Question to the devs about unfair stations and capital ships use.

[shado20]

The ease of placing these single block station safe zones creates an unfair risk to any established base faction. Any small group can very easily place two or three of these small station block safe zones near and around your station to grief your farmers. Giving them the safety to dip in and out of a safe zone that is only placed by a single block and they can spam up to their limit per person.

you need a military capital ship to siege a station, that's all fine and dandy but to place a station is nothing more than a small block that can be placed in about 10 minutes. So now there is an unfair risk to a military capital ship to clear a single block station with the safe zone that takes 10 minutes to place and I can only deploy this capital ship every 24 hours or so maybe. Just seems like the risk to clear a single block station is extremely high considering that for a moment when the capital ship arrives it's vulnerable and there's nothing at the station than a block to remove seems like a good way to grief somebody with the military capital ship since you get a warning of its arrival.

If the start of a station required a little more resources , construction time and placement it would alleviate the ease of being able to spam these blocks and grief factions. Much like the old way of building stations, that first module was not something quick and fast place and required it to be built.


Some mite think this is unlikely but if you pair this greef with the indestructible capital ship as base of operation to respawn close. Then place a station block to run in and out of faster than the indestructible capital ship, as i get a warning a military capital ship is coming to the single block station, warning ahead of time. The risk verses reward is to the greefers rather than to the station occupants.

 

[Oobfiche]

they are already looking into this issue as it is already well known.

 

[DivineEvil]

Well it does goes in parallel to what I was saying about the stations even when they were modular in CA stage. Back then it was extremely hard to complete even a single station module, but founding of the station was extremely easy. I had seen that as an issue and proposed that the station would have to be started by first completing a station core unit, which provided a basic setup of power generation, storage and manufacturing - all of which the player could only establish on the building plot after the station module was at least partially completed to house that plot. Still, I feel it was an unnecessary swing into the opposite direction with the stations as they're working now. The only way to trivialize station founding even more is just having a button in the player menu to have it placed for free.

I'm all for the players allowed to build their station however they like, but having so little requirement for making one is strange. I feel like the station foundation should borrow the feature from the CA where it would project a station core blueprint something like 5x5 cubes in size including the generator that have to be supplied with Exorium to keep the safe zone active for a week or two. Then when there will be an access to other station modules including the storage expansions, you would be able to store the fuel, and then this time could be shortened to something like a day and require such specialized storages to prolong that duration.

 

[Kenetor]

Well it does goes in parallel to what I was saying about the stations even when they were modular in CA stage. Back then it was extremely hard to complete even a single station module, but founding of the station was extremely easy. I had seen that as an issue and proposed that the station would have to be started by first completing a station core unit, which provided a basic setup of power generation, storage and manufacturing - all of which the player could only establish on the building plot after the station module was at least partially completed to house that plot. Still, I feel it was an unnecessary swing into the opposite direction with the stations as they're working now. The only way to trivialize station founding even more is just having a button in the player menu to have it placed for free.

I'm all for the players allowed to build their station however they like, but having so little requirement for making one is strange. I feel like the station foundation should borrow the feature from the CA where it would project a station core blueprint something like 5x5 cubes in size including the generator that have to be supplied with Exorium to keep the safe zone active for a week or two. Then when there will be an access to other station modules including the storage expansions, you would be able to store the fuel, and then this time could be shortened to something like a day and require such specialized storages to prolong that duration.

I miss the old way too, but lets face it, its not coming back, and while yes it took longer to set up initially and even longer so to build out, it certainly wasn't fun.
As for ease of setting one up, it was trivial and you wouldn't do it unless you were safe anyway, all it did was add an hour to setup at most.
station safe zones are not that big and you would need to put in a hell of a lot of stations to grief anyone.
Later these stations will be better used in expanding a zone/territory of control anyway, in the long term I don't see it being an issue.

 

[shado20]

well then you must be privileged to have ether more information on how they are going to make things work, or faith that they wont "F" it completely up! my money is on them "f"ing it completely up! but hay we have them telling and showing us the game design and concept, then changing it drastically without so much of a heads up!

 

[ChaosRifle]

well then you must be privileged to have ether more information on how they are going to make things work, or faith that they wont "F" it completely up!

He just watches the forum posts from FB, which is where this information comes from. Progress notes.

 

[Kenetor]

well then you must be privileged to have ether more information on how they are going to make things work, or faith that they wont "F" it completely up! my money is on them "f"ing it completely up! but hay we have them telling and showing us the game design and concept, then changing it drastically without so much of a heads up!

this is all public information, Lauri has talked before about groups of stations creating a larger safe zone to create a territory, this gives more reason to use your stations as such, and also for others to siege these stations and take over territory

 

[DivineEvil]

I wonder how captuing station would work against the player station limit.

I miss the old way too, but lets face it, its not coming back, and while yes it took longer to set up initially and even longer so to build out, it certainly wasn't fun.
As for ease of setting one up, it was trivial and you wouldn't do it unless you were safe anyway, all it did was add an hour to setup at most.
station safe zones are not that big and you would need to put in a hell of a lot of stations to grief anyone.
Later these stations will be better used in expanding a zone/territory of control anyway, in the long term I don't see it being an issue.

