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Outposts - A possible new PvP feature
xacrus
Member Posts: 11 Arc User
Outposts - A possible new PvP feature
An outpost can only be controlled by one side which can benefit the faction controlling it.
In the image you'll see 12 yellow markers placed in the center of most sector blocks where the outposts are placed (may be altared if suggestion is a success due to other bases like `Deep Space 9` in Beta Ursae however, The outpost feature would bring a lot of reasons to defend and visit more than other bases with sub-features I'll begin to explain.
Outposts won't be just another base that will contain Exchange/Mail/Tailor/Bank Computers plus other features the typical Starbases have to offer, but they also provide either one of the 2 benefits depending on which is liked more;
Option 1. - Galaxy/Universe Control which can be balanced in the center if 6 outposts is in Federation Control and 6 outposts in Klingon Control, Meaning no benefits to each side will come.
More or less control to a specific faction can result in bonuses to Dilithium income from missions or less income including npc shop prices and mark incomes.
This creates a great need for a faction to build a fleet of ships up to assault enemy controlled outposts to gain the benefits.
Option 2 - Each outpost control increases the benefits by building off the default incomes and prices with no loss in income for marks and dilithium with no raise in shop prices in a faction has no outposts controlled, This means that any outposts controlled by a faction (even just one) can bring slight benefits to the faction.
However, None of these things will effect the capacity limits to Dilithium refinement unless Cryptic decide otherwise, but I wouldn't blame them if they didn't since the current values are good as they are but if there were decreases in cap limits, It would only add to the need to have either a balanced control or more.
I will also cover the objectives of taking over an Outpost which does require all 3 career types in a moment, currently I have to explain a few issues that might be raised.
(You have to all relise, I've spent months planning this out, making sure that there are minimum problems to this possible.)
1st - Instances - Instances can be very random, and if a fleet of many squadrons enter, They will all most likely be put into different instances. For this there would need to be a Battle Instance or PvP Instance, When in sector space and just outside of an outpost (friendly or enemy) There will be the 2 options to enter `PvE` and `PvP`.
Both PvE and PvP will be no different from one another as far as docking and being able to use the outpost features go except, Enemies can drop in at any time and attempt to take down the outpost.
The outpost will be accessable to non-PvP players also only till the outpost is no longer in their control.
2nd - Deaths and Respawn - Having death and respawn in the same system won't be optional for the attacking side otherwise the battles become pointless, for this, any who die on the attacking faction will have to respawn in an outpost of a sector block of their choosing.
As for the defending side, There are 2 possible options depending on which is prefered;
1. - Respawning in the outpost that is being defended with an undocking cooldown.
2. - Just like the attacking faction, Only able to respawn in a different outpost of a sector block of their choosing.
3rd - Battle Forever - There is only big problem currently that could result in forever battling, by which I mean if say the Klingons take out the Federation faction who were defending the outpost, The Klingons could just come back and attack the outpost again which could lead to a never ending battle which is why there would need to be a cooldown until the outpost can be attacked again.
I've not really thought through what the cooldowns could be as it could range from an hour to 20 hours, but I believe personally the best cooldown would be 2 hours minimum.
These were the only problems I could think of but any others that come up I'll think on for a solution unless it's too big of a problem which would result in this feature not being able to work then I'll agree to it.
Objectives and Rewards
Taking an outpost will most certainly not be a one person job, nor a squad of five people.
It takes a fleet of squadrons, Especially if the enemy faction is defending.
An outpost has it's own weapons to defend plus a shield surrounding which prevents the outpost from having it's weapons attacked untill shields are down, These shields are generated by 8 generators around the outpost. Outside the shields are heavy turrets that surround the outpost which would be the prime target first before moving onto the generators.
The Turrets and Generators consist of a lot of hull points and not easy to take down if only a small fleet is attacking, The shields will prevent the ability to dock into the outpost since their setup by enemies and would need their generators taking out in order to dock inside and take control of the outpost.
Once turrets and shields are down, The outpost can be infiltrated;
Scientists will have to repair and calibrate the shields to work with their faction (8x).
