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Timer on shields


Lethys

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Interesting opinions so far.

 

So let's start by stating what we know and don't know:

 

1) Fairness is important in DU. There will be no orbital bombardment and no death ray for this very reason. People will always know what is happening to me (at least mechanically).

 

2) We know that when you log off, your construct stays in game where it was.

 

3) In DU there are no ships or buildings: There are only constructs, some of which happen to be able to move.

 

4) We do not know how shields work in DU yet, all we have heard is that there is a 48 hour timer. So let's not jump to conclusions before we have even had a devblog about how shields actually are intended to work.

 

Now I will skip to my own conclusion:

To be fair to all players, any unmanned unmoving construct will necessarily need protection of some kind because Real Life Happens. This makes the game more accessible to more people. Crying that this is unfair to pirates is incorrect. It is 'unfair' to cowardly pirates that are too afraid to attack a manned construct.

 

But doesn't this mean everyone will just log out at the first sign of trouble? Well, games have solved that problem a long time ago: the shield only goes up after a certain period of time has elapsed after the last mans log off. Does this hurt unintentional disconnects? Yes, but that would happen far less often at the exactly wrong time than people would abuse the system to stay safe from bad situations.

 

I would rather this timer-shield, call it a "guard shield", be seen as a separate mechanic to normal player built shields. Player built shields would run off power and can be knocked down as mentioned in earlier posts.

 

My 2c

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I think what would be cool, that is something along the lines of a massive "Shield-Breaker Ship", is to have a smaller construct be able to pass through the shield, and land on the ground. Max crew size for a ship such as this would be small, maybe 5 people. The ship should have to be equipped with an expensive and power hungry device that "uses neutron waves to disrupt the shields cover, allowing it to pass through", or something similar. The device should use enough power that the construct can't support any weapons, so they have to sneak down to the surface.

 

Once the ship has landed on the planet (If they don't die), what I'm imagining from there would be the 5 man crew infiltrating the shield generator room (Because we all know, you don't leave the shield generator out in the open). Then, you covertly have your hacker bring down the shield from the inside! For balancing reasons, the "hack" should last around 30 minutes, before the shield re-engages in a non-attack-able mode. This allows for the attacking force to invade, but they know they're fighting the clock, to either get to and destroy the generator, or seize the territory before time runs out and they're locked out. It could also inspire some last stands, as the defenders rally in the last minutes. "Come on guys! We only have to hold for 5 more minutes! Let's drive these assholes out!"

 

Now, do we know if you can hack the protection bubbles at all? No. (If we do, post quote or link please) There also probably isn't a device that allows a small construct to pass through a shield, nor should there be at launch. It would be best for this feature to come in an expansion.

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I reread my last post and realized auto-correct failed me by putting words like smart-ass into my post. Please read it now that it is correct so that you know what I meant. Sorry about that

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Interesting opinions so far.

 

So let's start by stating what we know and don't know:

 

1) Fairness is important in DU. There will be no orbital bombardment and no death ray for this very reason. People will always know what is happening to me (at least mechanically).

 

2) We know that when you log off, your construct stays in game where it was.

 

3) In DU there are no ships or buildings: There are only constructs, some of which happen to be able to move.

 

4) We do not know how shields work in DU yet, all we have heard is that there is a 48 hour timer. So let's not jump to conclusions before we have even had a devblog about how shields actually are intended to work.

 

Now I will skip to my own conclusion:

To be fair to all players, any unmanned unmoving construct will necessarily need protection of some kind because Real Life Happens. This makes the game more accessible to more people. Crying that this is unfair to pirates is incorrect. It is 'unfair' to cowardly pirates that are too afraid to attack a manned construct.

 

But doesn't this mean everyone will just log out at the first sign of trouble? Well, games have solved that problem a long time ago: the shield only goes up after a certain period of time has elapsed after the last mans log off. Does this hurt unintentional disconnects? Yes, but that would happen far less often at the exactly wrong time than people would abuse the system to stay safe from bad situations.

