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Balanced PvP Destruction System


MaximusNerdius

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@CaptainTwerkmotor

What part of "a sandbox game with Emergent Gameplay" did you not understand? ...

Is that what you are asking for? PvP without consequences? Cause if so, no, THIS game is not for you.

 

Read the title, it is asking for "balanced PvP destruction" ... IOW, if it takes a group of 5 players 40 hours to build something, a group of 5 players to shouldn't be able to take it down in 4 hours.

 

If this is going to be the "Mindcraft" of "EVE", then this game needs to have a balance on construction:destruction time frame. 10:1 (or 2, or 5) isn't balanced. "A sandbox with emergent gameplay" indicates nothing on this balance, or the lack of.

 

 

There shouldn't be arbitrary limits to how constructions can be torn down, regardless of how many man hours it took to build them. 

 

If you haven't properly defended your constructions, then you should suffer the consequences for it.

 

 

Jean-Christophe Baillie describes it very well in this article: https://gamerpros.co/exclusive-interview-novaquark-ceo-jean-christophe-baillie-mmo-dual-universe/

 

BB: Do you plan to introduce any kind of combat elements and PvP? Combat is a big part of many MMOs and players love the opportunity to fight each other. 

 

JC: Yes of course. It’s a question of PvP and implementing it, a point that’s very dear to us. We’re thinking of safe zones, one that would be around the Arcship (the main player starting point). It’s the ship that brought you to where you are.

 

Basically, there will be a 20 kilometer safe area where nothing can happen to you. We’ll be creating other safe areas, and players would be able to create their own grounds that aren’t indestructible. As long as players have the resources and wealth, they can make a zone that’s near impenetrable. Think about the United States. It’s not indestructible; can you imagine the whole world wanting to invade the United States? There’s enough security though, military, and whatnot that prevents that. In this game, it’d be a similar point.

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Personally, I believe that building a good defensive base on the surface of a planet should be less resource intensive than building the ships to attack it. Not because the developers nerfed the attackers, but because the attackers need engines, fuel, and ammunition for each of their ships. The defenders will need ammunition and electricity as well however by its very nature bases should have an abundant supply to defend its self. I agree with the original poster that unless the enemy overwhelmed you with something resembling a Star Destroyer your structures should not be easily destroyed with something like a speeder. (keeping with Starwars references)

 

Explosives yes, cannons yes ,machine guns your character shoots no. 

 

With a proper design of walls turrets and other defences, you should be able to stand your own against similarly power entities. As mentioned before, if you attempt to combat much stronger opponents than yourself then nothing should stop other players from destroying what you have built. Unless they try to destroy your reinforced wall with a machine gun.

 

The only thing that would piss me off is if characters are able to dig at an unreasonably fast rate. Allowing them to tunnel into you base quickly within minutes, passing the defences you laid because they dug 100 units down went under your base and used the mini map to guide them into the heart of the base. 

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I don't care who is aruging what and what has been said by anyone. The bottom line is that if players feel that they are wasting their time enough to change servers or quit the game due to 'griefing' EVEN if it's mildly defined,  the design team has not done their job correctly.

 

If Dual turns out to be one giant organization against the rest, and those people intend on griefing other players...it will cause people to leave. I have seen this in every game and in some cases to the detriment of the game and in worse cases to the detriment of the company.

 

The best scenario for mixing PVP and PVE that I have come across is the PVE servers in wow with instanced battlegrounds. I know this means nothing for Dual due to the single shard nature of the game, but if PVE'ers are constantly attacked (BTW, PVE'ers are where the money is made) then they will quit the game and go elsewhere and take their wallets with them.

 

​I am not sure how well versed you people are in how long it takes to make a large ship out of small voxels, but I am and I can tell you as an absolute if I spent 4-5 months working on something that some griefer comes by and blows up in 15 seconds with their merry band of griefers, I am gone and so is my guild and so are our wallets.

 

​If checks and balances are not implemented, and griefing PVP'ers are allowed to wreak havoc, the game will be dead before it begins.

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Well on the bright side were it might take months to build the forst prototype it will be farely easy to build the second one providing you have materials. Because you will already have a blueprint, you will not need to build it voxel by voxel again. Neither you will need t omake a new Lua script.

