Reminder: Person with half ADHD here.
Post goes awry after the... halfway mark? around there. I realise it quite late but eh... i dont want to remove half ot this long af post. Its not really nececary either... so people other than Aha and chip probably dont have any use of reading this... thing my post became.
Origanal post stats now:
I see now, that i have been pretty baiased aswell. I have supported chip and others becourse im of their opinion and only shredered Ahas posts becourse i wanted to explain how we are kinda talking around each other.
Then again i dont really want to be the mediator here, since i came here to represent my own opinion. But, well i guess im probably wont shredder any more posts in this thread anyways. Im kinda over that.
So... Let me try and explain how you two are (probably) not fully understanding each other. And please do respond if i understood something wrong.
Let me start with what Aha said to chips post, since im more of the standpoint of chip, its much easyer for me to understand his intentions (or so i hope) so i wanna start with that.
But first of all.
Answer:
I don't think I missed a thing here, it looks like you did!
If nothing else, at least my concept can still be an advocate to make SOMETHING.
Yep. This is in itself correct. Just look that 1. your two standpoints are different and as such 2. your approach is different as a result.
Chip says that IF rad sensors can be used to make AT, you can make slow, inacurate and very frail AT. As such it would be pretty bad to use as your main source of combat power. Or even as your second choice. It would mostly be good for solo players that dont do much combat in the first place, like miners.
While Aha says that AT that way would be too unbalanced and as such would be bad.
You see how those senteces and stances of you two cant be well conected? Thats becourse you are talking around each other (or im just bad at understanding your senteces).
Yes, good point. Is the point relevant tho?
Maybe.
Here you two are just different oppinions. Chip thinks the MMO aspect is VERY important. Aha thinks its not that important.
Because going crazy on the sandbox side BREAKS the MMO aspect.
I do have to say... This is your oppinion as long as you dont explain why this would be so. Sandbox is here not defined and i think its a poorly chosen word. SB has a really really big sandbox, the universe after all. Its rather NPCs and good/fast automation or anything thats not player driven is whats meant here. As for why it would break the mmo aspect? Well, if you dont need player to player interaction, there will be less player to player interaction. And thats what people like Chip and I dont want to happen. We want the whole game to be player driven. All of it.
"So, i heard Starbase is space engineers, but MMO?" "Eh, not really, its just another sandbox". We dont want that. The MMO aspect requires balance and careful game design considerations. The sandbox part, is entirely flexible and can be made to accomodate that. Otherwise, the MMO side will just fall off like it never existed.
Here hes trying to use an example to explain his oppinion: SB has AT = People think its like SE, just mmo.
But thats not the essence of the game. Or at least thats not what people like us want. In games like SE you only need 1 person to destroy a station that 5 people are in.
In SB you could sneak onto a big enemy ship, while they arent looking, or becourse it has a blindspot on the underside, while with games like SE you have 3rd person and could see that. and even if you would bord someones ship, your basicly powerless.
In SB after you bord you arent powerless. you can disable the thrusters, or just cut the fuel lines or destroy the generator / fuel like a suicide bomber. Ships are relativly frail in SB with a railgun beeing able to pierce 3 layers of the strongest armor in 1 shot.
I realised i rambeled on for too long on one topic again... Lets continue.
Hold on - how did this go from "combat balance" to "half the game vanishes"?
Balance in all gameplay aspects - resource acquisition, station / capital ship creation: means tuning them so that they have
- purpose
- value
These 2 things, are what drive player interaction, be it alliance, trade, contracts, jobs, or war.
This isnt a puzzle, where you can remove a piece and the rest stays there, this is a tower of cards. Remove one, and the whole thing falls, and becomes flat and meaningless.
Now this is the 2. part of that quote you used. Let me elaborate:
Why do we mine asteroids? To get recources. Why do we want recources? Becourse we can use them to print ships or get money for others to print our ships, or buy other peoples ships.
Why do we want a ship / good ship? becourse... we can do much more in a ship. We can do most basic things just stronger, faster, bigger.
Now we want more ships. What do we do? Mining is too slow... lets destroy some other miners and take their ores and salvage their ships. big profit after all.
That (and "pew pew enemy ships go boom" basicly fun and competitiveness) are the reasons for us to advance our ship designs and to attack others.
Stations aswell. Stations can be used to make a lot of money as such have a high VALUE, and have a lot of influence and can keep your people safe, as such have high PURPOSE. Same goes for capital ships that are needed to attack a station. They are the only objekt that can be used to attack stations and are used for traveling. They are also a safehaven for your people. As such have high PURPOSE. We dont really know how to get them yet (or i forgot) but they will be very expensive and can be used to attack stations for a lot of profit, as such a lot of VALUE again.
