Althought the principle of being on Gamma fulltime in order to defend your base is nice, I think some degree of "absent defence" is needed.  The turrets should be powerful enough for them to hold off a moderate force for at least a few hours. Even in EVE with 30-40k players online you still have attacks that take place during your timezone on an enemy who is largely not online because it's not his. In Perp we had/have the same thing, and I never see this changing no matter what the population is. It should require a great investment to build and maintain a Gamma island base, and it should require a decent investment to tear it down (provided it's built intelligently)

Agree with blackomen on this one. Turrets should not be disposable like T1 assault bots... Make them many times more expensive and many times more resilient to fire.

I dont want to setup a POS that feels "disposable". If I wanted a disposable base I would live on beta and put up walls. The fact that killing your main terminal drops all the loot would infer defenses would be balanced around not being disposable as what they are defending is far from it. But here we are 1 week before launch...

I'm not trying to say that the current offense/defense capabilities of the turrets is truely balanced.

However, it's probably good enough to launch with and see.

In general, the question is ultimately going to be

"How big does a corp have to be, to colonize a gamma island?"

The fact that there are turrets in the game AT ALL, means the devs realize that some off tz protection is required, which is also why they changed their minds a couple times on how the terminal protection would work too (it was at one time going to be just straight Armor, with no timer).

Waaait?

This seems like it would cause more qq in the long run, if corps put in 100's of hours and billions of NIC developing a gamma colony, and they are significantly under powered to support it, but the mechanics basically make the colony safe. Once those safeguards are removed, the colony is going to get destroyed in the minimal amount of time needed.

If gamma islands are difficult to hold with small corps, then corps CAN and HAVE allied together to accomplish goals.

Yes, with the population this low, it could end up being only 2 factions out on gamma. But as the population grows, some corps will also grow, and be able to split off, and then we'll have more factions on gamma.

Simply put, why should the devs change the game mechanics to allow small corps to create and hold a gamma outpost, when they have it in their (players) power to overcome that problem (by joining forces) without their help?

tl;dr - The game seems to hard, so people won't play it. Make it minecraft on peacful mode please.

If PBS is a "hassle to kill", but doesn't need any players to create 'hassle', then we get a situation just like beta.

How fun are SAP's currently? If 30 players show up at a sap for fun, defenders just stay docked up, because there's no real loss going from 100 to 85%.

If attackers show up with 3 players, 30 undock, again no fun.

To make Gamma different from Beta, there needs to be a reason for players to undock and defend, even if they are outnumbered. And the auto-matted defenses are there to help balance those numbers out.

If corps don't want the trouble of having a colony, they can just take a beta outpost instead, those aren't going away.

*cough* *cough* maybe if a certain someone spent more time testing with me instead of eve that statement may have been different. It is PBS not PoS and the new term  is "Colony"

No it shouldn't take a genius or the best player in game to have a successful establishment, however everyone and there mother shouldn't be able to go whip a settlement up and be able to not put any thought or effort in to it and expect it to be impervious to anything short of a massive siege.

  - Allow me to recap and summarize what has been formed here.

A) - A portion of the player bases wishes to be able to ignore there pbs with out any player support and it still be there.

B) -Another portion believes that pbs's should require player assistance to be a full well rounded roam proof system impervious to anything short of a seige.

Solution? Group A go live on Beta and set up mining outposts to go gather as you obviously don't want to be bothered to maintain your settlement and can go to sleep knowing your beta terminal will  still be there untouched in the morning. (you may lose a factory level or 2 maybe a aura now and then, but your assets are safe!)

Group B- Go to Gamma and establish a full colony and dig in for the long haul.

but remember folks this is where we are discussing this from a conceptual point of view how as a broad idea it should be. If you are looking for more specific details please refer to the appropriate sub thread. (i.e. Structure HP/e-war tuning/terraforming ext)

That is being talked about here

Which there is no static value as it has to be balanced around the player population with a standard for the "time required" as time is directly proportionate to the number of players present.

Edit for your edit- They live in beta until they can afford it?

I'm rather confused here, I believe I was told Arga and Lemon are the same person behind both accounts. If that's true, you don't need to post with both to seem like more people agree with you. Your opinion alone is worth noting. If that's not true, then sorry, but I swear arga told me he was his alt. (May be mixing up names.) In which case I goofed up who is who.

Back on topic, well it seems we all have the facts down, and now it's simply down to personal opinion. Myself/Sundial/Kari and others believe POS's/PBS's/Colonies/Cathedral sized money pits/etc should be very strong/hard targets by themselves even when no one is home, and should require a well organized assault to take down with just the turrets defending.

