This problem will be magnified soon and only a few people can see that far ahead.

Ill use walls 1.0 as an example of assumption vs. reality.

We, always seem to have to show everyone why its broken.  I am not a beta tester.

Walls 1.0 the death of the US Player population. 

It is also bad game design not to change something that is broken simply because the population is too low to make it an issue.

As I mentioned before, I wasn't even playing when sparks were introduced, so for me at least this isn't about STC is using this so lets screw them over.

If you're implying that adding a timer to sparks is going to make you stop playing, you know that devs can't be held hostage like that. Maybe the fact that I'm not actually playing gives me a more unbiased view, which I've always maintained regardless of my corp tag.

But I'm not beyond being swayed. I just have not seen anything posted in this thread that actually convinces me that being able to redeploy troops with 0 to 5 minutes delay is not over-powered and a terrible game mechanic in a PVP game.

If you have an actual counter-arguement about how instant (0-5min) troop movement is not bad for the game than that's a valid response, because that is exactly what the current game mechanic allows.

How is that a bad thing in this game with mechanics surrounding us?

It has worked very well with bigger population, knowing that it is hard-capped by 10 stations and the amount of resources you have in that terminal. You can already dock futher and further bots on your opponents without doing any spark teleportation. Further on, there are only 3 terminals in the game that are affected by it. Everything else, you can lock off - as you mentioned yourself, you are not talking about the current situation of our side holding all the terminals, right? If you really think that one side can hold all of the beta outposts in a healthy, multi-sided game, then you are wrong.

I'm only talking about the beta islands right now because during gamma sieges, 1h cooldown would be more or less meaningless because of the time it takes to conquer those islands is too many times bigger for it to count.

No. He is talking about the other 95% times you use spark teleportation and get stuck with cooldown on some remote part of the world, needing to wait out the timer. I understand you might not even remotely think about those situations because you don't actually play.

It seems like you are just trying to make your opinion win without covering all the bases, even worse is that you are baseing it all on word of mouth, never actually playing it yourself.

No Arga is discussing the concept behind spark teleportation and the proper way to fix it and not bain-aid it. He makes no claim to know all sides of the discussion but rather expresses his views on it very strongly and well thought out.

Again this has nothing to do with 99% of the way sparks are currently used or implemented but rather with how it can and WILL be abused in specific situations in t he future.

We are attempting to determine a solution, there will alwayws be people who throw out extremes and vastly off base ideas and solutions. Discussion is how you best present your case to discredit their ideal. This generally involves things much beyond "they dont play anymore", "they are only doing this because our tag" ext ext.

Up to this point, I haven't actually said how I would use the current spark setup, but I think everyone is missing the elephant when they say it only effects beta.

Unless I'm missing something, you can spark between your gamma bases no?

I doubt we would waste our sparks on beta, we would .... um, no I better not, as I do still intend to return if the pop increases, but I doubt it will if this remains.

Lemon's examples is exactly how a good FC would use fast travel to turn defense into offense.

And as you can see, my opinion is not always the same as CIR

The problem here is simply that fast travel like this would allow a large corp to easily rule a lot of space. Even if our new members only had (2) sparks available, we wouldn't have ALL of them set to the same (2) spots. Everyone would likely have the gamma base, and then groups of 15-20 would be set to each of our other bases. And with multiple accounts per vetern PVP player, that's a lot of territory that can be covered.

No where did I say that I would quit because of this change, i'm actually curious how you even pulled that out of what I said.  I'll be here tell the shut the servers down.

Here is the crutch, there is a PVP flag.  If as in lemons case I engage, I'm flagged.  There is your 5 mins.  You can't spark anywhere when flagged.  If you don't engage why should you be penalized?

1 other thing, the power projection argument is completely without merit.  You know how you stop someone from projecting power?  you bring a fleet and stop them from projecting power, not changing game mechanics.

Has anyone thought of a more simple solution?  How bout we just reduce the number of sparks?

Also, when did we decide this mechanic is broken?  Just because some say its broken, doesn't mean its broken.

We are the majority.  This argument defends my position.

All I can say for me, is I didn't know this was the way Sparks worked until this thread was opened up. Even if nobody is using sparks to rule the world, they can be used that way, and someone will use them that way.

It doesn't have to be fixed now. But it is broken. And it needs to be fixed before steam launch; only because, as is the case here, once people get used to using it the impact of changing it will be worse.

The only thing I'm trying to correct is the combat aspect. I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to remotely view and manage inventory, accept assignments, ect. ect. The solution of not triggering a timer unless you select a bot _shouldn't_ effect any thing other than being able to redeploy troops. If it does effect PVE, then its not the right solution.

You still have not presented an argument FOR having instant travel, other than majority rule, it's always been like this, and I like it this way.

Gunner, you are correct that with spark Teleport 20 people are able to control 10 outposts

So change the spark system because of that? Lol no. As you yourself point out, player population in the future will change the control. Your posts are bringing up far more basic issues with the game, and really they all point to the #1 issue. Population. All decent points. None of the decay in the game has its root causes in SpT, though. The population was shrinking long before it and Gamma were introduced.

Do you guys really think we at STC don't understand the factors that have lead to the current power structure within the game?

Lots of us love the game Gunner, not just you. On serious gameplay rules and balance, I never post politics I post with what I think will allow the game to grow.

Arga, I'm quoting EvE's system because other (not you) suggest it as an example (clone jump timers) why there should be a longer cooldown. EvE has the same issues, just on a larger scale.

Burden of proof is on the state my friend.  The system works perfectly fine now.  The proof must come from you that the system is broken.  To put it in your terms, no one has put forth proof that the system is indeed broken and requires changing. 

Its known as Hitchen's razor:  An assertion without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

I have yet to see anyone post any proof that the system is broken.  Yes missions are broken, but they are a system that is available to all, same with sparks, so its not like any one corp is gaining an advantage from that.  I don't think that because missions are broken we should make the game more tedious. Especially when mission can be fixed by changing missions, not the spark system.  Which is exactly what the Devs are doing now.