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Topic: Too few chokepoints

The current teleporter system has the same problem you find in most games with PvP enabled zones, chokepoints.  In the case of PO there are 3 ways to get onto a beta island, this is both far too few and also too predictable in my opinion.  GG roams beta islands on a daily basis, and also helps defend an island so what I outline below is based off of some amount of experience.

Problems:

  • 1 scout per gate(who cannot be killed) and the defending alliance knows exactly who and what is coming.  This limits ALL traffic to an island, not just gank groups

  • islands are relatively small compared to speed of fast ewar bots.  This means response time to find intruder is almost instant, again squashing any small squad visits.

  • Only 3 beta islands.  Thus, only 3 alliances.  Doubtful you will see any unallied corps on the same island as it is simply not productive to be at war with someone living so close to you.  The average player must join one of these 3 alliances if they wish to actively use a beta island(productively)

Possible Solutions:

The biggest two problems I see is too few beta islands, and too few entrances to those islands.    The easiest way I see of alleviating these problems is as follows:

  • Increase the number of beta islands, allowing more alliances to spring up

  • Add more entrances to each beta island FROM other beta islands with no safety bubble on either side, the way the intra-island teleports work now.  This has a couple effects, one being adding more entrances you would need to scout, and the second being a chokepoint that involves risk in scouting.  Having a invulnerable scout defeats much of the danger of the beta island currently for the defense, and makes it inaccessible/useless to visitors.

2 Reply by Arga (edited by Arga 2010-12-20 21:03:41)

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Re: Too few chokepoints

Tiggus wrote:

[*]Increase the number of beta islands, allowing more alliances to spring up[/*]

The player base is already too diluted with 3 islands and 3 alliances. These Alliances have maybe 150-200 agents online at any time (due to player base spread over time zones) which consists of 70-90 actual players with 2,3 or more seperate accounts.

Only a few corporations are full PVP, most have a subset of carebear industrialists that either don't pvp or don't have the skills to participate. In general, this means Alliances can field 30-50 combat agents; played by 25-40 players, but even then it takes 30-40 minutes to gather them.

I highly suspect corps like M2S require all members to have at least 1 Combat account based 100% at thier outpost, and may also require this of any alliance corps. This allows them to quickly log in that character and respond to any incursion. This is not a requirement of any other alliance, although members are required to respond to combat call, thier combat agent may be 10-15 mins of travel time away from beta.

EDIT: If the opposition is already on the Island, trying to get a bot in from Alpha to group up is difficult and mostly just suicide.

The only place to get more players for an alliance is from the existing alliances, and I doubt they would come from M2S or thier pets, so it would just mean less combat pilots that can be rallied. This would be bad for M2S btw, because the only pvp you would get is catching 1 or 2 bots that accidentally wandered too far from safety. They wouldn't even be able to defend an Intrusion, so no pvp there either.

Ah, you say, but diluting is just what the game needs; smaller groups would lead to non-blobbing tactical PVP.

Or, more likely leading to a squad of 30 bots roaming around looking for smaller groups to wtfpwn from the only alliance that wasn't diluted, and the defenders resources too thin to protect what they have so they can't risk combat, or if a group of 5 bots kills 10 of thiers because of tech differences they don't come out unless its a 4 to 1 advantage (and they still die and all the members Cquit and/or leave the game).

---

A collary to this is with the game so new, the only experienced pilots are those that were in beta, which is only a small subset of pilots in most corps (except 1). These pilots will get more experience as the game progresses, but you really can't expect them to be more than a blob until they have been in a lot of battle. 2 years worth of combat in beta is going to be much harder to over come than even 30K extra EP.

  • BKK
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Re: Too few chokepoints

its "only" one year beta experience..

m2s's experience in "pvp" will show up when their extensions are ready to field in heavies.

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Re: Too few chokepoints

The problem is theres not enough room/islands for the smaller corps to get a piece of the PvP pie.  If you try to live out on beta, you pretty much have to join one of the alliances or else you just get rolled and forced off the island.

There is certainly not too spread out by any means.  You can roam the entirity of the pvp areas in the game in a couple hours, which leaves little room for anyone to hide without being found often.

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Re: Too few chokepoints

Arga wrote:
Tiggus wrote:

[*]Increase the number of beta islands, allowing more alliances to spring up[/*]

The player base is already too diluted with 3 islands and 3 alliances. These Alliances have maybe 150-200 agents online at any time (due to player base spread over time zones) which consists of 70-90 actual players with 2,3 or more seperate accounts.
.

The size of the current alliances does not matter, what matters is they for the most part control the islands they live on, allowing no new growth for up and coming corps.  Take a look at: http://content.perpetuum-online.com/~gargaj/  , there are plenty of corps out there who would like to experience beta but in no way can compete on the current islands.  A game that has only 3 alliances is not conducive to growth, these corps should not just have 3 choices for a beta experience.

  • M2S
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Re: Too few chokepoints

Tiggus wrote:
Arga wrote:
Tiggus wrote:

[*]Increase the number of beta islands, allowing more alliances to spring up[/*]

The player base is already too diluted with 3 islands and 3 alliances. These Alliances have maybe 150-200 agents online at any time (due to player base spread over time zones) which consists of 70-90 actual players with 2,3 or more seperate accounts.
.

The size of the current alliances does not matter, what matters is they for the most part control the islands they live on, allowing no new growth for up and coming corps.  Take a look at: http://content.perpetuum-online.com/~gargaj/  , there are plenty of corps out there who would like to experience beta but in no way can compete on the current islands.  A game that has only 3 alliances is not conducive to growth, these corps should not just have 3 choices for a beta experience.

The Frenchies need an island too!

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Re: Too few chokepoints

Tiggus wrote:

The size of the current alliances does not matter, what matters is they for the most part control the islands they live on

I disagree. There is only 1 alliance that mostly controls thier Island.

The other 2 islands are roamed almost at will by any group of 3 or more causing the alliances to shut down all operations. Now if that group stays too long, eventually the defenders can muster a force and drive them off.

If you want to be picky, no the 'alliance' size doesn't matter, its the % of combat pilots in the alliance. There are only just so many pilots available on the server, and by making new alliances you WILL dilute them; leaving existing alliances with even less defenses and unable to mount any kind of offense.

And that's a nice graph, but its miss leading. First if they can't compete now in beta, they certainly aren't going to hold an island. Logistically 20 small corps forming an organized alliance is impossible, second out of the 5-10 (5 is min. and most of those cicles are the same min. size) members in each corp only 1-2 are going to be combat pilots (PVP pilots don't join small alpha corps because there's no PVP) likely the CEO and a couple officers.

Unless your a strictly PVP corp, you need 100 or more members to have 20-25 combat pilots online at any one time; if you're lucky.

A better graph would be number and type of bots active. I think you would see something a high percentage of the active bots are industry or arkhe/castel; most combat pilots are running an industry alt while they farm level 1 kernels and really have no interest in PVP.

No, I believe that the majority of the pilots that want to seriously be involved in PVP are. The rest are the ones that use assualt bots on level 1 assignments because level 2 isn't worth the risk.

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Re: Too few chokepoints

Your assumption is wrong, that's all I can really say.  I have some alt's in newer corps that massinvite(they spam invites to any uncorped person, including my scouts) and they definitely have interest in going to beta, mining epitron, etc.

None of these alliances currently out there would currently take them in, even a token few people could crush them in their yagel's and arkhes from the existing alliances.  There is a difference between "controlling an island" and having uncontrolled no-man land available where smal lgroups and individuals stand a chance of getting in and out.  Right now the land mass is too small, everything is controlled as far as a new small corp or individual is concerned.