I'm not exactly the best person to ask when it comes to technical aspects of a daily downtime for servers and how to circumvent it. I'm not exactly tech savy.

Suggesting to halt the down time is of course, not likely going to happen. For now I guess this can pose an omnipresent risk to drawing a battle out for that long?

In the event of the downtime disconnecting everyone, there should be at least some sort of fail-safe. I don't think there'd be a way to replace lost ISK, but perhaps the battle could be declared Invalid? Neither side wins and the battle must be reinitialized in order to continue the campaign.

I know this isn't much of a suggestion. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on how these things work can suggest a better idea?

That's a rather roundabout way of saying this idea is over the top Iron Wolf ... mind telling us what exactly you wanted to prove with these stats? That there's already more than enough for the New Eden universe to process without having to work a battle that can last several hours? If that's the case, why is DUST 514 even here at all =_=.

Attrition warfare...

Another person mentioned a similar idea to this.

There has to be a way to balance and set grounds for the fight BEFORE we start talking about its economic effects.

Besides server downtime, there are other questions that must be answered first.

How many players would be allowed in? How many vehicles will be allowed? Simply put, what are the parameters for the infinite battle, and if there are none, how do you implement boundless combat on a very limited system like the PS3?
Attrition warfare, imho, means corps bringing in nearly every available combatant, AND their allies to a fight, in order to wear down their enemies.
That is possible in EVE, but currently not possible with Dust. We have caps on manpower, and caps on deployable resources. Caps which are not present in Eve. I don't want a war of attrition where I cannot utilize any and all resources I deem necessary.
Furthermore, many of the restrictions we have in Dust are in place because of the PS3's limited capacity... Hardware-wise it's a 5-year old gaming laptop.

We have to circumvent these issues first, before we can get to the ideal free-form combat that we all want.
I love the idea, but I don't think it can be implemented right now.

Your post has been liked.

Attrition warfare...

How many players would be allowed in? How many vehicles will be allowed? Simply put, what are the parameters for the infinite battle, and if there are none, how do you implement boundless combat on a very limited system like the PS3?
Attrition warfare, imho, means corps bringing in nearly every available combatant, AND their allies to a fight, in order to wear down their enemies.
That is possible in EVE, but currently not possible with Dust. We have caps on manpower, and caps on deployable resources. Caps which are not present in Eve. I don't want a war of attrition where I cannot utilize any and all resources I deem necessary.
Furthermore, many of the restrictions we have in Dust are in place because of the PS3's limited capacity... Hardware-wise it's a 5-year old gaming laptop.

All those players don't necessarily have to be on the same map. In this game you could have a hundred players spread out across different districts on the planet you're fighting over, with events in district A affecting what happens in district B. Taking an objective in one area could keep enemies from calling in vehicles, orbital strikes*, etc.

*It's pretty much confirmed that EVE ships can shoot at us and we'll be able to shoot back once we have those installations

That's an idea too. I thought of that as well. Free-form movement between districts would be vital.
Circumstances, where a squad is trying to load into a new district, and getting dc'd, would be game breaking, and I see a lot of that happening, IF we try to push the infinite battle concept on the PS3 platform, though.
Currently, so many things go wrong just when we try to load into a single match or load up a fitting. Much less, literally go from one battle district to another, mid-game...

Don't get me wrong. I really want to see this implemented into the game. I don't see a game mode where all districts are open coming til PS4, though.

We COULD simply NOT allow players to run on foot between districts... but that would mean the gameplay experience won't be much different from what we have now.

Attrition warfare...

Another person mentioned a similar idea to this.

There has to be a way to balance and set grounds for the fight BEFORE we start talking about its economic effects.

Besides server downtime, there are other questions that must be answered first.

How many players would be allowed in? How many vehicles will be allowed? Simply put, what are the parameters for the infinite battle, and if there are none, how do you implement boundless combat on a very limited system like the PS3?
Attrition warfare, imho, means corps bringing in nearly every available combatant, AND their allies to a fight, in order to wear down their enemies.
That is possible in EVE, but currently not possible with Dust. We have caps on manpower, and caps on deployable resources. Caps which are not present in Eve. I don't want a war of attrition where I cannot utilize any and all resources I deem necessary.
Furthermore, many of the restrictions we have in Dust are in place because of the PS3's limited capacity... Hardware-wise it's a 5-year old gaming laptop.

We have to circumvent these issues first, before we can get to the ideal free-form combat that we all want.
I love the idea, but I don't think it can be implemented right now.

Your post has been liked.

NOTE: This idea is credited to Hagintora. He posted an excellent idea to a thread and I felt it needed a place of it's own. Also note, this is more an idea for a future release as content. I'm well aware of the fact there are more important things to worry about. But if CCP get's wind of this and decides to put it on the list then this thread will have served its purpose.

The idea is this: What if there was no immediate term of victory in a battle? Let's say there's a major land grab by two large player corps. One of them really wants a section of space controlled by another, and the defending corp is not willing to give it up, at all. So both sides fight until one of them decides to give up.

