Should automated static defences be added to duel universe?

[Aaron Cain]

And back to the issue  as we are playing DU and not Eve here.

Over 80% of respondents says yes to automatic defenses. So that is an overwhelming number
 

[Seidan]

feel like a very bad idea

if you believe this way you can protect yourself against 200+man raiding your city/outpost then consider if alone you can build 1 turret then they gonna build 10 turret even if they are limited per city they gonna have plenty of them

you can't win a 1v10 fight with or without automated defense nothing will change if you want protection join a big group

[Tordan]

The question is too vague.

Static defense is implicit in this game. Space is a static defense. The time and effort needed to build ships is a static defense. Safe zones will definitely be a static defense. A wall of voxels 16m thick is a static defense.

 

Do I think that there should be automatic unmanned turrets that fire at ships? no.

 

[Aaron Cain]

16m thick voxel wall, you gave me an idea

 

specially when everyone in it can maybe edit it and thus can edit a door and edit it back. this might be the best of the best of the best defense, regarding we possible get undestructible voxels.

So new plan, Build a box with 4 m walls all around with no exit and no glass and not a single element on the out side to make sure everything on the outside is only voxels. Also place the TU within this box so even that cannot be hacked. And there we have it, the best defense that looks like shit but can withstand Any attack.

 

Who needs guns?

[plmkoi]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:15 AM, Seidan said:

feel like a very bad idea

if you believe this way you can protect yourself against 200+man raiding your city/outpost then consider if alone you can build 1 turret then they gonna build 10 turret even if they are limited per city they gonna have plenty of them

you can't win a 1v10 fight with or without automated defense nothing will change if you want protection join a big group

It isn't and here is why. If you have to rely solely on individual bodies then guess what is going to happen? People would just zerg, you already see this crap in Eve. This game is already kind of moving into the direction where there is massive incentives in joining a blue doughnut. Now with automated turrets you can as I said in a previous post make it costly for the aggressor. 

 

Now can the larger entities do it, well yea. But with "resource scarcity" the incentive to put in a crap ton of turrets over ships and capital ships is in my opinion small, especially if you have espionage that can just disable them or sabotage them. If you are a large entity it is more logical to just dump your resources into more ships to accommodate your large personnel advantage. 

 

I am willing to concede that we can put limitations in the turrets like what I heard where turrets not controlled by a player is less effective, like making it more resource intensive with power, cpu, and etc. 

On 11/12/2019 at 8:49 AM, Tordan said:

The question is too vague.

Static defense is implicit in this game. Space is a static defense. The time and effort needed to build ships is a static defense. Safe zones will definitely be a static defense. A wall of voxels 16m thick is a static defense.

 

Do I think that there should be automatic unmanned turrets that fire at ships? no.

 

"The time and effort needed to build ships is a static defense." 

 

Wrong, this is an oxymoron as ships are mobile and can leave the area if the situation is un salvageable. Placed turrets are not the same thing, like saying a tank is static defense.

 

"Safe zones will definitely be a static defense." 

 

Safe zones i.e you mean starting zones? Because outside of the starting zone it is as safe as ability to conjure up enough bodies to fight off an aggressor.

 

"Do I think that there should be automatic unmanned turrets that fire at ships? no."

 

Then I hope you look forward to getting zerged, as outfits would just join larger blobs. Eve has already shown what is human nature (being risk adverse) and what the result is. If you want small outfits to never build stuff on claimed territory, then sure let's not put into the game disincentives to just wipe out people for the lulz. The point of adding automated turrets is that it gives smaller entities force multipliers and increases the cost of siege people.

 

If I have 300 people, do you think that 10 people is going to stop me from steam rolling them for the lulz? I can tell you in my head I might lost at most a couple guys as we zerg them. But not lets add to the calculation that this group has a tank or two with a few dozen shitty automated turrets. Am I going to weaken my outfit to destroy a person's creation and risk losing maybe half of my guys and air support? Probably not unless I desperately want that piece of land and it is going to give me an roi for the losses I suffered taking it. 