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Kiklix, those very points are why I want us to advocate for being able to repair our ships off the blueprint designs.

 

I mean if you spend that much time and someone comes and destroys a prototype. That is very unfortunate, but perhaps thats why the relative safety of the akified areas will exist. to slow down and temporarily prevent such catastrophic things from happening.

 

At the very least I would think if you are losing your arkified area you could get in, save the current ship design as a blueprint. and then reload it somewhere else to finish working on it.

 

ships that are too big to be designed in secret labs on planets, will have a natural tradeoff of being vulnerable to being destroyed in their design phase.

making a development facility in a obscure location will be a must.

 

As for the wanting to repair from blueprint. It would suck just as much to take that ship into battle and have it get all beat up in its first fight. Then spend 3 months repairing it by hand.

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Well you do not need to design it in real game space, you can do it in this virtual world space - 100% safe and then build from blueprint. You can also test it there and so on, there was no mention how ever if a group of people could join the same virtual space and work on the same design at the same time.

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Well on the bright side were it might take months to build the forst prototype it will be farely easy to build the second one providing you have materials. Because you will already have a blueprint, you will not need to build it voxel by voxel again. Neither you will need t omake a new Lua script.

 

Building with voxel doesn't take months. Neither LUA scripting. We'll start slowly mostly just because we'll need to train skills.

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Building with voxel doesn't take months. Neither LUA scripting. We'll start slowly mostly just because we'll need to train skills.

You might want to read the post I was refering to with this, instead of just straight on denying. It depends what you build and so the time is just as a reference point helping to get better perspective.

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Building with voxel doesn't take months. Neither LUA scripting. We'll start slowly mostly just because we'll need to train skills.

 

 

Have you built with small voxels before? I have and I am sorry, but you are completely incorrect if you think builds do not take months. I have seen buildings that were the size of the Spaceship in Prometheus take about 3 months.

 

​I have built in space engineers and in minecraft and two years of building in Landmark . Duals voxels will be closer to landmarks building, which takes far far longer than space enginerers or minecraft due to the smoothing aspect (rounding) and what can be done with the vertices of the voxels (I know technically the voxel is the vertex, but for sake of argument most people refer to the voxel as the cube they see).

 

​Space engineers I can get a ship done in no time. Minecraft I can get an entire house done in a couple days. Landmark a similar house or spaceship takes months. Its because of the fidelity. Even the coolest space engineers ships look dull compared to "meh" spaceships in landmark. In minecraft they all look lame.

 

​I think you are heavilyt discounting the fidelity smaller voxels allow for in a build and the associated time it takes to implement this stuff.

 

 

​This took me about 2 months.lmx-1.png

 

 

 

 

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I don't care who is aruging what and what has been said by anyone. The bottom line is that if players feel that they are wasting their time enough to change servers or quit the game due to 'griefing' EVEN if it's mildly defined,  the design team has not done their job correctly.

 

If Dual turns out to be one giant organization against the rest, and those people intend on griefing other players...it will cause people to leave. I have seen this in every game and in some cases to the detriment of the game and in worse cases to the detriment of the company.

 

The best scenario for mixing PVP and PVE that I have come across is the PVE servers in wow with instanced battlegrounds. I know this means nothing for Dual due to the single shard nature of the game, but if PVE'ers are constantly attacked (BTW, PVE'ers are where the money is made) then they will quit the game and go elsewhere and take their wallets with them.

 

​I am not sure how well versed you people are in how long it takes to make a large ship out of small voxels, but I am and I can tell you as an absolute if I spent 4-5 months working on something that some moron comes by and blows up in 15 seconds with their merry band of griefers, I am gone and so is my guild and so are our wallets.

 

​If checks and balances are not implemented, and griefing PVP'ers are allowed to wreak havoc, the game will be dead before it begins.

Saying you don't care what anyone says is not a good way to have a conversation. Having said that, all of your concerns are valid ones. It's just that most are not completely relevant because they are already being addressed separately.

