This object is in archive! 

2 Glaring PVP issues & simple solutions

DDario shared this feedback 2 years ago
Not Enough Votes

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.

Replies (3)

photo
2

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

photo
1

Problem with standard shields (station-only or not) as you say is that it only means there's another layer to chisel through. It's the equivalent of building 50 turrets. They'll still be knocked down while you're away. You've bought yourself an extra 20 minutes maybe.


The Safezone is already the right kind of shield for this purpose. It's on or off without HP meaning it stops (non exploitative) offline raiding cold and it's station-only. It's just overtuned because it never shuts off. Grinding to upkeep it is not fun for its owner. Never turning off to give others a chance to challenge the ground isn't fun for everybody else. Attacks on bases between factions are extinct in the wild because of it. The exception being when someone's base gets discovered and odds are they won't be online to fight when that happens either.


By reigning in its upkeep cost and adding a mandatory downtime window chosen by the Safezone's owner we are seamlessly integrating and encouraging the equivalent of scheduled PVP events using the game's own mechanics. It's a declaration of "here we are and this is when we're playing, come get you some" instead of everyone hiding behind an invincible shield, 20000km away, or both. The other part just ensures those attacks aren't suicide jetpack + rocket launcher spam so attackers actually need to lay some cards on the table.

We're about to get maybe the biggest combat-related update they've ever dropped. Let's encourage changes that make that combat happen. If I didn't explain something well enough let me know.

photo
photo
1

...what if I make TWO safe zones?

photo
2

Then you'd be feeding and upkeeping 2 different Safezones. Maybe with different downtime windows which could be interesting.

But I guess you were more talking about building them close together to stagger their downtime windows for full protection? Any SZ placed fully built, powered, unpowered, active, or resting projects a spherical radius of NO in which a second one can't be placed if it were to intersect with its own. Not by friends, not by enemies, and not by the owner. In example below; green circle is the visible SZ bubble of protection, yellow circle is the do not build SZ by me radius. Red lives peaceful country spaceman life by the ice riverbed until Blue moves in one day across it. Blue can't place own SZ unless it's far enough away to not intersect the no-no zones.


f497861c068c096b689a36770f94c978

photo
photo
2

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.

photo
1

Normally not a fan of designs that make the player wait to keep playing. Make them wait too long and they'll decide to do something else. But I don't hate this idea with the incrementing and cooling down.

photo
2

There is a way to tune it in such way that is not too punishing if you do a couple of oopsies. But if a guy is dying 10 time in a row, then he is obviously hydromaning and should be dealt with.

The only downside is in a case of a last ditch battle defending a medical room. Then, this mechanic is a win more in favour of the assailant. But we all know that those fights are the exceptions rather then the norm.

photo
Leave a Comment
 
Attach a file