Now think about this for a sec. This is a fight for a section of space. How much are you and your corp willing to loose (in terms of ISK) in order to keep your pocket of space your own? All of it? So much you actually go into debt?

How it would work would be something like this.

There would be one or two Commander type players who don't directly participate in the battle. Instead they direct troops and review the current stats of the battle. How much ISK the battle's cost them so far, how many clones have been killed and vehicles destroyed on the enemy side and various other bits of vital information that would help the Commander decide if they should withdraw or stand and fight some more. Only the Commander can make the withdraw order, so the power to win/loose the game is in the hands of a single pair of players, and it's a matter of finding out who will give in first.

A Player-determined victory means a battle can last for hours, even days! And for some reason, the whole idea just fits in perfectly with New Eden imo because think of EvE for a second. In a battle with over 1000 ships, how long do you think that battle would take? It would certainly take one good chunk of time to destroy every single one of those ships, so why can't we have something similar in DUST? A battle that can rage for as long as we have the resources and manpower to fight it.

Let me know what you all think.

P.S: I just woke up and wrote this ... so if there are gaps in the explanation then I don't mind answering questions. Feedback, both negative and positive is welcome ...

Okay, I've been thinking about this, and I think I've think I've come up with something: BPO's.

So we all start off the the game with Starter Fits, and one Specialty Fit (Arbiter, Sentinal, ect.). Lore wise it can be explained that the NPC Corps tht we belong to when we start the game are providing this equipment for us. If we want to use anything better than these item, we have to pay for, and maintain them, ourselves. So what if we did the same thing for Player run Corps?

When Corps start off, their early members would lose the access to Starter Fits (meaning that they would still be able to use them, but would now have to pay to maintain them), but keep the Specialty Fit. These Specialty Fits would be what Corps would pay for when Mercs die. FW, and Event Contracts could then have bonuses to them in the way of BPO Suits (much like they do now, but with Corps as the owners, not individual players), say for acheiving specific goals during the match. These suits could then be added to the list of things that Corp members could have access to (kinda like a Corp armoury), but that Corps would have to pay for when Mercs died.

Since all the BPO Suits are basically STD Variants, it would encourage players to join Player run Corps so they could have access to higher baseline equipment, as well as place some of the financial burden of funding a Planetary War on the Corps themselves. Corps could then choose, before deployment into the battlefield, up to 5 different fits that they beieive would be the most beneficial for the up the upcoming fight. The same could also be used for vehicles as well, with Corps supply access to up 3 different Militia Level vehicles. They would be free to players, but would be added to the cost that the Corp must pay when they are destoyed.

This, I think anyway, should balance the dilemma of personally owned equipment, with the economic aspect of war that we're trying to achieve with tis idea. Corps would then stock up on clones (by purchasing BioMass) before the mission started, thereby deciding how many clones they're willing to bring the fight, and they would have to pay for any and all equipment lost that was supplied directly from their armoury during the fight. All of this would add up to a growing bill that Corps would have to keep an eye, because at some point it just isn't worth it, economically, to conitu

However it does pose a question. What's going to happen to the current stock of player-owned BPOs? Will they be assimilated into the Corp Armory? And what about for your average Pub match where people don't want to loose any ISK? Will you force them to stay with a standard, low level suit in that regard?

Something like making BOPs Corp battle exclusive might pose a problem, and might cause a re-balancing act in terms of at least ISK reward in pub matches. I know a number of people who switch over to a BPO suit if it looks like they're going to loose, or if they've died a certain number of times. This ensures that they make some profit off of the rewards at the end of the battle even after they've restocked their fits. By removing all BPOs except for the Starter fit, you're essentially forcing players to make a choice. Do they loose ISK until they can't even afford a single suit? Or do they stick to a low level suit and risk getting trounced by the power gap?

What SHOULD happen in this case, is to disable the use of BPO suits in large scale corp battles. All current BPOs currently owned by all the participating players combined, become available for use by the Team Leader. During the preparation phase, the Leader can take the time he needs to look at all the BPOs he has gathered from his team, and, as you suggested, build a number of fits to suit as many situations as he think's they'll need. What's interesting about this idea, is that with the right kind of planning, you can easily set up fire teams to tackle certain objectives on the map.

The part of this idea that we should be focusing on is what EXACTLY are we expecting Corps to pay for? Paying for clones makes sense, as BioMass is already a commodity in EVE. But everything else is payed for by individual Mercs. This is the point in the other thread I was on, where we originally brought this idea up, that we reached an impasse. How do you balance the economics of warfare with the the personally owned equipment being brought in by Mercs? Besides BioMass, what would Corps be expected to pay for that would keep with the Risk Versus Reward paradigm that helps make this game great? We obviously don't want to make it too easy, where entire planets change hands everyday, but we also don't want to make so expensive that know one can take one over. Or make a profit from owning that planet when they do.

Unfortunately I have never played EVE, and as we are far more combat oriented than EVE is, I'm not sure that there is a good example we can use from that game.

I'm going to shamelessly bump this ... and move on with my life =)