DUST Search - Fighting the Blue Donut: PC Suggestions

CCP FoxFour wrote:

Parson Atreides wrote:

Maybe I don't know what you mean by blue donut. If planets provide bonuses for controlling the entire thing, you're always going to have people either attacking your districts to prevent you from getting the bonus (or to get it for themselves) or you're going to be attacking someone else's districts because you want that bonus. Or if you get some sort of bonus for controlling more districts at like 4 controlled, then 7 controlled, then 10 controlled, etc. then you have incentive to attack as well.

How is giving a few extra clones to the attacker if they win going to provide more incentive than planetary or district count bonuses?

I don't know where the term came from, but people are using it to reference large coalitions of corporations or alliances that just set each other blue and never attack each other.

Even on a planet scale some organizations may band together and say "you take that planet, I take this planet, we don't attack each other, maybe we help each other defend" The idea being that if they form enough friends they won't get attacked and can just sit there making ISK with no risk.

Our hope is to incentives people into attacking because it can make them more money than sitting around doing nothing. While this won't stop everyone as there will always be people who want to make the safe ISK we are hoping to incentivise enough people into not doing it that it won't be a problem. We will monitor this after launch and if it is a problem we will crank up the rewards for attacking.

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Beren Hurin OMNI Endeavors O.M.N.I. Initiative 320	Posted - 2013.04.02 23:56:00 - [1] - Quote So I was discussing with people about ways you could prevent massive groups from taking giant swaths of territory. A couple of thoughts that I had that were probably planted by seeds of the other various thoughts were this: Unification: Allow for districts on planets to be 'unified'. -áThis would take a whole day to perform, and if attacked, would be cancelled. Unified districts would share a common clone reserve, reinforcement timer, compound their generation rate, but also get a tax bonus. -áAdditionally, remaining properties would be shared such as the movement bonus can now apply to more clones than previous. -áNet clone production wouldn't change. -áThere would also be an income bonus for unified districts. Districts can only upgrade their unification level. -áIf a unified district is defeated, after all clones are lost, one district of the attacker's choosing is removed and the remaining ones resume production. -áif all clones are not lost, then some go to the attacker and all districts that are unified have stalled clone production. Public Affairs: As mercs you may not care about local or galactic politics, but as we have learned in the Caldari Prime event and it's aftermath, corporations are inevitably intertwined with planetary populations. -áFor this reason I suggest an interconnectedness between districts, their population alignment, and corp alignment. One problem people have with normal player psychology is that they figure that that we will inevitably find a way for a giant corp to take over most of space, or a huge chunk of it. -áWhat normally prevents a nation from doing this is often demographics, economics, and geography. -áThe more an empire is stretched the bigger it's logistic trail becomes and the more people it has to please. It is this last part that I think could be interesting. -áSo I propose that at deployment each district has a predisposed faction alignment. -áThese would correspond to the same alignment levels as Eve. -áHowever, dust mercs could gain alignment based on the faction warfare contracts they take. Each FW contract would be different from each other and provide a positive or negative alignment impact. -áThey may or may not be based on the FW corps involved, but lore wise, would really be about the planetary district conflicts and THEIR domestic politics. -áEach contract would give a major bonus for winning and a minor bonus for losing with an equal penalty or none at all for fighting against the opposing side. The effect would be, for example, if you had a giant corporation, and you wanted a planet that had districts that required you to have +4 Sibiestor standing, not only would you have to defend those districts, -ábut you'd have to maintain that cumulative standing within your corp. -áthe more people you have in corp the harder it would be. -áAlso the more districts you have, the harder it would be to maintain a spectrum of positive standings with multiple factions. -áThese could be NPC bloodlines too rather than empire factions... The better your team, the more often they won, the easier it would be to quickly get and maintain the alignment spectrum necessary for optimal defense. The penalty for falling too far below a required standing, or squandering your