Korvin Lomont wrote:To some degree I could agree with you point of view. Some sort of frontier to battle (similar than it is in risk) would be great, but there must be a way to beat Corps thats manage to grab enough land to never run out of clones or isk. Just imagine you could restock your frontiers with clones where as the attackers only can attack with 120 clones per attack thats stupid and that way it is nearly impossible to break such "fortifications" and that would hurt the game more than the current crappy implementation.
So yes there need be the need to act more tactical and strategical but there needs to be a "backdoor" so that there is always a way to beat corps in good positions.
BTW I really don't care about your alliance tag
1st: I agree, 120 clone packs gotta go... they give a very large disadvantage to the attacker and overall just makes a bad barrier to entering PC.
Otherwise: I agree with you to an extent. A mechanic like this would force you rely on your alliance a lot more. You still could take so much land before your borders are starting to infringe on someone else who will be red to you. Through alliances you can make sure you have your back covered while you fight over your planets. Allied corps can also back stab you if you aren't careful
However is here a mechanic I think would very well with a frontline based PC:
Planets no longer have district ownership, and we implement a few new PIs:
Capital District (max one available per planet): Determines planet ownership
Orbital Elevator: Controls the ability to send and receive clones from other planets
Defense Relay: Protect capital district, capital district is not available if a relay is still active.
Modify:
Surface Research Lab: Produces 2,000,000 ISK per day
Clone Production Facility: Produces 80 clones per day
Clone Storage Facility: Holds 450 clones (same)
Planetary districts will now act more like 'modules' for a planet. In this way you can customize how a planet to what you want to do, and in many cases well protected districts may want to switch over to having as many research labs as possible, while contested districts may want more defense relays.
So now lets change it to where planets have a 2 hour reinforcement window and attackers can choose within the nearest 15m increment when they want to attack and which district they want to attack. If they lose the attack, nothing happens, if they win the attack, that district goes offline for repairs.
Orbital Elevators will take 5 days for repairs with a 7 day reinforcement timer (invulnerability timer)
Defense Relays will take 3 days for repairs with no reinforcement timer, only one relay can be repaired at a time.
Clone Facilities and Research Labs will take 3 days for repairs with a 5 day reinforcement timer
Finally, you leave the system in place where defenders get a 1 hour window after a successful defense to move clones around if they want to.
Changing PI should be reduced to 20m from 100m, and take 3 days, with a 3 day lock timer.
So when you attack a planet, you will have to make tactical decisions on how you want to approach it.
1. You knock out the elevator so they can't funnel in more clones?
2. Take out clone facilities so you can attack and have the planet run out of clones?
3. Go straight for the relays asap to try and take the planet?
This would actually give a strategic advantage to changing PIs too, which I don't think I've ever seen anyone do.
Finally, the last mechanic to put in place would be this:
The closer you are to the center of MH (and each new... cluster?) the more districts each planet has. So it becomes risk vs. reward, do you open yourself to attacks from more angles for the chance at a bigger district or are you happy with a few fringe planets worth almost nothing while you help your alliance buddies push into new territory? Something along the lines of fringe planets have ~4 districts and center planets ~8-9 districts.
This kind of mechanic would put a bigger emphasis on having an alliance, you want more land, you need more peeps in your alliance! Mega zerg corps have always been kinda meh, I would rather we try to put emphasis on having alliances with many many corps (and many many chances for corp espionage)
Then, we need to open up land (im thinking 500-700 planets over 2-3 clusters (or whatever MH is), I've diluted the ability for a single planet in PC to make passive money. For a first pass I would leave the clone sale mechanic in. But eventually building a system where PC makes no 'end of match' payouts at all, and its all corp issued contracts would be the real way to make PC battles truly 'player issued' and to remove a mechanic where you can 'farm clones' which is what will be happening soon in PC once the FEC war has concluded.