Stations, Factions and Travel

Preamble

There were multiple discussions in the open discussion thread about what could be done, and some of them were pretty interesting to read.

Some complained about travel time and whished the gates would take them directly where they want to go (wasn’t fond of that).

Some others made remarks about [security zones and how they are aligned on the map](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/23427-rebalance-the-map/).

Some questioned the rules of engagement, aka, how u can use the criminal system to your advantage.

At least some were also surprised at the start, what friendly fire changed in that mode.

And with it there were a couple of questions about some kind of faction warfare being completely left out.

 

Faction Warfare

I initially missed this kind of depth, but also felt like the chaos was really funny (at least for me), and as it was stated by others: since there is no real gain to kill-on-sight, it might get boring, or manageable; Might be right, might also become a problem if we really have 10k players roaming around, where the griefers will become prominent.

 

What I missed was actually zones are becoming somewhat of a faction warfare zones, where all either aligned with a faction, or home-docking for a faction, would be treated as allies, while for them anyone also participating in this kind of faction duty for a different faction, would become targets.

With this comes the rather questionable setting of PvP protection, and i would propose to change exactly that into a toggle between two modes, a choice can only be altered in a docked station:

  • either you are flying for your faction (lets call it Factioneer): in faction controlled areas, you cannot damage anyone, except enemy npcs or criminal factioneers from other factions. Either your corp faction, the squad leaders alignment, or your homedock station counts as your alignment. you cannot enter enemy faction zones without a fight, but you are also not friendly firing cops or factioneers from your own faction. Ideal for local PvE, or defensive PvP with T3 ships. Or sudden mass PvP in the center.
  • or you are flying as neutral: in station controlled areas, pvp protection is as-is, otherwise the rules are the same as they are now for you. you can attack anyone in any non-protected area at your own risk. but you can also visit the homeworlds of other factions relatively safe and do pve missions there, but you are a free kill.

 

I know, this would remove the possibility to attack your own cops in your station protected homebase, but that really makes no sense anyway. You could still try to enter the region flying for another faction and kill those cops.

 

Squads of course all dock out the same way, so there should not be neutrals among factioneers.

 

Also it brings up other logical problems, like flying as neutral to empire home being in a fed corps, docking out in faction mode and sieging / trolling the enemy station instance. This could be made harder with some more additions, like if you fly for a faction, and die, you can only return to your friendly station, or forbidding to dock out in the home station of an enemy as factioneer; or being unable to use a warpgate to the enemies main base.

 

Frontier and Pirate Stations

Which brings me to the travel time, and the stations themselves.

Adding a second “Frontier” Station for each faction would ease up a lot. Frontier stations could have less strict rules, and be surrounded by non-protected areas, so if you want to see fast action, you would rather dock there. They could have less strict rules of engagement, than the homestation, like in the examples above, allow enemy factioneers to enter, dock and dock out, as long as they do no trouble.

This would also allow the home station to be more logical in being surrounded by protected areas.

 

Finally, for negative karma freaks, in the center of the global map, there could be a sector where there is a complete freeport, supposedly run by pirates themselves, allowing only neutral docking/undocking and engaging anyone with a faction alignment and positive karma.

 

This way, the map could also be expanded a bit slowly, allowing travel time and risk to be part of the gameplay, and also bring some fun into the central systems.

 

I suppose the dreadnoughts, hinted as serving as mobile stations, could also change the gameplay in future.

Efefay approves.

Move supply drone a litte ways behind or slightly away from gate. Hard to activate with high lag. Interaction changes from gate to drone then back again before it can be selected

Yes please.

 

Move supply drone a litte ways behind or slightly away from gate. Hard to activate with high lag. Interaction changes from gate to drone then back again before it can be selected

 

This, too. Cargo drones can be hard to spot as is already; they don’t have to be hugging the gates they’re sitting on.

Move supply drone a litte ways behind or slightly away from gate. Hard to activate with high lag. Interaction changes from gate to drone then back again before it can be selected

Simply sit outside of the gate ring and not above the gaps in the structure but above the solid parts. You cannot activate the gate then so it’s easy to hit the drone.

Simply sit outside of the gate ring and not above the gaps in the structure but above the solid parts. You cannot activate the gate then so it’s easy to hit the drone.

 

Ah so to jump you kinda need LOS? Thanks for that tip, it will make it a lot easier!

Yes, you need LoS on the event horizon.

Yes, you need LoS on the event horizon.

 

Are you sure? I’m pretty sure i jumped from outside the ring, with an opaque ring piece obscuring the whole stuff. I think you just have to be close enough, but i will test. Sometimes i lose the connection when bumping into the ring from the inside.

Are you sure?

Yes :slight_smile:

(for nearly all gates anyway, a few seem bugged)

I think the cargo drones need to be more common and more visible. Seems like half the sectors don’t have them at all.

I think the cargo drones need to be more common and more visible. Seems like half the sectors don’t have them at all.

There are Cargo drones in pretty much every sector that actually matters, more of these just supports mindless farming

more of these just supports mindless farming

Thought that was the point of open space. Is there another?

Thought that was the point of open space. Is there another?

 

This. So far, there is no point of open space except getting a ton of artifacts and OP stuff you have to farm constantly.

Thought that was the point of open space. Is there another?

Nah, if the whole point of it would’ve have been mindless farming, there would not be even a possibility to kill other pilots. I am pretty sure they will do something about LRF cloak whenever they get time to start “balancing” it, plus with much denser population in locations, mindless farming wont be as breeze as it is atm (so whoever is able to bring himself for that bore doom and farm, actually getting good head start on resources, as usual, but w/e if you ask me).

I think moving them 300-500m further out and giving them a “glowing” effect to make visual recognition easier would solve most of the problems.

plus with much denser population in locations, mindless farming wont be as breeze as it is atm

More population will just spawn more instances, and in particular if they keep the population cap per instance as low as it currently is you won’t really notice a difference.

it is pretty much comes down to the same arguments we had back in 0.7.0, there is still xxxx tons to do

it is pretty much comes down to the same arguments we had back in 0.7.0, there is still xxxx tons to do

I can agree with that. :wink:

Yes, you need LoS on the event horizon.

OtsLKW1.jpg

Ok, I just made a picture too, but Kostyan’s is probably better, i have a little slit which can be considered LoS if you want to stretch it.

 

7apUqf3.jpg