 

I would rather this timer-shield, call it a "guard shield", be seen as a separate mechanic to normal player built shields. Player built shields would run off power and can be knocked down as mentioned in earlier posts.

 

My 2c

Provide link that says a weapon on a construct in space can't hit a construct on the ground. What you are saying means that a space -station is (somehow) immune to damage by other ships. The rest is also subject to "provide link".

 

The only thing JC said, is that there won't be WMD (that's Weapons of Mass Destruction). An orbital strike is not a WMD.. You think orbital strike and imagine meteors. A meteor can be a kilometer in length and very very heavy. An orbital strike round needs to be 10 meters long. Wage the difference in destruction. So yeah, orbital strikes are a thing.

 

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Interesting opinions so far.

 

So let's start by stating what we know and don't know:

 

1) Fairness is important in DU. There will be no orbital bombardment and no death ray for this very reason. People will always know what is happening to me (at least mechanically).

 

2) We know that when you log off, your construct stays in game where it was.

 

3) In DU there are no ships or buildings: There are only constructs, some of which happen to be able to move.

 

4) We do not know how shields work in DU yet, all we have heard is that there is a 48 hour timer. So let's not jump to conclusions before we have even had a devblog about how shields actually are intended to work.

 

Now I will skip to my own conclusion:

To be fair to all players, any unmanned unmoving construct will necessarily need protection of some kind because Real Life Happens. This makes the game more accessible to more people. Crying that this is unfair to pirates is incorrect. It is 'unfair' to cowardly pirates that are too afraid to attack a manned construct.

 

But doesn't this mean everyone will just log out at the first sign of trouble? Well, games have solved that problem a long time ago: the shield only goes up after a certain period of time has elapsed after the last mans log off. Does this hurt unintentional disconnects? Yes, but that would happen far less often at the exactly wrong time than people would abuse the system to stay safe from bad situations.

 

I would rather this timer-shield, call it a "guard shield", be seen as a separate mechanic to normal player built shields. Player built shields would run off power and can be knocked down as mentioned in earlier posts.

 

My 2c

 

So that playstyle should be banned and is not worth anything?

That also kills: Parking lots, security forces dedicated to protect assets of players, stations with huge and hard to kill shields run by players, stations dedicated to host those police forces. It even kills other branches of gameplay like distracting the police force in an area in order to get a small team inside a base and steal stuff. Or probably you skill for 1 year to get ninja skills to sneak into bases unseen to hack or steal something (which can ofc be countered with some other skillset).

If all constructs are safe and can't be harmed/stolen/manipulated by any means - that's what you would call an "op mechanic"

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So that playstyle should be banned and is not worth anything?

That also kills: Parking lots, security forces dedicated to protect assets of players, stations with huge and hard to kill shields run by players, stations dedicated to host those police forces. It even kills other branches of gameplay like distracting the police force in an area in order to get a small team inside a base and steal stuff. Or probably you skill for 1 year to get ninja skills to sneak into bases unseen to hack or steal something (which can ofc be countered with some other skillset).

If all constructs are safe and can't be harmed/stolen/manipulated by any means - that's what you would call an "op mechanic"

Not to mention, the mechanics Kurock proposes kill pretty much infrastructure architecture for bunkers. Why bother building a bunker like a maze that needs an actual map - something EMERGENT - when the enemy can't get in regardless?

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Hahaha. You guys.  You crack me up every time.

 

Now suddenly the guard timer is infinite instead of 48h.  There will still be parking lots, security forces dedicated to protect assets of players, stations with huge and hard to kill shields run by players, stations dedicated to host those police forces. 

Do you know why?  Because those big ass stations will have people on them.  What does that mean?  It means no guard-timer. Only player shields which allows all the ideas you mentioned before.

 

The only places that won't have a guard-timer are those places with no one in them. And then only for the first 48 hours. After that, its all fair game.