 

PvE'ers being constantly attacked is not something anyone wants to see. What we do want see is a balance between risk and reward and co-dependency between PvEers and PvPers. All kinds of players should be banding to gather to create a territory which has both military and geopolitical safety factors. Safe, not invulnerable. Venturing into untamed wilderness for may hold greater riches but will be riskier. This is the kind of vision for their game that NQ have spoken about on many occasions.

 

Your concern about losing designs that take endless hours to create and refine is also valid, but again, not relevant to this conversation. NQ plan to ensure that this kind of intellectual or creative property cannot be lost. They have talked about construct snapshots, blueprints and a virtual building simulator. Losing a building is not add big a problem losing the design for the building, especially when a blueprint coupled with time and resources in some kind of automated manufacturing unit can rebuild it for you. You lose time, money, status, but you don't lose your designs.

 

Finally, what you say about one giant organisation essentially winning the game is a valid concern that I have too, though I don't see how it is relevant to this conversation. A game that is richly filled with a variety of organisations of all sizes and that no one organisation ever "wins" is what I would like to see. In fact I think this is the single most important factor that NQ should be aware of when making gameplay decisions.

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Saying you don't care what anyone says is not a good way to have a conversation. Having said that, all of your concerns are valid ones. It's just that most are not completely relevant because they are already being addressed separately.

 

PvE'ers being constantly attacked is not something anyone wants to see. What we do want see is a balance between risk and reward and co-dependency between PvEers and PvPers. All kinds of players should be banding to gather to create a territory which has both military and geopolitical safety factors. Safe, not invulnerable. Venturing into untamed wilderness for may hold greater riches but will be riskier. This is the kind of vision for their game that NQ have spoken about on many occasions.

 

Your concern about losing designs that take endless hours to create and refine is also valid, but again, not relevant to this conversation. NQ plan to ensure that this kind of intellectual or creative property cannot be lost. They have talked about construct snapshots, blueprints and a virtual building simulator. Losing a building is not add big a problem losing the design for the building, especially when a blueprint coupled with time and resources in some kind of automated manufacturing unit can rebuild it for you. You lose time, money, status, but you don't lose your designs.

 

Finally, what you say about one giant organisation essentially winning the game is a valid concern that I have too, though I don't see how it is relevant to this conversation. A game that is richly filled with a variety of organisations of all sizes and that no one organisation ever "wins" is what I would like to see. In fact I think this is the single most important factor that NQ should be aware of when making gameplay decisions.

 

Exactly this. Between the design protection mechanisms and the "military and geopolitical" factors, this ought to be sufficient for protecting intellectual property. As far as resources go, I think that the proper ratio of time spent collecting resources to the time spent genuinely creating something should be fairly low, perhaps 1:10 or 1:20 or whatever fits. High enough that losing said resources would be a set-back, but low enough that having to re-collect the resources wouldn't induce rage quitting.

 

In this way, both the design (the blueprint/snapshot) and the resources can be properly balanced. Although, it seemed to me that from the dev blogs that this was intended.

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Saying you don't care what anyone says is not a good way to have a conversation. Having said that, all of your concerns are valid ones. It's just that most are not completely relevant because they are already being addressed separately.

 

PvE'ers being constantly attacked is not something anyone wants to see. What we do want see is a balance between risk and reward and co-dependency between PvEers and PvPers. All kinds of players should be banding to gather to create a territory which has both military and geopolitical safety factors. Safe, not invulnerable. Venturing into untamed wilderness for may hold greater riches but will be riskier. This is the kind of vision for their game that NQ have spoken about on many occasions.

 

Your concern about losing designs that take endless hours to create and refine is also valid, but again, not relevant to this conversation. NQ plan to ensure that this kind of intellectual or creative property cannot be lost. They have talked about construct snapshots, blueprints and a virtual building simulator. Losing a building is not add big a problem losing the design for the building, especially when a blueprint coupled with time and resources in some kind of automated manufacturing unit can rebuild it for you. You lose time, money, status, but you don't lose your designs.

 

Finally, what you say about one giant organisation essentially winning the game is a valid concern that I have too, though I don't see how it is relevant to this conversation. A game that is richly filled with a variety of organisations of all sizes and that no one organisation ever "wins" is what I would like to see. In fact I think this is the single most important factor that NQ should be aware of when making gameplay decisions.

