DUST Search - Proposed Ideas to Improve Planetary Conquest

Spartacus Dust wrote:

Kain Spero wrote:

In terms of what can be done for Planetary Conquest 2.0 I get really excited. I get the feeling that the potential in Dust that drew us to this game can actually be realized and the Dust 514 can become a true game.

I think being vulnerable during resource export and allowing for those realtime no timer fights alongside timer fights for the districts really would be a great way to go.

While these visions comes to be though we have the reality that is PC 1.0. I really don't feel that letting it languish while we wait for PC 2.0 is an option. The two biggest issues to me are passive ISK and clone pack size. The rest of the discussion becomes nuanced mechanics that may or may not be able to be addressed with the resources available.

Listening to the discussion here though is seems if we could get two things thrown into a quick hotfix while some of these other things are looked at it's increasing the clone pack to 150 with the same current cost per clone and turning off auto sale of clones. These are things that must be done and every day that goes by PC 1.0 digs itself further into the hole.

I completely agree


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Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1942	Posted - 2014.04.09 13:24:00 - [1] - Quote Don't have much to contribute here, because everything i think of keeps on bumping into the altcorp 'problem'. I don't neccesarily think it's a problem, kinda neutral on the topic atm. Feeling like the Genolution pack is the culprit here, though. One approach to the problem is to trying to come up with Real World analogs to the Genpak/altcorp mechaninc. The closest i've been able to get is something like when multinational corps like Boeing apply for protection as a 'fledgling industry'. In that case access to protection is effectively gated through a legislative/administrative process and the lobby industry, so there is time and money involved in getting access to the ~~Genpack~~ 'Fledgling' status. What if we do something like put a time lag on Genpacks? The PC pros will have to hammer out the details, but as a crude proposal what about: - maybe a 2 week lag between buying and being able to use your Genpack. - Corp participation in Genpack attacks must be 50% or greater, so at least half your mercs must be members of the altcorp. Failing to meet this criteria at match start(and throughout it's duration) means forfeiture of that match and loss of the Genpack. Also membership would have to be defined as older than 24 hours. -Genpacks can't be stored in any way, shape or form: once the waiting period expires, the pack has to be used to set up an attack immediately, say in a 4 hour window. Existing corps who wanted to use the Genpack mechanic for cross-region teleportation would then have maintain a queue of altcorps with Genpack applications to take advantage of the mechanic, as well as deal with the corp membership transfer hassle. This wouldn't stop the behavior, but it would make it a unappetizing logistical headache for wealthy existing corps looking to exploit the mechanic. Lastly, all of this should be fairly easy to implement for CCP, so very little new code - perhaps True Grit's system is robust enough to accomodate something like this already. Edit: Forgot the most important part: If measures like these worked, it would allow us to drop the price of a Genpak, making getting into PC less forbidding for new participants. Also, along the same lines, what if Genpack clones paid out at different rates than planetary clones? What if Genpack clones were not capturable or transferable? I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1942	Posted - 2014.04.09 18:06:00 - [2] - Quote Eugene Killmore wrote: The only thing that will save PC is increasing clone pack size or adding the ability to buy up to 450 clones at a set price per clone. At this point every other PC change is inconsequential in my mind other than adding a new region. Clone packs must allow corps a fighting chance and 120 is just stupid. The thing about expanding to a new region is that, yes, it might reduce issues temporarily, but the same undelying flawed mechanics would still be there driving bad gameply, but might be much less obvious. I'd rather see PC stay in the pressure cooker of Molden Heath until we hammer out mechanics that drive good gameplay. I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1942	Posted - 2014.04.09 18:07:00 - [3] - Quote Tallen Ellecon wrote: No passive ISK No passive ISK No passive ISK Incentivize conflict over complacency, at this point the incentive to make ISK instead of fight is not only detrimental to PC now in terms of fair fights (if any) but also to any future iteration of PC where those that have made so much off the current mechanics have a huge upper hand and we're back to where we are now. No passive ISK No passive ISK Must +1. I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1947	Posted - 2014.04.10 01:03:00 - [4] - Quote How to address the passive income clone mechanic in a hot fix? A Simple Risk/Reward Mechanic 1. Once your district hits its clone capacity(300 or 450 depending on SI, iirc) clone production is cut down to 1/10 of the current rate. 2. But for the greedy/needy......if you sell clones the clone production rate goes back up until you hit full capacity again, so the district owner can increase their passive income by running with a lower standing clone count. That's it, end of fancy system. Our elite pvp corps could maintain their sweet passive income by maintaining maybe only 150 clones in their district, knowing that they were pvp gods and able to beat any other corp in the game with 150 clones. On the other hand, if they didn't have the balls for that they could maintain maybe 200 or 250 clones and significantly drop their passive income. It would also maybe give a boost to the SI that increases clone production rate. I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1956	Posted - 2014.04.11 13:06:00 - [5] - Quote Thinking about incentivising activity/conflict it almost seems like we have to break rewards up into scenarios. For example, in those cases where one side wins through clone attrition, we would expect(perhaps someday) the subsequent capture of the MCC. Could we work this into our current mechanics through something like a simple die roll? In those cases where you cloned your enemy, the server would use remaining allied/enemy MCC hitpoints to form an odds ratio, which it would then roll at end of match to determine if you were successful in capturing the MCC. So if when you cloned your enemy your MMC was at 50% hp and the enemy MCC was at 50% hp your odds for MCC capture at match end would be 1 in 2. Lastly, if MCC capture was meant to be a rare thing, we could just scale the results of the final odds calculation. Payout could just be lumped into the final ISK rewarded for the match and split up using the current mechanics. WhatGÇÖs an MCC worth, anyway? I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1956	Posted - 2014.04.11 20:06:00 - [6] - Quote Kain Spero wrote: The system still needs to be balanced and adding mechanics that will add long term problems isn't the best course. I don't think the mechanics should go out of their way to punish players for being good. I put out some pokes about the window issue and I'm also in the process of getting a meeting set with CCP so these issues can be discussed. When I hear something back about how much the timers can be manipulated I'll let you know. We just need to be careful we don't swing the pendulum so far one direction that it becomes the blob always wins or Planetary Conquest becomes something you MUST do every day to keep your district. What if we tie the 'clone export window' to the 'attack vulnerability window', and adjust the clone production rate such that if a corp wanted to extract maximum passive ISK from a district it would have to be vulnerable/export several times a day. Conversely, if a corp wanted to play as defensively as possible, perhaps their district would be vulnerable to attack only once per week, but at that point they would be making virtually no passive ISK. I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1956	Posted - 2014.04.11 20:11:00 - [7] - Quote Kain Spero wrote: I think folks are underestimating the value of effective clone packs. I'm also curious now if a raiding mechanic can be implemented. What if instead of auto sale on the reinforce timer it spawns a match that you have to go into and win to get the ISK from your auto sale. The match spawns in other contracts for the attacker side where anyone can join. Attackers win they get ISK from the clone sale instead. Each side gets 40 clones. The effect would be a way for corps without land to siphon ISK from the big boys and potentially use that ISK to fund effective clone packs rather the relying on just taxes and donations. (My concern is this idea would require too much bandwidth) I'm fine with entertaining the idea of smaller clone packs I just think you won't solve PC 1.0 self attacking with clone packs unless the packs exceed the ISK you get from killing it combined with the passive ISK. Although with the above idea or turning off passive clone sales that problem would be largely eliminated. Like this a lot - generates PC-quality battles for corps who may not have the resources/connections to hold a district. Provides limited risk but great experience for PC noobies, increases community mixing. allows more peeps to have valid PC experince so they can add to the conversation. Battle could even be an ambush ^^ I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1966	Posted - 2014.04.13 18:15:00 - [8] - Quote Thinking about how this game will be in the future: Planets/districts from which landholding corps extract resources for use in EVE/DUST & clone mercenaries that can instantaneously jump their consciousness across all of colonized space. If we speculate that MMCs will be necessary to wage war and able to get in-system via covert jump of some carrier craft, warbarge or otherwise, how much advanced warning would we expect to have as the defender of a district? How should the attack scheduling mechanics work when the game is mature? The most organic and immersive mechanic i can imagine is vulnerability based on resource export - when we need to get clones/materials offplanet we necessarily open ourselves up to attack for a short period. Avoiding or ameliorating this vulnerability may be one of the primary motivations for investing in beanstalks. If we agree that the above description of the final product is a reasonably close guesstimate, it would be judicious to align our current ad hoc mechanics as closely as possible with our future vision, so long as the resulting system generated good gameplay. For that reason export window vulnerability seems the way to go, imo. To balance our current game mechanics income should scale with vulnerability, and corps should be able to set the frequency of the vulnerability/income window. I would calibrate the mechanic such that if a corp chose to be vulnerable 4 times per day they would maintain their current income, 2 times per day would be half their current income, once per day would be a quarter their current income and once every two days would an eighth of their current income, etc. This mechanic would generate lots of fights on weekends/holidays, reduce passive income, allow district-holders to adapt to RL demands and give corps an alternative to alt-corp-locking. It would not prevent alt-corp-locking, but that is a separate mechanic. While this shouldn't require too much work(and would require almost none if True Grit designed with flexibility/future in mind), it is prolly not something we could do in a hot fix now. Just posting it because it's worth thinking about what PC is ultimately going to look like. tl:dr District income should be tied to how often you allow your district to be vulnerable. District vulnerability timers would then be variable, from hours to days between possible battles. I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1967	Posted - 2014.04.14 00:08:00 - [9] - Quote Spartacus Dust wrote: Kain Spero wrote: In terms of what can be done for Planetary Conquest 2.0 I get really excited. I get the feeling that the potential in Dust that drew us to this game can actually be realized and the Dust 514 can become a true game. I think being vulnerable during resource export and allowing for those realtime no timer fights alongside timer fights for the districts really would be a great way to go. While these visions comes to be though we have the reality that is PC 1.0. I really don't feel that letting it languish while we wait for PC 2.0 is an option. The two biggest issues to me are passive ISK and clone pack size. The rest of the discussion becomes nuanced mechanics that may or may not be able to be addressed with the resources available. Listening to the discussion here though is seems if we could get two things thrown into a quick hotfix while some of these other things are looked at it's increasing the clone pack to 150 with the same current cost per clone and turning off auto sale of clones. These are things that must be done and every day that goes by PC 1.0 digs itself further into the hole. I completely agree also agree. These are good 'do no harm' proposals that fit into PC 1.0 and address current issues. I support SP rollover.
Vrain Matari Mikramurka Shock Troop Minmatar Republic 1976	Posted - 2014.04.16 17:22:00 - [10] - Quote Kain Spero wrote: Soraya Xel wrote: Kain Spero wrote: I think CCP understands that there are complex issues regarding Planetary Conquest with some potentially straight forward changes. The most important of these issues being passive ISK and clone pack size. So when do we get fixes? Unknown, but I've made my opinion know to CCP that if/when they decide on changes they need to inform the community. Thanks for the effort and the report. Even if this is a temporary fix to PC, the motivation for CCP should be the possibility of a more positive and larger palyerbase come fanfest. Improvements made to PC spill over into FW and pubs. I support SP rollover.