Not really needed and in hindsight probably a poor explanation:
Now that i explained what he probably meant in an example let me translate to your idea.
Look from this standpoint for now: We like player to player interaction. We dont want any other interaction.
Now what value or purpose do AT give? Well... they can be used with less players. But we dont really like it. and even then its worse than crewed turrets, so why bother to have them to begin with?
What value do they give? well... they can shoot at people... worse than crew. so they have less value than crew. but they are very expensive and take a lot of recources to use even after you buy them... so they are nice to scrap off your enemys for profit, but too expensive and weak to use on your own ships.
So, you, person that has a faction, doesnt use AT. But you are still very good at combat. since you are a combat faction, with a lot of good gunners. Now other people see that the best combatens dont use AT. Best fighters/combat ships on the market dont use AT. So many more people dont use AT. Why would they? The people that know whats going on dont. And its hard to modify ships after all.
Now if most people use crewed guns, and dont have that much rad becourse of no AT, ships with AT are at an disadvantage over them. They have less crew on average (or at least in the same ship size class) and have worse weapons. So where is the VALUE?
and them manning turrets.
What turrets? Its not like you can just bolt turrets onto the station. They are also "ships". Ships with no thrusters maybe, or really slow, very armored ships but ships non the less.
As such they can be destroyed by fighters and their strong firepower or ordinary troops that get to the reactor. As i said: 1 or 3 good shoots and you are at the enemys reactor. And as such turrets that cant move would be a very easy target and as such a waste of recources and as such wouldnt be useful and as such wouldnt be used much.
Bombers do much more dmg and are much less likely to be hit. As such fighters would be used agiainst your bombers. As such you use your fighters to defend your bomber and attack their bomber. And if you want to defend a certain place, a more armored and more stationary gunship might be better. All while people are on the ground, trying to keep the most people alive while trying to kill as many enemys as possible.
You also need to remember that the attackers (capital ship people) dont only need to capture the staion. They need to defend aswell. The defenders (station people) can also capture the capital ship the same way. If you make a big turret wall, well... to destroy parts of the capital ship is pretty easy. and then the capital ship cant move anymore. and we do need to remember than a combat capital ship needs a chargup time of 24-72 hours to attack a station. So you have enough time to prepare on both sides.
So we have a staion that cant be attacked becourse of turretwall right? and we have a capital ship that cant move anymore that cant be attacked becourse of a turretwall right?
but the capital ship needs some more space for actual ships to attack. so it has worse turretwall right? and openinngs in it right? becourse you dont immediatly know who you should shoot.
After all, what shows if that ship is friend or foe? So there are openings. Openings where a player could slip trough and destroy the reactor again. Or sabotage fuel lines. Or mess with YOLOL code.
And thanks to that player, ships, bombers and bording craft with even more troops can get attack the capital ship. The same can go for the station.
There is no safezone after all, as such everything is your plaything if you work well enough. (Still sad that espionage wont be a thing.)
This way a new job is born. Becourse this could happen, you setup security at crucial points. So now you dont only have to defend the points but also defend crucial objects that you define yourself.
Sorry that i wrote so much again, but i couldnt keep this much shorter. After all, we are going to a new theme here. Might be some stuff wrong here, since FB hasnt completed the station/capital stuff even for ea time. So all we can do is take what we know what they will probably might very well use.
You need to capture areas. To do that, both sides need endos on the ground. >>> Standard FPS combat, dropships
But nothing is stopping you from using a ship to assist your side >>> Bombers and gunships
The enemy is killing your endos with bombers and gunships. Lets bring something to kill those! >>> Fighters, maybe heavier ships if they become viable
The enemy is killing your bombers and gunships, lets bring something to defeat them >>> Mirror match or purely ship to ship combat specialized ships.
This shows pretty much what the other "Class system" could be. Instead of classes controlled by size, its controlled by intent. What is this ship suppoed to do? Is it to transport players? is it to destroy other ships? is it to destroy really slow or non moving targets? Is it suppoed to snipe the generator of not always ships and ignore everything else? Is it so a single player can sneak past defenses and disable the enemy defenses?
Each of these classes need different attributes. These attributes can be stealth, AOE dmg, a lot of dmg to a stationary target, a lot of movement speed, a lot of dmg to fast things, a lot of defense and even more that i dont remember. Becourse the ships need different attributes they will be desinged different, not becourse they look cool that way, but becourse its more efficient.
only "end-game" is this kind of station sieges?