The freeform building is perfectly fine, I just think that founding a station should be a greater effort. Right now, Station Foundation works as a nearly instant territory grab and just requires to obtain some rare materials.

I would much prefer that Station Foundation to work more like before, like I've described above. This would put an emphasis on being able to bring the materials (commons and uncommon ones) to the place and then printing it out using the Build Tool. Let's say it would be a 5x5x5 module with an RTG reactor, that powers the Safe Zone. Once you feed it with a stack or two of Exorium, only then your Safe Zone would activate and remain to be so for 2 weeks.

Whatever the owners then going to build around it is completely up to them and according to current model. However, founding the station is a bit too easy of a prospect right now, especially considering the vast difference in requirements for the next technological step.

 

[Cavilier210]

well then you must be privileged to have ether more information on how they are going to make things work, or faith that they wont "F" it completely up! my money is on them "f"ing it completely up! but hay we have them telling and showing us the game design and concept, then changing it drastically without so much of a heads up!

Them doing this legit pissed me off. As did dumping a completely new and untested feature on us at the same time.

 

[Kenetor]

I wonder how captuing station would work against the player station limit.


The freeform building is perfectly fine, I just think that founding a station should be a greater effort. Right now, Station Foundation works as a nearly instant territory grab and just requires to obtain some rare materials.

I would much prefer that Station Foundation to work more like before, like I've described above. This would put an emphasis on being able to bring the materials (commons and uncommon ones) to the place and then printing it out using the Build Tool. Let's say it would be a 5x5x5 module with an RTG reactor, that powers the Safe Zone. Once you feed it with a stack or two of Exorium, only then your Safe Zone would activate and remain to be so for 2 weeks.

Whatever the owners then going to build around it is completely up to them and according to current model. However, founding the station is a bit too easy of a prospect right now, especially considering the vast difference in requirements for the next technological step.

I wholeheartedly agree, it IS too easy, I just doubt the change would make much difference in the grand scheme of things

Them doing this legit pissed me off. As did dumping a completely new and untested feature on us at the same time.

I certainly agree, non of EBM was tested nor did anyone know a change of this magnitude was coming, given the long term response to EBM, it was a hideously bad idea

 

[Vexus]

I expected station cubes to be much like the Tool Cupboard in Rust. Place the cube, then place defenses around it, and, for Starbase, provided you built the right parts, you then build a defensive shield (safe zone), which requires fuel and power and all the fixings of a ship to make the safe zone active. The set up time is not an arbitrary 10 minutes, but "as long as necessary if you even want a safe zone in the first place" which solves a plethora of other problems.

This provides a NATURAL limit to the number of stations; sinking time and effort and resources and designing and fuel into a station then becomes the limit. If players have too many stations, a slight tweak to the fuel consumption rate and other factors then solves that. But having hard-coded limits like what currently exists (3 stations) is uninspired and has never proven to work in this kind of game. The uninspired nature of it is what bothers me the most; everything about Starbase has been inspired up until Early Access, where we got 30 cookie-cutter stations and safe zones surrounding everything important. I have said from the beginning, there needs to be an ownership of what kind of game you are making. If it's PvP (CS:GO, League of Legends, Rust, etc and etc) then you need to own it and make it so players will fight and engage and deal with each other without arbitrary rules. For a small example on this, even in LoL, you are not safe anywhere, not even in your spawn, which is almost unnecessary (could disable abilities as well as taking damage inside spawn) but it adds to the experience as the winning team attempts to grab a final kill (often dying themselves in the process). In short, because they are making a PvP game, they know to give that experience, and don't cut corners on giving it.

Another thing with safe zones having fuel and other things - giving freedom to the player vs. whatever it is now - is that derelict stations become a thing. Decaying stations with loot for a passerby. A remote station you stumble upon that has fuel right when you need it. Someone's forward operating station that is loaded with ammo, but no one is defending it right now. This builds the richness of the game. This is not possible when "station = safe zone" is permanent and again... uninspired.

I have said time and time again; copy all the things all the other game genres are doing right; add the Frozenbyte/Starbase flair but keep the core concepts. The foundation is there for something magical if player freedom and player interaction are the core concepts to build the game upon.

Every time some arbitrary rule, number, or hard-coded thing is added, it literally detracts from the game, not adds. This is counter intuitive to a dev team which is responsible for story-driven and linear games. MMOs are about giving the player more and more options, not less. WoW became massively successful especially after they introduced flying mounts. They gave players more freedom, and benefited from that immensely. They also had neutral/PvP zones, where anyone could kill anyone, as well as PvE zones. This kind of depth and richness is why they succeeded. They gave players options and freedom and didn't limit things.

I know why the stations are limited. They're bandwidth intensive, very intensive, as they are server-hosted and with thousands of players with thousands of stations, that becomes an issue. I have all sorts of ideas about this, but here is maybe not the place to talk about it. But that's why there's a hard-coded limit. It's not the same network code as peer-to-peer ship/player movement. These are static things and have to be fed to players even if the player is not near the station.