[quote="yclepticon"]Wow, thanks for all the great feedback so far!


I am glad you mentioned base capturing because I didn't have a chance to cover that in my post. We are going to streamline the process of capturing bases so that the challenge is in the actual radiation part and not in the aftermath where you wait around for the galaxy to lose ownership. When you irradiate a base, it will now go into destroyed mode (but not drop anything) in addition to becoming abandoned as it currently would. You will be allowed to capture it even if the galaxy is still owned by another team, but you won't be able to repair it until ownership is lost.

You mentioned "We'd need base rad weapons to even attempt capping anything of value." I think this is a bit exaggerated, but I understand where you are coming from. For sure there will be kits that you could capture before with PvB but which are too hard to capture after the change. However, it's important to keep in mind that the capturing potential of a large number of BvB kits is extremely high. With that being said, I will be doing a special design pass on available radiation weapons and may decide to put in some new ones if I find them to be lacking.

You need to be very careful here. If you truely intend to make base gear disposable and still be equivilent to current top end gear then its probably not too much of a problem.
However in my opinion good top end base gear is just to valuable to lose.

I agree with Enk that the purpose in attacking a gal should be to either capture or deny the earning potential of that gal to the enemy

So while i still do not agree with 2x beef and think it's too much. What about permanent drones and especially the Kasa Quu and Ancient Defense ones, they are like completely useless these days and will be even more so if bases get beefed and they just stay as bad as they are.

I agree all drones seems useless, unless they do grem its actually worst for a galaxy if you use drones, for the most part.

I'm not happy with the state of permanent drones, either. One thing that troubles me is that they are so easy to kill since you can just tractor them around (and to some extent this applies to unattached kits too). One idea I had was that unattached assets would simply refuse to be tractored by non-friendlies. After all, they are meant to be huge, advanced weapons platforms. You'd think they'd have a way to stop themselves from getting pulled around.

I'm aware that this change would be controversial (and I have misgivings about it, myself). But without something to that effect, I am reluctant to really give permanent drones a makeover. It would seem like wasted work since they'll still have this huge disadvantage. However, most permanent drones will automatically be buffed since they generally use base gear items. My plan was to let that buff happen on the side and then maybe we can figure out what to do with permanent drones after the rebalance is in place. I am happy to do a more focused change to them if we can come up with a good way, though.

Not being able to tractor perma drones or unattached bases is a change i am all for, thinking about it, it is really silly that we can tractor bases around to a area where we can kill them...

Tractoring Bases

When you engage in BvB the attackers' bases are always unattached.

The defenders bases are usually attached.

This gives the attackers a huge advantage as they can position themselves to engage on their terms. (Usually they aim to outrange the defender and thus position themselves so that they can hit but the defender cannot)

The defender can attempt to upset this by tractoring an attacking base into range.

If you disallow unfriendly tractoring you are handing the attackers a huge advantage in a situation where they already have a substantial advantage.

yeh but you could in theory "base run" from the attacker if you cant tractor other sides bases. just keep tractoring your own base away from thiers keeping 10k between them.

If they cant tractor your base to stop you, would be comical.

If yclept really wants to make the change to tractoring, an exception could easily be made for BvB kits, surely.

I can see why the majority of drones should possibly be left alone for the beginning of the revamp. However there are a couple drones that have major issues for their cost/tech that could merit some changes sooner.

One example would be Armada Ambrosia Drones: first off, they were (apparently) nerfed very hard by increasing their transference resists from 20% to 70% (wiki to now), and their range is absolutely terrible. With SMast 26 and 2 adonis range augs, its transference weapon has ~700 range. Despite the fact that the shield bank/regen is nice (and probably close to what was intended for drones as small outpost type platforms), the drone costs 2b to make, not to mention that it's a bp from random reward missions. For its cost/acquisition method, it shouldn't be only useable (barely with the trans resist) by equipping 2 range augs.

Oh yeah Armada Ambrosia Drones are a joke.

to solve the base/perma drone tractoring issue why not do to this problem like u did to building as non support players, simply add a line of ships that's sole purpose is to tractor that way they can be usefull but also countered. most attacking teams will include some ships built only for tractoring.

Or apply tractoring effect so only 1 can work on the object no matter how many people are tractoring.

There are already ships built only for tractoring (e.g. Tractor DS/Hawk) and those ships are precisely the ones that make unattached assets problematic. If the only issue we had were combat-augged DMs trying to pull stuff around, that would be a much less serious problem. And yes, tractor ships can be countered by active defenders, but that doesn't solve anything since they can show up at any hour of the day or night to do their business.

Multiple people tractoring a single object is also a secondary concern. The main problem is 1 or more tractor ships pulling assets out from 9k away.

Completely agree with Johno here ^



Also agree here.

It seems to me that you're beefing 'my' bases and also beefing the bases that a BvB squad would use to kill them. Furthermore, essentially in attempting to thwart a PvB squad by beefing 'my' bases, you're just forcing them to use a few of these *disposable* kits (alas turning it into slightly more logistical BvB) hardly questionable on aug costs given the rewards potentially reaped.

Weren't people who were quitting qq'ing about balance issues with regards to PvB a while ago?

This base re-balance would definitely go a long ways with assisting bases vs. players balancing, such that an elite squad of players cannot just go about demolishing anything that isn't well-fortified.

With regards to comments concerning BvB vulnerability, this is somewhat true, only if your galaxy was a border. For sake of argument, let's say you are that unfortunate border galaxy, if someone lays a large # of kits to BvB your galaxy, I would think they deserve the victory purely from an economic perspective. If you compare the costs to benefits relationship between old system (PvB mostly) and proposed system (BvB), the new environment would be immensely more balanced with respect to effort/risk & reward.

Furthermore, I feel that PvB is quite unbalanced and most likely will be nerfed at some point regardless of any BvB beefs, and this would reduce the ability of teams to wage war. Theoretically, with the nerf, SS would just about lose PvP in general - which it seems no one would want. So, I think beefing BvB is also fair solution to compliment the probable decline in PvB.

One thing that is concerning is the 1-hour warning time for BvB after the war declaration for border gals. If that were beefed significantly, to 24-hours or more, it could give a bit more breathing room for an active team to prep the defenses. Nothing more exciting in SS than a big showdown between two prepared teams in a pre-ordained location.

is it possible to get basses be non-tractorable from an item made in the base from a BP that takes like 24 hours? and for drones something that can be put in like an aug.

that way a defender can already have all its basses non-tractorable and the attacker can have it after 24 hours. that way BvB tractoring problems would be solved.

for drones it wouldnt make sense if they can be always non-tractorable while bases needs an item