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Discussion of the mechanics of Alien Cores


SvarogZ

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I would like to talk about the mechanics of the alien cores and plasma.

 

What it looks like now.

One powerful corporation controls all the alien cores. To fight them, the other players must ally with the same power. Thus, we will end up with two or three corporations controlling all the cores, or only one monopolist with no competition. At present we have one monopolist.

 

I would like to suggest a few things that can help make gameplay much more exciting.

 

1.      Plasma

a.      The plasma should occupy more than the maximum volume of the jetpack and perhaps even the S-container.

b.      The plasma must decompose during the warp. Thus, it can only be transported in the usual way.

Result: Plasma can be intercepted during transport

 

2. Stealth

To provide surveillance of enemy bases and ships, we need stealth technology.

It can look like a shield with a limited volume, If the elements of the ship are inside the stealth bubble zone, the ship is invisible to all radars.

If the ship is too close to the radar or exceeds the maximum speed for stealth, stealth does not work.

 

3. Alien cores

I would like you to consider another mechanic that I think gives much more reason for both small and large teams to fight.

A unique resource (say, plasma) is generated with a random time delay, say 6 hours to 7 days. The number of generated resources depends on the time delay. All players know exactly where and when. The place is always the same and cannot belong to the players. The resource can not be warped.

So, for example, we know about generating 1 resource unit in 6h. This is not interesting for large corporations. It's an opportunity for smaller teams to compete for that resource.

Another example is that we know about generating 100 resource units in 7 days. Big corporations are very interested in taking over. This is the best opportunity to prepare for the greate battle and distribute beacons and bases around the spawn point. This way, the battle can begin well before time X. Currently, players are defending alien cores. I suggest defending bases around alien cores.

 

This gives different strategies for capturing and transporting the exotic resource. 

For example, you can hide it under the base shield and then transport it. Or try to use stealth and deceive all fighters.

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On 6/1/2022 at 3:00 PM, SvarogZ said:

One powerful corporation controls all the alien cores. To fight them, the other players must ally with the same power. Thus, we will end up with two or three corporations controlling all the cores, or only one monopolist with no competition. At present we have one monopolist.

Warp allows such force-projection that any large faction can theoretically put everything they have on any alien-core they own near about at the drop of a hat with relatively little effort, while the invulnerable period station-shields have grants them more than enough time to move. Simply put, the universe is too small, the alien-cores are too close to everything, and managing to both take and hold them against a universe-dominating faction is going to be a very large and very long game of attrition that wont be feasible for smaller orgs to attempt.

 

Its an mmo, "conservation of ninjutsu" can't apply. In a game like DU large factions will dominate, and absolutely nothing can be done to prevent it that wont crater the game in relatively short order.

 

On 6/1/2022 at 3:00 PM, SvarogZ said:

1.      Plasma

a.      The plasma should occupy more than the maximum volume of the jetpack and perhaps even the S-container.

b.      The plasma must decompose during the warp. Thus, it can only be transported in the usual way.

Result: Plasma can be intercepted during transport

This would be an interesting way to do things that would help encourage some pvp in theory, but it is far more likely that the faction with control of the core would just set up a station to process everything at the core in to finished product that they could then ship to wherever normally and at their leisure.

 

Even if on-site processing was somehow prevented, it isn't hard to fit an M (or L) container to an XS core, and any competent mission runner will tell you that the odds of a smart pilot being intercepted outside the pipes are next to non-existent.

 

On a final note, it would probably be easier to make the plasma just behave like aphelia-mission packages that prevent warp instead of making it decay during warp. It would achieve the same function as making it decay, but provide significantly less work that wound need to be done before implementation and thus get the feature deployed faster.

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I think the best principle that helps achieve interesting gameplay is the paper-scissor-rock principle, if you can't have more than one. We have to follow that principle wherever possible. 

 

I agree, it's easier to make the behavior similar to Aphelia's packs. However, I don't think it's a good idea to base the game on bans. Using conditions is much better. I don't think all three mechanics described in my post are too difficult to implement.

 

1. Make the plasma "unwarpable". Just remove all plasma from all containers before warp. Easy.

2. Prohibit possession of alien cores. Easy.

3. Spawn plasma in the conteiner located in the alien core. Also easy.

4. The hardest part is stealth, but it's not outstanding effort compared to the work already done on alien cores and PvP. It will be implemented anyway.
 

