It's old now really.

I find the Gallow glass view interesting. Odd to see where the anger has cone from as the only occupied outpost ever attacked by the alliance was m2s' who's stated aim was to own every station. The basis of the whole thing was simply to create a way for the islands to be occupied without people having to deal with getting camped all day like n-a had to. It was a reaction rather than an action. That was my basis for the ill advised idea to be able to shoot each other off island so we kept things interesting, an idea since dropped.

Sorry to hear we got it so wrong the corps we were trying to help felt it neccesarry to join the problem. It has to be said that the powerblock ideal has occupied the islands far more than they ever were.

How about a temporary stacking resistance against the damage types?

If you get hit by thermal damage then for you get some extra resistance ( besides normal resistance ) against the next thermal damage. This resistance would gradually decrease with a set number per second. The amount of resistance would be based on the amount of damage taken compared to your maximum armor. Weapons firing at exactly the same time ( by pressing space ) only apply the resistance after all shots hit.

So for example a bot loses 10% hp from a thermal shot. After this it would gain a flat 25% decrease to the next thermal damage. This resistance would gradually decrease by say 10% per second. So if it was hit by another bot with the same strength thermal shot it would only lose 7,5% hp. This in turn would boost it's thermal resistance again by say 18,75% for a total of 43,75%.

The precise percentages would have to be changed but the end goal is that there will be diminishing returns for every extra bot firing at a target. So that 20 people wouldn't be twice as strong as 10 people, but only say 1,5 times as strong. The result would hopefully be that the extra coordination needed for an additional person would eventually outweigh the benefit of the damage they bring.

A big organised corp could still bring a large squad and with proper coordination and multiple target calling wreak havoc, but with lesser organisation you'd be limiting your effectiveness and thus giving smaller but more organised groups a chance.

It would also be a self-balancing mechanism if one race is stronger then the others. Each race does a majority of one damage type, so that damage type would be most used and thus the stacking resistances the highest. Thus other races would be more welcome in squads to add more variety to damage types. In the end the optimal group wouldn't be one with only the FotM race but instead one with a slight majority of FotM but still a decent representation of other races.

Lore/Physics wise the explanation would be simple. If your armor has been recently superheated by thermal damage then additional heating will have a reduced effect. If your armor and the underlying systems are already punctured by kinetic damage then additional kinetic damage will need to be much stronger to penetrate deep enough to hit the next row of internal systems. If your armor is already a compressed mess from seismic explosions then additional explosions will need more force to do an equal amount of damage. And adding more corrosive chemicals to an area that's already covered in them wouldn't do that much additional damage.

what about a straight up negative effect? the more people you have, the more effect you get. Make it simple, and to the point, like a targeting delay, or vision issue, and increase the effect as the number of players on a field increases. fit it into the lore or whatever you want that can be easily done after the fact, but don't get too fancy with it. The idea of making something that can't be countered is the only viable option, or you'll simply find a way around it.

The other issue then is "what is the optimal gang size?" and would it be an effect where you could simply make another gang and avoid the penalty, keeping the same number of people on the field, or would it be based on the number of people in close proximity.

The proximity method is the best I think, might also serve to poke some carebears off of their comfy alpha islands, which should go full PVP when the infinite buy orders are dropped btw.

The only thing that makes sense is collision and true Los. I would hold off on collision causing damage and Los although stopping weapons should not initially cause them damage but it just makes sense.

If you add into this terraforming you would increase the skill element of choosing your ground and working as a team and unskilled megablobs and people sitting on saps would be counterproductive after certain numbers.

There's not enough *** pvp on these *** pvp islands.

Arkhes should only spawn on Alpha islands. Only way you should be allowed to spawn on Beta is if you have a light bot or better in the terminal where you are homed.

Arkhe's shouldn't be effective at anything other than killing starter drones. Period.

This can be achieved by making it so that Arkhe's can only fit SynTec equipment, create a new ammo type that can only be used in syntec guns / have syn tec equip not use ammo at all then reduce the overall damage by 100x along with the drone hp by 100x.

Think it's time to set up a skype group with this intention as the beta group seems to have got their splitting just right.

Simple solution. The more people closer together the higher a negative effect is applied until the close together people are unable to move or shoot. Something like that.

LOS being blocked by other robots would be very good but probably hard to code and very bad for the server. Collisions would also *** the server further. Limiting locking targets would be hard to make exploitable as friendly would all lock each other.

Blobbing should be allowed but it should have a negative effect to all players in the blob. The effect doesn't matter as long as it's negative.