 

This allows more emergent gameplay, not less, because:

1) More people will feel they can go exploring space which they couldn't do otherwise without this mechanic because of the time real life allows them to play the game.  More players in space means more victims  explorers.

2) Playing alone becomes viable.  It's still not going to be easy, and more people will always have an advantage over a single player, but at least it is possible.  This mechanic favors the loner.
 

Course I don't play EVE so how much can my opinion possibly mean?

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Not trying to be the forum police here, but come on guys, good discussion going on over this, no need to start throwing jabs at each other over differing opinions.

 

Wouldn't hurt maybe to get more clarification if possible on this particular subject from NQ, otherwise we'll just go in circles over this. 

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Hahaha. You guys.  You crack me up every time.

 

Now suddenly the guard timer is infinite instead of 48h.  There will still be parking lots, security forces dedicated to protect assets of players, stations with huge and hard to kill shields run by players, stations dedicated to host those police forces. 

Do you know why?  Because those big ass stations will have people on them.  What does that mean?  It means no guard-timer. Only player shields which allows all the ideas you mentioned before.

 

The only places that won't have a guard-timer are those places with no one in them. And then only for the first 48 hours. After that, its all fair game.

 

This allows more emergent gameplay, not less, because:

1) More people will feel they can go exploring space which they couldn't do otherwise without this mechanic because of the time real life allows them to play the game.  More players in space means more victims  explorers.

2) Playing alone becomes viable.  It's still not going to be easy, and more people will always have an advantage over a single player, but at least it is possible.  This mechanic favors the loner.

 

Course I don't play EVE so how much can my opinion possibly mean?

Play EVE, see the difference with the ease of passage in it, then you'll understand. But then again, EVE is about risk, like DU, so I don't understand why you hesitate to try EVE, it's a good introduction to the mentality of politics, regional player culture and social interaction ((AKA, scams, scams everwhere, don't trust anyone O_O ).

 

That being said, in EVE, you can't go down to planets and chill in a system. People move around star systems all the time to do stuff. In DU, that won't be much of the case, given how much an area may be developed. A busy town, with PvP arenas, will probably satiate the need for people to feed the proverbial beast in them, therefore, they won't need to travel from half a map away to defend an asset in a system. If a system is unprotected, then it means it's not worthy to maintain or not profitable. Those systems, should be ripe for the taking without magic space shields blocking advance. That's how grey zones are established. 

 

And no, you cannot go exploring on the frontier without expecting the savages to come after you. Without a frontier, there's no significance to civilisation away from its borders. Safety and exploration DO NOT mix. You wanna be an explorer? Pack guns, heavy armor and a sharp mind. NQ should not be baby-sitting you. JC said the game is going to be complex, difficult, risk-full and rewarding. Your "exploration" has no risk involved if you have magic shields protecting you.

 

See, that's the problem. If people want to explore, they should do at their own peril. 

 

Your version of "exploration" is this .

 

My version of exploration is this.

 

And I am not fond of hand-holding, or a supporter of risklessness.

 

What's next? Setting up industrial sites, without having the risk of being attacked and having your site destroyed in an act of cutt-throat capitalism? That's a boring game you want. A game where an industrial doesn't have to rub shoulders with tools bureaucrats, in order to ensure safety for their industrial site, in exchange for a lower price when selling to the faction itself. Why bother with poltics, when magic space shields exist in the game, that protect your base, ship and factory for 48 hours , or forever, on that matter?

 

Also, you still haven't provided a link on your false claims that orbital strikes won't be a thing, fairness is for killing people without them knowing what happenend, AKA, oneshoting people on a planet with a Death Star. That - the Death Star - is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Throwing enormous bullets from orbit, is not a WMD.  

 

And your previous claims point out to perma-shields for every person who thinks they are a special snowflake that wants to park their ship in the middle of nowhere, because "why bother with space stations and paying tolls, if I can just park my ship in the middle of nowhere?".