corporate image, would be having a larger and larger window for a reinforcement timer for a particular district. -áFor every point of standing below the requirement you would add an additional hour that a district is vulnerable, up to 5 hours. -áSo if you had districts that required Khanid +5, Khanid +3, True Amarr+2 and Intaki +2 all on the same planet, and you had Khanid 3 , true Amarr +2 and Intaki -1, then you'd be vulnerable for 3 hours in the first district, 1 hour the next, 1 in the following, and 4 hours in the Intaki district. -á You could only still be attacked once per reinforcement timer, but by a wider audience, and possibly not in peak times. -áAlso, alignment would naturally degrade over time forcing you to upkeep standings, or risk more vulnerability. So this would be the mechanic that represented the extra 'work' your corp would do to make it easier to hold the space you own. -áAdditionally PvE drone battles could allow for a bit easier alignment bonuses to bloodline alignment increases that won't also result in negative affects, and possibly for larger numbers of members for your corp.
Vaerana Myshtana Bojo's School of the Trades 581	Posted - 2013.04.03 01:54:00 - [2] - Quote I'm definitely in favor of keeping the Blue Donut out of Dust. I'm not sure how planetary consolidation would do that. I worry that the big corps would simply farm it the same way that they can farm the current PC model we've been shown. Without some sort of feedback curve that makes more districts harder to hold, I'm not sure we can stop the Blue Donut. I agree that Standings have a place in the game. I'm not sure if what you describe is exactly the way to go, but some Standings mechanic is better than nine.
Iron Wolf Saber BetaMax. CRONOS. 3334	Posted - 2013.04.03 01:57:00 - [3] - Quote Vaerana Myshtana wrote: I'm definitely in favor of keeping the Blue Donut out of Dust. I'm not sure how planetary consolidation would do that. I worry that the big corps would simply farm it the same way that they can farm the current PC model we've been shown. Without some sort of feedback curve that makes more districts harder to hold, I'm not sure we can stop the Blue Donut. I agree that Standings have a place in the game. I'm not sure if what you describe is exactly the way to go, but some Standings mechanic is better than nine. Beer's idea? Yeah I could tear that one apart, bottom line of his idea is shooting self in foot and attacking is extremely far more costly than sitting. You cannot make everyone in eve happy and you're are eventually going to be forced to shoot your npc friends in his idea. I am typing up my idea now though that takes a far different approach.
Val'herik Dorn SyNergy Gaming 392	Posted - 2013.04.03 01:59:00 - [4] - Quote Remember too that big corps like small corps start with 1 district then have to grow more clones. The first couple of weeks in pc will be sloooooow.
Vaerana Myshtana Bojo's School of the Trades 581	Posted - 2013.04.03 02:16:00 - [5] - Quote Val'herik Dorn wrote: Remember too that big corps like small corps start with 1 district then have to grow more clones. The first couple of weeks in pc will be sloooooow. The Blue Donut isn't really a short term problem, it's more of a long-term outcome of any sovereignty system that makes it nigh impossible for new corps to pose a serious threat to established ones. In EVE, to have a shot at conquering space you basically need the resources of conquered space. The same problem is inherent in the currently outlined PC system. Essentially, any corp that controls more than a certain critical mass of districts will by nigh-invulnerable ("SPOON!") to anyone but another corp of similar size. That's because they can keep throwing clones at any threatened/lost district. Without districts to draw from, the usurper corps are limited to attacking one district at a time and at great cost in terms of grinding instant battles. As a result, the big corps agree not to attack each other (they set each other "blue") meaning that virtually all of the conquerable territory is pretty much stagnant, boring, and stable- the "Blue Donut". In Dust, it is probably going to be the "Blue Potato" unless CCP can tweak the system effectively.
Beren Hurin OMNI Endeavors O.M.N.I. Initiative 320	Posted - 2013.04.03 03:26:00 - [6] - Quote What if the alignment system also went sort of like... Whoever is more aligned with a district that side could face as much as a single null cannon's worth of damage for the entirety of the match as a result of nearby hacked planetary defenses by sympathizing local rebels. So defender corp A has an alignment +2 with group x, while attacker corp B has an alignment +5 with them. Because it was so small it was easy to have the double amount of alignment required to get the full damage attack bonus. Another idea, instead of alignment, is just to reward bloodline LP from merc battles or something like it that must be spent on the districts to maintain a positive relationship with its people. They could even give you something from spending them, but there would still be that requirement for lowsec. If you don't have enough people in corp to get the LP or buy the LP, then your district will start to fight against your MCC during matches. If districts become too hostile toward owners they stop producing clones. This suggestion would require a little better corp management UI, but if LP was transferable to the corp, and from Eve, then that could make this even more interesting.