Engineers will have to repair the weapon platforms surrounding the outpost (Depending on how many weapon platforms are set).
Tacticals will have to reset the weapons grid to work with their faction (Depending how many weapons the outpost has).
Of course as long as the shield generators are down, this means both factions can still dock into the outpost resulting in battles within the Outpost which means guarding the scientists of the fleet will be a priority until shields are back online and the enemies can no longer gain access.
The rewards to taking control of an outpost will go towards the upcoming new PvP reputation system which is currently undetermined when it will be released, This of coarse means, PvP Marks and Dilithium will be gained from taking control of an outpost.
To finish off, Each outpost can have (a) bonus 20-hour mission(s) that can reward you with either PvP Marks or Fleet Marks and dilithium, That is from each individual outpost, But that is an optional feature to have as it would also give all the more reason to fight for outposts.
There are a lot that could be done with a system like this in the future for Star Trek Online and also creates a great PvP experiance to the game with great battles and tactics,
I understand that this kind of features is quiet a large one to add and I don't expect immediate likes as there will probably be something I haven't thought off and then there are those who don't like these kind of features in general, This is me just taking a shot at greatly improving PvP and bringing something large into the game which makes this game cover both PvE and PvP instead of restricting PvP to a queued system and have PvE everywhere else.
This is the kind of feature that will bring more PvP lovers to the game and will create also great team effort.
Many thanks for Reading,
And I hope it doesn't get all thumbs down to the idea since it took time to work it all out hehe,
@_xAcrus_
[SIGPIC]xAcrus@_xAcrus_[/SIGPIC]
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Comments
I see where you want to go with the benefits/consequences of gaining/losing an outpost (personally I agree with you (i feel there needs to be something to "lose" in this game), but I feel that would not be widely accepted, and looked at as a punishment for not playing pvp. Any consequence action will evoke some rage. Not sure how to accommodate both scenarios (I think that fleets should be elect to participate, and tie it somehow in there).
There is also an imbalance in the player population base that may make an outpost capture difficult, if not nearly impossible in the scales your mention. Especially if it is an instanced map.
As much as I like this idea, I think it needs to be scaled back slightly to fit within the constraints of this game (maybe some sort of 20 man, this seems to be the limit of Cryptics "mission maps"), but seems a little small for what you want to do.
In the end, I really like your idea, and think it would be an EPIC (i never use that word) addition... but sadly, i do think it is TOO epic to fit into this game.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
As far as complaints about it being punishment for not doing pvp goes, I'm not sure that would be much of an issue since the idea in its current form doesn't factor in faction population. As long as the numbers of people actually taking part in it are more or less equal, I can't see that being a problem.
Without some kind of 'no-one home flag' which starts a timer for the outpost to turn neutral, having a minimum number of defenders required for it to be attackable would lead to a capture and abandon exploit, but max number of defenders/attackers would help with any numbers balancing issues. Maybe that's not 'realistic', but this is a game and it simply wouldn't be fair if one faction were hypothetically able to outnumber the other by 10-1, player skill aside.
Don't stop with the idea though, even if I can't shake the nagging thought that yes, the above posts are right, it may need to wait to be implemented in another game.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
However, I can see non PvP orientated fleets being a little miffed.
My fleet for starters. I'm the only one who does PvP, that's out of nearly 500 people.
Plenty of other fleets who don't have a PvP element either.
I'm afraid that only the top few would get any success and the rest of us without that strong PvP would be left behind and in tatters. Penalised.
It would in all honesty come down to he who has the most cheese and OTT consoles (basically pinnacle P2W fleets) who gain further advantage and bonuses.
Just a quick post to say 2 things,
1st - I forgot to mention in the post that when an outpost is being attacked, The factions outpost will receive a message notifying them that the outpost is being attacked.
2nd - As far as faction/player imbalance goes, It's not an issue with this due to Instance limits of I believe 90 to 100 which half will be reserved for each faction in Battle Instance.