 

My opening statement about "not caring what anyone says" was in regards to what I immediately said right after. I was not making an opinion I was stating a cold hard undeniable fact, hence why I could care less what anyone says. Facts > opinions. As far as my concerns, yes they are being addressed but none of this is in a vacuum because each system plays off the other making my concerns completely relevant to the discussion at hand.

 

​I understand the risk and reward aspect, but there is no reward for PVE'ers who have to deal with PVP. PVPers dealing with PVE is the very nature of any game design, but when PVE'ers are forced to dealing with PVP, it no longer becomes PVE and instead becomes PVP. I am PVPer first and formost and always have been, but I completely understand the plight of the person who does not wish to deal with other players in regards to combat. Should PVP be reliant on the PVE aspects of the game, absolutely. Should the PVE'ers be reliant on PVPers to protect them, absolutely not....because when you do, as I have already stated it stops becoming PVE and turns in to PVP which makes calling anything PVE a blatant lie. Now should PVE'ers be reliant on PVP'ers to bring them resources...possibly but this is a slippery slope.

 

I am not concerned about losing designs I know what Novaquark has talked about and I personally hope for an instanced building area for builders but that has not been set in stone hence my concern. But outside of that I am concerned about people being able to get things built and placed into the game. If this process is constantly hindered by griefers or PVP 'bros', those people will stop playing the game and take their money with them. All the blueprints and stuff in the world is not going to stop someone from leaving if they can not achieve their goal. If we get the ability to build inside of an instance, then problem is close to being solved...but again this is not set in stone.

 

As far as organizations...I should not have to point out that the larger the outfit, the more likely they have people online to grief someone if they intend to making life hell for that other person. Large organizations have been notorious in every single MMO that has ever been made for griefing smaller parties or bullying smaller outfits to join theirs. This very nature increases  the likelihood of the OP's original commentary, hence making it extremely valid to this discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Exactly this. Between the design protection mechanisms and the "military and geopolitical" factors, this ought to be sufficient for protecting intellectual property. As far as resources go, I think that the proper ratio of time spent collecting resources to the time spent genuinely creating something should be fairly low, perhaps 1:10 or 1:20 or whatever fits. High enough that losing said resources would be a set-back, but low enough that having to re-collect the resources wouldn't induce rage quitting.

 

In this way, both the design (the blueprint/snapshot) and the resources can be properly balanced. Although, it seemed to me that from the dev blogs that this was intended.

 

But this does not factor in harassment that often happens from large organizations or griefers.

 

​People are like water, they take the path of least resistance. Once someone realizes another person/guild/organization is a push over, that small group of people will continually be harassed by the larger one. It's been a staple of MMOPVP and MMOPVP failure for 20 years.

 

​If an environment is completely hostile to the PVE group the game will not take off and will become niche.

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While I am a huge fan of open pvp, that doesn't mean I want what the OP is describing. The way I see it, the game must guarantee that when you go to sleep your stuff will still be there the next day and that destroying something typically takes more effort than building it. The game basically needs to be balanced in favor of the defender.

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While I am a huge fan of open pvp, that doesn't mean I want what the OP is describing. The way I see it, the game must guarantee that when you go to sleep your stuff will still be there the next day and that destroying something typically takes more effort than building it. The game basically needs to be balanced in favor of the defender.

 

I'd give you a like, but ran out of likes for the day. I'll make sure I do it tomorrow.

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I think we need to address the difference between pve and pvp. I would propose that in a game like this there are very few acts that are just pve or just pvp and that instead there is a continuum. On form of pvp could be denying access to an area to other players, therefore limiting their available actions. Two people cannot occupy the same place, and therefore there people must have the ability to force another player out of an area. All players will have to do both pve and pvp activities, to some degree, players may tend to one part of the spectrum but in the end they are inseparable.

 

Anything that can be be build should be destroyable, the real question is how we balance these two aspects of the game. In my opinion defending should be easier than attacking and there should be some safety so that you do not have to play all the time, very few people have the time to even play every day. That said it would probably not be good design if defenses not controlled by players was capable of holding of even moderately sized groups for any longer stretches of time.

