Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Could the observatory provide some kind of d-scan ability to the structures? In wormhole, instead of sitting at the pos I would be docked in the station. This would mean I wouldn't have anyway to see if there is something happening in the space.


Side notes:

From the lore point of view I do not get how d-scan is working. It will take time for information to travel 14AUs.

Also, I would get how observatory would provide local to the system, as the information is routed through the FTL network to central router where the local chat is handled. The ships chooses to connect to local, when it jumps to new system ("Ok. I entered system X, so I need to join chat channel X"). I don't see how observatory would force ship to join the local. Maybe you should be able to leave local at will, but gates and stations would let you use them, until you have been in local 15 minutes.

Which is why cynos let reinforcements arrive quickly.

And with the current mechanics you have plenty of time to see that guy in the covert ship who would like to tackle you and light the cyno. Getting extra time to get away is asking quite a bit, IMO.

Loving the OA structure idea. Its really goin to put cloaky campers in a non afk state,and give players a chance to enjoy pve content. I feel that the main purpose of this structure is to combat morale camping so SoV Indexes can get upgraded for preparation for the new SoV mechanics. As for the talks of removing local and delayed local I just have to say that Null is not WH space PERIOD.

But TCUs are placed in every system a corp/alliance wants to hold. If you want intel in that system, put an OA in there, if not then you are tacitly accepting a higher level of risk. I see absolutely no problem with this at all.

And yeah, if a guy wants to go AFK in a system with no OA....what is the problem? He is AFK, you don't see him, he doesn't see you (no OA right, none for you none for him). Where is the problem.

If you can't articulate a problem I'm left to conclude that there is a high probability there is, in fact, no problem at all.

And they still would not be the same even if local works approximately the same in both types of space.

So no worries.

This is a difficult topic to discus. The implications of it are massive. Even without Fozzie sov, these 2 structure groups alone could completely change null.

Gates:

"Gates focus on movement, like warp speeds, agility and mass..." No. This would mean attackers would have to assume they will be out-manuevered while warping around system, and when they land, out-run. In a nutshell, you have to commit to every fight and you can't kite. Massive armor brawl fleets should never be the only viable tactic. This would have the effect of making null (and maybe even wormholes) considerably safer than low for occupants. It will create fiefdoms in null who's ONLY PvP content is sov warfare.

I don't have a problem with anything else with gates and think that allowing players to create a steady, alternate transportation network (one that's bristling with guns and preferably tied to a ship's navigation system) is a great idea. It will give null occupants a safe way to move around in their territory, which has both positive military and economic implications.

Observatory Arrays:

These seem really fun, but as with the issues of gates impacting warp and speed, it may bias too strongly toward the owner if not done right. The defender will already have a much better understanding of the situation than the attacker simply because they have these structures. Interfering with the attacker's one intelligence tool (D-scan) on top of that, could easily make it so dangerous that no one chooses to fight in tollerably networked systems outside of sov warfare. An alternative route could be to give the system 2 distinct modes. One is offensive, giving defenders more intelligence, while the other is defensive and denies an opponent intelligence. This would force defenders to make meaningful decisions about how to configure thier intel network.

Then there is the issue of pinpointing ships, AFK cloakers etc. Decloaking cloakies or pinpointing them down to warpable coordinates is too powerful in my opinion. Giving general information about their location is not. Use the scan probe mechanic with each OA acting as a probe and cloaked ships having a very low signature strength, low enough so they can never produce a warpable location. You could display this information on a map, and in a defender's d-scan with a new column for precision of that location. So for example, the ship is 7 AU away, and it could be up to 1 AU away from that point. If some cloaked ship was sitting someplace all day, it would be obvious, because these values would never change. As soon as he gets back online and warps somewhere, the values change and the defender knows it's time to dock up or whatever.

The bigger picture:

Traveling through null has always been a dangerous affair. These changes will make it considerably less dangerous for sov owners and considerably more dangerous for non sov owners. A corp/alliance/coalition that owns sov that is connected to empire space will have a huge advantage over one that does not. Not only will they be able to easily access the bustling high sec trade hubs, they will be able to deny access to corps that are further from empire space. It may cause these distant sections of null to become even more isolated than they already are. You could mitigate this by allowing gates to be built in lowsec, which could create some very interesting gameplay (and some severely trashed sec statuses).

Overall, I like the concept.

What in the actual hell are you talking about? They're not, in fact it's the exact opposite at present, because kite is king.

You might have a point if they chop off about 400m/s max speed from everything below a cruiser in size, but as long as the goddamned Svipul is still flying faster than the ingame camera can actually track the bastard, you don't.

And by the way, you might consider that these gate structures are CCP's way of saying "don't get too used to cynos".

I'm saying that if gates have the ability to impact max velocity and warp speed of non-owner ships, the non-owners will be forced to assume they will be out-manuevered and out-run, in which case, kite setups and small gangs won't work for non-owners (for owners they'll be stupid good). You won't be able to choose your fights, control range or disengage. That, in my mind, equals massive armor brawl with decent projection, or just forget fighting. Stack links on top of it, and the advantage will get absurd.