This feature also will bring more PvP lovers to the game since I have a few friends who play this and love the game and many other friends who tried the game but didn't like it due to it's lack in PvP.
The previous game we all played was all about the PvP in space which I won't name but there is a feature very similar to this only I had to modify it quiet largely to work with Star Trek Online.
Thanks,
@_xAcrus_
Both PvE and PvP aspects of the game added points from different tiers into side control of the map(10-20, 20-30. 40-50). It meant if you didn't PvP thats fine your PvE still contributed and if you liked PvP then it was a wonderous game with epic battles in open areas, one of the few games that took 300v300 to bring lag upon the server. If only SW:Tor had this.
This could be implented with this game having PvE Qs and PvP Qs adding to a factions score aswell as open pvp areas like Ker'rat (which is predominatly FED completing it atm). As the tide of points sways it opens up starbases along the borders for attack.
How I would love this to become reality, Cryptics lack of any investment into PvP since launch has this as a pipe dream. Though I'm sure it would give long lasting returns far more than LoR.
Since that won't happen, I would suggest the following following the basic idea of capturing outposts:
1. There should be at least three levels of outpost, small (1 Vs. 1) medium (5 Vs. 5), and large (10 Vs. 10). All of these would be qued, like the existing PvP maps. No matter what, win or lose, once the match is over, the players can not get into another match of any level for 20 hours. Also, since the level of of one hit kills in this game is crazy, and because the elite PvPer's would cry otherwiseeach match would have five team resets. After everyone on one team (no matter the team size) is dead, it is counted as a win for the other side, and both sides reset to the starting position.
2. Each match, both sides are rewarded with fleet marks and dilithium, the winers get full rewards, and the losers get 25%. The rewards would scale with the size of the match, with the 10 vs 10 one being 10 times greater than the 1 vs 1, at least. Also, in the existing dilithium stores, and fleet and rep stores, if a player is on the side of the faction that controls the most outposts, they get a discount on all items that only cost dilithium (so sets and special weapons like the plasma flamethrower would stay the same prices). Might limit this to only those who have played the PvP game in the last 30 days or something, if possible.
3. Maybe make a PvE version of each type of map, that only rewards fleet marks with half hour cooldown, and does not play into the faction control game, thus giving something that the majority of the players would play while still givingthe PvP crowd something special.
Nouveau riche LTS member
The idea behind Outpost taking would strictly be PvP.
A faction can take control of an outpost if there are no enemies to defend, but won't stop them from coming back later to take it back. This feature is all about faction team work, Organizing attacks on enemy outposts to gain more benefits and defending if enemy faction is on a outpost attack run.
In these type of situations when it comes to attacking or defending an outpost, both PvE and PvP or PvE/PvP Mix setups come into this, Take all you can to attack or defend.
The feature could be implemented into the game and with Cryptic being the geniuses they are, they could fix whatever imbalances there are although faction balance doesn't have any effect here due to instance size, This would also turn Star Trek Online into a good mix of PvE and PvP, becoming a game for everyone who loves sci-fi.
There is so much PvE in the game, This is purely a PvP idea.
Thanks,
@_xAcrus_
Completely antithetical to what the federation and ST is about.
Incompatible with what STO is, a casual plug and play mmo.
Just another, rich get richer, big get bigger cluster**** of a idea with no real thought behind far too many words.
There's a dozen or so smaller things cryptic could do that would have a way bigger impact on pvp than some poor version of *factional warfare* in STO.
Unless they can make it a money maker.
Do you even Science Bro?
The idea behind all this is for the PvP lovers, no queuing of any kind, something for factions to really fight for other than Nukara/Task Force/Romulus marks, Something fresh in the game that brings PvP alive and feels very rewarding to Take Control/Defend an outpost successfully other than marks.
On top of all that, attracting more into Star Trek Online who are PvPers and Fleet wide team work.
==== post above is by xacrus =====
EDIT: Closed for necroing an old thread. Remember, if a thread has been inactive for 30 days, you should not post to it. Feel free to create a new thread on the subject if you would like to discuss further