if there is no risk, then players will be able to earn billions of credits by flying ships assembled from boards removed from an old barn, and without thinking about safety, cooperation and training. this is wrong.
Yes. My point is: even though this is wrong and has "impending doom" written on it for the future of an engaged playerbase - because players, PvE or PvP alike, need some risk/reward mechanic to enjoy a game - this "riskless gameplay" seems to be the direction the devs are headed in.
Capital ships are just static stations with the ability to instantly (after a countdown) teleport to different coordinates. They will have safe zones; so semi-mobile permanent safe zones. There is no way to match the risk with the reward with this kind of system; there is no risk, at all, with a permanent safe zone. The only risk is when you just made a jump, and a couple hours later some enemy ships show up to camp your safe zone, so you sit in your capital ship safe zone for the next 20 hours waiting to make another jump, while complaining about the situation on Discord and forums. It's not going to be good for anyone.
The answer is to do away with the special treatment of civilian capital ships and make players come together for the security and safety of their capitals by having all capital ships be "military" ships capable of combat. They can all have safe zones as long as they can be assaulted in some way, and perhaps capitals which do not power lots of weaponry have more room for the upkeep of a safe zone to more likely escape combat.
please offer your ideas on how to make the risk commensurate with the reward.
The simple answer is there is no viable idea to make the risk commensurate with the reward as long as a permanent safe zone is in place. Risk / reward is a math equation. With zero risk, the reward means nothing. Risk (my entire 1 billion credit capital) / reward (of 100 million credits worth of ore) = viable gameplay. With permanent safe zones eliminating risk, the gameplay does not work out. It also devalues everyone else's enjoyment because materials and so on become so easy to come by, that nothing you do matters. EVE did a good job here, giving players the ability to sink credits into massive ships for massive risk/reward moves, but those expensive ships were lost at such a rate, due to the ingenuity of players, that the economy, which involved lots of PvE grind, stayed in check.
The answer is to not have permanent safe zones around capitals - allow any amount of risk above zero. As this is an ancient game design problem, it bothers me to see Starbase devs try and tackle this like it's something new AND to choose the wrong solution which has proven to be wrong time and time again. It's precisely why cheating/hacking is not good in video games. If a player can give themselves infinite health, then there is no risk, and the reward of playing the game means nothing; as well, in multiplayer games, this greatly devalues everyone else's gameplay. But that's what Starbase devs are saying. They're saying, "You have infinite health in this capital ship safe zone," which is akin to a cheat code which devalues any and all risk of making the thing and deploying it.
I won't go into detail about the prospect of parking your safe capital ship somewhere, going out to fight people, and then running back to your safe zone the moment there's any threat - not only is this boring for the safe-zone player, but the person attempting to "get revenge" for being attacked runs into a safe zone where they have no outlet for their frustration of being attacked and surviving.
The other problem is all the "new" problems that will be created (like above) and rabbit-hole solutions that will need to be added to band-aid this. For example, special "capital ship" fuel will be likely. And in doing so, the "risk" of being stranded because you ran out of fuel seems to be something above zero risk. However there is no risk of loss, due to the safe zone, and so the task of refueling becomes tedious and repetitive, securing fuel for a riskless enterprise. It would be like picking up health potions while you're already at infinite health. It becomes yet another problem to solve, and another problem people will inevitably complain about. This leads to more rabbit-hole solutions that all stem from the initial problem.
Attempts should be made to ensure every player action has meaning. Without that, there is a breakdown of the entire gameplay. This is why PvP MMOs are hard, because the temptation is there to set rules and restrictions when the opposite should be the goal (and is the proven solution). The more freedom you give players, without bottlenecking them into strange dev-created rulesets, the more the players flourish in crafting their own meta game out of the universe. The focus then should be on enhancing the gameplay the players show interest in, not eliminating it.
A good example of this was the wreckage on the moon out of the warp gate on EA release. This yielded so much gameplay, and instead of enhancing this and improving it, the devs killed it by making the entire area a safe zone. But it was a focal point for all players to go to, to salvage loot, or to engage in PvP, or just hang out hiding among the wrecks seeing other ships fight overhead. This natural meta game evolved due to the game mechanics - the players who "did not know any better" and lost their ships actually had some skin in the game knowing their wrecked ship was being fought over in some way or another. Their loss became part of someone else's story.
A safe zone is like... Pong, but your paddle spans the entire screen. The other player is unable to score a single point, because you're safe. As such, the other player stops playing, because there's no reward for them, and you quit, because there's no risk for you (and subsequently, no reward as no one is playing with you).
It's not a suggestion, or a personal request, or a wish or anything else; the removal of widespread permanent safe zones throughout the game is a necessity for the health of the game. A singular, large safe zone that covers 1000km in a sphere is enough to keep risk-adverse people engaged in that area; people who want risk should be able to quickly move out of that area and into the freedom of space where anything goes. Players will define that meta and the game will have a unique character not bottlenecked by arbitrary rule sets.