I mean... bruh?
Wdym? Have we ever talked about endgame? We are still BEVORE EA! There is no endgame right now.
Maybe endgame will be that whole planets will fight against each other. But is that really endgame?
Isnt that just what you can make 3 hours in the game but on a larger scale? A much larger scale but basicly still the same. After all, there is no such thing as progression.
You make money. You invest it (Miner probably). You make more money. You invest it. you make more money. you invest it. you make some losses. you lose some investments. you start over again. you make some more money.
you inve..........
Do you get what im getting at?
If the players define the game through player to player interactrions then who defines the endgame? Probably the players. And we are constantly challanging the limits the game places on us.
As such we advance. And advance again. and again. So as long as the devs add more or change a bit, which i heard somehwere they wanted to do for at least a few years (dont take my word for it tho), then there will be no true endgame.
Is there a endgame in rl? maybe? be rich? be famous? make a rocket company to create rapidly reusable rockets? fly to the moon? Idk? mars?
I simply want to say that such things as endgame dont exist in ea, and its BEVORE ea right now.
You already have access to materials via station storage to build-repair-reload turrets, you can just spawn and hop right into it. Way more time and resource efficient.
This applys to the capital ship aswell. If you cant fight then why would you start fighting?
As an attacker, again, just a transport ship that is a ship with 10-30 turrets manned, get to the station, into cover, and start the objective asap, capturing zones with endos.
Well, what tells you that singular transport ship doesnt get gunned down instantly? As such you would need distractions.
Do i hear fighters again?
But spaceships can destroy more. Thats the reason why they are even used in ship to ship combat. if they were weaker we wouldnt be fighting with them in open space aswell. In close combat they might be too big tho... so you only take the turret with you. and a bit of ammo and a batery becours a generator would be too big. now thats what i call a glass cannon!
You must understand that there are lot of people who would like proper space battles.
Well what gives them PURPOSE? Why would they do proper space battles? becourse they can? or like them? then they would do so anyways.
Dont really know what you are going into tbh. Please elaborate.
We have here a major game design flaw.
Dont really call it a flaw. If now capital ships with a safezone could move normaly we would have a much bigger problem. You could have done it a different way, but if we dont have capital ships, do you really want to fly a few hours straight with a few hundred other people, having to stop and refuel at some places, just to attack a station? This is a game, and even if i would find that better, since you would have to be atentive against assults of pirates and similar players, it would be boring af.
Mobile space stations removed or repurposed, instead, there is this gigantic safe zone breaker device, that you just build into a battleship with enormous radiation, so everyone can see it with the radar.
That was my oppinion on that statement above. OH ****! I didnt want to voice my oppinion.... I did it again ;(. Well i wont delete half of this post thats too long and most people wont read to this pont anyways... so i guess it doesnt matter that much... but still... Sorry...
So, where was i?
Right! This was supposed to be the halfway mark. now i wanted to show Ahas position to all this so you two might be able to have a better understanding of the others oppinion and thought process... but didnt i do that already? somewhere in this mess of a post?
Well, i really dont want to write much more so im just gonna do some superficial stuff thats really easy to see and as such wont help at all! Arent i doing so much for this conversation? Now away with the sacasm...
Since you people are already there on the station defending, it makes a lot more sense to just spam tons of turrets and fend off any bomber-fighter with unavoidable rain of bullets from 999 turrets
This is understandable, as long as you dont include if this is efficient or profitable or enjoyable, its a very viable taktic. If you shoot so much that the others cant shoot back or aproach you will be invincible. But you still need to manualy refuel all those guns. So that wouldnt work forever.
Attacking military convoys would be great but yes, the mobile space station warp makes it obsolete.
I agree, Im quite sad that there is no sneaking into your enemys team and sabotaging the ships even bevore battle. But, as said bevore, it would be pretty boring.
Oh right, im going into the wrong post. sry...
I dont remember what i wanted to do at the start of this post... I know that i wanted to make a small post, a few sentences long, but where have i ended at? I dont even know myself... I feel like i have once again only expressed my own oppinion, which i didnt want to do... and i doubt i actually helped either of you two to understand the other sides points better.
Well i dont want to write much more... as such i probably wont write in the next few days. This might be the last of my weired posts in this thread, as i doubt i have much more things to say that i havent said at least 3 times bevore...
Well, see you guys on other threads!