Some thoughts on player-controlled Gates:

1. I think we can all agree that Gate-connections should be unfiltered, i.e. it should never be possible to disallow a specific group of players to jump and still have the Gate usable by friendlies. Gates should be on or off for everyone.

2. Gates should be weapon-platforms first and foremost, tampering with other effects and the connections themselves should be secondary, since armed Gates will already be valuable thanks to their primary function (being Gates) alone. They should be able to act autonomously.

3. If gates were used primarily as defensive structures, they should be conquerable in mid-length engagaments and using Entosis only instead of Entosis+Site, since they would have no system-wide effects to justify major engagements, however their automatic strategically valuable placement means that they should not be taken quickly.

4. Alternatively to 3, Gates could also be quickly conquerable, which might be more engaging. An additional structure could change this, see scenario c .

Example scenario a : Alliances A and B are small-ish. A forms quicker and has better FCs than B. This allows A to take gates even in B's central areas quickly, causing inconvenience for B's members since the Gates now shoot them. It also gives whomever holds the relevant Gate an advantage on grid with it, which is better for A, because they are better organized. However, B can take the Gates back quickly whenever A gets bored of gate-camping. And we're back at the beginning.

Scenario b: B has decided to buy better weaponry for their Gates, to make it harder to take them by allowing them to defend themselves better. This delights A. They bring heavier, more valuable ships, take the Gates and loot the valuable Structure-modules. If Alliance B had better FCs and participation, they could have threathened A's gang.
Note that A and B do not have to hold sov in the systems this is happening in. Perhaps this could even be going on in NPC null or Lowsec.

Scenario c : Alliance C is big and rich. Alliance D depends on C. To make the area where D has been placed by C defendable under fozziesov, D holds sov where they're active. However, the Gates are held by C to ensure D's loyalty. This would work no matter how long it takes to conquer gates. Primarily since C and D are neighbors, which means C protects D as long as they are blue, but can also take Gates back quickly if D tries to become independent, even if they cannot flip the sov and actually hold it in the long term.

However, there might be a structure to allow D to protect their Gates. This additional structure (call it Stargate Management Facility or whatever), anchorable in sov null if the anchoring Alliance holds the system, makes it impossible to conquer Gates as long as it is anchored. It could be conquerable in longer engagements using Entosis+Site, and would immediatly flip all Gates to whoever takes it. Additionaly, while it is reinforced it might disallow refitting of Gates. This would provide Alliances with a fair trade-off of risk vs reward, allowing them to protect the Gates in systems they hold sov in while simultaneously risking the weapons installed on Gates more than they would otherwise.

If there were to be system-wide Gate effects, they should be enabled using an additional structure instead of Gates. That structure, anchorable if sov and all gates in system are held by the anchoring Alliance, might affect ship movement, provide the one-way jump function suggested by CCP Nullarbor and it might even have some small effect on wormholes.
An effect I'd like to see would be the creation of one static wormhole per one such structure, i.e. per system, which could lead to Null, Low, J-space ( C1 to C4 only, please) but not Highsec. (Something something Empires don't want that something something.)
Why it should not be possible to have a static connection to Highsec out of Sov Null should be self-evident. The same applies to C5 or C6 statics.
This static wormhole generation function should require some fuel.
Another function I'd love to see would be enabling and disabling Gate connections, with a maximum of one disabled Gate, which would be disabled in- and outgoing, per structure, i.e. again per system. This, too, should need fuel.

It might be useful to have different Stargate Management Facilities (SMFs for short). One might only block attempts to conquer Gates and do other things poorly, e.g. it might not have the ability to fit specific service modules and rigs or it might have a chance to explode and reset Gate ownership system-wide if it is used for other functions.

Example I: Alliance C wants to go annoy people in FW. To do that, they fit a Wormhole Statification Module and a Rig that makes sure that their static leads to Lowsec. If they wanted to go to Null instead, they would have to destroy the Lowsec Rig (only one allowed at a time) and fit a Nullsec Rig. Without a Rig the Module spawns a random wormhole, without fuel it does nothing.

Example II: Alliance D, newly independent, anchors Prototype SMFs in all of their systems, to block attempts to conquer their Stargates. (To do this, they had to take the Gates themselves beforehand) They now have a buffer that makes it harder, but by no means impossible to mess with their Gates. However, after some time they want to upgrade to a proper SMF , because that one has more functionalities. So they unanchor the Prototype, which makes their Gates vulnerable. Having underrestimated the hostile neighbor Alliance C, they lose several Gates (or even only one) and can no longer anchor an SMF. Tough luck.

Opinions?

I'm not in agreement... You can lock a door so why can't you lock a gate?

They should make it to where you have to have a key to access to gate to use it. If it was made similar to the bookmarking system where corporations have a corp wide key that can be copied by anyone in corp but also spies could make and distribute the keys, i think that could be interesting.

However, hostiles should be able to get temporary access by hacking the gate.