Sieges and their effect to PvP

[LauriFB]

Getting sieged with a fleet of civvies on siegerange border seems like a raw deal for the defenders every time.

There's a number of hard/soft locks to prevent most blatant exploits:

• Siege can only be started with a military capital ship with high enough class - so attackers must have always at least one capital ship they are willing to sacrifice
• Siege established a relatively large (say, 200 km diameter to start with, but can be also a lot larger if needed) warzone, which locks civilian capital ships from entering it and ones staying inside unusable
• Civilian capital ship shield only allows a relatively low number of passing ships per certain time - meaning that it can carry a fleet but fleet can't enter or leave the ship at once. If you get only one ship out per five minutes the opposing side has easy task with destroying them one by one. Similarly the fighters can't escape to the safety of the civilian capital ship, as only a few would get there.
• If the fight takes place inside the belt civilian capitals are either locked out or have to park at the docks, which means they will be locked out once siege starts

I'm sure players will invent creative exploits, and then we'll just fix those exploits.

 

[Quevin]

There's a number of hard/soft locks to prevent most blatant exploits:

• Siege can only be started with a military capital ship with high enough class - so attackers must have always at least one capital ship they are willing to sacrifice
• Siege established a relatively large (say, 200 km diameter to start with, but can be also a lot larger if needed) warzone, which locks civilian capital ships from entering it and ones staying inside unusable
• Civilian capital ship shield only allows a relatively low number of passing ships per certain time - meaning that it can carry a fleet but fleet can't enter or leave the ship at once. If you get only one ship out per five minutes the opposing side has easy task with destroying them one by one. Similarly the fighters can't escape to the safety of the civilian capital ship, as only a few would get there.
• If the fight takes place inside the belt civilian capitals are either locked out or have to park at the docks, which means they will be locked out once siege starts

I'm sure players will invent creative exploits, and then we'll just fix those exploits.

Lauri, we aren't talking about starting a siege with Civ Cap Ship, however what is there to prevent camping a station 24/7 when having a Civ Cap Ship at the edge of the asteroid field (a max of 30 min drive with 150m/s ship to the middle of the belt).

As Civ Cap Ship are invulnerable it to me seems just better to not risk anything and keep "sieging them" by camping them.

 

[Throdnk]

Seems like camping would be fair game, requiring player interaction and combat to resolve it. And do you really want to camp a small station 24/7?

Edit:
I'm more surprised of the warzone being that large (>200km), was expecting smaller numbers. Will we be unable to place station closer that that to each other? What happens to other stations in that area? Will other ships in that area be notified? Sounds like a siege being declared to a station near the edge of origin station safezone will make the whole dev safezone be surrounded by a warzone. I'd expect this to be the case constantly then, even if just to prevent civil capital ships from getting near origin for trading.

 

[LauriFB]

Lauri, we aren't talking about starting a siege with Civ Cap Ship, however what is there to prevent camping a station 24/7 when having a Civ Cap Ship at the edge of the asteroid field (a max of 30 min drive with 150m/s ship to the middle of the belt).

As Civ Cap Ship are invulnerable it to me seems just better to not risk anything and keep "sieging them" by camping them.

There's nothing planned to prevent this. I also don't see is this particularly a problem; it's just one out of the many ways to harass someone. If someone is super dedicated to whatever semi-griefing they like to do there's likely not much we can do directly against a certain tactic, and only rules would help against such actions. However, we are not looking to extend rules to ban camping at this point.

 

[Greebo]

Lauri, we aren't talking about starting a siege with Civ Cap Ship, however what is there to prevent camping a station 24/7 when having a Civ Cap Ship at the edge of the asteroid field (a max of 30 min drive with 150m/s ship to the middle of the belt).

As Civ Cap Ship are invulnerable it to me seems just better to not risk anything and keep "sieging them" by camping them.

That sounds really inefficient, if you're having to respawn at a cap 30 minutes away you're just going to be feeding ships to the defender, or giving them plenty of time to regroup.

Your best bet is to respawn at the cap you're sieging with to avoid a 30 minute respawn timer.

 

[Throdnk]

I added some more curious questions to my previous post

 

[LauriFB]

I'm more surprised of the warzone being that large (>200km), was expecting smaller numbers. Will we be unable to place station closer that that to each other? What happens to other stations in that area? Will other ships in that area be notified? Sounds like a siege being declared to a station near the edge of origin station safezone will make the whole dev safezone be surrounded by a warzone. I'd expect this to be the case constantly then, even if just to prevent civil capital ships from getting near origin for trading.

Inside the belt the belt itself already offers enough shielding against exploits, so it's likely we'll just adust the area based on where the station is located. And warzone won't override other stations or origin safe zone.

I'm sure someone will establish stations next to station being attacked and exploit those, but in the other hand such stations can be sieged out of existence as a pre-emptive countermeasure. We also most likely need to limit ships a station can safely harbour based on station size.

 

[Tomasz]

Inside the belt the belt itself already offers enough shielding against exploits, so it's likely we'll just adust the area based on where the station is located. And warzone won't override other stations or origin safe zone.