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3 hours ago, SvarogZ said:

I agree, it's easier to make the behavior similar to Aphelia's packs. However, I don't think it's a good idea to base the game on bans. Using conditions is much better. I don't think all three mechanics described in my post are too difficult to implement.

I am going to go out on a limb here and assume that English isn't your first language, my apologies if I am incorrect.
"Ban" is most commonly used to either refer to permanently preventing an account from playing the game (the objective being to prevent the account's owner from playing), or to refer to an action that if performed would be punished with a ban on someone's account. 

 

As far as preventing people from warping with a package goes, the game itself doesn't allow it. If you press the button to warp with an aphelia-mission package in your cargo the game just tells you that you cant, and nothing happens. It works quite well, and the people that complain about it tend to only be the ones that also think players shouldn't be allowed to play as pirates or attack anyone that doesn't want to pvp.

 

3 hours ago, SvarogZ said:

1. Make the plasma "unwarpable". Just remove all plasma from all containers before warp. Easy.

2. Prohibit possession of alien cores. Easy.

3. Spawn plasma in the conteiner located in the alien core. Also easy.

4. The hardest part is stealth, but it's not outstanding effort compared to the work already done on alien cores and PvP. It will be implemented anyway.

There's a saying that fits this quite well: "Easier said than done."


NQ isn't an experienced game development company. DU is their very ambitious first game, and while it has some truly amazing features, it has its flaws too. One of NQ's plans has been to make all the kergon fuels in to one single fuel that can be made four different ways. It sounds easy, but here we are two years after they said it and it still hasn't happened. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I suspect if it were that easy they'd have done it already just to call it a fulfilled promise and to appease the people that have asked for it.

 

1. Making the plasma get removed from an inventory during warp is an entirely new mechanic, the closest things right are the use of warp-cells during warp, and the act of checking to see if an aphelia-mission package is on the ship before warping. It sounds relatively short and easy, but it would probably involve more steps to add in than just adding the tag on mission packages that prevents warping to the plasma items and updating the line of text explaining what you can't warp with.

2/3. You've probably never had possession of an alien core, but it behaves like a static core on a planet. You need to own it so you can build on it and deploy mining units and a plasma collector on it. But even if it didn't need to be owned and just put all the plasma and t5 ore in to a container anyone could access, do you really think a large faction that can hold the alien cores like they can now wouldn't just build a structure around it on other cores? or keep a fleet around it and either have someone waiting to just empty the container or kill and steal from anyone that came up to empty it? 

 

4. If they ever get around to adding in stealth (people have asked for it for a while now), it would be too powerful if it could be used to stay within linked container range of the core long enough for someone to steal the plasma. With stealth like that players would never get pirated anywhere unless NQ added some major drawback to using it. People have wanted it for a long time (I am one of them), but it needs to be balanced by other mechanics and features or it will just cause balance problems.

 

 

The whole point of the alien cores was to be something big factions would have big fights over, not something little guys can sneak up and steal. If we try to push away from what it is now in favor of letting everyone have a chance at it, then we'll be making it just like asteroids. I'd like if my faction could come up and pirate some plasma from Legion, or if we had a way to manufacture exotics without having to go through whoever controls the alien cores, but right now the issue is one of the big factions having too much force-projection available, not of an inability to pirate their ships.

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14 minutes ago, Taelessael said:

I am going to go out on a limb here and assume that English isn't your first language, my apologies if I am incorrect.
"Ban" is most commonly used to either refer to permanently preventing an account from playing the game (the objective being to prevent the account's owner from playing), or to refer to an action that if performed would be punished with a ban on someone's account. 

 

English is not my language at all. It's not the second. Let's say 1 and 1/4 :)

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Stealth zone can be big enought for only small ships.

 

Stealth can be disabled if any object close enought. Say 100km.

 

Everything is manageable.

 

If developers are not familiar with their code and can only tag the items, they cannot build something like DU. You are talking as a coder with his manager. To represent everything too complex :)

 

Apologize for mistakes. Hopefully you can get my ideas ;)

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The problem here is that al lthis is focused on combat PVP gameplay, while the Alien cores IMO should have the harvesting of resources and bringing them to market or use in industry as core purpose. That there are opportunities for combat engagement along the way of that purpose I woudl see no issue with.

