As promised at the dev-player meeting yesterady i will post here quite a few things and ideas. This will be long but it might be worth reading it. If you dont read it to its full content then pls do not comment. Thank you very much.

Risk vs Reward for gamma

We all agreed that we need mor stuff to do on gamma. Especially the pve part is not very persent there atm. There are various ways to improve that and here are just a few ideas. But there has to be more stuff to do on gamma.

Random spawns:
Random spawn would beasicly similar to the spawns at alpha and beta. Some groups that spawn at a place and you can shoot them. Of cource this is gamma so it should be not too easy and be ment for higher skilled pilots. On the other hand it might be a good option to also have some lower tier content there so that you can love with your corp there even if you are not a old veteran.
The spawns themselves can not be static like they are on anpha/beta. Of cource because ppl want to terraform and build bases and static spawns will limit that too much. So what i suggest is a similar to the ore field mechanic. The spawns are either there for a specific time (days/weeks/whatever) and then change the location and maybe even its type. Or it can have a limited number of bots that can spawn there (of cource should last for more then half a hour) and after its „empty“ it will despawn and a new spawn will aprear somewere on the island.

Roaming NPCs:
roaming squads are a good addition, but not for the main purpose. People want to kill things, they dont want to spend most of the time searching for things to kill. On the other hand roaming gamgs are good if, and only if they are worth the effort. Take observers for example. Thats the thing that is worth tracking it down. And then it is not that important that its a long way and that there are not present all the time. On the other hand i think observers could be more present there. Just Standard npcs T5 will shurly be totaly not intresting for gamma. There are better spawns on beta for that.

Bringing miners and pve together!
An idea i had quite some time ago, and i think i have brought that up already somewhere. People like to play together and why not give the miners and the farmers a reason to do stuff together.
My idea is a overcharge mode for the mining towers. With this activated you will get a bonuson mineral extraction for the miners. But this will trigger the attention of the „native population“ and there will spawn bots that will attack everything they can find. Thats where the pve ppl come in. You also could add that this will get harder and more rewaring the longer it runs. And maybe with some hardcore ending if you are able to stand it. You will be able to turn the overcharge mechnism off anytime if you want and with that cancel the spawning of new enemies and the minin bonus. That ppl will not overuse this and make too many out of this you can limit numbers how often you can use that per outpost or even per island within a certain timeframe (what ever that will be. 3 times a hour, or once a day).

Industry NPCs
well on the alpha and beta islands industrial npcs are quite rare. That is one reason why the industrial reasearch like T4 med miners are still a rare sight. So this might be in the view of risk vs reward that there will be spwens of indusrial bot on gamma. This is defenetly something the players will have a intrest in when you can farm golden mech and heavy mech kernels there...

NPCs in general.
I admit that T5 npcs are not that bad. But i would suggest and hope that there will be better and special npcs on gamma as well. Dont ask me what it has to be. But there should be different stuff. They dont have to drop T6 kernels, but a increased droprate for kernels will be appreciated. Of cource they should have improved loot...

Colixum
colixum should not only be a thing you need for a scarb mk2 or more buildings on gamma. This should be the high ore that all the ppl living on alpha want to have because they can get their shiny stuff with this...
there has to be a need for the expensive stuff on alpha so that ppl on gamma will get that and can sell it on alpha. On the other hand ppl anc mine a lot of stuff in savety on alpha. Especially the low ores... so there can be a trade between these regions. (yes i dont like to compare it... but take a look at STeve.)

Better means of transportation
we have pointed that out more then often enough. Yes we are gratefull for the scarab, but if you want trade to happen with resources then we need a transporter that is up to that job. And a factor 2 to the scarb will not do. even factor 10 will be too small... im talking about beeing able to move something around the line of 50000 to 100000 Us of material (yes volume). Without that noone will bother to move that kind of stuff though „hostile terretorry“ in too small bots (scarab) where you often need multible loads of them just to transport off what you got in a small mining operation with only a few ppl. Frighter class transportation is direly needed.