I'm sure someone will establish stations next to station being attacked and exploit those, but in the other hand such stations can be sieged out of existence as a pre-emptive countermeasure. We also most likely need to limit ships a station can safely harbour based on station size.

Limiting amount of stationed ships could be nice mechanic to incentivize building bigger stations.
One cool and "cheap" mechanic that adds alot to pvp experience without messing with economy is registering kills and making it a bragging rght. like Leaderboard for kills , KILL/DEATh ratio and such. It has no negative impact on players who just care about PvE and has hudge fun factor for PvPers. It could be easly added aswell at least in its barebone.Death of a players is surely registered along with its reason anyways, all you'd have to do is attatch that information to killer, and make that information somehow listed or visible to others.
Possible also broadcast players death in zone or something.

 

[LauriFB]

Limiting amount of stationed ships could be nice mechanic to incentivize building bigger stations.
One cool and "cheap" mechanic that adds alot to pvp experience without messing with economy is registering kills and making it a bragging rght. like Leaderboard for kills , KILL/DEATh ratio and such. It has no negative impact on players who just care about PvE and has hudge fun factor for PvPers. It could be easly added aswell at least in its barebone.Death of a players is surely registered along with its reason anyways, all you'd have to do is attatch that information to killer, and make that information somehow listed or visible to others.
Possible also broadcast players death in zone or something.

We have plans for vast statistics and how to show off with them to everyone, but unfortunately all more pressing features have taken the front seat at the moment. One day we'll get there

 

[Tomasz]

Yeah, i bet everything is urgent now.I pointed it out, becouse it seems very labour not-intensive for how much it brings in.

 

[Rhade]

Healthy pvp is in the core of Starbase, we just need the features to support that. Some people are asking (in a demanding tone) that I should give them unhealthy pvp at once. Unfortunately that would just kill off the playerbase. There's great pvp coming, and we have our focus on that.

That's an interesting delineation. You call certain PvP "healthy," and certain PvP "unhealthy." In your opinion, what is the difference between the two? By that measure, isn't it also feasibly unhealthy when PvP protections swing too far in the other way?

Examples:

Unhealthy PvP is when there are no safe zones, and it kills the community because there are no protections. PvP dominates everything. Game becomes a random bloodbath, PvE players quit, eventually followed by bored PvP players leaving.

Isn't it also unhealthy from the other dimension when safe zones are being thrown down at every major POI and anti-PvP dominates everything? PvP players quit, game becomes a ship demonstration demo, PvE players leave.

It's a tricky balance. No one expects you guys to nail it 100% and of course you're always going to hear complaints. Personally I don't know if sieges resolve the issue that the pendulum is swung pretty for towards the second example I listed. I'll sit on the sidelines and wait and see how things play out.

Thanks for the talk, all sides appreciate you sitting down and engaging.

 

[SpaceEnjoyer]

Shoving PvE babies into PvP zones in chase of greater riches is already a good start. It just so happened that Charodium, probably because it is in such high demand rn, turned the safezone way too profitable. Hoping that changes though and looking forward to all the planned features

 

[Vanidar]

Shoving PvE babies into PvP zones in chase of greater riches is already a good start. It just so happened that Charodium, probably because it is in such high demand rn, turned the safezone way too profitable. Hoping that changes though and looking forward to all the planned features

Disagree with "shoving", but yes, strongly incentivizing playing the game outside of a safe zone makes it more ideal. If people don't want to come out and risk their stuff, cool, I'll take it myself. If they want to come out and risk their stuff, that's cool, we can fight over it and it'll be dope win or lose. Risk and reward and all that.

Yes, with the current snapshot of the economy and how the safezone and ores are setup and factoring in towers as well, charodium is a major offender for motivating people to stay in a SZ 24/7. I think it'd be great if the majority of charodium was outside the SZ to promote a bit of friction and sink in the short term -- and just like always, if people don't want to risk it to mine it, they can always buy it from people that do.

 

[LauriFB]

That's an interesting delineation. You call certain PvP "healthy," and certain PvP "unhealthy." In your opinion, what is the difference between the two?

Your examples were pretty spot on. I wouldn't also classify healthy and unhealthy pvp by the actions itself but more by the effect it has to the playerbase: unhealthy pvp reduces playerbase, usually by either allowing griefing pve players or by not having pvp at all, which in turn leads pvp players to quit.

Both sides are pretty vocal with demanding unhealthy pvp/pve at once, "or they quit". The threat is a zero sum or negative value threat in my eyes, as they often demand something which would drive someone else out. And most likely such people will kill the enjoyment from themselves anyway, so worst case is that they first drive others away and then quit anyway. I'm also guessing that many of those who now ragequit will come back to see the proper features in action.

I understand that the frustration is based on the fact that they have seen or even experienced the potential of the fun, and they just want that a lot more, right now. But to actually provide endless amount of that fun we need to be able to do all the intended features and not to provide quick fixes to players at the cost of the other players. The game we are creating is not a zero sum game but everyone will have fair share of fun with the proper features.

