1 (edited by Burial 2013-11-16 17:49:23)

Topic: Connect Sparks to relations

I've always had the idea that connecting relations to PVP actions will serve the game good. Basically whenever you are the aggressor and kill someone on some faction island, you loose a percentage from the relations towards that faction. This means that if you are, for example, hunting people on Domhalarn, you will loose standing for that faction and soon you won't be able to spark to blue terminals. If your corporation owns an outpost on blue island, you are fine and can spark even without any standings.

Since now we have faction standings, I believe time is right to connect Sparks to faction standings.

The main focus is that if you go to someones island to PVP there, you will lose nearby spark setting ability. It's not about making newbies life hard with making them grind relations for PVP. It's about making choices. If you choose to hunt people on faction island X, you will loose faction X standings and Spark Teleports. It needs to be balanced so it really means it's not worth it to start grinding the relations up after every battle.

No standings needed for setting sparks in beta outposts your corporation owns!

  • 0.5-2 standings for Alpha1 terminals and outposts

  • 3 for Alpha2 terminals

  • 4-5 standings for Beta1 terminals and outposts

  • 6 standings for Beta2 outposts


Why?
- Nerf to Spark teleportation. You actually need to build your character up for installing good Sparks.
- Nerf PVP Sparking. Don't affect everyone else.

2 (edited by Khetar 2013-11-05 21:03:59)

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

What I get from this..
*make PvP not considerable for anyone who is new, and needs the money and/or tokens from missions
*make it, by this, impossible for new corporations to attack outposts on outposts, since a lot of the PvP guys like to do missions
*make it even easier for defenders to defend outposts

Overall: Sounds like a great change for the game to attract new corps to beta and promote newbie roams, yea.

3 (edited by Burial 2013-11-05 21:50:49)

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

Khetar wrote:

*make PvP not considerable for anyone who is new, and needs the money and/or tokens from missions

They can pick one faction that they grind and two factions that they PVP in. If corporation owns an outpost on said island, they can PVP and defend themselves without any standing hit.

Khetar wrote:

*make it, by this, impossible for new corporations to attack outposts on outposts, since a lot of the PvP guys like to do missions

Missions are available only on three islands of the six. If they are the aggressors, then the only thing that happens for them is that they need more time reaching the island. Once they get an outpost, they can set sparks up regardless of the faction standing.

Khetar wrote:

*make it even easier for defenders to defend outposts

For weaker corporations, it's a good thing. For stronger corporations, it doesn't matter, they are capable anyway.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

If you target a NPC Island, you probably will do so for the mission.
If it takes like a week or something until you got it, your standings will be screwed, making you need to go back to alpha to farm it all up again, ending in double the time needed, which does not make any sense to me.
Yea, right. The stronger corps dont mind, which hold all the betas in the current situation, and they may keep carelessly attacking any outpost since, as you said, they are capable anyway.
Overall just makes the process longer and more painful for new corporations to a) get a beta b) make use of it.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

I don't think it makes a lot of difference for a corporation trying to get an outpost on the island. They know the intrusion time ahead and the extra 15-20 minutes it takes to travel from neighboring faction island, despite not being able to Spark straight to Beta terminal, is not going to decide who is going to get the SAP and who won't.

The only difference will be that attackers will have a harder time scouting islands they don't have outposts on for potential targets. Reason is that if someone is continuously aggressive on some island, he won't be able to Spark close and has to walk.

There is absolutely no difference from the SAP attacking perspective, just gankers will have a harder time.

Anyway, you bring out our current political scene, but you don't see that Beta islands can hold only maximum of 2-3 corporations for the free, without standing loss PVP. Our current alliance consists of 7 corporations. If any of them PVP on an island they don't hold an outpost on, they will be losing standings.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

Khetar, would you willingly start to live on an island you know your enemy can scout in 5 minutes?

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

It makes a huge difference for me if I can just jump over to ICS-B to attack all the SAPs, or got to go and run from Tellesis. On ICS-B I'm right on the field, while when I teleport you may catch me on those, for example, or see me jumping, etc. It's a totally different situation.
I'd say that's the risk when you want to live on a missionisland: The enemy has easy access through the NPC outpost (and should have), which ends in the risk to run missions on beta. There should be a larger risk, otherwise the rewards should be significantly lower.
Well I think a vet has a very much easier time to get his standing back up than a newbie has, even if it's just the time it takes to shoot/mine something, adding up with the relationskills, better equipment, etc..

Yes, I would say that's the whole point of risk in eprimining and living on beta. I don't know how you experienced the game, but when I started out, we were used to vets killing us in our little argano hoards, while we were trying to ninja mine epriton outside of new crimea. I don't see the result being very different from that, it just should stay a danger to be on beta and at the same time, it should be easier accessible for new corporations, to keep the game alive.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

I might be wrong, but I think that's because your main goal is not really getting the outpost but just to generate some PVP. In that case, sure, it helps a lot to get in place fast, but in the case of actually concentrating on one outpost and tring to get it, there's not much difference.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

You are, indeed wrong. We need to take an outpost to be able to mine epriton, since we can not stay in T2 assault bots forever. I just the the big obstacle of getting it, first, which isn't easy in the first place, with SAP times being in the middle of the night/morning for the past days (hard if you don't have both timezones covered) and this would make it even harder.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

while i feel spark tele is a problem with no obvious fix i cannot agree that it being based off standings would do any good. no standings required if corp owns outpost. . . . so the big corps who have outposts already can continue to teleport around and defend. whilst new guys in new corps have an even harder time to get involved in saps. its hard enough as it is.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

even more worse for noobs that neither have the ep for the sparks nor the standing to set them.

i think it will make things just worse.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

This just widens the gap between vets and those catching up , even forcing players to grind missions for easier access to beta is a no go. This totally against the sandbox way, which is what this game is about.

RIP PERPETUUM

13 (edited by Burial 2013-11-08 17:58:49)

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

The main point is that if you are always PVPing on some island, you will not just get that relation up enough to install the higher sparks.

What it basically does is stop everyone from running around Beta terminals killing people and in return it makes life on Beta a lot easier, even for newbies.

In a nutshell it's a nerf to Spark Teleports for those people who use it for PVP.

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

I don't think it would be a good idea to connect PvE and PvP like that, it's kinda like when industrialists had to do combat missions to get relation. If I understand it right then you would be basically penalized for doing PvP on the enemy island since you would have to do missions after every battle to keep your sparks, which would feel like a chore to many people.

15 (edited by Burial 2013-11-16 19:10:21)

Re: Connect Sparks to relations

Fair enough. I understand the idea doesn't really appeal to a lot of people and it's fine. Was just hoping to move peoples minds away from simple hardcoded cooldowns and other restrictions.

Just to answer some points(no need to reply):
* With current Spark(implant) system, you just need the relation once to unlock it and then you can use whenever.
* You can easily PVP on two of the faction islands and grind missions on the third one. All about choices.