 

Suggesting that transport of plasma effective must be done with non warp travel kill the entire purpose of the cores as it only caters to the combat PVP focused players and eliminates the rest. DU is not and should not be a combat PVP game first as it is well established and well documented that combat PVP in general is not a main driver in agame's long term success.

 

 

The mere fact hat a single alliance was able to grab and control the cores in game so fast, with so much ease and be able to maintain control with little effort just shows both how broken the whole mechanic is and how it is misrepresented an /or ill conceived by NQ

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10 hours ago, SvarogZ said:

Stealth zone can be big enought for only small ships.

My favorite ship is a small core with an L shield that can pick 2.5kt of weight off of Alioth with 3 large containers, and has an external space for 4 more large containers. It wouldn't be hard to build one that can do even more, but I like the look of this one. Limiting stealth to small-core ships will not do much.

 

10 hours ago, SvarogZ said:

Stealth can be disabled if any object close enought. Say 100km.

If stealth is disabled at 100km, you'll never get close enough to steal the plasma, the core's owners will see you coming from a long ways off and either shoot you, or swipe the plasma themselves before you get to the core and then shoot you.
 

10 hours ago, SvarogZ said:

If developers are not familiar with their code and can only tag the items, they cannot build something like DU. You are talking as a coder with his manager. To represent everything too complex

I am oversimplifying, but my point is if you want something, it is easier to get it done using existing stuff than it is to make whole new things for it. Changing fuel like NQ said they would sounds easy, but there are a lot of steps to it (I can think of a dozen changes to the code it would require if they didn't write things to be easily changed), so it wont happen for a long time.

 

On top of that, both making fuel a bit easier and making plasma more easily pirated will provide almost no actual gain. Most people stick to one kind of fuel, and most competent pilots shipping the plasma would easily avoid pirates 99% of the time.

 

In short, you're asking for a fix to something that isn't a problem. This particular feature's sole purpose is for big factions to fight over the resources. It may need to be a little harder to get to until the game grows (to limit excessive force-projection), but it doesn't need to be vulnerable to the little guys.

 

8 hours ago, blazemonger said:

The problem here is that al lthis is focused on combat PVP gameplay, while the Alien cores IMO should have the harvesting of resources and bringing them to market or use in industry as core purpose. That there are opportunities for combat engagement along the way of that purpose I woudl see no issue with.

 

Suggesting that transport of plasma effective must be done with non warp travel kill the entire purpose of the cores as it only caters to the combat PVP focused players and eliminates the rest. DU is not and should not be a combat PVP game first as it is well established and well documented that combat PVP in general is not a main driver in agame's long term success.

The point of alien cores is to be a reward for pvp players to encourage large-scale pvp. NQ hopes people will risk a lot of stuff for a small amount of good stuff, thereby both creating pvp play for the pvp players, and encouraging pvp players to obtain replacements for the stuff they lost from the factory/mining players. SavrogZ's idea for needing the plasma to be slow-boated would incentivize pvp a bit more, but not enough for it to really do anything significant (other than annoy the current plasma-haulers).

 

9 hours ago, blazemonger said:

The mere fact hat a single alliance was able to grab and control the cores in game so fast, with so much ease and be able to maintain control with little effort just shows both how broken the whole mechanic is and how it is misrepresented an /or ill conceived by NQ

It still seems to me like it is more an issue of available force-projection in a relatively small universe. A prepared faction can warp from any resource point to any other resource point in under an hour without any risk of being intercepted. If the Alien cores were farther away from everything so that they couldn't be directly warped to from anywhere, then it would be a bit harder to control them all, but at the end of the day with a large faction's capacity to simply string warp-beacons in to a path, it wont do much in a universe as small as DU.

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From a combat PVP player's perspective I guess your comments are fair @Taelessael..

 

What's not right with it from my perspective though is that is puts everything in the combat PVP basket and it assumes that PVPplayers should "do it all" themselves, which IMO is precisely why I do not agree. The content should incentivize players NOT interested in combat PVP to venture out for the rewards as they are worth the risk. ANd yes, that woudl then in turn open up opportunity for combat PVP players.

 

I honestly believe that the compare with EVE does apply here. In EVE, the PVP players do not go out and run high tier relic and data sites or combat sites to get the loot that is needed for industry to produce the components that are used to build the modules they need for their ships to go fight. They may hunt the players that do, but those are two entirely separate loops which generally do not meet until he puts the modules on his ship. If you translates these sites to DU, it woudl be like there is a legion fleet at every superior sleeper cache waiting to kill the specialized ship to run that site.