 

And yes, your suggestion is killing emergent gameplay at its very core. 

 

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Not trying to be the forum police here, but come on guys, good discussion going on over this, no need to start throwing jabs at each other over differing opinions.

 

Wouldn't hurt maybe to get more clarification if possible on this particular subject from NQ, otherwise we'll just go in circles over this. 

Sure, I am all in for a response that clarifies where those shields apply and if the territory units will be another 48 hours. I wonder if NQ will cater to endless atalemates, since not everyone can play a game for 4 days in a row to capture one territory tile, because on top of that, their Kickstarter video starts to make no sense, if a shield can have 48 hours immunity on it, what's the whole thing about " strong marketplaces can afford stronger shields "  part.

 

I hope it was a mistranslation of something else from JC's presentation of DU in french. Who knows.

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Hahaha. You guys. You crack me up every time.

 

Now suddenly the guard timer is infinite instead of 48h. There will still be parking lots, security forces dedicated to protect assets of players, stations with huge and hard to kill shields run by players, stations dedicated to host those police forces.

Do you know why? Because those big ass stations will have people on them. What does that mean? It means no guard-timer. Only player shields which allows all the ideas you mentioned before.

 

The only places that won't have a guard-timer are those places with no one in them. And then only for the first 48 hours. After that, its all fair game.

 

This allows more emergent gameplay, not less, because:

1) More people will feel they can go exploring space which they couldn't do otherwise without this mechanic because of the time real life allows them to play the game. More players in space means more victims explorers.

2) Playing alone becomes viable. It's still not going to be easy, and more people will always have an advantage over a single player, but at least it is possible. This mechanic favors the loner.

 

Course I don't play EVE so how much can my opinion possibly mean?

Well I got that, but the conclusions are off. No player who logs on daily will use those lots. So you get less people using it which will maybe render them not viable to run.

 

Players who are online don't need those lots anyway

 

In a MMO (focus on the multiplayer part here) a loner should not be favored. It sshould be possible, true.

Easy mechanic: risk vs. reward. You want huge rewards by playing alone and getting all that sweet sweet diamond-extremium-expensive ore for yourself? No problem - just live with the risk that your base might get raided while you are away. For exploring, you don't need that "guard shield" for your constructs because it's either useless (because you're more than a week away anyhow) or it just is totally op because nothing could possible attack you. That mechanic will lead to easily abusable, perfectly safe grinding bases. And if you are worried about RL issues of players: everyone has them, and there will be enough groups who support this (and players not online more than 1/week).

 

I want DU to be balanced. Newbros and peaceful players should have their perfectly safe zones (mind the blank) and pirates their prey. But the higher the reward, the higher the risk - so they say in eve as you....don't know

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Well I got that, but the conclusions are off. No player who logs on daily will use those lots. So you get less people using it which will maybe render them not viable to run.

 

Players who are online don't need those lots anyway

 

In a MMO (focus on the multiplayer part here) a loner should not be favored. It sshould be possible, true.

Easy mechanic: risk vs. reward. You want huge rewards by playing alone and getting all that sweet sweet diamond-extremium-expensive ore for yourself? No problem - just live with the risk that your base might get raided while you are away. For exploring, you don't need that "guard shield" for your constructs because it's either useless (because you're more than a week away anyhow) or it just is totally op because nothing could possible attack you. That mechanic will lead to easily abusable, perfectly safe grinding bases. And if you are worried about RL issues of players: everyone has them, and there will be enough groups who support this (and players not online more than 1/week).

 

I want DU to be balanced. Newbros and peaceful players should have their perfectly safe zones (mind the blank) and pirates their prey. But the higher the reward, the higher the risk - so they say in eve as you....don't know

Well, chances are newbros will be at the safest of safe places, on the starting system, with all adjacent systems being player-run empires, that police their territories, which means, newbros will be safe in the "high-sec" space, while we savages will be at the fringes of the universe, burning planets to their cores and moving to the next system... err... I mean planting lillies and listening to N-Sync. Yeah... totally N-Sync.

