Bring more mentality is fine with me if the server can handle it. Penalising corporations for picking up new guys is not good for any game.

I do have one suggestion which may not go over so well with some, but will be helpful to combat one problem I see. Its the issue of boxed healers or dragging of alts to be switched over to once their main is dead, if necessary. Its obvious that the majority of beta peeps are multiboxing, which is not helping matters.

Squads limited to 10 agents
Leaving game will automatically boot you from a squad (leadership needs to be autopassed)
I feel like approach (auto follow) needs looking at somehow. Its handy for dragging an afk friend or alt around, but when its dragging multiple alts around in a laggy battle it becomes a problem for everyone. Disrupted when target is in combat? I mean, who really uses it to approach an enemy anyway?

This will lead to pvp requiring more organisation (no more noob blobs) and will help keep multiboxing honest.

Nexus modules will need a boost to compensate for their relative nerf though. I think they need a boost to be more attractive and coupled with smaller squads would really make the role of "squad leader" a real career option and definite role in combat, or atleast something for older agents to branch into for more diverstiy.

What this all addds up to is organised specialised squads, tailored for their intended task, rather than everyone in an alliance joining one big blob of mechs, with the "hardcore" dragging along a personal healer or "spare" combat agents. Just my idea to turn a pile of crap into an interesting metagame. It also gives industry folks a more cemented role in pvp, that of an active combat healer, one which is sadly sidelined as a role soley for alts right now.

How much of this is a problem? People multibox scouts, but once you have a squad moving in an engagement I don't see many people dragging an alt around with them.

I think you need to change more fundamental mechanics than squad sizes.

As for the blocking access to beta facilities the devs have said quite categorically that it's not going to happen with the outposts...we have to wait for POS.

The only true way to limit blobs is to limit the number of people allowed in an area. Any solution to discourage blobbing would probably get exploited in unexpected way.

For instance, I was wondering if you could discourage it by having a way to destable teleport stations. The more people pass through a teleport in one direction, the more it destabilises until it can't be used and needs to be repaired. However, people would just bring repair kits, or extra people (read: multiboxed alts) to jump through in the opposite direction which would probably make traffic worse....or people would deliberate use it as a griefing tactic against smaller corps.

Somehow limiting the number of people who can target a single unit would be one idea. Rationale behind it could be something along the lines of "There is too much interference for your targetting system to lock on" or something. However, this would be easy to exploit by having X number of friendlies lock onto the said target, and that would be a big issue. If there were some way around this, it might encourage smaller groups. Or, it would just make people learn to call targets better.

I like the idea of limiting squad size. Perhaps make the size relational to some skill located under the.. (sorry at work, cant remember the name) teamwork/leadership extensions. Everyone starts with a 5 person squad ability, then each level adds 2 more members, for a total of a 25 member squad. This wouldn't really prevent zergs though, since you could just run multiple squads without too much trouble.

Or, along the same lines as the targeting thing, maybe the more people in your immediate vicinity the longer it takes to lock onto targets (due to some sort of interference) but, this could also be easily exploited by a huge group vs a small group, as everybodies lock times would increase and not just the larger group.

I don't think we will ever see a "roving band of 100 people" walking around beta island solely looking for PVP targets. I think this will only be an issue during schedule corp combat.

I've only participated once (in the battle that crashed all of M2S).. but, having multiple objectives that must be completed and defended simultaneously, fairly spread apart, would not stop a corp from amassing 150 people.. but it might at least split that 150 up into 5 smaller groups. Having say, 7 objectives, and the first to either defend/capture 4 of the 7 is declared the winner.. vs 1 defense as it is now. Or maybe 3 defenses to win and 4 captures to win. Shrug.

Anything that somehow limits a "blob" will be exploitable in some fashion I think, unless that blob can be split up.

Just my thoughts.

Clearly limiting access to lvl 3 facilities and binding to stations would help soften the ties between island cuddlebunnies. I am not suggesting people are locked out of outposts. Assignments would still be open too all with relevant rep.

Would it be possible to have the extra bonus of the lvl 3 facility only available to corp members, I wonder? So anyone can use them, but only the owners recieve the extra 10% bonus? Thats how I would do it.