You are holding the gun at the wrong end.

Blobbling is not the root of the problem you have to fix, it is a symptom.

First of all, blobbing is inevitable. Ever since humanity started to wage wars, they always tried to bring more force than what the enemy had, simply to increase chances of victory. You might be able to forge arbitrary limitations that reduce / discourage blobbing, but it will always feel artificial and it will be very hard to come up with a system that works fair under all circumstances or even just in the majority of cases.

Why is blobbing so appearent in this game? Because of its size. I will draw some EVE analogies, so if you do not like those, then stop reading. I use EVE as an example, as it is pretty much what perp aims to be when it comes to open world pvp.

What we have in perp right now, 3 alpha and 3 beta islands is ridiculously small and way too big at the same time. Small, as the number of access points to/from each island is about the same than the average number of jump gates in a system from eve, except that in EVE, you have 8-10 times the systems in a single region, then you have islands in perp, and theres plenty of regions, not to mention, that the regions im talking about are 100% pvp zones, while perp is only 50% pvp right now, with 3 islands being pve only.

There is a lack of choke points in the game, which makes it hard to set up ambushes and absurdly easy to set up blockades (be it for attack or defense)

On the other hand however, the islands seem large, mostly because the lack of fast travel and the difficulties of getting around the various plants / elevation. In EVE, systems are huge, but you travel from point to point using a fast travel mechanism called warping. This means that you:
- Do not have to press W, or use auto move AND
- Do not have to actively dodge the grass that keeps growing everywhere and that you can't even clear out of the way in most cases.

So I spend comparable time travelling in perp, as i spend in eve when i try to get from point A to point B, except that in the case of EVE, travel itself is lengthy but does not require active attention, not to mention the presence of an autopilot. In PERP on the other hand travel takes just as long, but it is also tiring and requires me actively focusing on it if i do not want to get stuck on a tree. (or have auto move turn off because of a lag spike)

Another effect of the low number of islands is corporation dominance. In EVE, you have many many small groups or even single persons out in 0.0, because it is vast and even though territory might be claimed, it is large enough so it can't be effeciently patrolled all the time. With mere 3 islands, that is impossible here. If you - as a single person, or even just a small group - would want to go out there to do something, you would inside an hour bump into one of the entities claiming that island, that is, if you manage to get past the people usually guarding the teleporters leading onto the island. If you do not want to see blobs, you first have to see small groups making their way into beta, which you will simply not see in the current setup.

Yet another problem of beta as it is now.. uniformity. The three beta islands are more or less the same, except for the missions and the primary faction of NPCs you encounter there. There is no good beta and better beta, or bad beta and worse beta. There is just beta numero uno, two, and drei. Thats about the only difference you have between the current beta islands. There should be islands that are richer than others, islands that have no outposts at all, islands that have good spawns and islands that just suck (but are still better than alpha islands.

To sum it up:
1) More beta islands would be needed, each with only one type of outpost and no freakin terminals.
2) Add islands without outposts or terminals, but generally being a lot better than stadard beta islands. Let's call them gamma islands. These should only be accessible from beta islands.
3) Introduce a fast travel network that allows you to move from teleporter to teleporter without having to run through half the island in the process. The distance between the main teleporters and the terminals on alpha stations would be a decent mean distance to travel between each 'jump', allowing for some decent fights around teleport gates, but still allowing travel at a decent speed inbetween teleports. This option only really works out, if you increase the number of teleport nodes to go through by quite a lot.

Generally speaking, you have to increase the size of the world A LOT. By a lot i mean a lot.. EVE was the size you see today (minus 2-3 regions or so, but thats only about 10-15% of the map size) even when the PCU was less than 3000, and guess what.. we still managed to bump into eachother quite regularly.. If you want an epic game, you have to present an epic world first, and perp's just is not big enough for that right now. Not by a long shot.

Compared to EVE, Perp is as if we would be constrained to 6 adjoining star systems out of the few thousand that are in that game. I hope you realize how pathetic that looks in scale.

I was discussing this on teamspeak the other night, this is a very big problem.  3 chokepoints per island can easily be scouted almost 100% of the time meaning nothing but a large group who is coming with the intention of a fight can really gain access to beta.  Devices that allow groups to teleport to beacons or random places on a island would actually be very cool, anything to bypass the very limited number of island teleports and add some danger to beta, as right now it is actually very safe if you are in the controlling alliance.

Adding more beta islands would also help with this, all the dangerous territory in the game should not be locked down like it is right now, let more people into it who are not part of the major corps out there currently.