 

But regardless, a solo player can still make their own path in the game. Nobody prevents a player from going into a frontier town, the "low-sec" system in other words, and getting into trouble because he looked a guy the wrong way (which happens to me all the time in EVE, I swear, I nver shot first), which at its core, is what emergent gameplay is all about. Now, if that solo player wants to be the general in an army, he would have to actually find people, rub shoulders and all that politics stuff to get that position -- until they are proven as a military hack of a general and they are demoted to pirvate sergeant sweeper first class. And let's face it, many people will simply go solo and get into trouble in frontier towns in the game, rather than stay in the "high-sec" areas of the star-map, at least, those who are savages like us :P 

 

 

But all of that solo risk and reward, stems from wanderlust and wanderlust without danger, is not an adventure, but a theme park ride and DU, is not a theme park MMO, it's a sandbox with emergent gameplay. 

 

I rest my case at that good sir.

 

o7

 

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Pretty sure it's done this way with regards to hard timers in both Eve, and planned to be done here, because unfortunately people don't all "live" in DU, and instead exist in the limitations and constraints of real life. People play all over the world, at different times, in different timezones, and can't drop everything on a whim even if they are instantly somehow notified that their shields are "under attack".

 

So really, it's more of a mechanic that enables the defenders to have a chance at countering their attackers, and actually provokes a PvP fight - albeit 48 hours later, instead of shooting down shields and taking over bases of each other when the other party is simply not online. Though I'd have to say that I agree with the point that 48 hours doesn't really work in this concept either - as the attackers 12 hours away, simply have to time it to have the shields go 'offline' at 9pm their time, when the defenders are going off to work at 9am theirs. So I don't know what is the best way to go about this either.

 

What I would like to see, is some way for smaller organisations with much smaller structures to effectively 'hide' their structures better. A small secret outpost with a small shield should be much harder to locate in the first place, than a much larger one, Maybe have a bit of a 'risk and effort vs reward' scenario - whereby a huge organisation with 10'000 people wouldn't be going around blowing up small 10 man bunkers "for the lulz", while it's still viable and profitable for a 50 member organisation to attempt the same feat. Though once again, I don't know how this can be practically achieved in realistic terms.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that once we have the game in alpha, and have a feel of what the world is like and how it works, people may have better ideas how to go about doing this - but until that point, I feel it's really taking stabs in the dark.

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Hahahaha. Coming from Twerk.  Hahahaha.  *can't breathe*

Your weak arguements graduated into simple "hahahaha".

 

Provide link to your wild claims from earlier. We are all waiting. 

 

And my quality of character is known. My word is my bond. Is yours? No, since you haven't provided a link yet and your can't defend your arguements without devolving into "lolz".

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  • 2 weeks later...

Naturally...internet flame war. Everyone here has high hopes for this game, everyone has a remarkably specific vision for the game and feels remarkably defensive when that vision is challenged in any way. Who am I kidding? "EVE Online" has been out for over a decade and people still argue about what kind of game it should be. EVE has room for BOTH pirates and carebears and SOMEHOW that fact makes the forum flame wars even hotter.

 

Many important game mechanics are still undecided. It is important to put your ideas out there for people to see, but it is also important to avoid getting attached to them. The developers will peruse the boards and pick up the ones THEY like.

 

I think it is fair to assert that in a game: A fair fight is better than an unfair fight, also the fight is better when it is more convenient for everyone.

 

Thus I think that mechanics that allow the side with superior numbers, resources, and prior strategy to have an advantage that is neither too great nor too small.