 

Pvp drastically differs once you go from theme park with infinite resources to a game that encourages resource scarcity. That is why you don't see alliance waging massive wars on a constant basis as that is resources you have to replace if as they say, shit really hits the fan. 

 

[Tordan]

1 hour ago, plmkoi said:

Safe zones i.e you mean starting zones?

no. I mean that there will be sanctuary areas in this game where PvP will not be allowed. It has been stated implicitly.  In fact there used to be a 3rd moon in orbit of Alioth called a sanctuary moon. It was "temporarily" removed.

 

1 hour ago, plmkoi said:

If I have 300 people, do you think that 10 people is going to stop me from steam rolling them for the lulz?

Just because you would, doesn't mean I would. If I am in an Org with lots of people, and we declare that everyone is safe within our region as long as they act peacefully, then we will likely have a mostly peaceful area. Particularly as we will not be wasting resources on pointless skirmishes, and can apply those resources in keeping the peace.

[plmkoi]

2 minutes ago, Tordan said:

no. I mean that there will be sanctuary areas in this game where PvP will not be allowed. It has been stated implicitly.  In fact there used to be a 3rd moon in orbit of Alioth called a sanctuary moon. It was "temporarily" removed.

But we both know that the fun factor of the game is going to be outside said safe zones. Well you are the first one that mentioned it is an entire moon and I thank you for that. I been getting mixed messages where it is going to be like a 1-2 km sized city/outside that FFA pvp and that is why I pushed in another thread the inclusion of sec status. No FFA mmo survived for long term and that is why all the kickstarted mmo's are implementing some safe zone controls and contrary to popular belief hardcore pvp players are unsustainable revenue source for an mmo. 

 

4 minutes ago, Tordan said:

Just because you would, doesn't mean I would. If I am in an Org with lots of people, and we declare that everyone is safe within our region as long as they act peacefully, then we will likely have a mostly peaceful area. Particularly as we will not be wasting resources on pointless skirmishes, and can apply those resources in keeping the peace.

Well it comes down to a matter of perspective I guess. In Eve people that run stuff outside of empire space (safe zones) tends to be very realistic as resources are usually scarce and so bad decisions or unexpected disasters has serious consequences, aka an eviction if you live out in null. While you might not proceed with such activities, people that are similarly minded to me would have 0 doubt what the obvious choice would be, which is take out the small group and evict them. Now that equation significantly changes if the gain is going to be negligible compared to effort put in, i.e I can lose a lot of equipment and some personnel for just evicting a group of small player for no other purpose then creating a buffer. So what would be the next logical solution? Diplomacy and get them to join a covenant of other groups to give me said buffer. When I started to get into Eve I was surprised how many people read/studied: Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Machiavelli, and etc. Only in a sandbox like Eve does people go to great lengths to have a competitive advantage against their adversaries. 

 

I will state that for a sandbox mmo the biggest aspect you should consider for ideas or aspects of a game is incentives/disincentives. Example would be that one point there was rampant inflation for a short period in regards to ship insurance. Reason was that circumstances changed to incentivize insurance fraud, or the current issue in Eve of suicide ganking with no consequences. Again, CCP putting their head in the sand to actually put in a system that followed their old philosophy that every action has consequences. You can foresee a lot of the issues with this title just by looking at Eve's development and how bad they f***** up on just about everything for sand box wise after 2013. We have yet to get into other titles like Dark fall and etc.

[Tordan]

46 minutes ago, plmkoi said:

But we both know that the fun factor of the game is going to be outside said safe zones.

This game is not Eve and it has a very large community of people for whom the 'fun factor' is creating, not destroying. That fact alone stands a very big chance of making this game very different. Nothing I have stated here is buried under the NDA. The backer rewards include information about sanctuary areas, as does the public non-NDA Trello account.

[unown]

On 11/25/2019 at 2:46 PM, Tordan said:

This game is not Eve and it has a very large community of people for whom the 'fun factor' is creating, not destroying. That fact alone stands a very big chance of making this game very different. Nothing I have stated here is buried under the NDA. The backer rewards include information about sanctuary areas, as does the public non-NDA Trello account.