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But this does not factor in harassment that often happens from large organizations or griefers.

 

​People are like water, they take the path of least resistance. Once someone realizes another person/guild/organization is a push over, that small group of people will continually be harassed by the larger one. It's been a staple of MMOPVP and MMOPVP failure for 20 years.

 

​If an environment is completely hostile to the PVE group the game will not take off and will become niche.

 

True, but this doesn't only apply to PVP balance, it applies to other aspects of the game too. The economy comes to mind. A large organization could manipulate the economy, even ruin it. Suppose you even had a PVE organization which ruined the blueprints economy by selling good ships at a super competitive price. This would be an equally negative situation too.

 

My point is that this isn't about PVE vs PVP, it's about ruining the game experience. A sufficiently motivated organization would do whatever it took to achieve its goals, letting nothing, not even defense-favored combat mechanics, stand in its way. I agree that the combat mechanics should not be poorly designed to allow this, but at the same time, it's not the only cause of the would-be problem. Equal scrutiny should be given to all conceivable player and organization interactions to prevent a completely hostile environment.

 

Another solution would be to buff smaller groups or debuff larger groups in some way. Perhaps through "taxes" which would evaporate. I don't know. Suggestions for this?

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True, but this doesn't only apply to PVP balance, it applies to other aspects of the game too. The economy comes to mind. A large organization could manipulate the economy, even ruin it. Suppose you even had a PVE organization which ruined the blueprints economy by selling good ships at a super competitive price. This would be an equally negative situation too.

 

My point is that this isn't about PVE vs PVP, it's about ruining the game experience. A sufficiently motivated organization would do whatever it took to achieve its goals, letting nothing, not even defense-favored combat mechanics, stand in its way. I agree that the combat mechanics should not be poorly designed to allow this, but at the same time, it's not the only cause of the would-be problem. Equal scrutiny should be given to all conceivable player and organization interactions to prevent a completely hostile environment.

 

Another solution would be to buff smaller groups or debuff larger groups in some way. Perhaps through "taxes" which would evaporate. I don't know. Suggestions for this?

 

The whole point of the sandbox is people being able to set their own goals and find ways of achieving them, if your goal is to become space-rich and market manipulation is part of how you achieve this, that is fine with me. Just as long as anyone is allowed to do all the things that are available to do. I really don't see a problem with different peoples goals putting them on a collision course, if anything that is what makes me interested in the game.

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True, but this doesn't only apply to PVP balance, it applies to other aspects of the game too. The economy comes to mind. A large organization could manipulate the economy, even ruin it. Suppose you even had a PVE organization which ruined the blueprints economy by selling good ships at a super competitive price. This would be an equally negative situation too.

 

My point is that this isn't about PVE vs PVP, it's about ruining the game experience. A sufficiently motivated organization would do whatever it took to achieve its goals, letting nothing, not even defense-favored combat mechanics, stand in its way. I agree that the combat mechanics should not be poorly designed to allow this, but at the same time, it's not the only cause of the would-be problem. Equal scrutiny should be given to all conceivable player and organization interactions to prevent a completely hostile environment.

 

Another solution would be to buff smaller groups or debuff larger groups in some way. Perhaps through "taxes" which would evaporate. I don't know. Suggestions for this?

 

 

 

I would agree with you except that the argument of 'running the economy' seems thin at best. I have never seen a large game economy taken over by one organization. I tried it myself at one time. I had a bank alt guild named "Savings and Trust" and I had about 40 members in my bank alt guild. All bank alts, we attempted to run the economy but it was just not possible. There was always someone out there to sell items for less than we could. At the point that items were being sold for the vendor value it only ruined us. It was a win for the buyers.

 

The economy is a lot different than PVP vs PVE. Even if an economy was thrashed by a guild, most games you can just go out and farm materials yourself. The auction houses are more about saving time than anything.

 

But groups of pvpers who like to pray on pvers has been a HUGE problem in every mmo ever made, so it's not really apples to apples.

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You do have a point.