Defend your Gamma:

we have pointed out good enough that we need to be able to defend gamma, and i dont want to go though all the points in the meeting again. But one point is important to me. The defenders must always have the advatage in this. Atm its always at the advatage of the attackers.
You have to spend bilions of nic to build something and the attacker only need a litte bit to punch a hole in it. This has to change. Either the effort and nic involved have to be around the same line, or they can go with the choke points the defendes have set up...

Its all about choke points.
You can not defend a base at a 360° radius. This will take way too many resources and is not a good idea at all. I played myself with a idea of a fortress of a octagon in the middle of a island but soon scrabed that. You need choke ounts to defend yourself and you have to use what you can. Im am heavily against any form of building or terraforming restriction around the coast line because this will totaly negate any advatage that you can get from the layout of a island. The only option you then have left is a 360° radius of base defense.

So basicly we have the tool of terraforming at our hand that we can use to create choke points for the defendes to force the attackers to take a disadvatage. Atm this does not realy work because we can build a imense terraformed superstructure (i think you know what i mean) that costs bilions of nic and take enourmous amount of effort to build, just for the attackes to breach it in no time at its weakest part and be inside. Turrets might shoot in all directions, but the defensive terraforming and the building placement are one unit, and if you breach the line the defeses will no longer be effective. So the only thing that will work is to keep the attackers outside.

Terraforming restrictions
my first idea of cource was that you can not terraform in a radius around enemy buildings. That would be nice but is way too powerful because the defendes could wall themselves in and no attacker would have a chance breaking in it. So this is a no go.
On the other hand it can be made harder for them. You dont have to restrict them totaly from terraforming, but you can reduse the effect of terraformer if you are in a cetain radius of a enemy building. Of cource this as to be significant. This will slow down any attacker trying to terraform. So this will give defenders time, and also will drasticly increase the costs for the attackers. Could also work with the attacker need other charges around enemy buildings to further increase the costs for them.

I cant tell you if this is the right way but we need mechanism that makes it hard for the attackers to breach a defensive structure. There were some other intresting ideas that might be worth looking ito it on the forums after the meeting.

Last notice on terraforming: did you fix the issue that the terraforming via beacon charger will often not go accoring to the plan in some cases?

General terraforming
In general i think the costs has to be lower so that terraforming your base will be more a issue of your creativity and work you want to put in there then a issue of your purse.
A important thing i see and that greatly annoyed me are the building plans. First make them a bit bigger. Lets say double the length (4x size of current max). Second remove the costs of them. Its anoying to pay for the options to draw a few lines. Third remove the time limit and the fee to keep the plan alive. If i put a lot of effort into a plan then i dont wnat it to disapear or just repay perodicly just to keep it so i can for example fix damage that was done... ppl want to play the game and they dont want to be annoyed. Leave the costs where they do belong and that is the process itself. Thank you very much.

Structures:

as i have pointed out in the meeting i personaly think they are still too week and have too many ways were you can counter them. But im not going into stats like they need more hp/resists/dps/range … or whatever

But i have some other ideas how the defense can be improved.

Defense Tower
the defense tower will be a commad post for the turrets. Here you can set options for them.
Unmaned mode:
in unmaned mode you can set priority for targets. There have to be a lot of them. Like priority of bot types, priority for shielded targets, ranges, and so on and so on... the more options we have here the better it is. Of cource you can make presets and change them just as you see fit. Also in the battle. Basicly this is a way to make a AI setup for your turrets... you could also have different setups for different types of turrets even if they are linked to the same defense tower.
Maned mode:
any person who has access to the colony network can acces it. (even better if you can assighn even a group of ppl outside of your corp for this... just like in the terraforming plans.)
when you are in this you are in freeflight mode with very high detection. Lets say 3000+ meter range of seeing everything. And you can assighn 10 primary targets for the turrets. That should also be visualised to everybody in the squad so that this also can work as some kind of fleet command. Also you should be able to place one taarget marker on a enemy bot. For this of cource the tower has to lock onto the target what you can do once you are „in it“.
For the mechanics themselves:
Of couce you cant do that with a connection to the turrets because the incomming conections of the turrets are needed for other things. But turrets also have outgoing connections. So you can link the turrets to the defensive tower instead the other way around. Would need a increase in the connection radius (1000-1500m) but as long as this link is no command link then there should be no problem.