True this game is not eve but in the context of plmkoi's post there are many similarities 

[Wyndle]

IMO, I believe there should be unmanned defense options.  I see it as a dangerous form of chess.  Can I either outwit or roll over the defense system?  That nuance is one of the reasons I PvP other than defending what is mine.  Killing for the sake of taking what belongs to others doesn't hold weight for me, but give me a strategic puzzle under fire and I would lend myself to an effort in that vein. 

[Fenrave]

I personally think that automated defenses should be limited to their own subset of turrets. You can only get small, mildly inaccurate PDCs as automated defenses. They would be great for small scale fights, such as fending off a pirate, but when scaled up, you might as well be hitting your opponent with what can be compared to spaghetti. Other things to weaken them would probably be a high ammo usage, though that does mean a high fire rate at the same time. If they ate through ammo really quickly, then it would be mildly impractical to install hundreds of them on a ship, since you would need to dedicate a huge portion of your ship to ammo storage. Assuming ammo is combustible when shot, this would obviously become a priority target for anyone aware of it.

Naturally other variants this could exist, maybe some more scaled up ones or different weapon types, but overall the premise is the same. Though i have to seriously ask, what kind of situation would a small org need to put themselves in that would warrant such a huge force to come down on them? Its likely that if they did something that pissed off an org to the point where this would happen, that they would be able to man their own turrets or escape before such a situation escalates.

Automated defenses should not be the primary damage dealer, it should just be a stop-gap measure. Bigger more powerful turrets should be manned, as to not make everything horribly unbalanced. A small org should not be able to fend off a big org with automated defenses alone. I'd imagine you should always come to expect that a bigger org might want to flex on you, so you should either move out far away or adopt a mobile strategy.

[unown]

17 hours ago, Fenrave said:

I personally think that automated defenses should be limited to their own subset of turrets. You can only get small, mildly inaccurate PDCs as automated defenses. They would be great for small scale fights, such as fending off a pirate, but when scaled up, you might as well be hitting your opponent with what can be compared to spaghetti. Other things to weaken them would probably be a high ammo usage, though that does mean a high fire rate at the same time. If they ate through ammo really quickly, then it would be mildly impractical to install hundreds of them on a ship, since you would need to dedicate a huge portion of your ship to ammo storage. Assuming ammo is combustible when shot, this would obviously become a priority target for anyone aware of it.

Naturally other variants this could exist, maybe some more scaled up ones or different weapon types, but overall the premise is the same. Though i have to seriously ask, what kind of situation would a small org need to put themselves in that would warrant such a huge force to come down on them? Its likely that if they did something that pissed off an org to the point where this would happen, that they would be able to man their own turrets or escape before such a situation escalates.

Automated defenses should not be the primary damage dealer, it should just be a stop-gap measure. Bigger more powerful turrets should be manned, as to not make everything horribly unbalanced. A small org should not be able to fend off a big org with automated defenses alone. I'd imagine you should always come to expect that a bigger org might want to flex on you, so you should either move out far away or adopt a mobile strategy.

This is specified as Static defense designed to protect things such as space station's and non movable objects like planet side bases and were not intended to be placed on ships because NQ has ruled against this already. However I disagree that small orgs are not able given the time and reasorce's to defend themselves against a larger threat. I believe they should be able to the defender should always have the atvatage and that only builds with time.Its also a deterrent for large orgs to roll small ones.

[Fenrave]

I had assumed that given there was multiple discussions on this thread about ship based automated defenses(basically using ships/stations interchangeably), that the original topic was not the main topic at hand. Neither was i aware of the ruling, and thats mildly disappointing, regardless that was just my personal opinion on the topic.
I'm going to assume by the second point you made that you believe that smaller orgs(as long as their the defender), should have the advantage. Which wouldn't be denied here, since i didn't say anything like that at all. I was speaking in the context of a small org being slammed by a huge attack from a much bigger org, of course they should have the homefield advantage, they would theoretically have many hours to plan ahead and get their members on. My point being was that a small org shouldn't be able to rely on automated defenses, since that would also be scaled to big orgs, where they could have a colossal swarm of automated defenses. Because no matter how you try to balance it, bigger orgs will always have the advantage in resources, manpower and influence.