 

In terms of the 48 hour shield, there should obviously be some sort mechanism for both attackers and defenders to influence when the main battle occurs, i.e. when the shield does down the the attackers can actually attack inside the territory. Of course the attackers will get to decide when the attack, and the timer, starts. I suggest that the defender be allowed to change the length of the time for their shield, but lock it in place after the attackers appear. Possibly the attacker may also change the time in some way, but generally have a smaller influence.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Honestly as ridiculous as this sounds I would prefer that it not be you take out the shield and 48 hours later it goes down but more along the lines of it takes a large amount of time to take down that way the players using the shield have time to get on and do something about it but if I wanted I could bring a larger fleet and take down the shield faster, just gives players more options, I feel 48 hours gives the shield user to much time to do something kinda of negating aggression especially for small pirate groups that want something inside that shield.

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Honestly as ridiculous as this sounds I would prefer that it not be you take out the shield and 48 hours later it goes down but more along the lines of it takes a large amount of time to take down that way the players using the shield have time to get on and do something about it but if I wanted I could bring a larger fleet and take down the shield faster, just gives players more options, I feel 48 hours gives the shield user to much time to do something kinda of negating aggression especially for small pirate groups that want something inside that shield.

 

The problem with "bring more - bring it down faster" is: that mechanic favors the big ones. As I already said in my first post, you have to have a kind of hard or soft limit to it.

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I agree it favors larger orgs but to me that makes sense. So in our world today we have large countries with gigantic armies able to wipe out defensive structures of smaller countries one reason they don't is because it is too much effort to do so. I feel like while yes the biggest of orgs could go around smashing small pirate bases with gigantic fleets, the pirates should set up their bases as hidden or very well protected. So as far as making players not in large organizations closer in terms of ability I agree with you, but I would like to have it kept in mind that I think my way is much more realistic to how pirates/small groups interact with larger Orgs.

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I agree it favors larger orgs but to me that makes sense. So in our world today we have large countries with gigantic armies able to wipe out defensive structures of smaller countries one reason they don't is because it is too much effort to do so. I feel like while yes the biggest of orgs could go around smashing small pirate bases with gigantic fleets, the pirates should set up their bases as hidden or very well protected. So as far as making players not in large organizations closer in terms of ability I agree with you, but I would like to have it kept in mind that I think my way is much more realistic to how pirates/small groups interact with larger Orgs.

This is a game, not RL. Everyone should have fun. You just can't have fun when at some point anyone just steamrolls you because they can. Bad mechanic.

 

Just look at eve and why they changed everything

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  • 1 year later...

Very interesting conversation (even if a bit old now)

 

I imagine "shields" less of physical objects, and more of diplomatic thing. It's like "We challenge your forces for a battle! Set a time between 24 and 48 hours from now". Then defenders have 12 hours to decide when the case-fire ends (attackers get notified of the time too - we want battle, not hide and seek). When shield goes down after timer, both armies are manned and ready for fun PvP battle. Shield can be manually closed after 6 hours, should be enough time for a firce fight.

 

So it's a tool to prevent riding off-line bases at 6am. Something that IMO has no place in computer game that's suppose to be PvP rather than PvE.


Stronger shields may mean that you need more DPS to set off the timer. Just so single fighter jet can't challenge whole big city (even if it shoots it for a week). Only force large enough to have chance in actual battle.

 

To prevent defenders from reinforcing it too much, or escaping with resources - shield that is on timer should prevent movement of any ships. Good luck carrying resources by hand. You need to park outside, thus be open for unannounced attack. Or just arrive right before the battle. They should also prevent shooting through in any direction.

 

To allow small sneaky raids... maybe based on amount of resources stored withing shield, it could let small vehicles to pass through? So large city would be protected from night-attack of large forces, but lesser threats need to be dealt with small automated/manual defences. So raiders could bring just enough forces to either sneak in and steal something, or assault some less-protected stockpile.

 

BTW on topic of force-fields that actually soak damage - I hate those. They just dumb down whole aspect of localised damage. They may be fine for games with HP pool, but not for games based on engineering and voxel/module based damage.

 

BTW2 Don't forget that unlike Eve, here you can build deep underground. So all your big ships may mean nothing in actual base attack. Kill-box corridor gives huge advantage to defenders.

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