2 Glaring PVP issues & simple solutions
These are 2 issues in my opinion which stand out during the PVP experience and how to easily fix them.
Offline raiding is too powerful & Safezone is overtuned.
If a base or ship is found then it's compromised. No matter what kind of robust defenses are built another player can level it in 10 minutes if the owners aren't online. Bringing an entire base worth of armaments on a mobile platform is an intrinsic property of the game and isn't an issue here, the Safezone block is. The protection is either zero or 100% with no in between. If someone's willing to put forth the grinding time to feed it they'll be able to keep their patch of ground forever.
Offline raiding & Safezone fix:
Make the Safezone less grindy to upkeep. In tradeoff the Safezone's owner must choose a window of time when their Safezone will deactivate and enter a resting period for one hour. This cooldown window happens once initially when powering on for the first time. Other players are able to see how long until a Safezone enters rest mode when looking at the bubble from a distance. The result is that for 1 hour a week, that base inside becomes vulnerable to attack. Because the owner decides when they have the greatest chance of being able to actively participate in and coordinate its defense, should any attack occur. Perhaps they begin a supply ship convoy moving things to a second base in preparation. Perhaps they build satellite outposts in a perimeter further outside of their Safezone radius. Maybe even drones with autopilot patrol. These are just some of the preparation behaviors that would be encouraged. The amount time in which Safezones must cooldown would default to 1hr/week but be server configurable.
As it is now people tend to avoid enemy Safezones completely because there's nothing they can do to them besides wait outside and hope there's some activity. I'm sure that some people have grown accustomed to having an invulnerable fortress forever but it's not in the spirit of a pvp game and better to shake things up.
Jetpack combat too effective & costs nothing.
This has always been an issue but now more than ever with the advent of portable rocket launchers. A player jetpacking is agile and small enough to dodge thousands of bullets from turrets flying at them with ease, including interior turrets which are supposed to be anti-personnel. Even without a weapon they can still charge in and grind over and over again until they do some damage since respawning is free and infinite. Attacking as a spaceman allows a player to do incredible damage while putting up nothing. Some private servers even outright ban the practice calling it 'suit warrioring' or 'hydromanning' among other even worse names. I don't agree because it's a space game with pvp and you have a jetpack. Rather than taking things away from the player let's add some risk instead.
Jetpack combat & suicide attack fix:
Rather simple solution is to slow the jetpack's absurd acceleration. It should take 15-20 seconds to both reach top speed and slow down from it. This is not impacting top speed, players can still reach 110m/s just no longer reach it instantly with the power to stop and change direction on a dime like an over-caffeinated hummingbird.
Additionally, make Survival Kits and Medical Rooms draw Medical Components into their inventories which they must consume when performing a respawn. This would give silver some renewable value like magnesium and uranium due to the component cost and encourage players to make use of Cryopods when logging off. Offensively it would discourage repeated suicide attacks in the space suit or using it to scout dangerous/unknown making disposable RC drones a better alternative. Starter pods would come with a few extra Medical Components to start a player off with to balance the change.
I feel like the best solution for this is to have shields that can only be used on station grids. Wish vanilla safezone blocks could work like that, but at least there is a mod for this
I feel like the best solution for this is to have shields that can only be used on station grids. Wish vanilla safezone blocks could work like that, but at least there is a mod for this
...what if I make TWO safe zones?
...what if I make TWO safe zones?
There could be an exponential spawn delay to fix the suicide jetpack attack. Something like; you die once; it takes 5 seconds before you can respawn. Die again in the next minutes, then it's 1 minute. Again, 5 minutes and so on.
This won't stop a very suborn opponent, but it could convince some to at least commit a warship to their attack.
There could be an exponential spawn delay to fix the suicide jetpack attack. Something like; you die once; it takes 5 seconds before you can respawn. Die again in the next minutes, then it's 1 minute. Again, 5 minutes and so on.
This won't stop a very suborn opponent, but it could convince some to at least commit a warship to their attack.
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