Dev Zoom.

I am glad that you are looking at it and could agree with us that something is not balanced here.

dude, they know its whack

no person could sit by and deny it

Its like calling a duck an elephant.

You believe that if you want but if you've found any evidence for it in a DEVs post then you really need to go back to English comprehension class.

This thread boils down to this, devs.

This thread boils down to this:

A:   10 people defending more stations than would have been possible before the cheap mechanic known as Sparks.

B:  The outright abuse of said mechanic to do 10s of thousands of missions and rack up millions of tokens that would be impossible and certainly intolerable otherwise.

C: defend 15 stations as if it were just one station because there is no time and space to travel.  Wow really?

This is going to get worse, not better.

This spark thing completely destroyed anything positive that Intrusion 2.0 did.

and yes Burial, when its changed, we are going grind you down until you are owning the proper amount of stations that a few people should own.

You are going to have to travel, get blue balled, travel some more, maybe fight, travel some more etc etc etc until you are actually going to DECIDE  what to defend and what to let go.

No player should ever have the ability to be everywhere unless he has 18 subbed accounts.

Sparks takes food off the Devs tables... there, you made me say it.   

Ok again you guys are still just screaming bloody murder and making this personal.

The problem is not 10 or 20 maybe even 40 sparking in to 1 terminal but the fact that they can do that and then *If * they want spark and deploy again within that same island to rapidly redeploy.

This is about the added movement that is allowed even after you have arrived and are in the active zone or desired area.

How does the lock-out mechanism not cover this?

The problem with the PVP lock-out is it only works if someone flags, it doesn't address the issue of blobbling.

In this context, I'm defining blobbling as applying overwhelming force to ensure victory (where sometimes blobbling is otherwise defined similar to zerging, in the application of an overwhelming number of weak forces against a smaller stronger force).

Why I still have an issue with this is because an FC can still call in a significant number of their troops, undock and be present on the field for an engagement. These troops can be used to corral, FC, intimidate or otherwise push the battle around without ever flagging.

These same troops can then dock and spark to the next engagement.

** At this point in the game, where players are LUCKY to get 1 PVP engagement a day, I totally agree that it is not an issue; and I've said this before numerous times. The problem comes in when/if perp takes off and there are corps of hundreds of players able to blob around, which results in attackers/defenders having to counter by blobbing around (application of maximum force with minimal loss); thereby not only encouraging but requiring blobbing.

The collary to this, is that the issue is apparent now and sparking is really convienent, if they wait to correct it they'll be taking away something people really like (just because people like it doesn't make it a good mechanic).

18 pages is proof enough that people don't like the idea of messing with the sparks. Do it now and it pisses off 30 people, wait and it will piss off 1000 people. It's simply, statistically, better to change it now then to wait until it becomes an issue.

How do you suggest to fix the issue of intimidation(comical example btw) and blobbing? Because a cooldown will not fix it.

The way I see it: Aslong as there are SAPs that have timers, there will always be ample time to prepare a blob. You can blood-spark to Alpha 2 terminal in less than 5 minutes and in the next 5 minutes you can be at the closest teleporter to action.

SAPs are always about blobbing, Arga. Both sides know the time when they have to show up so the side that has better guns on the field gets the SAP. It was already made more fair in Intrusion 2.0 by making it so the attackers have to attack multiple SAPs and the defenders wouldn't be locked out of their assets by one fight gone wrong.

The fact is, the attackers are already controlling the potential blob card. They choose when to attack either by roaming beta or attacking gamma and defenders are just reacting. In the end, a spark cooldown could potentially seriously hinder anyone trying to comfortably live on a beta or gamma island, not to mention it seriously benefits people with bigger numbers and more alts.

Gunner talked about the tactic of someone being the bait and getting people to spark in and flag up while others attack a strategic location - now think if the side with more numbers starts to do it. You are forgetting that the cooldown rule would apply to everyone.

The idea that spark cooldown disables blob from controlling big territory is the biggest load of BS I have seen in this thread. Usually it's not more than 3-4 outposts that need attention even when they all are under fire. It's very easy to set defending them priority and that's when blob arrives, no matter how long the spark cooldown is.

Here is how a longer PVP timer could actually help. Let's say blob comes in and flags up, then they are unable to dock up and spark out for 30-60minutes, meaning the little guys have that much free time to rain terror on the blobbers land/SAPs. That means the blob has to really think if their own homeyard is safe enough for them to flag here. You are thinking about mentioning how you would order people to suicide their bots to defend their territory but when that happens, little guys already won in my book.

Anyway, the potential scenarios are really getting out of hand already. Each of the ideas has positive and negative sides. The devs need to figure out how exactly they want their game to proceed at this point and stop listening to the community or nothing gets done.

@Burial

We only need to set rules about Same island sparking. This will be a commonly used tactic if say 20-30+ people live on that island and it is their only land. Unlimited resources does not force larger groups to own larger territories.

Who says if they re-spark in to the same beta-terminal again after death is balanced.  What I want prevented is being able to leverage same island sparking to not only gain but secure superior positioning over any enemy force SAP or Roaming that comes on to the island. what is wrong with forcing players to make a tactical choice when deploying to a island that they have multiple deploy locations on, the defender already have the ability to properly counter the force present and dictate the engagement all/any engagements.