Energy grit
to be frank here: i dont like it atm. For basicly two reasons.
First the costs. Atm your energy production facility (reactor) is not that expensive, but the pipelines that are bringing the energy to your structures cost multible times as much as the powerplant itself. This has to be changed. The main cost should be the power creation and the buildings that will need the power, but atm the energy transfer structures are way too expensive.

The second thing i dont like is that you are too limited how you can build your energy distribution net. You limit us in the range, you limit us in how much energy one building can transfer out, and you limit us in how much lines we can put into one buildings, and i think these parts are all fine. The thing where is see way too much restrictions is in the number of outgoing connections of them. Atm in most cases you just need a lot of these structures, not because you need to transfer more energy, just because you only can link too few structures from a node. And you have in most cases a lot structures of a full base...
the bottleneck should be your power, not how to get it where it is needed there. Also the current system prevents any creative way to set up your energy grit. There were some intresting things in your first blog about that but with this restrction on the buildings it makes basicly no sense to use anything like that. For that we need more outgoing connections, and im not talking about one ore two more. I also think that the outgoing connections should not increase with the tech level... just the ammount that can be transferd and the range should be the boni.

Transmitter node:
it can transfer a realively small amount of enrgy but there are also a lot of buildings that are needed in a large number that dont need that much energy. 3-5 outgoing connection for a transmitter node basicly means that you will need tons of them, and you will never reach the potentioal that they could transfer with most of them.

Backbone:
2-3 outgoing connections atm mean that you can only transfer your energy to a battery because wehn you link it to transmitte rnodes then you will have a big waste of the potential and you can still connect it to too few to power anything. You will basicly need a array of them were they transfer energy from one to the next and then use a few outgoings to the transmitter. If you do this till the max power output of your reactor is reached then you will have been able to build quite a bunch of more reactors from that. The only usefull job for the backbone is atm „long“ range transfer to a battery.

Battery:
batteries are atm the only useful way to fuel transmitter nodes because they have 5-7 outgoing connections. But they have the disadvantage that they burn 30% of you energy just for nothing.
(question just to conform this: i think and hope that it means that they will burn 30% more energy and not that they can transfer only 70% of what is in the discription). In my opinion a battery should be a option to cutting corners and save some nic or resources then you can charge multibel batteries with a reactor if you have enough time. You you have the risk that this stored energy will not be enough when needed. Not the only way to spread the energy around.

My solution to this would be:
increase reactor cost
reduce the costs of the other 3 buildings aslo drasticly (factor 8-10)
increase outgoing connections of transmitter nodes to 20
increase outgoing connections of backbones to 7
increase outgoing connections of batteries to 10

this will allow for crative ways for the players to build their energy infrastructure without beeing too limited by the insane costs for a few wires. This will encourage redundant systems and other creative solutions also as useing your energy in efficient ways.

Repair nodes
they got buffed and that was good so, but i think that there still is some things that should be changed.
first they require too much energy.
second they need more outgoing connections because i dont want to live in a field or repair nodes...
third... think we had that problem earlier... they are too expensive.

Walls and gates
Last thing is a suggestion, but not a new idea. would be some nice idea will be energy walls and gates. Old ppl might remember something from older command an conquer titles. Basicly you build a node and you can link it to anothe rone in range. Then there will be formed a unpasable(and unterraformable) barrier in between them. Also some kind of gate will be usefull.. that will block the way for enemy bots, but of cource can be destroyed.
All of thses energy walls and gates will of cource require quite a bit of energy...

so after three hours + i defenetly am done with typing for today. There may be tons of spelling and garmmar errors in there but i will not go over it today again...

tl;dr
there is no tl;dr this is a lot of stuff and a lot of points... no way to shorten that down taht much. Read it or leave it.
If you want to dicuss anything of this with me, may it be the devs or any other player just feel free to do so. but i would prefer not to type that much... voice coms prefered...

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