While station siege on large stations will be pretty brutal, as other (or both) side will lose massive amounts of wealth, and there's possibility for a lot of civilians to be caught in the crossfire, I see that perfectly fair game. Everyone involved have (or should) known the risks. For example civilians have a reasonable time window to escape (given that they actually have a escape plan), but then again slowboaters when siege is declared must be very nice targets for pirates.

 

[le_souriceau]

Your examples were pretty spot on. I wouldn't also classify healthy and unhealthy pvp by the actions itself but more by the effect it has to the playerbase: unhealthy pvp reduces playerbase, usually by either allowing griefing pve players or by not having pvp at all, which in turn leads pvp players to quit.

Is SB context its all about resources.

Non-PvP players (honestly, they nothing to do with PvE, they are "economic PvPers", miners, later industrialists) hate to be challenged in resource/money grab by risk of being killed or robbed.

PvP players (obviously wanting more targets and drama), hate when Non-PvPers allowed to hoard assets without risk.

So its greed to kill vs greed to hoard. Questionable if "griefing" even applies here.

....but then again slowboaters when siege is declared must be very nice targets for pirates.

If its 150/ms "slowboaters", they actualy will be close to invincible. And without radiation detection its still needle in hay once guy made it out of visual detection zone from station.

 

[ChaosRifle]

There's nothing planned to prevent this.

Regarding the one ship per 5 minutes, with civvie cap ships invulnerable, it stands to reason large corps would just give their fleet members the mats for small capitals, thus avoiding the 5min timer, as they all fly their own. The only limit then would be fuel cost for jumping the civvie in. It was stated that even solos should be able to get a small cap ship, so doing that wouldnt be hard at all for even a medium sized company, right?

 

[Distuth]

Regarding the one ship per 5 minutes, with civvie cap ships invulnerable, it stands to reason large corps would just give their fleet members the mats for small capitals, thus avoiding the 5min timer, as they all fly their own. The only limit then would be fuel cost for jumping the civvie in. It was stated that even solos should be able to get a small cap ship, so doing that wouldnt be hard at all for even a medium sized company, right?

Keep in mind, they need a dock to land at if they're in a belt. You wanna build 30 expensive docks?

 

[Vanidar]

Keep in mind, they need a dock to land at if they're in a belt. You wanna build 30 expensive docks?

This assumes the fight over an area is happening inside the belt to begin with. That's a big assumption. However, if that assumption is true and this battle *is* being fought somewhere in the belt, you're making some more assumptions about the proposed 30 CCAPs not being able to participate:

1. Whatever area is being fought over is far enough from the edge of the belt where we can't just easily fly in ships from N CCAPs sitting at that edge to reinforce. In this case, you cannot address or attack the root of your problem (our CCAP(s))
2. A dock can only host one ship at a time

Given a company with enough resources, I don't see how it's unlikely they have more than 1 CCAP barring some kind of messy in-company 1 ship rule, but then how do you handle a large alliance with many small companies? Maybe not quite 30 in the near future, but certainly multiple. The point is, CCAPs being 100% invulnerable and unable to be dislodged by any means is something that *will* be abused, especially for offensive purposes. It's not like the same rich company has the best armor and takes 5 shots per plate instead of 2 and with "good piloting" you can come out on top (counterplay available in this case), it's a mechanic that present situations where there is simply zero ability to counter what an enemy is doing. You can't remove your enemy's grasp on a forward position (maybe even in your front yard) as long as they have at least one CCAP sitting there staring at you. As long as CCAPs are invulnerable and can carry weapons of any type, produce them on-site, or serve as a carrier to offensive-capable ships, it's the obvious meta that the "competitive" crowd will look to exploit. They'll pop out and harass your miners, your haulers, whatever, with a quick flight time and a real possibility of them making it back inside the safety of their CCAP before you can even respond. Given enough time and enough resource aggregation, I'm not sure how you stop that since you can't attack them. And before someone says they can't warp into warzones (or areas under siege), warzones or stations under siege aren't the only place people will be invested in or want to fight over or control.

FB believes they can balance them and I look forward to being pleasantly surprised, I just think it's going to be migraine-inducing as long as you have the mixture of complete invulnerability, the ability to warp to most places (or close enough), and offensive capabilities no matter how much you try to nerf or limit said offensive capabilities. I was surprised when I read they could carry ships and players with weapons when I read the description about being a 100% safe civilian ship meant mainly for exploration.

 

[Bestcoaster]

If you're spamming dock stations (or building an enormous dock station) what difference do the CCAPs make? Anything CCAPs can do in terms of harassment you could do with the resources you're putting into that station.

If someone wants to sit around and ambush your miners or cargo ships outside your safe zone, they don't need a nearby CCAP to do it, and if they can get away after the attack then they get away - it doesn't matter how close their base is.

 

[J.D.]

If you're spamming dock stations (or building an enormous dock station) what difference do the CCAPs make? Anything CCAPs can do in terms of harassment you could do with the resources you're putting into that station.

If someone wants to sit around and ambush your miners or cargo ships outside your safe zone, they don't need a nearby CCAP to do it, and if they can get away after the attack then they get away - it doesn't matter how close their base is.

the difference is that ccap ships can never be destroyed. there is no mechanic that can do it. not even siege. the station docks, however, can be sieged.