Not saying that they should lose, as i did clarify that they should move out of the way of more aggressive orgs or adopt a mobile strategy. If you're going to start a small org that becomes the target of bigger orgs, sitting still in one place is just asking for trouble, especially if you've done something to anger a bigger org, or they are just be unreasonably aggressive.

[unown]

14 hours ago, Fenrave said:

I had assumed that given there was multiple discussions on this thread about ship based automated defenses(basically using ships/stations interchangeably), that the original topic was not the main topic at hand. Neither was i aware of the ruling, and thats mildly disappointing, regardless that was just my personal opinion on the topic.
I'm going to assume by the second point you made that you believe that smaller orgs(as long as their the defender), should have the advantage. Which wouldn't be denied here, since i didn't say anything like that at all. I was speaking in the context of a small org being slammed by a huge attack from a much bigger org, of course they should have the homefield advantage, they would theoretically have many hours to plan ahead and get their members on. My point being was that a small org shouldn't be able to rely on automated defenses, since that would also be scaled to big orgs, where they could have a colossal swarm of automated defenses. Because no matter how you try to balance it, bigger orgs will always have the advantage in resources, manpower and influence.

Not saying that they should lose, as i did clarify that they should move out of the way of more aggressive orgs or adopt a mobile strategy. If you're going to start a small org that becomes the target of bigger orgs, sitting still in one place is just asking for trouble, especially if you've done something to anger a bigger org, or they are just be unreasonably aggressive.

You are correct and I agree the main point that someone else made was that yes Large orgs can slam smaller orgs but automated deffences make it so in doing so they lose (if the smaller org took the time to do it) A substantial amount that it won't be Meta. Also the more time a Org has the less likely they can be (removed) from there home. 

 

And yes Large orgs will have the same Homeland advantages however other Larger Orgs will also be more likely to hit you because you have more to take

[unown]

On 11/25/2019 at 12:25 PM, plmkoi said:

 

 

If I have 300 people, do you think that 10 people is going to stop me from steam rolling them for the lulz? I can tell you in my head I might lost at most a couple guys as we zerg them. But not lets add to the calculation that this group has a tank or two with a few dozen shitty automated turrets. Am I going to weaken my outfit to destroy a person's creation and risk losing maybe half of my guys and air support? Probably not unless I desperately want that piece of land and it is going to give me an roi for the losses I suffered taking it. 

 

Pvp drastically differs once you go from theme park with infinite resources to a game that encourages resource scarcity. That is why you don't see alliance waging massive wars on a constant basis as that is resources you have to replace if as they say, shit really hits the fan. 

 

 

The point I was drawing off of

[Aaron Cain]

To refer to the 300 vs 10 people.

Give me some time to build up and auto defenses and i will hold against 300, heck you can even trow in 1000 and i will hold. The strategic options we probably have in DU will be good enough to hold against large groups Unless the come far better armored and weaponized. But then again, are they willing to take the loss on materials.

 

[unown]

On 12/16/2019 at 7:46 AM, Aaron Cain said:

To refer to the 300 vs 10 people.

Give me some time to build up and auto defenses and i will hold against 300, heck you can even trow in 1000 and i will hold. The strategic options we probably have in DU will be good enough to hold against large groups Unless the come far better armored and weaponized. But then again, are they willing to take the loss on materials.

 

my point exactly 

[plmkoi]

On 11/25/2019 at 11:46 PM, Tordan said:

This game is not Eve and it has a very large community of people for whom the 'fun factor' is creating, not destroying. That fact alone stands a very big chance of making this game very different. Nothing I have stated here is buried under the NDA. The backer rewards include information about sanctuary areas, as does the public non-NDA Trello account.