 

 

This is not meant as a dig against the PVP contingent in DU, it is basically saying that I feel DU is way to shallow and lacks the meat on te bones to be called a MMO at this point.

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21 hours ago, blazemonger said:

From a combat PVP player's perspective I guess your comments are fair @Taelessael..

 

What's not right with it from my perspective though is that is puts everything in the combat PVP basket and it assumes that PVPplayers should "do it all" themselves, which IMO is precisely why I do not agree. The content should incentivize players NOT interested in combat PVP to venture out for the rewards as they are worth the risk. ANd yes, that woudl then in turn open up opportunity for combat PVP players.

 

I honestly believe that the compare with EVE does apply here. In EVE, the PVP players do not go out and run high tier relic and data sites or combat sites to get the loot that is needed for industry to produce the components that are used to build the modules they need for their ships to go fight. They may hunt the players that do, but those are two entirely separate loops which generally do not meet until he puts the modules on his ship. If you translates these sites to DU, it woudl be like there is a legion fleet at every superior sleeper cache waiting to kill the specialized ship to run that site.

 

 

This is not meant as a dig against the PVP contingent in DU, it is basically saying that I feel DU is way to shallow and lacks the meat on te bones to be called a MMO at this point.

The PvE-content-with-risk is meant to be high tier asteroids in the PvP zone. Unfortunately they are completely worthless as t4-t5 still pop up on safe zone asteroids, and even if it did not they are also mined passively in the safe zone. This is further compounded by the bad spawning algorithm, which regularly spawns exotics within radar distance of the safe zone. Removing t4/t5 from the safe zone would give the content you seek; especially t4, since it is in higher demand. Removing t3 from planets and distributing it between safe and PvP zone asteroids would also go a long way; only T1 and T2 should really be automined.

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5 hours ago, Nayropux said:

The PvE-content-with-risk is meant to be high tier asteroids in the PvP zone.

 

PVP zone asteroids are not worth it anyway as it is way to easy to know when to go and shoot someone's shop off of the asteroid.. there is no level of reward that will justify a guaranteed loss.. Asteroids in PVP sone are just another pewpew magnet.

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On 6/3/2022 at 12:26 PM, blazemonger said:

What's not right with it from my perspective though is that is puts everything in the combat PVP basket and it assumes that PVPplayers should "do it all" themselves, which IMO is precisely why I do not agree. The content should incentivize players NOT interested in combat PVP to venture out for the rewards as they are worth the risk. ANd yes, that woudl then in turn open up opportunity for combat PVP players.

That would be asteroids. They may not be great when compared to other options, but I know pve players that go after them still when they need the materials. You may not consider them worth the risk, but some people do. That said, there is no arguing that the asteroid system could still use some work, it functions in the most literal sense, but it could be a lot better.

 

On 6/3/2022 at 12:26 PM, blazemonger said:

I honestly believe that the compare with EVE does apply here. In EVE, the PVP players do not go out and run high tier relic and data sites or combat sites to get the loot that is needed for industry to produce the components that are used to build the modules they need for their ships to go fight. They may hunt the players that do, but those are two entirely separate loops which generally do not meet until he puts the modules on his ship. If you translates these sites to DU, it woudl be like there is a legion fleet at every superior sleeper cache waiting to kill the specialized ship to run that site.

Sleeper-sights are exploration-related, they'd be closer to asteroids than alien cores. Alien cores are quite overtly more like EVE's player-owned stations (towers). A relic plasma collector (eve's moon harvesting array) collects materials that are either processed in to useful things by the controlling faction's factory-guys, or are hauled to a market to be sold. Taking the site requires laying siege to the station to bring down a special shield that makes the whole thing invulnerable for a period of time mid-siege to allow the defender's faction time to get their act together and bring in more/bigger guns. Again though, the system is rather obviously currently imperfect, and would benefit greatly from some more work/planning.

 

On 6/3/2022 at 12:26 PM, blazemonger said:

This is not meant as a dig against the PVP contingent in DU, it is basically saying that I feel DU is way to shallow and lacks the meat on te bones to be called a MMO at this point.

I agree with you that the game needs more meat.

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