 

My worry is that if two forces meet in combat, where both are equally equipped, one will have a decisive victory simply because it was called "defender" instead of "attacker."

 

Bases and ships aren't going to be differentiated. Everything made is just a construct, so how should one be labeled "defender" or "attacker." Instead of labels, what form should this balance take, and how would you balance it?

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You do have a point.

 

My worry is that if two forces meet in combat, where both are equally equipped, one will have a decisive victory simply because it was called "defender" instead of "attacker."

 

Bases and ships aren't going to be differentiated. Everything made is just a construct, so how should one be labeled "defender" or "attacker." Instead of labels, what form should this balance take, and how would you balance it?

 

Well it goes both ways. If the 'defender' goes on the offensive, the attacker now defending would get the same benefits of the defense. I don't think arbitrarily buffing the defenders makes sense, just that defense is stronger to start with. I would argue that stronger defenses that slow up the speed of combat a bit, allowing for strategic maneuvers etc would be better game play than zerging in and blowing stuff up...which is mostly what we see in a lot of MMO's.

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One thing we could have is some kind of shield generator, that by some limitation would be impractical or impossible to have on a ship intended for fighting, that once it drops below x hitpoints becomes invulnerable for y amount of time and exits this reinforced mode at a time determined by the defender. We are going to have cross-timezone wars in this game, and for it to be fun at all we mustn't have a situation where people need to be online and defending their stuff 24/7. Allowing the defender to set the time of an engagement might be enough.

 

The fact that everything is just another construct makes this much harder to achieve but strong defense mechanics aren't optional in a game like this. Look at eve online's current Sov-system where the attacker has most of the advantages in that there is no minimum required effort in attacking someone, you cannot defend someone else's sov, and the attacker largely determines when the fighting will take place. This has meant that sov is essentially not worth defending as it is easier to just reconquer it than defend it.

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Well it goes both ways. If the 'defender' goes on the offensive, the attacker now defending would get the same benefits of the defense. I don't think arbitrarily buffing the defenders makes sense, just that defense is stronger to start with. I would argue that stronger defenses that slow up the speed of combat a bit, allowing for strategic maneuvers etc would be better game play than zerging in and blowing stuff up...which is mostly what we see in a lot of MMO's.

 

Slowing things down might work, but then I worry about being too long. For two very well defended forces, what's to prevent a battle lasting hours or even days? It would get pretty boring. For a grounded base, running away from a fight isn't an option. Will players be forced to remain on-site as a battle goes on? Several concurrent battles could be going on... That would be too slow of a pace of battles.

 

One thing we could have is some kind of shield generator, that by some limitation would be impractical or impossible to have on a ship intended for fighting, that once it drops below x hitpoints becomes invulnerable for y amount of time and exits this reinforced mode at a time determined by the defender. We are going to have cross-timezone wars in this game, and for it to be fun at all we mustn't have a situation where people need to be online and defending their stuff 24/7. Allowing the defender to set the time of an engagement might be enough.

 

The fact that everything is just another construct makes this much harder to achieve but strong defense mechanics aren't optional in a game like this. Look at eve online's current Sov-system where the attacker has most of the advantages in that there is no minimum required effort in attacking someone, you cannot defend someone else's sov, and the attacker largely determines when the fighting will take place. This has meant that sov is essentially not worth defending as it is easier to just reconquer it than defend it.

 

Unfortunately, there is nothing to distinguish bases from ships. Anything you can put on a base, you can put on a ship. I read a comment of one of the dev blog articles about how a 24hr grace invulnerability period might activate when a base is about to be destroyed. That would allow the time-zone issue to be settled, but then it could give the defender time to repair everything, which would put everything back at square one.

 

Sometimes the issue of time-zones can't be solved. I might be available only between hours w and x while the other guy is only available between hours y and z. If we are made to wait between me and the other guy coming on and offline, battles again may last for a day or longer, which is unacceptable.

 

It wouldn't be a good idea if battles were to take place only on the defender's terms. I can think of the example of two warring factions hiring privateers or assaulting the enemy's inferior forces, or intercepting their supply line. I don't like the idea of preventing this kind of player interaction to save someone else.

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