I see people keep posting this "this game is not Eve". Well of course it isn't a carbon copy as you don't want to copy a cesspool at it's current state. But J.D keeps spamming the "civilization building mmo" and for some reason, people keep denying the fact that Eve Online is the progenitor of sandbox/civilization building in mmo's. All others that cam after is either dead or on life support and that is because the studios thought they can make radical changes to Eve's system and failed. 

On 12/1/2019 at 8:28 PM, unown said:

True this game is not eve but in the context of plmkoi's post there are many similarities 

Well J.D has said Eve is the inspiration, but if he has played the game for a extended amount of time in my opinion is debatable. 

On 12/9/2019 at 5:32 AM, Wyndle said:

IMO, I believe there should be unmanned defense options.  I see it as a dangerous form of chess.  Can I either outwit or roll over the defense system?  That nuance is one of the reasons I PvP other than defending what is mine.  Killing for the sake of taking what belongs to others doesn't hold weight for me, but give me a strategic puzzle under fire and I would lend myself to an effort in that vein. 

I emphasized this point comrade for others to see the type of attitude that I commend and how I see such things. As for outwit or roll over question, how about sabotage with espionage? See this is why I love Eve as many people either are ignorant or forgotten the exploits of "The Guiding Hand Social Club" (which I hope you enjoy). Eve is many things and patience has a whole new meaning in that game. Hell, they had a thing called whaling where an an outfit hunts super capital class ships by stalking their prey for weeks if not months (think 3 months for one victim supposedly) just for one day to hot drop them and kill them. 

On 12/12/2019 at 1:48 AM, Fenrave said:

I personally think that automated defenses should be limited to their own subset of turrets. You can only get small, mildly inaccurate PDCs as automated defenses. They would be great for small scale fights, such as fending off a pirate, but when scaled up, you might as well be hitting your opponent with what can be compared to spaghetti. Other things to weaken them would probably be a high ammo usage, though that does mean a high fire rate at the same time. If they ate through ammo really quickly, then it would be mildly impractical to install hundreds of them on a ship, since you would need to dedicate a huge portion of your ship to ammo storage. Assuming ammo is combustible when shot, this would obviously become a priority target for anyone aware of it.

Naturally other variants this could exist, maybe some more scaled up ones or different weapon types, but overall the premise is the same. Though i have to seriously ask, what kind of situation would a small org need to put themselves in that would warrant such a huge force to come down on them? Its likely that if they did something that pissed off an org to the point where this would happen, that they would be able to man their own turrets or escape before such a situation escalates.

Automated defenses should not be the primary damage dealer, it should just be a stop-gap measure. Bigger more powerful turrets should be manned, as to not make everything horribly unbalanced. A small org should not be able to fend off a big org with automated defenses alone. I'd imagine you should always come to expect that a bigger org might want to flex on you, so you should either move out far away or adopt a mobile strategy.

I think they shouldn't be limited in anyway and from my mindset from an Eve player/Military historian buff I feel like the thinking behind this is flawed. 

• Whether manned turrets or auto it takes resources with the creation of the gun, ammo, power to the gun, and anything else they are going to add to the game. Resources are not free and there is a cost to them.
• Auto turrets being a primary damage dealer? Well who ever is that battle commander should be shot multiple times. Here is a good analogy. I want to put all my available resources (or most of it into auto turrets) is like saying I want my only chess pieces to be no pawns, bishops, queen, or knights and  get 2 extra rooks with my king. The key to this point is the variation of tools and relying heavy on automated anything provides a lot of points of failure in my opinion.
• As bad as this may sound Sun Tzu once said "the worst policy is to besiege if it can be possibly avoided". Lets break this down to the fundamentals. Stalingrad at least 20k Russians held off 100k German force and prior to that the Winter War. Using the two points prior for a video game, you want people to not throw their weight around you have to raise the costs of them just steam rolling you. People can make rational decisions and you can with small game design choices give small groups a little leverage against larger entities. The choice they have to make, is it worth the risk expending tons of valuable resources for some territory at the risk of falling prey to another organization. If you want diplomacy to matter you have to make it costly to just invade people.
• As for small org situation? This is why people in DU need to play Eve for a significant amount of time. This is just one of the many examples why you want the cost to mean something as Provi forces at point had maybe over 2k and never surpassed 3.5k players compared to 5k to 15k and take these numbers with a grain of salt. Probably was worse for all I know.  

