very valid arguements on both sides here. As always, it is the Devs' choice as to what actually gets done. However, while I may be too late in voicing my opinion, I have an idea that could very well apeal to both the attackers AND defenders: PBS Customization

As we currently do with our pimped out rides (aka robots), allow owners of PBS to customize the static defense statistics (armor, resistances, etc) with a 'plug-in' interface similar to the 'bot fitting panel. This would have several benefits for both sides:

1) Owners could beef up one or more (skill based) resistances to the structures (can be a per-structure rule or 'anything attached to main terminal' rule), but at a loss of resistance to other areas - ie: adding a thermal resistance plate could up thermal by 40%, but reduced kinetic by 20% or whatever...

2) Same would go for the base's weaponry - make it ammunition based damage, not some generic, all-around damage that can be pre-determined and tanked for. This way, you could have several guns doing kinetic damage, missile turrents doing seismic, and a few large guns doing thermal. If tactically engaged correctly, this could be dealt with by an attacking force, but NOT head on, and NOT with the standard 'brute force' methods used in every single mmo in the world.

My point here is: You are at a stage in the development of Perpetuum that you chose to either make this a UNIQUE game or a cut-n-paste combination of the other 3 or 4 GOOD games out there. By sticking to the standard styles of PVP, I feel that you will end up with yet another attempt at eve with bots :-/. You had a good start with the skill aquisition plan - I dont need to worry that I am going to be away for a week - the points will accrue and I can spend those when I get home. I hope to see further uniqueness in the PVP path you take - make _me_ WANT to pvp, or at least own a PBS.

63

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Sundial wrote:
Tux wrote:

PS> DEVS please make sure to allow turrets to be drained and neuted  cool

Im pretty sure CRM mentioned this on IRC.

funny you bring that up, because as much time as the Devs spend in IRC they sure dont make an effort to spend the same amount of time IN game. i really want to know what their issue is. They use a live chat like IRC but cant do the same IN game (also a live chat) .. .

good stuff 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.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

im not sure that this system will work. but sure i will be willing to give it a try.

if i compare it to STeve. even with the reinforce timer of a pos (and there is way less at stake with a pos then with a loot filled outpost). it often took quite a while with your dreads to take down a pos. and when groups get bigger the times for you to shoot/bomb down a outpost will decrease. so either the ppl will complain that it takes half a day to bring that down with massive numbers. and even if it works it will be not enough reaction time of any holding corp if its not on their timezone.
and in the same way for the holding corp it will not be worth risking to build an (most likely) expensive outpost and store thinds even more worth in it, just to see it gone when they log in the next day (or few days).

the only way i see it that you will not need to attack for hours and hours and still have enough time to strenghen your defences and prepare for an attack.

1. the attacks have to be multible ones in a big time frame to get a outposts down. no shooting or bombing over hours.
2. the time frame has to be big enough so that the holding corp has enough time to react. this is in my opinion 7-14 days compared with what is at stake with an outpost.

in my opinion it will be hard to be able to achief this with a system. i havent given it too much thought, but i think you will need a multible layered reinforce state.

lets say the outpost facilities and buildings are shielded.
at first only the first layer of defence is vunrable, so you can attack it till the reinforce comes in. when you come back the second layer is vunrable and so on. with this you dont have to shoot 20trillion hps down that i think you would need to get a "save enough" outpost to store anything in it. so each attack is limited in the time you will need (if you breached the active defences, may it be turrets or may it be players defending). but you will need a lot of these sucessfull attacks, so you cant take an outpost within a few hours or even a few days.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

the other thing i have thought of:
everyone is talking about destroying the enemy outpost. will there be any ways to capture one???

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Syrissa: we could still have a timer in that system for the main terminal after it becomes vulnerable for added security. But I don't think we can or should put a timer on the whole base with all its buildings. Shooting a shield or whatever for several days only to get halted by an arbitrary stop sign every now and then without achieving anything meaningful doesn't sound very fun. And then you would still have the very same problem of balancing building HP and all that, with the added problem of balancing the timers themselves.

Capturing parts of another network will be possible. If you manage to bring a building or a whole part of a network offline, you can connect it to your own network using the control towers you can see in the example image on the blog. Capturing another main terminal however is not possible, at least we don't have a valid concept for it.

67 (edited by Syrissa 2012-03-09 11:34:07)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

@zoom
just giving my concerns about it...

- outposts have to be save enough
- attacking outposts should not end in endless shooting or bombing

...

maybe i could have kept that shorter.

but in general i like your idea of the networks.