Lemon/Arga and umm... think there was someone else, believe that these colonies should be manned and maintained 24/7 by at least a few players or else fall to ruin by small roaming albeit well organized groups. (At least this is what I took from it.)

Obviously I'm biased on which I want, but I doubt we can convince one another that we're right at this point via conversation at least. What I think we need is an actual mass scale test of some of this on the test server rather than our largely theorycrafting and small scale tests. It won't answer everything, but should help some in balancing. Though I I do expect we'll all have the same personal design preferences after it anyway. Comes down to what the devs want at this point. Someone here will not be getting what they want.

I truly believe if we have bases like they exist now, noone will have a Gamma colony after a month in launch. It just won't be worth it to replace it every day. And I at least intend to raid like theirs no tomorrow to prove it after launch.

Oldest player still in the game. Perpetuum for life.
Original Founder of M2S, may it rest in peace.
"Hungarian Math" is defined by the dictionary as "Just like normal math, but where each equation ends by dividing the sum by Potato."
-Shoutout to "Stranger Danger" for the "potato" comment.

Exactly.  Which is why it is critical that there is sufficient balance to allow small entities a reasonable chance to be able to defend their investment.  Dispite the fact that this thread was created for the purpose of giving the devs an overview of release readiness from the community (see op) and not as a debate thread, some valid points have been made.  Too hard to defend, and only multitime zone power blocks will be able to defend their assets, and absolute chaos every time the majority of ppl in a corp or alliance have logged for the day.  To hard to assault and it becomes a static environment of "fortress of solitudes" spattered across the landscapes.

The fact that unsubstantiated opinion and theory crafting ( plus rather poorly disguised ad hominem attacks and references to unrelated issues long in the past) is driving much of the debates is the very issue the devs need to be aware of.  Blackomen has correctly pointed out, that a mass scale test for several days needs to be performed.  However, with the "pvp by permission" only stance on the test server limits any factual and objective testing, due to individuals with a vested interest in driving the mechanics for their own benefit or their enemy's detriment, will skew the results to try to manipulate the devs to their favor.  Alot of claims have been made, lets see it tested for a few days aggressively by anyone and everyone on the test server, and see if they play out as stated.

The objective is balanced game play, and the only way that can be done is with objective data, and not rhetoric.  It's not about what is or is not personally beneficial to individuals or groups, nor about epeen or winning an arguement.  It's about providing comprehensive, objective, and factual data, and combining it with experience and knowledge, to forge effective and balanced gameplay.

My bad then, must have confused who Lemon's alt was.

And I guess we'll just have to let things unfold to find out. Hope we're both wrong and it turns out awesome day 1.

Oldest player still in the game. Perpetuum for life.
Original Founder of M2S, may it rest in peace.
"Hungarian Math" is defined by the dictionary as "Just like normal math, but where each equation ends by dividing the sum by Potato."
-Shoutout to "Stranger Danger" for the "potato" comment.

Nice post,but there are lot of question and thinking here.
All of you forget one BIG thing in all story!

TRANSPORT

First of all take closer look on map and u will see that you will not  be able to take gamma island if u dont have beta,so if u control beta or first gamma you have everything(almost)!
This will be good if u have like in eve 100 players online in one alliance @ every timezone. .

Everything is good so far,except logistics!

If u ever do jump freither run in eve you are clear with one thing, we need here scarab who can jump.
In perpetuum we need desperately balance and new bots for transport.

*Palette of bots are just too small and way too expensive atm,and acording to my intel it will be even more expensive .
**You can always take look on eve (5 t1 ships for hauling,than 2x t2 fast clocky ships, then orca,freither and jf as ultimative ship for logistics).

GUYS,
in eve i am making logistics from jita to tenal (region) in jf in 10min in one way(i have cal 5 and 5 mid-points to my final dest)! Who dont belive i can show him .
And that is what we need here.
What i want to say here is that we need lot of balance for gamma that we doesnt have now!
Put focus on making nik nad building advanced stuff and finally pvp,and not transport!

DEVS from Pesta, I expect that u answer on next question:
Are u planning soon implment in game bot as jump freither? And if u not why not?
The most important thin on gamma will be logistic m8s. And scarab is rofl bot for this kind of job!

I dont know why but i see if u leave gamma like that game will be unplayble(you are close).

Ok this is sandbox,but fu** that kind of sandbox.
If u want sandbox give me option to create island and put teleporters/station where i want,what you say about that sandbox?