 

On 12/12/2019 at 7:13 PM, unown said:

This is specified as Static defense designed to protect things such as space station's and non movable objects like planet side bases and were not intended to be placed on ships because NQ has ruled against this already. However I disagree that small orgs are not able given the time and reasorce's to defend themselves against a larger threat. I believe they should be able to the defender should always have the atvatage and that only builds with time.Its also a deterrent for large orgs to roll small ones.

As for larger organizations using auto turrets it going to happen, but the difference is that they aren't going to be heavily reliant on them in comparison to small organizations. A larger force if run competently is going to have a more mobile force as it offers flexibility which equals options. A smaller organization is already going to be limited in options and so you can use your human assets at key points to maximize the destruction you inflict with the aid of auto turrets. So you are correct on it being a major deterrent. 

On 12/13/2019 at 10:51 PM, unown said:

You are correct and I agree the main point that someone else made was that yes Large orgs can slam smaller orgs but automated deffences make it so in doing so they lose (if the smaller org took the time to do it) A substantial amount that it won't be Meta. Also the more time a Org has the less likely they can be (removed) from there home. 

 

And yes Large orgs will have the same Homeland advantages however other Larger Orgs will also be more likely to hit you because you have more to take

Not much homeland advantage as they would only use the bare minimum turrets to defend the base for holding out until a relief force comes in. Smaller organizations won't get a relief force unless they get allies. 

On 12/16/2019 at 4:46 PM, Aaron Cain said:

To refer to the 300 vs 10 people.

Give me some time to build up and auto defenses and i will hold against 300, heck you can even trow in 1000 and i will hold. The strategic options we probably have in DU will be good enough to hold against large groups Unless the come far better armored and weaponized. But then again, are they willing to take the loss on materials.

 

Well comrade I commend the boldness, but we have to see as there are many factors we need to see. This pvp drop and what the options are going to make or break the game and I hope this isn't an all air centric approach.

[ExPLiCiT]

There needs to be something that can be done to defend bases when you are offline or there is no reason to even build bases in a pvp zone because they will be easily destroyed and won't be worth the resources or effort to build. A ship can be moved to a safe zone when you log off, a base cannot.

 

So what will the defense mechanism be if not some type of automated turret? Well this is where it needs to be well thought out. In Empyrion there are automated turrets and offline protection. The offline protection has a delay in engaging after logging off so that it can't be exploited by logging off while under attack. It also only lasts for a certain period of being offline. This offline mechanic had its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that if any player in the faction was online you would lose all the offline protection on all your bases and if that player didn't alert anyone, that was offline, that the bases were being attacked or try to defend them themselves the bases likely wouldn't last long, however that is a penalty for not having a dedicated and organized group. Also the turrets would fire even when offline protection was on so that would allow players to deplete expensive ammo and fuel of offline bases which can the base to consume all it fuel and it would drop the offline shields. This is a good penalty for poor design. Another tactic that was used was wait until a player logs off and then deploy a bunch of decoy bullet sponges and hit it with everything you got to get it down before the offline protection had the ability to engage.

 

Fighting bases in Empyrion can be a lot of fun as there are all kinds of tactics you can use and make up to counter the automated defenses. It would be just as fun on this game. There is a lot NQ could learn on balancing and what works and doesn't work on Empyrion. I sincerely hope that some if their team have actively played that game to learn from it.

[Lethys]

Thats why you have timers (24-48h) to attack/destroy a base. No need for automated turrets. Which will not be of any use anyway when facing a well organized fleet