68 (edited by MrCeeJ 2012-03-09 12:28:23)

Re: PBS Blog discussion

DEV Zoom wrote:

The basic issue here is (and always has been) the number of attackers, which we have no control over. We have to find a reasonable value for building armor HPs, the cycle time of repairers, how much energy they consume, how hard the turrets hit, and so on.

This is the issue. and I think you can solve it using the same way the EP system works, with exponential diminishing returns.

Since you can't build a PBS system that works well now and still works with 10* or 50* the server population, you will have to leave that balancing to the players themselves.

If you are allowed to add an unlimited number of armour plates to a structure, but each one adds a diminishing number of hitpoints then each corp will work on a balance between the armour of each building, the redundancy in their network, the risk of being attacked and their ability to defend.

If you have a large corp with a big 'off time' then you can pump more resources into defending it during your off time, if your corp is smaller but has 24/7 activity you could defend with less.

There will be corps/alliances that are too small or with too little coverage to be able to defend, but that is the way it goes.

I think the walls show a way of doing it: The 'proper' way to break through is to use a bomb, but this is expensive and requires cargo capacity so requires some logistics and planning. The 'cheap' way of doing it is to hit it with a mech, this requires an error on the defenders part of leaving something targetable on the other side, and will be totally countered by a compiler bot or repair drone on the part of the defenders. The 'fail' way is to spend a few weeks shooting it with a light bot and hopefully you can get through eventually.

So for PBS the 'proper' way to take a base is to build your own control structures and slowly invade their network, cutting ties and converting buildings. This requires a lot of planning, coordination and investment.

The cheap way is to turn up with a bunch of mechs and blow up all their reactors, and who cares what the fail way is. The important thing is that the cheap way should not be too cheap (c.f. the wall resistance change) to be able to circumvent the defences, and that people with off time zone vulnerabilities are given the opportunity to compensate for them with additional (excessive?) expenditure.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

DEV Zoom wrote:

The basic issue here is (and always has been) the number of attackers, which we have no control over. We have to find a reasonable value for building armor HPs, the cycle time of repairers, how much energy they consume, how hard the turrets hit, and so on.

Lets begin from a beginning: this numbers (building armor HPs, the cycle time of repairers, how much energy they consume, how hard the turrets hit, and so on) should help to protect your base from a certain size of attackers. The main task of devs should be to protect your time and efforts, what you invested in your base, against server-wide blob.

You can understand this issue when you imagine how intermediate corp building its own base for a month, but loosing it for a 10 minutes because of insane DPS from server-blob focus.

In my opinion, PBS should basically reflect game mechanics at all, so there should be 3 types of defense: passive on early game (plates with diminished returns), active on mid game (previous one + repair system) and shield on end game.

Shield should be an ultimate defense, but it will work not long because of insane energy consumption.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

@Zoom

Can PBS have maskers?

John 3:16 - Timothy 2:23

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Gremrod wrote:

Can PBS have maskers?

Probably, we haven't planned for that though. However you bring up an interesting topic, because we needed to decide whether pbs terminals would show up on the world map or not. If they do, that would probably be too much strategic information for the enemy, and if they don't, we rule out the possibility of running publicly available trading hubs and similar enterprises. Also it would be very nice if the map could show occupied territories for every corporation, perhaps with the color of their choice, but this rules out completely hidden pbs bases.

For now we have decided to have it optional, you can show off your e-peen/occupied area to the public, if you want. This will only show your little country, not the types of buildings, however if you place your buildings far from each other without overlapping, their typical occupation radiuses could give away their type too.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

... ???

Can you clarify this.

Currently, you can see graphically see outposts from much further away then what they show up on the landmarks. Will PBS be more like plants or walls in this respect, not able to physically view them until closer to 500m or so, even if they do show on the landmarks at 1k?

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Sorry, I was only talking about the world map, not the terrain. But there I'd say they should be visible depending on their size, the main terminal from further away, and for example turrets only at a closer distance.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

It makes sense it would be visible from farther away, but it does basically negate any attempts at masking as a way of security though obscurity, which is what I think Grem was going for.

For instance, you can see any outpost clearly now from across the entire Island (without a mountain in the way). Not putting the outposts on the map will keep casual players from knowing where you are, but any corp that would pose a threat to an outpost will simply roam the few gamma islands and know there is a base there.

This is neither a good or bad thing, simply that unless there were going to be hundreds of gamma islands, masking an entire outpost againt detection isn't necessary. The setup and deployment time of bases doesn't lend itself to an RTS type strategy of hiding your base until it becomes defenseable. Corps are going to need players online to do it.

Being able to mask turrets and probes is much more functionally relevant.

Re: PBS Blog discussion

Arga wrote:

For instance, you can see any outpost clearly now from across the entire Island (without a mountain in the way).

Well, on gamma you'll be able to put a mountain in the way lol