As for the squad size limitation. Its a sneaky way of discouraging people from just dragging along all they can muster. Well thought out spec groups will be more effective than cobbled together blobs. Its a way for smaller, more organised corps to be more effective pound for pound than a mass of drooling idiots. Even something as simple as getting effective squads of 10 together when you have 100+ people and alts is a big undertaking, especially if you don't have extremely competant people to do it.

I considered suggesting limiting remote repair and energy transfers to squdmates only, but it would probably be more annoying than anything, having a buddy next to you dying and not being able to heal him because of a bandaid fix. it would be enough that they can not automatically see the health off 100+ alliance members without targetting them or getting a call for ehals over chat or coms.

It looks as if Perpetuum is headed the same way as EVE went.  Blobs and zergs rule.

  With the weapons and technology that we are using, I can think of a couple ways to severely discourage blobbing and zerging.

  1) Cluster Munitions - basically area effect weapons.

  2) Viral electronic warfare which feeds off linked commo channels.  If you have 10 people on team A and 40 people on team B, and any of those players are hit by the viral attack would spread the attack to their teammates.  Every mech is affected if any of them are successfully affected.  The more mechs on a team that are affected, the worse the effects would be.  At 10 players, targeting times would be extended maybe, at 20, you might lose lock on existing targets, at 30 you might have your targeting range significantly reduced, at 40, you might simply be unable to target anything.  At 50 all of your equipment stops functioning.  At 60 your mech might move at half speed.

  The same might hold true for corps or alliance, not just teams.  If you get too many people together in one place, and they are linked by team, corp, or alliance, one hit could bring a zerg to it's knees.

  This would be a mighty potent discouragement.

  It might be appropriate to allow some mitigation of this effect with modules, but the modules would need to be difficult to fit, and NOT fit in an aske at all.

merged topics

Yup I thought of that and was trying to hink of how to prevent it.  The only thing I can think of would be to make it so that if a bot's weapon misfires, it will target the nearest bot that does not share a communications channel with the misfiring bot.  If that bot is not an enemy, it will do enhanced damage due to defenses not being prepared for an attack from that angle.

This would cause a pretty significant number of friendly fire incidents in a zerg or blob situation where there are several small teams operating, especially with low skill pilots.  With high skill pilots, there would be fewer misfires, but the ones that do happen would probably hurt a lot more.

What about adding a friendly fire aspect?

Edit: It would require some sort of targeting cone like 90 degrees in the direction of your target. It actually could be expanded to every bot in your way.

Well not entirely...Missiles have a different LOS so it would boost missile bots to damn near OP status. But introducing some sort of mechanic that causes you to miss your target by X% or something Dependant on the number of bots between you and your target would force people to have to pick targets closer to them or risk missing...or if we want to go this far....hitting someone else

They won't be adding los.

How about something simple that fits the lore.

We're controlling robots by satellite. The more concentration in an area the weaker the signal due to interference. Add some negative penalties for that.

I'll leave the specifics up to the devs.

It's really tough to limit player participation in these battles in a single shard open server.

As much as I don't like instances perhapes what is needed to add some diversity to these battles instead of just blobbing bases to win.

Maybe they need to add a Strike forces type aspect to them. Instanced battles that take place inside the station with a player cap. You'd still need to manage to take certain objectives in the open world to fully take control of a station. But add an instanced battle over say a control module within the station. Say 5 on 5 for arguments sake.

Set it up where you can only access it from one point for attackers and as players die in the instance other attackers can jump in and take their place and the same for the defenders.

I donno I'm just posting this as it pops into my head

Regarding people bringing lots of people to a fight, I think this should be completely regulated by the players and the longterm solution is one of politics.

You can form a super zerg and take a outpost, but you risk angering the rest of the server, see Axe in the current climate.  All of the leaders I spoke to outside of the Axe alliance were very upset that Axe had basically forced the rest of the major corps of the server to form large-ish alliances to be able to defend, I think everyone would have been happy for quite awhile running solo or with a few select allies.

I see it evolving more like shadowbane than eve politically, there are only a few powerblocs at this point due to the scarcity of outposts, so if you want to operate on beta you need to join up with one or form a new one(not easy).  Anyone who forms a zerg significantly larger than the other powerblocs is going to be "the enemy" of the other 2.  In this way it is almost like Daoc's RvR faction system and seems to almost balance well...