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 2354	Posted - 2013.04.03 03:28:00 - [7] - Quote This sounds like it would make the problems WORSE instead of better. Unification of districts means that the districts effectively become MORE difficult to take once a Corp holds a decent amount of territory. That means people WON'T be targeting the high-level Corps because their unified Districts will be harder to attack. Keeping the districts independent as they are in the current model is a better protection against the blue donut, honestly. You don't get exponential increases in value on your districts, linear benefits mean that each district is vulnerable to atack on an individual level, rather than based on how many other districts are supporting it from the same Corp. Also, I like that there's (currently) no way to transfer clones between Alliance members, so you can't rely on allies outside of your Corp for direct intervention, only to counter-attack the people attacking you.
gbghg L.O.T.I.S. Legacy Rising 1013	Posted - 2013.04.03 03:30:00 - [8] - Quote berin don't know if you saw this already but if you haven't you might be interested, from FoxFour's clone stealing thread https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66365&p=5 CCP FoxFour wrote: Parson Atreides wrote: Maybe I don't know what you mean by blue donut. If planets provide bonuses for controlling the entire thing, you're always going to have people either attacking your districts to prevent you from getting the bonus (or to get it for themselves) or you're going to be attacking someone else's districts because you want that bonus. Or if you get some sort of bonus for controlling more districts at like 4 controlled, then 7 controlled, then 10 controlled, etc. then you have incentive to attack as well. How is giving a few extra clones to the attacker if they win going to provide more incentive than planetary or district count bonuses? I don't know where the term came from, but people are using it to reference large coalitions of corporations or alliances that just set each other blue and never attack each other. Even on a planet scale some organizations may band together and say "you take that planet, I take this planet, we don't attack each other, maybe we help each other defend" The idea being that if they form enough friends they won't get attacked and can just sit there making ISK with no risk. Our hope is to incentives people into attacking because it can make them more money than sitting around doing nothing. While this won't stop everyone as there will always be people who want to make the safe ISK we are hoping to incentivise enough people into not doing it that it won't be a problem. We will monitor this after launch and if it is a problem we will crank up the rewards for attacking.
Beren Hurin OMNI Endeavors O.M.N.I. Initiative 320	Posted - 2013.04.03 03:35:00 - [9] - Quote Garrett Blacknova wrote: This sounds like it would make the problems WORSE instead of better. Unification of districts means that the districts effectively become MORE difficult to take once a Corp holds a decent amount of territory. That means people WON'T be targeting the high-level Corps because their unified Districts will be harder to attack. Keeping the districts independent as they are in the current model is a better protection against the blue donut, honestly. You don't get exponential increases in value on your districts, linear benefits mean that each district is vulnerable to atack on an individual level, rather than based on how many other districts are supporting it from the same Corp. Also, I like that there's (currently) no way to transfer clones between Alliance members, so you can't rely on allies outside of your Corp for direct intervention, only to counter-attack the people attacking you. There is a plus and minus. If the attackers win there could be more clones to take home. Having more clones to fight with would just mean it'd take longer to get them to 0. You could say there is a minimum count required to maintain unification, and once below it would refracture. MCCs would still work the same way. Just because a defender has more clones than the attacker doesn't give much inherent advantage. The advantage for the defender is that it doesn't have to move clones around as much. It could also build up larger reserves that it could then make bigger more risky attacks in larger numbers against more fortified opponents.


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